Introduction:

Hi everyone, I just thought to share this Holy Priest raiding guide for patch 4.3 and  hopefully it will help any priest out there how to optimize your stat priority, reforging gears, enchants, gems, glyphs, and spec builds better. I have read a few of Priest guides out there since Patch 4.3 came out and just thought I can share my own perspectives for it and try to explain everything as I can. Anyway,  I am not a very good theorycrafter so all that is posted here are based on my own experience, so if you have any suggestions or different views you are very welcome to comment below. This guide is a general and basic knowledge for any Holy Priest, hope you consider this guide informative and will help you in the long run.

Glossary: 

I may use some abbreviations and terms that Priest are very familiar with, these are often used in any forums, guide sites and blogs out there, I just thought to share it for those who are not familiar with the Priest spells that way you know what term I am using.

• PoH – Prayer of Healing
• PoM – Prayer of Mending
• CoH – Circle of Healing
• GS – Guardian Spirit
• GH – Greater Heal
• BH – Binding Heal
• FH – Flash Heal
• LW – Lightwelll
• HPS – Healing per Second
• AoE – Area of Effect
• HV – Heavenly Voice
• BS – Blessed Resilience
• GCD – Global Cool Down

Spec Build and Glyphs:

Haste Holy build 6/32/3 Here I will show you a holy spec build with glyphs. These specs really depends what your role during raid and your raid environment. choose a build that would really benefit and determine your play style.  This build is a haste PvE build.

I choose this build for Heavenly Voice vs Blessed resilience, this is because I am always assigned to raid heals and use cooldowns pretty much every attempt we go to in the current content Dragon Soul, I also consider this build a very self effecient and not raid dependent build. Patch 4.3 has a general change on Divine Hymn having 2 points distributed in Heavenly voice would really benefit me most for increasing 100% healing done and reduces the global cooldown to 5minutes. I will not get into details of all the other spells as they are very self explanatory.

Mastery Holy Build 6/32/3 – This build is what I currently using, Few tries on optimizing my stats from the recent gear upgrades I got, I finally able to pull much healing output and able to conserve my mana more. This build is a Default PvE build for mastery. and putting 2points on Veiled Shadows to reduce cooldown of your fade abilitiy and Shadowfiend gcd for 60secs is beneficial in long fights so you can use your shadowfiend at least 2-3 times. and leaving 1 points in Darkness for haste is okay. The reason I left my current haste low and more mastery, because with raid buff my haste will still be able to reach the cap of 12.5% which is ideal for holy priests to have, you can go over but not necessarily, unless you really choose to be a pure haste build. Also Crit on this build benefits you from getting mana back but is still consider the least stat to optimized.

All builds that are presented here are through my experiences and experiments and tweaks, It is up to you to decide which build is best for you and also depends what your role in raid. Also about the Chakra state Please refer to this discussions over in wowhead, and there is a table presented in the comments how it works also with Revelations state, you may notice that it is posted last year for 4.0.1 and how it works is still the same. If I am missing something please discuss below I might learn more about the build I presented here. Thank you!

Stat Priority:

Some guides will definitely show you more numbers on this section, but I hate Math to make it easier I will make this simple as I can so you will not get too confused about it.

1. Intellect = This is the most important stat you need to prioritize first because it is by far the most effective stat for holy healing. and depends what Item level on gear upgrades it seems to be the most stat given and it increases your mana pool.
2. Spirit = The second most important stat you need to get, It helps you regenerate mana really good regardless of any item level of gear.
3. Haste = This stat basically helps you cast faster. If you have the rating of 1290 = 2.1 secs. cast time on Greater heal or Prayer of Healing and 1.26 sec on global cooldown for Firelands gears I believed and that is 10.08% which is okay. For the current content I recommend having at least 1994 rating which i estimate around 12.9% haste raid buffed and it will lower your cast time of Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing to 2.0 sec. and global cooldown lowered to 1.2 sec which is not bad either. But it always differs from your gears. if you have low level items at the moment just get at least the soft cap which is the breakpoint for 12.9% haste. Also don’t worry about getting a little over of your haste capped. For more detailed explanation about the haste formulas and numbers Plusheal community also has a great guide on haste threshold and may answer your questions as well (just thought to include this as reference because I am not very good on configuring all the numbers.)
4. Mastery = Some priest prefer this stat as there 3rd priority stat, depends on your talent build and what benefit you most is okay. But I still consider haste first over mastery. After having your haste soft capped to 1994 rating, or lower + raid buff  for current content, Have your gear reforge some to mastery and balance everything. Mastery also helps maximize your healing-output. My build that I currently use is optimized to mastery after getting enough haste and raid buffed to at least for mine is 13.44% is okay and I am currently just haste rating of 892 (6.97% + 25 man raid buffed = 13.44% of my current gear).
5. Critical Strike = The least stat to prioritize as a holy priest. it is the weakest stat and really don’t have to worry about it. and reforging this stat to either haste, mastery or spirit will help your other stats better.

Rotation and Cooldowns:

Reforging

In reforging your gear items, you have to prioritize what stat you need most to maximize your most effective secondary stats. and there are process and examples for you below how. Spirit > Haste Cap > Mastery > Crit. Credits include for this area from Narilka of Ensidia/Manaflask. Also I added a few details on reforging stats for Mastery build as well.

1. First Priority is to maximize your Spirit, Reforge Crit first or Mastery/Haste to Spirit. If you don’t have enough haste and barely reached to 12.5% don’t reforge haste into spirit.
2. Second getting your Haste capped to 12.5% or 1994 rating for current content and gear item level. Any gear without Haste, reforge Crit first or Mastery to Haste. and you can do this process until you reached your haste capped.
3. Third is to optimize, and you need to check your gears and balance your stats. you would want to reforge crit into haste or mastery then.

• If Items with no Spirit but has Crit and Mastery then you reforge the crit to spirit.
• If Items has no Haste and Spirit and you need haste to cap then you don’t need to do any reforge. If you don’t need haste because you reached the haste cap then reforge the Haste to Mastery.
• If the item has Mastery and Spirit and you need haste for cap then you can reforge the Mastery to Haste. If you don’t need haste, because you already reached the haste cap then don’t do any reforging.

Gems and Enchants:

For Gem slots on any item gears you have, I will list down what you need for your reference same with the enchants (this includes what profession enchant that will also benefit you.) Tip: When I try to gem up my gears I make sure that if the extra stats given is +10int or +10 haste +10 crit I don’t follow the color gem slot but instead I put Red gem for Intellect unless the extra stat is +20 int or +20 haste and considering what your meta gem needs as well to work.

For Enchants I will list down below what enchant needed for each specific gear item such as for head, chest, gloves, etc. I will try to put what profession enchant can be useful as well.

• Red Gem Slot = Brilliant Queen’s Garnet (Cheap Alt)
• Yellow Gem Slot =Artful Lava Coral (Cheap Alt) |Reckless Lava Coral (Cheap Alt) |Zen Elven Peridot (Cheap Alt)
• Blue Gem Slot = Purified Shadow Spinel (Cheap Alt)
• Meta Gem Slot = Ember Shadowspirit Diamond

I think that wraps up the whole guide guys, Hope this will help you somehow. I apologized in advance if I may have missed something out but I am open to any discussions and suggestions and learn more as I play my priest. I thank you all for reading this post, for resources of links provided are mostly from wowhead.com, worldofwarcraft.com forums,  Narilka of Ensidia/Manaflask, noxxic.com, AskMrRobot and PlusHeal Community.

I will post another continuation topic for this guide on addons, macros and power auras, some gear BiS list for Holy priests to help more. Please don’t forget to subscribe for my feeds to get my latest updates in my blog. catch me on twitter too @amerpriest Thanks guys and Have a good one! =)