Season of Discovery Holy Priest Healer Rotation, Cooldowns, and Abilities

When playing a healer you typically do not use a rotation; healing relies on determining which of your abilities to use in order to do the most healing, while minimizing overheal and using the least amount of resources as you can. Familiarizing yourself with the tools available to you as a Holy Priest is absolutely crucial to best optimize your Mana usage especially in the lower level bands where Mana is likely to be a major issue.

• Use Penance first as it is your most efficient and highest throughput healing ability.
• Use Flash Heal in dire situations where the target is likely to die unless they are healed immediately, this spell is incredibly inefficient and should only be used in emergencies or incredibly high damage situations.
• Greater Heal is used in situations where you have plenty of time to get off a massive, very expensive heal so typically only in a situation where you are able tool pre-cast incoming damage or when your target is no longer taking incoming damage. Try to pair with Inner Focus if possible to save yourself some mana.
• Heal is the ability you will be using primarily to heal your group, it is a slow extremely efficient heal that should be your first response to damage when Penance is on cool down.
• Renew should only really be used when moving and used very sparingly as it is extremely mana inefficient. With Empowered Renew it can also be used in an emergency to instantly heal someone to avoid a death.
• Prayer of Mending will do an incredible amount of reactive healing and is very powerful in a situation where your group is constantly taking damage. This is one of the best healing spells in the game and should be your first reaction in a situation where you know consistent damage will be occuring.
• Power Word: Shield scales incredibly thanks to the addition of the Soul Warding rune and when using it can be used preemptively to avoid large amounts of incoming damage. Be aware of the considerable mana cost of this ability though and only use it when you are confident your Shield will be fully consumed.
• Circle of Healing should be used to heal your party only in situations of constant incoming damage where it cannot be triaged by single target healing members of the party or Renew won't restore enough health in time. This ability is strong in dungeons but even more powerful in raids though it uses mana quickly.
• Prayer of Healing can be used to heal five party members at a time, this ability is incredibly efficient if all five players require healing but generally is not needed in smaller group content.

Spirit of the Redeemer causes your heals to be free by becoming a Spirit of Redemption. This also causes you to become unable to be targeted or interrupted by any hostile spells. This is a useful cooldown that will allow you to cast without any risk of being attacked or any concern of spending Mana.

Shadowfiend creates a shadowy fiend that attacks your target, returning 5% of your Mana each time it successfully attacks. This is an incredible tool for returning Mana as well as doing some additional damage. Use it early into an encounter if the duration of the fight will allow for multiple uses.

Psychic Scream Fears three enemies within 8 yards of the caster, sending them running in all directions. As a Priest you are incredibly vulnerable against melee attackers. This makes Psychic Scream the perfect option when needing to protect yourself. It is important to be aware of your surroundings when using this as you can easily fear your target into additional enemies and the situation can quickly get out of control.

Mind Vision allows you to see from the perspective of your target. This can be used to scout dangerous locations, but is especially useful in PvP situations.

Fear Ward wards a friendly target against a Fear effect. 30 seconds cooldown. This ability can be used to preemptively avoid Fear effects not only on the Priest, but also on ally. This is especially strong when used on tanks to avoid the chaos of a mob being relocated or even the possibility of your tank being hit from behind, lessening their ability to mitigate damage.

Mind Control controls a humanoid mind, but increases their time between attacks by 25%. This is a useful ability that allows you to control a normally hostile humanoid and sometimes even use their own abilities against them, most often used to give otherwise unobtainable buffs. It can also be used to relocate the enemy to a more advantageous position for when you decide to end the effect.

Cure Disease: removes one disease from a friendly target.

Abolish Disease attempts to cure one disease effect from a friendly target every 5 seconds for 20 seconds.

Dispel Magic dispels magic on the target, removing two harmful effects from a friendly target and two beneficial effects from an enemy. Dispel Magic is an incredibly powerful ability that will allow you to remove some of the most dangerous debuffs in the game from your allies and also remove powerful buffs from your enemies. Being aware of what you can and cannot dispel is important, as the general logic is if you can dispel it, you probably should.

Levitate allows the caster to levitate, floating a few feet from the ground. This can be used to slow your falling and avoid otherwise dangerous situations, it can also be used to walk across water. Make sure to keep some Light Feathers on you at all times.

Power Word: Shield provides a powerful shield to a friendly target, absorbing incoming damage. This is a great way to lessen burst damage or avoid spell push back. It also applies the Weakened Soul debuff that will stop you from casting Power Word: Shield on the same target again for 15 seconds.

Mind Soothe soothes the target, reducing the radius in which it will attack you by 10 yards. Only effects Humanoids.

Power Word: Fortitude increases the Stamina of a friendly target for 30 minutes. (60 if you have learned the Scroll of Increased Fortitude)

Shadow Protection increases the targets resistance to Shadow spells for 10 minutes.

Anytime you spend Mana, a 5-second timer begins where you will no longer benefit from your out of combat Mana Regeneration. By avoiding spell casting or Mana consumption for 5 seconds you will begin to regenerate Mana at the out of combat rate which is often times much higher due to your Spirit. As you get more comfortable with encounters and assessing how much healing your abilities do, you will have an easier time taking advantage of this and maximizing your Mana Regeneration.