[PVE] --Martiz' guide to the way of Holy --

[Deleted]

Welcome to Martiz' guide of a Holy Priest

This is a guide to give fellow priests some kind of guidance in their exploring of the priest content ( specifically being Holy ). My guide will try to include as many elements as possible and I know I'm not perfect so feedback and response in a good way of manner is appreciated. My intention with this is that people probably are so stuck up with the "majority" perspective that others use. And this won't be a "do this" it'll cover a wide point of view in the way of a healer.

~~Healing and what you Do: ~~

*As a healer just the way it says, your job will be to heal people. By doing so you must do whatever it takes to prevent somebody to die. ( unless you intentionally want to kill them or they Stand in Fire h3h3 ).

* Being a healer is not an easy task. It requires you to consider each person's health including your own and you need to make a judgement of whether that or another needs the heal. By healing and practicing you will earn more experience in judging which will do better and which will not.

* People often blame the healer for not doing things properly such as Dispel Magic / Cure Disease - Or simply just doesn't heal enough. This is and isn't our concern at the same time. And dispelling & cure diseases is included in your spell journal, learn what to and what to not dispel/cure. On the other hand if people do things wrong then it clearly isn't just your concern, tell your party/raid/whoever nicely to do it properly again so it'll ease your stress.

The points I've written down above are examples of what you may need to consider and that given a thought can be proved useful to you. They are not guidelines but if you think about it, dispelling/curing something can be good or bad, Lich King's Necrotique plague, Twilight Ascendant Heart of Ice etc being mindful of when or not to dispel/cure is very important to cause relief in both healing and other kind of encounters' mechanic.


Alright so we covered the way of thinking, now we'll discuss the Stats & Gearing that you will need to give a thought about.

~~Stats, Spec & Gear?? How do I get the best use of stats? And what do I have to take in mind when I spec/gear: ~~

In my personal opinion Stats & Gear can be a very tricky part, since people tend to go by the " I do it like the others do, the top guilds do it this way, it's the better for me too "THIS IS INCORRECT !

Stats, spec & Gear could be seen as a human's attributes. Strong, weak, fragile etc. This means that we're not the other one alike nor are they like us. The same goes for in game even if it may differ a little from real life than virtuality, but it's still basic habits that tend to happen anywhere. - We typically don't and can't be the same as each other. As I say this I don't mean that we have to be different. There are several ways to improve one another and I'll try to cover these in the - Stats, spec & Gear -.

The Stats and what they offer us:

Main Stats these stats are considered main stats as they generally always are found on an item. And determines whether it be useful for a certain class or not.
Priests got the Intellect & Stamina being their important main stats [ Cataclysm edition, for references about WotLK please look somewhere else]. There are Strength a& Agility being Main Stats as well.

Secondary Stats these are the stats that in cataclysm and in my opinion could be called the reforgeable stats. Since cataclysm brought forth the "tweaking of stats system". For secondary stats, a priest will need to make use of all the stats.

As a holy priest and your role there are several perspectives of what Stats do and affect us. Itemization has probably always been a key role to how to improve the charters. But once again, stats and gearing is something you personally do. Then, there are couple of suggestions and options that can improve us. Hence why we're here for each other and not just by "that one reason".

Let's go through the stats in a more detailed way and I'll try to explain how it benefits us the most and what would be good to us as a holy priest.

Like I've said previously, a priests Main Stats will be Intellect & Stamina. Skip the stamina part, intellect is the part that tells you "Oh it's a caster/healer item ! ".

Intellect: is one of our most important stats when it comes to healing, but also as dps. It provides us with, critical strike, mana regeneration & better mana pool. It's pretty much an all in all stat that gives us what we need. ( Like a baby gets it's nutrients from the mother's milk ).

This is a stat that you won't need to worry about since it scales & comes of the gear you get and improves the longer up in content you come.

There really isn't much more to say or discuss about the Main Stats since it comes naturally to us but on the other hand we'll go through the Secondary Stats.


Spirit: is what we call the Mana Regeneration stat. It gives us the MP5 we use to regenerate mana. This stat is a VERY important stat to us as Holy Priest since it's our key regenerative stat. And with talents as you probably know about already Holy Conentration is the reason it's such a good stat for us.

Mastery: is the new Cataclysm stat which is something that I'm ascertained you already know about it, if not I suggest you look it up. Mastery is a very giving stat to Holy Priests since it benefits us in many ways. It gives our Mastery: Echoes of Light increased percentage. If I heal 100 my mastery is at 20% it provides an additional hot for 20% of the amount healed in a 6 seconds Healing over Time = [ HoT ]

This way Mastery is both a throughput stat AND mana regeneration stat at the same time. ( Stat vs Stat discussion will come after the explanation of stats.)

Haste: as the word itself says, this reduces our Cast Time by spells. Which is very useful. It's also a stat benefitting our throughput. Let's say I got an average cast time of Heal at about 2.5 ; with haste I'll break down that value, depending on how much haste I got. -Example: 2.5 >> 2.2 resulting in giving me better reaction time. And more heals going out in a period of time. Rather than if I would have had 2.5 having less heals going out in a period of time.

- P.s: I leave the math and numbers to the Elitistjerks or anyone else being interested in it, my point is not the math, it's the stat itself.

Critical Strike: as it says increases the chance to get Critical Strikes. I am not very keen on the values of Critical Strike but I know that it's a stat that is very RNG. It means that you can't predict when you'll get a Critical Strike, it occurs every now and then. Making it both a good stat and a less favored stat in different kind of views.

Hit Rating: leave this to the DPS section. Not really a healing stat unless you do PvP etc, but that's not what this guide is about

Above I've explained how each stat benefits us in it's way and like I said for the introduction of Stats,Gear & Spec this is something you'll personally need to consider yourself rather than looking at other people's spreadsheet. There are of course certain Haste Cap that'll tell you what Cast Time your spell will sit at or "vast majority prefered levels of Mastery,Critt, Spirit". But that's not the point here. The point is to give you the awareness and thinking of what will prove to be useful to YOU the most.

I have found myself this as an easy run down of what I need to keep in mind when I'm looking at my stats:

1. How is my cast time? Do people die before my heal land ? If yes, then I probably need more haste to make it land in time. ( Note: This is a personal preference but at average iLvl at 85 [ HC ready, iLvl 329 ] it mostly comes down to a 2.3 -- 2.5 s Cast Time )

2. Do I have enough mana to last during the whole fight? If not, then I certainly will need to work on my mana managements and mana regeneration. This means that I would need more Spirit ( Holy ).

Commonly used Tip: Since almost each class has a way to preserve & regenerate mana, I'll give the tip along the way as we speak. If we look at our own Spell Book, you'll see that we got Shadow Fiend + Hymn of Hope granting us mana return. I won't cover it in detail and assume you're already familiar with the use of them.

Popping Shadowfiend followed by a Hymn of Hope will grant you more mana than each cooldown individually. Why? Because Shadowfiend restores mana per hit and gives you a certain amount of your Maximum mana back. - Note that it says " Maximum Mana" and hence the reason to use Hymn of Hope Right after - Hymn of Hope increases our Maximum mana by a % and in conjunction with shadowfiend it'll give you increased mana return. I believe you get what I mean.

REMEMBER a healer Out of Mana is not a healer. Cause not being able to heal is not a healer anymore. So important to keep in mind that you'll need to be considerate to your mana since you got the important role of keeping people alive. And if you're Out of Mana you're pretty much nothing but a burden. Of course, there are exceptions at which you'll work harder to cover up others' mistakes but that's not your concern only ( read the " What you do text", you'll surely know what I mean ).

As mentioned before, we got a Base Mana pool + Intellect which gives us a bigger mana pool resulting in bigger returns of those cooldowns. And worry not, since it scale with gear it's mostly a matter of time and use that they'll be found greatly useful ( frankly speaking Dungeon Heroics/Raiding at Cataclysm content )


- Did you get anything of what I said? Was it a huge Wall of Text? A big chunk of information in how you could consider your stats?

- YES ! - Alright, then I believe you've started to use your head in what stat benefits your current content the most.

- NO ! - Then I must say you need to start thinking about what helps you the most in current time and not look at the paper or anyone else

Of course, I don't mean that it's a good or bad thing to do either of those YES or NO, my message is to improve yourself at your personal pace at which I have been very straight forward on in this guide. Rather than " THIS is BETTER or THAT IS NO GOOD " I want to grant the option of " what if I do it this way, no good? then what if I do it this way? - AH it works for "me " ~





Since it's not a complete guide just yet and I'm just at the start of it I'll just write down a | To do List | - I will fill up with more as time goes by.


|| TO DO LIST ||

Add Spec section in which I'll explain the various Talents we got and that can be useful.
Commonly used Guidelines
Raid encounters, specific tips & tricks

A whole lot more will be added in the meantime as this guide will be in progress and updated daily

Also feel free to leave feedback and comments ~~

//Sincerely, Martiz ! .

[Ynna]

There are a bit of typos and odd use of capital letters. I don't like the writing style, but that is a personal issue, and is certainly not your fault.
You can't really call this a guide yet since it is lacking a lot of information. I would have waited to post a guide until you had everything written down.
I'm working on my own Holy guide, and I'm not posting anything until it is completely finished. There's no reason to rush things like this.

[Veiled]

I have to agree with Ynna. While the effort is appreciated, the guide itself is really difficult to read due to the strong use of italics and typos. I feel like you're headed in the right direction, though..

[Mazi]

I have to agree with Ynna. While the effort is appreciated, the guide itself is really difficult to read due to the strong use of italics and typos. I feel like you're headed in the right direction, though..

agree with above.