In this article, we present you with various talent trees for Holy Priests (WoW 4.3) that you can use in specific situations. We also give you pointers for customising your talent tree and adapting it to a particular boss. The other articles of our Holy Priest guide can be accessed from the table of contents on the left.

1. Common Talent Builds↑top

As a Holy Priest, you should never be assigned to tank healing, since you are ill-equipped for this role. All of our suggested talent builds are tailored for raid healing.

This is a standard and powerful talent build for a Holy Priest. It takes all the important healing talents. Additionally, it takes Darkness, increasing your haste.

This talent build differs from the previous one by taking Veiled Shadows for a reduced cooldown on Shadowfiend as well as taking the situational Body and Soul talent. To achieve this, the build does not take Surge of Light or Darkness.

This talent build does not take Inspiration (useful on fights when someone else is guaranteed to provide this buff on your tanks) or Darkness. Instead, it provides you with the situationally useful Spirit of Redemption talent, as well as Body and Soul and Veiled Shadows.

2. Customising Your Build↑top

In this section, we will explain to you a few of your choices for optional talents. Then, we will explain what each of your important glyphs does and when they should be used.

2.1. Optional Talents

While the above builds will work in practically every situation, we feel that it is important for you to understand what your optional talents are and how they can be used.

• Surge of Light gives you a small chance to gain some instant cast and free of cost Flash Heals. The value of this talent is generally dimished by the fact that you will be using raid healing spells for the majority of the time, and the proc is only triggered by single target heals. You can take this talent, but its impact is small and you can safely skip it for something else.
• Inspiration applies the 10% physical damage taken reduction to the targets of basically all your heals. It is only useful on the tanks (unless a specific encounter ability has other raid members taking physical damage). You should take this talent whenever someone else is not 100% guaranteed to provide it for you (other Holy Priests, some Discipline Priests as well as Restoration Shamans).
• Spirit of Redemption allows you to continue healing, free of mana cost, for 15 seconds after you die. Generally speaking, this talent does not have very much value (assuming that you will die is a bad starting point for your character), but it can be valuable on very difficult encounters where every last heal can make the difference between a kill and a wipe.
• Body and Soul causes your Power Word: Shield and Leap of Faith to apply a buff to the target increasing their movement speed by 60% for 4 seconds. Additionally, your Cure Disease also removes one poison effect when used on yourself. This talent is very situational. Moreover, using this talent is problematic, since, as a Holy Priest, you cannot use Power Word: Shield very much unless there are no Discipline Priests in the raid.
• 1/2 or 2/2 in Blessed Resilience causes you to receive increased healing after you take damage from some sources. This talent can be useful to ease the healing that your healers have to do, but it is overall not very valuable.
• Darkness provides you with 3% increased haste. It is possible to take any number of points in this talent. Taking this talent will depend on how you value Haste Rating in your itemisation.
• Veiled Shadows reduces the cooldown of your Shadowfiend by 1 minute, allowing you to sometimes use it an additional time during the fight.

All other talents are mandatory. Your choice of optional talents can prove to be beneficial to you in very situational cases, although, overall, it will not affect your performance very much.

2.2. Glyphs

Glyph choice as a Holy Priest is quite simple.

2.2.1. Prime Glyphs

You have two Prime Glyphs that you should always use. They are:

• Glyph of Prayer of Healing, which grants your Prayer of Healing a healing-over-time effect, which heals for 20% of the initial heal, over 6 seconds;
• Glyph of Renew, which increases the healing done by Renew by 10%.

For your third glyph, you should choose between the following two glyphs:

• Glyph of Lightwell, which increases the amount of healing charges of your Lightwell by 5. It should be used whenever your raid is making proper use of your Lightwell and you do not specifically need the Glyph of Guardian Spirit (see below).
• Glyph of Guardian Spirit, which reduces the cooldown of your Guardian Spirit by 30 seconds. You should use this if your raid is not proficient at using your Lightwell (or if the encounter does not call for it) or if there is a mechanic in the fight that desperately requires more frequent use of your Guardian Spirit.

2.2.2. Major Glyphs

There are several Major Glyphs that can be viable, although we highly recommend using the following:

• Glyph of Circle of Healing, which increases the number of targets hit by your Circle of Healing by 1. It also increases the mana cost of the spell by 20%.
• Glyph of Prayer of Mending, which increases the first heal of your Prayer of Mending spell by 60%;
• Glyph of Mass Dispel: reduces the cast time of your Mass Dispel ability by 1 second.

2.2.3. Minor Glyphs

There are 4 Minor Glyphs that you can choose from freely:

• Glyph of Fading, which reduces the mana cost of your Fade spell by 30%;
• Glyph of Fortitude, which reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 50%;
• Glyph of Levitate, which removes the reagent requirement from your Levitate spell;
• Glyph of Shadowfiend, which instantly grants you 5% of your maximum mana if your Shadowfiend dies from damage.