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.

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.   

Healing in Cataclysm, first impressions

After leveling my paladin to level 82 with my girlfriend's mage, we decided to queue for some random dungeons. We managed to get Vortex Pinnacle four times, in a row, but it definitely gave me an idea of what to expect for healing in cataclysm in this expansion.

First off, just about every tank had 80 thousand health points or more, and everyone else has about 45k health points. So right away the health pools are much larger. With those larger health pools comes larger amounts of damage to be dealt. I was constantly casting something, and often times I was choosing between the cheap heal and the big heal. If someone was below half I would cast the big heal, and if not I went with the cheap heal.

Overall my overhealing was almost non existent, and I did find running out of mana an issue at all. I am looking forward to trying out more of the dungeons, and eventually the 85 dungeons and heroics. It seems like healing in this expansion will be more about making the right decisions, where WotLK was more about having one choice and casting it as fast as possible.

Chakra feels awkward...

There has been a lot of discussion about Chakra, and not all of it has been positive. I personally thought that it was a cool idea, and I was really looking forward to seeing it be the reason that Holy is fun to play. By my use of past tense you can tell that I am disappointed in the current state of Chakra.

In case you don't know, Chakra is a spell on a one minute cooldown, where after you click it the next heal (and by heal I mean Heal, Prayer of Healing, Renew, and Smite) that you use will put you in a specific Chakra state for 30 seconds. Each Chakra state improves the spell that you used, and (provided that you spent the necessary talent points) casting that spell will extend the time that you are in the Chakra state. Sounds great right?

It's not as great as you might think. First of all it is a lot to keep track of. When I tried to describe it to my girlfriend she threw her hands up and said "that is too complicated." While I don't disagree with her, I think that main problem is that Chakra itself has a cooldown (of one minute), and it has the feeling of locking you in to a certain spell.

This problem of locking you in, can cause a lot of opportunities to make a mistake. If you use Heal, for example, after hitting Chakra, but you are transitioning into a phase of the fight when you need Prayer of Healing or Renew, you can't change Chakra states until that phase is (most likely) over.

On the surface Chakra looks like it adds some nice potency, but in practice it has only added constraints and has mostly been useless. For instance, if I am in Vault of Archavon, and one of the bosses does their AoE, I might go into Chakra State: Prayer of Healing. Allowing me to raid heal effectively and all is well. But, that period of AoE only comes in bursts, I'm not spamming Prayer of Healing and Chakra goes away until I can use it again. It's good for one or two casts (in this case).

I am sure that there are a lot of situations where this spell comes in handy, and instances in Cataclysm might prove to make it's one minute cooldown more understandable. Currently, thought, it lacks fluidity, and there doesn't seem to be a seamless transition between Chakra states. My suggestion would be to make the spell not have a cooldown, or become some sort of passive ability. This definitely could make Holy overpowered, but given the current state of Holy's viability making Chakra more powerful might turn out to balance things out nicely.

The New Raid Frames

With patch 4.0 new default raid frames were introduced. As someone who does not use any addons, except for Recount, Decursive, and Deadly Boss Mods. So, these new raid frames were a nice addition for someone like me.

If you haven't noticed the new feature, or you don't care because you use Grid or Xperl or whatever, I find these new raid frames to be a pretty nice addition, and they have some nice features that could allow you to not use on of your addons (saving up some needed memory).

After using this for the past couple of weeks doing heroics, there are some very nice features. Starting with the least important, I like that I can see class color. Adds some pazazz! Next thing I like is that I can move the raid frames a lot easier now than I used to. This goes along with another feature that I like, which is that my bar is included in the raid frames. That allows me to not have to look at my own health bar, and instead I can see it included with all of the other health bars, very handy. I like that I can see the buffs and debuffs that people have on them with more detail than before, but sometimes they take up too much of the bars. And lastly the most important feature with the new Raid Frames, that I have found to be really super totally awesome, is show incoming heal and show health lost.

Now I know that these features come with most UI addons, but since I don't have these, I find this to be especially awesome. Being able to see exactly how much health a person has lost, allows me to more accurately choose the right heal for the job (reducing overhealing), and being able to see how much my Renew and Mastery heals will heal for lets me know if I really need to cast a Heal, or if those HoTs will do the job for me.

These two features will be very useful in a raid becuase I'll be able to tell whether I need to heal someone or not. Overall this will help healers become more efficient, and accurate when keeping a raid alive.

Forgive me if you use an addon that already allows you to use these features, but to those who don't I hope that you think that they are as awesome as I do.

About Surge of Light

I have seen some points that have been brought up about Surge of Light. Currently this talent gives you a 6% (if you spend two points in it) for your Smite and Heal casts to allow you to cast Flash Heal instantly, without mana cost, and without a chance to critical.

Before 4.0.1 this talent gave you the ability to instantly cast a mana and crit free Flash Heal 50% of the time after you get a critical with any of your spells. This allowed for instant Flash Heals to proc very often. Which in turn allowed you to obtain 3 stacks of Serendipity very easily, which also made casting a faster Prayer of Healing (or Greater Heal) easier.

Now the proc chance is very low. And by very low I mean that if I were to cast 100 Heals in a row, Surge of Light would only pop up 6 times. In a night of raiding (in WotLK content) spells like Renew, Prayer of Mending, and Circle of Healing are the major spells that are used. So out of the total amount of heals you cast the chance to pop a Surge of Light is even lower. Making a lot of raiding holy priests (a lot better than me) find this talent to be very useless.

I personnaly specced into Surge of Light. I have been running a lot of heroics, since I stopped raiding, which means I have been using Heal more often, so it is more useful to me than the alternative (Tome of Light: reduces the cooldown of Holy Word spells). Having said that, I definitely think that the proc chance is too low. I like having talents that cause spells to pop up, but I like them because those procs actually happen. With Surge of Light, it rarely pops up. If they want to keep it from being OP, I would either let it take the form of the older version with a 25% instead of 50% chance, or allow it proc off of all spell casts at the same 6% as it is now.

Something to make it cool and useful. Right now it feels like one of those old Darkmoon trinkets, or one of those Vanilla legendaries with a cool put rare proc.

The new healing model

I will start by saying that I have really enjoyed healing on my priest and paladin. Now here is why.

The introduction of Heal and Holy Light as the medium efficient heal. This change has really changed how I have appraoched healing. I have a choice to make. If a tank is near half health do I use Heal because it's cheap, or do I use Greater Heal because they might die if I don't top them off soon enough? If a dps just took a huge chunk of damage do I use Greater Heal to get them to full health, or do I use Flash Heal because the sufficient heal won't get there in time?These options are a welcome change from the previous model of healing. (these apply to paladin just insert Holy Light, Flash of Light, and Divine Light respectively)

The new mechanics for priests and palains. For my paladin I really like how Holy Shock is the go to spell because it will buff the other heals. With the four peice set bonus on my teir 10 a Holy Shock critical makes Holy Light cast ridiculously fast, which is very cool. And I really like the options I have once I get 3 charges of Holy Power. Do I use Word of Glory now, or save that instant for when I won't have time to cast something?

For my priest I have enjoyed how Chakra has been working. Certain cases are better for corresponding Chakra states, and there is a decision to be made there as well. Surge of Light procs are a nice way to save some mana (I just wish it had a higher chance to proc), and like my paladin I really like the healing mastery bonus.

Mastery has turned out to be a very nice change. For my paladin I add some extra mitigation (which explains why Sacred Sheild went away), and for my priest the added heal over time helps me heal someone and not have to use a wastful heal to "top" someone off. Balancing how much mastery I go with, and making sure I still have enough Haste, Spell Power, Mana, Spirit, and Crit is a nice added bit of depth to stat choices.

So all in all I am very pleased with all of these changes. I know that a lot of people are not very pleased with these changes. To those people I say "QQ Moar!" The game is changing, and healing is changing with it. Hop on and enjoy the ride, or role a dps.

Reforging...

With the new patch hitting the servers today a new way to customize gear comes with it. Reforging, is a new tool that will let players pick a stat (ie. haste, crit, etc) on their gear and turn 40% of that stat into a more preferred stat. On both of my healers, this looks very appealing.

For my paladin I can turn some extra spirit into haste or crit, or I can make some of that extra crit into mastery or haste. I am not entirely sure how I am going to tackle this for my paladin, but I am thinking that crit is going to be more attractive for me.

For my priest, I've decided that haste is going to be very attractive. Not only will it help spells like Renew, and my mastery heal over time, it will help make the (very) slow Heal a little less slow. More Heals, will increase my chance for Surge of Light procs, and of course a smaller global cooldown. So haste is looking like a good first choice. So what I've decided with regards to Reforging I am planning on taking items that have crit and adding haste to those.

For my second choice, I am really liking mastery over crit right now. Crit is always unreliable, and only provides more overhealing. I won't need to rely on it for procs (like I did before 4.0), like I will be on my paladin (Holy Shock procs are nice). Which makes me think that mastery is going to be a nice stat to go with.

The Holy mastery will allow my direct healing spells to add a heal over time onto the target. You might not think that this is that great, but this is what I am thinking. Say I heal someone who just took a 6.5k hit. I heal for 6k, and apply the heal over time on top of that. This way the HoT will heal the remaining health preventing me from feeling a need to cast another heal that would then overheal. So if I can make this heal over time stronger, I'll be able to add a nice health cushion to targets, which I think will help out a lot.

So with regards to Reforging, I'm going to take items with Haste, and turn the Spirit on them into Mastery. I will warn you, though, Reforging can be very expensive if you decide to reforge all of you items at once.

Overhealing, and my Healing Approach

Since I started healing on my paladin through BC heroics, I used the approach of "big hit, use Holy Light, small hit, use Flash of Light." It worked pretty well, and during that time I began to get pretty good at keeping the green bars full.

Then Wrath came, and with it brought the "OMG everyone is taking big hits!" approach. As I began raiding in Naxx, and OS 25 man, it seemed as though everyone in the raid was taking a lot of damage. Combine that with my position as the tank healer, I began using the "use Holy Light" approach. No matter how big or small the hit was this was my heal of choice. This caused a lot of overhealing to be done. But it worked, all the way into ICC.

And then I started playing my priest. As I progressed through ICC 10, I found that about half of the fight were perfect for me. Whether there was constant pulsing AoE, or splash AoE damage, I used Renew, CoH, and PoH accordingly. I noticed though, that I was contributing to a lot of overhealing. Especially once my former guild began to work on the Lich King. So I wanted to start smart healing. Rather than throwing my array of heals at situations blindly, I stopped to think "Do I really need to cast that now, or can it wait?"

This shift in my approach, helped me become very efficient (notably on the Lich King fight itself). I would still use Prayer of Mending on cool down, and keep Renew on the tanks, but I became a little bit more selective on when I would use my other heals. Making sure they would not overheal, so that I would not waste my mana on heals that weren't needed.

Since I stopped raiding, I've kept this approach into my daily random heroics. Trying to fine tune my strategy and seeing a long I can wait to fill the green bars.

Now that I've begun testing my new spells and talents on my paladin and priest, I have tried to keep up with smart healing. And it has been going pretty well. with the change to Heal and Holy Light, I have that cheap small heal for when little damage is going out. I have the fast larger heal for when people get low, and I have the slow big heal for when people need to be brought up.

I have been working on utilizing these three heals when they are needed, while still using the rest of my arsenal when needed. While every fight, and group set up may shift my strategy, I still try to avoid overhealing as much as I can. This mini game that I am playing to keep people alive, while reducing wasted heals is why I like healing so much. The balance between mana efficiency and still preventing deaths is why I am especially looking forward to Cataclysm because overhealing will matter.

Thoughts on 4.0

After doing some more testing on the PTR I have come to a couple of conclusions regarding the paladin and priest healing changes.

I found the paladin playstyle to be very fun. Holy Shock, Word of Glory, and Holy Light work really well together. The combination of chosing the right heal and managing holy power is much better than throwing the same heal at every situation. I also like how many choices there are for spending talent points once I spend 31 in the holy tree. The ret and prot trees have nice healing options, and there are a ton of nice soloing and utility points left in the holy tree. All of these changes make me very interested in playing my paladin.

As far as my priest goes, I am content with the changes. I haven't been able to get the most out of Chakra, but it is still a nice ability. What I have enjoyed is the desicion process when chosing the right heal. I've managed to figure out that I want to use Heal when the target is above 50% (give or take), and Flash Heal when they get below, and a Serendipitous Greater Heal if they are near death. I really like the dynamic that is going on here. Before Flash Heal was the only filler between Prayer of Mending, or Renews, or a needed Circle of Healing or Prayer of Healing. Now I've got some options. I also like how Surge of Light has found its way back into the spec. The instant  free procs from Heal go very nicely with Serendipity. I have realized that Archangel isn't as terrific as I thought for healing as holy, but it is still nice for pvp or soloing, and  I am going to want a ton of haste to make Heal as fast as it can be.

All in all, I am excited to heal on my pally again, and I am just as happy to heal on my priest. A win win for sure.

the PTR is Wonderful!

With all of the class changes coming out with patch 4.0, I decided to test out the new talents before they went live.

I was like a kid in a candy store. So many changes, it is like relearning how to play. I'll start with some of the broad changes, and get to the priest and pally stuff more. The new glyph interface is very nice. I am really looking forward to this change. Being able to get all of the glyphs that I want, and swap them in an out as I please is going to be a lot less of a hassle than the current system. The new Power Auras addition to the interface is very handy. Not only do shiny things appear around my character, but the button that you get to hit lights up too! This is a very nice change from constantly looking to the upper right of my screen for spells that poped up. And lastly, I am looking forward to Reforging. This looks like ti will add some much needed flexibility when prioritizing gear.

Now to the goods. I started first on my priest. I specced holy using this spec (minus Evangelism and Archangel because you're only lvl 80 on the ptr). To start, Chakra is a nice talent, and I love how it can stay up for as long as you want, and provide a nice boos to the heal that you need. Holy Word: Chastise, is pretty cool. I think that the cooldown is a bit long, but I like how it changes depending on the Chakra state I'm in. Also I am glad that Surge of Light is in the tree and easy to get. I get free Flash Heals, which give me Serendipity buffs which makes the use of the big heals much easier. I like how those talents work with eachother.

Also in case you were wondering I did try out discipline, so that I could get Archangel. It looks awesome (gives you wings), and it makes casting smite boost healing. I decided that I won't pick it up (too many better options, but if you want more about it you can see Miss Medicina's post about the numbers behind it's awesomeness here.

Next I went to my Paladin. The spec that I used here is different from the one that I linked in my previous post. I wanted to test out the healing, later on I'll test out the kind of damage I can dish out as holy, but for now I want to get used to healing. So here is the spec. There are some things off the bat that take some getting used to. Holy power is one of those things. In the spec that i linked, you will gain Holy Power by using Holy Shock and by healing the target of Beacon of Light with your casted heals. You can only have 3 charges of Holy Power, and once you have any number of charges you can use Word of Glory. While Word of Glory doesn't heal for much unless you have 3 charges, it is free and instant so you would only be wasting a global cooldown if you use it with less than 3 charges. Another thing that took me sometime to get used to was all of the buffs the pop up. Casting Holy Shock gives you haste when casting, and if you crit it makes Holy Light even faster. At the same time, casting has a chance to allow you to use Holy Shock without it triggering a cooldown (2 in a row). These buffs are really nice, and they make the playstyle a lot more interactive and fun. Managing the buffs to the casted spells, managing the buffs to Holy Shock, and using Holy Power effectively is a lot more dynamic than spamming the most efficient heal all the time.

The last thing I want to say about Holy paladins is Light of Dawn!!!! It looks really amazing.

All in all, holy priests will still be a lot of fun, and holy paladins will have a much more dynamic playstyle. I am looking forward to playing both when 4.0 goes live.