'Idiots Guide to Priest Healing for the beginning'?

[Wardley]

Hey,

Has anyone put together a kinda 'Complete Idiots Guide to Priest Healing' to follow from the very beginning? My priest is lvl 15 now and I'm planning on levelling him up healing through instances but just kinda want to make sure I follow the 'easiest' route. So, things like which talents to take as you level up and which spells to use when.

Ok, so at level 15 I've only got 3 spells to choose from - Shield, Renew and Lesser Heal so I would expect at the moment my healing to be something like keep Renew up on everyone, shield on tank and then Lesser Heal spam on tank when needed? But it would be nice to have a guide to follow for later on when it gets a bit more complicated? (I'm assuming it will get complicated).

[Ademonium]

In my experience a priest can't go wrong with healing. Especially when leveled through the LFD system. Just spec holy and take the things you like to have. Holy priests are powerful enough to heal anything.

[Deleted]

I'd level as disc. Once you get Soulwarding, just shield everyone. Flash heal's the heal you will use all of the time when you get it.

[Berlain]

Especially when leveled through the LFD system.

I second that. Thanks to the LFD, if you're interested in leveling a healer alt and yet have no stomach for questing (me,) all you have to do is park in town and spam-run dungeons till you can't stand it anymore. Scads of XP, and all the best gear. Pick Enchanting as a profession and strike a mint d/e'ing while running, to boot.

As for learning how to heal - you'll pick it up quick enough through trial and error if nothing else. By the time you hit the real dungeons in wotlk you'll be pro.

I leveled Holy, but if I had it to do again now, I'd do it Disc... disc feels more 'tangible' for lack of a better word... but it doesn't matter. Either spec works.

If you prefer to quest, be sure to put 3 points into 'spirit tap' in your shadow tree - sounds counter-intuitive as a healer, but this talent will allow you keep runnin' and keep the drinking downtime to a minimum. Be sure to drop the points at 80, of course.

[Ademonium]

As for learning how to heal - you'll pick it up quick enough through trial and error if nothing else. By the time you hit the real dungeons in wotlk you'll be pro.

This and not wanting to quest anymore made me run LFD. It's so lovely to do. lvl 50-60 van be a pain btw. but finally in TBC there will be no problem anymore.

[Thundertom]

This and not wanting to quest anymore made me run LFD. It's so lovely to do. lvl 50-60 van be a pain btw. but finally in TBC there will be no problem anymore.

yeah, all you get is BRD from 50 on.

[Aonix]

In my experience a priest can't go wrong with healing. Especially when leveled through the LFD system. Just spec holy and take the things you like to have. Holy priests are powerful enough to heal anything.

around 60-80 i would not spec Holy for random dungeons at all..Ooms way too fast , and depending on whatever shitty tank you get (think all the nice dk's you get around 55) , holy has trouble keeping them up.
Disc is the way to go for sure.

[Kirigi]

around 60-80 i would not spec Holy for random dungeons at all..Ooms way too fast , and depending on whatever shitty tank you get (think all the nice dk's you get around 55) , holy has trouble keeping them up.
Disc is the way to go for sure.

I just finished levelling my priest 2 weeks ago-ish and did it dual spec'd shadow/holy. If I were to do it again, I too would go disc because I always had mana problems. I quoted Aonix for his Outland comment. He is 110% spot on correct, healing was fine until level 58 when the shitty dk's started queueing as tank and it was HELL. No tanking gear, no tanking spec, just frost presence and bam, I'm a tank! It was terrible and of course, when they died trying to aoe pull, I was accused of being a shitty healer. Disc might have mitigated some of that, but you can't heal stupid.

[Zeuq]

FTR, if you're looking for a leveling guide, you should check out the sticky. There's at least two leveling guids linked in there.

[harky]

Neither of those are optimized for straight dungeon grinding as a healer though. I don't think anyone's put together anything quite like that. Not really needed before level 50 though. You can heal them as 0/0/0.

[sacrypheyes]

same as above.

only thing i'd point out is that meditation has to be specced if you want to minimize mana issues as a healer.
mp5 gear exists in vanilla but spirit gear is really abundant and imo is the best regen stat along with int at lower levels.

speccing full disc on the other hand only really helps once you can get rapture and even better, penance (meaning lvl 60). before that, i think you should main spec holy after you get meditation if you really want to heal spec.

any spec can heal properly any dungeon in vanilla as long as you got a good healing gear set (int/spi/mp5). don't worry too much about sp in the beginning vanilla as a healer, sure get some if you can without giving up too much mana stats but otherwise, just wait for end-vanilla/bc to really start focusing on sp gear.

[Vook]

yeah, all you get is BRD from 50 on.

At 54+, you'll also get Dire Maul a lot. (Got nothing but Dire Maul after my Rogue hit 54.)

[Lunataria]

sheild->renew
wait...
wait...
wait...
wait...
sheild->renew
wait...
wait...
wait...
wait...
repeat.

that is low level priest healing.

[Frmercury]

Here's a small blog with a rough healing guide for Disc and Holy: http://priestitforward.wordpress.com/

Feel free to post on there with questions too.