Holy Priest 5 mans. Emergency heals

[Myunihausen]

Hello, I love my preist and though I'm told to just go disc, I have heard of many sucessfully healing 5 mans as holy. I am kinda stuck in reg heroics ATM despite my gear being a little more than whats needed because I'm just feeling that my heals are a bit too weak for the ZA/ZG's.. esp. in the "heal everyone at once dept". What are you guys doing to get everyone back up to a safe level? ATM alot of the groups i've been in so much damage is being taken that I am forced into the corner of spamming greater heals that just wreck my mana. I'm seeing good heals from POM and COH, but not enough, and my POH seems almost worthless (it is glyphed). I like to save cd's for when really needed but have been using divine hyme alot more to attempt to delay the inevitable and even then it's not enough. I have the same spec recommened and am following just about everything that the stickied holy preist thread says/suggests. I used to be a really good healer with him in wrath and BC (yes, healing was easy in wrath but as far as when/what to cast and emergency triage) but ATM the normal heroics are just making me feel incompetant. Hopefully one of you has info that could possibly get me out of this rut, if not i'll give disc a try before throwing this toon to the backburner. I know some of it is the resiliance/dps geared tanks forcing me to stay on them or they die and ppl not knowing the fights/doing stupid shit but honestly I can feel the weakness.... Currently I use alot of Heal since it's free to tackle inc tank dmg and keep ppl topped off until stronger casts are needed, POM is rarely off cd and pop COH when all party members begin taking damage, it's after that when I get forced into the greater heal casts and attempting POH (which for me seems very too little, too late everytime).

[Themos]

Binding Heal might be a solution to your problems. Heal yourself and someone else at the same time and the Serendipity stacks will get used on either a Gheal or PoH to great effect.

I hope youre healing in Serenity Chakra. All heroics, including ZA/ZG , it's a given

[eErike]

Serenity off cd is the trick, having a renew up on players you find to usually take damage is nice to. Don't feel the need to have everyone topped all the time eother, slowly healing the gruop with CoH and renew if what goes the best with our mastery. I have found that a haste heavy build is more suitable for 5mans than a mastery one, but that might just be me.

[Vook]

Gah, wall of text! Use spacing

Both specs are perfectly fine for 5mans. Holy as more AoE, Disc has more single target. If the tank is getting smashed, use CC or check his gear/spec.

Also, an armory would be helpful.

[Nanaboostme]

"ATM alot of the groups i've been in so much damage is being taken that I am forced into the corner of spamming greater heals that just wreck my mana."

- Take advantage of Serendipity - 2 flash heals followed by Greater Heal (or Prayer of Healing). Faster heals and a quick and cheaper greater heal.

"I'm seeing good heals from POM and COH, but not enough, and my POH seems almost worthless (it is glyphed). "

When you know everyone will be taking a great amount of damage, switch to Sanctuary. All AoE spells get at 15% increase. Always keep PoM up, download an addon if you can't keep track of who it is currently on. It should usually be in your top 3 healing abilities.

"I like to save cd's for when really needed but have been using divine hyme alot more to attempt to delay the inevitable and even then it's not enough. I have the same spec recommened and am following just about everything that the stickied holy preist thread says/suggests."

- It's extremely tougher for Holy Priests in lower gears when it comes to mana regeneration. Your tank will have to be more patient before every pull to let you drink if they want to survive at the least. Once I past around the i357ish lvl, mana regeneration was so much less strenuous for me.

Addition: Avoid speccing in renew might do the trick.
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bcbZsu...zohb:azV0zqVzM - this is what Narika from Ensidia used. She says renew tends to be useless and the reason why you might become mana starved so quickly. It's better to rely on Serendipity for quicker and more direct healing than placing renew on your party members. I only keep renew on my tank and only refreshing it with Serenity

[Xami]

I haven't healed as Holy in a while, but if you can't sustain spamming gheal then you may have a regen problem. Check your gear and make sure you're getting enough spi. I'd aim for 2000 or more.

Any particular fights you're struggling with? With a bit of knowledge some fights become very trivial. Mandokir, for example, seems to require a lot of healing at first glance, but the mechanic behind Bloodletting allows you to be lazy and not top off anyone but the tank, because the only damage non-tanks take is %-based on current HP (meaning they can't die), so you can just toss a renew and keep healing the tank.

I think the most difficult bosses to heal as priest are Akil'zon (the bird boss in ZA) and Kilnara (Panther boss in ZG). These bosses are quite dependent on DPS performance. For bird boss, make sure your DPS are killing little birds as well as the big white one. For panther boss, let DPS burn cd's early on and stay compact for ground AoE heal, and make them use Lightwell. Even at 360+ ilvl the panther boss gives priests difficulties. It's a group effort to minimize incoming damage, as well as healer being on top of dispelling and being as efficient as possible.

A lot of the zg/za fights are quite dependent on DPS performance. If your 3 DPS are cool and pull 20k+ DPS and does everything right, you'll most likely end fights with more than 50% mana left. If they only pull ~10k DPS and fail at avoiding things, you're in trouble.