[Priest] Holy Raiding Guide (4.3)

[Mazi]

Someone has to be the bottom healer. It doesn't mean you're not bringing anything worthwhile to the table or not doing your job. But when there's 3 healers and you only have 3 spots to rank your healing done... logic sets in.

[nobodysbaby]

Want to add:

I think maybe I would do as much healing on the meters playing Holy in 10's, BUT.. imo preventing damage will always have a higher value than healing it afterwards, and the flexibility Disc provides going from tank/raid without hazzle, is making it winning in the long run/overall, as I said above. Your RL should value this aswell, and not only look at the mtrs

[Androni]

I guess your right, its just that on the meters my co-healers do around 15k HPS while i'm arond 9k-11k it just makes me feel a little inadequate at times.

[nobodysbaby]

Well there is only SO much damage you can heal, and someone will do it faster than the other

When you have learned the rythm of the fights (like learning a song rly) you will progress and develop more skills, knowing when dmg will come, precast, when to use CD's and all the small things, that makes healing fun and challangeing.

[Lohe]

Holy is not strong in 10 mans, imo mainly for 2 reasons; Sanctuary is non-limited when it comes to nr of targets affected (25x1-2k ticks vs 10x1-2k ticks), and the lack of flexibility healing 1 target in Chakra Sanctuary, or choose Serenity and loose % in raidhealing.

I was under the impression that the total healing done doesn't actually increase after 6 targets.
If you have 6 players in it it would heal for 1667 (made up numbers) per tick, if you had 10 players in it it would heal for 1000 per tick (still the same 10000 healing total per tick but spread over 10 players instead of 6).

[Mazi]

I was under the impression that the total healing done doesn't actually increase after 6 targets.
If you have 6 players in it it would heal for 1667 (made up numbers) per tick, if you had 10 players in it it would heal for 1000 per tick (still the same 10000 healing total per tick but spread over 10 players instead of 6).

It was supposed to heal for like... 1000 per tick with 6 or less players and then 300 per tick over 6, but as of FL it always heals for 1000 per tick.

[Themos]

Sanctuary isn't as useful on 10 man, very true. But neither is Holy Rain.

10 man is more about properly choosing the right spell at the right time rather than 25 man specific roles RAW SMASH. In this regard, Holy is very powerful imo. And I never feel inadequate. While Sanctuary is a great chakra to primarily use on 25, I found that in 10 Serenity works much better most of the time. The added burst of Holy Word Serenity, the ability to keep Renews rolling for virtually free, and more reliance on direct heals (especially Binding Heal) makes it pull out ahead by a wide margin. On top of that, you can very easily swap to Sanctuary for very specific burn phases. Factor in a very powerful 3 min CD that we got with 4.3, and Holy is sexy in all sorts of ways.

The Chakra system isn't a con it's a plus that gives the holy priest kit, which already has a very extensive spell book, even more options. Albeit conditionally. The Holy kit also is very skill dependent. In the hands of a good player, Holy is fantastic. It's not as derp as Disc or holy pallies, in bad hands you'll do absolutely terrible.

[nobodysbaby]

Yepp, Holy is practice, practice and more practice. I agree with Themos, I have seen the biggest variety of bad vs awsome healers in this specc.

[Christoffer1989]

I tried too find this but no luck, so im asking here

I have a priest alt, running MS as Holy and I have sstumble across t13 shadow gloves now I wonder if its worth replacing t12 chest+gloves with t13 shadow gloves and mmorchok 384 chest.
I have t13 397 legs + 384 shoulders so I have 2set bonus

Armory: http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...3%A1n/advanced

[Themos]

The t13 2set promotes more proactive use of DH. As long as you use it earlier in burn phases and take advantage of the mana cost reduction, you should be fine. You have HotU, so I say go with the higher ilvl stats. Your combat regen is a bit low for heroic modes, but for normal runs you should be more than fine, imo.

[Christoffer1989]

The t13 2set promotes more proactive use of DH. As long as you use it earlier in burn phases and take advantage of the mana cost reduction, you should be fine. You have HotU, so I say go with the higher ilvl stats. Your combat regen is a bit low for heroic modes, but for normal runs you should be more than fine, imo.

Atm im only doing LFR / 5mans^^ but ty for answar

[Themos]

Atm im only doing LFR / 5mans^^ but ty for answar

Ah, then definitely take the upgrades and proactively use DH early and often. If a fight takes 5 mins, make sure you used DH twice, etc.
The t13 2set is very noticeable. At my regen, I can pretty much spam spells and my mana bar doesn't move up or down. Well utilized, it's very potent.

[zakaluka]

with regard to sanctuary, it's still far and away holy's highest HPET spell during stacking phases:

10-stack Sanc: 131k HPC (heal-per-cast) cast time? ~1.2s (assuming you haste stack in 10 man o.o) 110k HPET
5 target PoH is: 80k HPC @ 2.0s cast time, 40k HPET
PoM? if you let it get consumed fully, 67k HPE, 55k HPET, 20 HPM.

PoH and Sanc have almost identical HPM (sanc wins by a very tiny bit, more if you are mastery stacked)
What this means is: gone are the days where we would precast sanc before big inc damage, and no other time.

Just as any GCD you can use on Mending spikes your HPS and improves your overall effic, any GCD you spend on Sanc provides all the same benefits (even during heavy spike aoe healing).
- Below 9 targets sanc becomes an effic loss, but still remains a significant hps spike.
- At 5 targets, sanc still has higher HPCT than PoH. Burst gain, effic loss. Think hagara.
- Between 3 and 4 targets, Sanc still has higher HPC than renew, so it's still a good precast if all you're worried about is triage. Think morchok 10 here.

[Themos]

While numbers like that are useful, you can't judge which spell to use solely on things like HPET.
Abbreviated HPS matters as well, especially in 10 man due to there being less splash/cross healing. Your individual decision has a much bigger impact. It's much easier to fully optimize your casts in a 25 man.


Consider that while Sanctuary has a very high HPET, raiders need to stand in it and stay alive to make that HPET value be realistic.
When the shit hits the fan on the last leg of the fight (think pre 5-10% debuff nerfs), wasting a global on Sanct can get someone killed b/c in the next 2-3 seconds Sanctuary does squat for their health pool. The most important thing as a healer is to keep everyone alive. Things like HPET be damned sometimes.

Morchuk is a good example, even if no one moved for the duration of Sanctuary during his Enrage, taking the time to cast Sanct can result in a Stomp death b/c one of your soakers is too low in health and it's about to hit.


An alternative way of considering this is as follows:
-You only need so much HPS for a fight, that aside it's all about timing the right heals on the right people. As such you can sacrifice your HPS by a small fraction, to keep people alive by using the less optimal casts b/c situationally those spells are the ones that work best.

[zakaluka]

it's more just useful for planning, knowing when it's efficient to cast sanc. I wasn't suggesting sanc will prevent deaths right now the way a PoH or flash will, it's more that it will gain you ground over the next 18 seconds with crazy damage flying around.

Like this scenario: I'm healing 10-main raids again. The joys of guild politics: a key group of players quit over some drama that a long-absent GM caused. Back to 10's for now. So on Hagara I am holy and heal with another holy priest (our healer switch) + a resto shaman. Ranged pile is 7 large, so group 2 holds all the ranged but me and the other holy priest sit in group 1 by ourselves (for max abuse of binding heal to spike).

It's useful for me to know these HPET numbers in this situation. As long as I'm not stuck in triage or recovery, any gcd spent on sanc is worthwhile. Because it nets me about an extra PoH. Same story as Mending.

No, the numbers don't mean everything. They're just useful in solidifying your strategy. You still have to heal reactively - IE the situation forces you to use certain heals even if they're not the most 'efficient'.

[kronpas]

Im back from almost a year quitting the game, and the guide provided great help. But I havent been in game yet, so reading it somewhat confusing me esp. the spell usage part. From what I understand you mainly use flash heal and greater heal, 2 of the most mana intensive spells. Is healer mana pool at this stage of the game so large that one can forget the insane cost of flash heal?

[Danner]

Kronpas: Negative. But our regen is ~3x as good as it was a year ago thanks to gear upgrades. And that REALLY helps.

As Disc, you won't need to cast it too much. You have other better spells to cover the same niche, and thus flash heal is more of an oddity.
As Holy in 25man you won't need to cast it too much. You can get away with using AoE heals primarily, and let the other healers do the spot heals.
As Holy in 10man, you need to either cast it too much, or rely on Renew to do the same thing.

By far, Renew cannot replace FHeal/Gheal, but it's not a completely useless alternative. A mix/match between the two saves the day. The devil is in how you mix the two, and alternate with other cheaper heals inbetween (ProM, CoH, Surge of Light, Serenity etc). I must admit my solution is to brute-force for more regen and rely more heavily on flash heal than I remotely should - but it's working pretty well after some gear upgrades. Even though 6800 combat regen is a patently ridiculous amount of regen, I can still run myself dry very fast if needed. But the important thing is that it works.

[Themos]

Im back from almost a year quitting the game, and the guide provided great help. But I havent been in game yet, so reading it somewhat confusing me esp. the spell usage part. From what I understand you mainly use flash heal and greater heal, 2 of the most mana intensive spells. Is healer mana pool at this stage of the game so large that one can forget the insane cost of flash heal?

For Holy, the high cost of Fheal was never that much of a penalty due to how Serendipity worked. As long as you used those stacks, and never capped at 2 when casting more Flash Heals(or Binding Heals!!), it was a relatively efficient healing spell from our toolkit. Holy's big problem was the prohibitively high mana cost on all our spells in general. Which has long been a non-issue. I haven't had to worry about mana since the first tier of content, and only then right after the regen nerf that we rightfully needed.

As the content has been getting progressively harsher, our combat regen has been keeping up if not out pacing what we need. Especially since, a SF+Hymn of Hope combo is a full mana bar reset.

There is nothing insane about the cost of any of our spells.

[zakaluka]

At the same time Kronpas misinterpreted the reading slightly. Yes, FH is far too expensive to use liberally. Casting flash won't bring you off your spike, but it will steal overall HPS (and thus your other healer's mana) in the long run. Flash remains an emergency spell as long as you happen to be limited by regen. And if you find yourself using flash just because you can afford it - it's an inefficient playstyle. GHeal brings you off your spike, but saves you mana. Just another tradeoff.

Only one fight will force you into using a lot of flash, our friend Morchok.

[Ethas]

For Holy, the high cost of Fheal was never that much of a penalty due to how Serendipity worked. As long as you used those stacks, and never capped at 2 when casting more Flash Heals(or Binding Heals!!), it was a relatively efficient healing spell from our toolkit. Holy's big problem was the prohibitively high mana cost on all our spells in general. Which has long been a non-issue. I haven't had to worry about mana since the first tier of content, and only then right after the regen nerf that we rightfully needed.

As the content has been getting progressively harsher, our combat regen has been keeping up if not out pacing what we need. Especially since, a SF+Hymn of Hope combo is a full mana bar reset.

There is nothing insane about the cost of any of our spells.

Strange, but at the first tier set 2 FH per fight could easily lead me to oom at the last %s of the boss's health (usualy toughest part of the fight).

Right now you can use FH/GH, but very occasionally, since you are far better at AoE healing than single-target.