Flashheal the new Greater Heal? Blizz gone overboard...

[Dillybear]

actually looking at champ 3000s post i have to say he said it better and with a lot less rage than i did >.> so i support his post.

[Seligen]

As to discipline, you have plenty of useful tools in your arsenal as well. With holy I find myself using chakra combined with heal and renew for a good majority of the time. Discipline is very similar in this regard. You have a talent where using heal will reduce weakened soul's duration. Use it to full effect. Pop Power Word: Shield. Heal. Heal. Heal. Power Word: Shield. Heal. Heal. Etc.

Power word shield is a very unique spell that acts as a sort of pre-heal to damage that hasn't been done. So it potentially can still be doing its job while the next heal shoots off. Penance is more of a quick way to stack grace for 24% extra healing, which is AMAZING. And in emergencies you can pop pain suppression for a whopping damage reduction. I mostly heal with holy, but my brief foray into disc had shown me enough. It's fully capable of keeping up with Holy.

[Zeuq]

I disagree with this for 2 reasons, 1 being Heroic and you control your heals and..

I'm not sure what your first point is. What does Heroic have to do with any of this?

2. Knowing how to time it, in Vanilla my guild was the top guild on the server, and I usually have the lowest OH (by %) with thehighest effective healing. And this was with a 3.5 sec GH, the thing is I am a proactive healer where as most where a reactive healer.

For example, On Onixia vanilla I would start pre-casting GH, when I saw her head tilt back I knew she was about to do a flame breath, so I would let the GH fly and boom instantly the tank was back to Full health with little or no OH.

OH is a combination of having bad healers and/or lack of healing coordination, if everyone is OH, might want to run with 1 less healer.

First off, I was comparing to wrath, not to vanilla. For most people, comparisons to wrath are most meaningful because that's the most recent past. If you want to compare to Vanilla or BC, fine, but don't move the goal posts.

Second, I played in a high rated guild through late vanilla and BC too, and I remember precasting and downranking and I was effective at it typically with lowest overheal and highest effective healing, and I really don't see how those are qualitatively any different from the current state. Rather than spamming GH1 or GH2 or whatever, you spam Heal. When you had big damage incoming, you precasted max rank GH, now you just cast GH.

Further, while I was good at precasting, I found it rather boring because, it was really just a manipulation of the FSR, which was a terrible mechanic to begin with. I'd rather be pressing buttons to DO something rather than pressing buttons to NOT DO something. I want healing to be about decision making, not about how close my latency and reaction time will let me get to letting a cast go off.

Moreso, as I mentioned, it allows for more synergy when multiple healers are on the tank, which has never really existed before. In wrath, you needed them because of risk of tank death in less than a GCD, but it was boring because everyone was just spamming for max HPS. In vanilla and BC, sure, you could have one person doing consistent HPS and another watching for burst damage with precasting, but that's far less interesting than letting both healers provide consistent HPS when the damage is steady and burst HPS when the damage is high. Sure, precasting was effective in those days and those of us that were good at it were highly valuable healers, but that doesn't make it an interesting mechanic.

If you want to spam a rotation or make quick twitchy reactions that fine, but IMO, Healing, and as Blizzard has also made clear, Healing is supposed to be about decision making with spell selection, mana management, and triage which is something that the larger health pools and "spammy" Heal provides to a greater degree than the previous healing paradigms.

[Seligen]

I forgot to mention Archangel as well for another 20% healing bonus, and all you have to do is spam smite a few times. You get some mana back, some extra healing power, and with the right talent smite will even keep healing while you stack the buff up for archangel. I wish I could afford to pick up this talent.

[timmyotoole]

After healing for a while now, i feel that blizz made a mistake with pushing flashheal to hard in a corner. Instead of greater heal, flashheal is gonna be the heal spell u never want to use. Sure u can use it, but if u start using it, its already game over. U can't really afford to use it. Instead of blizz intention to use the full arsenal of heals, i think they have been to hard on flashheal.

Basicly greater heal has become my go to spell. Basicly there is no other option to heal incoming damage then that and the occasional penance which doesnt feel powerfull enough. Instead of spamming flashheeal, we are now spamming the slower greater heal. Different spell same spam. Sure we use other spells too but overal we are being pushed into greater heal.

Heal is a nice spell but its too slow and too weak. Why would u cast heal when u could cast greater heal in the same time. Sure heal is nice because its cheap, but it takes to low to be actually decent.

Overal i feel priest can easily be tweaked to use their full arsenal of spells.

Greater Heal = ok
Penance = need buffed, needs to feel like an emergency heal that heals more then greater heal, or cooldown needs to be lowerd if stays weak.
Heal = Healspell should be made more powerfull or casttime should be reduced, maybe talented or glyphed. Casttime in between flash and greater, or equal to flash. Overal disc priest need heal to be a viable fast spell in pvp. Heal should be a fast lowoutput spell, while flashheal fast and high output.
Flashheal= Manacost need to be toned down, so u can use flashheal enough without running oom too fast. Not too low so u grab it too fast, but low enough so u aint punished to hard for using it that u remove it from your bar like with greater heal in wrath.
prayer of healing= ok
renew= ok

While blizzard has attempted to make people use different healz, blizzard has created a situation where only some heals are viable. Overal i would be happy if heal would be made a little bit faster, so we could weave it together with greater heal.

When things go wrong as a priest i can feel powerless since i dont find anything decent in my arsenal to keep people alive. Other healers seem to be able to keep up a bad group much better then a priest can. Sure if things go perfect, there is no problem, however the strength of playing a healer is being able to support weaker players by playing good. At the moment priest lacks in this department to outheal stupid and run dry... While other healers cope much better..

Greater Heal: Go to heal for Disc. Slow, strong, low cost.
Penance: Strong, fast, good way to get Inspiration and Grace on the tank. It is NOT an emergency heal, it is insanely cheap, and heals for ~15k in average gear.
Flash Heal: Your emergency, ohgodohgodthetanksgonnadie, heal.

etc etc

So no, the heals are fit their respective roles, you’re just trying to use them as you did in WoTLK.

We’re not supposed to be healing through stupid. Do your party a favour and let idiots die.

[zenkai]

I'm not sure what your first point is. What does Heroic have to do with any of this?

Because heroics has its place too?

First off, I was comparing to wrath, not to vanilla. For most people, comparisons to wrath are most meaningful because that's the most recent past. If you want to compare to Vanilla or BC, fine, but don't move the goal posts.

I disagree, Wrath was dumb, put a monkey in a chair and stack enough SP and haste and you looked pretty on the meters, although Cata isn't like Vanillia its more like it than wrath because you now have to pay attention to how you use your mana.

If you want to spam a rotation or make quick twitchy reactions that fine, but IMO, Healing, and as Blizzard has also made clear, Healing is supposed to be about decision making with spell selection, mana management, and triage which is something that the larger health pools and "spammy" Heal provides to a greater degree than the previous healing paradigms.

Although I liked Cata healing better than Wrath healing, It failed to reach it's mark for what I was hoping for. Still rather have an expensive GH that is great HPM and heals a big chunk of damage, it would be used for the right spell for the right time. GH as of now heals for crap, it isn't much more beneficial HPS (unless you cast flash heal twice..) wise than a Heal in Chakara state and definitely not good HPM compared to Heal.

[Belteshazzar]

I play a holy priest, and use every spell in my arsenal. Binding Heal, Flash Heal... everything..

There is a time and a place for each and every spell..

Mana conservation is not just spamming heal. It is using the most effective spells in the most effective places.

For example, if only me and a single dps are hit by a damage effect, I'll use Binding Heal. It is the most effective spell for that situation.

I can't comment on Disc, because I don't play it, but yes, Flash Heal in my Holy arsenal is a very, very used spell. You can't spam it, but it definitely has a time and place for its use.

I just hit 85 and healed my first HoO, with a group where only the tank had done it before. On one of the bosses with a fair amount of aoe, I must have gone 6 or 7 casts without reusing a spell. I was using generic heal spam on the tank, then others started taking damage, so I hit one with renew, hit the next with Serenity, a circle dropped on me and one other, so I hit hit CoH and PoM'd the tank as I moved out, then hit me and him with a binding, hit the tank with a flash, then dropped a PoH to bring the whole group back over 80% or so.

It's not how every situation is going to work out, and had the group known the fight better, we'd all have taken a lot less damage, but I loved it. I'm a GC success story! :-p

[Ynna]

Well Heal sucks because u can't use it in combat. Basicly what your saying heal is for out of combat use or when theres no damage going. Basically a spell thats worthless in your arsenal during heavy damage.
It would be much more fun and skill to be able to use heal during combat, adding another extra choice.

Flash Heal as disc runs u dry very fast, using it two- three times is enough. When priests already have it hard on running oom, using any spell that wastes mana hurts u even more. Flash Heal cost as much as greater heal makes no sense. Flash Heal should cost around 3000 mana while greater heal is 5000 mana, still expensive, but at least more viable.

Apparently holy with the chakra mode has an even easier time if your able to use flash heal often, even when never using flash heal at all and only using my most mana efficient heals i can run oom as disc priest, especially in the harder heroics.

Sure everything gets better with gear, i would recommend new disc priest in greenish gear-blues. To start with easier heroics and never use flash heal.

Heal is a great spell in normal dungeons, u can basically only use that spell to keep people up, in heroics heal loses its flavor...Even greater heal does not pack a real punch..

Having done some raids, I feel damage is still fairly heavy and doesn't give you really much time to think.. Sure tanks wont get globaled, but u still need steady greater heal on them. Raids are more about awareness now

Either way, the priest needs some tuning, espcially in pvp u can see the state of disc, vs a holy paladin..

Priest Healing is perfectly fine. (I do have my problems with the state of Healing at the moment, but they have nothing to do with balance.)
You seem to be stuck in the WotLK mentality of using Flash Heal for everything. Heal is a perfectly viable tool for healing in heroics. If you keep a steady stream of Heals, using Serenity or Penance where necessary you'll be fine in most cases. Heal isn't meant for heavy damage healing, but it is meant as a go to spell in normal situations. Flash Heal doesn't cost too much mana. It does cost a large chunk of your mana pool to discourage you from overusing it. Most of the time you only one Flash Heal to stabilize and then you can continue with using Heal to top people off.
If you run oom in heroics there are issues, but they are not with the priest class. Maybe your group sucks, maybe your gear is terrible, maybe you don't heal as good as you thing you do.
If you're not using Heal, you're doing it wrong.
If you need to cast Flash Heal so often it makes you go out of mana, you're doing it wrong.

[Zeuq]

Because heroics has its place too?

I'm still failing to see what heroics have to do with changes in the healing paradigm.

I disagree, Wrath was dumb, put a monkey in a chair and stack enough SP and haste and you looked pretty on the meters, although Cata isn't like Vanillia its more like it than wrath because you now have to pay attention to how you use your mana.

It's fine if you didn't like Wrath, but you're still moving the goal posts with respect to the point I was trying to make. I was making a comparison to wrath, you come in and say wrath was stupid and vanilla/BC is better. You're welcome to that opinion, but it doesn't add or detract anything from the point I was making. Which was, a tank death in a single GCD because you had to move or wanted to help on another target is dumb. Yes, it was at it's worst in Wrath, but it existed beforehand too. RNG is fine when it's something that makes it interesting, but an RNG tank death isn't interesting, it's just a waste of 5-10 minutes because of a silly wipe.

Although I liked Cata healing better than Wrath healing, It failed to reach it's mark for what I was hoping for. Still rather have an expensive GH that is great HPM and heals a big chunk of damage, it would be used for the right spell for the right time. GH as of now heals for crap, it isn't much more beneficial HPS (unless you cast flash heal twice..) wise than a Heal in Chakara state and definitely not good HPM compared to Heal.

It more or less hit the marks that Blizzard set, so if you were expecting something else, well, I'm not really sure where you got that expectation from. Second, it sounds like your qualm is just about the size of the health pool. If you were critting Greater Heals for 36k on 60k health pools instead of 120k, would you feel better? If you actually looked at the numbers, you'd know your assertion that it isn't much more beneficial HPS than Heal is flatly wrong. So what if it takes 4 or 5 of them to top someone off instead of 1 or 2, it also takes 4 or 5 hits to kill them instead of 1 or 2, so it works out exactly the same except for those really stupid RNG tank deaths. The only way I can see that you think it's a bad thing is because you clearly don't actually understand the numbers based on your assertion that the HPS of GH is comparable to Heal when, in fact, it's more like ~2.8x the HPS.

[sacrypheyes]

Priest Healing is perfectly fine. (I do have my problems with the state of Healing at the moment, but they have nothing to do with balance.)
You seem to be stuck in the WotLK mentality of using Flash Heal for everything. Heal is a perfectly viable tool for healing in heroics. If you keep a steady stream of Heals, using Serenity or Penance where necessary you'll be fine in most cases. Heal isn't meant for heavy damage healing, but it is meant as a go to spell in normal situations. Flash Heal doesn't cost too much mana. It does cost a large chunk of your mana pool to discourage you from overusing it. Most of the time you only one Flash Heal to stabilize and then you can continue with using Heal to top people off.
If you run oom in heroics there are issues, but they are not with the priest class. Maybe your group sucks, maybe your gear is terrible, maybe you don't heal as good as you thing you do.
If you're not using Heal, you're doing it wrong.
If you need to cast Flash Heal so often it makes you go out of mana, you're doing it wrong.

pretty much like he said.

i'm running with both holy and disc specs now that i'm 85 and began raiding with my guild, and have not know any major issue so far when it comes to healing... well, that is if i don't take in account the fact that i was a bit undergeared at first, which unless i'm wrong is pretty much how it's meant to be.

Flash Heal is one spell i use at rare times but comes in handy when it has to : in those "oh sh!t" moments when you have one single person to heal up fast (usually the tank) before he gets another hit.

if your group is taking heavy damage, you're supposed as disc to pop pw:b and begin PoH spam (w or w/o Power Infusion if needed), if one single person is taking heavy damage, Pain Sup. is a very welcome cd to help him make it through while you'll cast say pw:s > penance > binding heal (in case you also need healing) > inner focus (if up) > GH.
by the time you've cast all that, if that one person also used his own survival (self healing/dmg reduction etc) cooldowns, he should at the very least be at 50% hp, or else you guys really did something very wrong.

as for Heal, well, never had any issue using it in heroics at all (or in raids for that matter), be it with a holy or disc spec. it's a great cheap spell that heals for about 10k (well with my current gear) when you've got grace full stacked (which btw is why penance is there for imo). not to mention that once talented it allows to cast pw:s more often, which i use as a buffer while i'm casting GH/PoH in heavy damage fights.

and as far as i can tell, disc seems a little better than holy atm. it brings both very good single target healing AND raid healing thanks to stronger PoH triggering Aegis. i struggle a bit with holy sometimes because i can't always afford to swich my chakra states from serenity to sanctuary though i'd need a bit more aoe healing. not telling it should be "fixed" (if it ever has to).

[KhameleonN]

Well Heal sucks because u can't use it in combat.

Wait, what?

[Swag]

I think if Penance was buffed I'd be more comfortable with how Disc plays atm. Since the spell has a cooldown, I don't really see a problem with it hitting for more. What was once (arguably) one of the strongest single target heals in the game is now just something I use to quickly get 3 stacks of Grace on my tank when I've switched off to heal another target.

[ContentsMayVary]

I think if Penance was buffed I'd be more comfortable with how Disc plays atm. Since the spell has a cooldown, I don't really see a problem with it hitting for more. What was once (arguably) one of the strongest single target heals in the game is now just something I use to quickly get 3 stacks of Grace on my tank when I've switched off to heal another target.

What? Pennance is our best healing spell! I use it on cooldown*; I thought everyone did!

* Unless it would overheal ofc

[sacrypheyes]

imo penance is fine as it is, plus it allows to fully stack grace which is a 25% healing increase on the target, nothing to laugh at.

if my target already has his 3 grace stacks, it heals for about 8k per tick, making it a 20k+ heal in about 1.6-1.8s (depends on haste buffs). no really, it's fine.

[Nisala]

The idea, as I've understood it, was that flash heal was more of an emergency heal which was there to save people in dire circumstances, not as a typical tank healing spell. Ultimately, it's expensive because if you're using it, someone's done something wrong or you didn't heal them enough and so they've gone down low. That's what the spell is there for; to make up for mistakes (most of the time, I won't say all of the time) at the expense of mana.

Obviously I'm not including SoL in this, but since we're talking from a discipline perspective, that doesn't matter.

Regarding Penance, once archangel is up you can get Penance to do close to if not more than 30k healing. That's a big heal, and more than enough for something that immediately hits the target and costs very little mana to use. I think Penance is fine.