World of Warcraft®

Nice work there, agree on pretty much all of it.

Not sure that you're right about the following though:

"Divine Hymn is a panic button and Lightwell is more for raiding i believe."

I use these most of the time in heroics. They're both great tools in several situations, I think. Lightwell is awesome if you're in a group that knows how to use it - c'mon, it's healing that costs absolutely no mana, and Hymn is faster than spamming PoH which you may benefit from in certain situations.

But as I said, nice guide. Should help a lot of people get started :)

@Kryzstch

Improved Renew is win, and that was always my point. Rapid renewal and divine touch, however, aren't. Rapid renewal is subject to double-cast, and Divine touch.. Well, at lvl 85 it heals for aproximately 1.2-1.5k, which is simply not worth the 2 points.
But stick to Improved Renew, that's always nice to have. :)

And about Divine Hymn, maybe i didn't make myself clear enough. ^^
It's a panic button, yes, but of couse very viable for heroics aswell!

Lightwell.. Yeah, it's awesome, but like i said your group needs to use it. It's either win-win or 6.2k wasted mana.

My argument would be, that if you cast it before the fight, so you start with full mana, it's not wasted mana :)

And oh, you don't have to feel panic just because you chose the fastest AoE healing, the way I see it. But I get what you mean :)

But a very good guide, I actually didn't know about how the chackra effect was dependant of which spell you cast first. Thought it was coincidal :)

Interesting post, though I disagree a bit.

I am totally raiding specced though I don't have trouble healing heroics, but my gear is pretty much past them too. So here's what I think from my experience on things - although this probably comes out biased towards raiding.

For example, Lightwell is awesome. It is not Lightwells or priests fault if people don't know how to use it, it's well worth taking anyway (glyphing it might be bit too much for heroics but absolutely must in my opinion for raiding).

I don't value flash heal glyph much when we don't want to cast that spell in the first place. Others just work better here.


My prime glyphs atm
- Guardian spirit - often someone seems to be close to dying and the raid cannot afford it; I find that my Guardian Spirit is on cooldown very often even with this glyph. Actually since cd is so short sometimes I just cast it on tank when I know dmg he / she takes soon will be heavy.
- Lightwell - 5 more charges to the one of our best heals, independent from our actions. A bit tricky sometimes to place the well in raids when you need to move a lot, though...
- Prayer of Healing - no need to explain really. AoE healing is what we do best and most in raids, simply huge boost to it.

Major atm:
- Circle of Healing - one more target to intelligent heal
- Spirit of Redemption - took this again on respec since very, very often on progress bosses this could have made all the difference at the end - and it might have done it the first raid I had after taking it
- Divine accuracy - woot what? Comes with spec which is:

http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bcroZfhbrRkrkckob

8 / 31 / 2

Archangel from disc and darkness 2/3 from shadow. I know that this spec is really unorthodox at the moment, but especially in raid environments, damage often comes in bursts and / or we need as much dps in boss as possible - if only to make fight last less time and people making less mistakes.

So I smite 5 stack when safe - and proc archangel when I know heavy healing is needed. 15% more (in optimal situation) is huge bonus to aoe-healing. Of course, often I end up using just few stacks, or even worse, no time to get any smites in - but even so, at the moment I feel the benefits weigh over losses.

I have never thought of veiled shadows, but then again, I try to push for so much spirit that I don't really need to worry lot about mana regen. My spec / thoughts on it primarily focus on two things: haste & spirit. I want to be able to cast fast when needed and not worry about going out of mana. EDIT 2: Mastery HoT stacks, so my argument was invalid here. Now I think mastery very likely is better.

Sadly I haven't had the time to really test out different ways and regemming for it would be expensive as well. Maybe I try some day to reforge as much into mastery as possible and see what happens (keeping some haste for caps naturally).

EDIT: Also I need haste for time to squeeze in some smites for Archangel!

Anyway, for gear: Spirit comes as priority nro. 1. If it has spirit, it has intellect (excluding trinkets). Only exceptions I allow for myself in this come when I can replace blue with epic - as long as that epic does not have hit in it. We can always reforge the stat we like the least (crit, mostly) to spirit.

For trinkets, I think Darkmoon Faire Tsunami deck reward is way better than any else (assuming it stays up decently well, haven't got into testing it yet) and Mandala of Stirring Patterns is second best. Also, you don't need to "use" either, so one less thing to worry about.

EDIT: Core of Ripeness from Valor points vendor is excellent as well.

EDIT2: Also everything here relates to 10-man raids; no idea if it would make any sense at 25-mans.

Smite? I won't even comment that.

And when Echo of Light does 14% of my healing in a raid, is the 2nd most healing factor, i'd say mastery beats haste by miles. Haste just makes you blow off more mana, so you're working against youself. It takes HUGE amounts before haste becomes anywhere near as good as mastery.

You lack 1 Pt in Darkness, which works agains your ''moar haste'' idea. You also seemed to forget the last point in Mental Agility.. which works against mana sustainability.

I've come to this thread hoping to get some answers but I didn't. So here's my problem: I suck.
I suck at healing, the guild is about to ditch me.
What am I doing wrong ? A paladin with worse gear than me is doing 2k more healing, a druid with worse gear than me is doing more healing than me (just a tad bit more) but keeping up his mana. I blow off all my cooldowns, everything, including hymn and whatnot just to stay in a decent range below the 2nd healer. (10mans).

What am I doing wrong with this priest? I tried everything.
I use Chakra all the time, I have it bound to my Heal and my PoH and also activate it by itself whenever I need it.

My usual fight is like this... let's talk Council: Activate Chakra serenity on tank, renew, keep renew up + PoM.

Cast heals in between on raid members, keep the tank up with heal and greater heal sometimes. - this is the usual situation, keep the tank up with heal, greater heal and renew all the time, PoM him on CD.

on aoe: I pop CoH, PoM, renew on every raid member that needs it and spam PoH like crazy.

I use Binding Heal anytime I need it. I also use the Holy word serenity, never use the holy word: sanctuary nor flash heal.

IDK what is wrong. At first I thought its my way of playing but i've seen some videos and read on these forums and it seems like this is what everyone is doing.

now I wonder if it's my gear, please check me out and tell me what's wrong. I usually try to stack spirit > haste > mastery > crit.

Really loved the post,iam gonna start using Inner fire in raids from now on.Although i use Glyph of lightwell instead.Would like to know if we healers should be enchanting our weapons with Power Torrent instead of Heartsong though.Thank you in advance :)

@Klava, apart from your major glyphs, which are a bit odd - I think for raiding the circle of healing one is pretty much a must, and your weapon enchant - I prefer heartsong to hurricane, I cant see I see major problems with your gear. I personally dont like your trinkets either, but well, they're not horrible. You say you are never using HW Sanctuary, is it just the spell itself or the aoe chakra generally? As far as I noticed, the way to leet hps for holy priests is spam poh as much as you can - yes, it sounds meh, but its the sad truth. If you dont have 30%+ of your healing in a raid as holy from poh, you're doing it wrong :D. If you are tank healing as holy, the person assigning you to that is doing it wrong. In rest its just a matter of being fast enough and keeping chakra up.

@Klava:

You shouldn't be tank healing so often. Only when the other healers aren't keeping the MT up. Keeping renew on the tank is acceptable, but you should mainly stay in Chakra: Sanctuary, spamming Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing.

Use Prayer of Healing on a group where atleast 3 players need the healing.
Circle of Healing on every cooldown, unless the damage taken is very high (and you'll need prayer of healing)

Raid Healing is the key word, not tank healing. So yeah, whoever assigned you to be just a tank healer should be ditched :)

I would also focus on mastery instead of haste. It's debateable but IMO haste is only really useful if you spam renew alot but renew sucks its way too costly.


From reading around the only reason people seem to stack haste is to give renew an extra tick. If you're not using renew cept on tanks then haste is pointless. Damage at the moment is not spikey enough to need marginally quicker spells. Holy priest mastery is really, really good.


Other priests seem to really value haste though so I don't know might be a preference thing.

Great thread, thanks for all those information :)

31/01/2011 8:26 PMPosted by Zandalah

You lack 1 Pt in Darkness, which works agains your ''moar haste'' idea. You also seemed to forget the last point in Mental Agility.. which works against mana sustainability.

Yes, both are true and valid points. But those losses are, in my opinion, minor compared to 15% more healing when needed. Almost every fight has lull and time to heal heavily. Also instant casts costs are not that heavy, since most of the time I won't be casting renew - either at all or very rarely - and PoM use is rare as well. That still leaves CoH, but I'd say it's pretty minor to take 2% off of that cost.

About smiting itself and people disliking it (or thinking it should only be done by disc priests), I dunno what to say. Although I haven't been able to test it much, I can squeeze in smites here and there, and after using Archangel they are pretty much without mana cost - and if we compare it to just regenning that time, now I can heal better when I need to. Well, just repeating myself.

EDIT: Removed this part; Mastery echo of light HoT stacks, so I was totally wrong and corrected.

Anyway, after tonight I'll have more experience with this build, I'll report back. But hmm, maybe I could try mastery as well... we'll see.

EDIT: Once again, this all regards 10-man raids I have been with. Very often that few hundred thousand dmg difference can make it on progress raid.

EDIT2: Oops, well, my mind missed "in a raid" from one of previous posts. All right, time to test it out.

31/01/2011 8:21 PMPosted by Zandalah

Smite? I won't even comment that.

And when Echo of Light does 14% of my healing in a raid, is the 2nd most healing factor, i'd say mastery beats haste by miles. Haste just makes you blow off more mana, so you're working against youself. It takes HUGE amounts before haste becomes anywhere near as good as mastery.

Oh, btw, what addon sorts out healing outputs? I'd like to test out myself that mastery thing if I push for it tonight.

EDIT: Hum I guess recount does.

EDIT2: Thing is, I have this gut feeling and now I test it out. :)

EDIT3: Sigh, things coming into mind all the time. For 25-mans at least masterys value is probably huge, I'd never dispute that.

Ye, recount. Of course, it's subject to overhealing, but its usually about 14-15% of your total Healing done, and another 14-15% of your total overhealing done. So the downside is ''lots'' of overhealing, upside is that its POTENTIAL is massive, and that this will almost never overheal if the encounter damage is heavy.

That being said, haste is not a bad stat at all. Mastery just weighs heavier, and I choose to reforge it into mastery.

Oh, i almost forgot!

02/02/2011 1:55 PMPosted by Gaernan

This means chaincasting PoH for example - which means more than half of first casts mastery value disappeared

You'd think that's how it works, but no. :D

Lets say you have 24% Extra healing from echo of light (pretty high, but not that hard to get.)

You cast PoH healing for 10k on each target. This leaves an Echo of Light HoT that heals for 2400 over 6 sec. In other words, 400 per tick. Then, after 3 ticks, or 1200 healing, your second PoH lands, also healing for 10k, leaving a 2400 healing echo of light HoT. The 3 REMAINING ticks from your first cast (1200) is added to the new 6 ticks (2400) which means your Echo of Light now heals for 1200+2400 = 3600 over 6 sec, or 600 healing per tick. It stacks, but not to infinity.

Try casting 3 consecutive heals (any kind will work) and you will see the size of the Echo of Light grow.

Heal
Your most basic spell. You wanna keybind this on 1 or 2

I kinda got a bit scared when I read this bit.....you are writing a guide and actually advocating using keybinds as opposed to an addon like VuhDo or HealBot??

But other than that I thought this was a really nice useful guide. I've decided to get my Priest back into end game healing as back-up for my druid so this was a nice place to start - thanks!

Oh, i almost forgot!

This means chaincasting PoH for example - which means more than half of first casts mastery value disappeared

You'd think that's how it works, but no. :D

Lets say you have 24% Extra healing from echo of light (pretty high, but not that hard to get.)

You cast PoH healing for 10k on each target. This leaves an Echo of Light HoT that heals for 2400 over 6 sec. In other words, 400 per tick. Then, after 3 ticks, or 1200 healing, your second PoH lands, also healing for 10k, leaving a 2400 healing echo of light HoT. The 3 REMAINING ticks from your first cast (1200) is added to the new 6 ticks (2400) which means your Echo of Light now heals for 1200+2400 = 3600 over 6 sec, or 600 healing per tick. It stacks, but not to infinity.

Try casting 3 consecutive heals (any kind will work) and you will see the size of the Echo of Light grow.

Uuuf... ok so that kills all my arguments right there. Time to reforge for mastery - permanently. Tested it out - yeah, you are absolutely right about HoT stacking. Mastery, I love you. And thanks, this will have HUGE impact.

You're welcome, and glad i could help. :)