Any tips raiding Holy Priest?

[Funknotic]

Was just wondering what are some tips/advice when raiding as holy?

When and how often should I Renew?
How much Renews should be up during a 10 man raid/20 man raid
What are my main healing spells?
How often do i use "Heal"?
Haste or Mastery?
Power torrent or Heartsong?

Im new, just need advice, healing as holy just inst the same compared to WotLK

[Denae]

If you are raid healing (which is likely) it mostly a lot of PoH and CoH spam. I use Renew on the tanks always and often on players who have lower health compared to the rest of their group. PoM on cooldown is probably good for most fights as well. I almost never use Heal, instead using Greater Heal to pick up lower health players as damage is usually too high for the low output of Heal (encounters vary though -- for example, I use Serenity Chakra and Heal to keep Renew rolling on the players on my platform during phase 2 of Nefarian and my mana actually goes back up a little during that phase). Binding Heal is excellent for healing yourself as well and PW:S is used in several fights for the speed boost. Basically, all your healing spells are useful at points (well, except Holy Nova), but like I said, it's mainly a lot of aoe heals.

I like mastery more than haste for raid healing, but again it depends a lot on the encounter which is "better" (mastery is rather pointless on Chimaeron for example). I suggest reforging all to mastery one raid and then all to haste another raid and see which feels better to you. Use Power Torrent; you should have plenty of spirit from your gear.

[Voluum]

spam heal 24/7 and renew is your main spell now. stack spirit then crit

[Ynna]

1) Keep Renew up on all tanks. The other times I use Renew is when I don't have to time to heal someone up, or when I'm on the move.
2) In general at least two (one for each tank). For the rest it depends on what's happening in a fight. You won't be able to sustain a Renew-spam like you could in WotLK, so don't even try.
3) Your main healing spells are probably Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, Lightwell and Heal. Use Greater Heal if Heal won't be enough. Use Flash Heal only as a last resort.
4) Heal is your goto-heal for spothealing. If one person took damage: Heal. The tank is taking low to moderate levels of damage: Heal.
5) Whatever you prefer. Each stat is valuable in a different way. Stack one, or maintain a healthy balance between the two, it's all viable.
6) Power Torrent

[Danner]

Holy priest healing is usually defined by your chakra stance. And for raids, it's mostly boiling down to the Sanctuary Chakra.

As a holypriest, your main forte is the huge AoE burst,. So for 90% of all raids, I recommend to basically stay in sanctuary, and spam Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing liberally at anything that is getting hurt. Renew on a tank or two also helps, but rarely makes a massive difference on hardmodes. Use Guardian Spirit (or fall back to flash heal) on anything that dips too low, and be prepared to throw a body-and-soul-speedshield on kiters. Prayer of Mending helps HPS and in some cases make a major difference in the "keep things alive" department. That's it really, stick to that and you can't really go wrong. The real challenge is maintaining your mana levels while doing that; the healing mostly does itself as a holypriest.

To maintain mana, remember to use your shadowfiend early along with hymn of hope, use cooldowns you may have from professions and racials and trinkets, and save the manapotion for the end of the fight if you can. If you can make a deal with a boomkin, try to get his innervate, otherwise just gear a little harder for spirit. You want to have enough mana to reasonably be able to cover something going bad, but you don't need to hold out forever. I strongly recommend the darkmoon card: tsunami trinket by the way.

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Renew is an interesting spell really. Renew-blankets are way too costly to be viable, but the potential HPS is extremely potent. I think a priest could outheal a WoTLK druid if fed enough innervates. And if you think it's silly to measure myself against a last-expansion healer, it's just that druids were THAT good back then (still are, but it's not quite the same level of badasstitude). I wouldn't try to make my healing revolve around the spell right now though. It's more a support spell. Whether you think it is worth pumping half a million talent points into making it potent or not is up to you. The alternative talents are almost as good, it depends on your style in the end.

The same goes for stats. All healer stats are viable. All combinations of healer stats are viable, but it really depends on your playstyle. Obviously, if you stick to Renew, crit is going to be less valuable, but it often makes a world of difference when critting on a low health player with Test of Faith. If you stick to PoH, haste is going to be very potent, but it does virtually nothing for CoH - so there is a tradeoff there. Mastery is all-round good for HPS, but if you stack it exclusively, you will find your reaction time will suffer badly in hardmodes. Find a tradeoff that works for you. You can't go wrong, really, unless you overstack spirit. But even then, it's not the end of the world.

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Serenity Chakra state is more situational in raids. In general, you don't need it, but there are some fights where it makes a good candidate. For example, if you are healing the kiter on magmaw HC; then all you really need is potent single target heals (and body & soul). Serenity chakra is good at these situations. A holypriest is never excellent at single target healing, but unlike WoTLK, we can actually do it these days. It's just a little waste of potential to do so.

The major benefit from the serenity chakra is actually the serenity spell. It's a brilliant, cheap heal. I find that if I overextend myself on the mana situation, simply switching to serenity and spamming heal + serenity, I can handle both tank and raid healing moderately well, while using virtually no mana. I will be underperforming while doing so, and the HPS will be pathetic, but do not underestimate the life-saving powers of an instant single target heal. It's basically why I pick Desperate Prayer too

Cho'gall normalmode is actually a great fight to not use any chakra state at all. The instant interrupting chastise spell is excellent at breaking worship channels.

[Krowz]

Excellent advice Danner, but I have a question

Close to 85 on my priest and I wonder how viable Holy Word: Sanctuary is? It seems extremely costly mana wise, but I suppose with a 18 second duration it makes it worth it?

[Ynna]

Serenity Chakra state is more situational in raids. In general, you don't need it, but there are some fights where it makes a good candidate. For example, if you are healing the kiter on magmaw HC; then all you really need is potent single target heals (and body & soul). Serenity chakra is good at these situations. A holypriest is never excellent at single target healing, but unlike WoTLK, we can actually do it these days. It's just a little waste of potential to do so.

The major benefit from the serenity chakra is actually the serenity spell. It's a brilliant, cheap heal. I find that if I overextend myself on the mana situation, simply switching to serenity and spamming heal + serenity, I can handle both tank and raid healing moderately well, while using virtually no mana. I will be underperforming while doing so, and the HPS will be pathetic, but do not underestimate the life-saving powers of an instant single target heal. It's basically why I pick Desperate Prayer too

Excellent advice concerning Chakra. Would you mind if I steal it if I ever want to extend my guide to include raid healing.

Cho'gall normalmode is actually a great fight to not use any chakra state at all. The instant interrupting chastise spell is excellent at breaking worship channels.

What I do is I press the Chakra button, which leaves you Chakra-less for a moment, so you can use Chastice.

Excellent advice Danner, but I have a question

Close to 85 on my priest and I wonder how viable Holy Word: Sanctuary is? It seems extremely costly mana wise, but I suppose with a 18 second duration it makes it worth it?

It is a heavy mana hog, but there are moments when mana isn't a concern and healing done isn't. These moments are a great time to use Holy Word: Sanctuary.

Or not. Haste to breakpoints (consult the stickies they proably tell you what they are).

For n-th time: Haste is good on whatever level of Haste.

[Danner]

Close to 85 on my priest and I wonder how viable Holy Word: Sanctuary is? It seems extremely costly mana wise, but I suppose with a 18 second duration it makes it worth it?

To be honest, no.

Sanctuary is in my eyes a very expensive toy that will increase your HPS by around 3k while it is up, but offer almost nothing in terms of raid survivability. Does 0.5% of a hpbar per second really matter when you usually have to heal the raid up within 10 seconds? The spell is just healing too and too little to assist in topping the raid up (that's where you want druids rotating tranquility and/or spam PoH like crazy), and its manacost is prohibitively high. If you ever find you have enough mana to blow this spell around every cooldown, you are probably stacking way too many healers.

That's just me though, other healers swear to it. The primary use case is however unarguably as a support spell. Kinda like renew, actually, only raidwide, and incredibly impotent per target. I rarely cast it except for giggles while buffing up. But if you are in a competition to win healing meter positioning, it is your best friend.

The perfect holypriest state is to have the Sanctuary Chakra bonus and the Serenity heal in my opinion. Too bad we have to choose!

Excellent advice concerning Chakra. Would you mind if I steal it if I ever want to extend my guide to include raid healing.

Feel free

Haste? Mastery? Crit?

Haste is a great stat in hardmodes. It allows you to land heals faster, which is going to make a lot of difference when the damage is furious. But it really don't matter much in normalmodes, except for playstyle reasons. Haste has a nasty downside that other stats does not - you will inadvertedly consume more mana if you stack more haste. Even if you don't have to. If you like to get the heal in "just in time", this is the stat for you.

Mastery as a holypriest is an excellent all-round stat that boost your throughput, and it generally makes a difference. But again, there is a downside to it - you will get the healing up to six seconds later. Which in most raid environments, don't really matter too much. Raids tend to take damage in bursts, leaving mastery to be overhealing quite often. Tanks usually take damage all the time, but priests are not usually employed as tank healers. Still, it's a safe stat to stack, it's basically "free healing" you don't have to think much about. If you like to see lots of numbers or high HPS, this is the stat for you.

Crit is a somewhat unpopular stat with healers right now. Mostly this is because it's point-by-point more expensive than the other stats, offers less than half the per-point throughput, is very unreliable, and often simply overheals. Most healers out there end up reforging away crit if it is on gear right now. Even GC agreed these were good points - so in the next major patch, critical heals gets twice as good. Despite all the downsides, critical heals are actually amazing lifesavers, and nothing beats landing a juicy 50k Greater Heal on a tank that is just about to die. If you like bug numbers, crit is for you!

Ultimately, which stat to stack is simple. Stack intellect.