Holy Priest DPS - 5.4 Guide

[Merklynn 3]

Dear Priests,

 

I have written a guide on how to play as a Holy Priest DPS spec for World of Warcraft 5.4:

 

http://www.michaeloglesby.com/holy-priest-dps

 

Some of you are probably thinking 'WTF? Holy Priest DPS? You have lost your mind mate'. I thought the same thing as well, so don't dismiss it, you'll be surprised on the results.

 

I have been playing Holy Priest DPS for the last three months with some great results.

 

Enjoy.

[Draygot 1]

I've been doing holy priest dps since the beginning when it first got introduced. Great pointers. But things I would change.

 

Stat priority should be haste to 8085 (just like shadow) then crit and then all the haste you can get after that, prioritizing crit.

 

Twist of Fate is better than power infusion because of the huge uptime you can get from healing and dpsing at the same time.

 

While it is a strong dps class, the only thing it *shines* at is as being an atonement like dps. It's ability to heal and dps surpasses any other healing spec. If you do the normal rotation and add in CoH/PoM/Lightspring/Divine Hymn, you basically become a full dps and 1/2 to 3/4 healer. It makes you an absurdly powerful 3rd healer in fights you don't need the full 3rd healer.

[Akraen 230]

Thanks for this! Great guide.

[Horcored 17]

Well, i gotta say, i tried this out on a training dummy and got like 80k dps(530ish ilvl), its nowhere near a full dps

[Brutalpriest 60]

So I made a shadow offspec and a holy offspec and target dummied for about 2 minutes each and got Shadow: 132k dps, and holy 119k dps.  Considering that mastery is a dead stat for holy and not for shadow, I take this to mean that yes, holy is a viable dps spec but with severe gear restrictions.

 

Can we get an armory and some logs?

[Akraen 230]

What is it that causes holy to do so much more than disc?

[Brutalpriest 60]

They're not healing =/  Also, the +50% Holy damage chakra.

[Zagam 1,982]

Disc DPS serves as a utility player since they heal while adding some DPS.  Holy DPS is just a confused DPS.  Why not just go Shadow?  Otherwise, you have to bounce back and forth between healing and DPS and that just doesn't seem...worthwhile.

[Brutalpriest 60]

Zagam, for single target fights, I'm pretty sure that holy priest would do more damage.  Just don't have him heal and have him as true dps roll. 

[Merklynn 3]

Hi guys,

 

Thank you all for reading my guide and having a great discussion.

 

Where Holy DPS Priest really excel is with Add-Control. With Mind Sear and Chakra: Chastise, you can do a lot more DPS than a Shadow Priest. 

 

Yes, Holy Priest DPS may not do more DPS than a Shadow Priest DPS on single target, but does a Shadow Priest have Divine Hymn or Hymn of Hope? Can a SP help out with the healing if it went a bit wrong?

 

Holy Priest DPS will never be top of the DPS and HPS meters, it's just another form of play that might be fun to players who play the Priest class who are bored with Shadow or Disc.

[Brutalpriest 60]

A fun aside, this makes the You're Doing It Wrong (silver in proving grounds with spec and trial mismatch) really easy =)

[Merklynn 3]

A fun aside, this makes the You're Doing It Wrong (silver in proving grounds with spec and trial mismatch) really easy =)

 

 

Yes it does, an achievement that I have already got: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/twisting-nether/Merklynn/achievement#15165:15222:a8697

[Brutalpriest 60]

Well, I ran with our guild flex run to give this a shot.  My dps was competitive, but my competition was all flex-geared alts =/ 

 

My conclusion on the subject is that, even if all of my mastery were crit, my dps at ilvl 570 would stil be comprable to a traditional dps-er about 20 ilvls below myself. 

[Lichdom 18]

Well, I ran with our guild flex run to give this a shot.  My dps was competitive, but my competition was all flex-geared alts =/ 

 

My conclusion on the subject is that, even if all of my mastery were crit, my dps at ilvl 570 would stil be comprable to a traditional dps-er about 20 ilvls below myself. 

 

Well, depending on what one's aim is with the spec, that's either encouraging or discouraging. If you plan to simply set your role to DPS and ward off ridicule with respectable dps, then its a bit discouraging. If you plan to play a half healer similar to what disc priests do by design, then its encouraging.

 

The half healer holy dps spec has pretty much always been viable for what it does. I've played half healer holy dps on and off all the way back in Kara, up through Ulduar and beyond. I've played that spec in many of our progression kills where we were struggling on both the dps requirement and healing needs. Its such a fun spec to play, that I had to constantly challenge myself whenever I wanted to play that spec whether it was more viable to bring a full dpser instead. More often than not, the answer was: Yes, better to bring a full dps.

 

In truth, there are very specific circumstances in which the half healer role is justified.

 

Firstly, its best played in 10 man. In 25 man, you have a much more granular scale of healing by going down from 7 healers, to 6, to 5, and so on. On 10 man, going from 3 to 2 healers costs you nearly 33% of your raid's healing output and being able to make that reduction only 15% and still boosting your raid's dps output while doing so is a worthwhile goal.

 

Secondly, the fight mechanics of a given boss should allow for the half healer's role to make a large difference beyond the simple kill time. Mainly, the fight should have a burn/nuke phase in which every bit of dps makes the fight that much easier. There should also be a big raid damage phase in which 2 healers would simply not be able to keep up. Annoyingly, these two phases must also not occur together. 

 

With all that in mind, one can just look at the bosses in the current tier to realize that almost none of them fulfill all of these requirements, whereas in past tiers and expansions, some bosses did. So even though holy dps is higher than it has been in a long time, the lack of appropriate encounters to truly exploit it, coupled with the disc spec being able to cover that role by design when needed, puts the spec squarely in the "fun but not serious" camp.

 

In the right encounter and played well, holy dps makes it feel like you have 11 people in your 10 man raid. When played badly, or when the encounter doesn't support it, its more like your brought 9 people to you 10 man raid.