Help me with my Priest heals

[t0rc]

One of our healers has gone back to school so I'm going to be picking up raid healing on my priest.

I'll collect some WoL for review but currently don't have any parses.

here is my gear and spec:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...rei/Tsc/simple

Currently my HPS isn't coming in as high as the Druid raid healer. I notice my overhealing is considerably lower than her's. I don't know if this is accounting for the HPS disparity and her's just goes towards overhealing and mine are more efficient.

I've been doing a bit of research this morning, I think i'm using flash heal too much in my disc spec. I'll try and use shield more. For now If you could check out my gear and spec to see if something is out of whack. I've been stacking masterly, not haste. I've been wondering if this could have an impact on my overall healing and I should consider switching to haste stacking, or at least regem some gear to give me a bit more haste.

Also, I like to keep spirit of redemption, because if you die last and get out of combat quickly you can cast mass ressurection.

Thanks in advance

[Deleted]

10 or 25 man. Wich is the other healer if going with 3? How much mana your ending each fight with

[Sterilize]

Are you counting absorbs into your totals as well?

[Ultima]

Half the people in this thread will tell you to reforge to Haste, the other half-1 will tell you to reforge to Mastery. One person will tell you to reforge Crit.

You won't be beating a Resto Druid in healing done. Your overhealing should be lower, it's hard to beat them at that!

Are you raiding 10 or 25? Are you mainly Holy or Disc? (You mentioned SoR)

[Deleted]

As far as comparing yourself to a druid healer is concerned, remember that things like Tranquility (their lovely 3 minute cooldown) will add to to their healing done/hps.

A disco priest's 3min cooldown (barrier) will not show up as additional healing, despite preventing 25% of damage for those under it.

This is part of the reason druids look incredible on the meters.

[t0rc]

@Onaturi
10 man raids. I'm mostly oom or LoM by the end of raids. I forgot about the rapture procs so I'll try shielding and flash healing less.

@Sterilize
No i'm not counting absorbs unless recount includes them. I don't think it does.

@Ultima
10 man raiding. I mentioned SoR from my holy spec just because i figured someone would ask why I had that for a raiding spec. At this point I'd like to run as disc and switch to holy for fights that require the raid to stack for heals.

Recount does include absorbs ~ Ultima

[Sterilize]

I use skada as a dmg meter and there's a few additional plugins one can download that total healing done+absorbs or just flat absorbs if you wish. There's probably something similar for recount.

[t0rc]

I think i also need to make a macro to cast my inner focus in my Gheal cast. I often neglect this ability.

---------- Post added 2011-09-02 at 11:27 AM ----------

How do my spec/gem/enchant choices look? i pretty much took the template from the mmo-champ site for both specs. I also believe i'm gemmed correctly if stacking mastery is my concern.

[Deleted]

Holies need 12.5% raidbuffed for an extra tick of renew, then stack mastery. As disc you can stack either haste to maximize PoH or mastery for PW:S. Depends on your play style. But something in the middle just doesn't work.

Druids are always topping the meter if they're doing it right, and overheal as well, since all cooldowns of druids are just boosting own heals, whereas priests have hymns and PW:B that are mitigating or help boosting the others, so it's not really a big deal to be 10% behind.

Never use any single heal on non graced targets as disc, disc ist the worst rnghealer. Or if you are requested to do that from you raidleader, spec holy.

SoR is good for heroic progression, but if you are just doing normal modes, you can skip this point, because you normally won't wipe on a normal mode boss because the boss is doing more damage than you can heal. It's more likely that somebody is doing it all wrong. Also, you should have a rogue, hunter or mage for mass res. A point wasted just for that is a bit ... not so cool.

Atonement is useless. It's 5 points for nothing other than 2 more seemingly viable keys to push which reduce your healing done.

If you are doing Tankheal with your disc spec, skill Inspiration (Tier 2 Holy). If you are doing raid healing, take focused will, des. prayer and veiled shadows (Tier 1 Shadow) instead of train of thought, since you never cast a greater heal as a raid healing disc.

Raid healing would be very mana intensive as disc, so keep tracking rapture and summon your fiend on cooldown.

[Zka]

I use skada as a dmg meter and there's a few additional plugins one can download that total healing done+absorbs or just flat absorbs if you wish. There's probably something similar for recount.

Ah can we stop with this finally? Recount is counting absorbs AS HEAL since 4.0.1 or so. Anyone who updated his recount in this expansion should never see heals without absorbs.

---------- Post added 2011-09-02 at 01:49 PM ----------

since you never cast a greater heal as a raid healing disc.

That's a lie. Maybe that works in 25m normals where you can afford the luxury of only healing groups with poh and penance the tank every blue moon or something like that.
But a lot of bosses involve random target damage (on 1-2 targets), how do you heal that? FH? Renew??? No way. You'll use penance/gheal for that. Unless you are doing it wrong, that is.

[Deleted]

The first thing you need to learn is that comparing your performance against a different class using healing meters is utterly worthless. Healing meters aren't like dps meters. There is only a finite amount of damage that needs to be healed during a fight.

Talk to your other healers. If they're stressed out whilst you're twiddling your thumbs then you have a problem. If your raid isn't dying due to lack of healing, then congratulations, you're doing it right.

[Deleted]

But a lot of bosses involve random target damage (on 1-2 targets), how do you heal that? FH? Renew??? No way. You'll use penance/gheal for that. Unless you are doing it wrong, that is.

As stated, you are not doing a random target healing as disc. If you are asked to do it, spec holy. In fact, Paladin is the right class to do this kind of job.

[Zka]

The first thing you need to learn is that comparing your performance against a different class using healing meters is utterly worthless. Healing meters aren't like dps meters. There is only a finite amount of damage that needs to be healed during a fight.

Talk to your other healers. If they're stressed out whilst you're twiddling your thumbs then you have a problem.

In fact, healing meters will easily show if you are twiddling thumbs: you will do MUCH less total effective healing than the other healers.
I haven't really seen an exception to that unless we used more healers than needed.

---------- Post added 2011-09-02 at 01:56 PM ----------

As stated, you are not doing a random target healing as disc. If you are asked to do it, spec holy. In fact, Paladin is the right class to do this kind of job.

Why not? And what if I have to? And why is holy better for that? I specced holy once and felt like a gimp when I tried to heal random burst targets.

[Callypso]

As Ultima pointed out, half the people here will tell you haste is the way to go, the other half mastery. The one person that will mention Crit is wrong.

Haste vs mastery really comes down to playstyle. For me personally, whether i'm disc or holy, haste benefits the most from my personal healing style and vice versa. I tried going with haste.... and my healing became a mess (or so it felt anyway).

As disc you should be able to cover nearly all your healing with a combination of Gheal, Shields, and PoH (depending on what your assignment is ofc). Flashheal should be an 'oh shit' heal only, and if you're casting "heal" too much, you are a) running with too many healers b) not pulling your weight c) there's simply no damage going on at that time.

[Deleted]

Why not? And what if I have to? And why is holy better for that? I specced holy once and felt like a gimp when I tried to heal random burst targets.

Because holy can do 2 target healing without losing hps. Disc can't. You need a Penance for grace and you cannot use your shield on 12 sec CD since the damage is completely random, so you shield the tank. The result is, you are doing worse at what you are supposed to be doing. As a holy, you have an "oh shit" cooldown if your target is dropping low. As a disc, pain sup wouldn't help if the target is already at 20k health. He would die with or without the painsup in most cases.

If you've checked the official site of simcraft, there are exactly 3 model's for disc, a tank healing model, with or w/o renew, a PoH model, both with rapture on CD, and a shield spam model. It's got its reason.

---------- Post added 2011-09-02 at 02:12 PM ----------

Oh right, Inner Fire if you are haste PoH disc, Inner Will else.

[Deleted]

I think i also need to make a macro to cast my inner focus in my Gheal cast. I often neglect this ability.[COLOR="red"]

/cast Inner Focus
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear();
/cast Greater Heal

[babylon]

35/../..
strange talents choice. if you heal raid and like atonement, why sos? if you heal tank and like sos, why atonement?
i feel like going for all those options means that you will have them all but wont have any of them maxed as you miss out on output talents like darkness.

you mentioned you go oom or lom - why not speccing veiled shadows till you sort your mana usage?
also think of spending valors on 2 set pieces (dress+gloves maybe?) for the bonus.

at this gear level, for a beginner with mana problems, i like to think that heartsong might be a better enchant than power torrent. mostly because you seem still a bit confused with your regular spells, missing raptures - doubt you spend time on planning using cds on procs then but thats my personal opinion, not to be discussed.

flash heal - afraid you are using too much of it? remove it from your bars/bindings completely for 1 week.
not a joke.
learn to play without it, learn to abuse other tools, and then pick it back up.

[voorshwa]

First off, do yourself an incredible favor and stop looking at meters and HPS. Those kinds of numbers matter for DPS, not Healers.

Second, if you are hell bent on keeping SoR then you are planning to fail. If you are keeping a deep tree Priest talent so you can make the retry faster then you are depriving yourself of much more meaningful points elsewhere. Stop comparing yourself to other healers unless they are your exact class/spec. All healing is different for different situations for different classes. In case you didn't notice the point of that last sentence, every class/spec is different.

If you are actually going to be a Disc Priest then you need more Mastery. Simply because your best heals (Absorbs) are based off of mastery and are instant cast and not DoTs. So Haste is pretty much just for your Flash Heal, Greater Heal (yes you should use this in Disc) and PoH (again use it). Don't use Barrier for Holy SH** moments. Use it on CD and make sure to time your Shadow Fiend with your Mana Chant. You will get back more mana per hit of your shadow fiend because of the chant.

And the one thing I know many priests fail to use is Binding Heal. This is one of our most useful spells because it allows us to not only heal someone else, but ourselves when we can't move. It's a quick cast and can be the difference on a win on certain fights (Last Phase Council). Also, PoM off CD all the time, everytime.

hth

V

EDIT: Spelling Errors

[Madam]

OP~ You mentioned healing w/ a Druid, are you two healing? If so, pick up 2/2 Inspiration.

Ingela's Rapture add-on will help.

Running at 2800 combat regen seems high for an AA/A spec, also, most stack Haste for this build.

With your high Mastery and Spirit (not reforging anything) you should favor PW:S spam.
You may want to go with non AA/A spec for your current stat weights.

Macro's taken from the Disc Guide at the top of this page.

Inner Focus / Prayer of Healing Macro:

#show Prayer of Healing
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Inner Focus
/cast [target=target] Prayer of Healing
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

Inner Focus / Greater Heal Macro:

#show Greater Heal
/script UIErrorsFrame:Hide()
/cast Inner Focus
/cast [target=target] Greater Heal
/script UIErrorsFrame:Clear(); UIErrorsFrame:Show()

[zakaluka]

There is a huge rift in the priest community about the 'right' ways to do things. The more I read these dialogues and understand them, the more I begin to understand why. 'Top performing' disc priests also have the least stable throughput and depend more heavily on their other healers to make good decisions. Is that responsible or useful? Maybe. It depends entirely on the people in your raid group.

As a result you'll get all kinds of conflicting advice on a forum like this. All I can say is take the ideas people give you and try them out a few at a time. At first, settle down with whichever configuration feels most stable / dependable to you. After you get practice with that start figuring out how you can boost your throughput in little chunks here/there.

I'm always changing how I do things. Sometimes I put on a reforge or try some healing strategy that dominates the healing meters, but I often put an idea back on the shelf because maybe it didn't feel 'safe'. 'Highest performing' is not always 'best'.