New to raid healing

**silairya** · 2015-09-18, 04:24 PM

Hi there,

I've generally played only ranged DPS throughout WoW, starting in vanilla. The group I raid with has recently lost one of our healers, so I volunteered to start learning it on my priest char. I've only played shadow with a bit of disc for pvp until now. We already have a disc priest in our raid, so I specced into holy. Healing is pretty much brand new to me, so I've been reading guides from various sites, and I did some pug healing in HFC normal last night.

My throughput really isn't good yet, but I know it'll take practice. I have a few questions if anyone here wouldn't mind helping me out.

1) How much spirit do I want to stack? Right now I have about 1500 and a Shadowmoon weapon enchant. I haven't found myself going OOM on fights (but I haven't really been into many challenging situations yet, just first 6 on HFC normal), but I was advised to spec out of mindbender into SoL. Do I want to stack spirit on every location it can appear on: both trinkets, both rings, neck, and cloak? Should my enchants be +spirit until my gear is good enough to hit a certain amount?

2) I'm unsure how to best utilize PoH since it can only heal the group members of the targeted person. With people running around during fights, especially pugs where there's not optimal organization, I'm not sure how to tell if group members are close enough together to make PoH work optimally or if I'm just going to be casting an expensive single-target heal.

3) Should I be Renew blanketing the same way Disc priests shield blanket? Even if the raid isn't really taking damage, just keep throwing out renews for overhealing, WoM stacks, and to keep CoH's cooldown refreshed?

4) Am I putting myself and my group at a disadvantage by going Holy instead of Disc? I would think multiple disc priests in raid doesn't work too well because of WS debuff, but it also seems like every priest is disc. I'd prefer to keep shadow for my offspec rather than having to run holy + disc for situational swaps.

**jason1975** · 2015-09-18, 04:58 PM

Hey there! Welcome to healing!

A couple of things:

1. What are you using for a healing UI? I use Vuhdo and love it. Others use other click to heal solutions. Are you using one? IMO, this can be one of the biggest gameplay improvements for new healers as it reduces your needed reaction time.

2. 1500 spirit seems to be getting there. My disc priest has about 1900, but at times it feels like too much and I've been working to shed some spirit. How are you doing with mana in encounters?

3. Just try to heal a group where 3 players will be healed. If there are so few groups needing healing, go back to renew spamming on players that need healing and CoH on CD. For most groups you should be in sanctuary. Personally, I always ask for groups to be arranged as tank/melee and ranged/heals. Many RL's will just give you assist if you ask for it to arrange groups for PoH.

4. I believe - but I'm sure I'll be corrected if I'm wrong - that PoM on CD when the raid is taking damage is the appropriate strategy.

5. Two Discs is a net loss to their throughput. One priest should be holy, and holy does pretty well compared to other throughput healers.

**Djriff** · 2015-09-18, 05:08 PM

To be honest, don't play a holy priest, they are absolute garbage in comparison with the other healers.

If you decide to stick it anyways (good on you!) here's some tips to answer your questions.

1a) How much spirit you stack is entirely dependent on how often you cast. 1500 is a decent amount, shadowmoon enchant will help offset that. That said, 1500 is on the low side of spirit for a holy priest, personally I run really high spirit (~2200 iirc) as I never stop casting.

1b) So for your mana return talents you have 3 choices. The main 2 to consider are Power Word: Solace and Mindbender. PW: Solace will give more mana return, but cost more GCD's in the long run (5 GCD's per min vs 1 GCD per min). Mindbender will give you more GCD's and slightly less mana. Surge of Light on the other hand doesn't offer direct mana return but does allow you to adopt a slightly different play style and must be paired with Divine Star. Essentially each cast of Divine Star will give you 2 free flash heals which translates to 2 stacks of Serendipity and a 40% reduced mana cost Prayer of Healing. SoL/Divine Star is best used on stacked fights (Council, Gorefiend (feast time), Socrethar, Mannoroth, Archimonde, etc.)

2) Basic rule of thumb for PoH is to only cast it when it will heal at least 3 people with minimal overhealing. Really you won't be using it much as its a lot more feasible to sit in Blue chakra and spam renew and CoH on CD. There are addons you can get that pair with raid frames (Grid, Elvui, Vuhdoo, Healbot) that will show a number (1-5) over a raid member. That number will tell you how many people PoH would hit if you cast it right there.

3) You should always be renewing in blue chakra to fuel more CoH casts. It's ideal to have renews rolling before big damage comes out. In the case of Gorefiends feast you may have to swap from renew spam to BH BH PoH spam to keep up with the sheer amount of damage rolling.

4) Since you already have a disc, no. Multiple disc priests can work, but it needs to be coordinated and have at least 13 people for each disc priest in the raid to prevent shield overlapping.

**silairya** · 2015-09-18, 05:13 PM

I don't have a healing UI now, just the default with DBM and I downloaded weakaura last night but haven't configured it. I was just using the regular raidframe (I think it's called that) to monitor hps and select people for healing. I'll check out Vuhdo though!

My mana was ok before, but I was specced into Mindbender (and I got a couple upgrades last night that I haven't had a chance to try out). Once I looked at my performance vs other priest logs, it seemed my rotation and specs were all off. I changed my talents from MB to SoL, Cascade to Halo, and PI to Twisted Fate. I was mostly using Renew, Heal, and CoH, but it seems like the SoL playstyle is to spam Renew/PoM, use Flash Heals on SoL procs, then use Serendipity for PoH and basically just ignore Heal? It's counter to what a lot of guides said, but I can see how it's less clunky than Heal if I have the spirit to sustain it.

In regards to 3., that's the issue I'm having, is telling when a group needs 3 players healed. Though that's probably because I don't have a good healing UI and am just using default.

It won't let me post a working link to my char's armory yet since it's only my 2nd post, but I'm in here:
us.battle.net/wow/en/character/arthas/Silairya/simple

I know the gear isn't really decent, I had shelved this char in the middle of WoD for my mage and just picked it back up and respecced into Holy. Last night was my first real run where I got a few pieces of gear. I was only pulling about 27k hps/sec, but I'm hoping changing my spec/rotation as I mentioned above will help with that.

**Danner** · 2015-09-18, 05:30 PM

Hello, and welcome to healing

#1:
The real answer is - as much as you can until you feel like you have enough.

The old saying is that the perfect level of regen is where you end all fights with no mana left, and everyone alive. In practice you want some wiggle room for failures.
Somebody is bound to fsck up and you need to cover the deficit somehow! I personally stack spirit on all item slots I can, and keep a pair of regen trinkets about, but they're typically things that are swapped per fight.

Mana management nowadays is mostly about what mana you use, not what mana you regen though. So heal a little conservatively, and you will not suffer OOM'ing. Just don't heal so conservatively that people die

Note... me stacking spirit means my throughput is a little bit less than it could have been, because that extra spirit could have been throughput stats.
And that means I'm not really playing to my fullest potential. I charge you with being the better priest... if you want!

#2:
PoH feels weak to me this expansion. It's not really packing a punch, IMO.
I don't use it too much as a result, though if everyone in a group is hurt, and you have two stacks of serendipity, it's hard to go wrong using it.
CoH + Flash Heal are my personal goto-heals, and Prayer of Mending is my primary support heal. All three are really important parts of the Holy toolkit.
Flash Heal is expensive though, so renew is a great substitute to last longer. Estimating if your healing target is in immediate danger or not is a big part of that decision-making.

Don't worry about the range of PoH though. It generally heals everyone in the group you target. The 40 yd range is huge!
What often is a problem is that you don't have a full group to heal. Then it is far less effective a heal.

#3:
It's an option. Blue chakra + renew spam is a very affordable way to heal. You don't use much mana that way. And you get to cast CoH a lot, which is good.
But you will feel like a healbot, and I don't think I am healing optimally when doing so. Mostly because I am annoyed about casting out semi-pointless renews to reduce the cooldown of CoH.

Other healers have experimented with yellow chakra + glyphed binding heal and renew refreshing. Some make this work well. I never seemed to grasp the major benefit of it.

I feel a bit more relaxed about it all since I don't do mythic, so I just end up healing what I feel like, using a little bit of all my toolkits, like it was TBC. It works out well.

#4:
Kinda yes.
A disc priest is dramatically reducing the swingyness of the raid damage taken. That's why every raid has a disc priest to heal, it's a hella important raid utility. Disc literally saves lives.
If you already have a disc priest, holy is a fine if unremarkable option. It's much more fun to play holy though! And the most important part is to have fun!

**mylotic** · 2015-09-25, 10:57 PM

1) 1500 is a good start and with that shadow moon weapon enchant it should keep you up. Once your gear is better, you can change the enchants of your gear into haste since Holy's mastery will tick faster with more haste as well as renew. You should stack spirit until you feel comfortable with where you are, If you are not going oom, then try using a different stat like haste. Preferably I like Mind bender, Though SOL can work in very situational fights.

2) Try using a healing addon to know where your groups are. I use Grid and it helps when I should cast POH, though if you are unsure you can try clarity of purpose which heals 5 injured players withing 10 yards of the player you healed. Though you will lose the talent Words of Mending, so I recommend a healing addon of your choice to make POH work best.

3) Personally, I avoid any forms of over healing, is basically waste healing in my point of view. Shield blanket is different because PW:S (if not glyphed) does not heal, but it shields so you are preventing damage. I think I would time my renews when heavy damage is about to happen probably even change chakra to single target to get the most out of it, you really are going to have to play and look at your numbers as to see which is the best choice for you.

4) Every Priest is Disc because they are strong, but you actually will but a raid in a disadvantage if there are two disc priest because of WS debuff. Keep shadow for your offspec. Holy is good in some fights, remember your Holy Hymn buffs the healing of your fellow healer so it is a good combo to use when heavy damage is about to happen ( as well as coming it with your legendary ring).

I myself am knew to Holy since I don't raid as holy, but I hope my little knowledge of healing can be of some help.

**Djriff** · 2015-09-25, 11:29 PM