Holy DPS - Teach me!

[Booniehat]

Hey guys,

How do you do competitive holy DPS. I'm not trolling, I've actually read a few players' accounts of Holy doing surprisingly high dmg due to chastise.

It'd be great if I can put decent DPS while healing my raid. Solve a lot of guild healing problems.

Thanks!

Interesting thread on official wow forums on Holy Priest DPS : http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...0051461?page=1

(I'm a little scared to post there - too many trolls.)

[Blachshma]

Hey guys,

How do you do competitive holy DPS. I'm not trolling, I've actually read a few players' accounts of Holy doing surprisingly high dmg due to chastise.

It'd be great if I can put decent DPS while healing my raid. Solve a lot of guild healing problems.

Thanks!

Interesting thread on official wow forums on Holy Priest DPS : http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...0051461?page=1

(I'm a little scared to post there - too many trolls.)

Haven't tried it a lot, but I'll say what I think from my little experience on it and what I read on other places.

1) You need to have specific gear for it. Since your dps costs pretty much no mana, spirit is uesless, and your should have as little as possible of it. Mastery is obviously useless as well, so you would want to reforge away from thos two stats. I would guess haste is your friend as far as reforging goes, but maybe some priests will prefer going crit.

2) Glyphs will help your dps greatly. Glyph of holy fire and glyph od smite should great enhance your dps with an instant holy fire and 20% damage increase of smite. Needless to say, you smite only when holy fire dot is up.

3) Do not use Chastise for PvE, it does very little damage and not worth the gcd. For PvP chastise is wonderful though.

4) Keep your Shadow Word: Pain up.

5) Use Halo on cd.

6) Fiend/bender for extra damage.

7) For AoE you spam Mind Sear.

With all this, I imagine after mastering this rotation (a rather easy one), you should be able to contribute nicely to dps in raids. You might do slightly less than a shadow priest (I hear on Windlord holy outperforms shadow), but you can always jump back to Sanctuary, pop a hymn/lightwell and burn your mana with big bursts in case your group needs it.

[Megiddo]

Mender and PI(debatable) is a must if you wanna DPS as holy. Holy does more DPS than Shadow on single target fights however it is very susceptible to movement. You have to stand still, it is fun when you feel the blank impression on your mates when you out DPS them on a heroic encounter as Holy!

[Blackmorgrim]

I'd actually recommend getting about 3k spirit, you will OOM without any at all. Mastery is useless except for increasing your healing for halo, DS, or cooldowns. Try to wear crit/haste gear when possible, filling in spirit/crit or spirit/haste elsewhere. Gearing slightly crit heavy will give you more leeway with spirit.
For single target:
Start with DS/Halo, SWP, Mindbender, then Holy Fire, Smite while Holy Fire is up, when holy fire expires, use the time before the cooldown comes up to use DS/Halo, refresh SWP, or summon mindbender.

Yes, Holy Fire and Smite glyphs are a must, anything else is personal preference. For wind lord, I would suggest Glyph of dispel magic so you can at least get a little dps in while being on dispel duty.

For Wind Lord, I think Holy is at least competitive, not necessarily better than shadow. However, for progression, Holy DPS equal or slightly better than shadow, but at the same time gives you all of Holy's healing cooldowns should your raid need them, but not necessarily a full-time healer.



On a sidenote... holy crap is my sig in need of updating... *runs to update*

[Deleted]

It's not the fact of it being competitive, but rather comparable to what shadow can do. But keep in mind that your healing will be sub par, since you'll want as little spirit as you can, leaving you oom very fast outside of DPSing. Stats are also not very good for healing, especially if you'll go haste over crit.

In essence, if you want a healer that can do DPS, go disc crit build. If you want a DPS who can pop a raid and tank cooldown, go holy DPS.

[Booniehat]

Was thinking this build would be good on certain fights. My guilds in a weird place where 2 healers are struggling but 3 full healers is too much/not enough DPS. A Holy DPS would be a nice inbetween.

Also, let's face it. Half the time in LFR you only really need 3-4 healers (at the average gear levels). I always see the top 3 healers handling about 70% of the heals. This would help by allowing us queues as healers very nicely :P If clutch heals are needed, im sure I can handle it!

---------- Post added 2013-02-04 at 12:33 PM ----------

It's not the fact of it being competitive, but rather comparable to what shadow can do. But keep in mind that your healing will be sub par, since you'll want as little spirit as you can, leaving you oom very fast outside of DPSing. Stats are also not very good for healing, especially if you'll go haste over crit.

In essence, if you want a healer that can do DPS, go disc crit build. If you want a DPS who can pop a raid and tank cooldown, go holy DPS.

Are DISC and Holy's DPS comparable?

[Deleted]

You can do kind of decent dps as disc, especially if you gear for it. Best part is that you also heal for the same amount as the dmg you deal through atonement.
Holy will deal more dmg but not while healing at the same time.

Without having geared for it (I'm high spirit, mastery=crit>>>haste), fully buffed with cooldowns (Hero, Mindbender, int pot...) I peak at about 100k dps on fights like Garajal for example as disc.

[Deleted]

Are DISC and Holy's DPS comparable?

In terms of pure DPS? No. But as disc you remain a completely competent healer, so if need be you can just heal for extended periods of time and you're doing a lot of healing while DPSing. That's my point, if you're looking for some extra DPS but can't do it with one less healer, choose disc. But if you want a DPS that can chip in a couple of times during the fight, choose holy. Or a boomkin.

A full out spirit/crit disc with 4 set can do 40-50k DPS, holy can get close to 100k, but as disc you'll be doing about the same amount (a bit less actually, since self healing is reduced and SWD and SWP do not heal) of HPS at the same time.

[Danner]

Holy is a really awesome "0.5" healer right now. By that I mean, when you need a little more than 2 healers in your raid for some specific damage phase, but otherwise can heal with two healers no problem. Unfortunately, you can't really spare a full DPSer worth of DPS for that 3rd healer. What to do?.

Solution: Pick a holypriest!

The holy priest can do close to 100k DPS given buffs, glyphs and somewhat right gear. While doing that, the holypriest won't heal at all.
A discpriest can do close to 50k DPS given buffs and glyphs, and heal for a similar amount thanks to atonement.

So why is the holypriest superior?

It comes down to the usecase and the fact that Holy can so easily burn mana for awesome healing.

The holypriest can do awesome DPS, and when the shit hits the fan, usually has full mana. At this point, the holypriest can go sanc chakra and throw out a cacade, lightspring, divine hymn and spam CoHPoH like it is 1999 until the end of the damage phase. While a normal holypriest would have to hold back to not burn away all the mana, this is not a problem for a smitepriest. Mana is there to be burned, fast. And noone is better at burning mana than a holypriest.

Then the smitepriest reverts to chakra:chastise and builds up a lot of new mana. Since he's barely using any, that is equivalent of standing around doing nothing. By the time the next damage phase appears, that mana should be back and ready for being abused all over again.

Net result: almost 100% of a DPSer while DPSing, way more than 100% of a healer while healing.
In LFR runs, it's not uncommon of to see holypriests in the top 10 DPS, while still being on a comfortable 3rd-4th in the healing meters. Of course meters don't tell the whole story, and I would like to claim it is better than what it looks. The beaty of the setup is that the holypriest really shine when healing since it is possible to heal without holding back, and still does more damage than a disc priest in the long run.

[Blachshma]

Holy is a really awesome "0.5" healer right now. By that I mean, when you need a little more than 2 healers in your raid for some specific damage phase, but otherwise can heal with two healers no problem. Unfortunately, you can't really spare a full DPSer worth of DPS for that 3rd healer. What to do?.

Solution: Pick a holypriest!

The holy priest can do close to 100k DPS given buffs, glyphs and somewhat right gear. While doing that, the holypriest won't heal at all.
A discpriest can do close to 50k DPS given buffs and glyphs, and heal for a similar amount thanks to atonement.

So why is the holypriest superior?

It comes down to the usecase and the fact that Holy can so easily burn mana for awesome healing.

The holypriest can do awesome DPS, and when the shit hits the fan, usually has full mana. At this point, the holypriest can go sanc chakra and throw out a cacade, lightspring, divine hymn and spam CoHPoH like it is 1999 until the end of the damage phase. While a normal holypriest would have to hold back to not burn away all the mana, this is not a problem for a smitepriest. Mana is there to be burned, fast. And noone is better at burning mana than a holypriest.

Then the smitepriest reverts to chakra:chastise and builds up a lot of new mana. Since he's barely using any, that is equivalent of standing around doing nothing. By the time the next damage phase appears, that mana should be back and ready for being abused all over again.

Net result: almost 100% of a DPSer while DPSing, way more than 100% of a healer while healing.
In LFR runs, it's not uncommon of to see holypriests in the top 10 DPS, while still being on a comfortable 3rd-4th in the healing meters. Of course meters don't tell the whole story, and I would like to claim it is better than what it looks. The beaty of the setup is that the holypriest really shine when healing since it is possible to heal without holding back, and still does more damage than a disc priest in the long run.

Haha I love your post, you truly love our spec

The bolded made me lol so hard.

[Booniehat]

Just tried it out in 3 heroic dungeons and an LFR.

Topped the dungeons (#1 DPS by far), and it does well (was #3 DPS) until there is quite a bit of movement needed. Faired really badly on Garalon, lol...

Im about 480 geared and pulled something like 75K DPS in heroics, 55K DPS in LFR with some movement. AOE was ridiculous - Mind sear is strong as shadow but it has NOTHING on holy's mind sear.

[Twintop]

Im about 480 geared and pulled something like 75K DPS in heroics, 55K DPS in LFR with some movement. AOE was ridiculous - Mind sear is strong as shadow but it has NOTHING on holy's mind sear.

If you're less than 25% Shadow Mastery, HolyDPS's Mind Sear does more damage. Above 25% Shadow Mastery, you get enough Mastery procs (on average) to take the lead.

[Booniehat]

If you're less than 25% Shadow Mastery, HolyDPS's Mind Sear does more damage. Above 25% Shadow Mastery, you get enough Mastery procs (on average) to take the lead.

I thought shadow runs far far away from mastery? Unless you're talking about leftover mastery. Must be a pretty high end gear for that right?

[Twintop]

I thought shadow runs far far away from mastery? Unless you're talking about leftover mastery. Must be a pretty high end gear for that right?

It isn't hard to get 25% mastery in T14 gear, since it is base 14.4% and another 9% from just getting Mastery buff in a raid gets you to 23.4%. ~534 Mastery from gear (two or three items with Mastery reforged to something else) gets you past the 25% threshold.

[snaxattax]

don't forget about your lightwell, too. having your lightwell in a convenient spot for people to click can be a pretty nice boost that doesn't require you to stop dpsing. tsulong is actually a really good fight for holy dps. if you're doing heroic, twist of fate is better, PI is better for reg (for dps). use your guardian spirit on tsulong (for the extra +healing) right before a sun breath (and swap into your single target healing chakra if you don't need to be killing adds) and renew->holyword as you move in position for the breath and then flashx2/gheal spam to help cut some more % off of tsulong's health. remember to stop healing when the sunbreath buff falls off so that you don't overwrite your beefy as hell renew.

divine hymn is really nice, too.