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I've been shadow my entire career, but I'm switching to Holy now that I'm level 80. Could I get some advice on this spec? I checked out 4-5 builds on wowwiki and came up with this.

Is not having 1/1 Inner Focus and 3/3 Meditation going to hurt me? Not having that tier is concerning me.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html?tal=050320001000000000000000000013205103230215253105331351000000000000000000000000000

Thanks so much! I'm brand new to Holy so not sure what else to say, lol.

Edited, Feb 25th 2009 1:05pm by Jedius

Not having inner focus isn't a very big loss, not getting meditation is. It's mandatory, no discussion about it, if you don't get it you'll be OOM in no time since it's the foundation of priest mana regen.

That build is obviously excellent, as it is the same as mine.

As I said, post 3.1 I may ditch Test of Faith for Healing Prayers, but for now I like the one you link.

Healing is usually reactive. You can't really make a rotation. Keep PoM up as much as you can. Renew the random damage done to the dpsers. Use cancel-casting (cast your heal, usually GH, and cancel it at the last moment if it's not needed, while imediately start casting it again...). Use smart the holy concentration. When you have it, also cast inner-focus for some more out of 5 seconds casting. Or use inner focus for PoH to help getting those crits. And then use SoL for free FH :)

Ok, simmer down Synn...I didn't claim to be a priest expert. Save some of the question marks for other posters. I don't want you wearing out your keyboard.

Thank you all for your input. I'm just trying to get a rough idea of which spells are first priority and specific uses for some spells.

Renew: Always up on the tank and a convenient way to patch up those who took some splash damage. Also something you might want to keep on Warlocks. Else their life-tapping might let you jump to wrong conclusions :)

PoM: Keep it on cooldown. Let one loose whenever the cooldown is up. Also excellent when you need a quick heal and FH would take too long.

Binding Heal: Use over FH each time YOU took damage. That way you can heal yourself AND the tank at the same time. Much better than having the tank drop while you're busy healing yourself.

Flash Heal: Quick patches of health to those in need. On a well-geared tank, it's usually all you need during heroic trash pulls along with Renew and PoM.

Greater Heal: Your most efficient heal, and truly a nuke. It's the bread & butter of a Holy Priest. Take note of your average amount healed with it. If the tank engages a boss or pack of mobs, start casting GH. Once his health drops by the average amount healed by your GH, allow the cast to go off. Otherwise interrupt the cast and immediately start casting again. For one thing you'll have a chance to gain some extra mana, for another, you effectively fight the rather long casting time of GH by almost always being "halfway there"

Holy Nova: Not to be underestimated, especially when glyphed. If you're standing back with other casters, it's a quick and easy way to heal those around you. It is totally awesome though when you happen to have healer aggro and are waiting for the tank to pull a mob off you. You can heal yourself without making matters worse, because Holy Nova doesn't create threat, and you can do so while running towards the tank.

Circle of Healing: Quick and easy way to deal with AoE damage. Just that.

Guardian Spirit: Best freaking healing spell in the game, because it does exactly what the tooltip says.

There should be more info in the sticky.

Good news, then! They're nerfing out of 5SR regen. So really, I wouldn't bother with cancel-casting now; you might as well get used to playing without it right off the bat.

1700sp is dandy for heroics IMO.

No, it's still going to be 2. What's changing is the way it regenerates. It will no longer be overly efficient to stay outside of the 5SR because out-of-combat regen will be nerfed. At the same time, in-combat regen is said to be slightly increased.

It shouldn't make much of a difference to you if you haven't spent months or years hoping for clearcasting procs with a holy priest.

With the talent changes, you can expect yourself to be casting a lot of Flash Heals and Binding Heals to not only prevent overhealing with Greater Heal, but also to make use of the new Serendipity, which will give you greater speed on GH when you actually need it.

Expect Holy Priests to move a little more towards Paladins in their healing style.