Holy Priest Healing Stat Priority — The War Within (11.0.5)
On this page, you will find out the optimal stat priority for your Holy Priest. We first present the stat priority, before delving into more complex explanations. Our content is updated for World of Warcraft — The War Within (11.0.5).
If you were looking for WotLK Classic content, please refer to our WotLK Classic Holy Priest stat priority.
The Basics of Stats for Holy Priest
Raids
When raiding, you want to use your Mana pool flexibly to counteract deadly damage throughout a long fight. Thus, efficient Mana usage is of paramount importance.
- Intellect
- Critical Strike = Mastery
- Versatility
- Haste
Dungeons
When healing dungeons, you want to maximize your throughput in short fights. Since you can drink quite often, raw throughput stats are important. Damage-reducing stats also gain in importance as they allow you to survive things you usually cannot in the highest Mythic keystone dungeons.
- Intellect
- Critical Strike = Haste
- Versatility
- Mastery
Note about Leech and Avoidance
While we provide stat preference lists, swapping gear to higher item level items — and their higher Intellect/total stats — should usually provide a larger upgrade than using lower item level items with better stats. The exception to this rule are items with important tertiary stats, Leech, and Avoidance, all of which should still be used ahead of other items without them unless the difference in item level is around 15 or above.
Getting a Better Understanding of Holy Priests Stats
Leech allows you to passively self-heal for a percentage of the healing/damage of each spell you cast. Due to its great scaling and the prevalence of enemy mechanics that hurt everyone in the group, it ends up doing a lot of free healing that would, otherwise, need to be covered by Mana from yourself or the other healers in your group.
Avoidance's exact power depends on the encounter mechanics, but is often the decider on living/dying against extreme damage abilities in very high keystones. The damage it prevents is also very helpful in a raid setting.
Intellect is your primary stat. You should look for this stat in all of your upgrades. It provides you with Spell Power, which increases the power of your heals.
Mastery ( Mastery: Echo of Light) causes each one of your direct heals to place a HoT on the target, healing for a percentage of the initial heal over 6 seconds. Successive applications of this HoT stack.
Critical Strike doubles the effects of your heals, which also benefits your Mastery.
Haste lowers the cast time of your heals, as well as your global cooldown. It also reduces the cooldown of Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending, as well as increasing the healing of Renew (by granting additional ticks).
Versatility increases all your damage and healing done, and decreases all damage taken.
Speed slightly increases the speed at which your character moves. This can be useful when trying to dodge encounter mechanics or when repositioning with your group, but is not as noticeable as other stats.
Stat Gain Per Rating
In order to get 1% benefit from each stat, you need different amounts of stat rating. This means some stats naturally scale better than others, even before diminishing returns kick in from having too much of a certain stat relative to others.
- Critical Strike - 700 rating per 1%
- Versatility - 780 rating per 1% damage/healing increase / 0.5% damage taken reduction
- Mastery - 732 rating per 1%
- Haste - 660 rating per 1%
- Leech - 487.5 rating per 1%
- Avoidance - 260 rating per 1%
- Speed - 162.5 rating per 1%
Changelog
- 21 Oct. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 11.0.5.
- 09 Sep. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within Season 1.
- 21 Aug. 2024: Updated for The War Within.
- 23 Jul. 2024: Reviewed for The War Within pre-patch.
- 07 May 2024: Reviewed for 10.2.7.
- 22 Apr. 2024: Reviewed for Dragonflight Season 4.
- 17 Mar. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.6.
- 15 Jan. 2024: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.5.
- 06 Nov. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.2.
- 04 Sep. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.7.
- 10 Jul. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.5.
- 01 May 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.1.
- 20 Mar. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.7.
- 24 Jan. 2023: Reviewed for Patch 10.0.5.
- 11 Dec. 2022: Updated Stat Gain per Rating and Stat DR Thresholds.
- 28 Nov. 2022: Reviewed for Dragonflight launch.
- 25 Oct. 2022: Updated for Dragonflight pre-patch.
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This guide has been written by Niphyr, a generally knowledgeable, long-time healing Priest and theorycrafter. You can follow him on Twitter.
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