Healing Heroics for Holy Priest

Recently I've been able to finally heal some heroics on my priest. His average item level is around 338 and is lacking in the mama regen department, but I managed to keep everyone alive pretty well.

Overall, I feel very comfortable with healing as Holy. Compared to my Paladin, I feel like healing on the priest has a slower pace to it. I don't have to constantly cast spells on a normal pool because I can let Renew and Prayer of Mending do most of my work. Staying in Chakra: Serenity makes Heal even better with the improved chance to critical, and having my Heal spells refresh Renew is a great tool for keeping it up on targets without having to spend more mana.

As far as overhealing goes, the main culprits were Renew, Prayer of Mending, and Prayer of Healing. There are times when Renew is ticking before the tank has taken damage, and Prayer of Mending heals for over 10k when the target only took a hit of 7k. But, those heals are always going to contribute to overhealing, my problem is Prayer of Healing. I've found few situations where all five party members require me to use Prayer of Healing (and Circle of Healing for that matter). It's gotten me thinking that if this spell is only going to heal 3/5 group members (at best), then I should just cast a Heal on everyone instead. Obviously time becomes the limiting factor here, but I think that I'm going to start limiting my use of Prayer of Healing so that it's not overhealing so often. Circle of Healing may be in the same boat, but it doesn't heal for as much and it's cheap and instant.

All in all I am really enjoying how healing on my priest feels. I feel comfortable with my mana and my output (providing a fight is not going terrible), and with tools like Lightwell, Leap of Faith, and Body and Soul I really like the utility that I can bring.

I'm going to try to test more on the PTR and post about how Mastery is for Holy Paladins in 4.2, so we'll see how that goes.

Holy Paladin 4.2 Changes. Some fun possibilities

After looking at the patch notes for 4.2 the changes to holy paladins for PVE and PVP healing.

Starting with the nerfs

• Divine Light mana cost has been increased to 35% of base mana, up from 30%.
• Flash of Light mana cost has been increased to 31% of base mana, up from 27%.
• Holy Light mana cost has been increased to 12% of base mana, up from 10%.

These obviously are aimed at reducing our efficiency, and while the increased mana costs don't look great, I don't see them making us any less viable. This nerf is really just making other healers more able to compete with our awesomenss. 

Now to the Talent Changes

Denounce has been redesigned. It still reduces the mana cost of Exorcism. However, it no longer has a chance on Holy Shock of making Exorcism free and instant. Instead, it has a 50/100% chance to prevent the Exorcism target from causing critical effects for the next 6 seconds. This effect can be dispelled.

This is pretty interesting. I talked previously about possible pvp specs that I was going to go with Denounce. This talent allows us to put out some damage without sacrificing to much mana to do so. It still makes us able to use Exorcism liberally, but now the debuff applied can be pretty powerful. Casting Exorcism every 6 seconds will prevent the target from landing a critical. While this is obviously great for pvp, I'm thinking about the possibilities in dungeons and raids. This talents could allow Holy Paladins to tank (potentially). Better yet, if there is a dps trying to tank, the holy paladin could make it so they don't need to worry about being critted on. The change is probably more designed for pvp, but the other option is fun to think about. 

Some other interesting changes

• Infusion of Light can now lower the cast time of Flash of Light by 0.75/1.5 seconds, in addition to Holy Light and Divine Light. In addition, the old Denounce spell overlay effect has been transferred to Infusion of Light since Denounce is no longer a proc.
• Speed of Light now increases movement speed when Holy Radiance or Divine Protection are cast. In addition, this talent now reduces the cooldown of Holy Radiance by 13/26/40 seconds, up from 10/20/30.

The Infusion of Light changes are very interesting. Making Flash of Light instant is rather amazing. I don't really see how this is going to be balanced, but I have no problem with it being overpowered. Flash of Light does have a hefty mana cost, but it will be interesting to see how it works out being instant cast. 

I am looking forward to the speed boost from casting Divine Protection, that will definitely come in handy. And on top of that, being able to cast Holy Radiance more often will definitely help our Raid healing ability, but it could hurt our mana if it's used too often. 

Current outlook

As it stands I think think that Patch 4.2 will be a positive one for holy paladins. We may receive a heavy mana increase, but the changes to some of our core talents should help us to forget about the nerf,. I am looking forward to these tweaks, and I am interested to see what changes manage to go live with the patch.

P.S

I know I haven't posted about holy priests for a while. I haven't been able to play that character very much lately, and there aren't any interesting changes coming to holy priests in the newest patch. I hope that I'll have some good material to post about with regards to holy priesting so stay tuned. 

  

Am I fickle or what

My last post was all about my new pvp spec for my holy paladin. After running a dungeon with that spec, I changed it getting rid of Denounce, and later I ended up reverting back to my original healing spec. I tend to do this often, I try something new and then end up changing back to the original spec. Often times I find out that what I tried didn't work, or I decide that I just liked what I had before better.

The way that I figured it is this; I spend most of my time healing in heroics, why change my spec so that I can better heal in pvp when I only do that once a week or so. If I end up finding out that my current set up isn't working you might see me post again about a new pvp spec, but until then I'm going to keep Light of Dawn and see how it goes.

Trying out my Holy Paladin PVP spec

Yesterday I decided to change my spec to suit a PVP playstyle. I chose to go with a hybrid between PVE talents and PVP talents because I still plan to heal dungeons and such. I am planning on organizing

Here it is http://www.wowhead.com/talent#scfbdrduubohbZcb:acVkfz  and I think it will work pretty well for me.

I think that the spec is pretty solid. it all came down to a choice between Tower of Radiance and Enlightened Judgments and Improved Judgment. Tower would have increased my holy power generation, but I really like the longer range on my judgments. I also decided to go with the increased healing from Conviction and Divnity instead of going with the bonus holy power from Pursuit of Justice. Most of these decisions stem from keeping the PVE in mind.

I decided to go with Denounce as a way for me to add some fire power to the mix. With that talent I feel more confident when I am going one on one with someone.

All in all I feel pretty good about the spec. I might find that Tower of Radiance and Pursuit of Justice are more  needed than I thought, but we'll see.

Holy Paladin Mastery, is it really that bad?

I know that for my holy paladin that I go for Intellect> Spirit> Haste> Critical> Mastery. That set up seems to be the accepted best way to go, but I like to think about other options. Could Mastery end up being our best stat (if we're able to get a ton of it?).

What does it do?
Our Mastery is Illuminated Healing. At level 80 our direct healing spells will give a shield that absorbs damage. It lasts for 15 seconds (as of Patch 4.1), it starts at absorbing 10% of the heal, and increases at 1.5% per point of mastery (also as of Patch 4.1). Essentially this replaced Sacred Sheild for holy paladins, and I find it to be an interesting mastery compared to other healers.

Why is it so bad for us?
There are a few reasons. First, the sheild isn't terribly powerful. Absorbing for 10% of a 7k heal is only 700 damage absorbed, and that's pretty lackluster. Second, in comparison to Haste, Mastery appears to be very weak. To give you an idea, If I have a Shadow Priest, Boomkin, or Elemental Shaman in my heroic group I am sitting around 30% haste. That's right around where my haste was at in Icecrown. Heals are faster, the global cooldown is smaller, and Holy Radiance ticks more often. A lot of positives going on, all at once. Mastery isn't really keeping up.

What to do now?
The buffs to Mastery in 4.1 are going to help it out. Currently it is pretty even with Critical, so I would gague the buff to push it behind haste. I want to see if it can pass haste, and maybe even spriit. If the shields can become powerful enough to prevent us from casting as many heals, then we won't need the mana regen from spirit because we aren't casting as often.

So, I plan to head over to the Public Test Realms. While Blizzard is still testing for patch 4.2, I'm going to copy my paladin, and make a premade one to see how powerful Mastery can be. I'm going to gem exclusively for it, gear and reforge for it, and test my skills as healing with it. I'll be sure to record my numbers on recount, and I'll report my results as soon as I am finished.

Hypothesis
Everything is better when you have a ton of it. I hope to find that with a ton of Mastery you can be completely viable. If I am wrong, well it wouldn't be the first time.

Holy Paladin Healing,

As my guild has gotten closer to leveling to 25, my girlfriend and I have jumped back into running guild heroics. This has allowed me to heal heroics again, and I have really enjoyed it. So, I wanted to share my strategies for healing heroics, and healing in general. 

Holy Powah....err Power

Holy Power is your friend. You want to generate Holy Power as much as you can, so you'll want to use Holy Shock as much as you can. Being able to generate Holy Power often, allows you to use Word of Glory more often. More Word of Glory means more free heals, and that is always good. You can also use Light of Dawn with your Holy Power, but unless you're going to heal at least three of your group members with it the output isn't as good. I compare Light of Dawn to my priest's Circle of Healing, only it's a lot less useful. 

Beacon of Light is a must 

Always, always, always put this spell on someone who is going to take high amounts of consistent damage. Typically this target will be your tank, and you will be so glad that it is. I remember when this spell went live near the end of Burning Crusade, and it was a lifesaver when I was healing heroics then. While it will provide the majority of your overhealing, if have the glyph all of that healing is free. Even without the glyph since it lasts for 5 minutes if you cast it before a fight the mana cost won't really be an issue. Use it, use it, use it, you'll forget about it when it is up, and notice your tank dying when it's not. 

Holy Light is your friend.

Holy Light is your least expensive heal, and it will be your most used spell after every run. If my target is above 40% health, I'm going to use Holy Light (unless I can use Holy Shock of course). I also won't heal my target unless they've lost 10 thousand health. Even though Holy Light is cheap, I still want to reduce my overhealing whenever I can. 

Divine Light

Divine Light is our biggest heal. I use this whenever the tank is getting below 50% health, and whenever Holy Light won't be enough for one of the dps. Be careful not to rely on its potency unless you need to, it is very easy to spam in a pinch, but if you're not careful you will run out of mana before you know it. 

An added bonus to Divine Light is its ability to grant a charge of Holy Power when you heal a target who has Beacon of Light. This is very helpful for charging up your Holy Power, and really helps you pile on the Word of Glory. 

Flash of Light 

Flash of Light  is our fastest heal, and should only be used when you target is going to die. When Holy Light and Divine Light aren't fast enough, Flash of Light is a must. Like Divine Light, you will need to limit your use of this spell. It is very expensive, and will run your mana into the ground if you're not careful. 

When you need to bring someone back from the brink of death Flash of Light is great. Don't forget about Holy Shock and Word of Glory, though. Holy Shock may not do much healing, but Word of Glory is and they are both really cheap and instant. Sometime 1.5 seconds still isn't fast enough, and if you can send a Word of Glory instead it could mean the difference between life and death. 

We can raid heal now right?

With the addition of Light of Dawn and Holy Radiance combined with Beacon of Light, our ability to heal multiple targets has tripled in strength. Holy Radiance is a must have for certain fights, and while it won't do all of your healing it will serve as a much needed health buffer while you're casting your heals. I like to use this with my cooldowns whenever possible. Making the healing from this spell more powerful really helps when the boss is dealing massive damage to your whole group. Don't be afraid to use it on trash, and combine it with Light of Dawn whenever you can. Don't use it on cooldown though, it has a hefty mana cost and a 30 second cooldown. If you use it at a time when you don't really need it, you're going to miss it when people start dying. 

Using Cooldowns 

I try to save all of our cooldowns for boss fights. We have so many to choose from that it is always best to have a lot of options when we need to keep people alive. Whether you're increasing your haste and crit, increasing your healing done, or summoning a shiny winged guy with a sword to help you heal we have three tools to help us heal more. On top of that we can reduce the damage that we take, reduce the amount of damage someone else takes, protect someone from physical damage, and protect ourselves from all damage . And if you choose to you can increase the power of your auras. So many ways to save people on top of our healing spells. Do not use them lightly, but don't be afraid to save a life when you can. Too often I forget to use a lot of these, and at the end of a fight I think about how much easier it could have been if I could have remember to press the button. 

I think that about covers everything that I wanted to mention, and I hope it is helpful. The best way to heal, is always the way that you find to be most useful, and never forget it. 

Healing Dunegons as a Holy Priest

Jumping back into talking about some healing. Yesterday I was dpsing with a guildie who is new to healing as holy, and as we went through he reminded me that finding the right balance of spells to use is not easy by any means. This is not meant to limit your spell usage only to those I have mentioned. The key to effective healing is always through trial and error. Learn what your spells do and evaluate how you can best use them. This is meant to be a starting point for anyone unsure about what to do.

Chakra, learn it, live it, love it
So to start off, for most dungeons you'll spend a lot of time in Chakra:Serenity. For the excetion of trash and bosses with heavy groupwide damage, your main healing spell will be Heal, and being in Serenity just makes the most sense.

Lightwell is your Friend
Before I jump into spell usage, I want to add that casting Lightwell before every boss fight is important. Even if no one else uses it, if the only healing doe to you is through the Lightwell, it has saved you from casting heals on yourself, which is totally worth it.

PoM
After a few nights of running dungeons I was able to see just how much of my healing is coming from my spells. The winner by far is Prayer of Mending. I use it every chance I get always on the tank, and it is by far my leader in healing done. Always use Prayer of Mending!

Healing slow with Heal
Next up is Heal. I use this whenever my targets have 50% or more health, and only if they have taken enough damage (normally around 7,000) first. I like to try to keep Renew on the tank as much as I can. This isn't too hard as long as I'm in Serenity as the Heals refresh its durration.

Emergency use only
I only use Flash Heal if someone is in danger of dying, or if I have a Surge of Light pop up. It is an expensive heal, and while it grants Serendipity, it's not really needed outside of emergencies. Typically if someone needs a big heal Greater Heal will have enough time to land, so casting Flash of Light outside of Surge of Light to maintain Serendipity isn't needed.

Group Healing at its Finest
If atleast 4 members of the group have taken significant damage, I use Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing. If I have to use these spells often, I should be in Chakra: Sanctuary so their potency is buffed. The same goes for Holy Word: Sanctuary, I try to only use this when the group is stacked up so that it is healing to its fullest. These three spells can cause the most overheal, so don't waste them if you don't have to.

Renew and PW:S
There are times when Renew is really awesome and great to spam on the group, but there aren't many of these times. I've found it's most use to come on the tank. The same goes for Power Word: Shield. With its steep mana cost I try to only use it to give someone the Body and Soul speed boost.

Wraping up
In general try to reduce your overhealing as much as you can. Ideally you should be able to stay below 10% overhealing. Remeber Prayer of Mending, and don't forget about your Chakra and the Lightwell.

Abandon Ship

After recently changing this blogs focus, I've decided to just start a new blog. My new blog, Wasting Time Wowing, will be about my experiences playing the game, while this blog will return to its original focus. Once I jump back into healing on a more regular basis I'll post more about that here. I'm going to leave the older (and outdated) posts in case you're feeling nostalgic.

Returning back to normal here, and if you're looking for some hot screenshots of my dwarf with his hammer, check them out here.

Itching for some PVP

I know that I said last time, that I would be posting when I had the hammer. Well I have all of the materials for it, but I didn't have anyone online to make the Sulfuron Hammer for me. So I'll have to wait another day or two, but the important thing is that I have all of the mats I need. 

So onto the topic. Lately I have been very interested in PVPing. On a hunter, a rogue, a warrior, or on my shiny pally  I have really enjoyed running battlegrounds. The problem is, that most of the characters that I have been pvping on are on different realms from my main realm. This means no heirlooms, no guild perks, and no gold. So I'm pretty much stuck with the gear that I have, and whatever upgrades I can get through Dungeons and honor. I don't really mind working to get better gear as I level, but I just want to pvp, I don't want to deal with the time it takes to get the gear on a character that isn't even on my main realm. 

So, I'm going to have to just bite the bullet, and suck it up. I might server swap the shiny pally, but my other toons can stay put. I'll just have to find a way to pvp on my main realm. Until then I shall continue to get my fix. 

Zul'Aman, and Not Making Progress

Last Friday my guild ran Zul'Aman. Since it won't be around in its current form once patch 4.1 hits we decided to take the opportunity at getting some guildies their achievements before it went bye bye. We managed to get the Guild Achievement for it aswell, and over all the run went very well.

Over the past few weeks we've been scheduling lower level raids for a couple of reasons. One, so that we are doing things as a guild, always nice. And two, so that we can help our less experienced guild members get used to what raiding means. We have a lot of new players, and a lot of players new to end game raiding. If they want to raid current content as a guild, we figure they need to show that they can raid trivial content as a guild also. We started in Molten Core, went on to Karazhan, and Zul'Aman. Next week we're moving on to Naxxramas. We'll see how it goes, and eventually we'll move into the later tiers of both previous expansions.

No new progress on crafting the legendary. I'm only two Blood of the Mountains away still. This week I'm going to farm my butt off to get that hammer. Wish me luck, and happy belated April Fools!

The next time that I post I hope to have Sulfuras in my possession.

Changing things

I've decided to shift the focus of this blog. Since I haven't been healing very much lately on my paladin or my priest, I dont' have anything related to healing to write about. Instead I'll be sharing my experiences playing the game. For any of you who regularly visit this, I thank you, and I hope you enjoy the shift in focus.
To start my newly focused blog; I am 3 Blood of the Mountain away from crafting Rag's hammer. I've been killing the Molten Destroyers in Molten Core for the last few nights, and hopefully enough will drop before too long. I'm pretty excited because this will be my first legendary, and it will be my guild's first as well.

Wish me luck, and watch yer back.

Reforging Mastery or Haste

Now that my priest is level 83, I've started to think about what stats I want to prioritize for him. I know that critical rating is at the bottom, and that I reforge crit whenever it is on an item, but I am not sure about whether I should prioritize haste over mastery or vise versa.

I know that haste is needed and it's great, but I'm starting to think that I should go for mastery almost exclusively. Here's what I figure; I am rarely overhealing with more than 20% of my heals. Mastery is only third in terms of the spells that overheal. This makes me feel that the extra healing added from mastery won't add to the overhealing and will isntead provide a significant percentage of my overall healing.

Right now Echo of Light is only contributing to around 10% of my healing done. Since this is going to be free added healing, boosting it to provide more output should help it to move closer to 20% of my healing. On top of the added boost to output, the extra mastery will allow me to move on to heal another target sooner. I know that my last heal applied a significant heal over time, so I can move on to the next target.

That's how I'm think about things so far. I think that I'm going to gem for a combination of Intellect and Mastery, and I'm going to try to acquire more peices with mastery and reforge for it whenever I can. We'll see how this works out, as I am sure that I will probably revert to choosing haste to be number one after some more healing on my priest.

Feeling Overpowered

I've finally started leveling my priest and in between questing and leveling his professions I've been able to do runs of Throne of the Tides and Blackrock Caverns. So far, these two dungeons are feeling like warm ups. There really isn't a challenge, and it feels like I have an answer for whatever damage heads my groups way.

I have been trying to stick with Chakra: Serenity for most fights, and I often find myself just standing around waiting to heal. For fights with heavy raid damage I use Chakra: Sanctuary and the same is pretty much true. Lightwell has proven to be very helpful, and I think that people are actually learning how to use it for once.

I am really looking forward to getting into some heroics on this guy because right now healing is not very challenging. Holy priesting is really making me think about which healer I want to play more when I get this guy to 85.

Gearing my Holy Paladin

Until my guild starts raiding, I've been running every heroic under the sun. I've been pretty successful so far, and a lot of that success has to do with my gear. Obviously I'm going for plate gear with intellect on it, but what do I look for once I've found the intelligent plate?

What to go for.
First of all I want gear that has spirit on it. If I have a peice that doesn't have any spirit I want to reforge either Crit or Mastery for spirit. Second, I want gear that has haste on it. Haste makes the global cooldown and my cast times slower, and with enough of it I get an extra tick from Holy Radiance. I try to reforge crit or mastery to haste. Crit is preferred over mastery, but I'm not going to reforge for it anytime soon.

What to gem for.
I like to match sockets, so for red gems I go with +40 int gems, yellow sockets get +20int +20 haste, and blue gems get +20int +20 spirit. This way I'm getting my main stat, intellect, and the spirit and hast I need as well.

What to enchant for.
I go for intellect enchants, spirit enchants, and haste enchants for my gear. Same reasoning as before, when enough haste I can increase my output, and with enough spirit I won't run out of mana.

So far that has been working pretty well for me. I haven't had any mana problems, and there are very few times where someone dies as a result of my healing. They might die because they stood in the fire for too long, but rarely is it because of my inability to save them.

I hope this helps you with your gearing choices. It has defintiely helped me.

Healing Heroics: Not that scary anymore.

Recently I've been healing more and more of the heroics that Cataclysm has to offer, and my experience in them is getting less painful each time. From my first heroic in Deadmines, to my most recent in Shadowfang Keep, and everything in between I haven't felt the same stress when healing heroics now. What is accounting for these pleasant heroic runs?

Granted I have better gear now, the groups I've gotten have been pretty good, I've been able to learn fights with guildies, and healing as a paladin has been really fun. Why does healing as a paladin feel so awesome?

Being able to heal through AoE raid damage is why. Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn are really fun to use. Beacon of Light is stong, don't get me wrong, but HR and LoD are the game changers. Holy Radiance, while at a hefty mana cost, shines when everyone is taking huge chunks of damage at the same time. While it won't heal everyone to full, it while help keep people from dying while you finish them off. This makes AoE heavy fights much more manageable. Popping this at the right time (and not being afraid to use it) can make healing easy and I dare say overpowered.

Light of Dawn plays a similar role in making the healing game easier. It has been nerfed, and it doesn't seem to be powerful numbers wise, but it is in a sneaky way. You can essentially shoot 5 Holy Shocks at your group at the same time with not mana cost to you. So that's nice. On top of that the health buffer, if you're able to hit everyone in the group with LoD you'll be able to transfer a significant amount of healing toward you tank at no cost.

Both spells are situational, and require some thoughtful positioning, but when the stars align the green bars shine (see what I did there). If you're a paladin, and struggling with keeping everyone alive start incorporating this into your arsenal. You'll be delighted at how much smoother keeping people alive becomes.   

What a Catacalysm!

It has been a while since my last post, but, as I stare at this computer wasting time that could be spent doing homework, I think to myself that wasting a few more minutes couldn't hurt. So Cataclysm is out! As a breif overview, I am very happy with the game so far. My time spent healing has been limited, and I have yet to begin leveling my priest. With that said, though, I definitely think that most of the discussion that I touched on with 4.0.1, proved to be right.

The game of healing has changed dramatically. Everyone has around 100k health, and our heals are not much stronger now than they were at 80. Through the few heroics I have had the chance of healing, I can say that the changes aren't as overwhelming as I thought they would be. The game is more about keeping people from dying rather than keeping everyone topped off, and I like that. The mana game is very interesting (and frustrating at times), and there are very few times when I am not actively saving lives :)

As my guild slowly gets our feet wet in more of the content, I will try to post more regularly about it. I'm not quite sure how many of regular readers I have, but to anyone reading this, I hope that you find this blog to, at the very least, help you waste time that you could could have otherwise spent studying.