Holy and disc healing rotations and stats

[bkw]

so i started healing today, we are missing a healer in the guild so im rolling my priest atm. what are the rotations for disc and holy?

i've been playing holy mostly and what i always do is:

PoM on cd
CoH on cd
double flash heals to serendipityx2 > PoH > cascade(recovering from several aoe damage like overloads in msv)

anyways, i feel kinda lost here, its like i dont know what to cast apart from those 2 on cd.

dunno a lot about disc either, but i would like to now in case i have to respec for a certain boss, and i dont really know if i would respec to disc since i love holy <3

i guess the default chakra is the one that puts that yellowish healing aoe.

also, i dont know what stats i should go for, any suggestions? (i will mostly do holy healing cause i enjoy it more than disc)

thanks everyone, i will appreciate the answer, and im welcome to any tip you have, first time i will do priest healing!

edit: i forgot to put that i will use discipline for challenge mode, if its more useful than holy, which i think it is.

[Rec]

Flash Heals are very inefficient, I cast it maybe twice in 12 boss encounters this week, and those were only used as tank saves when they already had Weakened Soul. The "default" Chakra is the one that increases your AoE healing, whatever colour that is, idr. As holy, you'll want to gem spirit and gear for haste up to an attainable breakpoint, then mastery.

http://icy-veins.com is a good resource.

Here is a chart of the breakpoints. Personally, I geared up to 4721 haste when I played holy.

http://talesofapriest.com/resources/haste-breakpoints/

As disc, the biggest thing that will improve your healing is learning boss encounters, and learning to use your timers effectively. Spirit Shell will be huge if you properly manage timers and CDs.

[bkw]

thanks for the quick and incredibly useful response, appreciated that.

i think the holy guide answered pretty much of my questions about the rotations, where flash heal is rarely used. Imo its kinda weird because we actually have a passive skill that reduces our next PoH or GH mana cost and cast time for each time we cast the flash heal, whats the point of having this if we are not even going to cast that spell?

so if im doing that kind of rotation (CoH, PoM, HW: Sanctuary, some PoH if needed), for example stone guards, i shouldnt be ooming fast enough unless the wrong dogs overload?

Do you know a good value of spirit? im kinda ooming but i guess its because of my no-spirit pvp gear.

Last time i did LFR MSV, i lotted a pair of gloves without spirit, should i use that or keep the 463 with spirit?

[Docta]

In lfr/25 you can get away with sanctuary, but if you are talking about doing a 10m raid I would avoid it unless your mana is not moving and the entire raid is stacked.

[Danner]

Rotations is sort of a loaded word with healing. You aren't really supposed to be doing stuff in a predefined order. You're supposed to heal reactively to things happening by picking the right tool for the job, or especially as disc, pro-actively prepare for incoming damage.

The moment you start using things on cooldown, you've really already lost any hope of healing effectively.

--

I suggest the following priority based scheme as holy:

1: Do not do anything. Seriously, you need to preserve your mana, and you need to think twice before spending any. Let the other healers sweat a little, then jump into the fray once you decided this is the right time. Holding back is half the point of Holy.
2: After a big damage burst, cascade or Halo is a great tool to use. It heals for a megaton, and it's really good if you minimize the overhealing.
3: Make sure your lightwell is out always. Precast it so that you can refresh it sooner. It's a great heal.
4: If the cascade/Halo wasn't enough, pop Divine Hymn as well. I usually hold mine back to specific moments in each fight where I know it will be useful, but this depends on the fight and how it works.

5: ... it's complicated.

Now, at this point it's all about distributing the mana you have left evenly around the points in the fight where it makes sense. How you do that depends on the fight. Some fights require heavy healing, some don't. Some fights require hard tank healing, some require evenly distributed ticking healing on everyone. Some also require dispels. And it all depends on your preferred healing style, gearing style, role in the encounter, and sometimes even glyphs. I cannot tell you how YOU should heal. But I can tell you how I do it.

In 10 mans, I mostly stick to Serenity chakra stance. This means my main heals are Renew, Serenity and Gheal combos. "Heal" if the fight is in a slow phase. It doesn't mean you should never cast Prayer of Healing, but keep in mind that every time you do you are being rather inefficient. Prayer of Mending can be awesome... or mostly wasted. It depends on the fight. I normally don't cast it on cooldown (it's not exactly free), but it's something you should be conscious about whether it will be used. Nothing is more wasted than a ProM that only jumps once. But if you can make it jump 5 times, you just healed for a ton with very little mana spent.

Flash Heals are extremely expensive, and should really only be used in emergencies - or when FDCL procs if you go with that (usually you should go for mindbender) - or if you have the tier set bonus (but even then, sparingly). Holy has great synergy with Flash Heal though, so it's an awesome spell to weave into your spell selection... but you cannot afford it for very long.

Sanctuary isn't useless at all, but switching to it is usually something that I decide on a per-fight, per-phase basis. Your AOE heals are so incredibly much more powerful if you go with this (if you feel you aren't able to outheal some AoE attack, try it!), but your single target heals suffer greatly, and in 10mans I usually find serenity the overall better stance. But hey, it depends. Sanc is also a stance that forces you to go PoH a lot, which is at least draining my mana rather fast, though you do a lot of healing when spamming it.

CoH I almost exclusively use as a follow-up to PoH, to get that extra "kick" to PoH. I rarely use it alone, and certainly not on cooldown. The spell itself is not healing for a lot, and even though it is smart (meaning low overhealing), it's usually not that important to top people off. Leave that to Healing Rain / Efflorescence.

In 25man LFR, I usually just stick to Chastise chakra stance, and smite my eyes out with the FDCL talent, then flash heal every now and then. Some fights require heavier healing and warrant a chakra stance switch. I don't have much 25man experience anymore outside of that, but I can imagine Sanc being way more powerful since PoH always has some targets.

Anyway... important part is to experiment. Some things work, some do not. And healing experience is all about trying and figuring out when to spend mana, and when to hold back.

[Rec]

thanks for the quick and incredibly useful response, appreciated that.

i think the holy guide answered pretty much of my questions about the rotations, where flash heal is rarely used. Imo its kinda weird because we actually have a passive skill that reduces our next PoH or GH mana cost and cast time for each time we cast the flash heal, whats the point of having this if we are not even going to cast that spell?

so if im doing that kind of rotation (CoH, PoM, HW: Sanctuary, some PoH if needed), for example stone guards, i shouldnt be ooming fast enough unless the wrong dogs overload?

Do you know a good value of spirit? im kinda ooming but i guess its because of my no-spirit pvp gear.

Last time i did LFR MSV, i lotted a pair of gloves without spirit, should i use that or keep the 463 with spirit?

Yeah, Serendipity seems kind of out of place now. I feel it's more of a relic from previous expansions where we could spam spells like Flash Heal all day without fear of going oom. Right now, it's one of those "nice to haves" instead of a "must keep this up" kind of thing.

As a fresh priest, it's hard to have too much spirit. Most of the top priests in the world gem for spirit, and they're in nearly full heroic gear right now. An intel heavy gem strat can work depending on your play style (more so with disc than holy), but that's something you'll get a feel for as you gear up and learn the class. Personally, I do like gemming for intel as disc, but frankly that's because I overgear the content we're progressing on.

For the gloves, consider reforging towards spirit and see how much you'd lose. Going down in iLevel is typically not the best, as you lose a lot of intellect.

Also, I should add that right now disc is the strongest healer HPS-wise right now, holy is essentially tied for worst. I always like to tell people to go with the spec/class they have the most fun playing as, but it's something to consider.

[bkw]

long post

thanks! really detailed. your point was clear, i have to spend my mana only if i use my spells at the 100%, that way i wont oom and i will do a great healing, doing this they wont go to waste, hurting my mana and stuff.

Yeah, Serendipity seems kind of out of place now. I feel it's more of a relic from previous expansions where we could spam spells like Flash Heal all day without fear of going oom. Right now, it's one of those "nice to haves" instead of a "must keep this up" kind of thing.

As a fresh priest, it's hard to have too much spirit. Most of the top priests in the world gem for spirit, and they're in nearly full heroic gear right now. An intel heavy gem strat can work depending on your play style (more so with disc than holy), but that's something you'll get a feel for as you gear up and learn the class. Personally, I do like gemming for intel as disc, but frankly that's because I overgear the content we're progressing on.

For the gloves, consider reforging towards spirit and see how much you'd lose. Going down in iLevel is typically not the best, as you lose a lot of intellect.

Also, I should add that right now disc is the strongest healer HPS-wise right now, holy is essentially tied for worst. I always like to tell people to go with the spec/class they have the most fun playing as, but it's something to consider.

yeah, i guess i will go for spirit + haste first so i can reach the same haste breakpoint you did, past that one these are really far away and may fall behind mastery.

what about disc then? whats the healing prefference playing as that? should i be dpsing the boss when someone takes damage?

[Danner]

I'm no expert on disc as I merely dabble in it, but...

Atonement (that smite healing thing) is interesting, and certainly will help out. But you shouldn't depend on it. Mostly it shines when you are overgearing content and can keep everyone up though atonement alone. It may also allow you to spend some time to dps where you would usually have to heal instead. But I consider it a toy, not a real tool for serious healing.

Disc is mostly all about countering attacks through precasted heals and clever use of cooldowns. There is a lot of cooldowns actually, too much for my liking. The main power-tool for Disc is Spirit Shell, a spell which turns all heals into shields. It's certainly not uncommon of to stack up a million healing in absorbs through one spirit shell, and if you do that just before the boss unleashes his big attack, that attack will be most ineffective. Where upon disc just saved the day, and made all other healers redundant. Try to combine this with other cooldowns like Power Infusion for some truly spectacular results.

In addition to spirit shell, there is also Divine Aegis (that shield echo), which is predominantly visible through Prayer of Healing, and of course Power Word Shield that are the main heals. PWS is a very good single target heal once you get some mastery going, but it is quite expensive. To counter that, disc get a hefty discount on a shield every 12 seconds, which in time even will turn into a mana gain. But yeah... you can't spam PWS and stay afloat in the mana department.

Disc played well will do some insane healing, absorb a massive amount of damage before any other healer even can get a heal in, and this will make everything easier. Disc is very much OP right now, because those absorbs are both potent by design (due to countering damage rather than healing it) and implementation (they are REALLY stong numberwise).

In the single target department, disc is either massively powerful or really weak, depending on whether you have grace stacked on the target. Penance is your main tool for stacking grace, and it is also healing for a decent amount. Its main downside is the large cooldown, like every other disc tool. Generally this makes Disc a fantastic tank healer and a really poor spot healer. The latter is something you want to rely on your fellow healers to cover.

As for mana, Disc is greatly helped by Inner Focus, which will make your mana consumption go down by a noteable amount. You will find that you have more mana available as disc than as holy. And that your heals are even stronger than your holy counterpart (and I consider holy very strong!). The big downside for me is really that I don't have Divine Hymn as disc. I really love that spell.

But back to atonement... there is finally Archangel. its use is IMO optional as you usually lose more HPS by smiting as you gain by using AA. But you can get some decent mileage out of the spell by simply glyphing and casting an instant Holy Fire every now and then. This way you can build a good stack of evangelism, and if you remember to re-cast HF every now and then you will keep it maxed by the time AA goes back off cooldown. And the instant Holy Fire also adds a pretty good heal to boot thanks to Atonement. Combining or alternating Archangel, Power Infusion and Spirit Shell... yeah, need I say more?

Disc is OP. Enjoy it while it lasts.

[Rec]

Atonement is amazing. It's a smart heal for one, though it is a little mana inefficient. The thing is, it's so good at picking targets that just dip below 100% before you'll notice it, the overhealing it does is minimal. It is so much more than a toy, it's my go-to filler spell, and I don't see a reason why it shouldn't be. Using smite also makes it easy to keep up evangelism stacks. After you stack to 5, HF on CD to keep it up, or continue smiting if you have nothing else to do.

Rapture returns a lot of mana. Make sure you pay attention to your buffs for trinket procs. Also time your on use spirit trinkets so that you use them, and then shield someone. The mana return will help you big time.

I have to disagree with the above saying that disc is a poor spot healer. You'll rarely use penance on CD anyways, so it's often available. You also have PWS, which is a very good tool to save lives, it's instant and can absorb for more than 120k (stacking mastery), it could very well be the best spot heal in the game.

Save IF for a big PoH after the raid took a big burst of damage, or right before a tank saving flash heal.

Save this chart for reference:



Edit: I should mention that this chart was made by a priest in late September, so your numbers will vary, but, as someone who is gearing up, these will be pretty close. As you begin to pile on the epics, this will change.

[Danner]

Rec: nice chart!

Also: I would not listen too much to me either when it comes to disc. I don't play disc that much, mostly due to Holy being strong enough and it being my preferred spec. Listen to people with disc experience

[Kalmah]

@rec

The healing values in your chart seem way too low. With what kind of stats and buffs did you calculate them? Different spells don't scale the same way with different stats, so I'm not even sur that the relative hpm values are useful.

[Rec]

Rec: nice chart!

Also: I would not listen too much to me either when it comes to disc. I don't play disc that much, mostly due to Holy being strong enough and it being my preferred spec. Listen to people with disc experience

Holy's always been a favorite spec of mine, I wish it was more competitive. : (

@rec

The healing values in your chart seem way too low. With what kind of stats and buffs did you calculate them? Different spells don't scale the same way with different stats, so I'm not even sur that the relative hpm values are useful.

I did not produce that chart, I picked it up from an older WoW Insider article. I believe it was made just after the disc buffs.

I was, however, able to find a priest calculator, I don't know how up to date it is, but it may be of help:

http://www.temerityofwindrunner.com/...iest-calc.html

[Deleted]

I recently made a little chart too, seeing as it seems relevent to this thread I don't mind sharing. This was done with my current gear (~496ilvl, no set bonuses, many shadow gems / reforges). All the spells were done with the optimal chakra, 0% overhealing. Just averaged out crit.
~27.5k spell power, 18/5% mastery, 7.5% crit(which was actually wrong, i'm on 12%...), obviously these were only applied to the spells that actually benefit from them.
There well may be mistakes, this was done super quickly because I wanted to see some comparisons - obviously some of these spells don't have DR applied, I couldn't find enough people to test how DR affects them, I 'believe' they cap at 6 targets? so highlighted those.





Some of the more interesting things I noted.
HW: Sanc on 6 targets is higher HPM than 'heal'.

Divine star is silly OP in any situation you can actually use it (people close enough together), it doesn't 'seem' to be suffering from DR... which as you can see by my note, if you manage to hit everyone... with 0% overhealing that's quite a 'skill shot'.

Divine Hymn seems decidedly underpowered as a channeled spell, comparing it to our lvl90 talents it would be hard to convince me that DH would be OP if you didn't need to channel it, like an instant cast totem, or a buff on you that radiates for 8sec.

Lightwell is super awesome as we've always known.

The lvl90 talents look pretty balanced when you begin to consider the positional requirements of each, kind of a shame that the damage components of star and halo seem to be ignored in the balancing of cascade.

Was a bit suprised to see a 5 bounce PoM with less HPCT than a 5 target PoH. It's implications of divine insight confuses me a little. In a siutation where your PoH won't overheal it's just so much better than PoM. PoM heals less and costs more. PoH can also hit more than 5 targets (if you're talking about padding meters ) from pets. I think this shows me that DI is very strong where raid damage is not spread across groups or is so light that PoH would overheal more than 20%. I think I shall be considering PI / ToF for the healing intensive fights from now on. PI particularly seems to stand out thanks to the mana saving.

Interesting (to me) to see HW: serenity and gheal on nearly the exact same HPCT, certainly worth that GCD on CD when tank healing.

Also shows CoH with a higher HPCT than a 0% overhealing, 5 target PoH, meaning it is worth using during heavy AoE damage instead of just spamming PoH (but PoM is not, in terms of raw hps).

Divine star is more healing per second, per cast and per mana than 'heal', 'greater heal' OR 'flash heal' on a single target...

[bkw]

im sorry but whats HPCT, heal per cast time?

some cool math i didnt know, so i guess divine star is better in some 10man fights where everybody is mostly stacked like feng

[Deleted]

ya healing per cast time. i come from the world of shadow :<

[bkw]

cool, actually i just tried out disc while farming gear in heroics and i was healing crazy ammounts of damage with attonement + some preshields and easily preventing party damageit with SS, cant believe discipline is THIS good. i think i will be playing this now and then.

just a random question i cant figure out myself. should i have EVERY ITEM with spirit? i mean, innate spirit, not reforged. cause some days ago i did LFR and looted some cool gloves but those didnt have spirit, and i went as holy. this means that im forced to reforge spirit?

[Chimaera]

cool, actually i just tried out disc while farming gear in heroics and i was healing crazy ammounts of damage with attonement + some preshields and easily preventing party damageit with SS, cant believe discipline is THIS good. i think i will be playing this now and then.

just a random question i cant figure out myself. should i have EVERY ITEM with spirit? i mean, innate spirit, not reforged. cause some days ago i did LFR and looted some cool gloves but those didnt have spirit, and i went as holy. this means that im forced to reforge spirit?

Optimally every piece should have spirit on it baseline. Until you cannot effectively spend the additional mana spirit is the #1 stat for sustained healing for disc.

[Danner]

The endless crave for mana is the same with every healer really. Monks are excluded from this; there are some monk threads out there that recommend less than 3k spirit for monks. The bastards.

So in short: Get spirit on absolutely every item slot until you feel you have "enough". Enough means "I can do my job if I hold back", not "I can spam the least efficient heals forever".

If you get an good item upgrade without spirit, reforge may be an option, but that will only work for a few items. Don't expect to pick up random stuff and reforge them into spirit and expect that to suffice! And do not under any circumstances listen to blue posts saying that running around with 5-6 items with spirit is good enough. That won't work, period. Spirit bloody well is the most important stat of them all, and you need a huge amount of it.

As Holy at least, the sweet spot is around 8000-10000 spirit unbuffed (this means somewhere between 8500 and 13500 buffed, depending on buffs) - BUT - this will depend on who is playing. Some healers use a lot more mana than others. It's just down to gear and playstyles. I cannot tell you how much spirit you should have, as you may need more or less than this. The same goes for disc, though with the new rapture, disc will be needing a little less spirit than Holy. That said ... I wouldn't recommend gearing for the current state of affairs, as everyone seems to agree that nerfs are incoming.