Suggested Healing Priest Specs, Glyphs, and Addons for 3.1

Not sure how to spec or glyph for 3.1? Here are my suggestions. Feel free to modify accordingly. WoW Insider has a great roundup to everything 3.1 related.

No Stock UI has a great list of updated and compatible 3.1 addons for you to peruse.

Discipline Priest Specs

57/14/0

Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of Power Word: Shield by 4 seconds and reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Shield by 30%.

Absolution: Reduces mana cost of Dispels and Disease curing spells by up to 15%.

Focused Will: Increases your spell critical effect by 3% fully talented. If you get crit, incoming damage is reduced by 4% and healing effects on you increase by 5/10/15%.

3 points can go either into Absolution or Focused Will. With the amount of cleansers and dispelers in my arsenal, I opted for the increase crit for the time being. But that might change later.

Improved Flash Heal: Must talent, I think. Reduces mana cost of Flash Heal by 15% and increases the crit chance if your targets are below half health.

Rapture: It’s different now. When your Shield is absorbed or dispelled, you instantly get back 2.5% of your total mana and your target gains 2% mana, 8 rage, 16 energy, or 32 runic power. Works every 12 seconds.

Discipline Priest Glyphs

Glyph of Flash Heal
Glyph of Power Word: Shield
Glyph of Penance – NEW: Your Scribes will have to be lucky here.
Glyph of Prayer of Healing – At least it’s some form of AoE healing if the fight calls for it

Holy Priests Specs

14/57/0

Blessed Resilience: For 3 points, it increases your healing effectiveness by 3%. The stronger your healing effectiveness, the better this talent will be. For the time being I opted not to get it.

Serendipity: A haste inducing talent. Requires you to Flash Heal or Binding Heal before it adds a 12% haste buff per stack up to 3 (total of 36%). Makes your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing faster. Note: Binding Heal used to grant 2 haste buffs per one cast. It doesn’t do that anymore.

Test of Faith: No change here.

You’re going to end up with 6 talent points. You can only invest in two of the above abilities. I recommended Serendipity and Test of Faith.

Empowered Renew: Another instant healing spell added to Priests. The closest thing I can think of is that it’s an inverse Lifebloom. Instead of tick, tick, tick, BOOM! It becomes BOOM! Tick, tick, tick.

Holy Priest Glyphs

Glyph of Circle of Healing
Glyph of Hymn of Hope
Glyph of Renew
Glyph of Flash Heal
Glyph of Guardian Spirit

Things will be very busy in the World. New places to explore, new dungeons to conquer. All of us will do our best to provide the advice and guidance in the challenges ahead.

26 thoughts on “Suggested Healing Priest Specs, Glyphs, and Addons for 3.1”

  1. I’ve always been curious about Divine Fury, since I’ve seen a lot of disc priests take it over Improved Renew+Healing Focus… Do you really find yourself casting Greater Heal, or you just take it for smite/holy fire? I never took it as disc seeing how I only cast GHeal out of combat after ressing someone.

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  2. @Oleg: Lilitharien and I were discussing this earlier in fact. Either way, you need 10 points to make it to the third tier. It’s either going to be Divine Fury, or Healing Focus/Renew. This largely depends on your playing style. I do find myself using Greater Heal frequently. I’ll only Renew my current target usually. I don’t find my spells being interrupted or slowed down as often during raids so I don’t worry about Healing Focus as much. Not to mention if you’re an offensive healer with extra mana and time to spare, you might find yourself pitching in offensively with Smites and what not every so often. Entirely up to you as long as the Priest can reach Desperate Prayer and Inspiration.

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  3. Discipline spec – Why grace? And if you absolutely want grace, why 2 points? If you’re tank healing at that point (which is the only reason you would want this talent, single target healing) wouldn’t the 15 seconds be enough to keep the stack up even with 50% chance?

    Rapture – big change indeed. What happens if your PWS just runs its course? as I read it, it means you’ve just wasted your mana (nothing absorbed and no mana returned). So it becomes more important to be picky on who you want to stick your PWS. Does this effectively mean that bringing a second disc priest to the raid might already cause 1 of 2 to run oom because they cannot both keep up shields on targets that are being hit enough so that rapture is actually valid?

    Would also love to hear opinions on the changes to hymn of hope, and I wonder how many healers will actually opt to go for 2 healing specs with dual speccing in 🙂

    Shyraias last blog post..Time with a capital T

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  4. Hmm… I’m glad they’ve tried to do something with Renew, but 6 talent points and a glyph and it’s still a so-so situational spell for me…. with the extra raid damage and greater utility of Prayer of Healing in 3.1, I’m going to stick those renew points in holy reach & healing prayers. (something like http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=0503203100000000000000000000205051032302152530005301351000000000000000000000000000&glyph=071901030506&version=9767).

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  5. Matticus I am curious to your thoughts on the build below? Mainly curious how important you feel Desperate Prayer, Spirit of Redemption and Inner Focus are. For me that last point is pretty much a throw away though I would undoubtedly throw it into Inner Focus just because.

    http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbhZcxxcf0Vih0euAo

    As for Disc again I feel that Desperate Prayer isn’t really worth a talent point. Maybe 1/2 into Reflective Shield? I also really want to take the point out of Inner Focus and go 2/2 Reflective Shield but I think that is physically unpossible 😉 . Anyways just curious about your thoughts on this.

    @Shyraia I would say that Grace is beneficial regardless of how many targets you are healing. With the increase in the damage taken by the raid I think we will see this as something that is very useful on multiple targets in the raid (one at a time of course heh). Also to indulge your curiosity; I will be taking Disc healing and Holy healing as my two specs most likely with the dual spec stuff heh. I don’t know what it is about healing but I just can’t escape it no matter how hard I try. So I figured why fight it (if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em) 😉 .

    @Oleg thus far I found it really easy to heal a lot of fights by just keeping a Greater Heal casting. So I would spam Greater Heal and just stop casting if the tank didn’t need it. I do this as Holy and I do this as Disc. Call it force of habit from 40-man raiding. With the changes to mana regen I am unsure of how this method will work but I will undoubtedly test it out just because; why not? Also as Rafnir said Renew is kind of a waste now. From what I have been reading and hearing from some friends; it is almost always worth casting a Flash Heal or two instead of Renew’ing someone. Really the only reason I take the Improved Renew talent as Holy is because, like Matticus, I don’t find myself getting interrupted much. Oh and as for Disc Priests skipping both It is because crit heals are quite important. Unfortunately that is why I roll against a lot of Mages on gear :/ (minus anything with +hit fyi).

    Anyways it is 4am so if I mis-spoke or look like a noob I blame time.

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  6. @angry panda

    Aren’t they getting rid of reflective shield in 3.1? Personally i’ve found that desperate prayer has saved my butt a few times in raids — eg in Grobb after a tick of the injection when its coming off if my raid healer is healing the tank for me (i’m usually mt healer) it helps me get back faster, or on Loatheb in the small healing window if i’m very low it’s nice ot have an instant way of getitng my health up so i lose less time to get others up. In the end we’re all going to have to see just how much we’re relying on the new ways of casting spells and not to work out the most feasible glyphing/talenting for ourselves.

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  7. If you’re going to spec Holy, Spirit of Redemption is a no-brainer. 5% Spirit for one talent point is awesome, the on-death effect is just a bonus.

    As to the First-Ten-Points-in-Holy-for-Disc debate, I’ll be going Healing Focus / Holy Spec / 3/5 Spell Warding. I hardly use Greater Heal as-is (and Renew even less) so with no-cooldown Power Word: Shield, Improved Flash Heal, and 6.4s CD Penance, I see myself using it even less in 3.1. The pushback resistance and 6% less spell damage taken seem to be the better options.

    Caladeins last blog post..Where did this thing come from?

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  8. Thanks for the suggested healing specs! Its been a huge help.

    Now if I can just figure out what to do with my gems…

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  9. Shy – Those are excellent posts. I threw this post together to help out priests who were unsure of how to spec or glyph in this patch.

    Regarding Rapture, you’re technically right. But remember that the expected damage our tanks and raiders are taking are supposed to be much higher in Ulduar. You shouldn’t notice a significant difference (I didn’t).

    amandine – Reflective shield is still in the Discipline tree. It’s been modified to be 2 talents now.

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  10. Great post, I agree on most points. I think the Disc tree really has one logical spec (but at least all the points are pretty good now), and I like the Holy tree, you have some interesting choices between Test of Faith, Serendipity, Renew, etc.

    I really like the new Test of Faith. 12% more healing (for 3 talent points), just where it’s needed. Given that CoH and PoM will seek out the players lowest on health, this could really add up. Of course it all depends how often you heal people who have low HP; some raid groups in some encounters will not see low HP players very much at all.

    Wikwockets last blog post..Viable talent specs in 3.1

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  11. Thanks for follow up on Divine Fury. Yeah I guess I’m just of a different playstyle. As I’m usually a tank healer, I always keep renew up, and between penance/prom CDs and flash heals have no need for greater heals =)

    And speaking of dual specs, I’ll be one of the “dual healers.” Disc/disc is my choice 😀 Pvp and pve specs.

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  12. @borgadril

    Since Penance is a pretty cheap spell, unless you’re having extreme mana problems I’d still choose the crit in Focused Will over the 10% price reduction of Penance 🙂

    Anyone as unimpressed with the Glyph of Guardian Spirit as I am? If the fight relies on using cooldowns on the tank, then the glyph is useless because GS will have been triggered. So basically, it’s only useful to you if you’re doing a lot of guesswork with your GS, which happens, but not frequently enough to justify a major glyph slot imo.

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  13. @Moantez: I suggest to:
    – drop points from holy spec (into healing focus and holy reach)
    – move 1 point from empowered healing into circle of healin (the minor loss is acceptable for the AoE gain)

    You build has:
    – the strongest single target heals
    – the biggest stat gain, and consequently the best regen (not including rapture)

    In gear I suggest:
    – drop crit, you have little to no synergy with it and it is not a good throughput stat nor a decent efficiency stat
    – stack haste as your best bet on throughput
    – stack base stats (int spirit)
    – Glyph of Renew, FHeal, Holy Nova

    It’s an endurance build. However, in 3.1 pure builds have gained a lot of ground:
    – you do not have the MT healing capacity of a disc priest
    – without serendipity you do not have the best AoE healing of the holy priest.
    – your strength will lie in endurance and not in burst healing
    At best you can provide a support role throughout the entire run, rather than provide a burst-type healing but you won’t rock the world with that build. It was good in 3.0… but 3.1 has surpassed it.

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  14. @Theressa: Surge of Light is an absolute must have talent for Holy Priests. As you start developing your gear more and ranking up on the crit, the odds of Surge of Light proccing become higher and higher.

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  15. i’m just wondering, is Test of Faith a must have? my build:

    http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZcxtccMqih0euNo

    it’s actually specced that way because of my lack of spirit. i tried to put points in everything that reduced mana cost. my main spec is shadow priest and i stacked up in crits rather than spirit. but i’m hitting 80 and a lot of the gear that i piled up are 80 pvp gears… without spirit. i recently joined a guild that raids a lot though, so i don’t wanna fail too hard at healing. D: i am aware that i’ll need to get spiritful gear, but until then, i need to get a good spec.

    so on that note, is Test of Faith really necessary? i was thinking of using the extra points to complete Divine Providence and throw one in Inner Focus.

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  16. I’m desperately trying to become a better healer. I know all my weakness is in my armor and talent points (they are missaligned completely). I really would like to find a talent point tree to follow; i’m dual spec so if you have DPS too that would be great.

    Finally, I’m being told everwhere that I need two sets of armor (which makes sense), but I honestly don’t fully understand the difference between healing gear and dps gear…if both use Spell. Is the difference in the amount of intellect and spirit?

    Please help. My guild deserves better and I appreciate your time.

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