1. #1
    The Lightbringer Lovestar's Avatar
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    Holy, Proving Grounds, and impossible mana... any advice?

    Hi! I am having a lot of fun in Proving Grounds on PTR and using them to try out and challenge myself with all sorts of specs I've never (or rarely) played before. I'm working on Holy Priest right now (after finally getting through Mistweaver x.x).

    I got through Gold as Disc pretty smoothly, it took a lot of tries (doing this cold-turkey after being away from WoW for ~a year) but all I really had to do was learn the pace of the fights and use Disc's ultra-cooldowns in the correct order. Disc is kind of a "CD metronome" style, I guess.

    Holy, though, is stonewalling me. I can handle the damage fine, but no matter what I do I can't keep up my mana. I'm on vapors the whole time, and so much as one single mistake or overheal can spell the end of the trial. Which makes me sad, because I never bothered with Holy before, but this spec is actually really fun!! When I have mana.

    Can any HPriests here correct what I'm doing wrong?

    ~~~

    For reference, this is my setup:
    • Chakra: Serenity (single-target)
    • Psyfiend, Mindbender, Desperate Prayer, Power Infusion, Cascade (swapping PI for Divine Insight gets me basically the same results)
    • Glyphs: +2 charges Lightspring, 60% more on first PoM, +33% / -3s Renew
    • Premade in 463 Heroic blues garbage (but the iLevel scales down to 463 anyway, and all my other Golds were also in the same junk)

    And this is my healing checklist:
    • Absolutely no use of PW:S, ever
    • Absolutely no DPS spells, ever
    • Absolutely no Flash Heal, ever
    • Renew on tank, maintained with direct heals
    • Renews spread on anyone who takes meaningful damage
    • HW: Serenity on CD (when tank is damaged)
    • PoM on CD on tank (if all charges have emptied)
    • "Heal" on tank as long as possible, then GHeal when I have to bring him up
    • Heal to keep people topped up when I know big damage is coming
    • Prayer of Healing instead of Heal if 4-5 targets are all damaged
    • Circle of Healing in place of PoH on CD
    • Cascade in place of PoH / CoH on CD
    • Mindbender on CD
    • Hymn of Hope on CD when I both have a Mindbender out, and can find a break to get a full channel
    • Lightwell on CD once heavy damage starts going out
    • Void Shift + Desperate Prayer to ghetto LOH the tank
    • Spirit Shell + PoH spam on CD (haha, just kidding. I wish. :p)

    Again, this keeps everyone alive no problem, it's very effective. But my mana just plummets as the intense damage comes in (Pyroblasts on random party members, horrible burrowing rabbit things leaving "must heal past 90%" bleed debuff that sucks my mana dry to clean off, etc), and after a few intense waves I'm on total vapors desperately staring at the Mindbender CD.

  2. #2
    Brewmaster Outofmana's Avatar
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    Staring at mindbender cooldown should be Blizzards priest-description; welcome to the Holy Priest.

  3. #3
    You didn't say what gems you were using which is extremely important. At that low ilvl you need spirit gems on every slot if you wanna make it past wave 10. On my live gem reforge/gemming setup i made it only to wave 16 which when scaled down is a mere 7k spirit aka not enough. While your post is mainly for gold keeping those in mind would go a long way to handle endless as well.

    TLDR: Use spirit flask,gems and it's perfectly doable.

  4. #4
    The Lightbringer Lovestar's Avatar
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    OK.

    So, I'm not doing anything "wrong", mechanically, with my approach to Holy Priest healing? It's just a spec where you're dealing with either "enough Spirit" or "not enough Spirit"?

  5. #5
    I have not heard anyone say the finished Endless yet. Testing I did I do not think you can do it with Holy due to mana. I will have to test on live as it's been a few patches on ptr since I tried but I will tell you this; I one shot up to endless and one shot most my challenge modes. Endless stumped me.

  6. #6
    The Lightbringer Lovestar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zosyn View Post
    I would recommend using divine star over cascade. It has a lower mana cost and will help dps adds, if you are positioned correctly.
    I do prefer Divine Star, but the frustration is that the NPC party members tend to spread themselves out all over the place while simultaneously taking tons and tons of damage. It makes it hard to effectively use DS on cooldown.

    With Monk, moving into position for Chi Burst is easy due to all their movement tools. But I found myself wasting too much time trying to set up a good Star shot, versus just tapping Cascade and keep going (which also refreshed all my Renews).

    I think it's a personal thing, though. If you have the spatial coordination / sense to pull off consistent Stars, definitely go for it.

  7. #7
    Out of the jar . . . Allatar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nightstorm View Post
    I have not heard anyone say the finished Endless yet. Testing I did I do not think you can do it with Holy due to mana. I will have to test on live as it's been a few patches on ptr since I tried but I will tell you this; I one shot up to endless and one shot most my challenge modes. Endless stumped me.
    Er you do realise that Endless isn't supposed to be finished; that's why it's called Endless . . . . .
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  8. #8
    The Lightbringer Lovestar's Avatar
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    I reforged, re-enchanted, and re-gemmed the premade's gear, bringing me from 5500 Spirit to 8200 Spirit, then flasked up to 9200. I didn't really do anything differently rotationally, but *poof*, one-shot Gold with the extra Spirit.

    If anyone's curious, these tips are what helped me the most to clear through it. They're probably "lol" obvious to experienced Priests, but maybe it will help someone else new to the Holy style.
    • Lots of control
    • Screaming and hollering
    • Passion
    • Yay!

    Mana
    • First of all, you have to treat your mana like it's Cata Heroics, Day 1 all over again. Heal is your go-to spell, Flash Heal doesn't exist (don't touch it.), and GHeal/Binding have to be used only when there's absolutely no other choice. Heal Heal Heal Heal ...... Heal. Even if you think the person might die... try a Heal anyway. You can usually do it.
    • Mindbender absolutely on CD the second it's ready.
    • Macro "/targetenemy /petattack" to all your heals (especially Heal) so you never, ever see your Mindbender running back up to you and standing there — oh god, no! GO HIT THINGS!!! D: And that will happen if you're not alert, because sometimes a mob dies and the Mindbender decides to come hang out with you instead of switching to the next one. Macro fixes this.
    • Hymn of Hope whenever you can stop healing long enough to do it (there will be a few pauses in the damage intake).
    • Power Infusion any time the tank is getting hammered to blunt the mana cost of those GHeals.

    Rabbit bleeds.
    • This is the most important mechanic to be alert about, more than about anything else in the trial.
    • Holy has a lot of trouble bringing people up once they're way down, because you don't have the mana for GHeal or Binding spam, and Heal can't keep up with the damage pace. This means the rabbit's Bleed debuff is 100% deadly, and if you let it go out of control, you're done.
    • So when the rabbits pop up and Bleed someone, you have to drop everything you're doing and punch them back up immediately (renew + Serenity + GHeal + Heal); the tank can survive being ignored while you do that.
    • One of the waves will bring in rabbits so fast that you can't keep up with all the bleeds and still keep the tank alive. When you see 3-4 Bleed icons in the raid frames, just top up the tank, remain calm, and Divine Hymn to clear them all off.

    Renew & Cascade
    • Glyph Renew. You don't need long-term, steady healing. You need short-term, rapid, multi-tasking healing that lets you conserve GCDs and cast times. So a shorter, more powerful Renew is very useful.
    • Don't be afraid to be spread Renews on lots of people when heavy damage is going out, and refresh with Cascade.
    • But you don't have the mana to just Renew at random; you have to make sure those NPCs will actually die without the Renews, and that means learning how the damage waves come in.
    • Don't Cascade until you've got Renews on 3-4 people that need healing, and are about to expire. The Renew refresh is what makes Cascade better than Divine Star here (imo); otherwise it's too expensive.

    AoE
    • Don't just PoM on CD (no matter what Icy Veins tells you...), it won't always be effective and will waste mana, because even glyphed, it's inefficient on one target.
    • Do PoM on CD when one of the Hive Singers or Flamecallers is out, because then the healing will go to good use.
    • Circle of Healing on CD whenever the whole group is damaged, it doesn't heal much but it's cheap and will gradually keep the party topped up.
    • Resist Prayer of Healing usage. Tapping CoH on CD will usually gradually bring up the party between damage bursts, and Renew + Cascade will handle heavy phases. So PoH ends up being unnecessary mana use. A more surgical, targeted style that only tops the party up situationally is very important here to conserve mana.

    Cooldowns
    • Guardian Spirit will come off CD a few times if you use it liberally, so do so. It's a free 50% heal on the tank while you focus on the DPS pandas that are doing completely stupid things and need healing.
    • Keep Lightwell down on CD. Your party will be dropping below 50% ... a lot.
    • Void Shift + Desperate Prayer as another tank CD (or someone else about to die).
    • When Void Shift is on CD, save Desperate Prayer for quickly clearing the rabbit bleed off yourself.
    • Divine Hymn for clearing lots of rabbit bleeds. Remember that usually, the tank will die if you try to Divine Hymn when he's at ~50% or lower, so you can't just hit it blindly when you're panicking because lots of party members are damaged.

    Other mobs
    • Don't panic when the giant Conqueror mobs come out, this part is actually quite easy to heal. Just keep the tank's health high, and a system of GHeal + Heal Heal Heal Heal will get him through fine, even the big ones.
    • Unlike other healers, you can't really do anything with the Flamecaller or Hive Singer mobs to stop their casts (Scream is too expensive and doesn't affect the big ones). Instead, just Focus them so you can see who they're winding up a Pyroblast on and try to have a pre-cast Heal going off, then follow with a Renew. If a Flamecaller starts spam-casting Pyro on one target, you will need to pull out a GHeal or they'll die.
    • Aqualytes are irrelevant, just cleanse the debuff and heal up the tank from their high melee damage. They don't really add anything significant to worry about, just GCD clutter from all the cleanses you have to put out.

    If you survive past the insane wave with multiple Rabbit bleeds and Flamecallers that pops up about halfway through, then it's all downhill from there. So try to remember the hardest part is in the middle, not at the end, and use your CDs accordingly.

  9. #9
    Deleted
    I am currently wiping on wave 29 with holy, which I find just impossible to get through atm, due to the extreme RNG with the bleed.

    Gold with holy is an absolute joke, I one shotted it with both disc and holy. The challenge actually starts at wave 19 and reaches its peak at wave 29. Here is what I do atm.

    The hardest wave is by far the 9th wave, everthing else is easy or piss easy.

    Essential talents: Divine insight, psyfiend, FDCL, desperate prayer, Halo. Cascade and star are useless. Mindbender even though it potentially adds more mana does not hold a candle to FDCL. Glyphs I find that the dispel, renew and lightwell glyph are important.

    Spirit 9k needed at least.

    Chakra, serenity or smite chakra only. Keeping lightwell up at all times is essential to success.

    Here is a wave by wave guide, which if executed correctly will take you to wave 29 (from there on you are on your own):

    The endless challenge constantly repeats the first 10 waves (same ones as you get with gold), however every wave gets a stacking 2% damage buff. That means although wave 11 has the same type of mobs as wave 1, in wave 11 they do 20% more damage. This has some serious consequences later on as I will explain.

    Wave 1: Easy wave, you have the rippers hitting the tank and the flamecaster nuking random people with fire balls. The rippers can be CCd. During prep, put lightwell down. Serenity chakra, renew and PoM the tank before the fight starts Pop psyfiend as soon as the tank and rogue finish stunning the mobs. Spam heal on tank to keep renew up. When the psyfiend expires go in melee and fear the rippers. When the flame caster targets someone PoM if its on CD, renew them and pre-cast heal. Make sure you land at least one heal per fireball. After one ripper is dead the tank just needs serenity to keep renew ticking. Store up an FDCL procs and fire on people getting hit by fireballs or the tank if he gets below 70%. You will have 15s before the next wave to regen mana. Keep renew alive on the tank with serenity until the next wave. Wave 11 and wave 21 have more serious and potentially lethal tank damage. Store up an FDCL proc and be prepared to flash heal. You may use Void Shift in the first 15s of the wave, but don't use it later on.

    Wave2: In this wave you have the hive singer doing aoe damage to everyone, a water speaker doting people and doing tank damage and a reaper doing tank damage. The hive singer and ripper can be CCd. Your aim in this wave is to keep the tank alive until your group has been hit twice by the hive singer's aoe attack, then pop hymn to heal up the damage. This will allow you regenerate mana. When the wave starts wait until the stuns on the hive singer are over and chain fear him with psyfiend and psychic scream. Don't dispel the water speaker's debuff right away. Use it to get PoM jumps on the tank. Just be sure to dispel it before it explodes. Keep the tank at roughly half health. When the 2nd aoe from the hive singer hits, wait until the next water debuff goes on, dispel it immediately and use divine hymn. Use all your FDCL and serendipity procs on the tank, after divine hymn heal up the hive singer's aoe damage with PoH/PoM/CoH/FDCL. Stay in serenity chakra and keep renew on teh tank alive with serenity. Waves 12 and 22 have significantly more tank damage, so be prepared to use Guardian spirit on the tank if necessary, but ideally you should save GS for wave3.

    Wave3: this is where it gets tricky. In this wave you have a ripper, which does good tank damage and two tunnelers which dot up your raid. The ripper can be CCd. A DoT on the tank is what you need to guard against as you might end up wasting shit tons of mana to heal that up. Your aim in this wave is to heal it up without wasting mana. You must complete the wave with 250k+ mana. DONT USE void shift unless its absolutely necessary here. As soon as the wave starts put down psyfiend and shadowfiend one of the tunnelers and dot both tunnelers with pain if you have time. Keep the tank at high health and keep your eyes peeled for the tunneler attacks on the raid. As soon as someone gets targeted react fast by sticking PoM and renew on them, or hit them with serenity/FDCL procs as soon as they get hit. The best way to heal up the dot is by using renew and PoM jumps, if you need additional heal just use heal/serenity on no tank members. The only thing that can go wrong here is if you get the DoT on the tank. If this happens you must immediately go into emergency mode, because this can make and break your try especially on wave 23. You must heal up the tank without using void shift and without burning too much mana or its GG. Immediately blow serenity on the tank, use up any FDCL/Serendipity procs you have stored up (try to keep something in reserve) and burst hard. If you need to hard cast flash heals do it immediately. If the tank health falls low its over. In waves 13 and 23, if you have guardian spirit saved up now is the time to use it. I recommend saving guardian spirit as a backup in case the tank gets the dot here on wave 13 and 23. This is where Halo comes into its own. Because it can hit for over 100k halo is ideal for instantly getting the bleed off. Don't hesitate to switch to inner will and pop it (making sure you have the right range) if you fall behind on the bleeds. Quick reactions with halo can save the day here. It also does nice damage on the adds and shortens the phase. Good luck with FDCL procs makes this wave an absolute joke.

    Wave 4: Two water speakers and a flame caster and none of them can be CCd. This is a balancing act wave. Again your aim here is to not waste too much mana, but you have to make the right decisions. You will be getting two water speaker dots and you will only be able to dispel one without popping mass dispel, so you have to be ready to decide which dot to dispel and which dot to ignore. The tank damage isnt very high here. The main danger comes from the tank being burst and then being hit by a DoT explosion. Also there is a danger of wasting too much mana due to the dot explosions hitting multiple people. What you want to do is this. If you or the hunter get the DoT ignore it. Renew the target and PoM them to get bounces on the tank. pre-cast a heal before the explosion and renew will heal the target up to full health. However the mage the rogue and the tank often stand together, so it is essential to prevent the an explosion hitting all three. Don't mass dispel unless absolutely necessary because you will lose mana, even if the second explosion would hit three people. The only reason to mass dispel is if the tank is in danger of getting gibbed. You cannot use any CDs whatsoever here. You must manage the dot perfectly to keep mana high. If the tank, rogue and mage are all about to get hit by an explosion be prepared to heal them up with renew/Heal and you must get PoM on the target you won't dispel the instant the dot goes up. Use DI/FDCL/serendipty procs after the explosions, use serenity rotationally on the tank. In wave 24 the explosions hit quite hard and the tank damage is also high. Try to fear the ripper off if possible and you may want to mass dispel double dots on rogue and tank if your tank health is not very high. You should have just one water speaker up about 10s before the next wave begins.

    Wave 5: The first time your tank is really in danger. The wave starts with the big enraging adds (I forget the name) and one hive singer. After 15s you will get a tunneler. You want to keep your tank up through the enrage without using guardian spirit and you must heal the bleed through the hive singer's damage, which in wave 15 and 25 can be quite challenging. In wave 5 you will be using divine hymn hereThe biggest problem here in wave 15 and 25, is that the hive singer's aoe hits, the bleed from the tunneler and the enrage from the big add coincide so you have to time things right. You need to fear lock the hive singer and don't let him cast more than one aoe for about 10s. After those 10s the big add will enrage and the tunneler will appear. The first hting that needs to happen is you must get a halo off (temporarily switch to inner will for it if you can) to instantly heal up the hive singer's aoe damage, and PoM/renew the bleed then spam the tank with heal or flash/Gheal if necessary to keep him up through the enrage damage. If the bleed goes on the tank pop desperate prayer and void shift him. In wave 15 and 25 I recommend using void shift to help heal through the enrage damage, because it really is not a joke. Don't worry about healing up the bleed, you just need to keep the tank up until the hive singer does his second aoe, because after that you will serenity the tank and divine hymn. After the enrage is over the wave is easy. Just heal up the dots like in wave 3 and outheal an additional aoe hits from the hive singer with PoH/PoM/CoH. Halo is essential for safely getting though in waves 15 and 25, because what happens is you have your group at health health from the aoe someone with the bleed at 35% and your tank is getting the shit kicked out of him by the enraged add. Gripping the tank away while the add is casting his enrage is a good way to save up a couple of hits. In wave 25 if the bleed goes on the tank during the enrage and you don't have void shift, its GG. You are not going to outheal that without burning up your mana bar. If you are lucky with FDCL procs this wave becomes an absolute joke.

    Wave 6 is a bunch of flamecasters and a ripper. Use shadowfiend on a flamecaster as soon as you can This wave is not dangerous at all as long as you use PoM/renew and precast heal on people who get hit. Try to fear off the ripper to reduce the tank damage. In waves 16 and 26 there is a real danger of your non tank's getting practically one shotted from 80% by a double fireball, so you must be prepared to burn some mana to heal someone up if they are getting repeatedly targeted by the flame casters. PoM and renew anyone who gets the debuff. Try to manage the damage so that you can heal as much of it with PoH and CoH if possible. I don't recomend switching to the sanctuary chakra though, because keeping serenity/renew on the tank is important for keeping the tank damage under control, especially in waves 16 and 26. This not a very hard wave, but you must heal it as efficient as possible. In waves 16 and 26, this is when you will start to run low on mana.

    Wave 7 you have two of the big adds and a hive singer. This might seem like a hard wave but its actually easy. When the two big mobs cast their enrage simply grip and guardian spirit he tank. That is mostly all you need to do. Fear the hive singer as much as you can and heal up his damage with halo/PoH/CoH/PoM. Use FDCL on the tank. Serenity rotationally on the tank. You should generally not need to gheal the tank. The aoe heals + GS + heal/serenity/renew should be more than enough. The objective here is the save mana!

    Wave 8. This is when the shit starts hits the fan. You have a bunch of flame casters a ripper and a tunneler. Its hard to give any advice for this, because what happens is unpredictable. Wave 8 is easy, but waves 18 and 28 can be dead easy or stupidly hard depending on who gets the bleed and whether the flamecasters decide to repeatedly target teh same person. The only thing I can say is be prepared to burn some mana and DONT use divine hymn. Save it for wave 9.

    Wave 9, is the make or break wave. You have a water speaker, a hive singer and a tunneler. Now even in wave 9 these have a big damage buff so the damage is actually getting quite dangerous. The tunneler and water speaker do a LOT of tank damage and the hive singer after the first 15s will get off a large number of aoe hits one after the other each hitting for 30% of your health. Keeping everyone topped up is quite tough and getting the bleed off is even more challenging. On wave 29 if the bleed goes on the tank you are totally F****D. The key to getting through is CCing the hive singer effectively with fear/psyfiend. When the wave begins the hive singer will get an aoe hit off and immediately the tunneler will hit someone with the bleed. This means your group will be 70% health and someone will be 50% with a bleed hitting quite hard. You must get a good halo off. Stick your shadowfiend on the tunneler, dispel the dot, keep the tank up. And be ready to fear lock the hive singer. If you manage to get a long fear on him you have practically won. Use divine hymn when the hive singer is getting off repeated aoe attacks to help get bleeds off. Every happens very fast so in wave 19 and 29 you need fast reactions and some luck. I keep wiping on wave 29 due to being oom and unable to keep up with the hive singer's aoe+the bleed after the other two are dead.

    Wave 10 is a dead easy wave. You have a flame caster and a big enraging add to start with then a water speaker joins. However you will have guardian spirit, so healing through the enrage is trivial. The objective here is to burn the three within 1minute and 5s. The reason is that after this wave ends you get 15s where you can drink and that is absolutely crucial for surviving the next set of 10 waves. The tank don't need much healing, renew/serenity the occasional heal and guardian spirit are enough. After the enrage is over immediately switch to smite chakra and help burn the adds down. Heal the tank with FDCL procs and serendipity gheal. As soon as the adds are dead immediately drink to get to full mana and remember to switch back to serenity chakra.
    Last edited by mmoc58baca37e6; 2013-09-10 at 11:40 PM.

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