Feeling discouraged about heroic 5 mans.

[jibbyjackjoe]

Hello all. Without going into terrible detail about my stats, I'd like to vent my frustration about my experiences switching to heroics on my new 85 disc priest. Healing in normals was a blast. I never went oom, was always watching my mana usage knowing how cata 5 mans treated healers.

Now that I'm in heroics, I just can't complete them. I am A/A and had a blast doing damage while healing, but now I can't even get to 2 stacks before I have to start using normal heals. My PW:S gets absorbed on one hit. I'm using penance on cooldown... I think my ilvl sits at 332 (mostly normal gear, with 2 piece t12 and perhaps the valor wand).

I have attempted 4 heroics, none successful. I've used flasks, food, I have. I don't have the most fantastic gems, but it's not like I'm gemming strength and agility. I read tons of guides. I always ask if we can CC mobs (but it never happens because apparently everyone is supposed to be super geared).

All of that background info aside, my question is this: are heroics still tuned like they were at the beginning of cata, with tanks taking a ton of spike damage, new healers going oom, constantly spamming my fast heals because the slow heals wouldn't make it in time?

Thanks for your responses. I'm at work so I can't do the armory linky. I had zero problems doing normals, finally got my ilvl up to do heroics, and even waited until I got two more upgrades before attempting them. Still having no luck.

[skiiwee29]

Honestly, and this is me speaking personally... Holy is the better spec to start out with healing honestly. Much more mana regen without having to worry about Rapture. AE healing much more which makes keeping people topped up a little easier.

[jibbyjackjoe]

Honestly, and this is me speaking personally... Holy is the better spec to start out with healing honestly. Much more mana regen without having to worry about Rapture. AE healing much more which makes keeping people topped up a little easier.

Yeah, I was thinking about swapping to holy to see if I got better results. It just stinks that I found a healing style I really fell in love with, healed that way fro 15-85 normals, and now I have to switch just to play.

[zazuch]

The thing is your in nerfed heroics. Heroics were actually hard when they first came out. Required cc and took time to do them. Then people bitched about it and they nerfed and added the luck of the draw buff to make them faceroll easy again lol.

But as blatz said go holy. You can do disc later but there is so many cds and other things you can use that mana is not a issue in holy maybe with your gear but really geared priests holy almost never goes oom if you have a semi decent tank.

[jibbyjackjoe]

The thing is your in nerfed heroics. Heroics were actually hard when they first came out. Required cc and took time to do them. Then people bitched about it and they nerfed and added the luck of the draw buff to make them faceroll easy again lol.

But as blatz said go holy. You can do disc later but there is so many cds and other things you can use that mana is not a issue in holy maybe with your gear but really geared priests holy almost never goes oom if you have a semi decent tank.

That was part of my question too. The tanks I were healing we're literally getting hit for 66-75% of their health every time. Even shielded. No one would CC (cuz you know, ice trap is hard now that it doesn't cause aggro, amirite?) I just didn't know if I got really unlucky, or if disc just sucks at beginning heroics, or if all healing sucks at beginning heroics. If all after all that, then I'll look at my play style and see if I'm doing something wrong, but like I said, I feel like I just don't have enough time to do what A/A is designed to do anymore.

Thanks you guys for the responses so far

[Xuthal]

I am betting that your groups are being lazy about cc, your tanks are probably not using their defensive cds, etc. etc. I have stopped running heroic 5s these days for this very reason. Folks seem to have little interest in playing their class to the fullest at this level. I have no idea why, but it is frustrating as heck.

[skiiwee29]

Most likely if there getting gibbed that hard there trying to tank in improper gear and/or spec

[Shadowmeld]

I had a similar problem when I started healing on my shammy. I would do perfectly fine in any normals, and had mana/time to spare that I could blow it on damage for fun! I would even run the place as ele instead sometimes to try to maximize my 'off' damage. When I hit heroics, I had a hard time even keeping up with trash.

The only thing I can say is to make sure and do all the mechanics perfect. Sign up for heroics to maximize your gear chances, and just try to get through them. After a few heroics and some gear upgrades, you will start to feel much much better. Get your ilevel to the 340's and you'll feel much less stressed. Best of luck!!!

[kakle]

People can be quite unforgiving to healers, you might hate this suggestion more but maybe go shadow until geared enough to out heal impatient people, another option is to pvp and convert honor to jp(presuming you still can). The most fun option though is to get 5 friends and do it as a team.

[Yisile]

I ran a normal Heroic the other day... it was bad... At this point in time, anyone who's currently in a normal heroic likely doesn't know what they're doing at all. Mechanics, rotations, and brains are all out the window. My advice to you is to get 356 gear level ASAP and start doing the new heroics.

[berserklover]

I wouldn't worry about it, you should only have to heal the tank (most tank are pretty gear these days) and dps needs to watch out. Within a week u'll be ilvl 370 at least, and by then it won't matter anymore.

[Deadwood]

If you're on US servers, you're free to add me to Real ID. I'll run with you through heroics. My bear doesn't get hit hard at all. Will at least get you geared up a bit.

[jibbyjackjoe]

I love everyone in this thread. I'm probably going to get one more JP piece before I try again.
@cuddly, absolutely the nicest thing anyone on here offered to do : D I may hit you up! I work nights, so I usually only play around this time on my off days or right when I get home from work.

You all are truly fantastic. Any more suggestions are still appreciated.

[Killaim]

If tanks are hit for 66-75% of their health, they are doing something terribly wrong. Either playwise, gearwise or specwise.

PW:S will in most cases dissipate in one to two hits, which is pretty normal. Doesn't mean that it's a crap spell. And at low levels you'd probably want to hit the Rapture proc as often as possible. As for AA/A, don't expect to use it that much, only during downtimes when you're sure the tank/group won't take moderate-high amounts of damage in the foreseeable future or if there are some insane +healing and/or +damage buffs (100%+), otherwise stick to normal heals. Also Penance on cooldown is completely normal.

That's just about as much advice as I can give. I don't really know how a fresh healer feels in current day heroics and puggers, since my only healer has been my main priest, which I leveled up as Holy at release of Cata, so I was either running heroics with my guild or other group members were at least slightly sensible how difficult things may be :/

[Deleted]

Starting heroics as disc (especially AA/A) is hard, just switch to holy and you will have no problems at all. Sadly in our times people just queue up as tank to get faster invites while in no way having decent gear for that task, just stick to holy as second specc and you will see that while your gear goes up in ilvl, you will have more and more success playing AA/A.

[Penric]

I ran a normal Heroic the other day... it was bad... At this point in time, anyone who's currently in a normal heroic likely doesn't know what they're doing at all.

This is very true.. I decided to do a normal heroic the other day to get away from the 3 new ones and I discovered that people had no clue and the fact that the gear level for them were mostly blues unenchanted and odd gem choices. I have no problem at all healing the new 3 heroics but the older ones are more hectic as players are still learning the runs and still gearing up.

[Deleted]

Honestly, and this is me speaking personally... Holy is the better spec to start out with healing honestly. Much more mana regen without having to worry about Rapture. AE healing much more which makes keeping people topped up a little easier.

i agree with this

[Twoflower]

Tanks realy should not get hit for 50+% of their life in heroics. You must have some terrible tanks.

That said, I guess that you are a bit spoiled by your experience in leveling. You said that you never went oom. I am pretty sure that you can improve your playstyle of disc and it's not all 100% the tanks fault. Heroics took some getting used to at the beginning of cata. In the beginning, they can be a bit of a struggle.

Inspect your tank before your run and see if he has tanking gear, tanking spec and proper enchanting etc. Use CC. If people die without using CC; make sure to laugh at them and remind them to use CC next time. Get used to the instances. Get used to the new mana management requirements.

Enjoy it while it is difficult. A few JP items later and you can faceroll your way trough the heroics, and then it will be boring again. See it as a challenge

[Tricksterjim]

Do 10 Non-heroic 85 randoms to get JP. Buy OP 378 Gear. Buy cheap 353+ gear of AH to fill spot. --> Heal heroics without going under 80%

Literally if you spend 1 evening chaining non-heroic randoms you can get enough JP to gear your priest and have no problems at all. The JP gear more then enough to do any of the heroics.

[Deleted]

What I noticed at the beginning of Cataclysm and the heroic healing was (sadly) that your gear made the most difference, especially as Disc. I was lucky to be in guild groups as DPS so I could gather a decent healing gear before getting back to healing but those guys would still CC and so on. :P

And it doesn't hurt to remind the group about doing CC so you can keep up with the heals. Hopefully you just end up with a group that has some brains and they actually listen to you on that one. Other than that, you just have to rely on luck with the groups.