Holy Priest Healing Stat Priority — Dragonflight 10.1.7

When participating in raids, it is crucial to effectively manage your Mana pool in order to counteract the dangerous damage sustained during lengthy battles. As a result, efficient Mana usage becomes paramount.

To maximize your healing output during dungeon runs, where fights tend to be shorter and you have more opportunity to replenish Mana through drinking, prioritizing raw throughput stats is important. Additionally, focusing on damage-reducing stats becomes increasingly vital as they enable you to survive situations that would otherwise be challenging in the highest Mythic keystone dungeons.

In terms of stat priority for Holy Priests in raid scenarios, the following order is recommended:

Raid Healing Stat Priority

1. Intellect
2. Mastery = Critical Strike
3. Versatility
4. Haste

For dungeon healing, the stat priority is slightly different:

Dungeon Healing Stat Priority

1. Intellect
2. Critical Strike = Haste
3. Versatility
4. Mastery

While stat preference lists are provided, it is worth noting that swapping gear to items of higher item level, which offer greater Intellect and overall stats, typically results in a larger upgrade compared to using lower item level items with superior stats. However, this general rule does not apply to items with important tertiary stats such as Leech and Avoidance. These exceptional items should still be utilized over others without them, unless the difference in item level is approximately 15 or greater.

Let’s take a closer look at the significance of Leech and Avoidance:

Leech allows you to passively self-heal for a percentage of the healing or damage dealt by each spell you cast. Due to its exceptional scaling and the prevalence of enemy mechanics that harm the entire group, Leech provides significant free healing that would otherwise rely on Mana from yourself or other healers in your group.

Avoidance‘s effectiveness varies depending on encounter mechanics, but it often plays a critical role in surviving extreme damage abilities in very high keystones. Additionally, the damage it mitigates proves valuable in raid settings.

The primary stat for Holy Priests is Intellect. It is essential to seek out this stat in all your upgrades as it enhances your Spell Power, thereby increasing the potency of your heals.

Here’s a breakdown of the other secondary stats and their contributions:

• Mastery (Mastery: Echo of Light) causes each of your direct heals to apply a Heal-over-Time (HoT) effect on the target, healing for a percentage of the initial heal over 6 seconds. Multiple applications of this HoT stack.

• Critical Strike doubles the effectiveness of your heals, providing additional benefit to your Mastery as well.

• Haste reduces the cast time of your heals and global cooldown. It also decreases the cooldown of Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending, while increasing the healing of Renew through additional ticks.

• Versatility amplifies all damage and healing you deal while simultaneously reducing the damage you take.

• Speed slightly boosts your character’s movement speed. This can prove useful for evading encounter mechanics or repositioning with your group, although it may not be as noticeable as other stats.

It’s worth noting that achieving a 1% improvement in each stat requires different amounts of stat rating. Consequently, certain stats naturally scale more effectively than others even before diminishing returns take effect due to an excessive amount of a particular stat compared to others.

For reference, here are the stat ratings required to attain a 1% benefit for each stat:

1. Critical Strike – 180 rating per 1%
2. Versatility – 205 rating per 1% damage/healing increase or 0.5% damage taken reduction
3. Mastery – 160 rating per 1%
4. Haste – 170 rating per 1%
5. Leech – 110 rating per 1%
6. Avoidance – 72 rating per 1%
7. Speed – 50 rating per 1%

Starting from Patch 9.1, as players acquire more gear, diminishing returns on secondary stats will begin to impact most individuals. This means that when you accumulate a substantial amount of one secondary stat, either through gear or trinket effects, you will no longer receive the full value for all of it.

To mitigate the effects of diminishing returns, it is advisable to keep a variety of rings and necklaces. This provides a practical way to adjust a significant amount of secondary stats by easily swapping rings, along with their accompanying gems and enchantments. Doing so can help you avoid losing too many secondary stats to diminishing returns.

Here is an overview of when diminishing returns begin to affect each stat:

• Critical Strike — 5400
• Haste — 5100
• Mastery — 5400
• Versatility — 6150

To delve deeper into the mechanics of secondary stat diminishing returns for Holy Priests, you can find more detailed information here.

Remember to optimize your stat priorities based on the specific context of your healing role, whether in raids or dungeons, to enhance your effectiveness as a Holy Priest healer.