Holy Priests don't use Power:Word Shield?

[Deleted]

I dinged 85 yesterday, and ran a few heroic dungeons, I was having problems with mana. The tank told me that as holy I shouldn't be using Power Word: Shield, just PoHing and PoMing the group. Is this true?

[Dorfie]

Yes. Only before a pull or for the Body and Soul speed boost should you use Shield as Holy.

[driftefx]

PoM. CoH. Gheal. PoH + Sanctuary. Renew + Serenity. Win.

Stack spirit like no other.

[Deleted]

Won't I run out of mana even more if I just spam AoE? :S

[Callypso]

You shouldn't be spamming if there's nothing to heal

[Deleted]

Most of the time you can go in the "single target" Chakra and keep up the group easily. By using heal and the Holy Word you get in that Chakra you save alot of mana.
My tips for newly dinged priests going healer is to go Disc untill an average ilvl of around 378 with spirit items in every slot, as Disc is FAR less gear dependant.
It worked out the best for me, but if you only wanna play holy, then you just have to have some patience as gear improvement will increase your performance by a shit load. And playing holy as newly dinged with the lack of gear is quite hard (IMO), but if you feel for it, then you rock tbh.

[Deleted]

Heroic dungeon rotation is simple as holy.

Stay serenity for the majority of fights. Renew tank, spam heal on him, if it isn't enough then greater heal, if that isn't enough flash heal/greater heal and if that isn't enough use guardian spirit. You can chose between renew->heal on people or through poh/coh for aoe healing, it's a judgement call. The tank was right though, you shouldn't really use PWS aside from emergencies or prepull. Your mastery doesn't benefit at all from shield, and it can't crit either, so not exactly an efficient heal as a holy priest.

[Deleted]

PWS is a weak spell for holy but can occasionaly be useful in some situations. Lets say for example that you're solo healing your side on HC Morchok and your soaker is a warrior that can't pop cooldowns every stomp.
A PWS on the soaker in that case could be helpful just to mitigate some of the incomming dmg


Also, Body and Soul is amazing, really miss that talent

[Deleted]

Stacking Spirit is the main issue as Holy. PW:S should not be used unless you want to cast it on the tank, but my advice is also not to spam Renew. In 5 people content, just refresh it on the tank (staying in Serenity Chakra, of course) and use mainly direct heals; AoE according to the situation (Prayer of Mending and Circle of Healing can be used on CD when damage is hitting almost all party members).

[Raugnaut]

Yea, as stated, Power:Word Shield is not for spammage as holy- However, if a target is at like, 5% health, THEN you use PW:S to hopefully prevent thier death while you get em to a good health % with your cast-time direct heals.

Also, use Serenity in 5 mans. Sanctuary is really only for raids.

Also, Holy sucks without good gear- Disc is alot easier on the mana and such.

[Deleted]

However, if a target is at like, 5% health, THEN you use PW:S to hopefully prevent thier death

In that case, though, Guardian Spirit can easily become your best friend.

[Danner]

Holy use PW: Shield in the following scenarios:

If you have a person on low health and all of these conditions are true:
- Target is at an immediate risk of dying (if time isn't a major factor, use Renew or Greater Heal)
- Target is at an URGENT immediate risk ofdying (Flash Heal is not appropriate due to having a 1.5 sec cast time)
- You don't have a Surge of Light proc available (you rarely do anyway)
- GS is on cooldown (use GS instead if it is available)
- Serenity is not available due to stance and cooldown (use serenity instead if it is available)

If someone need to outrun a bad effect or move out or into the raid fast
- Body and Soul is one of the spec's biggest selling points. Abuse it!

And finally, to annoy discipline priests in the same group.


Truthfully, Power word: Shield is not the most useful spell as a holypriest. But it's still got its uses. That said, I wouldn't cry if the spell vanished from my toolbars as holy, but I wouldn't want to live in a world without Body & Soul. The biggest use I see is in burst healing scenarios where you need to get someone up damned fast. Flash heal does 25k healing, PW:Shield does another 20k. That's almost 50k healing in 1.5 seconds, and it's a good usecase. That said, Serenity works even better than PW: S in this case. So... yeah.

[gaymer77]

An easy way to think about when to use PW:S is thinking about what each spec of priest does for healing. Holy is all about healing someone up after they take damage while disc is all about absorbing/mitigating damage before its done. Its why when you look at throughput on a holy priest compared to a disc priest the holy priest will have a much higher throughput because they are healing after the damage is done. On my priest I went back to holy for my healing spec (always was a disc healer for my healing spec even in vanilla) because I like the healstyle of holy now & have so much spirit on my gear from being shadow main spec.

[Milkshake86]

Most of the time you can go in the "single target" Chakra and keep up the group easily. By using heal and the Holy Word you get in that Chakra you save alot of mana.
My tips for newly dinged priests going healer is to go Disc untill an average ilvl of around 378 with spirit items in every slot, as Disc is FAR less gear dependant.
It worked out the best for me, but if you only wanna play holy, then you just have to have some patience as gear improvement will increase your performance by a shit load. And playing holy as newly dinged with the lack of gear is quite hard (IMO), but if you feel for it, then you rock tbh.

understanding how to heal is the only setback. Not to be demeaning or rude, holy is not difficult to play in dungeons neither is disc and if you dont understand either or the one your playing you will oom. Disc gets a large portion of mp5 from rapture, if your unfamilliar or not tracking it you will oom faster than holy at any gear level otherwise you will pull ahead severely in early gear stages. As holy you need to understand how CoH and PoM work and what you can do to retain mana. Now this is just a for instance bu serenity is obsurdly efficient and w/ only 5 ppl it is quite easy to heal a group. Circle is a smart heal but is still bound to a distance of the initial target so hitting the tank w/ it when the other 4 members are ranged or away from the boss is a fairly bad decision, almost like using poh when only the tank is taking dmg. Heal is your best friend in holy til your gear is decent then you likely wont even need to cast during dungeons, fairly certain I can do top healing in every fight in LFR/LFD by just using pom coh and renew.

[fung]

Holy use PW: Shield in the following scenarios:
And finally, to annoy discipline priests in the same group.

HA--this post was a really good and thorough answer, even got that part =)

ooh, i know: to help rogue pvp partners restealth.

but ya, rarely used for anything other than the speedup.

[Blueness]

PoM. CoH. Gheal. PoH + Sanctuary. Renew + Serenity. Win.

Stack spirit like no other.

I wouldn't use Holy Word Sanctuary in a 5 man group, it is a lot of mana and doesn't tick for much, it really shines in 25 mans where everyone is stacked though, (and to a lesser extent, 10 mans).

[nikjey]

Yes, i still dont understand why pw: shield is bad for holy priest. I think its amazing spell for holy and people keep telling me i shouldnt use it and i cant understand why. for the record i never use this spell when i have a disc priest in the raid. I only put pw shield in my rotation when DISC PRIEST IS NOT AROUND !!!

someone please tell me why this spell is bad to put in my rotation. first of all the spell is instant cast, it wont take any casting time or fuck up my other spell and it only cost like 3,200 mana. I spam it everytime its up, and it has little effect on my mana. even a long fights like imp mar gok, on phase 4, i still have like 80% mana even after spamming it when its available. I dont think mana management is the issue to put it in my rotation.

Yes, i agree that this spell will never be my top healing spell , it can never beat renew , circle of healing and holy word serenity but it wont end up in the btm spell like holy word sanctuary. hw sanctuary is the most useless spell we have but i really think pwshield on holy is an amazing spell. i usually cast it after i cast renew , absorb further incoming dmg while renew doing it's work. its also a great spell to contribute to the tank healing while im busy keeping the whole raid alive. We healers always in the dilema on who is the priority to heal. If we focus on the tank, the dps will die. If we focus on the dps, the tank will die. Power word shield enables me to heal both at the same time. When guardian spirit not available, the combination of renew + power word shield + holy word serenity is enough to keep the tank to stay alive (all instant cast!!!) and i can have a piece of mind that the tank wont die anytime soon and go on focus my healing on a dps that needs it.

Yes, I am usually the top healer in every raid I join and I still dont understand why this spell is bad for holy priest. and yes I dont use it at all when a disc priest is around. Sometimes i do use it when the disc priest is useless and i notice that the tank doesnt have a shield. I usually will give the disc priest a few second to shield the tank if he didnt do it, I will. Yes, I agree that holy priest have many other spell that is more powerfull than pwshield but what is so bad about it ? its an instant spell, its just like icing on the cake. its not the cake ! just put a shield on top of my main spell. we holy priest can only use it once every 10 sec anyway, we cant spam it like disc and its just additional 3,200 mana every 10 sec. that is nothing. It's instant ! some say that it will trigger the global cd and i could have use the time to cast other valuble spell during that time. r u kidding me ? i have like 12% haste unbuff and I know its not alot but i really dont mind triggering 1 extra global cooldown every 10 sec. its really nothing because it just means i could have put an extra renew on 1 dps on that time spend to cast pwshield on a tank. R u kidding me ? which is more important ? 1 renew on dps (heals for a total of 30k hots and its probably gonna over heal anyway) or 1 pwshield on the tank ? ( pwshield can never overheal and it gives more 30k , about 38k with my ilvl and sometimes it will crit 80k). Of course the tank is way more important.

So someone please explain to me why this spell is bad ?

I will be extremely sad if blizzard remove this spell from holy. I will probably will completely remove this spell from my bar if it has casting time like what happen with prayer of mending. when the spell has 1.3 second casting time, it will really fuck up everything. I could have use that precious time to cast flash heal or PoH which gives more than what PoM will do. I'm spec for PoM anyway and I will get 1 every 10 spell i cast. heck, I rather cast renew on a random guy than spending 1.3 sec to put PoM on the tank.

[Deleted]

Most of the time, that spell is very bad for holy (PVE I mean).

It doesn't trigger EoL and it's a bad habit because you don't want to use it in raid (90% of the time, there will be a disc in the raid to do that better than you).

[Deleted]

Uuuh... this smell of necro...

Nevertheless: Especially in 5mans PW Shield is great for holy. Glyph it and you have another spell that refreshes your renew. In raids it is questionable if there is a disc priest in your team.
It's some kind of personal achievement for me when I can keep up renew on all 5 players for the whole instance.

[PosPosPos]

Most of the time, that spell is very bad for holy (PVE I mean).

It doesn't trigger EoL and it's a bad habit because you don't want to use it in raid (90% of the time, there will be a disc in the raid to do that better than you).

Doesn't matter that it doesn't proc EoL - it's way stronger than Renew as is.