Low Level Healing

[mickloven]

I've retired from raiding on my resto druid for the time being as I just don't have the time at night to dedicate to regular, progression raiding. To fill my WoW fix, i've decided to level a priest. Priest is currently 27. My spec is Holy/DPS. Once I get to Guardian Spirit, I'll move over to Discipline. I'm not sure why, but I just don't like Shadow. Maybe, I'll give it a try at 40, but I've never been a fan of Mind Flay (on prior attempts of leveling a priest).

Anyway, yesterday, I hopped on the Dungeon Finder and healed BFD and Deadmines. We actually 4 manned the latter half of both. I thought healing was a breeze and plan on using the dungeon finder as a major part of my leveling experience as I generally skipped all lower instances or ran through them with guildies 60, 70 or 80, as applicable. I've seen lots of raid healing guides online, but none for the lower levels. Right now, I have Renew, Heal, Flash Heal and Bubble key bound in Healbot (yes, I'm addicted to Healbot and hate Grid/Clique for raiding). So far, I basically just use Renew and Flash Heal and have limited mana problems except for bad pulls due to a hunter not putting his pet on passive. Is this the right strategy? Are there any new talents/spells that I should work into my strategy? Should I ever use bubble on the Tank (I won't have points in Disc to make bubble a major part of my healing)?

Thanks.

[Verzerrung]

Strat
1. Keep Renew on the tank during the fight.
2. Don't apply before he pulls though because the tick will pull afro as he runs up. Doesn't happen often but its a nice thing to avoid.
3. Flash heal if he is taking slow/small amounts of damage. Heal if its larger/faster.
4. Once you get Greater Heal, forget you have Lesser Heal and Heal
5. As far as mana/heal allocation goes FH cost more mana and heals for less than Heal/GH but is much faster. Binding Heal cost less mana per heal than FH but only if you and the target need healed
Heal/GH cost less mana per heal than Binding but is slower. Renew costs the most per heal out of all of them but is used to increase your total throughput. Like Rejuv, its just nice to have a little extra.
6. Bubble is not worth it if you are not speced into buffing it.

Tactics
Now something a bit different for priest healing, before endgame, compared to what I have read about druid healing is that, just because someone is not at full health does not mean they need healed. If you know your FH or Heal will over heal them by a decent percent of the heal then don't bother. This will save you a LOT of mana later on. This also creates a sort of juggling act with the tanks health. I would try to keep his health at about 90%. That way your FH have some leeway and with renew pushing over 90% you will get some more time to heal the other party members.

Talents
As far as talents go for heal lvling I would HIGHLY suggest picking up Spirit Tap in the shadow tree. It really does help regen at lower lvls.

Stats
Nothing but good old Spirit

Playing Around
On thing I like to do on 5mans is help train the tank guy thats new to tanking. How? By letting him know he will be the last o get healed. If an add is on someone else that party member gets healed priority until it is picked up. People will flame but in the end it teaches the tank he need to control the fight. However f that party member is the one that puled, by all means /laugh at his body.

Good Luck lvling and welcome to the Priesthood

[Lysdexic]

5. As far as mana/heal allocation goes FH cost more mana and heals for less than Heal/GH but is much faster. Binding Heal cost less mana per heal than FH but only if you and the target need healed

Not sure that's right. I think, for example, right when you get Flash heal it is more efficient than Heal. To the OP I suggest getting Dr.Damage. This addon will let you know lots of little details about your spells, in this case we'd look at hps and hpm. If Flash Heal is more hpm than Heal at any point keep in mind you'll be wanting to stick to it even when you want to spam (within reason).

Other than that, if you're not having any trouble with tanks dying or you going oom you're probably doing the right thing. Also, just because you aren't disc, don't neglect bubbles. They ARE one of your spells and they DO scale even without disc talents. Treat it as a relatively costly instant heal, providing enough of a buffer to get something else off.

[Sharaki]

Lastest learned rank of any given heal is usually most efficient (thanks to downranking nerf, manacost gets upgraded while spell healing doesnt when you level up).

Play with FSR, lower your level - more you benefit from spirit.