Prayer of healing

[Jimmyw]

ok so im sitting here at 01.34 and just started thinking of a chat i had with a m8 of mine earlier this week... does Prayer of Healing Heal random dudes in a raid or only the ones in your specific party??

spell description clearly says party whereas description for Circle of Healing say party OR raid members..... im wondering cause in raids my prio based rotation goes 1. Circle, 2 Prayer of mending and 3 Renew spamming in between with the occasional instant flash heal here and there... and if Prayer of healing indeed does heal raid and not only party i think its worth considering for some fights...

it might just be me who is a complete retard when it comes to this and i might just be healing completely wrong but i am hitting 8k+ HPS on a fight like Blood queen the way im healing atm... (i know its not all about HPS)...

anyway i havent really raided over the Easter Holidays so havent had the chance to check if im wrong about Prayer of healing.. if anyone knows i wud appreciate a definitive answer also regarding how you ppl heal, if u include prayer of healing into ur rotation..

[Netherwolf]

Prayer of Healing heals the targeted group. So if you target a random person in group 2 that whole party gets healed.

[Jimmyw]

yeah what i thought.. so not random raid members... that answers one question, another question is if ppl include it into their rotation

[Frmercury]

yeah what i thought.. so not random raid members... that answers one question, another question is if ppl include it into their rotation

The word 'rotation' doesn't come into play for healing, but the spell is used. I wouldn't call it a primary healing spell, it's certainly isn't taken off of any good healing Priests' bars.

[Danner]

When you cast Prayer of Healing, you target one person in your raid or party. Everyone in the party of the target player will be healed, if within 40 yds of the targetted player, including pets. In a heroic, that means you will always heal your own party. In a raid, that is not the case.

Circle of Healing heals 5 (6 glyphed) random recipents within range of your target, but not necessarily the target. The spell automatically picks targets with the least amount of HP. Again, including pets.

Getting high HPS on a fight like Blood Queen isn't rocket science. Maintaining your mana long enough to actually sustain that 8k HPS is the hard part. Most holypriests these days compensate by using a good trinket in addition to all their cooldowns.

I personally use a little bit of everything on blood queen. Prayer of Mending is a great tool to cast into the melee group; and does wonders to keep them alive - but so does a paladin. For the ranged, I use a combination of renew and Prayer of Healing - it really depends on the damage pattern present at any given time. Prayer of Healing (glyphed) is a really powerful tool on the blood queen - but - it's also a surefire way to kill your manabar in 2 minutes.

CoH is also good, but to be honest, I don't really use it on cooldown. While it does heal for a notable amount on the blood queen, it's a tool that very much feels like fighting a flood with a machine gun. Sure, you might kick the water back a bit, but you can't stop it. I don't use it a lot on this fight. Ghostcrawler says I am doing it wrong - holypriests are supposed to use CoH every 6 seconds according to his latest post. How times have changed - only a year ago, we were told off for using it too much, and now we're supposed to spam it. So many conflicting messages here :

What you often need to do is to trust your fellow healers, and let them heal a bit as well, hold back your mana for when it matters. Basically, you can not "win" the meters with a good druid in the raid, but you can get close, and lacking a good druid, you can easily claim the HPS king title. Still, that is not a good way to heal on bloodqueen. Let the other healers heal the brunt damage. Your job is to cover up the triage. Because every other healer out there (shammies excluded) is built for meter whoring; your job is to keep people alive. Make sure to pat them other healers on the back when they post healing meters telling you how much they beat you later.

I also use the lightwell to keep myself up. Though a renew could probably do the same job, that lightwell is simply a lot cheaper. Divine Hymn I usually use in the second airphase, but sometimes even in the first phase if the meleers like to clump together. They usually do.

[Jimmyw]

ty for that reply Danner, all i wanted to know.. only time i have been using Prayer of healing so far has been on Sindragosa when i waitied for my 4 stacks og that magic shit to tick off, so i start casting when its on 2 sec and prayer lands when it ticks off...

interesting that you pick Lightwell, actually never thought about picking that talent up....

[Danner]

ty for that reply Danner, all i wanted to know.. only time i have been using Prayer of healing so far has been on Sindragosa when i waitied for my 4 stacks og that magic shit to tick off, so i start casting when its on 2 sec and prayer lands when it ticks off...

Prayer of Healing is a great tool because it ignores line of sight, which is a massive problem on sindragosa. Priests have a real advantage on that fight because we can still heal people outside of the line of sight by cleverly targetting other people in the target's group and cast a PoH. It truly saves lives. Paladins do the same with beacon to keep the MT up while safely tucked behind an iceblock.

interesting that you pick Lightwell, actually never thought about picking that talent up....

To be honest, it's not remotely worth a talent point. I pick it for the 5% raid morale boost. A happy raid is a good raid, and a raid rolling on the floor laughing when you beg them to use lightwell is a happy raid. But it does have its moments. As a raid marker, or as a cheap renew substitute on BQ. But really. If any DPSer is actually using it, remember to smack them. They should be focusing on maximizing their DPS; not play around with the shiny toy. ^^

[Worshaka]

The only thing i'd add is that PoM isn't only effective on the melee... for any encounter where there is constant raid damage on everyone PoM is just as effective for ranged as it is for melee.... on the other hand I always found CoH to be more useful on melee due to the fact they are clumped together and therefore you are more likely to find 6 targets in need of a meaningful heal. I also believe that CoH will forcibly heal your target... If I don't target melee with CoH I try to target myself because I can position my character to maximise it's possible targets...

In something like BQ (which was being discussed) I'm of the opinion that PoM needs to be your priority, you want to keep that on CD, well beyond the need to keep CoH on CD. Renew is the other spell that you want to spam like no tomorrow... then you just keep a serendipty stack up your sleeve for an emergency PoH or GH on a specific target if need b.

Actually, on one occasion I did a lot of rebinding of my shadow talents and forgot to translate those new bindings to my holy spec. I had to heal BQ at the last moment and ended up only having working bindings for renew & Pom... it was 10man BQ and I achieved something around 6K HPS only using those 2 spells. I think that sort of illustrates how important those 2 spells are in that type of encounter.

[Kelesti]

While I'd agree with you on Mending, Worshaka, as well as the ability to target yourself for Circle to get the most out of where it's landing (except for one thing, if you aren't damaged enough, you aren't maximising the spell's full capabilities)...

I'm of the belief that if you have a chance to Prayer, with circle coming off of cooldown, use your Prayer first. Doesn't matter how many stacks of Serendipity, if you can make use of its healing now, you should. Circle interfering with your strongest hardest hitting spell just because you're casting it on cooldown will limit your effectiveness. It's like running 7 healers on fights that shouldn't need more than 5, it just gets in the way and reduces how effectively you can actually be.

The serendipity applies to Greater Heal as well. If there's some reason that you can cast it now, and have it work, it shouldn't matter how many stacks you have. Just cast the damn thing.

[rubberbands]

What you often need to do is to trust your fellow healers, and let them heal a bit as well, hold back your mana for when it matters.

[/quote]

Ghostcrawler says I am doing it wrong

Since when has GC ever had a clue about priests, but I digress.

And yeah Lightwell is debatable which will merit a new thread.