Suggestions for a new Holy Priest raider?

[Kinpuppalick]

Hello all!


Although I am not new to raiding (been doing it about a year as a resto druid) I am a very green holy/disc priest. Right now, I am mainly holy as it feels more comfortable to me, but I will be fleshing out my disc spec so I can properly switch back and forth. As it stands right now, the team I am on, we have just started raiding and tonight I am confident we will have our first boss kill. So exciting. What brings me here is that I am just new, confused and in need of some guidance on how to become a better, more effective healer.

Here I am!
I can't post a link to my armory, but I am MaryMaggot on Draenor.

addons I use
Vuhdo
Descursive
DBM

And when I raid I use the Spirit flask and Int food.

As it stands in armory I am logged out in disc ( I was doing dailies), but that is my holy gear. When I first started healing on her, I geared myself using noxxic/icy-veins and reforged for haste. Last week was our first attempt in raid and I felt terrible. My heals were so low on the meter, and while I know not to rely on what the meter says completely, I was too far behind my other healing partners. Our healing set up now is a Resto Druid, Holy Pally and myself as Holy Priest. The other two healers? Fantastic. Just wonderful players, effective and fun to work with.

So I started searching around and finally just googled "Holy Priest MoP" and found you guys. That is when I saw that mastery is a better suit for holy. I reforged and have seen my numbers go up, my mana more manageable and I don't feel like I'm the third wheel.

So here are questions I have

Is mastery the way to go? I have read that haste gives us another tick on renew and lightwell. If I reach the soft cap I notice that sure I get the tick, but my spell effectiveness goes WAY down. So is there a "sweet spot" in regards to how much mastery to how much haste? Personally? I would rather have more effective heals, cast less, than have faster heals another tick on a hot and just oom myself. Viable? Any suggestions are VERY appreciated.


How is my gear so far? Enchants/gemming? Im an enchanter and I have a JC so fixing those is not a problem and I'm totally cool with trying new things out and re doing it later. Mats are not a problem. My belt and one ring I know have to be replaced. That ring was just to get ilvl and now I can't get the ring I need to drop. No worries, today after I valor cap I will have the rep ring. My wrists were a Sha drop and I equipped them because they were an upgrade. I have the 170 enchant in my bags and I was hesitant to put them on those wrists. Worth it? I figure I won't replace the wrists until I get a 476+ pair. So maybe the enchant is worth it? Like I said, I have mats. My belt? It just isn't dropping for me for some reason when I run that heroic. So, I'll just run more.

Talents?

Dominate Mind
Body and Soul
Mindbender ( I know the armory says I have FDCL. I dont. I respecced it a few days ago for the extra mana)
Desperate Prayer
Twist of Fate
Cascade

I really like body and soul. One reason is that I like to shield myself to get out of poo, It also works nicely with others. That movement increase is easier than putting out feathers.



My glyphs. any suggestions? Are they good?


Okay, with my spells, which should be my top used? Is renew something I should be sprinkling on people?


And one other thing. The whole numbers thing. I am rather ignorant on it. I'm a smart gal, but I'm just not a numbers one. That doesn't mean I am not interested in learning. I see everyone posting logs, talking about theorycraft. How do I get into understanding that? Is there a theorycraft for dummies?


In the end what I want is to be effective and play my class to it's max. I don't care about *always* topping the healing meters as even though you could have three amazing healers, someone is always going to be third.

Thank you, and I appreciate the help.

[Ellumina]

Divine Insight for Tier 5 definitely. It is absolutely *amazing*, and I wouldn't suggest any other talent. Glyphs that I use:

Glyph of Circle of Healing
Glyph of Lightspring (This is AMAZING)
Glyph of Lightwell (I raid 25man so it's quite useful)
I do not glyph Renew because I don't find it critical, and is not one of my highest healing spells (compared to CoH and Lightspring listed above) or PoM due to Divine Insight.

My top raid healing spells are typically:
- Circle of Healing
- Echo of Light (Mastery) - I am mastery stacked
- Prayer of Healing
- Lightspring Renew
- Cascade
- Prayer of Mending
- Divine Hymn

Single target spells, such as Renew, heal for less overall (in a 25man environment). I also do not Renew spam personally.

Some random recent logs as Holy if you're curious to see general spell rankings in overall healing done over various fights.
Garalon
Imperial Vizier Zor'lok
Blade Lord Ta'yak
H Stone Guard

[Kinpuppalick]

Divine Insight for Tier 5 definitely. It is absolutely *amazing*, and I wouldn't suggest any other talent.

You know I had that before, I don't remember my reasoning for changing it. When realms come back up, I will change it. I *think* I remember changing it because last week we were all just taking so much damage while learning the fight?

Glyphs that I use:

Glyph of Circle of Healing
Glyph of Lightspring (This is AMAZING)
Glyph of Lightwell (I raid 25man so it's quite useful)
I do not glyph Renew because I don't find it critical, and is not one of my highest healing spells (compared to CoH and Lightspring listed above) or PoM due to Divine Insight.

Okay. So I'll switch out renew. The thing I didn't understand was that you can glyph both Lightwell AND Lightspring. Makes sense now though. Oh I forgot to say, we do 10m.

My top raid healing spells are typically:
- Circle of Healing
- Echo of Light (Mastery) - I am mastery stacked
- Prayer of Healing
- Lightspring Renew
- Cascade
- Prayer of Mending
- Divine Hymn

Single target spells, such as Renew, heal for less overall (in a 25man environment). I also do not Renew spam personally.

Okay, thanks for those links. How do I find myself on the logs? I'll go look, as I probably can answer the question before you reply, haha.


Thank you. You reply was really helpful and gave me some food for thought. I'm going to look at those logs and see how mine stack up. Cheers!

[Ellumina]

You know I had that before, I don't remember my reasoning for changing it. When realms come back up, I will change it. I *think* I remember changing it because last week we were all just taking so much damage while learning the fight?



Okay. So I'll switch out renew. The thing I didn't understand was that you can glyph both Lightwell AND Lightspring. Makes sense now though. Oh I forgot to say, we do 10m.


Okay, thanks for those links. How do I find myself on the logs? I'll go look, as I probably can answer the question before you reply, haha.


Thank you. You reply was really helpful and gave me some food for thought. I'm going to look at those logs and see how mine stack up. Cheers!

The logs I linked you are just mine, and by no means amazing, but they're my more recent logs and I figured I'd just link it for you. The only time I might ever see Renew rank really high is when there's almost no damage going out to the raid, and I'm bored standing around and I'll just blanket out Renews. But when it's heavy raid damage, I don't really stop to Renew when I have so many strong raid healing spells that I have available.

If you want to look up your logs, someone in your raid would have to be logging (I log for our guild, hence why I know I have logs of myself). I just looked up your Realm and I don't see your guild there, so perhaps no one in your raid logs. Consider logging for yourself though. I find it very useful in trying to improve myself or figuring out what I'm doing wrong.

And since you are 10 man, it may not be necessary for you to even glyph for Glyph of Lightwell (which, btw, the tooltip will not update saying 17 charges, but if you click on your Lightspring, it will say 17 charges). Glyph of Renew is by no means bad, it's just a personal preference for me since I don't prioritize Renewing when raid healing in a 25man (though you might find it more useful in 10man).

And I didn't mention it before, but Spirit. Spirit all the things! I think I started raiding this tier with like raw 6.5k spirit, and boy it was not pretty. Spirit is your best friend, so a Spirit flask would be the right choice, and even Spirit food if you can get your hands on it (especially at your current spirit level, you could always use more!)

[KidCanuck]

Some pointers for disc, since I'm much more familiar with disc than holy.

- Stack spirit and mastery, as disc is very hard on your mana and mastery has better synergy than haste or crit with most of your spells.
- Use spirit shell on CD. It rolls your mastery into your base healing value, so it's a huge boost.
- Atonement healing. Really useful for lower damage periods, just holy fire and smite and penance on the boss for some nice smart heals, and it stacks up archangel for a +25% boost to healing, which is very nice.
- Use penance to stack Grace on people. If you're switching targets, use penance to stack grace to 3x on the new target, it will buff your healing by a considerable amount.
- Don't use renew as disc. It's not very effective.
- Inner focus is on a very short CD, use it liberally.

Disc is more of a proactive style of healing. The big CD's are both damage reductions rather than actual heals. Spirit shell allows you to stack some huge damage absorb effects. Your performance as disc will get better and better the more you know the fight mechanics, and can predict when there will be an upcoming spike of damage. So study up, and watch those DBM timers.

[Kinpuppalick]

Yeah it looks like no one logs. So I am going to start. I figure it can't be bad?

---------- Post added 2012-11-13 at 03:33 PM ----------

Some pointers for disc, since I'm much more familiar with disc than holy.

- Stack spirit and mastery, as disc is very hard on your mana and mastery has better synergy than haste or crit with most of your spells.
- Use spirit shell on CD. It rolls your mastery into your base healing value, so it's a huge boost.
- Atonement healing. Really useful for lower damage periods, just holy fire and smite and penance on the boss for some nice smart heals, and it stacks up archangel for a +25% boost to healing, which is very nice.
- Use penance to stack Grace on people. If you're switching targets, use penance to stack grace to 3x on the new target, it will buff your healing by a considerable amount.
- Don't use renew as disc. It's not very effective.
- Inner focus is on a very short CD, use it liberally.

Disc is more of a proactive style of healing. The big CD's are both damage reductions rather than actual heals. Spirit shell allows you to stack some huge damage absorb effects. Your performance as disc will get better and better the more you know the fight mechanics, and can predict when there will be an upcoming spike of damage. So study up, and watch those DBM timers.

Thanks so much! I will DEF look into it more once I get holy fleshed out a bit more. I started out as disc but everyone was saying holy was better. My raid leader wants me holy/disc so I can switch if i need.

[HPLathus]

Some pointers for disc, since I'm much more familiar with disc than holy.


- Use spirit shell on CD. It rolls your mastery into your base healing value, so it's a huge boost.

- Inner focus is on a very short CD, use it liberally.

1) NO, DO NOT USE SPIRIT SHELL ON COOLDOWN. Use spirit shell when you know there is a PREDICTABLE AOE RAID DAMAGE ABILITY COMING AND PRE STACK THE SHIELDS ON EVERYONE

2) You should always be using inner focus on cooldown, the exception is when you know there will be aoe damage and you want to either spirit shell pre shield or react to the damage, typically I use inner focus with greater heal to cut down the recast significantly.. you should be casting greater heal enough in a fight that your inner focus comes up often..

Priests these days x_X

[KidCanuck]

1) NO, DO NOT USE SPIRIT SHELL ON COOLDOWN. Use spirit shell when you know there is a PREDICTABLE AOE RAID DAMAGE ABILITY COMING AND PRE STACK THE SHIELDS ON EVERYONE

2) You should always be using inner focus on cooldown, the exception is when you know there will be aoe damage and you want to either spirit shell pre shield or react to the damage, typically I use inner focus with greater heal to cut down the recast significantly.. you should be casting greater heal enough in a fight that your inner focus comes up often..

Priests these days x_X

1) Use Spirit Shell as often as you possibly can. It's a 1-minute CD, and if there's any 'predictable AoE raid damage', you've got about 28-29 sec after you pop the CD to absorb it. Make sure to use your last cast(s) under the effect of the CD to refresh the durations on your targets, and then the effect lasts for 15 sec after the CD wears off you.

If you're tank healing, SS makes your single target heals incredibly efficient by rolling your mastery into the base heal. If you're AoE healing, you can completely negate a huge raid damage spike if you time it correctly. *NOTE* This obviously requires some knowledge of the encounter mechanics.

2) Are you still talking about the old version of Inner Focus? It gives 100% crit chance, and 25% mana cost reduction. It makes a great combo for a tank who just got spiked. Shield -> Penance -> Inner Focus -> GHeal is a HUGE HP swing on a tank. And with the 45 sec CD, it'll be up very often. Just be careful not to waste the auto-crit on an overheal (although now that Aegis is buffed to 50% ...)

[HPLathus]

1) Use Spirit Shell as often as you possibly can. It's a 1-minute CD, and if there's any 'predictable AoE raid damage', you've got about 28-29 sec after you pop the CD to absorb it. Make sure to use your last cast(s) under the effect of the CD to refresh the durations on your targets, and then the effect lasts for 15 sec after the CD wears off you.

If you're tank healing, SS makes your single target heals incredibly efficient by rolling your mastery into the base heal. If you're AoE healing, you can completely negate a huge raid damage spike if you time it correctly. *NOTE* This obviously requires some knowledge of the encounter mechanics.

2) Are you still talking about the old version of Inner Focus? It gives 100% crit chance, and 25% mana cost reduction. It makes a great combo for a tank who just got spiked. Shield -> Penance -> Inner Focus -> GHeal is a HUGE HP swing on a tank. And with the 45 sec CD, it'll be up very often. Just be careful not to waste the auto-crit on an overheal (although now that Aegis is buffed to 50% ...)

No sir, you are still wrong.

Spirit shell is a situational spell that should be TIMED PROPERLY WITH RAID WIDE AOE DAMAGE. You should not just use it because it's off cooldown, thats a great way to wipe your raid honestly.

And no im not talking about the old version, greater heal + IF on a tank = one big stinkin shield for the tank.

And if on the raid PoH + IF One big bubble on the raid.

I think you might be forgetting that every time you greater heal it reduces the cooldown on inner focus.. for tank healing you should be using greater heal with IF on cooldown and mixing greater heals inbetween for spiking sakes.

[Dorfie]

Spirit shell on cd all the time is very bad.

However a lot of the raid wide damage in HoF does seem to line up with SSs cd.

[HPLathus]

I'm not saying keep it on cooldown.. but if theres AOE coming up why woud you waste it >_>

[Deleted]

Healing 10 and 25 man is different.
25man is more healing Role based to prevent massive cross healing
10man depends if u 2 or 3 heal but generally its more a "jack of all trades" healing type of style.

Generally my spells used are really depending on the fight and my Chakra.

Chakra:Serenity i make use of Renew / PoM on CD / CoH when (min 4 people) / Serenity / Heal or gheal when needed and occasionally a PoH when a group took damage. If i got many renew's rolling i tend to refresh them with Cascade. Using Serenity on the tank to keep renew rolling and the increased crit buff of serenity makes casting heal right after pretty good and cheap.
(heal crits pretty often with the buff or gheal if needed).

Chakra:Sanctuary i make more use of PoH / CoH on CD (min 4 people) / PoM on CD / Cascade when enough took damage and keeping renew as much as i can on the tank(s) and cast heal as filler on some short dull moments.

Always place Lightwell/Spring pre-pull i generally do it while we eat a feast or buff up after a wipe or right after trash dies i already place it. Make sure u cast chakra:Chastise well before the pull so u dont face a 30sec CD if ur heal buddy suffers lag so u can react fast with chakra.

My Chakra usage in Vaults:

Stone guard depends on setup.
if Jade guard active > Chakra:Sanctuary
If non-Jade guard setup > Chakra:Serenity

Feng > Phase 1 Chakra:Serenity in Phase 2&3 Chakra:Sanctuary right after the first Draw Flame (we dont use barrier on first i use Divine Hymn)

Gara'Jal if u struggle with enrage like we did at start and now im just used to do this now and my healer buddy(s) are used to it as well.
I start out in Chakra:Chastise till the first totem spawn, popping MindBinder first and go Holy Fire Smite, dont have to worry about mindbender CD as when the first totem spawns im still nearly full mana and bender CD is only 20sec left. After the first Banish i very rarely get picked again as a voodoo doll target, thus letting me waste my mana on dps first minute and my healer buddy to use his mana on actual healing.

So i go > Chastise (till 1st totem) > Serenity >@ around ~25+% (when we call out for hero) boss health i go Sanctuary.

This fight makes u use Binding heal a lot, might pick Halo to help out on Damage Spirit in spirit Realm and to add a quick last stack on both players in the realm and to refresh ur buff. If DPS do their jobs in the spirit realm u can stick with Serenity for stronger single target heals on the voodoo dolls and faster healing of ur targets inside the spirit realm. If there keeps being (too) many spirits up, go Sanctuary as u might fall behind on the non-doll targets.

Spirit Kings:
Start in Sanctuary > either Stay Sanc or switch to Serenity or even Chastise (depending on active king and/or heal buddy)

For me its Sanc > Serenity on Meng rest > Chastise if we got our new r.shaman with us than i keep serenity.

there's not much damage going out in this fight cept on the first king and Meng (spell reflect and healing after shout), only the ones that are pinned down @Subetai need some attention if the arent free fast enough.

Elegon
Chastise till first add than Sanctuary rest of the fight for me.
Did some chakra changing but the CD is a tad long for me on this fight and i should not be needed on dpsíng sparks so i stay sanctuary

Will of the Emperor
Serenity > Sanctuary on Clouds

[HPLathus]

Healing 10 and 25 man is different.
25man is more healing Role based to prevent massive cross healing
10man depends if u 2 or 3 heal but generally its more a "jack of all trades" healing type of style.

Generally my spells used are really depending on the fight and my Chakra.

Chakra:Serenity i make use of Renew / PoM on CD / CoH when (min 4 people) / Serenity / Heal or gheal when needed and occasionally a PoH when a group took damage. If i got many renew's rolling i tend to refresh them with Cascade. Using Serenity on the tank to keep renew rolling and the increased crit buff of serenity makes casting heal right after pretty good and cheap.
(heal crits pretty often with the buff or gheal if needed).

Chakra:Sanctuary i make more use of PoH / CoH on CD (min 4 people) / PoM on CD / Cascade when enough took damage and keeping renew as much as i can on the tank(s) and cast heal as filler on some short dull moments.

Always place Lightwell/Spring pre-pull i generally do it while we eat a feast or buff up after a wipe or right after trash dies i already place it. Make sure u cast chakra:Chastise well before the pull so u dont face a 30sec CD if ur heal buddy suffers lag so u can react fast with chakra.

My Chakra usage in Vaults:

Stone guard depends on setup.
if Jade guard active > Chakra:Sanctuary
If non-Jade guard setup > Chakra:Serenity

Feng > Phase 1 Chakra:Serenity in Phase 2&3 Chakra:Sanctuary right after the first Draw Flame (we dont use barrier on first i use Divine Hymn)

Gara'Jal if u struggle with enrage like we did at start and now im just used to do this now and my healer buddy(s) are used to it as well.
I start out in Chakra:Chastise till the first totem spawn, popping MindBinder first and go Holy Fire Smite, dont have to worry about mindbender CD as when the first totem spawns im still nearly full mana and bender CD is only 20sec left. After the first Banish i very rarely get picked again as a voodoo doll target, thus letting me waste my mana on dps first minute and my healer buddy to use his mana on actual healing.

So i go > Chastise (till 1st totem) > Serenity >@ around ~25+% (when we call out for hero) boss health i go Sanctuary.

This fight makes u use Binding heal a lot, might pick Halo to help out on Damage Spirit in spirit Realm and to add a quick last stack on both players in the realm and to refresh ur buff. If DPS do their jobs in the spirit realm u can stick with Serenity for stronger single target heals on the voodoo dolls and faster healing of ur targets inside the spirit realm. If there keeps being (too) many spirits up, go Sanctuary as u might fall behind on the non-doll targets.

Spirit Kings:
Start in Sanctuary > either Stay Sanc or switch to Serenity or even Chastise (depending on active king and/or heal buddy)

For me its Sanc > Serenity on Meng rest > Chastise if we got our new r.shaman with us than i keep serenity.

there's not much damage going out in this fight cept on the first king and Meng (spell reflect and healing after shout), only the ones that are pinned down @Subetai need some attention if the arent free fast enough.

Elegon
Chastise till first add than Sanctuary rest of the fight for me.
Did some chakra changing but the CD is a tad long for me on this fight and i should not be needed on dpsíng sparks so i stay sanctuary

Will of the Emperor
Serenity > Sanctuary on Clouds

Decent information, just to add.


For things like Chakra dancing, it's another situational thing. Don't think that you HAVE TO, because it honestly will depend on who is in your raid and what is going on. Stance dancing too much is a good way to find yourself globaled and having someone die because you couldn't cast.

I will agree I am finding myself going between AOE Chakra, and Single target chakra.


However, with the quoted post, I do not suggest EVER going into Chastise for any fight whatsoever. Holy is not meant to do dps at any moment, if you are you are simply wasting mana and global cooldowns that could be used for better things.

[Hoser]

I find myself being a spirit whore.

[PhillieB]

How to Priest has a very nice Holy Priest sticky, I suggest you start off from there: http://howtopriest.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=1613

[KidCanuck]

No sir, you are still wrong.

Spirit shell is a situational spell that should be TIMED PROPERLY WITH RAID WIDE AOE DAMAGE. You should not just use it because it's off cooldown, thats a great way to wipe your raid honestly.

And no im not talking about the old version, greater heal + IF on a tank = one big stinkin shield for the tank.

And if on the raid PoH + IF One big bubble on the raid.

I think you might be forgetting that every time you greater heal it reduces the cooldown on inner focus.. for tank healing you should be using greater heal with IF on cooldown and mixing greater heals inbetween for spiking sakes.

There's no reason you can't use Spirit Shell for single target healing either. A single GHeal crit throws a 200K+ shield on the tank, which frees you up nicely to PW:Solace a bit, or stack some Evangelism, or right before you need to move. On fights with nice predictable AoE spikes, sure, save solace for them, but on something like Gara'Jal (sp?) or Spirit Kings, it makes a very nice single target CD for the tank. I'm not saying waste it, but with such a short CD, it's not the type of cooldown that you save, you should use it as often as you can.

As for Inner Focus, wasting a 200K+ heal just to get a 100K shield seems wasteful to me, however short the CD is. Again, use it as often as it makes sense to.

[HPLathus]

No offense but I can tell you haven't ever been in a hardcore heroic guild.

Any heroic content guild is going to tell you to save spirit shells for AOE boss damage.