Here is my preferred way of playing a holy priest. It is important to remember that just because you don't do something like I do you're not wrong. Different players means different play styles.
The first thing to recognize about Holy priest is that it is a
RAID healer. if you want to single target heal then please go disc, I promise it is much better. I see many priests running around with improved and empowered healing in their specs, I strongly suggest the removal of these talent points because those 2 talents are more focused on single target healing, again if that is what you want to do then please try disc. Also remove light well, it really is a useless talent. Why? Because it is dependent on the people taking damage to click it, also it is stationary so lets say FIRE falls right on top of it, you will have to recast it somewhere else. Light well really just isn't worth the time or point, and it really does't heal for that much either.
The main spells used while Holy Priest healing is
Circle of Healing (CoH)
Prayer of Mending (PoM)
Renew
Prayer of Healing (PoH)
Flash Heal (Fl)
Prayer of Mending should be cast every time it is off cool down, it does alot of healing and on AoE fights never quits jumping.
Keep
renew up on the tanks as it helps to balance out damage.
I try to limit casting
prayer of healing only when I have three stacks of serendipity the quick cast time makes it much less of a pain to use. Something to keep in mind here though is to know before hand when a bunch of people are going to take damage. Let's use Gormuck as an example. His stomp causes a signifigant amount of damage to all melee. In order to top them off quickly before that stomp comes of Cool down I cast flash heal on 3 targets ( usually the tanks b/c of impale etc) and then time my prayer to hit right after Gormuck stomps. then a quick CoH and BAM melee is back to full health. If I were to wait till after the damage had occured to build my stacks the melee would have been healed up all ready by some other healer in the raid.
Flash heal is like your touch up spell (in addition to building your stacks of serendipity) use it when one person is low and needs to be topped off quickly. Also thanks to surge of light you should be getting lots of instant flash heals which makes this spell quick and easy to use.
Now
Power Word Shield (PWS) is a situational spell in raids because if there is a disc priest with you his shield will absorb much more and be more beneifical to the raid. Therefore holy priest SHOULD BACK OFF, our shield makes you run fast disc priest shield's mitigate damage pretty easy to tell whose is better. IF there is no disc priest in the raid then please feel free to shield the tank, shielding others really isnt that necessary because the Holy Priest PWS doesn't mitigate enough to be viable for multiple shield targets.
The 3 major glyphes I use are:
Circle of Healing (allows another to be hit in you CoH) <3
Prayer of Healing (Places a hot on players who recieve a heal from PoH)
Guardian Spirit (resets the timer if it is not used)
Here is the rank of how I prioritize stats:
Spell Power: more spell power means bigger heals
Crit/haste: As a holy priest most of your spells are instant or quick therefore haste is not as improtant as crit. The only spell that really beneifits from haste is PoH while all your spells benefit from Crit. However, I like to keep my haste at at least 15% if not a little higher (17-18). Crit vs haste really comes down to play style I know many players who swear by haste and they heal just fine. Remember this is just what I found works best for me.
Intellect: Increases crit chance and valuable source of mana regen
Spirit: Increase your Spell power and is another source of mana regen. Mp5 cannot compare to spirit in the case of a holy priest due to the additional spell power bonus. Spirit > mp5 always always always
Well there you go Cheru's way to Holy Priest if you have any questions feel free to ask away.
