Holy Priest Needs Advice

[hope84]

Hi guys, I've been playing on my priest for a few years and right now I'm feeling a lil bit frustrated about her.

I'm raiding BoT, TO4 & BwD on normal difficulty and I can't keep it up; I think I had read everything about Holy Priest Gemming, Enchanting, etc but I'm still going OOM all the time and standing at the bottom of the meters.
I know meters doesn't really matters if ppl is not dying on you BUT it's no fun seeing an undergeread holy paladin being top healer with 40% of healing done and 10K+ HPS and I'm third with 28% of healing done and 8K HPS.

This is the link to Höpe's armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...C3%B6pe/simple

I don't know if it is my gear, my talents or maybe my playstyle; but I'd really appreciate any advicce you can give me.

[Deathundone]

I looke at your gear. I'm not the best on priest healing as I have only healed with a paladin this expansion so far. My priest is only level 82. You do have enough spirit for your gear. I didn't get to go to in depth due to crappy internet and it took me 2 mins just to load this page. Don't pay attention to healing meters. 1: the pally is probably tank healing and tanks will take the most damage in a fight. 2: that pally probably has alot more overhealing that you do. One thing I've always tried to do is minimalize my overheals and not worry about my hps. Means I'm maximizing my mana usage. Make sure you are using your cd's in a timely and efficient manner. Don't wait untill you are already half way through the fight to use your shadowfiend or hym of hope. Figure out their cooldowns and the amount of time it takes to kill a boss. I don't remember the cd's off the top of my head. But, for instance it's a 6 min boss fight. Shadowfiend has a 3 min cd. Wait untill you are a min into the fight and pop your cd. Then 4 mins into the fight it will be off cd again. This will return you more mana over the course of the fight. I used to have a real problem with only using my cd's once i was oom. Can't do that in cata. I hope this will help. Good luck raiding!

[Undome]

What would be helpful, if you cannot provide any form of logs, is if you could give a general overview of what you do in a fight. I can't really offer a whole lot of feedback without knowing what spells you are using when.

From just a quick glance...

I think you are going a bit overboard with haste. You only need 12.5 percent raid buffed. That means, unless you aren't with a Shadowpriest, Boomkin, or Ele/Restro druid, you probably have too much haste. You should use that as a marker for your haste. If you are unsure based on your armory whether or not you have enough haste, go in game and check. I suggest you switch your focus to Mastery instead. Holy mastery is an amazing one and it provides free healing, especially on Aura fights, it is incredibly powerful when coupled with Prayer of Healing and the PoH Glyph.

Granted, this makes it more difficult for you to share gear with Shadow since they love haste.

Secondly, you can consider a respec. For raid healing, you won't be using Serenity, so having Revelations is generally just a mana drain. Consider speccing out of Revelations and Tome of Light. I suggest putting them into Blessed Resilience and Veiled Shadows.

That is all I can offer for now.

[Sebadoh]

I'm inclined to agree with Undome. Haste and Mastery are difficult to compare and weigh, but obviously if you're going OOM then you want to get to the bare minimum (as close to 12.5% haste with the 5% raid buff as you can get without going under).

Deathundone brings up a good point about cooldown usage, there are some fights where you can get in two Shadowfiends if you work it properly. Remember that if you use Fiend and HoH together, you gain more mana.

I haven't played with Holy since the buff to Sanctuary, but I doubt it made a big enough impact for it to be worth using in most situations. I'd hold on to the point in Revelations for stuff like Chimaeron Feuds where it actually does its job, but Tome of Light is not worth it, and definitely do not overuse Sanctuary as it will kill your mana pool.

One of the points from Tome of Light can go into the death angel or Blessed Resilience (which actually has a pretty nice uptime on several of the more difficult encounters), and the other point can go into the Shadowfiend talent over in the Shadow tree.

Question: Do people use your Lightwell? If not, bug them about it. It is a HUGE part of your healing.

[Undome]

I'm inclined to agree with Undome. Haste and Mastery are difficult to compare and weigh, but obviously if you're going OOM then you want to get to the bare minimum (as close to 12.5% haste with the 5% raid buff as you can get without going under).

Deathundone brings up a good point about cooldown usage, there are some fights where you can get in two Shadowfiends if you work it properly. Remember that if you use Fiend and HoH together, you gain more mana.

I haven't played with Holy since the buff to Sanctuary, but I doubt it made a big enough impact for it to be worth using in most situations. I'd hold on to the point in Revelations for stuff like Chimaeron Feuds where it actually does its job, but Tome of Light is not worth it, and definitely do not overuse Sanctuary as it will kill your mana pool.

One of the points from Tome of Light can go into the death angel or Blessed Resilience (which actually has a pretty nice uptime on several of the more difficult encounters), and the other point can go into the Shadowfiend talent over in the Shadow tree.

Question: Do people use your Lightwell? If not, bug them about it. It is a HUGE part of your healing.

Even during Heroic Chimaeron, at least in 10s, I am finding casting Sanctuary to be a waste of mana and time. There are better things to fill GCDs with.

From my experience with Blessed Resilience, I get ~30% uptime (depending on the fight this can be much higher). Coupled with Desperate Prayer and Test of Faith, it isn't terribly unusual for me to see 50-80k DP Crits depending on what kind of buffs are active at the time. it is quite a glorious combination.

Not disagreeing with you, just adding something else in.

[aresius]

My holy priest is my alt and all ive raided with here were a couple of pug runs through normal modes, so im not a priest expert. Hence my first recomendation is to take a look at alienas guide in the healing forum.
As far as i can see, your itemization (gemming/enchanting) is good. I dont know if there were changes since you first posted, but i think the amount of spirit you have is enough, and its not worth gemmig for.
The problem is likely with spell priorities. Although hps isint a reliable tool to help determine if healing is good (im sure all here can see anyone can spam a quick spell and oom too fast), i can last a entire fight pulling a average 10-12K, and i can peak 17-20K on a heavy aoe part of a fight by frying some mana.
Many holy priests come to cata with some WOTLK vices, like spamming renews or flash heals, and have to re-learn what to cast and when. Circle of healing, prayer of healing and prayer of mending are the new bread and butter.
A last note is to remember to use your mana cds (the hymnn and shadowfiend), and if your having serious mana issues, spec for veiled shadows to throw 2 fiends (sometimes 3!) in one fight. Last thing to consider is that holy priests make the best use of spirit since they have 80% combat regen (other heals have 60), so considering swapping one of the int trinkets might be helpfull. My priest has one spirit trinket (the one that gives 5 stacks of 103 spirit - near 100% uptime) and raid buffed my combat mana regen is near 5K.

[GoOrange]

I find that I always need spirit. You would think after a while that you would need less and less as the better gear has more of it included, but as the fights I'm doing get harder, my mana usage goes up and I still need that extra spirit.

So I continue to reforge everything for spirit wherever possible and maintain a healthy supply of spirit gems.

[hope84]

Guys thanks a lot for the help, I have made some changes to my gems / enchanting and I'm doing a lil bit better now. Anyways my HPS is still low (9K HPS in Cho'Gall yesterday)
Regarding usage of spells I cast heal as a filler. PoM & CoH in every CD, renew tanks and Serenity on every CD too. I'm usually raid healin and helpin other healers healin our tanks. I only use flash heal if someone is about to die or to get PoH hasted from Serendipity.

Using my shadowfiend real quick on the fight to get it back ready was really useful!

Regarding Blessed Resilence, I really don't get the talent that is why I'm not using it; I thought it worked only on melee attacks. How does it work?

Thanks a lot for the info and help to all.

[Undome]

Blessed Resilience currently procs off any critical, including critical heals. It is also exceptionally amazing after things such as Nef's Crackle or mechanics that really lower your HP. You can easily rebuild it for very small amounts of mana. I consider it a much stronger use of a talent point than Revelations since, for a raid healer in 10 mans, it doesn't provide me much of anything.

As for your Cho'gall numbers, that is actually fine. If you have two other competent healers with no mana issues (if you are just two healing that may be a bit low), I don't expect you to do more than 9-11 k HPS since they will be competing with you for heals. The fight isn't the best suited for us. HPriests pull out the best numbers where there is constant usage of PoH/CoH and our mastery. Fights like Magmaw and Halfus (more so on Heroic) are where we can do exceptionally well. I wouldn't dwell much on the meters.

As a clarification, you are only in Serenity Chakra for the first part of Cho'gall correct? You should definitely be in Sanctuary Chakra for the second phase when there is a lot more AoE damage that can be healed up. That would make better use of your PoH and your healing capabilities in general. If you could provide log at some point, that would also be helpful.

[hope84]

Undome, thanks a lot again! I dont know how to give you guys fight logs if you can guide me I'll link you some.
I'm gonna change my talents to give it a try to Blessed Resilence