Before you can start kitting out your character you’ll need to know what your stat priority is so you can select the appropriate gear, gems, enchants, and consumables. Holy Priests also have some soft Haste caps to consider as part of this process.
Stat Priority
- Intellect
- Spirit
- Haste
- Mastery
- Critical Strike
Intellect is your primary stat and will always be the most important stat for a Holy Priest as the main source of your Spell Power and mana pool. Intellect also increases your Critical Strike.
Spirit is the primary mana regeneration stat for all healers in Cataclysm, with MP5 being removed. Spirit is a stronger stat for Holy than for Discipline due to the Holy Concentration talent, bringing it a little closer to Intellect in terms of priority. Even so, the amount of Spirit you actually need comes down to how comfortable you feel with your mana pool. Once you get to the point where you are not burning through your mana on a typical fight, you may want to consider dropping some Spirit in favor of throughput stats.
Haste is the most valuable throughput stat for Holy Priests. It not only speeds up your casting time, it also speeds up the time on your global cooldown, allowing you to cast your instant spells faster as well. Haste will also increase the number of ticks you get out of Renew, Divine Hymn, and Hymn of Hope over their duration. 12.52% Haste will get you the first extra tick, which makes it a good breakpoint to aim for, but Haste remains strong for Holy Priests even outside of this cap. The downside of prioritizing Haste is that it only increases your throughput by speeding up the timeline of your spells and not by adding anything to them, so you’ll be healing more but also spending your mana faster.
Mastery is almost as valuable as Haste and can even pull ahead in the right circumstances. Each point of mastery improves your Echo of Light, adding some extra HoT healing to every target you heal. Compared to Haste, Mastery offers a direct increase to your output without requiring you to spend more mana, so it can be a better stat to stack at low gear levels or if you’re otherwise concerned about your mana pool. A balance of the two stats is ideal and will cover all your bases. Mastery performs better when there is steady incoming damage for your HoTs to heal while Haste may be stronger if you find your HoTs are overhealing.
Critical Strike is your weakest stat as a Holy Priest. You’ll generally want to replace it or Reforge it to something better. If there are no better options it’s still an increase to your healing output and will help you keep Inspiration up on the tanks.
Reforging
Reforging is a new feature in Cataclysm that allows you to trade out part of one secondary stat for another on any piece of gear. You won’t be able to get Intellect this way (or get rid of another stat like Agility or Stamina), but you can fine-tune your secondary stats to your heart’s content.
Holy Priests will want to Reforge any Critical Strike on their gear to a more useful stat. Once you are comfortable with your mana, you can even start to Reforge some of your Spirit to Haste or Mastery.
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