Holy Priest PvP Rotation and Playstyle — The War Within (11.0.7)

The main role for a Holy Priest, besides keeping your team alive, is to use your utility to prevent your teammates from using cooldowns and keep them offensive. Secondly, you want to support your team with Crowd Control, such as Holy Word: Chastise, Psychic Scream and Mind Control, damage and offensive purges. Positioning plays a key role for you, especially since Priest is not as mobile as other classes.

Discuss with your team to have a game plan. You and your team need to agree on who to control and who to kill before the game begins. You also need to know who will use their defensive cooldowns first, as overlapping defensives will make it very difficult for you to keep your team alive.

Buff your team with Power Word: Fortitude before the gates open. If you are playing against a team that can dispel this buff, remember to reapply Power Word: Fortitude throughout the arena match.

As soon as the gates open you will want to use Renew on all of your teammates, including yourself, and use Prayer of Mending.

A unique passive that Holy Priests have is with their Holy Word spells. This passive lets you use certain abilities to reduce the cooldown of your Holy Word spells.

• Holy Word: Serenity — Every time you use Flash Heal or Heal, it reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity by 6 seconds. Take advantage of this when you are playing with a team with strong single-target damage. The more times you use Flash Heal the faster you will have your strongest heal.
• Holy Word: Sanctify — Every time you use Prayer of Healing, it reduces the cooldown of Holy Word: Sanctify by 6 seconds and by 2 seconds when you cast Renew.
• Holy Word: Chastise — Every time you use Smite, the remaining cooldown of Holy Word: Chastise is reduced by 4 seconds. This is a very strong passive to take advantage of. It is important to use Smite if there is any downtime in an arena match. Reducing the cooldown of your only crowd control can catch teams off guard.

Premonition is a spell you get from the Oracle tree. There are three different buffs it can give:

• Premonition of Insight this reduces the cooldown on your next 3 spell casts. use this for important spells like Prayer of Mending or Holy Word: Serenity.
• Premonition of Piety increases your healing done and 98% of overhealing on players will be split on up to 4 nearby allies.
• Premonition of Solace makes your next single target healing spell grant your target a shield that absorbs 1 million damage and reduces the damage they take for 15 seconds.

These spells are something you want to keep in mind while doing your rotations. You have 2 charges of Premonition and you always want to have it recharging. This spell cycles through all of the above spells that it can be.

Something to always keep in mind during the course of an arena match is dealing damage while also healing. Do not sacrifice healing to do more damage, but when there are situations where your team is safe, it is a good idea to output some damage. Here is what you can do to deal more damage:

• Use Shadow Word: Pain on the enemy your team is trying to kill. You can also use this while kicked on the Holy school. Keep in mind, when talented into Catharsis, you need to be careful when to reapply Shadow Word: Pain to make use of Catharsis' effect.
• Holy Fire is a casted spell that deals a decent amount of damage.
• Smite is another casted spell. If Holy Fire is on cooldown and you still want to do damage, start casting Smite to do some single-target damage. It is important to note that the more you do damage with Smite, the faster Holy Word: Chastise will come off cooldown.
• Shadow Word: Death is a very interesting damage ability. The primary use for this ability is to deal damage with it to an enemy before they crowd control you. If it does not kill the enemy, it will deal damage to you, breaking the crowd control.
• Use Mindgames on the kill target when you and your team have set up Crowd Control on the enemy Healer. Mindgames does not only deal a substantial amount of damage, but it also deals additional damage to the target in case it tries to heal itself. This is a great way to handle the enemy's hybrid healing.
• Use Shadowfiend early on to benefit from the mana gain. It also does a fair amount of damage.

The great thing about Holy Priest is that they have the multiple ways to keep teammates alive and high on health. It is important to note that if you are using Apotheosis, try to wait until you have at least one Surge of Light proc. This will guarantee a shorter cooldown on Holy Word: Serenity and it is all instant. Generally speaking, try to cast Flash Heal or Heal after you used a Holy Word spell to benefit from Resonant Words.

• Before continuing with either of these rotations, make sure you have Lightwell placed on the ground and your team is in line of sight of it.
• The first method is best when the enemy team has multiple kicks available. It is also the fastest way to heal someone to high HP.
  1. Use Power Word: Shield on any teammates taking damage.
  2. Use Premonition.
  3. Use Prayer of Mending if it is off cooldown.
  4. Use Renew on all of your partners, including yourself.
  5. Use Holy Word: Serenity.
  6. Use Power Word: Life if you or your teammate has less than 50% HP.
  7. Use Power Infusion on your teammate. Due to Twins of the Sun Priestess both of you gain the effect.
     • If you do not necessarily need the extra haste, try to use it on your teammate when they have their major damage ability ready, to maximize the team's damage output.
  8. Use Flash Heal if you have Surge of Light.
  9. If you are stunned or need additional cooldowns to keep your teammate alive, Guardian Spirit should be used.
  10. Use Spirit of Redemption if you are running this PvP talent. You can free-cast holy spells without any mana cost during your spirit form. This is especially great to refresh the cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity. You can also use Mass Dispel on your teammates to get rid of dots.
  11. Use Void Shift if you have no meaningful heals left or are kicked on holy and your or your teammate is about to die.
• The second method is best used when playing against teams with strong spread pressure.
  1. Use Power Word: Shield on any teammates taking damage.
  2. Use Premonition.
  3. Use Holy Word: Sanctify.
  4. Use Prayer of Mending.
  5. Use Renew on all of your partners, including yourself.
  6. Use Holy Word: Serenity.
  7. Use Power Infusion on your teammate. Due to Twins of the Sun Priestess both of you gain the effect.
     • If you do not necessarily need the extra haste, try to use it on your teammate when they have their major damage ability ready to maximise the damage output of your team.
  8. Use Spirit of Redemption if you are running this PvP talent. You can free-cast holy spells without any mana cost during your spirit form. This is especially great to refresh the cooldown of Holy Word: Serenity. You can also use Mass Dispel on your teammates to get rid of dots.
  9. Use Power Word: Life if you or your teammate has less than 50% HP.
  10. Cast Flash Heal if your team is still low.
  11. Cast Heal if your team is stables and want to save Mana.

Use this to heal sustained damage throughout the match (damage done when the other team does not have burst cooldowns available). Generally speaking, try to cast Flash Heal or Heal after you used a Holy Word spell to benefit from Resonant Words.

1. Use Premonition.
2. Use Power Word: Shield on any teammates taking damage.
3. Use Prayer of Mending as soon as it is off cooldown. This will make up a large majority of your healing.
4. Maintain Renew on all of your teammates, including yourself.
5. If you are not in danger of being interrupted, cast Heal to save Mana.
6. It is best to stay max range when you are casting this to avoid interrupts the other team might have.
7. Use Flash Heal if you have Surge of Light.
8. Use Holy Word: Sanctify on your teammates to deal with spread pressure.
9. Use Power Word: Life if you or your teammate has less than 50% HP.
10. Cast Heal to conserve Mana if your team is not in any danger of dying.
11. In the downtime of an arena match, try to use Smite to reduce the cooldown of Holy Word: Chastise.
12. Cast Smite if your team is safe and you want to play aggressively with your team.

• Power Infusion is by far one of the strongest healing and damage cooldowns you have. Due to Twins of the Sun Priestess, you can use Power Infusion on your teammate, so both of you gain the effect. You will use Power Infusion whenever your team has damage cooldowns available, and if the enemy healer is in Crowd Control. This is especially powerful when the enemy has no way to Purge Power Infusion.
• Void Shift is a powerful cooldown that allows you to instantly save an ally, or yourself, from very low health by exchanging your health percentage with an ally. This can be used as an answer to overwhelming damage you cannot mitigate or heal through.
• Symbol of Hope is an incredible defensive cooldown for your teammates. A full channel of this spell reduces the cooldown of any major defensives by 60 seconds. In addition to this, they will also regain a large amount of Mana back. Use this when you need Mana and when your teammates need to get their defensives back. This can be used while out of line of the enemy team. If you do this, you will not be able to get interrupted and get full value out of the spell.
• Shadow Word: Death should be used on enemies below 20% health, it has a much more important use for a Discipline Priest. You can use this ability at any time, but if the target does not die, it will deal damage to yourself. This is extremely important because, if there is an enemy Mage on the other team, you can use Shadow Word: Death at the end of the cast and deal damage to yourself, breaking the crowd control on you.
• Guardian Spirit should be used when you or a teammate is very low on health and you have do not have a way to get out of a stun. Instead of dying, you will instantly heal for 40% of your maximum health.
• Desperate Prayer increases your health by 25% for 10 seconds, and instantly heals you for that amount. This is great for when you get are being targeted.
• Although not a defensive for yourself, Leap of Faith is great for helping teammates who are stuck in a stun or overextended. This ability can also be used to get your teammate behind a pillar to heal them.

It is advised to use Macros to use abilities on enemies or allies without having to target them. For this reason, we have a page dedicated to them.