Holy Priests Balance?

[SirLancelittle]

I've played a holy priest since Vanilla Wow, but I took WotLK off and played resto druid. I switched back to my holy priest because priests were simply far more interesting to play (more spells, more utility). In BC I was in a very hardcore raiding guild and considered one of the top two healers in my guild. Since WotLK I've been a lot more casual, but on my resto druid I was still considered one of the best healers. Now in Cataclysm I feel like I'm lagging behind in raids (5 mans are fine)....

The forums seem to indicate that holy priests can keep up with everyone and many people seem to consider them to be better than discipline priests. This doesn't feel like it is the case in my raids. While I know that healing meters aren't a perfect judge of healing skill, on most fights a healer who can put out a sustained 12k hps is far more valuable than a healer who is a 9k. I've raided both 10 and 25 man (with two different guilds actually) and in both cases, discipline priests were at the top of the meter even after the nerf. They were closely followed by holy paladins, then resto druids and shaman. Holy priests including myself and 3-4 others (total, not in any one raid) were lagging behind. At first I thought it was gear, or perhaps skill, but this same order has happened in groups with two sets of entirely different players.

What I would love to hear from the priest community is two things?
1) Have you had the same experience? Do you think disc priests are currently stronger in raids?

If you think holy priests are stronger:
2) What is your approximate healing breakdown.
Mine ends up being something like
30% Renew
15% Prayer of Healing
Everything else in the 5-10% range: Prayer of mending, Circle of healing, Mastery ticks, Lightwell, etc.

Thanks very much for the advice.

[Evolixe]

If 30% of your healing in a raid comes from renew you are doing it wrong....

I don't have any of my own breakdown scheds atm though and im not 100% sure. But i think it would look like something like this:

Prayer of Healing 25%
Circle of Healing 20%
Greater Heal 15%
Renew 13%
Mastery 11%
Flash Heal 10%

Edit: And to answer your question: No, i do not often find myself getting beaten by a disc priest. (fight dependant either way)

[Ethous]

If 30% of your healing in a raid comes from renew you are doing it wrong....

I don't have any of my own breakdown scheds atm though and im not 100% sure. But i think it would look like something like this:

Prayer of Healing 25%
Circle of Healing 20%
Greater Heal 15%
Renew 13%
Mastery 11%
Flash Heal 10%

Renew on some fights for me is 25% - 30% due to the amount of movement in heroic encounters. Example would be atramedes, you have time to cast maybe 2-4 poh's, than your running again, pom,coh, and renew.

[Evolixe]

Renew on some fights for me is 25% - 30% due to the amount of movement in heroic encounters. Example would be atramedes, you have time to cast maybe 2-4 poh's, than your running again, pom,coh, and renew.

Talking generally here, not atra hc specifically.

[SirLancelittle]

Thanks for the comments. I think my tendency to over renew comes from healing as a druid....

Do you pretty much just keep renew on the tanks?

[Aiurwyn]

depends on the amount of damage they are taking. It helps but normally isn't necessary. You're GCD and mana are better spent on more AoE heals.

My top 5 heals normally come out to PoH, PoM, and CoH fairly close with Echoes of Light and Lightwell right in behind. In 10 mans my overall healing is behind the resto druid we have and whoever is tank healing, but that is to be expected in 10s from my understanding.

[Deleted]

Since the buff to CoH it's usually my top heal, then closely followed by PoH,then Echoes, followed by either PoM or Greater heal. On some encounters Binding heal is quite high too.

[Deleted]

On my holy priest alt most of my healing by far generally comes from PoH and CoH spam with some single target heals and surprisingly considerable amounts of binding Heal whenever the encounter does heavy aoe damage to me too. That said, I'm nearly always healing the raid in those raids I attend with the priest.

I believe I don't use Renew enough.

[Deleted]

What I would love to hear from the priest community is two things?
1) Have you had the same experience? Do you think disc priests are currently stronger in raids?

If you dont have any in your raid, they are ways stronger for most fights as they can increase effective hp on the raid before massive incoming dmg by 30k+ and 50k+ on tanks which is almost neccessary for heroic raids (or would at least speed up progressing alot.)
disc has its own niche whereas holy is pretty good at aoe healing, but not that incredibly much better than resto.

furthermore holy suffers alot from overgearing. if you are last in hps your raid simply overgears the encounter. there is just no way to keep up with disz/resto druids if the incoming aoe dmg is marginal and shields/hots keep the group topped. especially if your raid doesnt click the damn lightwell. in that case i would roll atonement specc and faceroll a bit. you will heal even less, but youll speed up killing time and can still support in case of burst damage.

[Evolixe]

Thanks for the comments. I think my tendency to over renew comes from healing as a druid....

Do you pretty much just keep renew on the tanks?

Yes pretty much, but i do ocassionally renew on people depending on the situation.

[Deleted]

It depends on encounter for me. On magmaw, 30% of my healing is made up of prayer of healing and only 15% by renew, while on valiona & theralion renew makes up 25% and prayer of healing 23%. Circle of healing make up 14% on magmaw (less than I expected, I probably played sloppily in that log) and 21% on valiona.

Basically, CoH on cooldown if more than 2 people are damaged. It's smart, it's fast and it's decently cheap. If more than 2 people in a group are hurt, PoH. Only renew on tanks and on single players who get hurt a lot, maybe someone who does a mistake and stands in fire for too long. Some people seem to prefer greater heal in this scenario though, and I guess that depends on the composition. Greater heal is obviously more mana effective, but if you have other good healers in the raid, there's a big chance of it getting sniped. If you're good at precasting though, I would assume greater heal is a much better option.

[Deleted]

It depends to much on the fight wether you're using one spell to much. But in general if you're falling behind on meters up your poh usage.

[Doomsoul]

Most often those are my top 5 spells:
1. Prayer of Healing
2. CoH
3. Echo of Light (not an actual spell)
4. PoM (on every cooldown) or Flash Heal. Flash heal sometimes climbs to 3rd place. Some will say I am a noob for using this and wasting all my mana, but I have so much regen, that I do not care at this point tbh.
To be honest 4th place is different on almost every fight. Depends on movement, control, aoe dmg and so on. But My top spell is Prayer of Healing, that one is a must.

P.S I have not specced into renew at all. I am almost not using it. If it wasn't for extra tank healing I would have removed it from my bars.

[Maxpowr]

My top 5 spells are generally...
1. PoH (30%)
2. CoH (25%)
3. Echo of Light (mastery) (15-20%)
4. Greater Heal (a lot of supplemental tank healing when no raid damage) (10-15%)
5. The last 15-20% is a mixture of other spells (DH, BH, PoM, renew etc.)

Renew is just an overall weak spell still. I consider it more of a filler spell and usually keep it rolling on the tanks to help smooth out damage for them. PoH and CoH are your go to raid spells. If your echo of light isn't in the top 4 spells used (should be third after PoH & CoH on most fights though), your mastery is probably too low.

We have an OP resto druid in guild (seriously this guy could outheal anyone regardless of gear). He is usually 1-2% above any other healer in effective healing. I don't like to judge meters really either but we consider it friendly competition. I am usually second and some holy paladins are just behind me.