I am good.... Very good at sucking at healing! help!

[darrenlol]

Hello, I am pretty new to holy priest. I used to play as shadow spec but I recently changed to holy for pve and disc for pvp. I never really healed through any WoTLK raids and I just stepped my foot into ICC 10. It was pretty hard since I was wearing pvp gears(still have 4-5 pieces). My guild downed first 4 bosses but we pretty much had 3 healers except saurfang so my guild is kinda asking me to step up so we can 2 man heal the whole thing.

My Armory = http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...t&cn=Everlivin

Now, the problem is, I think my mana is very low. It's sitting at 21k unbuffed. I still have couple pvp gears so that might be why but no holy priest guide says minimum mana required to heal no prob in icc 10.

1. So what's the minimum mana you think I need?

Also, my raid leader is always asking me to put renew on the tanks and sometimes raids depending on the boss but I heard renew is very ineffective mana wise.

2. Am I supposed to have renew on everybody when i am raid healing?

3. Most of the time I runs out of mana earlier than anybody else, According to my healing meter, my top healing is Flash heal around 45% and Prayer of Mending around 25%. CoH around like 15%.. How is my healing done supposed to look?

4. Is it just normal to have lower HPS than Holy Pally? In ToGC run last night I had around 4k HPS and Holy Pally had around 5-6k -_-;;

5. Please let me know if you see anything I have wrong with my gear(Other than pvp gears)

Thank you all!!!

[Amamaeth]

Problem is partly your pvp gear, spec and partly your rotation it seems (without a parse I won't be able to tell for sure, World of Logs GOGOGO). Since you are having mana problems, you can gem pure int in yellow slots to help there (I hope your raid has replenishment!). You could probably drop the PvP spellpower trinket for the badge int trinket as well.

As for spells, in general Prayer of Healing and Circle of healing should be near the top followed by Prayer of Mending and Flash Heal. Blanket renewing is done at higher gear levels, when mana is not an issue and only if you spec into renew. Which leads me to your spec. Assuming you are raid healing, you should drop some of the Greater Heal talents (Improved Healing and a few points in Empowered healing) to pick up PoH talents (Holy Reach, Healing Prayers) and pick up Blessed Resilience (3% healing to all spells). Drop the renew glyph as it's a HPS loss even if you spec for renew and pick up the Prayer of Healing glyph.

The idea here is you want to maximize your AoE healing capabilities. Single target healing is only useful for tank healer, which since you directly compared your HPS to a holy pally, I'm going to assume you aren't the tank healer :P Now, popping renew on the tanks can be very useful, and a very good idea, but if you are having mana issues even after these suggestions just leave tank healing to the pally and focus on maximizing your performance for your assignment.

[chun]

First, I'd advise you to take a look at the holy priest guide in this section, Aliena did a great job putting it together.

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...y-Priest-Guide

Now, replace your PvP gear with PvE gear. That will increase both your mana pool as well as your mana regen. Use emblems to buy the ilevel 232 gear if you have to.

Is your raid leader a priest? If not, then I recommend getting together with your healing team and sorting out healing responsibilities. Ie who is focusing more on the tanks, who is focusing more on the raid etc. As for using renews, there is a solid discussion in the thread above, the bottom line is you need to figure out what works best for your playstyle.

Use CoH as often as you can. Use PoM (especially on someone about to take damage) as often as you can. Between those, use either FH or Renew as a "filler". Also, don't forget PoH, particularly when you expect massive AoE dmg on groups.

Finally, don't forget to use your shadowfiend, hymn of hope, and innerfocus->Divine Prayer if needed.

The ultimate test of a healer, is making sure that your targets stay alive.

[Amamaeth]

Another tip I forgot, Shadowfiend + Hymn together restores a greater amount of mana then if you do them seperately, try to use them together when you need mana if you can.

[Bashal]

...look at the holy priest guide in this section, Aliena did a great job putting it together.

http://www.tankspot.com/showthread.p...y-Priest-Guide

qfe.

[Krustyclown]

I heal with a Resto Shaman, but I often find that minor practical changes often greatly impact the overall quality of raid healing. Although many of these are fairly basic principles, I will start at the beginning since you said you were new to the healing role.

1) I have found with healing that the speed and reaction time of a heal is actually more critical that the strength of the heal. A quickly cast 5k heal that saves a player from dying is much more beneficial than a 20k heal that almost got off in time. There are dozens of mods available to help you improve reaction time for heals (as well as cleansing/decursing). Are you currently running a healing mod UI like Grid/clique/xpearl/or healbot, etc. If not, I highly suggest looking into downloading some, even if it is just for 5 and 10 man encounters. If you are already running one of these but are not fully familiar with their capabilities, take some time to go to you tube and look up some advanced setup tutorials for your healing UI mod. You may be surprised to find a functionality you didn't know about or a different configuration that suits you better.

2) How is your frame rate and latency during raids? Obviously there has been quite a bit of instance lag lately server side, but if you are regularly running below 10 frames per second during raid encounters your healing will suffer. If so, you may want to consider lowering your video settings to the lowest setting or upgrading your video card. Slow or unstable internet connections will also negatively impact healing.

3) Although this was previously addressed in an earlier post, make sure your character is properly itemized as far as gear, gems, enchants, spec, glyphs, etc. I recommend reading one of the more detailed theory-crafting think tank (TTT) guides for your class on this site or on elitistjerks.com.

4) Practice makes perfect! It takes some time to get accustomed to move to healing from DPS. DPS is typically 80% proactive and 20% reactive, while healing is generally 20% proactive and 80% reactive. If healing still feels slightly awkward to you, you should consider healing some low level instances like naxx and ulduar (or even que for a few random 5 man heroics) on your non-raid days in order to get yourself accustomed to the new role and to tweak new mods or UIs. While this may be fairly basic, it is definitely one of the most effective for first time raid healers.

[darrenlol]

Thank you very one for the advice. Now I identified the problems.

1. Pvp gears need to be replaced with PVE gears.
2. My Spec needs to be changed to more raid healing viable one.
3. My Rotation was more of Flash Heal than PoH or CoH.

I will try to fix these and get used to them until my next raid day which is monday. I will let you guys know after.

Thank you!!!

[Maèl]

I'm with Ama except for some small things that really are a matter of taste.
If you keep ProM on CD as you should and use your CoH/PoH carefully then you still may find that you have trouble keeping Renew up on targets where it really makes a difference. Your most valuable glyphs(depending on the encounter) are Guardian Spirit and CoH. You should roll with glyph of FH until you have watched yourself how you use it. Since my primary spec is Disc I have quite a lot of int/crit on my gear. I find that I have many procs of Surge of Light so I'm currently reassessing the FH glyph. Being an engineer with the engineering glove enchant I quite often go on a very hastened PoH spree(depending on the encounter) so the PoH glyph could very well be worth it in my case.
Renew is a HoT. A fire and forget spell you cast when you feel you can spare the GCD. The longer it lasts the better. So the Glyph of Renew is IMHO, YMMV counterproductive. I went with Empored Renew instead of Blessed Resilience(and skipped Desparate Prayer) because I like another button to push while on the move but that is a matter of taste, really. But if you walk down that path just remember to go all the way and talent Renew. Push your AOE heals. Any talent that somehow improves CoH and, if your raid leader is clever about group composition, PoH is well worth it. Their biggest problem is range. So you will need Holy Reach.
When it comes to mana there are two things to consider:
a)time your cooldowns. If you are clever about it you can squeeze in two Shadowfiends per the typical encounter. Know your fights. With enough haste you may find the time to squeeze in a Hymn of Hope. You will sometimes have to interrupt it due to emergencies.
And it is ok to swear when you have to do so.
b)Int, int and int again. Being Holy you will find that Spellpower is not your problem. So gemming int/sp for yellow sockets is the way to go. Try to push spirit as well. The more int you have the more valuable spirit becomes as a regen stat. And pure MP5 doesn't scale with Blessing of Kings. So socketing spi/sp in those blue sockets is also very nice.

Do not, I repeat, do not include PoH or GH in your standard rotation. These are emergency spells and having 3 stacks of Serendipity is not enough reason to cast them. Especially PoH should at least hit 3 targets depending on the encounter. It is limited to the party, not the raid. It is nothing you want to include in your standard "rotation". It is expensive, so make it count.

Depending on the encounter your top 3 spells should be either of ProM, CoH, FH and PoH. In extreme cases like Twin Valkyrs you may find that ProM is your top healing spell. Yes, it is that good. Bounce it off of the current tank(or in case of DBS a target with a mark/blood boil) on any CD and don't worry about it no more for a couple of seconds. This is the most important class defining spell priests have. Yes, it is that good. Even for Disc priests.

If you find you are wanting for mana, remember to down a mana pot. If you already did so, squeal for an Innervate. Depending on your Druids you might have to squeal like a piggie. Pride is nothing. Mana is everything. Clever Shadowfiend/Hymn of Hope usage should save you from this indignity, tho. This isn't 2005 anymore, thank God. You might even want to flask for MP5 or drink elixirs/eat food for int or spirit. You shouldn't be lacking spellpower.

A very nice weapon to pick up is the staff of DBS/10. Just remember to socket it for sp/spi. This alone can do a lot for your mana reg. The iLvl245 intelligence badge trinket is also very, very, very nice. I dread the day I have to replace it. Marrowgar/10 drops a Spellpower trinket with mana return on use. This is also very good. Those will see you thru a lot of content. If you are filthy rich you could take a look at the Greatness/Intelligence(or Spirit) and Illusion card trinkets. But you will sooner or later replace them with what I've mentioned. Greatness propably isn't even worth it if you are filthy rich. Just go for that cheap badge trinket first for your intelligence needs.

As I said, my primary spec is Disc so I went with the +3% int meta. Thruth being told I don't think the meta sockets have any big impact once you have reached T9. Not for healers.


EDIT:
PoH and to a lesser extent CoH are very sensitive to positioning. You will need raid quite a bit of raid awareness in order to maximize their usefulness. Especially in 10 man raids wwhen the encounter demands you to spread out it isn't unheard of that CoH only hits 3 targets.
AND REMEMBER DIVINE HYMN! This can be a raid saver. More than once I found that this was my top 4th or top 5th spell despite the lengthy CD. Nothing spells awesome like a well timed Divine Hymn. Ther is never ever any reason to interrupt that one.

[Unluckky]

It definitely takes some time to be a good and then some more time to be a great holy priest. I have 6 spells bound to my mouse and it takes a bit to master the use of all of them i.e. binding heal. You were speaking from a raiding standpoint and one of the things I have done is make power auras show cooldowns for all my spells (PoM, CoH and serendipity stacks so i know when/if that hasted PoH or GH is available.) It is important to note that a priest is not a spammer like other healers tend to be much more, and that the correct tool for the job is vital. Having that info on your screen display can be huge. With high amounts of haste and the proper visual notes they can be useful tools. I know a holy pally that is very hard to beat, other than that I smoke everyone else I raid with that is anywhere near me in gearscore. Gem INT til you have enough mana (proper use of cd's is HUGE) then i went spellpower til i have around 3100 or so with inner fire on. I have recently boosted my haste to 750-800+ which is a huge help with throughput in todays raiding setup. I do soak up with flash healing tons more than i used to. but with proper mana cd's and good gear and i use the flash heal glyph because i get the most out of it compared to lets say prayer of healing glyph, which will turn into overheal and i just won't cast it enough to get as much out of it as flash heal glyph. I used to spam renew but after 2p t10 and some haste adjustments once i got the gear flash is very good now. GH with serendipity is same casting time as a flash or close to it. I am even able to tank heal now in 25 mans if really necessary although i am much more useful healing the raid. Use prayer of mending ON CD. One of the best spells out there imo once you master it.