Holy Healing Help

[Deleted]

Hi,

I've switched to my Priest recently and decided to play him as Holy.
I know Holy is not in the best sport right now but I enjoy it anyway.
I've been reading lots about playing Holy, I've built my own set of WeakAuras and I believe I'm fairly proficient in healing with him.

Still, I'm behind the other healers on most fights, my overheal is out of this world and I'm not quite sure what to change.

Another thing I have to mention, which is another constraint:
I don't want to blanket renew the whole raid. If I'd wanted to play this style I would have continued playing my druid.
I know the reactionary casting style of playing holy can be viable and successful from browsing worldoflogs and warcraftlogs rankings.
This is the style I want to play.

The example fight I'm posting it Thok 10 HC. We have one Pala tank and the other healers were a Disc Priest and a Resto Druid.

The log is here.

My armory is here.

My own diagnosis would be to reduce my overheal by casting PoM and CoH more, which I didn't cast precisely on cooldown this fight. Correct? What else?
I hope there are successful Holy Priests out there that can help me improve! Thanks!

Please don't tell me to play Discipline as my "only" way to get better. That's not what I'm asking. I want to make Holy work. Be competitive.

[Thirteen]

If you're raiding 10-man, you're not prioritizing your stats properly. Haste is what you want more of:


source: Derevka @ www.talesofapriest.com

Get to the furthest breakpoint of Renew that you can. The 13k (12.6 for goblin) one is essential, but if you can reach 18k, that's even better. On many encounters, Cascade works best since it refreshes Renew; just try to cast is 2-3 seconds before a big AoE, as that's when it does the most healing, more or less. If you're not rolling Cascade, go with Divine Star for Thok or Halo on Malkorok*. Depending on your tactics, Divine Star may also be better on Galakras, IJ or Sha - basically any one where you're stacked. Circle of Healing is... lackluster, to say the least. I still find myself casting it, but a lot of the time, it's not an effective use of a GCD. If you're aiming for 4-5 people in the same party, go with PoH instead. Try to only use CoH on the move, or just for topping people off. When your meta procs, your most effective cast will likely (not always) be a glyphed Binding Heal or Cascade, but if it procs together with the cloak, Binding Heal is the way to go. Also, I'd unglyph Prayer of Mending for Thok. Inner Sanctum is much better. If your raid doesn't mind clicking it, Lightwell should be your go-to, especially on a fight with long static phases like Thok.

*Renew doesn't work well on Malkorok, so you should be PoHing in Chakra: Sanctuary. That said, mastery is the best stat for that fight, though it's not at all necessary to switch your gems every time, unless you can afford it and are particularly having trouble with it. You should be crushing the meters on Malkorok, regardless.

TL;DR
-Haste is king (Glyphed Renew breakpoints)
-Gems:
Red/Yellow: Int/Haste until breakpoint; Int/Crit or Int/Mastery after you reach it.
Blue: Spirit/Haste until breakpoint; Spirit/Int, Spirit/Crit or Spirit/Mastery after you reach it.
-Chakra: Serenity nearly all the time; that said, YYMV.
-Cascade is preferred for a lot of the fights, but Divine Star and Halo are useful now and again.
-Consider Glyph of the Sha, it removes the GCD on Shadowfiend. Not a big deal, but it's convenient.
-4-set is useful in some situations for the large Serenity burst, but most of the time you'll prefer haste off-pieces.

My armory
My stats are trash right now because, lacking a proper raid group, I've been switching back and forth between 10 and 25 for a while, which is why my gear has a lot of haste, but my gems have mastery.

[Deleted]

Hi,

@thirteen : I agree with everything you just said but it's kinda off topic since OP said he doesn't want to use renew...

@OP : I don't want to seem mean or anything but if you don't want to use renew (and then follow the guidelines that thirteen explained in the previous post), well there's not much you can do to improve.
It's "normal" to have that much overhealing for holy in 10man, especially since you're so heavily mastery oriented. Just be happy you're not playing with disc + rsham which would snipe almost everything you do...

Best you could do to look better on the meters (if that's all it's about) would be to switch to 25man. And there still would be a lot of overhealing here...

[Thirteen]

Hi,

@thirteen : I agree with everything you just said but it's kinda off topic since OP said he doesn't want to use renew...

Oh darn, I didn't even see that line. Well, the truth is, then, that there's not much else to do. Prayer of Healing only gets you so far, and most of it, not to mention the mastery goes into overhealing. In 25mans, where you're running 4 or less healers, it's viable. The fact that it's party-based and the way people take damage is more or less random (Immerseus' Swirl, IJ's lasers, poisons on Shaman, etc.) makes it much less viable than other AoE heals. In a 10man setting the healing is much more reliable, but Renew is also far better.