Holy priest worth taking to a raid?

[jgnoel86]

Where to start, while I agree with some of the things stated about Healing focus right now not being very useful for raid encounters and could be used elsewhere I have to take into account the fact that I constantly do heroics on top of raiding and thus it wouldn't make sense for me to drop healing focus or respec every day simply for the additional 2 points I would gain.

True overhealing doesn't really matter if you do have the mana, back when the pally glyph was just changed to be OP we did a naxx 25 and our pally overhealed almost 40 million which would by most cases be sad when you consider his healing for the fights was only 17 million. But he had the mana so it didn't really matter all that much. But as blizzard has stated mana is soon going to become more important and do you want to learn how to play your class healing inefficiently simply so you can top your charts and then further fall on your face when you don't have the necessary mana? Overhealing is good but not necessary, even to predict damage, there are plenty of addon's that show agro to a person which makes predicting damage that much easy, then of course there is always the ever better "Just know the fight" tactic.

A balance of haste and crit is vital I think, having a 2.1 second greater heal is nice trust me, pop heroism and I've dropped to a 1.16 second cast on Greater healing, making it during heroism more viable then flash, or my less then a second flash. The trinket is nice, but as soon as I find something viable to replace it, you can believe it will be gone.

[cheeezitz]

Right now there is exactly one challenging encounter in this game and 2/2 Healing Focus is considered as standard for it as a holy priest. While I'll concede that this was probably not her prime motivation for choosing this spec, I would suggest to refrain from sweepy generalisations that might lead people to ignore the value of this talent.

So, what you are saying is, you see your role in a raid as topping the meters, instead of getting the job done. Rather interesting - but to a certain degree it might actually be promising for the moment. I'm curious what is going to happen, though, once healing (and raiding in general) becomes nontrivial. The only thing that you are actually proving with this statement is that your raid is taking too many healers (and consequently that the degree of "difficulty" currently allows your raid to do just that). Try doing Satharion and 3 drakes either 10 or 25 with this approach and you will see what I mean.
Matter of fact, too many healers play the epeen game which results in them not getting the job done because they try to use every single cooldown for bringing a cast through, no matter who they are actually supposed to heal.
This actually made me smile. Inner CD of 45 secs yet it proccs all the time? Amazing. Note: Trinkets with random haste procs are generally not nearly as good for healers as they are for damage dealers, because you have no way of ensuring that the proc comes when you need it. Of course, if your intention is to just squeeze in a heal quicker than another caster because you want to top the meters, it might just suit that purpose.

Jelously IMO because nothing you quoted had any relevance to show I do not know how to heal efficiently. If I simply spam inefficient heals I still go oom very quickly. The content is easy right now and of course it is less important, but I can assure you that there are many situations that I avoid overhealing and maximize my use of IHC, and 5SR. But this thread was about holy priest viability not for personal attacks. If you want to bitch about mana regen ease go to a holy pally thread. Holy priests are still the most difficult healing class to manage mana with right now.

The answer what I was trying to get at: Holy priests are still great and I encourage everyone who disagrees to adjust their playing style because I think a good holy priest can make a huge difference to every raid.

But to clarify my own statements: the badge trinket is not that good and I didnt mean to make it seem like I use it as a main part of my gear although it often makes a big difference. I would gladly replace it if another would drop. Every 45 seconds IS all the time pretty much...but in no way does it allow me not to stack haste. 8% haste is perfectly fine right now as I would rather have the extra crit for IHC procs and SoL with my current gear.

[Harlekin76]

Holy priests are still great and I encourage everyone who disagrees to adjust their playing style because I think a good holy priest can make a huge difference to every raid.

Absolutely. Holy priests are great healers - I never disputed that. We're just not designed to be topping the meters. If you constantly do so - why not share a wws log with us?

Holy priests are still the most difficult healing class to manage mana with right now.

Ehm... no. Easy mana regeneration is actually one of the things that makes the current content so trivial (feel free to check recent blue posts here on mmo). You really shouldn't be struggling with your mana - unless of course...

If I simply spam inefficient heals I still go oom very quickly.

I'm sorry if you feel personally attacked by what I write - this is not the intention. But, you see, above I have elaborated why it is not possible for priests who have sufficiently played competition from other healing classes to be topping the meters. Yet you do not provide any explanation at all, you simply pop up and say: "It is because I do so all the time." Don't take it personal and make other people speculate (as I did in my above post, obviously), contribute to the discussion by explaining how you do so (role/encounter/setup) and preferably provide a wws log - not so much to prove that you are right, but to allow others to learn.

[PurpleDrank]

Thread was TL;DR.

OP: Some other factors that may affect their healing:

What healing role are they given (or assuming they need to play) during raids? In their current state, priests are very good at cross healing; keeping renews and GHeals in the pipe on the tanks, switching to the raid with PRoM, CoH, SoL procs, Flash, and Binding Heal, and also pre-casting PoH on predictable damage. Specced Holy they shouldn't be using shield and renew generously.

Are they standing in a location where they can heal the players they need to, and adjusting if people go out of range? If assigned to cross or raid heal, on some fights it's easy to be standing in a bad location and have people go out of range (especially during fights like Archavon). If a player doesn't adjust while using instants, they may not be casting heals on people that need them.

Are they using an interface that makes healing easier? The difference between a setup with QuickHealth, raid frames that show Debuffs/Aggro/IncHeals etc and a Click-to-Cast or Mouseover setup is significant in HPS, but not a necessity. I'd encourage them to experiment, try new things out but ultimately play with what they are comfortable with. They shouldn't be staring at their screen not casting from being over or underwhelmed.

Are they experiencing latency or video lag? Combine that with reaction time, sometime that's all it takes for someone else to snipe over heals being cast.



Looking at their stats, Spellpower seems high, and spirit is a little low. As they gear, they'll want to buff either haste or crit and int/spirit.

For Holy, spec 14/57/0 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbzhZcxtcc0qihVIst
or 20/51/0 http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVI0zhxZfxtccMVi0Vhot

For a priority list as a cross/raid healing role: CoH > PRoM > SoL > Flash > Renew > GHeal Tank, and use PoH if it will hit 3 or more in group, shield can be used situationally (target in Frost Blast, a squishy with aggro, etc) and renew is best avoided on raid targets as it is often sniped over. This priority list can be helpful but is by no means an absolute; leaving the tank to CoH and Flash the raid over some trivial raid damage and letting the tank die may grant more HPS, but is in no way more efficient  

Holy Priests are still extremely strong healers (you can just check WWS parses) and gear doesn't play a huge role in that, but like GC said "bring the player, not the class"



edit: gramarz