Circle of Healing

Circle of Healing is a common priest spell card, inducted into the Legacy set, formerly from the Classic set.

Strategy
This is a cheap but powerful heal for priests, with the major downside of affecting all minions, including your opponent's. While potentially extremely useful, the right circumstances are therefore required to make the most of this spell.

Ideally, use this spell when all of your opponent's minions (if any) are at full health and when you have several damaged minions on the board. Remember that healing does not benefit full-health minions, so the only significant factor is the number of damaged minions on the board.

Combinations
A common use of this card is in combination with Auchenai Soulpriest to deal 4 damage to minions, acting as a very effective board wipe. This effectively provides the effect of a Flamestrike for just 4 mana, but will damage the priest's minions too, reducing the Soulpriest to 1 Health. Unless Silenced, the priest will also be unable to heal the Soulpriest due to their healing effects now dealing damage (although they can still use effects like Power Word: Shield), which means she will often be destroyed next turn. The combo acts to clear away enemies, with the casting priest usually having no other minions on the board at the time, and can be very useful for allowing priests to survive into the late game against more aggressive decks.

The same effect can also be achieved more efficiently with Embrace the Shadow, which costs 2 Mana less and doesn't leave a damaged Soulpriest on board.

Another common play involves summoning Injured Blademaster followed immediately by Circle of Healing, allowing the priest to put a 4/7 minion on the board for only 3 mana and two cards. This can be executed as early as turn 3 (turn 2 with The Coin), which is usually very hard for the opponent to remove in the early stages of the game, gaining the priest a significant advantage from the beginning of the game.

Circle of Healing can be used with several damaged minions and Northshire Cleric, healing friendly and enemy minions alike, with the undesirable healing compensated for by the substantial card draw. If both Wild Pyromancer and Northshire Cleric are on the board, Circle of Healing can be used as an even more significant card draw. Once the priest has triggered Wild Pyromancer's effect once, Circle of Healing can be played to heal all surviving minions and draw one card for each one.

Lore
is a Holy priest healing spell from . It is a self-targeting 'smart-heal' which heals the 5 most injured party members within 30 yards of the target for a small amount. While its 'smart-heal' effect is useful for saving the priest time selecting individual targets, it also prevents the priest from deciding who will benefit from this spell. This aspect of the ability is exaggerated in its Hearthstone card's trait of affecting all minions, while the WoW spell only affects friendly party members.

As an instant auto-targeting multi-target heal, Circle of Healing is extremely effective when the priest is unable to output enough healing through other means, and consequently comes with a cooldown, added in  after constant spamming of this ability became a common strategy for Holy priests. In the current game, the spell is a powerful instant AoE healing option for Holy priests.

Trivia

 * The artwork for this card comes from the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game "Drums of War" series, for the card Equalize.

Patch changes

 * Moved from Classic to Legacy set.