Priest Healer Guide for Season of Discovery Phase 2

In Season of Discovery Phase 2, Priest healers remain adaptable, with new runes enhancing their toolkit. The Hands Rune Slot offers Circle of Healing for raid healing and Penance for swift tank healing. In the Legs Rune Slot, choose between Power Word: Barrier for raid protection, Homunculi for utility, or Prayer of Mending for enhanced raid healing.

Phase 2 introduces Dispersion and Shadowfiend for mana regeneration, Pain Suppression for defense, and Mind Spike for increased DPS. Blizzard addresses bugs like the Strength of Soul rune, now allowing shields on tanks without resource loss.

Priests excel with versatile healing options, aiding in various encounters. Experiment with new abilities to optimize healing efficiency and support raid success.

Priest Healer Viability and Runes

Priest healers continue to demonstrate their versatility and strength in Phase 2, leveraging their diverse spell arsenal to excel in various encounter scenarios. The introduction of the rune system further enhances their capabilities, offering raid utility through spells like Pain Suppression and Homunculi's enhanced debuffs.

Moreover, Priests hold unique advantages such as being the sole source of Magic dispels for both the Alliance and Horde factions, providing valuable support in mitigating harmful effects. Additionally, the substantial increase in maximum HP from Power Word: Fortitude, exclusive to the Priest class, offers significant survivability benefits.

Furthermore, Priest healers bring a unique contribution to raid DPS with Power Infusion, a cooldown exclusive to their specialization.

In summary, Priest Healers emerge as a formidable force in Phase 2, offering valuable support and versatility in nearly any raid composition. Their wide array of spells and unique advantages make them a highly sought-after spec for successful raid progression.

Best Runes:

1.  Void Plague

2.  Empowered Renew

3.  Homunculi

4.  Pain Suppression

5.  Penance

Strengths and Weaknesses

Strengths:

1. Diverse Healing Abilities: Priests possess a wide range of healing spells, including single-target, multi-target, heal-over-time, and shielding abilities, allowing them to adapt to various healing situations.

2. Strong Raid Healing Potential: Utilizing Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending runes, Priests excel in raid healing, effectively healing multiple targets simultaneously.

3. Powerful Raid Utility: Priests provide valuable raid utility with abilities like Homunculi for debuffing enemies, Power Word: Barrier for raid protection, Dispel Magic, Cure Disease, Pain Suppression for damage mitigation, and Power Word: Fortitude for increasing maximum health.

Weaknesses:

1. Lower Healer Damage: Compared to classes like Mages, Priests have lower damage output as healers, prioritizing healing over dealing damage.

2. Mana Management: Priests need to be cautious with their spell casts to avoid running out of Mana, as excessive casting can deplete their resources quickly.

3. Gear Management: Due to the need to swap between different rune slots for optimal performance, Priests may find themselves needing to hoard spare gear pieces, which can be cumbersome and require additional inventory management.

Best Specialization for Priest Healer: Discipline

In the second phase of Season of Discovery, Discipline emerges as the optimal specialization for Priest healers due to its array of powerful talents tailored for mana regeneration and utility.

1. Power Infusion: Exclusive to the Discipline tree, Power Infusion provides a significant boost to spellcasting speed, enhancing healing throughput during critical moments.

2. Meditation: Despite the temporary interruption of spirit-based mana regeneration upon casting spells, Meditation ensures a consistent trickle of mana by allowing 15% of it to continue regenerating at all times, effectively granting around 20 MP5 for free.

3. Inner Focus: This talent enables Priests to temporarily benefit from 100% spirit-based mana regeneration, particularly advantageous when paired with abilities like Dispersion for extended mana sustainability.

4. Mental Agility: By reducing the mana cost of spells, Mental Agility contributes to significant mana conservation throughout raids, particularly beneficial when utilizing mana-intensive spells like Circle of Healing.

5. Mental Strength: Offering additional maximum mana and enhancing mana regeneration through abilities like Dispersion and Shadowfiend, Mental Strength bolsters Priest healers' mana reserves and sustainability in prolonged encounters.

Gameplay

1. Mana Management: Despite improved mana tools, efficient use of mana remains crucial. Prioritize efficient healing spells from your runes to conserve mana for emergencies or damage contribution.

2. Rune Swapping: Familiarize yourself with the use cases and drawbacks of each rune. Keep alternate gear pieces for each rune slot to enable quick swaps between them out of combat.

3. Five Second Rule: Understand the Five Second Rule mechanic, where not spending mana for five seconds triggers full spirit-based mana regeneration. Utilize this downtime for additional mana regeneration.

4. Basic Healing Priority:

- Prioritize healing with Power Word: Shield for instant damage mitigation.

- Utilize Penance for efficient healing, aiming for full value heals to maximize spirit-regeneration ticks.

- Maintain Renew on tanks for damage smoothing and potential spirit-regeneration ticks.

- Use Greater Heal or Flash Heal to address remaining damage, considering efficiency and urgency.

- Apply DoTs like Void Plague and Shadow Word: Pain during downtime, possibly following with Mind Spike -> Mind Blast if mana allows.

- Conserve mana by shooting at the boss during lulls, activating Inner Focus to extend time outside the Five Second Rule if possible.

5. Cooldowns:

- Utilize Inner Focus to extend time outside the Five Second Rule, combining it with efficient healing spells like Penance or Greater Heal.

- Use Dispersion during downtime to restore mana, considering its cooldown and potential damage mitigation benefits on certain encounters.

- Employ Shadowfiend to restore mana, understanding potential reductions due to dodged attacks.

Stats and Gear for Priest Healer

When selecting gear and prioritizing stats for Priest healers in Phase 2, it's essential to consider various factors, including mana sustainability, spell efficiency, and overall healing output.

1. Spell Power: Spell Power is crucial for both healing and damage spells. Prioritize Spell Power for increased healing throughput and offensive spellcasting potential.

2. Intellect: Intellect boosts your mana pool and spell critical strike chance. While Intellect grants significant mana, its value depends on raid pacing and the effectiveness of mana regeneration tools like Dispersion and Shadowfiend.

3. MP5 and Spirit: MP5 and Spirit are vital for mana regeneration. While MP5 provides consistent mana regeneration over time, Spirit's effectiveness is subject to the Five Second Rule. Balance these stats based on personal playstyle and mana management.

4. Spell Crit: Spell Crit increases the chance for spells to critically hit, providing occasional bursts of additional healing or damage. While not as crucial as other stats, Spell Crit can still be beneficial for enhancing overall performance.

5. Healing Power: While some spells scale with Healing Power, prioritize items with Spell Power, as they enhance both healing and damage spells effectively.

Gear Recommendations:

- Seek out items with Spell Power, Intellect, and Spirit for optimal performance.

- Key drops include Orb of the Forgotten Seer, Necrotic Wand, Deathmage Sash, Robes of the Lich, and Southsea Mojo Boots from various dungeons.

- Consider reputation items such as Lorekeeper's Ring, Bloodrot Cloak, and Highlander's Cloth Girdle earned through PvP activities.

- Look out for quality of life scrolls like Scroll of Shadowfiend and Scroll of Increased Fortitude, primarily dropping from Scarlet Monastery bosses, enhancing your abilities and reducing the cost of Power Word: Fortitude upkeep.

Best Races for Priest Healer

Best Alliance Races:

1. Dwarf:

- With exclusive access to Fear Ward, Dwarves are highly sought after for both PvE and PvP healing. Fear Ward provides invaluable crowd control resistance for the entire party.

- Desperate Prayer offers a free emergency self-heal, while Stoneform provides debuff cleansing and physical damage mitigation.

2. Human:

- While lacking Fear Ward, Humans have Desperate Prayer and additional Spirit from their racial. However, they are considered inferior to Dwarves due to the lack of Fear Ward.

- Diplomacy aids in reputation grinds, and Perception helps detect stealthed players in PvP.

Best Horde Races:

1. Troll:

- Berserking significantly reduces cast times for slower spells like Heal and Penance, making it highly beneficial for PvE healing. Additionally, Shadowguard synergizes well with other Priest abilities in both PvE and PvP.

- Troll Priests excel in both PvE and PvP, especially if they gain access to Fear Ward in future phases.

2. Undead:

- Will of the Forsaken provides crowd control resistance, though on a longer cooldown compared to Fear Ward. Devouring Plague offers strong offensive and defensive capabilities in PvP.

- Undead remains a solid choice for PvE and PvP, particularly excelling in the latter due to the utility provided by Will of the Forsaken and Devouring Plague.

Best Professions for Priest Healer

1. Engineering:

- Despite limited specialization options in Phase 2, Engineering remains a valuable profession for Priest healers.

- Hyperconductive Goldwrap, obtained through the Gnomeregan crafted items quest chain, provides useful stats like hit and crit, along with an on-use effect.

- Minor Recombobulator can be used for minor health and mana restoration or to bounce Prayer of Mending without triggering a Global Cooldown.

- Solid Dynamite and High-Yield Radiation Bomb offer additional utility and damage-dealing options.

- Advanced Target Dummy provides a helpful distraction in emergencies, taunting nearby mobs and soaking damage.

2. Tailoring:

- Gneuro-Linked Arcano-Filament Monocle, obtained through the Tailoring crafted item quest chain, offers valuable stats and a powerful on-use effect, making it a solid choice for headgear.

- Extraplanar Spidersilk Boots provide relevant stats and hit rating, useful until obtaining higher-tier boots and potentially even afterward.

- Tailoring offers flexibility in crafting gear tailored to Priest healers' needs, making it a suitable profession choice.

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