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Ok so I know alot of us are hating the way healing is for us now but it can be done! I have been a priest healer since classic running 40 man MC's. I have loved it even though at times it is a challenge to enjoy. A few friends and guildies have asked me how I am doing it or voiced complaints and all that jazz so I thought I would toss a few reminders on here for not only the healers but for the other classes as well based on things I have seen in my randoms so far and based on what I have heard in the chats.

For priest healing:
Flash heal is a waste of mana unless its an oh crap moment, so dont spam it unless you want to oom.
For holy lightwell doesnt suck anymore and its cheap....use it!
Keeping a renew and a bubble on the tank actually makes a difference, so you might try it ( especially if you speced for improved renew )
Keep stacking int and spirit
Keep control. Prioritize. Tank first, then you then top dps....mana control is a MUST!
Dont be afraid to use everything you got. I know in ICC alot of us spammed 3 buttons and that was it. In holy or disc we have over 12 options to use for healing. Prayers, renew, heal, flash, circle, lightwell, binding heal, divine hymm, bubbles, pennance, etc...

For DPS/Tanks:
Dont stand in crap like a noob and whine cause you died....
Click lightwell, it works!
Watch your threat, healers hate to heal two tanks especially if one is a clothie
Learn how to cc with your class. Hunters use traps, rogues use sap, warlocks banish, priests can mc, blah blah blah....Even healers can mc the adepts in VP and heal the group so its win win.
Keep things OFF your healer. This is a no brainer but sadly I see it all too often.
Watch where you are going, never run in front of the tank unless you know the area because ( for example ) if your a hunter, pull by accident and FD after we as a healer tried to keep you up guess what? You just killed us.
Let us get our mana back ( tanks :P ) because if we have no mana we cant heal, and if we cant heal you die, and if you die we die, and if we die we wipe. Its a vicious circle!


I hope this is at least somewhat helpfull! Now lets all go have some fun, get all purplefied and kill us a dragon! :)

Thanks for the insight onto Priest healing, (and in general) Leighah! We've got to be ready on these things, because for the first time in 2 years, stuff is HARD again. CCs, waiting for tank threat, efficient healing... all these have been forgotten since Wrath spoiled us like big pampered babies! I've been messing around in a couple of randoms with my mage, playing instances that people don't have trouble in (Vanilla stuff) and I still see people doing things like DPSing my sheep, ignoring the tank's main target, not understanding raid icons (skull first dang it!), and the like.

Remember:

- If you don't know the fight yet, take it slow and safe.
- Wait for the tank to get a few things off. For warriors, you have to wait for Rend > Thunderclap BEFORE engaging.
- Dead players do ZERO DPS.
- Sheeps are for ignoring, not attacking.
- Okay, we'll skip that mob and get the next patrol... DON'T STARFALL OH GODS WHY?!!?!?!?!

Leigh is a brilliant healer, so everything she has to say is sound advice. I've seen her heal, and she's just downright awesome. Especially her lightwells. Respect the lightwell!

The only thing I would add is to never stop casting. Healing just became like DPS, in that you use your free heal nonstop (the cheap, long cast time, small one). Everything else is like a CD that you use to respond to certain kinds of damage.

Oh, and to add to her second section, I see a lot of dps (and even tanks) saying: "The damage isn't scary, I don't have to move for that." Cata has become a matter of clean and efficient playing. You should be avoiding every single point of damage you can manage.

Honestly, healing hasn't gotten much harder. Healing dumb people who stand in fire (or don't believe in CC) has gotten harder. :P

In rough groups/pulls healers OOM like 60% of the way through the fight. When everyone does it right, I watch healers end those same pulls with 70-80% mana.

Thanks again Leigh for the advice. I have a healer alt incoming sometime soon -.-

Thanks for the compliments :)

And yeah its not that its harder its that you have to be smarter!
Again i love feedback from any healers on the server, there was a post not long ago about the raid community here on SoE and I feel since this is a horde heavy server and yes i know its a RP one, people will really enjoy the content if we really work at getting people into raids and actually clearing them.
We have the people, we have the expertise, we have the skills, and gosh darnit we have the smarts. Roleplayers are the most creative players so why not apply that to our raids and randoms? :)

First time visiting the new forums, and what do I see but a healy post by my very own guildmate. :)

She's right: priest heals don't suck. BUT healing isn't just an issue of choosing between cheap/expensive/fast/slow, etc. For me, that way of thinking doesn't even begin to cover it, and it also kind of gets in the way. The truth is that because of your talents, your heals have a synergy, so work that synergy for all its worth. That way, if you run out of mana, at least you got the most healing out of it you could given the situation, your gear, the other players, etc. And if you don't work the synergy, then you're in for a really rough ride.

Speaking as a disc priests re: normal Cata dungeons (just so you know where I'm coming from, I'm just about ready to start healing heroics, and then there will be raiding, which will further change what I'm learning), this is what I'm finding: along with the usual shielding & PoMs, max tank heals with stacks of grace and archangel. Weave heal in with your smites to get grace on and keep it there as much as you can. Use PW:B as much as possible; stick your tank under it during trash; it's great.

Renew, flash heal are emergency buffers best used to stabilize someone going down really fast. Even in an emergency, try not to spam flash heal. It just doesn't work anymore. It heals for so little, and it's not an instant.

Our newly buffed PoH is worth its weight in gold, not just for moments of intense aoe damage, but because you can use those Divine Aegis bubbles to good effect on the dps you don't have the mana or time to bubble spam anymore.

Macro Inner Focus and Power Infusion into everything applicable so that when they're ready, you're using them.

I also set the tank as my focus & use a smite macro that targets the focus target. This way I'm always smiting what the tank is fighting AND most importantly, I won't accidentally tab target and pull the wrong thing. BTW, in my opinion, smiting isn't damage dealing, it's healing. You're not suddenly a dpser because you're smiting (my first main is a mage & smiting to heal is nothing like being a caster). The dps is incidental--a nice side benefit. Disc priests are battle priests. We need to smash things. :)

Give yourself a leg up and enchant your gear with whatever you've got; don't sniff at Wrath enchants while you're getting that really good gear. Every little bit of extra intellect, spellpower, and whatever you think you need that you can get onto your gear helps you get where you're going that much faster and better. For me, it's money well spent.

There's loads more to say of course, but, all in all, I'm finding there are different possiblities/different combinations of heals and talent synergies for different situations: tank healing, dps, aoe, emergency, mana regen. And most of these situations are simultaneous. I've been making lists and plotting it all out. New combinations for new damage patterns. Max the effects of the procs and buffs (haste, reduced cds, increased crit chances, etc.) your talents give you. It's a lot more fun than the ever faster bubble botting and flash heal spamming of Wrath. But it is challenging. I'm just glad damage doesn't come in the amount and speed it used to. And when people remember to plunk their butts down and eat/drink between pulls instead of waiting for me to laboriously heal them back up one by one, I will be happy.

tl;dr: Don't be bad and stay away from pugs b/c they have no idea where their kick/mindfreeze/rebuke/skullbash buttons are.

PuGs aren't all bad. I had a good run through Stonecore yesterday by a group of competent people (or at least DPSers that knew the value of attacking what I'm whaling on, and not standing in fire). But the difference between a good PuG filled with good players and a PuG with one or two people that failed "Vanilla / BC instancing 101" are like night and day.

While there is a lot of good advice in this thread it is worth note that much like in the start of Wrath we are the weakest of the four healing classes. This isn't because we're not being played correctly or we're not trying hard enough but rather because of the way our abilities scale both in throughput and regeneration. We scale slower than any other healing class. We'll get back up there and be seriously competitive again but for the time being we literally are the worst.

Now note: I am not saying we can't do current content. We can, just fine as a matter of fact, but as a Priest you're going to work for it more and there rest of the group is going to have to equally be on their toes. I know that sounds like a "well duh," type of statement and no one will argue that stuff like crowd control is needed for any healer, but when it comes down to simple number comparison we won't match our competition. Now once again I'm not implying that we are incapable of doing current content, be it normal instances as we climb the ladder to heroics or even raids after we've spend our time running those heroics, but I want to reiterate that we can't perform the miracles we could before, especially towards the end of Wrath.

Ironically we talk about how we have so many different abilities at our disposal and wax poetically about how we were two or three button wonders in Wrath (not all Priests played like that, some of us did use every ability we have) but the sad truth of the mater is while they're trying to encourage us to use all these different spells we likely won't due to that poor scaling. For example, Renew is a joke for Discipline. Obviously we don't have the talents to help make it better, like Holy does, but during Wrath it wasn't a bad idea to use that ability to heal cut damage. Of all the spells people most likely didn't use that they may now Binding Heal is likely the winner. I can't count on hands and feet how many priests I talked to in Wrath that didn't even have that on their action bar, which is rather sad. But now I'm rambling.

Bottom line is this: Priest don't suck, there is a way and Leighah did a good job of explaining ways we can remain competitive and complete content. She is an excellent healer and someone who certainly knows her class. However, being the ever present pessimist that I am, I don't want everyone to think that adapting the play style of both the healer and their group will fix all the problems that are being directed at us. Because they won't. Only time, higher tiers of gear, and possible tweaks from Blizzard will do that.

As a former priest... I have nothing to add but...

*offers Adalicia a lil' stand* Here you go hun so your goblin will show up on her avvie.

D'aww...thanks! I like how you can see the top of my head.

ITT stuff anyone who isn't bad already knew.

Well, I think we need to differentiate between bad players and potential good players. Bad players are the ones that are told things and just don't care enough to do the right thing. Potential good players are just ignorant.

Bad players would read this thread and say "lol wut" and move on, continuing their spat of badness. Potential good players will read this thread and go "ah, I think I get it now" and play better in their next random because of it.

Priest healing 1.b: (the holy side of things)...

Those who were voicing concerns that priests weren't comparable to the other healers as far regen/etc. are in for quite a treat. Yup. Buffs to both healing trees. Go us! ^.^ Blizz has apparently attempted to bring us in-line to the others. Yes, it's still a challenge. But personally I can tell a major difference from the first week or so in Cata and my regen, vs what I'm seeing now. And it's not just the gear. The buff to Holy Concentration seems to have made quite a difference. More info? http://us.battle.net/wow/en/blog/1232869#blog


My tips for Holy (for what they're worth). Feel free to read, troll, /point/laugh/cry/whatever.

Holy:

1) Get a mod like Classtimers. Set it up so you can track renews on your target and focus, as well as basic things like Chakra duration and cooldowns on your Holy Word spells.

2) As it was stated above, it's all about synergy. Don't be afraid to ask tanks to wait 2.2 sec or so (depending on your "heal" cast time) to let you get into a preemptive Chakra state. They might laugh or call you a moron, but more often than not if they are at all decent, they will wait till your feet start glowing. Maintain this Chakra state out as long as possible while anticipating and refreshing it before casting downtime (ie: heavy movement phases or stuns). I personally choose to use only one point in the Chakra extension talent (State of Mind). If you are comfortable you can live without the 2/4-second safety net of extensions, go for it.

4) For heroics, Renew (however expensive it may seem) is our bread and butter right alongside of heal. Honestly, more-so now that the HW: Serenity chakra has been altered to let ANY direct heal refresh the duration of renew. Renew tank always and any dps below... let's say 75% health. Refresh this single renew using heal (or the fh/gh combo for heavier healing as discussed below) and you have a single cost HoT that can tick almost infinitely if you are good at it, not to mention our mastery HoT from the direct heal used to refresh the renew. I've found I can maintain this on 2-3 people easily given moderate damage going out. It's important to note that the instant heal from our HW:Serenity chakra state does NOT refresh the renew duration, so be prepared to judge if you should cast your refresher spell before or after this.

5) Don't be afraid to flash heal, HOWEVER... be smart about it. You should have Serendipity talented. Use it. 2 flashes or bindings will give you a nice, tasty greater heal with a decent mana reduction. Personally I set my timers up to show Serendipity's duration and stacks (which are now 2, not 3 like in Wrath)... Use the two flashes/binds as needed on the most critically low HP players, even if you space them out, which you can if you have the timers, and it is great for healing tank spikes over time... the greater heal as a third spike heal will ultimately be faster and slightly cheaper. Try to time them to be used right after your PW:Serenity heal for an extra crit effect. If done right, they shouldn't be -that- much of a drain.

6) Again, as it was pointed out above and as most of us know as common sense... do NOT waste time not casting. I had this discussion the other day with someone... Ending a fight at half mana, with no mana regen cooldowns burned but 2-3 people dead to unavoidable (ie: not the "i stood in fire/poison circles derp") damage... does NOT make you a good healer. The best healers are the ones who can push out the heals while not being afraid of going OOM. They know their costs and limits, and are casting whatever needs to be done to keep people alive. The days of spending 5 seconds out of casting for mana regen are over. If everyone is at full health and you literally have nothing to cast? Channel one of the mana pots that restores 22000 mana. They are worth it... trust me.

(cont. from above)

7) Lightwell is your bff:forever. Encourage people to use it. Remind them constantly until they beg you to shut up. Drill it into their brains. A lightwell HoT plus a renew HoT maintained will do more healing than you would probably guess. A few cool things about lightwell for those of you who are still clueless: It has a HUGE range now. It can be used while stunned (super useful also during certain boss encounters where they toss you around or grip you up into the air... *wink*). You CANNOT spam it. Try to. You cannot have someone grief the lightwell and consume all of the charges in under 10 seconds. The HoT must take the full duration before refreshing.

8) Surge of Light: *changing opinion here due to the announced changes that are coming to SoL* :P This may have a use again, joy!

9) For raiding: Don't underestimate the power of Prayer of Healing. As holy, it's godly. Transitioning to HW:Sanctuary and using PoH will give you a significantly powerful and surprisingly more mana efficient way to heal the raid while still allowing you to keep some heavy heals into a tank. The PoH glyphed HoT combined with Echo (our mastery HoT that can come from anything -- in this AoE damage situation think instant CoH/PoM, Lightwell ticks, or ticks from the AOE Sanctuary effect if people are clumped together) gives you a rather unbelievable amount of healing going into the raid without you giving it a second thought.

So, there's my input. Take it or leave it. I don't claim to know it all, although most of you on SoE who know me might find that hard to believe. But this is what I have learned in the 2 weeks since Cata drop. Hopefully someone will find it beneficial to read.

I like this. A lot of it is stuff I've been preaching* to PuGs, but am usually ignored. Personally, I don't see why people think Priest Heals suck. Perhaps the other healing classes have it easier? Anyways, my tips if no one else has mentioned them :

Regarding your skill:

- Study! To be a great healer, you don't have to pick apart the talents, glyphs, stats and gear and do a bunch of Theory-crafting. Chances are if you're reading this, you don't have time for that, so do the next best thing! Elitest Jerks and WoW Insider are two places that have guides up for different classes and specs. These guides are written by people who have done all that for those of us who can't for whatever reason, so make use of them!

Regarding dealing with the group:

- Know the difference between someone who honestly sucks and someone who needs better gear or more experience. In extension: Not all noobs are noobs. Some of them are newbies. A newbie will make an honest attempt to correct bad behavior if you tell them, and a noob won't. Learn the difference. Also remember that it doesn't take long to get to max level these days, and you can still get there before you've learned half of your class.

- Don't be afraid to throw your weight around. You shouldn't have to work harder just because the others are being lazy. Start off with stating your observations. If the tank isn't using available crowd control, tell him he should. If the DPS is rushing in and pulling aggro, or breaking crowd controlled mobs, tell them. If someone honestly sucks, don't be afraid to initiate that kick, even if it's the tank. Eating the wait time is better than dealing with a noob for two reasons: First, trying to deal with the noob stresses you out, and Second, not kicking them is essentially rewarding them for noobishness.

- Don't stress yourself out by grouping with noobs. A stressed healer doesn't heal as well long after the stressor is gone. If the whole group is against you (it happens), don't be afraid to leave. Use the dungeon cool-down/queue time to relax, and if you have friends who don't mind listening, feel free to rant to them. Or take it out on Gnomes**. Whatever relaxes you.

--------------------------------------------
* Pun intended.
** This poster loves Gnomes, and would never abuse them just to relieve stress.

But the gnomes... they are so puntable!

I think many of the differences between healers become moot once you get more gear. I don't see anyone caring much for the class of the healer anymore, just their gear and experience. Rejoice priests, you guys are still awesome!

I've actually never encountered anyone who shunned me for being a Priest, regardless if I was Discipline or Holy. I haven't even heard of the problem on Plus Heal either, so I apologize to all of you poor priesties who have suffered such unfortunate abuse.

Many helpful tips and tricks have been brought up in this topic, but remember that as with any class- your success depends on what works for you and your style. I've seen many different styles and builds and that's one of the great things of being a Priest right now. We have several outlets to go into once we fill our tree of Disc or Holy. : )

If any one still is looking for a little guidance or help in the Priest department, feel free to give me a holler in game. I'm always more than eager to help anyone with the class I love most. :D

In the hot-fixes that were deployed within the first two weeks of Cataclysm's launch helped the class beyond words. Holy managed to stand out, more so than Discipline as their bigger fixes are coming in the balancing patch, and haven't really had any issues once said fixes were in place.

Discipline can still have mana issues, more so than Holy, and until the 208% increase buff to PW:S goes through it'll still be on the weak end. The DA buff to PoH will be nice (since they're nerfing PoH by 15%) and the hot-fix to return Rapture to near Wrath levels was very welcome.

Priests are in a good place, relatively speaking, and gear does make a fairly big difference.