Picking the right talents for a priest isn’t always that easy. The fact that we priests got a lot of useful talents makes it harder to pick the best ones. Below I will describe which talents you definitely need and which can be skipped. This is a raiding spec of course. These descriptions are useful if you disagree with my talent choices, but you can skip them if you don’t see them as important for you.
5/5 Unbreakable Will – this talent is taken because holy priests are not famous for wanding bosses down, and having these resists makes healing easier with AoE fears ect. This talent, however, is bad if you’re horde and your tank doesn’t know how to stance dance (or any warrior for that matter) on fights like Ony, Nef, Magmadar etc. for the boss will run to the raid and you get a wipe. On alliance fear war should always be up on the tank and MT healer and this talent is ALWAYS taken.
0/5 Wand Specialization – this talent is useless for holy priests because you don’t use your wand during fights (only @ viscidus if raid is topped, but he takes barely any wand damage anyway).
0/5 Silent Resolve – this talent is as useless as it can get. Your tanks should be able to hold agro by now so speccing into silent resolve is the same as speccing no talent at all. Besides, you got fade and LIP.
2/2 Improved Power Word: Fortitude – it’s obvious to take this talent, because the +-200 more health it gives for 40 members is a total of 8k, making a big difference in survival.
3/3 Improved Power Word: Shield – it’s just nice to have this talent because for bosses in Naxx for when the tank is low hp, this can be a lifesaver. Also, the other options like reduced threat or 1 more point in martyrdom is kind of useless because you only get hit by lots of adds, and they will crit you quite a lot, so 1 point in that talent will be enough.
1/2 Martyrdom – this is because of fights where you got adds on you, you still can heal very well. For example, Anub'Rekhan, Onyxia or Ouro.
1/1 Inner Focus – this talent is useful just because of 1 free spell at its max rank (i.e. holy nova, prayer of healing, max rank flash/greater heal). Use this for staying out of the 5-second rule longer.
3/3 Meditation – this talent is obviously the best talent in the discipline tree, just because it will give you mana regenerate = more heals = more healing done = less people dying.
0/3 Improved Inner Fire – this talent is very useful for raiding, however you don’t have the points to put any in this talent and therefore it will remain unused (survivalability = armor increase). In PI specs, this is a must-have talent for it gives you more armor (= more chance to survive in world pvp encounters with world buffs up and also in raids).
5/5 Mental Agility – this talent is chosen because when you need to dispel/cast Power word: shield/buffs/renews it reduces the mana cost = more heals ect. And the alternatives are bad talents for PVE.
0/2 Improved Mana Burn – this talent is not useful for PVE, just because hunters can mana burn quick enough with their viper sting without losing much dps, if priests/locks do it, we lose too much dps/potential healing and speccing this talent is therefore uncalled.
1/1 Divine Spirit – this talent can be taken by all priests, but in my opinion having 1 priest specced in this talent and the rest not is better, because the 1 guy can buff all with this talent and then you can spend one more talent in the holy tree = win win. Thing is, for that to happen you need to have a reliable priest to do so (especially so with high respect costs, so this is not worth it if you don’t have that).
5/5 Mental Strength – this talent is used for priests to farm Dire Maul East with, PVP PI spec and PVE PI spec (unless you are having trouble healing dungeons, in which case an increased mana pool would help a lot).
0/5 Force of Will – this talent is kind of useless unless you fight against C’thun/other encounters which require almost 0 healing. You don’t have to have this for DME grinding, either (although it helps).
1/1 Power Infusion – this talent isn’t picked for the same reasons we don’t take force of will, however this one does do healing increased. But still it will reduce your healing overall by 10% and 25% less healing/damage of the spirit. Kind of wasted in this respect. But the same counts for this as force of will, it’s very useful for C’thun. This talent is only taken for Farm raids to speed up the clearing time or when you have high respect costs (and you need to farm gold as well etc.). For non-buffed content it is arguably better altogether than full holy for non-renew healers as they benefit little from the holy talents considering damage taken.
2/2 Healing Focus – this is just because it’s nice to have your casting time not interrupted by single npcs attacking you or AoE damage (otherwise you got martyrdom for 100% less casting time reduced).
3/3 Improved Renew – CHANGED. I have changed my stance on this talent. It’s generally very good for healers that use Renew frequently (raid-healing priests). Tank healers should not take this talent if your tank is rage-capped all the time (for survivalability is better than to take 5% extra holy crit). NOTE: with the newly changed rage-mechanics taking extra holy crit is still the go-to talent, but your tank should ban armor buffs with VCB to maximize his rage (among other things). NOTE: renew raid healing sucks without a good deal of healing bonus. I would put the threshold at at least 700 to make optimal use of it.
1/5 Holy Specialization – this talent is very useful because of the fact that it makes inspiration proc more, and when inspiration is on the tank, he takes WAY less damage. Also it increases the healing done and sometimes saves tanks from dying. PROBLEM: on unbuffed servers tanks never die or take real spiky damage, and thus inspiration is less of a use. Also, with world buffs up you got 18% more spell crit so this talent becomes less useful than its alternatives. It is good, though, for progression/tank healers.
0/5 Spell Warding – I don’t pick this talent because, even if it’s OP, I don’t have the talent points to take it. However it’s very useful @ C’thun or other bosses which only use spells/world PVP if you are struggling on them.
5/5 Divine Fury – this talent is speaking for itself, it releases the divine fury of healing upon your target, causing him to take faster heals. Very useful in any healing spec and the best talent of the holy tree.
1/1 Holy Nova – this talent is useful for it’s a must-have for world PVP encounters, it’s also nice to kill adds with when they got very low hp and you don’t have to heal. Only downside of this talent is that it costs tons of mana. But just 1 talent spent so gogogogo!
0/3 Blessed recovery – this talent is not taken because there’s a really low chance that you get crit for high numbers (1k+) in a raid environment for tanks need to pick up ads that do a lot of damage. Moreover, crits which do almost 0 damage won’t recover enough hp.
3/3 Inspiration – as stated before you need this talent to make the tank take less damage, it’s a 100% needed talent for when the tank is ragecapped! Very useful in combination with Inner Focus! PROBLEM: if your tank is not ragecapped, then this talent hurts your raid as it reduces his rage gain (depending on the rage formula) and thus reduces threat per second, which means your dps can do less dps and the fight lasts longer (unless your tank uses VCB properly).
3/3 Improved Healing – as the talent says, its IMPROVING your HEALING, so take this to make your spells cost less mana = more healing = less damage down put @ your raid = saving lives.
2/2 Holy Reach – this talent is simply taken for world PVP purposes. It is really useful there, but also for DME farming.
0/2 Searing Light – this talent is only used for holy dps; since we are healers we won’t use it. Yet again it’s a very useful talent for C’thun if you are struggling on him.
0/2 Improved Prayer of Healing – this talent is 100% useless since you will only be using prayer of healing with inner focus or barely at all (some at Lord Kazzak and Lethon I suppose, but even then it sucks to take considering the alternatives).
0/1 spirit of redemption – this is the talent the priests would pick if you are not specced into divine spirit (so all priests but 1) because when you die, healing without mana cost nor getting damage for 10 seconds ROCKS. One could argue that you could swap one talent point out of spiritual guidance into this one, but it's just a preference (for in farm raids you should NEVER die, and if you die you should feel how much it hurts the raid so you never make that mistake again!). Overall you will have more profit from spiritual guidance than from this one. It is all situational. In progression raids I would swap 1 of SG to here (as you don’t want to go PI as progression is about safety first for most guilds).
5/5 Spiritual Guidance (only if more than 500 HB & 250 Spirit buffed) – since spirit is one of the main assets of a priest, this talent is highly recommended. Not only has it increased the damage done by your spells, but also the healing done and that just for 5 talents.
5/5 spiritual healing (only if more than 500 HB) – this increases base healing done by 10 %, so I’d take this 100% if I were geared as indicated.
0/1 Light Well – this talent is useless because at most fights, people that need healing take damage and damage dispels light well. Moreover, other spells like renew can do healing better. It is nice to pop pre-fight and drink up, but remember people need to hug the light well to click it and gain its benefits, thus it will reduce damage done by casters/melee.
Shadow:
0/5 Spirit Tap – speccing into this talent would be for PVP/DME farming (and here it’s not a requirement).
0/1 Silence – this talent might be taken for PVP purposes, or very specific PVE purposes. Generally it is not worth taking.
Other shadow talents should not be considered in PVE when you’re holy.
Leveling:
For leveling purposes I will spec accordingly: first 5x wand spec, then 5x spirit tap + 2x improved SWP. Next you take 2 points in holy to take healing focus. Then back to discipline take 2x improved power word: fortitude, 2x martyrdom and 1x improved PWS. Take inner focus and mediation. The rest can be put in holy (personal preference). You don’t need more in shadow as you will never use these shadow talents during leveling (unless you want mind flay for PVP purposes I guess). At 40 you respec full shadow and from there on out it’s pretty self-explanatory.
I will now link a few talent trees to show you how a good priest spec may look like:
Renew/spirit spec:
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bxMusV0oZfotcf0qL Progression raids with +500 healing bonus.
Power Infusion spec (PVE):
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bxMGsAVoofotcf Farm instances/Speed runs/below 500 healing bonus progression raids/DME spec while raiding as well with it.
Power Infusion spec (PVP):
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bxMGsIioofothf
Silence Spec/Shadow Weaving (Situational):
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bZfotcf0qLVbgz0t
A GEAR SETUP
As a priest your gearing varies a lot depending on what other gear you already have and how the raids are scripted. I will list stat priorities below for the gear setup. I will refer to a brief explanation how your gear choices might be impacted by content listed above at the “The Healing Psyche” chapter.
NOTE: some guides got some factor like MEP or HEP, but these ones are really useless because it changes with your stats. Knowing that you need these stats.
Below 500 Healing Bonus
When you have below 500 healing bonus you want to take the following stat priorities:
Intellect>mp5s>spirit>healing bonus>stamina>spell crit>armor.
The reason you want to prioritize intellect over healing power is because downranking is simply not worth it. The mana it saves doesn’t outweigh the extra mana you gain my staying out of the 5 second rule. Having a high maximum amount of mana also helps you do more total healing for you can cast more spells (while your spells are still minimally impacted by healing bonus). It must be noted that this takes into account that you don’t take Darkmoon Card: Blue Moon for this trinket is literally wasted. For an explanation make a comment below the guide or look at the FAQ. It must also be noted that you don’t have the 3-set t2 bonus yet and thus you only got 15% mana regen while casting (which also makes the mana regen out-of-5-second-rule more efficient.
Above 500 Healing Bonus
When you have above 500 healing bonus you want to take the following stat priorities:
Healing>spirit>mp5s>intellect>Spell Crit>stamina>armor.
The reason healing bonus is more efficient now is because your healing bonus’ scaling starts outweighing out-of-5-second-rule mana regen. Downranking becomes efficient now. It must be noted, though, that while using high ranked healing spells are not that viable anymore, they still have their place if you have your tank spiking from full HP to 10%. You place spirit over mp5s for renew priests as they gain more healing bonus from spirit, while you place mp5s higher as tank healers as your spells cost more mana per healing done and thus are less efficient.
ENCHANTING YOUR GEAR
Enchants are pretty easy to pick as well, you just need to know what is BiS and what is Pre-raid:
Head: ZG> 8 Healing (pure PVE) or 150 mana (PVE&PVP)
Neck: -
Shoulder: Naxx>ZG (Till Naxx)>5 resistances (till ZG, with AD rep)
Back: FR/NR/FrR/Armor (after Silithus opens up)>7 FR (pure PVE) or 5 resistances (PVE&PVP)
Chest: 4 stats
Wrist: 24 healing (don’t waste 4mp5s for pre-500 healing bonus gear)
1h/2h: 55 healing (don’t waste intellect for pre-500 healing bonus gear)
OH: -
Wand: -
Trinket 1: -
Trinket 2: -
Ring 1: -
Ring 2: -
Feet: Minor speed (PVP&PVE) or 5 Spirit (pure PVE)
Legs: ZG> 8 Healing (pure PVE) or 150 mana (PVE&PVP)
Waist: -
Gloves: 30 healing (after AQ)>+riding skill (until AQ)