Holy in raids - what am I doing wrong?

[Deleted]

Hello everyone!

I'm struggling with my Holy Priest lately. I love the class, but I must be doing something wrong when it comes to raid healing. I'm constantly last on the Healing Done meters and I mean last by a lot, it came to the point where I'm ashamed to even enter a raid. And it's not like I'm slacking either, I really try my hardest, but I just end up running out of mana despite using PW: Solace on cooldown.

My Item Level is 643, so that shouldn't be too bad for a Normal Highmaul raid, should it?

• Talents: Desperate Prayer, Angelic Feather, PW: Solace, Void Tendrils, Twist of Fate, Cascade, Words of Mending
• Glyphs: Renew, Deep Wells, Circle of Healing

Stats:

• Intellect: 3222
• Spell Power: 4180
• Multistrike: 8.62%
• Spirit: 1141
• Crit: 8.71%
• Haste: 12.54%
• Mastery: 15.20%
• Versatility: 0.00%

From what I understand, I need to get as much Multistrike and Haste as I can.

I always stay in Chakra: Sanctuary in raids. I spam renew and use Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Cascade and Sanctuary on cooldown. Am I supposed to switch between chakras more while raid healing? Should I be casting Heal and Binding Heal too?

I'd really appreciate any sort of advice on how to bring my healing up.

Thanks!

[Djriff]

do you have logs?

[Deleted]

do you have logs?

I heard of that before, but don't know how or where to see them. Or are you talking about the Combat Log from in-game?

[Dantil]

Someone that's in your raid needs to actively record the data from the fights you do and then upload them to warcraftlogs, worldoflogs, etc. You can do it yourself which would be helpful, since, if you're doing pugs it's unlikely anyone else will be.

My advice for the mana issue is to make sure you're not being overzealous in what you heal. If a couple people take a small amount of damage, throw them a renew, don't burn a CoH. Don't use flash heal unless someone is in immediate danger of death, things like that. Healing efficiency is a lot different than it has been in the past, your focus shouldn't be on being the first to heal targets back to 100%, it should be on keeping people at a comfortable hp level to survive mechanics. Also, a good healer should always have a supply of mana pots, either for emergencies, or just if you're having consistent issues with mana. If you're really drained on mana, it's also a good idea to try and find a spot during the fight when there is little to no raid damage, and just stop casting entirely to get outside the 5 second rule for more regen.

[anon5123]

Not much we can tell you if you don't have logs.

Looking at your stats though...why are you stacking Mastery? It's terrible for Holy's current playstyle. You want to be stacking Multistrike, not Mastery.

Do not use CoH glyph. The extra healing is NOT worth the extra mana cost.

[TirielWoW]

It would be helpful to get a link to your character to see what kind of gear you have, too.

[Deleted]

My advice for the mana issue is to make sure you're not being overzealous in what you heal. If a couple people take a small amount of damage, throw them a renew, don't burn a CoH. Don't use flash heal unless someone is in immediate danger of death, things like that. Healing efficiency is a lot different than it has been in the past, your focus shouldn't be on being the first to heal targets back to 100%, it should be on keeping people at a comfortable hp level to survive mechanics. Also, a good healer should always have a supply of mana pots, either for emergencies, or just if you're having consistent issues with mana. If you're really drained on mana, it's also a good idea to try and find a spot during the fight when there is little to no raid damage, and just stop casting entirely to get outside the 5 second rule for more regen.

I see, thanks. Well, my mana isn't really an issue in Heroic Dungeons, but when it comes to raids, since I'm always so low on the meters, I try extra hard to push everything through and then that's where I start having mana issues. I just feel like if I stop casting for even a second, I'm going to be even lower. I wouldn't even mind being last, but it's that I'm last by a lot, it really feels like I'm doing something wrong. Or is my gear really that bad?

Is my rotation correct? Spam Renew on people and use Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Cascade on Cooldown? It feels like I should be doing more than that, but from what I've read in guides and stuff, not really.

Looking at your stats though...why are you stacking Mastery? It's terrible for Holy's current playstyle. You want to be stacking Multistrike, not Mastery.

Do not use CoH glyph. The extra healing is NOT worth the extra mana cost.

I'm not really trying to stack Mastery, it's just the gear that I have currently. I have a few epics from LFR/Normal HM, but my gear is probably far from optimal at the moment. But then again, is there any better way of getting it than running Normal pugs (I don't have a guild at the moment) and hoping for the best? I have about 5000 Apexis Crystals (I came back to WoW like two weeks ago, after years of pause) and I need far more than that to buy epic gear with them.

Thanks for the glyph advice, will replace it. Should I replace it with the PoM glyph, or does that result in less healing at the end? I use Binding Heal glyph for dungeons, but since I don't cast that much in raids, I thought I wouldn't use it there.

[Nurasu]

Do not use CoH glyph. The extra healing is NOT worth the extra mana cost.

I have to disagree on this, to an extent - our current playstyle just isn't mana-intensive enough for it to matter. If we were only looking at HPM values, we would all be running CoP since it blows PoH out of the water. I agree that it could vary depending on your gear / regen, but I don't think you can say as a general statement that higher HPM always beats HPS.

[Djriff]

I heard of that before, but don't know how or where to see them. Or are you talking about the Combat Log from in-game?

go to www.warcraftlogs.com and download the client from there. Will really help us give you specific advice.

[anon5123]

I don't think you can say as a general statement that higher HPM always beats HPS.

I wasn't trying to say this.

I was saying that 20% extra healing for 35% extra mana is really crap.

[Quantitative]

I wasn't trying to say this.

I was saying that 20% extra healing for 35% extra mana is really crap.

If you finish a fight and still have mana, you could have been using that glyph for an extra 20% healing on coh. It's obviously a huge loss in hpm, but its one of the few glyphs that will give a noticable boost to your hps.

[Drslump]

I also disagree with skipping COH glyph. Holy spams Renew until COH is ready. The whole point is to use this signature spell as often as possible. Mastery is okay and not ideal but it gets better as you do harder content and is slightly better than haste with T17 set bonuses later on. I've seen parses where Echo is pretty close to COH and Renew in healing done (as little as 5% difference).

But don't worry too much if you are coming in behind other healers. Holy is not particularly strong and you can see that in Warcraftlog rankings. Fights are dominated by Disc, Pallies, Druids for the most part. Just keep practicing and hang in there. I would also consider Power Infusion instead of Twist of Fate. You can dictate when you want to use PI versus ToF which only works if people take near lethal damage. If people are at that point, the entire team is already in trouble. There's a lot of fights requiring movement so I tend to bind PI with Divine Hymn so I can quickly cast and move again.

And lastly, you need to link your character and some raid logs as suggested. Hard to help without concrete data.

[Kraide]

Another playstyle that might be more your speed is an interesting one and significantly different than the renew+CoH spam meta but is still pretty effective (but requires some heavy attention to renew timers). It involves continuing to blanket targets with renew (and using CoH) but using Glyph of Binding Heal (because binding heal is a very cheap way to build serendipity) as both a way to refresh renews without recasting them and casting a lot of fast, cheap heals using serendipity. You'll basically renew as many important targets as you can and use a rotation more like Serenity+CoH+BH+BH+heal+BH+BH+heal+CoH, focusing BH on people whose renew is about to drop and heal for imperative targets. It's a bit tougher because you still want to use that BH to have as many renews up as you can juggle, and somewhat reliant on luck to hope the BH glyph-heal hits a target that has renew to refresh it for "free", but it can be pretty effective.

[Nurasu]

I wasn't trying to say this.

I was saying that 20% extra healing for 35% extra mana is really crap.

Yeah, that was maybe a little disingenuous. But still, if you can afford it, it's the highest HPS increasing glyph that we have. Sure the tradeoff isn't 1 to 1, but it's still worth it imo. I usually run that, renew, and either binding heal or deep wells.

[txrok]

holy isn't particularly strong is an understatement. Don't feel bad OP, it's not 'just' you - it's how bliz made up to be last for some unknown reason.

[Deleted]

Are you wiping, or are just looking at your HPS on meters. If it is not close kill or wipe, don't even look meters. If you look HPS, take a moment to think how is raid CDs assinged to use. If you are waiting for a call to use Divine Hymn and resto druid just spams Tranq on CD, it doesn't make you bad but probs lower or HPS. Your ilvl is 643, how is other healers geared? Any healer with 650 gears, witch is pretty easily optainable, should be healing more than you. Also at normal mode, damage income is not really high and I think Holy gets better compared to others when there is alot damage so you get most out of renew and CoH.

[Deleted]

holy isn't particularly strong is an understatement. Don't feel bad OP, it's not 'just' you - it's how bliz made up to be last for some unknown reason.

I have to disagree. I recently started healing again as holy in my current raid-setup. (I have been shadow in highmaul, but we figured a holy priest would be really useful) We currently have a restoration druid, restoration shaman, 2 holy paladins and a discipline priest available for us.

While raiding in BRF I found that I can keep up with the others (They are high quality, know their class well and some have been raiding at a high level before), while in the begin and at wipes we can look really weak, but we have to make optimal use of our abilities to be able to catch up with the meters (Full divine hymn, as many lightwells as possible and guardian) or even top them. Some fights especially in normal require too few healing and most of the work will be done by absorb healers such as priests and paladins. But when you find fights like oregorger where everyone will be hit by the brown puddle you can really show the power of holy.

I like to heal with the binding heal glyph, I generally stack some serendipity and use prayer of healing in situations where like 80-100% of it will be healed effective. Using circle of healing on CD is really strong in my opinion and renew to reduce the CD quickly. Sanctuary is generally considered weak but it can still be worth it to cast take in note tho where the group will be standing and think if it's worth it to place it there. Personally I don't really cast PoM on CD, with the level 100 talent I don't feel like I have to.

Mana is an important part of being a holy priest and it can really burn away if you have to burst heal, you want to make sure you get solace on every CD. (This can feel awkward since it's not in our "rotation", where it is for discipline.) Sometimes you just have to take a small break (Where you either cast nothing or low-mana cost spells like renew/heal/binding heal).

But in the end you shouldn't really Judge from a normal run, we really shine at higher difficulties, so keep that in mind!

[nietz]

If you're really drained on mana, it's also a good idea to try and find a spot during the fight when there is little to no raid damage, and just stop casting entirely to get outside the 5 second rule for more regen.

o_O The 5SR died a long time ago ...

[Deleted]

holy isn't particularly strong is an understatement. Don't feel bad OP, it's not 'just' you - it's how bliz made up to be last for some unknown reason.

Strongly disagree. Holy is only worst when you're doing content that is way below your gear level. For progression it's amazing, arguably the best healer when it comes to raw, sustained healing power. The problem with holy is that it's easy to screw us up. Bring too many discs and hpallies and people will not drop low enough to properly benefit from renews and eco. Bring too many monks and your hots will be sniped in to oblivion. And the fact that we spend too much mana trying to keep tanks alive, while pallies and discs can do it without interrupting their raid healing and for a nominal mana fee.


@OP, an armory link would go a long way, we'll be able to see your gear and search for any logs you've appeared in.

[Deleted]

If it truly would be the best for progression, why are there barely any of them going for mythic world first now?
The only one i can think of Jhazrun but well, its Jhazrun and he is a special case.