World of Warcraft®

So I just got my Priest to level 85 and am gearing up in Heroics and I'm finding out something..

I'm having difficulty knowing when to use Greater Heal. It seems that when theres alot of damage going out, I just automatically default to Flash Heal, as it's quicker then Greater Heal but its more costly, so I'm finding I'm going OOM quicker, when I would probably OOM less using Greater Heal, but I don't know when it's a good idea to use and when it's not..

I'm a Disc Priest and I think I've gotten the hang of everything else about my spec except for the usage of Greater Heal. And I think it's going to hold me back from serious raiding unless I can get my mind round it.

So, what's it for?

Flash heal when it will come constant maybe hige damage at around 2-3 members in the grupp but if the damage wont go so much to other players then tanks (i am thinking a dps ninja pulls) they wont need a flash heal to get up.
Also if the tank is taking constant medium damage it could be good to not top him but using GH when he gets low.
Also what you deside is medium low and hige damage scales whit you´r preference and gear :-)

So let the Tank get low and then use a Greater Heal? I use Vuhdo which shows me how much my heals will heal for on a non-crit, so I believe I can judge when a tank would be fully healed from it and use it then..

So Flash Heal for constant high damage and Greater Heal for when theres medium damage going out to specific players but nothing major? That's what I got from your response, I hope I got it right..

Letting a tank "get low" would mean him around 30% and thats a bit late to start healing. Just look how much your gheal heals for (dont rely on crits) and when hes missing about that hp, cast it. As disc priest its a bad idea to wait until ppl are low on hp, you will have a hard time catching up.

Go with the easy assumption:
- if the tank is above 70%, use Heal on him. It will pick up small dmg and reset weakened soul. Its also quite mana neutral.
- if the tank is between 30-70%, use gheal. You have Train of thoughts, which means spamming gheal will reduce the cd of your inner focus, which eventually makes gheal spam almost as efficient mana wise as Heal spam. Make sure you do use inner focus on cd, either for gheal or poh.
- if the tank is under 30% and taking a beating, and hes got weakened soul, consider using pain supp or even barrier to reduce inc dmg. Flash heal spam is a bit of a last resort, as it will oom you pretty fast so the fight cant go for much longer when you started that. Its also a good habit to not rely on flash heal, better not slack and end up forced to use it. You can also use power infusion on yourself to ease the mana cost. Dont be shy on using your cds, they are not so long as you might think. You can have them all every other 2 packs of trash.
Also, make sure you keep grace on the tank - if it fell off, penance to build 3 stacks fast. Penance is a very cheap heal too, so use it on cd.

About "flash heal for constant high dmg" - wrong assumption. Gheal is more than capable to deal with high dmg, aslong as the tank is not very low on hp. You can also use Power Infusion on yourself to speed those up. Flash Heal is literally the tank dying, you out of cds and him still taking a beating.

Thankyou Saphiramoon!

I always try to keep Grace up but I'll admit I don't use Penance to the best of its ability, its something I will practice more as I'm gearing up.

One thing I learned pretty quickly about Healing is that relying on crits is BAD. Because when you start doing that and you don't crit - things get bad, very quickly, so that's preaching to the converted, hehe. :)

Pain Suppression and Power Infusion are both on mouse-over binding to my mouse-wheel scroll up and scroll down, so they're VERY easy to get to for me, and allows me to use them on anybody I need to quickly. And I use them quite frequently, I'm finding Pain Suppression especially is a god-send whilst I'm still low geared, I'm able to handle pulls alot easier and be more mana efficient as my effiency at the moment is still really bad but that will improve with better gear ofcourse.

Inner Focus is macro'd in with Flash Heal and Greater Heal already so its used on cooldown almost all the time, but I'm considering removing it from Flash Heal based on your recommendation, would you say that's a good idea or not?

I do rely to much on Flash Heal at the moment and that's obvious considering how quickly I go through my mana.

I do appericate the help, I want to be the best Priest I can be. :)

08/03/2012 07:11Posted by Esuria

So Flash Heal for constant high damage and Greater Heal for when theres medium damage going out to specific players but nothing major? That's what I got from your response, I hope I got it right..

If everyone is low then use PoH :D

cant really coment about disc... but gear is the issue... i levelled my priest and my druid and healing was a nightmare up to the moment i hit 75-80k mana... after that it was a walktrough...
what i (as a holly) do is renew, pom, heal-heal-heal-heal-great heal.... or if its not enough flash-flash-great heal... (flashing only to make great heal cast time less)

been holly since release of cata! and love holly!

08/03/2012 08:50Posted by Etapic

So Flash Heal for constant high damage and Greater Heal for when theres medium damage going out to specific players but nothing major? That's what I got from your response, I hope I got it right..

If everyone is low then use PoH :D

Prayer of Healing doesn't heal enough to be useful when everyone is low, by that point I'll be wanting to use Divine Hymn.

08/03/2012 07:38Posted by Esuria

Inner Focus is macro'd in with Flash Heal and Greater Heal already so its used on cooldown almost all the time, but I'm considering removing it from Flash Heal based on your recommendation, would you say that's a good idea or not?

No, leave it for all, and put it for prayer of healing too. A free spell is a free spell, and they all have similar mana costs. Whichever is needed when inner focus comes off cd is well used. Inner focus also gives u a nice crit % so ftw - though you are perfectly right in not relying on crits. If they happen for disc even if they overheal they are still nice because they make a nice aegis bubble and will absorb incoming hits, so its not wasted at all.

08/03/2012 08:57Posted by Esuria

Prayer of Healing doesn't heal enough to be useful when everyone is low, by that point I'll be wanting to use Divine Hymn.

Dont think like this, disc prayer of healing is as capable of sustaining aoe healing as holy poh is. The numbers you see are maybe not that impressive, but remember they apply aegis 100% so what you see in numbers is actually 35-45% smaller than it really is. (depending on your mastery). The aegis also has the advantage of stacking and not going into overhealing when dmg continues to hit your party. When your poh crits, the aegis is even bigger. Macro it with inner focus just like u did with gh/fh and use it whenever u have aoe dmg. It costs less than a flash heal and will heal for quite a lot if u take into consideration aegis and the glyph. Tbh, with BT+PI, poh can do close healing with a divine hymn and it doesnt have an 8 min cd. In some raid encounters (not much in 5 mans), when you know aoe dmg will hit the party as soon as u pulled, you can spam poh and stack aegis to max and go in combat with a nice 50k+ shield on everybody in a group (aegis is capped at 40% of your own hp - for ex, my cap is about 68k).

Now, ofc if you have it, divine hymn is very good. However, its an 8 min cd, so not that easy to count on. All in all, dont be fooled by the impression disc has bad aoe healing.

Dont think like this, disc prayer of healing is as capable of sustaining aoe healing as holy poh is. The numbers you see are maybe not that impressive, but remember they apply aegis 100% so what you see in numbers is actually 35-45% smaller than it really is. (depending on your mastery). The aegis also has the advantage of stacking and not going into overhealing when dmg continues to hit your party. When your poh crits, the aegis is even bigger. Macro it with inner focus just like u did with gh/fh and use it whenever u have aoe dmg. It costs less than a flash heal and will heal for quite a lot if u take into consideration aegis and the glyph. Tbh, with BT+PI, poh can do close healing with a divine hymn and it doesnt have an 8 min cd.

Okay, I guess I'm just looking at it from my gear level where it doesn't seem to be doing anything and even the Divine Aegis that procs off it doesn't seem to asborb that much damage, and I do use Prayer of Healing alot, so it's not like I'm abandoning it :)

If you are having trouble keeping the tank up in dungeons and running oom it may be wise to try speccing into atonement (with the accuracy glyph of course)

atonement is much stronger in dungeons as it double dips from the luck of the draw buff
e.g if you would normally smite for 8k damage it would heal for 8k damage
in dungeons the spite would be 8000x1.15=9200 damage which then causes 9200x1.15=10580 healing on a nearby target.

Most dungeons you will keep the tank and melee alive with nothing but PW:S on the tank and smiting.

It would also give you the archangel giving you a powerful and low CD output cooldown for when things start taking a turn for the worse.

08/03/2012 10:56Posted by Esuria

Okay, I guess I'm just looking at it from my gear level where it doesn't seem to be doing anything and even the Divine Aegis that procs off it doesn't seem to asborb that much damage, and I do use Prayer of Healing alot, so it's not like I'm abandoning it :)

Just give it a bit more credit, you'll learn to love it ...or well, hate it. Sadly, in dragon soul its by far my most used spell, and it will be yours too when you will start raiding. Too used, if I can say so.

If you are having trouble keeping the tank up in dungeons and running oom it may be wise to try speccing into atonement (with the accuracy glyph of course)

atonement is much stronger in dungeons as it double dips from the luck of the draw buff
e.g if you would normally smite for 8k damage it would heal for 8k damage
in dungeons the spite would be 8000x1.15=9200 damage which then causes 9200x1.15=10580 healing on a nearby target.

Most dungeons you will keep the tank and melee alive with nothing but PW:S on the tank and smiting.

It would also give you the archangel giving you a powerful and low CD output cooldown for when things start taking a turn for the worse.

I'm not having issues keeping people alive it's more that I was having issues deciding when to use Greater Heal or Flash Heal. The only time people die is usually their error and not my own. I've tried the Atonement spec and it really doesn't work for me, I don't like how it plays. Thanks for the suggestion though.

Throw Heal and Flash Heal out of the window. If you are already resorting to those your group is doing something wrong or you are doing something wrong. And this is coming from healing cata 5man heroics from the first week of Cataclysm launch in worse gear you have right now.

Flash Heal is pointless, if someone stands in crap let them die, you dont need 5 people for any of the encounters in the content you are doing and it actually drives people to improve instead of you cutting yourself because you think you are a terrible healer due to running oom. Save mana for people that matter.

iI the tank is taking huge spike damage slap pain supression on him, power infusion on yourself and go to town with gheals - altho unless you pull 4 packs at once that would be massive ovrekill. Or ask him to use cd-s at the appropriate time. Dont forget your PW: Barrier can be used as a tank cooldown aswell.

Greater Heal with ToT/SoS spec as you have is very comparable healz-per-mana wise to Heal, on the plus side it heals for far more. The way to optimize its usage is to chaincast it but cancel the cast if you see that it would overheal for more then 50% of its healing done on the current target.

Dont macro inner focus in every spell you can, manage it yourself - there are occasions when you want to save it for example for a powerhymn - Power infusion on yourself, PW:S on tank/random group member - Inner focus - Divine Hymn. This results to more pulses of the hymn at increased crit rate. Expect crazy healing.

Think of penance as a nice quick cheap way of getting 3 stacks of grace up but dont rely on it for bursty heavy healing duty. It is cheap and its instant but thats where the positive things end.

Utilize your PW:S and the haste buff it brings with it. Manage your rapture returns by installing ingelas rapture addon. Instant casts dont consume Borrowed Time so you would be best off PW:S-ProM-penance-gheal to have every heal benefit as much as possible from it.

For heavy duty AoE healing you will want to use Power Infusion on yourself and spam PoH.

For maximum mana returns line up your hymn of hope and shadowfiend and if you can with any intellect procs you get from enchants/gear.

Disc is all about playing your cd-s right.

you are a disco priest and you oom? this is an art. whatever.i will speak for myself .i am holy.here you are

forget flash heal..flash heal is good,only for dangerous situations .i use to use it after casting guardian spirit,when i see a player(mostly the tank) to get raped by the mob.so greater heal is perfect for every situtation.dont forget the mana cost as well.

flash heal---more mana less heal less time to cast
greater heal---less mana,more heal but more time to cast it(our friend reforger is here dont forget.we dont want that much mastery-except if you still play disco-.HASTE FTW)

Dont macro inner focus in every spell you can, manage it yourself - there are occasions when you want to save it for example for a powerhymn - Power infusion on yourself, PW:S on tank/random group member - Inner focus - Divine Hymn. This results to more pulses of the hymn at increased crit rate. Expect crazy healing.

I'll have to poke you on this Sigrid :P. Check the tooltip on Inner Focus - its been changed for quiiiiteeee a while. I wont do anything for your DH (sadly :<).

Personally, I don't use it macroed either, but that's just because for me that macro seems to bug a lot and either IF doesn't get casted or gets my next spell stuck. Plus, I'm used to just slapping the keybind.

I'll have to poke you on this Sigrid :P. Check the tooltip on Inner Focus - its been changed for quiiiiteeee a while. I wont do anything for your DH (sadly :<).

Jesus on rollerskates, when did that happen?

08/03/2012 18:28Posted by Sigrid

Jesus on rollerskates, when did that happen?

It was a tuesday, 13th, with crap weather and a bad mood :<.

1. Learn the encounter. That makes it easier to predict the damage going on. If it's a steady tick of damage going on you can afford letting the DPS go down a bit. Back in Vanilla, it wasn't unthinkable to keep the DPSers at around 40-60% health and leave it at that. In cataclysm it's fairly easy to predict that damage that's going to go on, so you can use the right ability at the right time.

2. If a DPS is taking unnatural amount of damage, it's him not doing what he's suppose to do. At the cost of the group if the healer goes out of mana. In such cases, let that troublesome DPS die for the greater good of your group. Yes, they'll moan, but they always do.

Now, following 1 and 2 makes it easier to spend some time on healing the one taking all the damage - more or less. As a disc priest, using PoM, PW:S and Penance should suffice, but if he's taking heavy damage, just start throwing that Greater Heal even if he's at 90% health. It's much better to overheal some than letting the tank drop too far. In cases of heavy damage it can be hard getting the tank up again, so keep that in mind.

Don't worry too much about not topping of people, you're there to keep them alive, not to top them off. In early stages of Disc priest healing, you'd find yourself a bit on the low mana side. That's only natural, but it'll grow easier as you get better gear. Just remember to use your CDs when you have to, to keep your mana up and running. You'll need it.

Don't fuss too much about your gear though, grow experience, experiment and find your style in disc healing. Yeah, you'll get yelled at quite a lot but, hey, you're a healer, you'd better cast that bubble of give a dam on yourself and keep it up, that's what you're going to need the most :)

Probably already been said but what I tend to do is spam penance on the tank on CD. Divine Aegis works wonders even when you don't realise its there. Always try to penance and PWS before using greater healing as you have the back-up of your divine aegis and shield, plus a little haste buff if spec'd into it. Plenty of time to get one or two casts out depending.