The variable ways to heal
Spirit of Redemption
The Lvl 80 Holy Priest Raiding Guide is up for smite priests that dual spec with Holy heals. 
I’ve noticed an immense amount of variability about Holy priest healing, whereas Discipline is pretty clean-cut and straightforward. There’s giant debates on a weekly basis on the priest forums about how the Holy priest should gear, spec, and cast their spells; and I love that variability! My guide obviously goes over the way I play Holy priests, but I encourage players to find the style that suits them.
I’d considered writing up my Holy healing methods for awhile, but thoughts turned into action only after I raided with several members from larger endgame guilds (Momentum being endgame, but rather small) and they asked me for advice. I haven’t been healing all of WotLK with a Holy priest–most of my experiences, in fact, are with a Restoration shaman!–so to have a priest from a big-name guild, with big-raid gear, ask me what my methods are was quite the flattery.
Here’s five general pointers I can give on healing after my experiences with Restoration shaman, Restoration druid, and Holy priest:
- Always be aware of your class’s HoTs and keep them on the tank.
- Always be aware of the other healers in your raid and try to compliment their strengths and, more importantly, back up their weaknesses. For example, Discipline priests and paladins thrive on tank healing; so as a Holy priest, you can compliment tank heals with a HoT, then back up their weakness by focusing on the raid. Conversely, a Discipline priest would pay less attention to a raid when in the company of a Holy priest because of the Holy priest’s strength in raid healing, but that shouldn’t help them from complimenting raid heals with a Divine Hymn.
- Don’t rely on Burning Crusade stereotypes like shamans exclusively healing raids. In WotLK, a properly spec’d shaman makes a competitive tank healer. Another example is how the 5-second rule is virtually nonexistent these days. Oh, and mp5 is not as attractive to certain classes as it used to be; which leads me to…
- Invest in your ideal mana regeneration stat, whether it’s Spirit, mp5, or crit. Druids should pick Spirit over mp5, and shamans should pick mp5 over Spirit. Shamans should pay attention to how their critical strike rating plays a role in their mana regeneration just as much as their mp5. Holy priests should have gobs of Spirit. An OOM healer is a bad healer!
- Predict damage before it happens. The best healer is one that can start a heal before it’s needed. You want to avoid over-heals, naturally; but if you know Koralon is about ready to pulverize the whole raid with his fire, get a Prayer of Healing or Chain Heal started in advance.
Thanks to Slacker-RB for the modified screenshot.
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