Help this Holy Priest, she's TERRIBLE!

[Ishkhalol]

Preface: No logs, only anecdotes.

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte.../chya/advanced

Disclaimers: Yes I have a crap wand, currently farming GB for the one off Throngus. Same story for the trinkets, Core is on the first-purchase list for my VP (possibly tomorrow), and I'll have DMC:Tsunami as soon as the fair rolls around.

The sob story:

Well, I used to be a resto shaman. My small 10man guild was running double r-shams and a resto druid for our raids, and situations were sort of dicey. Holy priests were looking awesome, and I had one at lvl 80 so I figured, "Hey, I'll level that up, give us more tools in our 10mans, and be able to pick up my shaman partner's slack in healing because h-priests are OP, and we'll win more!"

Fast-forward to me now being a holy priest in our raids. I was able to gear up pretty fast, though I'm still 4-5 ilvls below my healing partners. However, I'm consistently 8-10% healing-done below BOTH of them in every single raid encounter (and a good 1-2k HPS lower as well). Magmaw, Double Dragons, Omnitron, the gamut. Even encounters where holy aoe healing is supposed to be ridiculously effective (Magmaw, for instance), I feel paltry. I seem to blow through my mana crazy fast (especially in AOE healing situations, though I've taken that as par for the course and time Chakra: Sanc for the best effect), and I use mana cooldowns fairly early in the fights to keep up (even using Hymn and Fiend together for max return, and Potion of Concentration later).

I have PoM bouncing off the tank on cooldown. I used CoH, Bindingx2, Chakra:Sanc and PoH for big AOE healing. I have Renew on both my tanks and keep it rolling with Heal when in Serenity state (most of the time). I feel like I'm using all of the spells and skills situationally correct and by the book, so why am I so terrible next to my other healers? The best HPS I've seen myself pull was a bare 8k HPS (and the r-shaman was easily 11k in the same fight, with hardly a dip in his mana). On average, I'm around 6.5k while my fellows are about 8k.

I'm taking it personally, haha. While on my shaman, at the same gearlevel and spec as the other shaman, I was always ahead of him in effectiveness. As the whole reason I changed class was to bring an even better healing class to the table, it's driving me crazy to be so weak in comparison.

tl;dr: I feel like I'm playing my holy priest right, and my gear isn't absolutely terrible, but the numbers aren't showing it. WTF am I doing wrong?

[Deleted]

Do not reforge haste out.

[Ishkhalol]

Do not reforge haste out.

While I can see the good advice on the surface, I don't see how it helps me in this situation... I'm currently aiming my haste levels around that "soft cap" of raid-buffed 12.5% to get the extra Renew tick. The faster I heal, the quicker I go OOM, so...? I'm not sure it's the biggest issue I have.

[Okard]

it might be how youre healing. If youre dishing out flash heals and greater heals, youll go oom faster. Stick with renew, prayer of mending, and Heal for the most part unless something is absolutely needed.

[Ishkhalol]

it might be how youre healing. If youre dishing out flash heals and greater heals, youll go oom faster. Stick with renew, prayer of mending, and Heal for the most part unless something is absolutely needed.

For the most part I'm using Heal and Renew for single heals, and as above, PoM on cooldown. I only use Flash if the tank is taking steady & heavy damage, and I do a Flash 2x for Serendipity and a GHeal to get them up.

Overall, it's like my entire healing arsenal feels like its significantly weaker, not hitting for as much, as my other healers. Does 5 ilvls really make that HUGE a difference?

[Deleted]

Are you / your party- & raidmember using the Lightwell? if no, you should drop the glyph.

I personaly try to keep the ratings (haste, crit, mastery) on the same value.

Do you use inner fire or inner Will? If it's inner Will, then you should think about to use PW:S, CoH, PoM & HW:Serenity more often.

[Zeuq]

I know you don't have logs, but it really is incredibly difficult to diagnose healing issues without seeing your actual spell selections. In the past, when I've seen healing issues of my own, I thought I had a certain distribution, but looking at the log, realized I was off. That said, I do have a couple of points.

First, drop the points in State of Mind. They were useful before 4.0.6, but now they just aren't.

For big AOE, you want to be in Chakra:Sanc, but you may or may not want to use HW:Sanc depending on the situation; if you do use it, try to time it right before the big AOE so you can drop it and start pre-casting a PoH to land right after the AOE. If it's burst AOE (eg, Crackle), focus on keeping CoH on CD, and try to spread out PoHs evenly. If it's ticking AOE (eg, Magmaw), make sure you get PoM in there before it goes out too, and recast it if you need to. HW:Sanc is useful when HPS is more important than HPM. On a fight like Magmaw, you ought to have plenty of time to top people off, so I generally don't use it there, but I do find it useful for a situation like Chimaeron's Feud, Crackles particularly in Phases 2 & 3, and late in Al'Akir Phase 2.

I would recommend against using BH for the big AOE situations as it is lower HPS than PoH, and doesn't really do you any good if you use it to build up Serenity during the AOE, and then just overheal on yourself or your target with that PoH. That's not to say it's not still a valuable spell, just not in those situations. Instead, try to plan how to use it. For instance, for AOE healing on Pillars on Nef, I make sure I'm outside the main group, and use that as the sole source of keeping myself up, topping off the others outside the group, and using the PoHs on group.

Really, though, it all comes down to planning your mana usage as a Holy Priest as we really have the ability to just blow our wad on the big AOE heals which tends to mean that we have to hold back some on the rest of the fight and trust our fellow healers when our regen is still lacking.

[Mazi]

Well one of the problems is that you're casting BH just for Serendipity. Don't think of Serendipity as necessary, rather just a nice bonus when you have it. You're wasting mana to gain cast time when you could just be pre-casting. It's also very important how the groups are set up - are all the melee in the same group and ranged? If not, ask your RL to maximize groups for PoH. When you're bouncing ProM off the tank, is it getting lost in the abyss because everyone is out of range? If so, don't cast it on him as you're not getting your maximum potential out of it.

Generally as long as you understand fight mechanics you can pre-cast a PoH to hit right after damage hits, CoH then PoH the other group and PoH again.

There really isn't a point in being in Serenity anymore unless you are full-time tank healing. The throughput buff you get to Renew by being in Sanc is going to help a lot more than Holy Word: Serenity on occasion. It's also going to boost your AoE healing immensely.

Your spec is a little off - why do you have 2 pts in State of Mind? You should also try out Rapid Renewal - Renew is really powerful with it's decreased mana cost and I find that especially true in 10m. Also, you don't need Tome of Light as you shouldn't ever be in Serenity unless full-time tank healing. Sanctuary is rarely used, let alone on CD. So that frees you up 4 points - try out Desperate Prayer - it heals for A TON; you can also pick up SoR and Blessed Resil (has a 30-50% uptime) as it will help you heal yourself up faster with DP / BH and get back to healing everyone else.

Are you using Gift of the Naaru? It's great for tanks

Try and pick up the DMC: Tsunami, it's just amazing. Drop Herb for Alch as well?

Are you dropping Lightwell in easy to access spots? Are your raid members using it? If not, try to remind them during heavy damage phases. Lightwell can easily make up 5-10% of your healing done.

I'm not perfect and I'm much more geared than you, but go ahead and nosey around my log for Magmaw and compare what I'm doing to what you're doing: http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-0g...e/?s=243&e=492 Feel free to look through the rest of the guilds logs too - On last nights 10m I ranked on every fight.

During non damage phases just remember that you don't have to be casting all the time, take some time to regen and prepare for the next big damage outburst

If you want to chat on aim or msn we can get into more 1 on 1 details, just leave your info or PM me and leave a message here saying you PMd me

[Deleted]

If you want to chat on aim or msn we can get into more 1 on 1 details, just leave your info or PM me and leave a message here saying you PMd me

TOTALLY off topic, but I just wanted to say what a great post this was and that I wish there were more people like you on the interwebs...very nice gesture, I tip my hat to you

[Svenofnine]

You could remove the 2 pts out of State of Mind. Why do you need your chakra CD reduced? it lasts 1 minute, and you can change it at 30 secs. This IS PLENTY early enough on all fights that I've encountered (being 1/13hm) Could put one back into Desperate prayer or Spirit of Redemption (inc priest arguments for and against the Angel Explosion) That point could be put into Veiled Shadows in the shadow tree to reduce your fiend's CD. I suggest popping fiend once your mana is at 80-90% (of your mana), so that it'll be up again for the last 30%ish of the boss fight. Hymn when Mana tide is down from your shaman for a HUGE mana return. Example when the head is chained down to the ground in magmaw. USE lightwell. Have your raiders understand that LW is a LARGE mana saver in the long run if they use it, and that as a dps their job is to stay alive as much as it is your job to keep them alive.

Don't reforge mastery into Spirit. The spirit from gear and enchants will be plenty enough if you manage your CDs well enough. Also, the more int, the better, however, Holy Priests typically don't ignore socket bonuses. Red = Int Yellow = Orange Int/Haste (or Int/Mastery if you are lacking) and Blue = Int/Spirit It gives you the most int without losing those socket bonuses.

Just my 2 cents. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nofnine/simple

[KingMilkbags]

Disclaimer: My main is a feral druid, but I had to gear/play my priest for 2 weeks while we recruited a full-time healer for my raid team, my experience is from an under geared priest trying to fill a slot.

What does your over healing look like? Are you assigned to tanks or raid? Are you healing reactively or proactively?

I ask these questions because if you look just at HPS and mana levels you might not be getting at the root of the problem. When AoE damage goes out in a raid, do your other healers (Druid/Shaman) help out by tossing hots, wild growth, chain heal, etc...? What might be happening is that the healing roles are not clearly defined and while you, trying to heal the raid and heal the tanks, are just trying to do too much and not really excelling at either role. A couple things to check for...

What spells are doing the most of your over healing?
-If they are your tank spells (heal, Gheal, Fheal, Instant, Renew) then you are wasting mana on tank healing, tone the heals down a bit and use that extra mana to heal harder during AoE bursts.

-If your AoE spells are topping the over healing (CoH, PoH, Sanctuary) then you are probably reactively casting PoH (cast just before the damage hits so there is less of a gap between heals and damage, this also lets you return to tanks faster) and/or using the incorrect person as the CoH beacon. Also, Sanctuary (ground circle) is not an efficient spell if only 2-3 members are in it; you really need the full 5-6 players to make that spell worth casting, multiple renews might work better.

Your gear isn't terrible at all, as long as you are at the 12% haste raid buffed (assuming you use Renew) then reforge mastery until your eyes bleed and get as much spirit as possible. I found that, especially early in raid content, that it is fine to sit for a few seconds and let your mana regen. Let your other healers know that you are the primary raid healer and for them to only assist if needed; this allows them to save mana for tanks and it allows you a bit of regen time between AoE situations.

I'm not saying this is the *best* way to heal, but I am saying that with my experience these tips/tricks helped me a ton and let us kill bosses we other wise wouldn't have with my priest as pretty much dead weight.

[Houndaer]

my holy priest is just starting out raiding, very few epics so I'm in the same boat.

My thought is that a holy priest isn't there to dish out raw healing power. Paladins do that well enough and stay at >50% mana for a whole fight if they can stand still. However the number of tools holy priests have at their disposal is outrageous. Rely on your "smart" heals to do most of the work. A lightwell will only heal a person who needs it. Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing prefer to target those people with lower health (I think this is raidwide, regardless of group arrangement, unless Mazi was talking about the physical space occupied by your melee and ranged "groups").

Milk your mastery as much as you can. I've tried to boost Echo's of Light's proportional healing in my 5-mans by watching the buff tick and not starting the next heal cast until it's half expired. If the target has taken, or is taking, too much damage for the echo of light to stabilizer him or her, I use renew then. Be aware that smaller echos of light overwrite larger ones, and if you immediately follow a Prayer of Healing with a Circle of Healing, you're cutting that HoT in half (or more).

I relate holy priests with resto druids mainly, but the term "aoe healer" or "raid healer" is a misnomer. a good paladin or shaman will of course heal the raid (or disc priest, sorry). and I think it'd be irresponsible for someone to focus so much on tank healing that they put the blinders on concerning the state of the other 8 people in the room. Rather, I think of druids and priests as being able to heal everyone at the same time. If you use PoH and CoH effectively, place renews where they need to be, and shield who you need to shield, then you are effectively healing everyone at once. You are the health cushion for the whole raid. Huge deficits are made up with flash of light and healing wave. That's not your job, unless things start going south, or during anticipated heavy raid damage phases.

Anyway, yeah body and soul has saved many people from omnitron slime bombs, atramedes fire breath targets, maloriak's add-tank too, and it is indispensable as a utility spell. Prayer of mending bounces around healing people without wasting global cooldowns. Lightwell does the same thing (and can't you even tap it while casting!?) , did I mention that if you die, you can STILL heal? Restore mana to your raid? The list goes on. Don't pay attention to the numbers. Paladins have more mana than they know what to do with and they'll snipe your heals, shamans too. They'll win healing meters for a lot of the early raid content unless you outgear them by a lot.

Ignore the healing meters. If the boss is dead, what does it matter?

[Lunarsoul]

What's your raid composition? Are you raiding with a class that provides the 5% haste buff? It's showing your haste rating at 10.83% with your Darkness talent. With the 5% haste buff, it takes you to 15.83%, which is 3.33% over the soft haste cap.

At this point, you need to reduce your haste and reforge/gem for mastery until you get to 12.5%. Mastery is a pure throughput stat for Holy priests and is the best stat until the hard haste cap, which is pretty difficult to get to without high end raiding gear. I'd recommend changing your enchants first. Go for mastery for boots and gloves, then start changing out your yellow slots with Artful Ember Topaz. A simpler way to go would be to just get Mandala of Stirring Patterns from the Baradin's Warden QM. It's a spirit trinket with an intellect proc and is worlds better than the Gale of Shadow trinket and is also fairly easy to get if you are on top of your dailies. Gale of Shadow is a fairly weak trinket for healers.

Again, reforge any crit rating to mastery if you are haste capped. Make sure you have some spirit on all your gear. And remember, Intellect is your friend!

[Evolixe]

I only use Flash if the tank is taking steady & heavy damage, and I do a Flash 2x for Serendipity and a GHeal to get them up.

Do not use flash heal for anything other than emergencies. Just use GH instead and skip FH unless you absolutely have to. And FHx2 + GH is only for the true top omgawawad moments.

[Deleted]

i had my first raid on my priest last wednesday (dinged a day before approx) and while being decently geared, about 340ish average. I never had _ANY_ mana problems while still being atleast tied with the holy paladin, and above the other holy priest or resto shaman.

the fights I got to do last week: Magmaw, Omnotron, Halfus, Valiona, Conclave.

since you're probably doing normal modes, for the most part atleast. you should have watched atleast one vide of every fight, and have tried them on your shaman. so you know what kind of damage is incomming - use this:

if you know there's a bit heavy raid damage incomming the next 5-10 seconds, but then no damage incomming for another 10-15, heal up slowly, the most important part about keeping mana is to not spam people up too fast, this isn't wotlk where people die in 2 seconds if not topped off. all the damage incomming in normal modes, safe Phase 2 of nefarian, halfus till time warden / whelps are pulled & blue phase on maloriak. is PREDICTABLE - heal accordingly, don't spam everyone with PoH from 50% - full in one go. if you know they wont be taking damage for another 15 seconds, 1-2 PoHs on each group a CoH and then let your hots slowly take care of the rest.

and don't try to do the job of two healers, while you might sometimes want to switch to tank healing (say no aoe damage incomming for a longer amount of time) trust in your other healers, let the classes better suited for tank healing do that, while you focus on keeping the raid up. obviously don't keep yourself from helping them out if you have the mana. but focus on your own job and making sure that's under control.

- hope this helps

[haydude]

Overall, it's like my entire healing arsenal feels like its significantly weaker, not hitting for as much, as my other healers. Does 5 ilvls really make that HUGE a difference?

Welcome to priest healing!

[Mazi]

TOTALLY off topic, but I just wanted to say what a great post this was and that I wish there were more people like you on the interwebs...very nice gesture, I tip my hat to you

Thanks

I just enjoy chatting about healing and priests in general & I like to help - just a huge nerd, hahah

[Zeuq]

What's your raid composition? Are you raiding with a class that provides the 5% haste buff? It's showing your haste rating at 10.83% with your Darkness talent. With the 5% haste buff, it takes you to 15.83%, which is 3.33% over the soft haste cap.

I strongly disagree with this advice. It is not a "Haste Cap" it is a Haste minimum. Haste still reduces the GCD and still makes all of your cast times shorter, so it is still valuable. In fact, it is still the highest HPS stat after Intellect. The thing that Mastery brings is improved HPM in addition to the HPS which is why its valuable, particularly when regen is a major issue. One needs to evaluate his role in his raid along with his gear and healing style and determine what balance of these stats is appropriate for them. I've found that a balance with a favor toward Mastery works well for me, but I can easily see situations and roles in which a Haste preference works as well or better, if my raid composition or role were a bit different. Regardless, only having enough Haste to hit the fifth tick of Renew will hinder one's HPS in most reasonable scenarios and potentially even hurt one's HPM by forcing one to use high-HPS/low-HPM spells where consistent casts with high-HPM spells and more Haste would have served the same purpose.

Also, as a nit-pick, Haste stacks multiplicatively, not additively. The OP actually has more Haste raid-buffed than your math would indicate.

[Mazi]

I strongly disagree with this advice. It is not a "Haste Cap" it is a Haste minimum. Haste still reduces the GCD and still makes all of your cast times shorter, so it is still valuable. In fact, it is still the highest HPS stat after Intellect. The thing that Mastery brings is improved HPM in addition to the HPS which is why its valuable, particularly when regen is a major issue. One needs to evaluate his role in his raid along with his gear and healing style and determine what balance of these stats is appropriate for them. I've found that a balance with a favor toward Mastery works well for me, but I can easily see situations and roles in which a Haste preference works as well or better, if my raid composition or role were a bit different. Regardless, only having enough Haste to hit the fifth tick of Renew will hinder one's HPS in most reasonable scenarios and potentially even hurt one's HPM by forcing one to use high-HPS/low-HPM spells where consistent casts with high-HPM spells and more Haste would have served the same purpose.

Also, as a nit-pick, Haste stacks multiplicatively, not additively. The OP actually has more Haste raid-buffed than your math would indicate.

I agree here. Haste vs. Mastery is a preference and highly based on your raid comp. But you really should go one way or the other. I started stacking Mastery and didn't see the benefit with our raids so I swapped to Haste and quite enjoy it

[Ishkhalol]

Thank you all for the great advice and food for thought.

My spec is based on things I've read and what I thought might work based on how I've been healing in heroics. I didn't realize Renew was such a big deal now! I thought it was sort of in the same boat as PW:S, a "don't over use it, don't blanket the raid in it, that's bad" sort of way. So, I've really only been casting Renew to keep on the tank to refresh with a single-target heal.

Our raid comp is typically: Warrior/Pally tanks, Holy priest/RDruid/HPally healing core, sometimes the RShaman. Fire Mage, Destro Lock, Surv/Marks hunter, Enh Shaman, A-Rogue.

I'm not sure that Armory is displaying the haste values correctly with the talent. Logged in last night outside of raid, I was around 13.5% haste looking at the Character display.

My raid leader is always telling me to stop stressing on the meters, haha... but I have little else to gauge my impact. I'm sort of the "healing leader" of our guild and I try to interpret where we have weaknesses and what we can do to improve. Of the healers mentioned in my OP, I have the lowest overhealing of our three. That's something I tend to be sort of hyper-aware of. I want to say I heal proactively with the big AOEs, but reactively otherwise with spot raid healing, or if the tank starts to spike (then it's AAAHH FlashFlashGHeal!!)

I'm going to mess around with my spec, make greater use of Renew (and not worry about Serendipity so much) for our next raid and see if I have an improvement. It may very well be that what I'm trying to make the spec do isn't what it's best at!