Spiritual Guidance: Patch 4.3 raid gear for holy and discipline priests

By Dawn Moore

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. Dawn Moore covers the healing side of things for discipline and holy priests. She also writes for LearnToRaid.com and produces the Circle of Healing Podcast.

I've always hated patch day, and not for the reasons you'd think. The servers' being down doesn't bother me, and neither do broken addons or occasional lag. What bothers me is that after spending a few straight months piecing together a good-looking outfit, I'm suddenly forced into a situation where all my gear will inevitably start to mismatch as I acquire upgrades.

That's why this upcoming patch is so amazing ... Transmogrification means I can transmogrify my new gear to match what I'm wearing until I have enough pieces to swap over to a new outfit. I know that's not as exciting as transmogrifying all my gear into a cool RP outfit, but after thinking about it for a while, I think I'd prefer to keep all my RP gear in my bags for special occasions. That way they're always special, since people will only see them once in a while.

Anyway, a new patch is right around the corner, which means shiny new priest gear is on its way too! In preparation for this, I've made a gear list for priests to reference as we progress into the newest content in the coming months.

If you haven't heard yet, Blizzard has tweaked the system we've been using for the past couple of years and will now only allow players to acquire tier gear from raiding. Valor points will still be employed to purchase certain pieces of gear, but those unique set bonuses will be reserved only for players who actually enter raid dungeons. Derevka over at Tales of a Priest explains some of the details in a pretty concise way, if you'd like some extra reading for the week.

ilevel 384, 397 and 410 gear

The following is gear available from Dragon Soul or the valor quartermasters in Orgrimmar and Stormwind. All drop gear is available in three different item levels for normal, heroic and Raid Finder difficulty.

Helm

Neck

Shoulders

Back

Chest

Wrists

Hands

Waist

Legs

Finger

Trinket

Feet

Main-hand weapon

Off-hand weapon

Staff

Wand

The old ilevel 378 valor gear that appeared at the start of patch 4.2 is also still available for purchase at the quartermasters, if you're in desperate need of some missing piece you can't get else where.

l 378 5-man dungeon gear

If you're behind the gear curve and looking to catch up or if you're just trying to piece together a new alt, the latest 5-man dungeons being introduced in patch 4.3 will be a great help at getting you closer to raiding. The three new dungeons drop ilevel 378 gear, which is the same item level as the gear you'd receive from bosses on normal mode in the Firelands.

Helm

Shoulders

Back

Chest

Waist

  • Chillbane Belt Hour of Twilight, Arcurion (see note about hit, below)

Legs

Fingers

Trinket

Feet

Main-hand weapon

Staff

Off-hand weapon

A note about hit I have not listed any valor gear with hit on it, since I assume healers will choose the most optimized gear they can when given a choice. My reason for listing drop items with hit (or damage effects) is so healing priests can keep potential upgrades in mind when RNG dishes out extra DPS weapons or cloth gear that your raid doesn't need. In the event a DPS caster needs these particular items, you should give them priority.

If you need some input on what gear is best for holy or discipline, I'd recommend checking out my stat priority posts for holy and discipline priests. The gear you want will definitely vary depending on the type of role you take on in your group, so you'll want to use that noggin of yours to decide what is best.

Finally, I have no doubt this list is incomplete, so if I missed a piece of gear, let me know in the comments. Since the patch hasn't hit yet, it's hard to use a single database to accumulate all the available gear. I'll add anything I miss as I find it, but I appreciate any help you guys can offer until then.

Spiritual Guidance has the inside line on pre-raid, valor point and raid gear for patch 4.2, as well as priest healing guides for the early and final bosses of The Firelands. Newcomer to the priest class? Look into leveling a healing priest, plus our guides to Discipline Priest 101 and Holy Priest 101.

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