Advice on addons for a newbie healing priest

[Dudeguy]

Hello all, as i mentioned in the title i'm here to ask for what addons should i use for healing purpose.

At the moment i have, forte xorcist, Grid (with manabar), Quartz, Power Auras.

I just started heal in 5 men instances, and i encountered some problems; before you ask i never healed with the priest before, because i started with shadow for leveling

Discipline spec is very fun and easy to do, but i still have to know the mechanic; i'm still holy paladin used (2 type of heals VS 666666 type of heals for the priest).

In example, i found prayer of mending is a great toll BUT i don't know when to recast it because i don't see when it goes off :-(

Penance is very good too and that's easy to see when use it.

Flash heal... i usually spam it, like i did with the paladin version.

Power word shield.. should be casted on all player?

Binding heal is a great help in dangerous situation.

Generally i start with pws, renew, pom on tank, then pws on me; then depend on situation...

In other words i'm a great noob... and i need a lot of advices, like addons i should use, tactics and whatever you think i need to know ;D

By the way, the priest class is very very fun, i enjoy myself playing it.

Thanks in advance for the gentle answer

[Leeroy-j]

In example, i found prayer of mending is a great toll BUT i don't know when to recast it because i don't see when it goes off :-(

Power word shield.. should be casted on all player?

HotCandy, keep tracks on your your Prayer of Mending and for example your Renew.
With time, you'll be able to almost keep track on Prayer of Mending yourself, atleast I almost do, But I've been playing priest 3 years now

Don't cast shield on tanks that use rage if it's not an emergency, they will scream at you since they wont get any of this wird thing, "rage".

[Zka]

Don't cast shield on tanks that use rage if it's not an emergency, they will scream at you since they wont get any of this wird thing, "rage".

Maybe read patch notes before telling outdated stuff...

[Aureon]

Binding Heal is not a great tool.
your main tools are PoM, PoH, FH, PW:S as disc, and PoM, PoH, GH, FH, PW:S and CoH as holy.
Get Grid+Clique and take your time to customize it.

[Deleted]

Grid is a must I'd say.
And just Keybind all you spells and you'll be fine with some practice.

[Ironfoot]

Binding Heal is not a great tool.
your main tools are PoM, PoH, FH, PW:S as disc, and PoM, PoH, GH, FH, PW:S and CoH as holy.
Get Grid+Clique and take your time to customize it.

Binding Heal is very good when both you and your target are taking damage. It beats 2 x Flash Heal by a mile.

Also you missed Penance from Disc, that's slightly important for a Disc Priest.

To OP: I use Need to Know to keep an eye on Renew and PW:S, and I have Grid for most other things. The only other addon I use it POM Tracker, which is self explanatory. Simply tells you who has POM on them at that time, and makes a handy noise when it wears off or is used up.

[Zka]

Binding Heal is not a great tool.

Another false info. BH is good in almost all cases when you take damage. It won't remove Grace from your tank, unlike if you used flash on yourself.

[syanid]

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-a...oriconbar.aspx

This addon will help you see PW:S, Weakened Soul and Prayer of Mending in form of icons at grid. It takes a few minutes to setup tho.

In 5mans, you want to have PW:S on the tank. If there is aoe damage, you shield all of the players. You usually want to have hasted Penance for burst healing (when you cast PW:S you get 25% haste temporary buff).

Renew is practically useless, but if no one is damaged and you have no clue what to cast and you have enough mana - sure, use it, it won't hurt but it doesn't proc Divine Aegis, heals less than flash heal and costs more (if I'm not mistaken about the cost).

[Izenhart]

Can't we sticky a post with addons for priests?

Topics like this are out once a week if not often...

[Zeuq]

Sticking to the add-on question first, here's some things I would recommend:

Healing add-on: VuhDo, Healbot, Grid, Pitbull, etc. This is what you'll use most, so play around with them and pick one that works well for you.
Improved Castbar: Quartz, Xperl, etc. It will help you keep track of latency so you can react and cast faster.
HoT/CD watcher: Forte Xorcist, DoTimer, etc. Very helpful for watching PoM, Penance, and other CDs
Power Auras... yeah, there is no other add-on that does shows important buffs/debuffs/procs as well. Must have for everyone.

Other add-ons I'd look at that aren't really going to improve your healing, but are still nice would be bartender, arkinventory, a buff mod, and unit frames.


And since people have brought up what spells to cast and given some bad advice, here's how I do five-mans as Discipline. PWS or Weakend Soul should ALWAYS be on the tank. Otherwise, fill in with Flash Heal and save Penance for burst damage. When the group takes damage, favor PWS so you don't lose Grace on the tank, otherwise use Flash Heal; preemptive PWS is the best route. Renew is pretty much worthless, but I will use it to top people up between pulls. And yes, Binding Heal is awesome, try to use that whenever you take damage rather than casting a heal directly on yourself because it's faster and, as someone else menetioned, won't drop Grace from your tank.

[harky]

You also need to keep in mind that Renew has a higher healing per cast than Flash heal in most cases, so it actually is worth casting for Disc. That's particularly true of heroics where PW:S and renew will give you a lot more options in some fights. Also, unless you're running 1/2 Grace the last thing on your mind should be preserving the charges. Convince your tank to do A Void Dance, or do Black Knight a few times and you'll get the hang of healing heroics a lot faster... and once you're all geared out you can start DPSing half the time in them because PW:S and renew keep the tank up.

On topic though... get Grid and Clique and mess with them a bit. Alternately get Grid and write a bunch of mouse-over macros. It's a little bit more complicated, but you'll learn more doing it. You'll also want GridQuickHealth, because it updates faster. VisualHeal can help too, it gives you green bars over your normal bars which show you how much incoming healing a target will be getting. It's not entirely reliable though as it calculates things like Penance in weird ways.

[Nekhetyo]

Maybe read patch notes before telling outdated stuff...

[volescue]

I would suggest Broker_PoM and StatBlockCore to keep track of your PoM. Its small, simple, and clean.

As disc you should shield everyone if you know they are going to be taking damage. It will make your job a lot easier.

OmniCC is a good way to keep track of CDs such as how long before you can use penance again.

In fights where AoE damage is consistant, but minimal, I would refrain from casting shields and just let PoM do its thing.

[Jÿnks]

I didn't read any posts and I'm sure people will disagree but I use HealBot for all my healing characters (druid, shaman and priest) and I like it. It shows who has what HoT and how long is left on it (if it's below 5 seconds, I think it is?) and it shows who has Prayer of Mending (as well as how long is left on it if it doesn't bounce anywhere else).

PW:S should be cast on anyone taking damage, mostly the tank since that is who will be taking the most damage.