This guide will explain all four of the covenants, as well as how to best use their main abilities, priest specific abilities, and soulbinds. As of right now, there are no strong outliers as far as the holy priest covenants' abilities go, so this guide will focus more on explaining the mechanics of the abilities and less so on telling you which one to pick. Below are the four covenants in no particular order:
Kyrian
The Kyrian covenant gives you access to an additional health potion and a large 3-minute cooldown that can be used for both healing and damage. The movement speed increase during the class ability and the hard-hitting instant casts during the buff helps holy priests as our movement abilities are generally lacking. Kyrians also get a special ability in The Necrotic Wake.
Abilities
Calls a steward to you, giving you a Phial of Serenity. This does not share a cooldown with healthstones or healing potions, giving you another consumable to use. The phial will restore 20% of your health and also remove diseases, poisons, and bleeds. It has a 3-minute cooldown and can be augmented by some soulbind abilities.
How to use it
The steward will be used before you start whatever fight you are doing, be it starting a raid encounter or a key. He will follow you around, allowing you to grab what you need from him before disappearing. Therefore, he is pretty easy to use.
Otherwise just known as Boon, this ability gives you a 10-second buff that allows you to use Ascended Blast and Ascended Nova. Both of these abilities will grant you a stack of Boon, which will create an Ascended Eruption when the buff fades. It has a 1.5 second cast time and a 3-minute cooldown.
Ascended Blast - This ability will replace Smite on your action bar. It has a 3-second cooldown, is instant, and hits much harder than Smite would. When you damage an enemy with it, you will heal a nearby ally and gain 5 stacks of Boon of the Ascended.
Ascended Nova - This ability is completely new, and will only replace your Boon of the Ascended button on your action bar. Nova has no cooldown and will both deal damage and healing to enemies and allies within 8 yards. It will grant 1 stack of Boon of the Ascended for each target it damages.
Ascended Eruption - At the end of the 10 seconds, or if the buff is removed, you will explode dealing damage and healing to targets within 15 yards of you. Both damage and healing will be increased by 3% for each stack of Boon of the Ascended you have.
How to use it
Boon of the Ascended requires a bit of planning in order to use well. You will want to use this ability during heavy damage, making sure you are damaging mobs and stacking with other players to make the most out of your Ascended Nova. You also want to make sure to be stacked so that you can make use of the Ascended Eruption.
Conduit Upgrade
Boon of the Ascended can be upgraded via the Courageous Ascension conduit ability. This will make both Ascended Blast and Ascended Eruption do more damage and is considered a good conduit.
Soulbinds
For in-depth conduit information, please see here.
We recommend choosing Kleia as your soulbind once you have her fully unlocked. The recommended soulbind paths can be seen below.
Venthyr
The Venthyr covenant gives you access to a movement ability and a short cooldown that can be used for a small amount of damage and healing. The movement ability in particular is very helpful to holy priests as movement is a department that we are lacking in. You will also get bonuses in both the Sanguine Depths and Halls of Atonement with this covenant.
Abilities
Door of Shadows allows you to teleport to another location up to 35 yards away after a short cast time. It has a 1 minute cooldown. This ability can be augmented by various soulbind abilities.
How to use it
This ability has a relatively short cooldown and is easy to use - just click where you want to go and you will end up there. It will be nice during moments where you want to move a short distance quickly to avoid planned mechanics or just for the movement speed. It could also be used to skip trash packs in dungeons.
After a short cast time, you put a debuff on an enemy target that causes their damage and healing to be reversed either for 5 seconds, or until the cap is reached. It has a short cooldown at 45 seconds. While it does cost 2% mana, you can gain it back as reversed damage and healing can restore up to 4% mana.
How to use it
Given its short cooldown and low amount of healing, this ability should be used early and often. You will need to make sure that the target will be doing some sort of damage or healing in the next 5 seconds.
Conduit Upgrade
Mindgames is upgraded via the Shattered Perceptions conduit ability, making Mindgames last an additional 2 seconds and dealing increased damage or healing. This conduit is pretty good and depending on what soulbind you use can definitely be in one of our potency slots.
Soulbinds
For in-depth conduit information, please see here.
All three of Venthyr's soulbinds are pretty good, you cannot really go wrong with any of them. If you're indecisive, we do recommend using General Draven as your soulbind. The recommended soulbind paths can be seen below.
Necrolord
The Necrolord covenant gives you a personal shield and short cooldown damage and healing ability. The signature ability is nice as holy priests do not have very strong personals. Necrolords receive benefits in both Plaguefall and Theater of Pain.
Abilities
Fleshcraft creates a personal shield over the course of 3 seconds. The size of the absorb increases the longer you channel it, up to 40% of your maximum health. While channeling your damage taken is reduced by 20%. There are soulbind abilities that will augment Fleshcraft in different ways. The shield lasts for 2 minutes, so it will be easy to use up all of the absorb as long as some sort of damage is happening. The cooldown of the ability is also 2 minutes.
How to use it
With the changes made to this ability in 9.0.5, Fleshcraft gives us some personal damage reduction that we have not really had in the past. This ability can be used as a personal, channeled during times of high damage where you need the DR.
Unholy Nova is an instant-cast ability that can be cast on friend or foe on a short 1-minute cooldown. This ability will fly towards the target and land on the ground where the target was standing when the ability was cast. It will explode on impact, immediately healing all allies in a 15-yard radius, and placing Unholy Transfusion on all enemy targets in the same area.
Unholy Transfusion - A 15-second debuff that both deals damage and causes anyone who attacks the target to be healed for a small amount. This is similar to giving everyone in your group leech, as every time they attack that target they are healed.
How to use it
Unholy Nova has a pretty short cooldown, so you will want to use it often. You want to make sure that your target is standing still so you do not miss with the ability. You also will want to hit some allies with it (will most likely be melee surrounding the target) and you want to make sure that your allies will be attacking the target after you have cast it to make the most use out of the Unholy Transfusion.
Conduit Upgrade
Unholy Nova is upgraded via Festering Transfusion, which makes Unholy Transfusion last 2 seconds longer and deal more damage and healing.
Soulbinds
For in-depth conduit information, please see here.
You will want to pick the Emeni soulbind here. The recommended soulbind paths can be seen below.
Night Fae
The Night Fae covenant gives you a short blink ability, as well as a cooldown that can be used in a few different ways, providing damage reduction, cooldown reduction, and mana. The blink is great for holy priests as our movement ability is poor. Night Fae will also get buffs in the Mists of Tirna Scithe and De Other Side dungeons.
Abilities
When activating this ability you shapeshift into a fox and blink forward 15 yards. While you are shapeshifted your movement speed is increased by 50%. You can teleport again every few seconds.
How to use it
Since this ability is an instant cast and has a short cooldown, it is easy to use to avoid dangerous mechanics or to simply move more quickly for a short amount of time. You can preplan when to use this ability to allow you to end up at your destination more quickly and therefore give you time to plant yourself and heal.
This instant cast ability gives you 3 faerie guardians for 20 seconds, each with a different ability that they can use to assist you. The faeries will all follow specific abilities, so you must cast them in order for the faeries to end up where you want them. The faeries can be moved at any time during this 20 second period.
This faerie will go on an enemy target. Any direct attacks against this target will restore .5% mana. The mana return has a .75 second internal cooldown, so it will only restore mana every .75 seconds, even if you have done damage more than once during that time frame. The faerie will follow your Shadow Word: Pain.
This faerie will reduce the target's damage taken by 20%. It will follow your Power Word: Shield.
This faerie will increase the cooldown reduction rate of a major ability by 100%. For Holy Priests, this will reduce the cooldown of Divine Hymn. The faerie will follow your Flash Heal.
How to use it
This one is probably the most difficult priest class ability to use. For 20 seconds, you have 3 different buffs that you can move around as you see fit, and you should try to get as much use out of them as possible.
The Wrathful Faerie is probably the easiest, as it will follow your Shadow Word: Pain and will simply return you some mana.
The Guardian Faerie is connected to a spell that we currently don't really want to use, which is both a blessing and a curse. Although Power Word: Shield is not currently a good spell for us, that means that we won't accidentally move the buff around while going through our normal rotation. Slap the shield on your tank (or anyone else that will take significant damage) and you're good to go!
The Benevolent Faerie is connected to your Flash Heal. For maximum healing, we would of course want to put the faerie on ourselves and make sure to use Divine Hymn often to make use of the shorter cooldown. However, that is not always useful, in a raid, your Hymns are usually planned out in advance and we don't really need any extra casts in Nathria. If you are going to use it for a DPS so they can reduce their damage cooldown, I would check with them first to make sure that things will still line up properly for them, as you may make it so their multiple abilities do not sync up well (Think a Marksmanship hunter with their Wild Spirits and Trueshot). This faerie can be a bit tricky because you are unable to Flash Heal again without moving the faerie, which will cause your target to lose some cooldown reduction. Consider using Heal instead if you are able.
Conduit Upgrade
This ability is augmented by Fae Fermenta, which will allow your buff targets to not completely lose their buff if you move the faerie to another target. This will only give an 80% copy and last for a few seconds, so the actual benefit is small. It just makes accidental target changes a bit more smooth. Please note that you can only have one extra copy of your faeries and will not be able to spread them out over many targets.
The Benevolent Faerie can be placed on another player to reduce the cooldown of one of their major class spells. It can be helpful to know what spells this Faerie augments so that it can be used properly for DPS if necessary. Below is a list of all spells that the Faerie will effect.
| Death Knight | Demon Hunter |
| Blood - Vampiric Blood Frost - Empower Rune Weapon Unholy - Apocalypse | Vengeance - Metamorphosis Havoc - Metamorphosis |
| Druid | Hunter |
| Restoration - Tranquility Guardian - Berserk / Incarnation (If talented) Feral - Berserk / Incarnation (If talented) Balance - Celestial Alignment | Survival - Coordinated Assault Beast Master - Aspect of the Wild Marksmanship - Trueshot |
| Mage | Monk |
| Arcane - Arcane Power Frost - Icy Veins Fire - Combustion | Brewmaster - Fortifying Brew Windwalker - Storm, Earth, and Fire / Serenity (If talented) Mistweaver - Revival |
| Paladin | Priest |
| All - Avenging Wrath Holy - Avenging Crusader (If talented) Retribution - Crusade (If talented) | Discipline - Rapture / Spirit Shell (If talented) Holy - Divine Hymn Shadow - Void Eruption |
| Rogue | Shaman |
| Outlaw - Adrenaline Rush Assassination - Vendetta Subtlety - Shadow Blades | Enhancement - Feral Spirit Restoration - Healing Tide Totem Elemental - Fire Elemental / Storm Elemental (If talented) |
| Warlock | Warrior |
| Destruction - Summon Infernal Affliction - Summon Darkglare Demonology - Summon Demonic Tyrant | Protection - Avatar Arms - Bladestorm Fury - Recklessness |
Soulbinds
For in-depth conduit information, please see here.
We recommend the Dreamweaver soulbind for Night Fae. The recommended soulbind paths can be seen below.
Navigate through the rest of the guide here!
Changelog
- 5 July 2021 - Updated for 9.1 changes
- 13 Mar 2021 - Updated for 9.0.5 changes
- 15 Nov 2020 - Created