Which Holy Word - Sanctuary or Serenity

[Coro]

I've been away from wow for about a month or so, coming back to Mythic raiding on my holy priest. When I stopped playing it was ALWAYS be in Sanctuary. The idea was PoM on CD > CoH on CD > Serendipity stacks > Renew.

I was reading a few other posts and it sounds like now the 'new thing' is to be in Serenity and to glyph binding heal. Why? How does that effect priority? Obviously heals are situational and change, and not as simple as use this spell now, but I don't know how/when/why binding heal > renew? I wasn't able to find any recent guides or explanations here or on official page, and I know most sites are still 6.0 information.

[Amandaauh]

The chakras are extremely broken and underpowered. Stay in sanctuary for the reduced CD on CoH. It's not worth it to cast sanctuary, as it does pretty much no healing. Serenity is extremely subpar too.

Although, it's so pretty and sparkly D:

[SilentRose]

The chakras are extremely broken and underpowered. Stay in sanctuary for the reduced CD on CoH. It's not worth it to cast sanctuary, as it does pretty much no healing. Serenity is extremely subpar too.

Although, it's so pretty and sparkly D:

Sanctuary does do a decent amount of healing if you can reach a certain item level. On my last mythic ore kill, it accounted for almost 2 million healing over duration of fight.


As well, chakra are not completely broken and underpowered, and only staying in one stance reduces your power depending on fight and raid comp. Sometimes serenity is best for lower raid damage and spike fights. Mythic flamebender, parts of hans and frans, iron maidens and operator are examples of when serenity can come in handy. Fights like gruul and kromogg usually have you in sanctuary for most the fight. Just think of serenity as more a benefit during medium/low damage and or helping healing tanks(or people who like hugging flamebender dogs) when is not much else going on. Then sanctuary is your main stance to be in for heavy raid damage.

[davesignal]

PW: Serenity is Flash Heal at a significant discount, usable while moving, and it increases your healing on a given target for 25% for 5 seconds. It's not underpowered.

PW: Sanctuary is just bonus healing and a "STAND HERE, IDIOTS" flare, which is fine because the passive bonus is much stronger when you actually need it.

PW: Serenity is a stronger spell, Chakra: Sanctuary is a stronger stance. Shockingly enough, they serve their purposes-- PW: Serenity is good when you need to single target heal people (often in an emergency or on the move), Chakra: Serenity is great for persistent AOE healing.

[Deleted]

In my opinion people often misunderstand how to play Chakra: Serenity. They use Holy Word: Serenity to snipeheal targets faster than their mates to get higher hps. But I would expect their hps to be higher if they would use the reduced cooldown on CoH. If thats not the case theyre simply running way too many healers. There is no fight in BRF where any player loses more than 100% life by unpredictable damage in less than 2-3 seconds what would make you need an instant singletarget spell with increased healing buff afterwards. Other healing classes got better utility for emergency heals anyway..

If you use Chakra: Serenity then do it for the Renew refreshing. People use glyphed Binding Heal because you can refresh Renew on multiple targets at once. Obviously one can Renew himself once and easily refresh it over a long period of time. So Chakra: Serenity is best when at least 6-7 targets (including yourself) get medium to high damage over at least 30 seconds. Good examples are Blackhand, Furnace, Maidens endphase, Thogar Mythic, Oregorger, Gruul, Kromog (HC rather than Mythic), Darmac.
Since one cannot decide on who is the third target of Binding Heal Chakra: Serenity obviously benefits more from smaller raid sizes. If constant damage on each raidmember comes in the perfect raid size would be around 10-12 players. One could refresh Renew on the whole raid. Binding Heal seems to prefer nearby players as third targets. For example at Kromog the two tanks are close together but seperated from the rest so casting Binding Heal on one tank will most likely refresh Renew on both. Refreshing 3 Renews with one 1.5 sec spell is huge. You can also use this the same way if you either heal the range or the melee camp. Binding Heal gives you also more Serendipidity stacks for big burst heals with PoH or to refresh more Renews with the fast Heal.

I actually use Chakra: Serenity on each fight. Due to my Hps I rarely see any reasons to change my playstyle.

I am convinced that Chakra: Serenity is able to get higher hps on most encounters if the number of healers is well chosen. But you should note that Chakra: Serenity is obviously way more difficult than Chakra: Sanctuary. Keeping an eye on each Renew is very timecomsuming and you will have less time to look out for avoidable damage. But at least you heal yourself all the time anyway, no matter if you take damage or not. You should also note that Chakra: Serenity is more punished by movement heavy encounters than Chakra: Sanctuary. One might cut Heal and use Surge of Light instead but you will have to use Binding Heal where Chakra: Sanctuary can move and cast Renew. Still, you are better at movement encounters than Shaman etc.

[Kenyans]

Just wanted to second what alynee is saying, it is likely the most comprehensive look on serenity that you'll find on this or any other priest forum.

that being said, a couple of additions:

the smart heal from binding heal has a 20 yd range so you're more likely to internally refresh a renew if you focus your renews on either ranged or melee and cast binding heal on the side you restricted your renews on.

unless you're running shielding talisman/autoclave i would highly suggest unloading your serendipity on heal over POH as binding heal is a much much more expensive filler spell than renew (it's equivalent in sanctuary)

furthermore make sure you and your disc priest track renew/pws on both of your raid frames, it'll increase the odds that your BH will refresh a third target by merit of it being a smart heal (aka less overlapping the two spells)

lastly be aware of the haste breakpoints for serenity, having a gcd at or below 1.2 seconds is very beneficial because it means that you can refresh potentially 9 renews+coh or 8+coh/pom every 12 seconds. I believe serenity is the only healing spec with this kind of haste breakpoint

[Deleted]

Serenity is great on bosses like Flamebender I feel. Having the ability to keep renews up on both tanks and a few melee and then using Binding Heal to refresh them as each molten torrent comes in is pretty cheap and quick. Not much use for reducing your cooldown on CoH during Flamebender.

Sanctuary is great for putting out continuously high healing through the standard PoM/Circle on CD and Renew filler while consuming serendipity into PoH since you'll be getting more Circles out which obviously means more healing. Kromog would be a good example where this is better.

Neither of them massively changes the playstyle but there's fights where both shine for different reasons.