[Priest] Guide to Healing

[Deleted]

Well, in all honesty, if you are in a raid doing the latest content and it's hardmodes, you know your class and your role and shouldn't even bother with a "guide".

The intentions with this guide was more to give players that are new to priest healing (newly dinged 80's or even shadowpriests) or perhaps players that consider rolling a priest a nice clue of what to expect and aim at, as well as give hints to how to play.

I agree with that the holy build is very personal. There's a lot of talents that can be moved around to suit your personal playstyle, raid setup and role.

Again, this guide is mainly for newcomers and not directed to those with experience.

[harky]

In that case I would recommend spending a bit of time discussing questionable talents and their applications. There are a lot of core talents that people should never, ever skip, which can be marked 'required', but a lot of the Holy tree is variable. That's especially true to a fresh 80 who many want to do a lot of heroics. The core of a raid Holy build can be seen here. However, if they want to heal in 5 mans, they may want a build that favors FH/GH substantially more. You need to free up 9 points, which can be taken from Renew talents (6), Body and Soul (2) and Test of Faith (1). Also due to lacking raid buffs you may want to take another out of Test of Faith and put it into Inner Focus. Hell, when first starting out you may want to go 18/53 due to mana problems.

That's kind of my point though. If you're trying to help beginners you need to let them know what the options are and why to take them.

[Morrigane]

I am kind of confused. What would be the difference between taking Spell Warding/4 and Divine Fury /5. I know EJ has it with Divine Fury but Harky is going with Spell Warding. As I am just about to hit the Northrend content. I am curious to the difference between the two talents. And since there is a difference in the "core" talents. Which glyphs? Or is it the same

[Mithip]

I am kind of confused. What would be the difference between taking Spell Warding/4 and Divine Fury /5. I know EJ has it with Divine Fury but Harky is going with Spell Warding. As I am just about to hit the Northrend content. I am curious to the difference between the two talents. And since there is a difference in the "core" talents. Which glyphs? Or is it the same

As you just hit northrend, you are leveling right?

Then Divine Fury would be nice to help you kill mobs solo, but once at 80, if you see yourself not using Greater Heal at all or just once or twice per fight, Spell Warding is a better option for you. But if you do use GH alot, go for divine fury.

[rubberbands]

As you just hit northrend, you are leveling right?

Then Divine Fury would be nice to help you kill mobs solo, but once at 80, if you see yourself not using Greater Heal at all or just once or twice per fight, Spell Warding is a better option for you. But if you do use GH alot, go for divine fury.

Yes, as many people (like spiritus, harky) have mentioned, it is hard to give out a "best" spec since alot about healing is different from DPS, where you have a statastical, undebatable numerical benchmark. Not only that, a large part depends on your personal playstyle and beliefs. For the GH example, if you think GH takes way too long, causes overheal, costs too much etc, you will be less inclined to take it. If you like the idea of having more mana, you will be more inclined towards things like HC, healing prayers, flash heal glyph, and maybe going to 3/3 MA in disc, and will probably toss out things like Test of faith, blessed resilience, etc.

So what would be great to do is try out a few raids first and find out what you tend to do, and then from there start thinking about whats things you want to improve, and what things you dont need.

Although harky did provide quite a standard "mandatory" specs, here is my opinion of what is really totally neccessary(consider both POVs)

-13 (or 14) The obvious points in disc. Fairly straightforward.
-holy reach (debated)
-SOR (some debate, but generally agreed that it's really a bang for your buck for just 1 talent point)
-at least some points spiritual guidance
-at least some points in spiritual healing
-at least some points in divine providence
-serendipity
-COH (yes, i've seen holy priests trying to substantiate not taking this, i have no idea why)
-GS (yes, i've also seen some builds with 50 points in holy and skipping this, also a mystery)

like harky mentioned, the 6 points in renew (and the glyph) come together, so see if you like renewing first then you'll get a better idea. For example, I myself dont believe in renew so I wont have those 6 points.

[harky]

-13 (or 14) The obvious points in disc. Fairly straightforward.
-holy reach (debated)
-SOR (some debate, but generally agreed that it's really a bang for your buck for just 1 talent point)
-at least some points spiritual guidance
-at least some points in spiritual healing
-at least some points in divine providence
-serendipity
-COH (yes, i've seen holy priests trying to substantiate not taking this, i have no idea why)
-GS (yes, i've also seen some builds with 50 points in holy and skipping this, also a mystery)

You have to keep things within reason, or you may give new players a false sense of their options.

Holy Reach should not be debated. It increases the radius of PoH and CoH, which greatly increases their total area of effect.

I assume SoR is SoL? If so then, yes, there's some debate there. Primarily the debate over 1, or 2 points. Also related to Serendipity.

EDIT: Epic brain lapse. SoR is Spirit of Redemption, obviously. The above is for SoL, which as mentioned should be up for some debate. SoR is worth mention primarily for pointing out that it's taken for the 6% spirit and not the on-death effect.

Spiritual Guidance maxed. Spiritual Healing maxed. Without those two Holy scales very poorly.

Divine Providence maxed. While Renew vs FH is debatable, the use of Prayer of Healing, Binding Heal and especially Prayer of Mending is not in any debate.

Serendipity I can see some debate too. If you're using Renew as primary filler, then Serendipity is often not stacked when it's needed. If SoL is taken (1 or 2), Serendipity should also be taken.

CoH should not be under debate. It's far too good. As I began this post: Keep it within reason. Dropping CoH is completely unreasonable.

GS can be debated for some content. It and the glyph are required for harder content and as soon as you begin raiding seriously it needs to be taken. If all your doing is 5 mans, or Naxx, or whatever, it's not really needed. It can be useful with bad tanks, though. It's also not worth taking if you're not willing to use a Glyph on it.

Blessed Resilience and Test of Faith both need to be discussed as well. Test of Faith is situational, but during those situations it's much better than Blessed Resilience. Very few encounters actually favor Test of Faith. Hardmode XT is the main one. During tantrum Test of Faith can help a great deal. What you're looking for is a fight with a lot of unavoidable AOE that spikes people very low. Anub is definitely not a good example, because Test of Faith would be in effect constantly and it's a fight where healing too much is what kills you. This applies to FH/GH builds as well because despite using FH/GH, PoM/PoH and CoH will still be used a great deal. So Emp. Healing needs to be questioned as Blessed Resil in particular effects all spells, rather than only filler spells.

[Verzerrung]

my 2 cents:

First off I do realize some Ulduar hard mods work better with a bigger mana pool but I have always found the Spirit>Haste>Crit>Int>SP to work out the best for me in almost all situations. Out of all the healers minus maybe pallys, Priest naturally have the hardest hitting heals so we dont need to buff our throughput that much. Any SP we need comes with the gear that's an upgrade to other stats and from our specs.

Spirit v Int
For holy, Int is nice but we do not get anywhere near the utility from it as Spirit. So many things in the holy tree are Buffed my or boost spirit so I don't understand why people shy away from it or even claim mp5 crap. For long fights or even just quick skirmishes Spirit creates sustainability whereas Int ends in a burnout. Most damage in raids happens in burst and in between burst your spirit shines through with a nice regen.

Haste v Crit
My main focus is usually Haste over crit unless the spirit and int upgrades are noticable. I favor haste because nothing in groups goes according to plan. Haste help me stay on top of spike damage to the tank or raid. Crit just creates misleading judgments on heals and a false sense of what your average heal is going to hit for. Granted ignoring crit and swearing by haste are not wise either. For this I try to keep my haste around 400 for a nice speedy FH and GH/PoH when they are needed back to back(GH>GH or PoH>PoH)

[harky]

First off I do realize some Ulduar hard mods work better with a bigger mana pool but I have always found the Spirit>Haste>Crit>Int>SP to work out the best for me in almost all situations. Out of all the healers minus maybe pallys, Priest naturally have the hardest hitting heals so we dont need to buff our throughput that much. Any SP we need comes with the gear that's an upgrade to other stats and from our specs.

Underplaying throughput will get you into a great deal of trouble. Holy Priests are actually the class which needs to bolster their throughput the most. Shaman, Paladin, Druid and even Disc Priests all have better tools given to them. Holy Priests do have mana problems compared to the other healers and they have lower throughput when naked, particularly single target. This is the kind of thing that gets new Priests into trouble.

Spirit v Int
For holy, Int is nice but we do not get anywhere near the utility from it as Spirit. So many things in the holy tree are Buffed my or boost spirit so I don't understand why people shy away from it or even claim mp5 crap. For long fights or even just quick skirmishes Spirit creates sustainability whereas Int ends in a burnout. Most damage in raids happens in burst and in between burst your spirit shines through with a nice regen.

This is very misinformed. First off all your mana pool is equal to mana/(fightduration/5) MP/5. For instance in an 8 minute fight, 30k mana is equal to 312.5 mp/5. In a 4 minute fight that same 30k mana is worth 625 mp/5. That's completely ignoring Int's contribution to regen and the implications of Replenishment. Spirit is worse for regen than Int. Int comes stock on all caster gear however, so this only comes up with gems. Gemming spirit is mostly silly. It's useful for activating a meta or good socket bonus, but that's it. Spirit adds a slight amount of throughput, but Int is by far the superior regen stat.

Haste v Crit
My main focus is usually Haste over crit unless the spirit and int upgrades are noticable. I favor haste because nothing in groups goes according to plan. Haste help me stay on top of spike damage to the tank or raid. Crit just creates misleading judgments on heals and a false sense of what your average heal is going to hit for. Granted ignoring crit and swearing by haste are not wise either. For this I try to keep my haste around 400 for a nice speedy FH and GH/PoH when they are needed back to back(GH>GH or PoH>PoH)

Crit is definitely needed up to a certain threshold due to its impact through Holy Concentration. If you have less than 25% Holy crit (as Holy, not Disc) then you really ought to aim for more. At the same time going over 30% is kind of 'meh' because of diminishing returns in uptime of Holy Conc. As mentioned earlier 12-14% Haste for Holy is almost considered mandatory.

[rubberbands]

Spirit adds a slight amount of throughput, but Int is by far the superior regen stat.

The spirit-int regen calculation model is needlessly complicated, and involves tons of factors like each individual boss, your playstyle and even how many hunter pets there in your raid. But yes like Harky says this is the basic established idea. Int will always be superior than spirit if you need more mana. The only thing spirit has over int is some +SP which you may or may not value. Obviously, spirit wont be as bad if you have higher crit due to a higher HC uptime, but Int will still be better (when purely looking at mana issues)

I apologize if I did sound ouf of reason for my previous post, but there are really alot of arguments out there that neglect the "obviously mandatory" talents, and I didn't want to sound to pushy. From what i've seem myself also, TOF is rather unpopular.