Priest PvE Specs

[Holy]

Priests are one of the most versatile classes in World of Warcraft and with their three different trees comes a variation of viable specs that can accomplish different things. Here are some specs that I have used in the past that are viable and could be used depending on your own personal play style. There is no necessarily "wrong" spec to have as long as you can justify using it. Take note of your own spell usage (ie do you use Renew a lot? Flash Heal? PoH?) and alter your talents accordingly.

Special notes: For all three trees, at least 13 points in discipline is required. Meditation is pretty much a no-brainer, as are Improved Inner Fire and Improved Power Word: Fortitude to get there. Twin Disciplines is pretty much mandatory as well for first tier, unless you are putting together a pvp spec. For healing, Inner Focus is generally taken just because it is so powerful with Divine Hymn, and a free spell every three minutes can help a lot.

Holy

Renew oriented raid healing spec:
This is the spec I currently use. (However, I'm planning on shifting some points to Body and Soul to play with it during raids.) It can be a controversial spec and relies heavily on the priest's usage of Renew. This spec shines on fights where there is constant raid damage, such as Twin Valkyr (in which HPS can really skyrocket). However, be warned that this spec is not for single target healing or even burst healing and thus should not be used on fights that require such (and even 10 mans will expose the weakness of this spec). This spec's spell usage generally sees spamming of renew on any player that will need healing and relies on a constant stream of healing. On fights like Twin Valkyr, general spell rotation will be something along the lines of: Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, Renew, Renew, Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, Renew, Renew, repeat. This spec also allows the priest to pull out hasted Prayer of Healings when the time comes, though somewhat infrequently as the only source of Serendipity will be Surge of Light procs. Greater Heal usage should be nonexistent - Spell Warding is taken instead of Divine Fury for personal survival and with no points in Empowered Healing there will be little force behind the heal. Flash Heal should only be used with Surge of Light or spot heals here and there as Empowered Healing will not contribute to that either.
Suggested glyphs: Renew, Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing

Flash Heal oriented:
As you can see, there is little variation from the previous spec. No points in Blessed Resilience and only 1/3 in Empowered Renew put into Empowered Healing (5/5) will really strengthen flash heals so that will be your bread and butter in this spec. Renew should be used as a filler at best - 1/3 in the talent is to allow the instant healing to take place and thus cause surge of light procs. No Blesssed Resilience means 3% less on the rest of your healing spells so use Flash Heal much more liberally. However with this spec Serendipity should be up a lot and thus Prayer of Healing will be getting a lot more usage.
Suggested glyphs: Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, Flash Heal/Guardian Spirit (Depending on if you have mana issues)

HOT Based:
For those who love to play like resto druids. It is a stronger variation of the Renew spec but should only be used if you are absolutely positive you won't be using Prayer of Healing. Mental Agility will allow you to spam Circle of Healing, Renew, and Prayer of Mending all for a bit longer. You also lose one point in Surge of Light but your crit should be high enough to still proc often enough. Surge of Light procs also become less important since you are no longer proccing Serendipity. The problem with this spec is that outside of Inner Focus+Divine Hymn, you don't really have any big burst heals. That being said, it'll be up to you in order to be casting pre-emptively enough to ensure that you're never in a situation where the use of Prayer of Healing would outshine your ticking HOTs. (Note: If you aren't having mana problems, you can drop 2/2 Healing Prayers for Body and Soul to play with.)
Suggest glyphs: Circle of Healing, Renew, Guardian Spirit

*Note that none of the specs takes Divine Fury. There are still priests who think that Greater Heal is a useful spell and far be it from me to argue the usefulness of it but at this stage in the game, the cast time is far too great for such little reward. There is some viability in a spec with 5/5 Divine Fury and 5/5 Empowered Healing that could take advantage of Serendipity procs to get a fast Greater Heal, but it just isn't as efficient any more. Plus, Greater Healing takes the most talents to buff - Empowered Healing, Improved Healing, and Divine Fury: 13 points total. In my personal experience, I have not used Greater Heal more than a couple times a fight, so those points are really just being wasted. Holy is more or less the raid healing spec now so there shouldn't be much need for large single target heals. Disc is a better alternative.

Discipline

"Cookie-cutter":
The holy points are more or less debatable but you should drop points to get to Inspiration and really the last point is only useful in Desperate Prayer (which can still be lifesaving in a number of situations). You can choose to drop points from Spell Warding into Divine Fury if you want to pull off some hasted Greater Heals from Borrowed Time or sacrifice some crit to max it out, but the scaling of Greater Heal for disc is even more abysmal than holy so I would not recommend this. With the discipline tree there is little variation you can make - most of the talents at the bottom are mandatory to make up for the lack of any stat conversion to spellpower. Discipline itself is a strong raid mitigator now - stack spellpower and spam Power Word: Shield. With enough spellpower, your Power Word: Shield becomes a 6k~ instant heal that is spammable. Use it. Be aggressive with it. There are many fights where you can exploit the crap out of the mechanics of Rapture if you are having mana issues (which you should be, because spamming PWS aggressively can hurt your mana). Penance is best for support tank healing - the longer cooldown has drastically cut down single target HPS. Flash Heal is useful when you are spot raid healing (perhaps when the raid member has Weakened Soul) due to the crit on low health members but it will probably not be enough to keep a tank up between Penance cooldowns. Don't try to be a hero - get another healer (preferably a paladin) to cover your tank as well. You are now a variation of raid healing (er, raid bubbling) with a fantastic ability to support a main tank healer. (Generally in raids, I PWS spam and then Penance whichever tank is the lowest. Then flash or PWS until Penance is up again.) Remember to use Pain Suppression on cooldown unless you are saving it for a particular ability. Use Power Infusion on whoever is most beneficial for the fight - a DPS (who benefits from haste, say Art) if it is a DPS check and we are lacking or a healer (generally a paladin, say Kadas) if the healing is going to be intensive.

Do not waste your global cooldown by casting Renew. Make sure your healing addon has the ability to show who has Weakened Soul so you aren't wasting time trying to bubble someone who can't be bubbled and you know when they can be bubbled again. Tanks, for instance, should always have Weakened Soul.
Suggested glyphs: Flash Heal, Penance, Power Word: Shield

Shadow

"Cookie-cutter":
Meditation is mandatory yet Inner Focus is not unless you have taken points from shadow and don't have anywhere to put that last point. Inner Focus is currently bugged in that if it does not increase the critical chance of a dot - when it is fixed it will probably be beneficial to pick it up and use it with Shadow Word: Pain right off the bat. This shadow spec is built for the most DPS but you can alter it according to your gear and/or the encounter. Improved Vampiric Embrace can be really useful on certain fights where there is a lot of raid damage and you want to help the healers out. Shadow Affinity can also be extremely useful on fights where you are going to have aggro issues - Hodir for example. With 3/3 in Shadow Affinity you can never really pull threat, even with Vampiric Embrace healing you. If you really want points in these talents, I'd suggest taking points out of Focused Mind or Shadow Focus if you can sustain your mana. Shadow Focus can be played with since there is just an obscene amount of hit on our gear nowadays so you may find yourself way over the hit cap and thus could take a point out.
Suggested glyphs: Shadow, Mind Flay, Dispersion or Shadow Word: Pain

Mana Intensive:
This spec is for shadow priests who can manage their cooldowns well to avoid running out of mana without Focused Mind. You gain Improved Vampiric Embrace (which can improve your unique utility and be very helpful in many fights) as well as Inner Focus. Inner Focus is still bugged to the point where it can't affect a DOT, but you can keep it in your hat for an emergency Divine Hymn if it is needed. If you are very, very confident in your healers, you can use it in conjunction with a Devouring Plague to help out on mana. You'll have to try to pop your fiend at least twice a fight - sending it out when you're at 70-80% mana is a good idea so it'll be up again. If you can send it out with Heroism, that is also very beneficial. Glyph of Dispersion is really the only choice here - Shadow Word: Pain does not offer much in mana return and if you can time your Dispersions well as to not lose DPS time, you can gain a lot of mana back.
Suggested glyphs: Shadow, Mind Flay, Dispersion

Very informative--makes me want to fiddle with my specs a bit.  Thank you!

Not a problem. Most of my speccing information comes from personal experience. If you feel like you could alter your spec to fit your playstyle better, I suggest heavily using Recount to help yourself out. Measure how much you actually use each spell and change your talents accordingly. I used to rely heavily on greater heal talents towards the beginning of WotLK but after analyzing Recount I found that I had never used it more than 10 times a fight. You want your talents to affect the majority of how you play, not just a rare occurrence. (This is partly why I choose 3/3 Blessed Resilience in my own holy spec as opposed to points in Empowered Healing, simply because I don't use Flash/Greater Heal enough to justify the points and I use the other spells in the holy arsenal a lot, lot more.)

I don't run recount as it slows my computer down, but Strum does, usually.  If anyone can send me recount from either this week OR from raiding next week, I'll take a look-see!

See, I always thought there were "right" "wrong" and "mostly-right" ways of doing things and you adjusted your play to those categories.  Adjusting my abilities to my playstyle...new idea for me, very exciting, and definitely worth a shot. 

Thanks for the post - super hellpful for me since I just got to 80 and have thrown points wherever - especially in my 1 day old Holy spec.  I've already respecced - a couple of times.  It's hard for me to pass up the improved Renew talents but I can't imagine relying primarily on renew to get my healing done.  Is it fail to take the points into with Flash of Light being my primary single target heal?  Also - Holy priests can tank heal confirm/deny.

Thanks for the post - super hellpful for me since I just got to 80 and have thrown points wherever - especially in my 1 day old Holy spec.  I've already respecced - a couple of times.  It's hard for me to pass up the improved Renew talents but I can't imagine relying primarily on renew to get my healing done.  Is it fail to take the points into with Flash of Light being my primary single target heal?  Also - Holy priests can tank heal confirm/deny.

No, you can take a spec that is oriented towards flash heal. It's the second spec on the list. You take 2/3 improved renew so you can get to the tiers below and 1/3 empowered renew so your renew can crit and has the potential to proc surge of light. But you also take 5/5 Empowered Healing so your flash heals can benefit the most from your bonus spellpower. Renew is only good if you fully spec/glyph for it and use it a LOT (think a druid's Rejuvenation) but it becomes a filler spell if you try to focus on other spells more.

Tank healing is iffy. If there is no holy paladin or anything nearby, you can sustain some single target HPS with Flash Heal x3 (stacking Serendipity) and then Greater Heal. Keep Renew on your tank. However since the holy specs above don't spec for Greater Heal, you'd probably have to respec into 5/5 Divine Fury and 3/3 Improved Healing in order to get the max effect of your Greater Heal. Even then the mana efficiency is not great and your output still pales in comparison to a holy paladin. I find 8 talent points into a spell that can only be used with a 3 second precast at best (3 flash heals for stacking Serendipity) to be a bit of a waste. Holy is the raid healing tree. Abuse it.

If you're thinking 5/10 mans, Disc is probably your best bet. PWS spam in a 10 man is extremely powerful and PoH becomes even more powerful as well with only two groups taking damage. Penance alone makes for some great tank healing, and normally flash heal is enough for the damage to tanks in 10 mans. If not, your other healers can throw on heals and between the three of you the tanks should be fine.

So much respeccing!  I went ahead and dropped shadow for now while I play with these two healing specs.  I love disc but all the alt priests are disc making them ineffective on our alt runs so I wanted to play with holy.  Also I'm being invited to raids with other groups and it is difficult to prove yourself with the poor meter performance of disc.  I set up my holy spec to utilize renew as well as greater heal to further this holy tank healing experiment.  As of right now I have a disc spec to fall back on if I'm assigned tank healing and am struggling to keep up but I'd like to see how it works.

Tank healing is iffy. If there is no holy paladin or anything nearby, you can sustain some single target HPS with Flash Heal x3 (stacking Serendipity) and then Greater Heal. Keep Renew on your tank...Even then the mana efficiency is not great and your output still pales in comparison to a holy paladin.
If you're thinking 5/10 mans, Disc is probably your best bet. PWS spam in a 10 man is extremely powerful and PoH becomes even more powerful as well with only two groups taking damage. Penance alone makes for some great tank healing, and normally flash heal is enough for the damage to tanks in 10 mans. If not, your other healers can throw on heals and between the three of you the tanks should be fine.

That.

I'm almost always Disc in 10 mans, I shield the shit out of stuff, penance what I need to, then flash heal whomever is a little hurt until Weakened Soul is passed and I can do it again.  Tank healing is great with shield, renew, (penance if needed) and a little flash heal to keep Grace rolling,  and its extremely mana efficient...especially on stuff like Icehowl because you get mana back when the shield is broken. .  Holy spec tends to suck my mana dry in 10 man especially if I have to tank heal (ie the tank healer is down and I'm covering).  

Maladok: about your meters!!  Think of it also as Disc is like, damage prevention, while Holy is damage control (proactive vs reactive healing).  Most of our healing isn't going to show up, ie shield breakage, on meters!  I used to get discouraged about that too, because I can rock meters on holy...but its just a different approach to healing.  Tell those noobs that!

Now, I disagree with using Renew at all as disc. Perhaps at the beginning of the fight when you're pre-hotting/shielding the tank, but you're better off just spamming Flash Heals or Penances instead of Renew when there's nothing to do. Proccing Divine Aegis is going to be much more beneficial than any negligible healing that Renew will do - and all of those heals will keep Grace up.

Now, I disagree with using Renew at all as disc. Perhaps at the beginning of the fight when you're pre-hotting/shielding the tank,

Thats exactly when I put it up, and when I know theres going to be some incoming damage...ie Icehowl charge.  Shield-renew on tank.

i find this entire conversation, with more than two healing spells... dizzying.

I almost never use renew iwth my disc spec but I like it in holy - not so much that I'd like to make it my primary heal ( I can't wrap my head around that working effectively) but I do like throwing it around when a handful of people are taking a bit of damage to keep them topped off over a period of time without excessive over healing.

Renew is only powerful if you spec for it and abuse it. With the glyphs and talents, it becomes maybe a very weak flash heal with greater heal potential. It also opens the door to raid healing a lot more effectively than flash heal allows, as renew is instant cast and thus spammable. It is very, very powerful if you know how much damage someone will be taking in a fight and thus can compensate by pre-emptively healing.

For example: in the Anub'arak encounter, a glyphed/talented Renew can pretty much negate Penetrating Cold completely. In cases like that, if you configure your addon to show the debuff, you can make the fight healing trivial as the ~6 people who take damage from Penetrating Cold will pretty much stop taking that damage. It also works for pre-emptively healing stuff like the little adds in that fight and their debuff (Acid-Drenched Mandibles). It becomes a great tool for stabilizing health in phases too, similar to how Power Word: Shield works for Disc.

Note that with the new T10 4 set bonus, it may be more beneficial as Holy to orient your build towards Flash Heal instead of Renew. Disc priests will also want to use Flash Heal more than Greater Heal for single target HPS to proc the cooldown clear of Penance.

A new variation of both holy and shadow have been added.