[Holy] Regen Tips and Tricks

[HPLathus]

So, I have been seeing a lot of priests on the forums latley talking a lot about how bad holy regen seems to be[mainly because we only really have 1 source of additional regen other then spirit at any given time]

So I decided to create this thread that is OPEN for constructive discussion on strategies people use as holy priests to best regen mana throughout the course of fights.


1) Pop shadowfiend/mind bender as early as possible. Don't wait till you get to 20% mana to pop your shadowfiend, pop it 20 seconds into a fight to cap your mana back up and you will find that it could be available 2-3 times per fight.

2) Mana potions, macro these bad boys with your archangel/arcane torrent/trinket procs 30k mana is 30k mana, period.

3) Macros:

/use 10(Engineers)
/use 14(or 13 depending on what your "use" trinket is)
/cast arcane torrent
/use Insert_manapot_here

4) PW:Solace: I can't say enough how useful this spell is specifically as holy. A lot of people argue mindbender is better, but if you are using shadowfiend early in the fight this creates a second source of mana regen, even if you only get to cast it 5 times during a downtime moment. thats 2100x5: 10,500 mana, most fights i cast this at LEAST 3 dozen times. Thats a lot of mana.

Also, if you are using PW:Solace with cooldowns like HYmn of Hope, you are gaining aditional mana per cast, it's important to time solace with abilities like that to MAXIMIZE as much regen as you can.

5) This somewhat relates to the macro I posted, but you need to be using your trinkets ON cooldown. Macro them into your casts, other abilities something so you can ensure that you are getting full benefit from them(granted you have use trinkets)

6) Be selective with your casts, if you are stacking mastery take advantage of the fact that that extra 20-30% HoT is going to heal the last 10k health that people have, trust me it will. You don't need to cast PoH until it's overhealing ESP with mastery stacking.

7) CoH/PoM/Divine Insight: Circle of healing + glyph is a great instant heal, a lot of people I watch in videos and talk to are missing the great short cooldown on this spell. You should be using it on cooldown is there are more then 4 people in the raid with 20k or more damage done to them. Don't rely on PoH to be your ONLY aoe healing spell

Divine Insight: For most fights, you almost NEED to have a weak aura/power aura to track this bad boy. It's amazing, basically a second circle of healing as well as a pretty low mana cost for PoM. This could replace an entire PoH cast or CoH.

PoM: should be casting it on cooldown, it's a smart heal and once its cast, you are already regening the mana and it will continue to heal after you have cast it

8) Don't snipe heals, yea healing meters are cool, you can do awsome HPS sure, but in 25 mans you have 3-4 other healers, and in 10 mans 1-2 extra. It's not about topping meters, it's about making sure you are benefiting the ENTIRE raid esp your other healers, if you are trying to snipe heals to be "top on meters" you are doing it wrong.

If there are 2 healers in a raid, play as if you are healing with two characters, not just trying to be the single best healer

if there are 3 other healers, play as if you are healing with 3 characters.

9) DON'T USE HW: SANCTUARY

FOr the mana cost, and the diminishing returns on this spell it just is NOT worth it. I have never seen a single WoL parse with sanctuary doing any WORTHWHILE healing. Sure it's a heal that lasts 25-30 seconds but at most its critting people for 2.5k.

COmpare it to healing rain, it's just not good.

It's a mana drainer, plain and simple, you have much better heals to cast then sanctuary.


Hope this helps, everyone should be adding insight as to how you manage your mana as holy. Holy REALLY doesn't have as many mana problems as people think, most of the time people see holy as the "OMG SPAM HEAL SPEC FOR AOE AWSOMENESSSS" and is what causes them to go oom.


HOly is about using your "SMART" heals efficiently to maximize your output(which can be massive if you control them well enough)


POST YOUR OWN OPINIONS/FEEDBACK AND CREATE DISCUSSION ON THIS TOPIC

Please post constructively and don't bash people.

[Syonu]

9) DON'T USE HW: SANCTUARY

FOr the mana cost, and the diminishing returns on this spell it just is NOT worth it. I have never seen a single WoL parse with sanctuary doing any WORTHWHILE healing. Sure it's a heal that lasts 25-30 seconds but at most its critting people for 2.5k.

COmpare it to healing rain, it's just not good.

It's a mana drainer, plain and simple, you have much better heals to cast then sanctuary.

I completely agree with this 100%. This being said I still use Chakra: Sanctuary during points in the raid where there is high raid damage (still never using HW: Sanctuary). Worthless extra spell, but the passive from the Chakra is great.

[Holygrail]

2) Mana potions, macro these bad boys with your archangel/arcane torrent/trinket procs 30k mana is 30k mana, period.

I fail to see why macroing a mana potion to Archangel etc. is going to be useful.
You should use it for a quick mana boost if you're running low on mana and need more quickly. Seeing as you can only use it once per fight you might as well use it at the correct moment, there's no need to macro it.

4) PW:Solace: I can't say enough how useful this spell is specifically as holy.

I know this is opinionated but with the recent buff to Mindbender's mana restoration (1.5% per hit), Mindbender is therefore statistically better on almost all boss encounters currently in the game. You can't afford *that* much downtime as Holy, infact Solace is generally more useful as Disc in my opinion.

Nether-the-less, some good all-round tips

[Deleted]

Personally I'd advise against having your mana pot in a macro. Mana management is often about control, and having it within a macro means you lose some; using AT and Pot could mean a net loss of mana due to trying to exceed your total mana pool. Additionally, you have 2, or possibly 3 different mana gaining potions you could use, differing fights may mean you take a master pot, others a focus pot.

Most of the rest of your information is solid, though assuming your armory is your main, once you move into heroic modes you will likely find little room for solace, the only fight I use it for is Elegon, YMMV.

HW Sanctuary isn't totally worthless, but yes, it's rare I cast it-even though I see crits approaching 7k.

Others things you may want to consider:

Doubling up on mana hymns if you have a SP in the raid, having popped fiend/bender first.

These can be done if you have some warning or control on when the pull will occur:

Cast that worthless HW Sanctuary 5 seconds before the pull if it's a fight where you will be stacked enough, doing so means you can start with "free healing", having already regained the mana from the cast. (You can do this even if you want to be in serenity for the fight by having used the appropriate chakra well before the pull and then changing back right after the Sanc cast) I did this for Spirit Kings and Garajal heroic progress as examples.

Always cast lightwell/lightspring pre pull, even better, time it according to how long it will likely be up for. i.e. will all charges be used? will they all be used within 2 minutes? 1 minute? Adjust the timing of placement accordingly. Effective healing from that thing is incredibly cheap.
For example, Gara'jal HC, in order to meet the DPS check in week 1, our healers had to DPS the first minute or so of the fight, lightspring would often be fully used up within 90 seconds, so I'd try and time it so another could be placed very close to when all charges from the previous were gone.

There may be other things I've forgotten..it's late.

[HPLathus]

I fail to see why macroing a mana potion to Archangel etc. is going to be useful.
You should use it for a quick mana boost if you're running low on mana and need more quickly. Seeing as you can only use it once per fight you might as well use it at the correct moment, there's no need to macro it.


I know this is opinionated but with the recent buff to Mindbender's mana restoration (1.5% per hit), Mindbender is therefore statistically better on almost all boss encounters currently in the game. You can't afford *that* much downtime as Holy, infact Solace is generally more useful as Disc in my opinion.

Nether-the-less, some good all-round tips

If I'm not mistaken, the mind bender in 5.1 was only a tooltip update from a very early hotfox.

The double up hymn as well is fantastic and timing that with fiend and solace is op

[Ulteir]

Thanks for the post, I haven't had any mana issues with holy. Sitting around 12.5k raid buffed. have yet to try out PW:Solace. Are you 25 man raiding? I am in a 10 man and in msv we are two healing everything right now and I don't see a down time to use PW:Solace.

[emni]

Mana Regen tip for Mindbender:

Get Power Auras or WeakAuras. Make an aura that flashes at you every time you are below 75% mana AND your Mindbender is off of cooldown. Every time you see this aura, cast Mindbender. It's really as simple as that.

For Power Auras this means creating two auras - one that tracks Mindbender cooldown and a second one that checks if you're below 75% mana. Make one dependant on the other. For WeakAuras, simply make an aura with 2 conditions (<75% mana & Mindbender Spell Cooldown Inverted).

Of course, use a healthy doze of brain in addition if you know Mindbender is better delayed because there is no good target to cast it on etc. But this method generally means you don't have to watch your mana as closely.

[Danner]

This is a great topic!

Most of you are well aware, but I can recommend the Potion of Focus as a supplement/replacement for the standard Endless Mana Potion. It will put you out of commission for 10 seconds, but it's far more mana than a normal pot. Generally your other raid healer(s) can cover the slack while you are "gone". Just be careful to not pop it in any dangerous situation. Idied once popping it at a bad time on elegon, causing me to stand in lighting and die spectacularly.

I also wholly appreciate that you listed #6: Be selective with casts. It's probably the most important way to not run OOM. Anyone can mash ProM and CoH on cooldown, the skill is really to not do that, and rather figure out when those spells do anything useful.

To help you out with this, you can get a raidframe that shows incoming heals. Shadowed unitframes and pitbull both have this option at least, I don't know about the others. You'd be surprised how often information on incoming heals can help you avoid overhealing.

Also: FDCL is actually very excellent on very specific fights. If the fight is all about tank healing (normalmode Will of the emperor f.ex), FDCL will offer far more mana returns than anything mindbender or solace can muster. In general though, it's inferior to the other two. Mindbender is IMO the best in 10mans, as I just don't have that many spare GCDs.

[Deleted]

Some good tips in this thread by multiple people.

Holy REALLY doesn't have as many mana problems as people think, most of the time people see holy as the "OMG SPAM HEAL SPEC FOR AOE AWSOMENESSSS" and is what causes them to go oom.

I assume you're speaking of normal raid content as you haven't done any Heroic ones? In which case I agree, but not in terms of HC content. Now I'm not saying our regen as Holy is terrible, but just in terms of comparison to other specs and classes we are a tad worse and need a lot more spirit than they do do at least on HC bosses, which kind of makes us more gear dependent.

[h3lladvocate]

1. Macroing Mana Pot to anything is about the dumbest thing you can do. By doing that, you've instantly locked your potion CD, when A. Focus Pot is better if there is downtime to pop it and B. the encounter may need you to Int pot, which you now can't cause you have a "win" macro...

2. Mindbender > Solace, almost always. With the buff, Mindbender is now 15% every minute. To get the same with solace, that is... 10 casts a minute... If your mana regen is so bad you have to casts 0 cost spells for 15 seconds every minute that do 0 healing, outside of a fight like Elegon where there are moment designed for that, you might want to go back to 5 mans.

3. Be selective with your casts is correct. That is pretty much the entire point of Holy, smart casting. You are already going to do a ton of over healing, whether you like it or not, our Mastery is almost guaranteed to over heal, don't add to it... Let it tick if people are at 85%+, go cast on someone else or pre-hot some people for an inc AoE or w/e...

4. I wouldn't recommend CoH glyph if you are trying to watch mana and get more HPS. Divine Insight is generally better for this, PoM is only a tiny bit more mana than CoH and does a ton more healing. CoH glyph would make CoH cost more that PoM and still do less healing. While I personally am rocking CoH glyph now that I have tons of regen, if you are struggling, stick with Divine Insight if you need the HPS or PI if you are absolutely mana starved.

4. Sanctuary isn't that bad FYI... HPMC it is one of your highest spells infact. The only caveat is that it has to be 100% used, like a stack boss, Elegon p4, Gara'jal, etc. It isn't free castable whenever like DS, but if it is used to it's potential, it is one of your more efficient spells.

Honestly, Holy is about being smart (here's a hint, casting Cascade on CD because you heard it's amazing, and it still is, will make you OOM...). Make sure you are aware of your blue bar and how much spells cost in relation to it. Set up aura's for stuff, it is important that you PoM on CD almost 100% of the time (very VERY few situations where you don't, by the time you figure them out, you no longer need our help xP), CoH on CD if AoE healing, and when your raid/heal lead tells you Holy can't Tank heal, tell em GTFO cause it can if done right.

[HPLathus]

Some good tips in this thread by multiple people.


I assume you're speaking of normal raid content as you haven't done any Heroic ones? In which case I agree, but not in terms of HC content. Now I'm not saying our regen as Holy is terrible, but just in terms of comparison to other specs and classes we are a tad worse and need a lot more spirit than they do do at least on HC bosses, which kind of makes us more gear dependent.

I have raided in top 50 guilds in Cata as well as BC

Only reason I'm not in heroics now is due to irl. So I understand heroic content and how it scales and really don't see how there are mana problems if you are playing correctly.

Holy sure takes more management however that's just part of it. If you are having mana problems there are probably too many errors in your raids

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 04:04 PM ----------

First of all to the above post.

Clearly saying to macro your mana pot into things like arcane torrent/trinket/any profession CDs is not a bad idea whatsoever.

Being hyper critical and making rude remarks because you think ur hot stuff is however.


Regardless of what anyone says, sanctuary is a waste. Period. You ESP should not be using this on heroic content.

The coh glyph is debatable. You can think it of simply making the spell hit 6 targets for a normalized mana increase. One less spell you need to cast on someone

[Deleted]

If you can enlighten me how to heal 400k average unavoidable raid damage taken per second in a 10 man raid as holy, without having mana issues, I love to know. Also note much of this comes in huge spikes, some at random times in conjunction with a predictable-ish raid wide 275k hit (whilst also having random 75k hits from 1 ability and 110k hits from another) All can hit at virtually the same time-all those numbers are per player.

Though this may come across as confrontational, it's not really intended, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

[HPLathus]

If you can enlighten me how to heal 400k average unavoidable raid damage taken per second in a 10 man raid as holy, without having mana issues, I love to know. Also note much of this comes in huge spikes, some at random times in conjunction with a predictable-ish raid wide 275k hit (whilst also having random 75k hits from 1 ability and 110k hits from another) All can hit at virtually the same time-all those numbers are per player.

Though this may come across as confrontational, it's not really intended, I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Well honestly, mastery would help balance this out a great deal. I assume you are talking about garalon?

Or possibly amber shaper/wind lord??

Best bet would be to have a divine insight proc ready, coh up, mending already on the raid and be pre casting PoH as the damage is coming.

A fight where there is consistant AOE damage like garalon, mastery is going to shine above the rest as holy. as well as being able to manage your timing on CoH/PoM/Divine Insight.

Without having mana issues? Well that goes back to managing your mana cooldowns and being extremely selective with your casts. Obviously if it's consistant damage, you are going to want PoM used on cooldown as well as any moment a divine insight procs.

Sounds like a fight where you would want to pop fiend early regardless, even possible double hymn at 50% if you have 2 priests and timing your second fiend with the hymn(s). Most likley a good fight to switch your talent choice to mindbender if you had solace previously.

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 04:49 PM ----------

Not to mention a well timed cascade for any larger spikes throughout the consistent damage.

[Deleted]

Garalon, Amber Shaper and Wind Lord and all incredibly easy to heal, even on Heroic.

This is for Grand Empress Heroic. Re-read the raid damage taken per second, then just from a pure max output pov calculate how you can heal 25-35% of that number on a purely theoretical basis assuming zero overheal and full mastery stacking. The numbers just don't add up (Unless of course you ignore mana) Perhaps someone out of the 6 guilds that had killed it when we started progress on the fight had done so as holy; but I couldn't find any logs, out of those that were public, which showed this.

Also, Solace on anything other than Elegon simply doesn't work in heroic mode 10's imo.

[HPLathus]

40k rDPS

PoH hitting for 40k-90k(obviously 90k are crits) every aprox 1.5 seconds

3k Mastery rolling on each raid member

Prayer of mending constantly bouncing

Coh on cooldown

Cascade when people start dipping below 70%

2 other healers?

1 possibly disc, one possibly shaman


its possible, yes sure i posted a disc priest. Doesn't make holy NOT viable for this fight. Raid composition can make up for things like that to help your mana issues.

Will it be difficult? Of course its going to be a challenge, thats the POINT OF HEROICS. TO make it hard, people are constantly trying to gimp fights and make them easy mode by using overpowered mechanics instead of trying to work through them.

[h3lladvocate]

I have raided in top 50 guilds in Cata as well as BC

Only reason I'm not in heroics now is due to irl. So I understand heroic content and how it scales and really don't see how there are mana problems if you are playing correctly.

Holy sure takes more management however that's just part of it. If you are having mana problems there are probably too many errors in your raids

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 04:04 PM ----------

First of all to the above post.

Clearly saying to macro your mana pot into things like arcane torrent/trinket/any profession CDs is not a bad idea whatsoever.

Being hyper critical and making rude remarks because you think ur hot stuff is however.


Regardless of what anyone says, sanctuary is a waste. Period. You ESP should not be using this on heroic content.

The coh glyph is debatable. You can think it of simply making the spell hit 6 targets for a normalized mana increase. One less spell you need to cast on someone

I generally do not like to mean, honestly, but how is it not stupid? You pop Arcane Torrent at 3-4% mana lost to maximize it and OOPS, you just blew your potion and wasted it... Your macro makes you delay your Arcane Torrent casts, your Wings casts, etc, until you would be able to maximize benefit from the potion, not to mentions locks you to using Mana potion instead of the other 2..., and seeing as your first suggestion is to pop Mindbener/S.Fiend as soon as you can, this 100% contradicts that statement.

Sanctuary is not really a waste and I do use it on Heroic content. H Elegon, raid is stacked, cast it on the raid at the beginning of the burn, while you have full mana, does 100% no over healing, hits everyone and is extremely efficient... H Gara'jal, well, nvm, you're not Holy for that fight, but if you were it aint bad. H Wind Lord sub 20%. If you compare Sanc to Healing Rain, yes, it's bad. In general, Sanc IS bad. But, if you are stacked for 30 seconds (and there are several fight where you are), it is good.

And sorry if I sound "hyper critical", but I am very critical when it comes to Holy specifically.

[Isolated]

I have raided in top 50 guilds in Cata as well as BC

Only reason I'm not in heroics now is due to irl. So I understand heroic content and how it scales and really don't see how there are mana problems if you are playing correctly.

Holy sure takes more management however that's just part of it. If you are having mana problems there are probably too many errors in your raids

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 04:04 PM ----------

First of all to the above post.

Clearly saying to macro your mana pot into things like arcane torrent/trinket/any profession CDs is not a bad idea whatsoever.

Being hyper critical and making rude remarks because you think ur hot stuff is however.


Regardless of what anyone says, sanctuary is a waste. Period. You ESP should not be using this on heroic content.

The coh glyph is debatable. You can think it of simply making the spell hit 6 targets for a normalized mana increase. One less spell you need to cast on someone

While some of your advice is good, I have to agree with h3lladvocate on the macros for mana pots, and sanc. Also, if you want to claim you've raided in top 50 guilds, you should remember account wide achievements, and not post your armory in your sig.

[Deleted]

40k rDPS

Doesn't make holy NOT viable for this fight. Raid composition can make up for things like that to help your mana issues.

Will it be difficult? Of course its going to be a challenge, thats the POINT OF HEROICS. TO make it hard, people are constantly trying to gimp fights and make them easy mode by using overpowered mechanics instead of trying to work through them.

Try reading again. 40k? lol. 400, that's FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND raid damage per second

[HPLathus]

I generally do not like to mean, honestly, but how is it not stupid? You pop Arcane Torrent at 3-4% mana lost to maximize it and OOPS, you just blew your potion and wasted it... Your macro makes you delay your Arcane Torrent casts, your Wings casts, etc, until you would be able to maximize benefit from the potion, not to mentions locks you to using Mana potion instead of the other 2..., and seeing as your first suggestion is to pop Mindbener/S.Fiend as soon as you can, this 100% contradicts that statement.

Sanctuary is not really a waste and I do use it on Heroic content. H Elegon, raid is stacked, cast it on the raid at the beginning of the burn, while you have full mana, does 100% no over healing, hits everyone and is extremely efficient... H Gara'jal, well, nvm, you're not Holy for that fight, but if you were it aint bad. H Wind Lord sub 20%. If you compare Sanc to Healing Rain, yes, it's bad. In general, Sanc IS bad. But, if you are stacked for 30 seconds (and there are several fight where you are), it is good.

And sorry if I sound "hyper critical", but I am very critical when it comes to Holy specifically.

The macro I should say is a "convenience" macro. Doesn't mean it should be your primary regen macro. But if you mana pot why not have everything in one macro should they be up. More of a key binding reducing macro per say.

Obviously I would never say mana potion at 95% mana so you would make a choice wether or not this is your 30% macro or your 70% macro.

Hell, maybe you key bind archangel/torrent/synapse/trinket in your 95% macro and add the mana potion for your 30% macro


I'm not saying its the only choice, just advising macroing things ESP for regen Can save time, as well as keybinds to just make it easier.

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 06:04 PM ----------

Try reading again. 40k? lol. 400, that's FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND raid damage per second

Divided amongst 10
People is 40k rDPS

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 06:12 PM ----------

On each person**. Clarified

---------- Post added 2012-12-04 at 06:18 PM ----------

While some of your advice is good, I have to agree with h3lladvocate on the macros for mana pots, and sanc. Also, if you want to claim you've raided in top 50 guilds, you should remember account wide achievements, and not post your armory in your sig.

First off: please leave troll drama out f this.

Second, I was top 40 actually early into Cata check my achievements. Ive also ranked top 10 as holy and disc in early Cata content when it was legit and actually hard.

Cata guild: Cadia, BC guild: black blood battalion

My paladin in black blood battalion is what I raided on. During a hiatus it was hacked and deleted.


I love when people try to pull the achievement card on me thinking I can't back myself up.


Also, Cadia disbanded before we got to heroic nef and council.

[Deleted]

Divided amongst 10
People is 40k rDPS

If the damage were constant and predictable it might be easier. However, look at it another way. 400 divided by 4 (since you need to 4 heal it) means 100k HPS.

My PoH takes 2.3 seconds to cast. 1.5 is dream land or serendipity hasted and you cannot, under any circumstances afford FH in this encounter more than the odd rare occasion to prevent a death. PoH with a 16% crit rate (mine raid buffed) means you get less than 1 crit per cast on average. Do the maths. Work every other HPCT/HPM calculation you like....

As for "Cascade when people dip below 70%" really? Check logs, and the journal (which is incorrect btw, some abilities hit for more than stated, and the same as they do in 25 man....)

[20:57:36.902] Unknown Cry of Terror X 67027 (A: 4778)
[20:57:36.934] X Cascade X +45953
[20:57:37.385] Dissonance Field Corruption X 75000
[20:57:37.758] X Cascade X +45213
[20:57:37.758] X Expel Harm X +*87898*
[20:57:38.246] X Eternal Flame X +7306
[20:57:38.772] X Healthstone X +97062
[20:57:38.903] Unknown Cry of Terror X 71936
[20:57:40.190] X Prayer of Healing X +31857
[20:57:40.660] X Eternal Flame X +7306
[20:57:40.898] Unknown Cry of Terror X 69007 (A: 2319)
[20:57:41.395] Dissonance Field Sonic Discharge X 180703 (O: 67278, A: 27029)

This a random death I selected, names replaced with X and some actions deleted so as to only show damage taken and healing received.
I'll total it for you, that's 565077 damage in 4.4 seconds, now understand every other raid member takes that same damage, with tanks taking melee hits too, and some people randomly taking other damage like another 75k hit of Dissonance Field Corruption, or add in a 110k Screech for good measure.