With the arrival of Cataclysm, the talent system received a massive overhaul, changing from the 71 talent points system to a more compact 41 points system. As such, many of the old talents were either completely removed or changed, resulting in fewer possible build variations. One key aspect of the new system is that you must use at least 31 points in your main specialization to use the remaining 10 points in a secondary specialization.
Talent Builds
Holy Priests have a few options in terms of customizing their talent build based on their group, the content, and their own preferences. Primarily, you’ll want to choose which of the following one-point talents you want to have, as each will redefine your approach to healing in some meaningful way:
- Desperate Prayer is a solid personal healing cooldown that should be a default choice if the point isn’t needed elsewhere.
- Lightwell adds another strong raid healing spell to your kit, but it’s only useful if your teammates actually use it.
- Rapid Renewal lets you cast Renew twice as fast, which is especially useful on any fight where your group is spread out and your other AoE heals are not as effective.
- Spirit of Redemption will give you 15 seconds of free healing, but you have to die in order to use it.
- Archangel is usually better to avoid, since you’d have to drop Darkness and you don’t have Atonement to compliment it the way Discipline Priests do.
There’s one other talent that we should talk about here, and that’s Body and Soul. Being able to throw a 60% movement speed buff on any target by shielding them is pretty useful. But this talent doesn’t actually buff your healing at all, and your Power Word: Shield is relatively weak for its high mana cost. Plus if you have a Discipline Priest in the group, they may not like you putting Weakened Soul debuffs on everyone.
Glyphs
Prime Glyphs
- Glyph of Prayer of Healing
With this glyph, your Prayer of Healing also adds a six-second HoT to each target. You’re making one of your most-used spells even stronger, so most of the time you’ll want to use this glyph.
- Glyph of Renew
You’ll be using Renew a lot, so this is another glyph that makes sense to keep equipped at all times.
- Glyph of Lightwell
You’ll obviously only want this if you have taken the Lightwell talent, since otherwise it’s useless! If you do have the spell, this is a great buff to it.
- Glyph of Flash Heal
This glyph buffs your Flash Heal‘s crit chance when the target’s health is low, making your emergency heal more potent. It’s not the strongest glyph, but it’s a good third option if you don’t have Lightwell.
- Glyph of Guardian Spirit
Reducing the cooldown of your Guardian Spirit spell is another option if you expect to get more than one use out of your powerful tank cooldown over the course of a fight.
Major Glyphs
- Glyph of Prayer of Mending
There’s almost no healing situation where you don’t want to use Prayer of Mending on cooldown, so you’ll want this glyph for any kind of content.
- Glyph of Circle of Healing
Circle of Healing is one of your core spells, and this glyph will cause it to heal an extra target. You should always use this in raid content, but you could give it up for smaller group content.
- Glyph of Dispel Magic
This glyph makes your Dispel Magic into a heal as well as a cleanse. A good option if you expect to do any dispelling.
- Glyph of Mass Dispel
If you think you’ll be using Mass Dispel a lot, you may want to take this glyph to speed up its cast time.
- Glyph of Divine Accuracy
If you’re going to be doing some damage in your downtime, this glyph will ensure that your Holy Fires and Smites hit their target.
- Glyph of Smite
This one makes your Smites do extra damage to targets affected by your Holy Fire. If you don’t already need three of the other glyphs listed above, and you’ll be doing some damage, why not?
- Glyph of Holy Nova
I don’t doubt there will be niche situations where you want to spam Holy Nova, but it’s unlikely to be a good idea in most raiding content.
Minor Glyphs
- Glyph of Fortitude
This glyph makes your Power Word: Fortitude cheaper to cast, which is especially useful if you have to rebuff someone while you’re in combat (usually a tank).
- Glyph of Levitate
With this rune, you won’t have to worry about carrying around a bunch of Light Feathers anymore — or jumping off a cliff only to realize you ran out of feathers and forgot to buy more.
- Glyph of Shadowfiend
Although hopefully your Shadowfiend won’t be dying in the first place, it’s nice to know that if it does, you’ll still get some mana out of it.
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