Priest Winnar

Ghostcrawler is the Blizzard face behind whether they buff you or nerf you; and Ghostcrawler plays a Holy / Discipline priest.

Alright, now that we’re up to speed… here’s something you might not have read before! Ghostcrawler recently replied to a priest thread on the forums about his playstyle when he’s Discing and Holy’ing. It’s a quick and helpful read that healing priests across the Interwebs can benefit from.

Disc: PoM on cooldown. PW:S as much as you can (esp. on the Arcane mage until 3.3.3). Use Penance often when you need burst. Resort to PoH if a lot of people need healing at once, especially in 10-player raids where you don’t have a lot of other healers to pick up the slack. Keep Pain Suppression and Divine Hymn for emergencies. Use Power Infusion on a mage or lock if you don’t need it.

Holy: PoM on cooldown. CoH on cooldown if there is any raid damage. Renew to handle the rest of the raid damage. Flash Heal if someone is still low after all of that. Save GS and Divine Hymn for emergencies or timed boss cooldowns. I tend to use Binding Heal a lot more than most priests because it makes me feel smart, especially when globals are in question.

What I like: Feeling smart when I mix the right tool with the right problem. Saving lives when someone thought they were dead. Sitting there at full mana halfway through a fight because I didn’t heal when I didn’t need to. Penance in general. Body and Soul. Borrowed Time. Serendipity.

What I don’t like: Using CoH so much. Dealing with Weakened Soul (esp. as Holy). Lightwell. Seeing priests die. (In all honesty I don’t die a lot, but I see Spirits of Redemption constantly. I guess as a sweeping generalization, priests have the stare-at-Grid syndrome worse than other healers.) Blowing 3 candles every wipe. Looking like a mage if I pick the wrong gear.

This is obviously meant for PvE; not PvP.

My Discipline playstyle mirrors what Ghostcrawler mentions here rather fluidly; nice parallel there. As far as Holy though, I tend to use Flash Heal over Renew for patching up a raid, just on the grounds that it gets me closer to my precious Serendipity. Renew is something I reserve for tanks. I’m not sure if that’s an inferior decision or a decision based on taste, but it’s fun nonetheless to make the comparison.

Also, he’s darn right about Binding Heal. Most priests forget they even have it, and it really makes me feel smart whenever I hit my 7 key.

I'm out of a job, but I gots this barrel!

Today is rant day! I’m curious what the perspective of fellow healing priests (and other healers) are on this touchy question:

“Who gets to heal?”

Johannah’s guild, Momentum, is over-flowing with healers. As the only healer that has healed and remained healing for the guild since it’s formation back in the Karahzan days of Burning Crusade, I can safely say that I have seen more drama over who gets to heal than any other kind of drama you can dig up for an inspiring update to Officer Chat.

And how we determine who gets to heal on which day has a stringent set of rules that are adhered to about as often as visitors adhere to the “don’t feed the animals!” signs at zoos.

One of the things that I find causes the most problems is healing yourself out of a job. What I mean by that is, right now, many guilds are using three healers for ICC-10; once ICC-10 has fully released and everyone has geared themselves to the brim, it will likely reduce to two healers. There are fights right now where we are already dwindling to two healers. Healers get better at the fights, get the gear they need, and heal themselves right into an alternate position.

The three healers then enter a knife fight in which the most passive aggressive person is at the top and the most non-confrontational person is at the bottom, with the person in the middle trembling in verbal fear. Never mind when, like this last Friday, four out of the ten people that can go all play a main spec healing role.

How does one expertly handle healing yourself out of job, or having too many healers available?

Through competition?

WoW.com asked the question once, “Is healing competitive?” You better believe it. One of the biggest reasons I heal Holy spec despite my revelation on the benefits of Discipline in 3.3–beyond the fact I think Holy is a more enjoyable experience–is that Holy simply pulls more on the charts. Immature players like to measure themselves through the numbers provided on these charts with no adherence to the Discipline absorption rule, and I got sick of the underhanded opinions derived from this method of thinking. (For the unfamiliar, this rule is that the Discipline priest is generally going to be 10% under the other healers due to bubble love.)

I have also noticed an amazing phenomena about two like-classes healing together. A Restoration druid by itself does not perform nearly as well as, say, two Restoration druid head-to-head for the trophy I-Am-Mother-Earth-Hear-Me-Rawr. A Holy priest in a VoA-25 did me the courtesy of molesting my Discipline heals, as I divulged in my last post, “Playing nice with other priests.” Strutting your muscles next to fellow kin is a popular practice for many players.

The biggest problem with gauging a healer’s effectiveness through competition is that it is not always an accurate ruler for skill. For instance, if you have one healer that does 4k HPS and stands in fire, and another healer that does 3.5k HPS and moves when they are in scary stuff, who do you think is the better player?

Through power?

In Raid Rx, writer Marcie Knox quotes, “This is where I control your raiding life. Those cookies better be in the mail!” Should officers get dibs on healing over the players beneath them? We all want to say “no” because of the conscientious angel inside our minds, but you know the power trip happens. You know people exercise their rank in their favor. My fear of this is so grand that I find myself DPSing more than any other healer (except maybe our recent Restoration shaman) in our guild. I just don’t like the idea of “guild-master’s-girlfriend-always-gets-to-heal” drama.

Sometimes that power needs to be exercised though. There is no justification for not making it through a progression raid simply because healer XYZ refuses to learn how to DPS and thus thinks it is okay to occupy the healing spot when they are breaking a fundamental rule, such as: not healing as much as healer ABC; or playing a class that fills the other healing role and negating the benefits of multiple healing classes/specs working together. Stubborn people weigh everyone down and “you’re exercising your power over me!” is a lame cop out.

Through taking turns?

This method, I thought, sounded the most amicable. If healer XYZ heals one week while healer ABC DPS’s, then the following week, healer XYZ should DPS and ABC should heal. An elitist guild would say “whichever healer is the most effective should heal all the time,” but that might really piss XYZ off and casual guilds aren’t about making members mad. Taking turns is the communal, non-conflict way of handling it.

Provided, of course, both XYZ and ABC can heal through the bosses without getting the raid spanked.

Be kind to your fellow healers and respect some of the critical rules of raiding.

In short, follow some rules of kindness with your healers and the raid:

• Don’t double class. If you are a priest, and there is another priest already healing (especially if that priest is your spec!), maybe you should let the other class heal. Variety is the spice of life. The same applies to two druid combos, two paladin combos, and two shaman combos.
• If you know one of the healers you’re fighting for a healing spot with DPS’s all the time, let them heal. It’s ridiculous to think you’re entitled to making their life hell.
• Get some DPS gear. There really is no excuse with the availability of tier 9 via running random heroics.
• Treat others the way you’d like them to treat you. If you expect your fellow healers to be semi-decent at DPSing, you should also be semi-decent at it. If you expect healers to share the healing role with you, you should share it with them.

Good luck playing your main spec role!

Then I did research.

Since Holy and Discipline healing are wildly different, I’m going to explain why this trinket is a win from both angles. First though, there’s some basic things you should know about your new (or desired) mana regen toy:

• It has an internal cooldown of ~0.33 seconds.
• If you activate it’s use constantly, it grants a 2.4% haste rating.
• If you proc it constantly, it grants ~165 mp5. (Theorycrafter needs evidence? Check out the source.)

So how do you use it constantly? Take your favorite spell–Penance is great for Discipline Priests and Circle of Healing works for Holy priests–and macro it so that you have it /use 13. My macro (which uses mouseover heals for Grid) looks like this:

#showtooltip
/cast [@mouseover][] Penance
/use 13

Okay, now you have your Ephemeral Snowflake’s use interlaced into your healing rotation without having to think much of it. Let’s look at how to get it to proc constantly.

Procing the Ephemeral Snowflake as a Holy Priest

You want to make sure you’re healing, somehow, once every 1/3 a second. Sound crazy? It’s not that hard, actually.

Every time your Renew ticks (except the initial tick from Empowered Renew), you’ll be getting 11 mana back. If you’re raid healing, your HoTs will be all over the place, ticking for you while you’re doing other things. Then, of course, there’s the other HoT; Prayer of Healing’s glyph. Equipped with Serendipity and Healing Prayers, a Holy priest can easily have five different HoTs going off at once to push the internal cooldown of this trinket to its limit.

But you’re not done yet. When you cast Circle of Healing (glyphed, of course), you’ll be getting another 5 unique procs off. Your Prayer of Mending will also be healing people without your supervision (that naughty spell!) By exploiting all of your instant casts and HoTs in addition to your big spells, you can really push the proc to its limit and make sure it’s working even when your cast bar is tending to bigger things.

Procing the Ephemeral Snowflake as a Discipline Priest

This is a little bit harder. You’re glyphed so that your Power Word: Shield heals people, naturally, giving you the ability to get some of the procs of your insta-bubbles. Penance ticks pretty fast too, and you have Renew, even if it’s not spec’d. Your Prayer of Mending is working full-time, but your spec doesn’t let you get it out as fast, and it’s more expensive when you do. In short, you need to work out a better rotation.

Here’s how I found it worked the best:

1. Get the spare room for a Prayer of Healing glyph.
2. Instead of saying you’re a “tank healer,” volunteer to take care of the group your tank is in. Maybe throw all the tanks in group one.

Once you’re ready to start your endless Ephemeral Snowflake proc rotation, do this:

1. Renew the tank.
2. PW:S the tank for Borrowed Time.
3. Prayer of Healing the group. Hope the two HoTs are ticking totally off-beat with one another.
4. For six seconds, do all the bubbles and Penances you need to do. This should be getting the last third of the second, while Renew and PoH are picking up the other two-thirds of the second. Get a final PW:S off right before 6 seconds are up for another Borrowed Time.
5. PoH the tank again.
6. Refresh Renew as necessary, rinsing and repeating PoH every 6 seconds.

It’ll be a tighter squeeze than Holy healing, but it will work.

Is the Ephemeral Snowflake good for other classes?

Druids love this trinket, and for obvious HoT-gasm reasons.

Restoration shamans? Well, they can proc it with Riptide, but not with Earth Shield or the healing totem. Chain Heal also seems to give it a proc every bounce, though the bounces happen all at once, so you’re yet again looking at a restriction with the 0.33 second cooldown. In short, shammies are more questionable.

I don’t have enough experience with Holy paladins to assess that angle, but they have their own positive remarks on WoWHead, so something must be working. I’d be curious to hear a paladin’s opinion on it.

Where do I get one!?

Like what you’ve read? Then go get your very own Ephemeral Snowflake off Marwyn in Halls of Reflection! It works beautifully with a Darkmoon Card: Greatness for mana hogs like myself.

Note that these items are friendly to healing priests and, as such, will not have any hit rating. Smite and Shadow priests definitely need hit rating, so it’s better to check the previous list for the pews!

1. Chest. Mord’rethar Robes. Devourer of Souls, Forge of Souls. Spirit for Holy — crit rating for Discipline! And it’s not like Discipline shies away from Spirit or Holy loathes crit rating either. Need I say more? This robe is just “wow” without having to blow emblems or go to a raid.
2. Waist. Braid of Salt and Fire. Ick, Pit of Saron. Haste saves lives, and spirit gives mana to save lives. This is a solid belt. There are boots in Pit of Saron too that make the trip more worthwhile: Prelate’s Shoes.
3. Off-hand Frill. The Shriveled Heart. The Captain’s Chest, Halls of Reflection. I listed this yesterday, and I’m listing it again. You’re going to need an off-hand when you get your hilt weapon, and this is simply the best one around without stepping into a raid.
4. Gloves. Suspiciously Soft Gloves. Marwyn, Halls of Reflection. I also listed these yesterday for smite spec, and for the same reason; crit rating and spirit. While Holy priests often don’t rely on crit as much (but, if you read my Lvl 80 Holy Priest Guide, you know I’m a fan of Surge of Light), I still think these are a solid set of gloves and are worthy of your top 5 items to grab for your healing set. These will alternate between Holy and Discipline fairly well.
5. Trinket. Ephemeral Snowflake. Marwyn, Halls of Reflection. Whether you’re a Holy or Discipline priest, this trinket has some uses for you. I’ll explain how it works in my post tomorrow and how you can maximize it’s output; for now, go run Halls of Reflection and try to grab yourself one!

Halls of Reflection is the winner again, but there’s something in all three instances to explore. By the time you get all the smite and healing items, you should have your very own Battered Hilt.

For the past few weeks, everyone’s enjoyed patch 3.3 and the first ICC wing. We soak it up during our eager World of Warcraft breaks in the middle of the Holiday conundrum, knowing it will be awhile before the next wing is released. For my guild, the experience known as Saurfang (and informally known as this) came to fruition last night, thankfully after hot soup and a sandwich to ease my twitching nervous system.

At first, like many deceptive fights in progression raids, I thought Blizzard had once again made things too easy. And then, with very little warning (I think our raid leader read tidbits from WoWWiki at some point, but it’s difficult for me to listen to something that sounds like the mother from Peanuts), everyone dies and I think, “Progression raid is progressing!”

Happens every time.

I’m sure in another 3 weeks, I’ll have guild members complaining they made things too easy anyway, but for now, this kind of sharp learning curve spawns all kinds of hilarious and bountiful whispers. At some point, I told another one of the guildies through the pink text, “I’m Penancing Under Duress.” I will henceforth refer to this as iPud.

The question is: in 3.3, is it better to heal Holy, or to heal iPud?

Healing Discipline: Why your raid can benefit from your very own iPud

Here are three reasons iPud is the successful way to heal in 3.3:

1. For the bubbles! Taken from WoWWiki’s entry on Saurfang: Saurfang will cast Boiling Blood on random raid members. This can simply be healed through, though every tick grants blood power. While you can not dispel or normally remove this debuff, immunity abilities like Ice Block and Divine Shield will stop it ticking while active, as will a Priest’s Power Word: Shield. This can greatly reduce the amount of Blood Power Saurfang receives. Power Word: Shield procs Borrowed Time for faster Penance to deal with Mark of the Fallen Champion so that Saurfang doesn’t heal 5% of his total health. PW:S is also an excellent way to help with Bonestorm while running around (insta-cast + running = FTW!) and, provided you have Rapture, will help your raid maintain high mana/energy/rage throughout these extended fights.
2. You still have a Prayer of Healing strategy. One of the big arguments against Discipline is that it is ineffective for raid healing (even though I just mentioned that Penance is a great fix for Mark of the Fallen Champion.) While it’s true that Discipline is not as effective as Holy, you’re not nearly as gimped at raid heals as you might think, or people might make you out to be. Try procing Borrowed Time before Prayer of Healing; it won’t feel as fast as Serendipity 3, but you can get Borrowed Time faster than Serendipity 3, which means you can potentially pump out Prayer of Healing faster in the long haul.
3. Mana, mana, mana. I mentioned in a previous post how I had switched from Healbot to Grid healing. I heal faster that way. Healing faster meant running out of mana quicker, and when my 1400+ Spirit with my Darkmoon Card: Greatness could no longer keep my mana up, I switched from Holy to Discipline in a desperate attempt to fix mana issues I got tired of fighting. With that in mind, a higher Spirit (and Int too, but the delicate process of DMC:G is that Spirit > Int at all times for the proc) could fix Holy.

Healing Holy: Why iPud might not be the thing for you

Here are three reasons Holy may be the better option than Discipline in 3.3:

1. Speed demon bubble. Just because you’re not spec’d for a cheap, high-absorption bubble doesn’t mean that PW:S is useless. If you spec’d into Body and Soul like I recommended in my Lvl 80 Holy Priest Raiding Guide, you can utilize PW:S to help run from Bonestorm, help raid members stay away from blood beasts, and run back to the ledge during the airship event. Careful, though; Holy is a mana sink to begin with, and using too much PW:S is only going to make it worse.
2. Raid spreading out + Circle of Healing smart heal. Several bosses, yet again, require the raid to spread out. Chain Heal, even increased from an 8 to 10 yard jump, can’t cut it in several scenarios where the raid just needs to stay away from each other; this is where the Holy priest’s Circle of Healing really shines. If your raid needs a smart heal to take care of the raid damage, a Holy priest definitely brings a friendlier smart heal than the Restoration shaman. Going Discipline won’t give the priest this smart heal advantage.
3. Strategic Lightwell. Lightwell is actually rather useful in several of these fights. For instance, those with Mark of the Champion can stack on another HoT simply by making a pit stop at the nearest Lightwell location.

Why I prefer iPud over Holy in 3.3

I am a Holy priest at heart, whether it’s pewing or healing; but in 3.3, at least in ICC’s first wing, Discipline priests are definitely getting the spotlight. So many fights benefit from the improved PW:S and so many of them are mana intensive, requiring the spec that is more friendly to your mana pool and sustainability. Not only that, but there is a vast difference in the ease of healing the new 5-mans between the two specs; Halls of Reflection in Discipline is peachy, and in Holy, is like a flashback to the nightmare runs through a Heroic TK instance in green and blue gear. While Holy still has it’s clear advantages (like Circle of Healing), the disparity of them is too wide for it to hold a candle to Discipline.

The first time I get an opportunity to wriggle my way into an ICC raid as Smite, I’ll provide a compare-contrast on how our fair Smite spec is doing versus the new-and-improved Shadow spec. Until then, Happy Holidays!

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer? I have two healers: Johannah, Holy priest (who smites, never Discipline!); and Kourtnie, Restoration shaman
• What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans) All of the above, but raiding takes the cake. Mostly 10-mans; 25-mans once in awhile. I do PvP as a healer too though in both battlegrounds and arenas, and who doesn’t do the heroic daily!?
• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?
  • Priest: Gotta be Guardian Spirit; glyph it up and you get 150% healing boosts really often! Circle of Healing and Divine Hymn are close seconds though.
  • Shaman: Earth Shield. I like to make a game out of seeing if a tank can get through a heroic with only Earth Shield and Riptide.
• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?
  • Priest: Binding Heal, which is terrible, because it’s an excellent spell. It’s not that I don’t know it’s there, it’s that my health is usually the last thing on my mind. I think if I had to pick one to consciously forget, it’d be Greater Heal, because I’m much more focused on raid healing that trying to nab large chunks of damage off tanks. Our paladins do a dandy job on that.
  • Shaman: Chain Heal, and this is why I switched to Holy priest as my raider. I understand that 3.2 boosted Chain Heal significantly, but my play style just veers more towards fast-action spells and it’s undeniably slow to cast. Circle of Healing provides that nom-nom-nom smart heal goodness in an insta-cast form.
• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?
  • Priest: Holy priests are strong raid healers, and this is where my healing enjoyment truly lies. In a pinch though, I can tank heal, and this is definitely a plus for the class. Priests also have so many spells, so the fun factor for healing is always there.
  • Shaman: Totems, totems, totems! Who doesn’t love them? And your armor is significantly higher than those squishy priests, too. Unfortunately, the slow raid heal spell didn’t agree with me in a burst-damage expansion like Wrath of the Lich King.
• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?
  • Priest: Real easy to die. This definitely shows in PvP situations, but even in PvE, if you don’t have Fade and that new OT is a menace, you’re done for. My shaman spoiled me with her ability to sustain herself by spamming Lesser Healing Wave and relying on heavy armor.
  • Shaman: Too slow.
• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you? Raid healing in both situations, but a Restoration shaman does a better job at tank heals than a Holy priest does if there’s a lack in the tank heal department.
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?
  • Priest: I love me a paladin. Since Holy priests are so strong on raid heals, the paladin’s tank healing capabilities really compliment well.
  • Shaman: Druid. I cast burst heal all day with Lesser Healing Wave, so let’s get some slow and steady HoTs!
• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?
  • Priest: In 10-mans, another Holy priest. We need another tank healer in there! In 25-mans, druids. They like to raid heal, but my Circle of Healing is going to eat up that damage they’re rolling HoTs over whether I want it to or not–smart heals are mean that way.
  • Shaman: Paladin. You’ve condemned me to raid heal service and I get you think Chain Heal is awesome, but I am actually a big fan of Lesser Healing Wave on top of my nifty Earth Shield.
• What is your worst habit as a healer? Freaking out. Seriously, never Prayer of Healing without Serendipity 3, and don’t rely on Chain Heal when bad things are happening. Any slow spell means dead man with WotLK’s ridiculous burst damage output.
• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing? Don’t tell me you need healing. Especially don’t tell me if someone else needs healing. I see it. Promise.
• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing? Definitely. I’ve never thought any healing class was weaker than the other enough that it’s unbalanced, though.
• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer? Meters. I know everyone likes to say that meters don’t tell the whole story, but if you use them right, they can help out a lot. Don’t just check how your heals were in the fight. Check these things too: Overheals; dispels; mana regeneration. Compare yourself to other members of your class/spec. See how you’re doing. It also lets you get an idea of the strengths/weaknesses of the other classes. For instance, paladins do great heals, but their overheals are something else!
• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?
  • Priest: When people don’t realize the wildly different mechanics between Discipline and Holy. Both specs can raid heal and tank heal. Both specs can bubble. Both specs can HoT. But one spec is better at one of those roles than the other, and people should be aware of those strengths and weaknesses.
  • Shaman: OMG, that we can’t tank heal. I Hate That. With capitals.
• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn? Whether they should use Spirit or mp5, and how to balance their mana, haste, and spellpower. It’s not just priests and shamans, but every class. Druids and priests should use Spirit, shamans and paladins should use mp5. Simple as that. Also, if you never go below 90% mana, get yourself some haste. If you’re oom constantly, stop stacking haste and focus more on your regen stat.
• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)? I am the lowest overheals! /flex. Seriously though, I’m always high heals output, and I’m always pretty low overheals output. I have a reputation for being a good healer, and I really believe that’s because I’ve been doing it since vanilla. It’s all practice. Classes are just flavor; it ultimately comes down to the player.
• Haste or Crit and why?
  • Priest: Both, please! In equal measure!
  • Shaman: Crit, crit, crit, crit! Did I mention crit? Crit gives mana back thanks to the WS talents, and you’ll get Focus Magic if you tell people you have a 50% crit rating.
• What healing class do you feel you understand least? Paladins, because I’ve never played them. I’ve even played druid heals in Wrath content, but I’m not good enough about it to warrant discussing it in detail! You must be a masta grasshoppa to offer advice to others.
• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing? I used to use HealBot. I recently switched to Grid and mouse-over heals after our uber paladin, Ariadnia, told me it’ll clip off half-second stalls on my healing. I use Bartender4 to manage my explosion of buttons.
• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?
  • Priest: I gem Spirit even though I read I’m not supposed to. I have an obsession with Body and Soul and it’s ability to save people that are running behind with things like deep breath, and PW:S is a mana sink, so that’s how I try to counteract it. I also stack a little more crit than most Holy priests because I’m a Surge of Light fan. Part of what I love about priests is that they allow this kind of flexibility in stats.
  • Shaman: I have serious crit addiction.

Part of this is tagging two others to participate, so I’m going to choose these two bloggers:

1. The Unconventional Priest, which is now a smite priest blog! ZOMG, go read it, it’s going to be uber!
2. Unbearably HoT, because I’d like to learn more about druid healing; not to mention every entry is dripping with sexual hilarity and I’d love to instigate another potential post.

Check out the Circle of Healers to others that have participated in this questionnaire. This whole thing was started by Miss Medicina.

But what if you want to heal exclusively in PvP situations?

I’ve always been Holy > Discipline, regardless of the situation; because of that, I’m going to review a strong, deep Holy tree build for PvP. If you’re looking for a Discipline build–admittedly more common in PvP situations–then try the Cookie Cutter Discipline Priest PvP Build or the Alternative Discipline Priest PvP Build from WoWWiki.

Holy priest PvP spec (14/57/0)

This spec involves the following talents:

• Unbreakable Will (5/5): Replaces the Twin Disciplines taken in a PvE spec.
• Improved Inner Fire (3/3): Increase armor and spellpower.
• Improved Fortitude (2/2): Improved hit points for yourself and your group / raid / team.
• Meditation (3/3): You’re going to build a Spirit PvP set for this spec, so start investing in those Spirit-friendly talents!
• Inner Focus (1/1)
• Why’d I skip Martyrdom? I honestly do not feel this is as useful as some other Holy talents available. I only take this in my Smite PvP build because it’s on the way to Power Infusion.

HOLY

• Holy Specialization (5/5): If you decide to swap Surge of Light (see below), swap this with Blessed Recovery and Healing Prayers for survivability and greater Prayer of Mending spam / mana sustainability.
• Improved Renew (3/3): See strat below.
• Healing Focus (2/2): Pushback resistance for when the Horde (or Alliance?) are pounding on you.
• Spell Warding (5/5): 10% reduction to spell damage in PvP? Yes, please!
• Divine Fury (5/5): For obvious reasons.
• Holy Reach (2/2): This will let you hide in the battleground bushes (or whatever) and do your damage/heals from a ninja position.
• Desperate Prayer (1/1): Will save your life.
• Spirit of Redemption (1/1): Will save someone else’s life.
• Surge of Light (2/2): Only take this if Holy Specialization and your gear brings you to a 25% crit rating. The free Flash Heals will be beneficial in sticky situations, but it’s useless if you don’t crit enough to take advantage of the talent often. If you decide to skip Surge of Light, you can invest into Martyrdom in Discipline instead, or 2/3 Holy Concentration.
• Spiritual Guidance (5/5): Since you’ll be investing into the Spirit-based PvP gear, this is the way to go for your extra spellpower.
• Spiritual Healing (4/5): I only invested 4/5 into this because I was straining on points. If you opt out with some of the optional talents mentioned, you can drop an additional point in here.
• Blessed Resilience (3/3): This is the most important PvP talent to any priest that has points invested into the Holy tree. You will notice a drastic improvement in classes that thrive off of critical strikes to blow you up. Also note that Blessed Resilience can proc off of crits that never actually landed due to Resilience; the talent is taken into consideration before Resilience is.
• Body and Soul (2/2): This talent is almost as important as Blessed Resilience. See below for more.
• Serendipity (3/3): This is key for getting off quick, powerful heals in PvP situations. It’s also one of the most enjoyable factors in Holy healing.
• Circle of Healing (1/1): Is win.
• Empowered Renew (3/3): See strat below.
• Divine Providence (5/5): Give your healing spells an oomph and make your instant casts more frequent.
• Guardian Spirit (1/1): In PvE, I encourage priests to use this to bolster heals rather than actually sacrifice the spell; in PvP, it’s the exact opposite. Use this when you know you or a teammate is about to die.

Here’s a visual of the tree:

When PvPing this way, some points to keep in mind:

• Instant casts are your friend. The more you refrain from a casting bar, the more you save yourself from interrupts. If you went ahead and followed my preference of taking Holy Specialization and Surge of Light, this will be easier for you. I operate with this kind of spell priority:
  • Keep Prayer of Mending up on yourself, but try to refrain from PW:S. You’re a pin cushion, but you don’t want to lose your sprint when it’s time to run.
  • Renew anyone taking damage or about to take damage. Empowered Renew and Improved Renew really help with this. If you’re in a situation where you know you’re about to get mauled, Renew yourself ahead of time.
  • The moment more than one person in the area has damage–even if it’s just two–Circle of Healing. This will likely proc a Surge of Light and you can insta-Flash Heal the person lowest in health. If it’s you, consider Desperate Prayer instead and Flash Heal the next most wounded target. Always think of CoH as your SoL-proc-button.
  • PW:S is your insta-cast sprint button. Don’t be afraid to give a flag carrier or a near-death ally sprint. If you get really good, you can recognize when someone’s trying to kite a melee and PW:S the melee to catch up with the kiter.
  • Dispel, Dispel, DISPEL!
• Gear for Spirit. There is Spirit PvP gear, and my goodness, it’s meant for you! Also, make sure you have 5% hit rating to get rid of paladin bubbles and other nifty offensive dispel duties.
• Use Serendipity to try to ninja in a PoH or GrH whenever a kicker isn’t in range of you.
• If someone interrupts you, don’t be afraid to use Shadow spells; fear is the most ideal. (Did I mention that 5% hit is helping you scream?)
• Resilience = better Blessed Resilience.
• I personally save Inner Focus for my “Oh crap!” moments where I realize I’m out of mana and need to pop my fiend.
• Glyphs vary, but I like the FH and Renew ones. CoH glyph is great for big battlegrounds.

Any questions, thoughts, concerns? Feel free to ask / share!

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:

1. Always be aware of your class’s HoTs and keep them on the tank.
2. 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.
3. 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…
4. 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!
5. 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.

Prayer of Mending

Did you know Prayer of Mending procs Surge of Light? Did you know it could be earning you free Smites for–well, even more free?

If you’ve gotten comfortable with your version of smite spec from the Lvl 80 Smite Priest Raiding Guide, consider adding Prayer of Mending into your priority list. Not only will the spell pay for itself with random Surge of Light procs, but it will provide an additional smart healing flowing through the damage cesspools of your raid. Here’s how I use it:

1. Start the pull with Prayer of Mending active on the tank. (If he’s the only one that’s going to be in melee and you know the ranged are going to bunch up and take damage, consider starting it on the most kamikaze member in your raid/group instead.)
2. Hit Power Infusion and drop Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Holy Fire.
3. Smite until Holy Fire is done ticking. While casting Smite, observe the movement of your Prayer of Mending; this is extremely easy if you use Healbot for your raid interface, or anything else that makes Prayer of Mending visually accessible.
4. If Prayer of Mending is on its last tick or has expired, renew it after Holy Fire is done ticking. You can also use this narrow window to Power Word: Shield someone for Renewed Hope. If Prayer of Mending is still 2-4 ticks from expiring, however, continue to use Smite past Holy Fire’s duration and simply refresh Prayer of Mending when Shadow Word: Pain or Devouring Plague expires.

If you really like this setup, consider investing in Improved Prayers instead of Improved Renew (or Spell Warding if you went that route.)  You could even build the following macro to cast Prayer of Mending on a friendly target and Smite on any other target:

#showtooltip
/cast [harm] Smite; Prayer of Mending

Enjoy your random Surge of Lights, not to mention a fine job done at offering additional heals!

Restoration shaman in Ahn'kahet.

First, a little background.

Last time we looked at shadow priests versus smite priests. If you’re interested in playing a smite priest though, chances are you aren’t a hardcore DPS’er. You found out about this spec because you were playing with your Holy tree and a lightbulb turned on–or because you were trying to figure out how many Smites you could squeeze into that window where you weren’t healing before your raid leader asked what you were doing. Since one of the reasons you’re playing a smite priest is because you also fill healing roles, why not look at how your healing role pars up to the other “raid healing class” that comes with Lightning Bolts instead of Smites?

At least half the time, I’m healing raids. I actually discovered smite priest spec with Johannah as a raid utility in Burning Crusade because we kept having healers show up for a raid here and there, and without dual specs and with a craving to keep my gold, I designed a spec that could fill both roles in a pinch.

When Johannah was moved from smite priest to the primary raid healer role though, I became frustrated. During Burning Crusade, the shaman Chain Heal was astronomically better than anything I felt Johannah could do. Burning Crusade priests were the slush second place of all healing roles; overshadowed by the paladin on tanks, overshadowed by the druids on HoTs, overshadowed by the shaman on raid heals.

So I went for a class that wasn’t second place and ended up with Kourtnie the Restoration Shaman NINJA.

Side note: In vent, NINJA is pronounced “Neeeeenja,” not just “Ninja.” Ninjas, lowercase, are people that take gear. NINJAS, uppercase, are just awesome.

Restoration shamans versus priests in Wrath of the Lich King.

I was doing great healing with Kourtnie the NINJA until WotLK came out. At first, I had respect for the fact that priests could once again resume a real place among WoW healing society; if a holy priest could raid heal efficiently, that was great. When Prayer of Healing whooped Chain Heal into the ground though pre-3.2 though, my tolerance started to grow thin.

Here are some charts on the spells I used for the bosses in the Tournament of Crusaders raid, with the play style I was accustomed to before the Chain Heal fixes:

Bad LHW habits are bad...

...but are encouraged by Chain Heal's setbacks.

Notice that Chain Heal is, sadly, on the bottom of the list. Since then, Chain Heal has been bolstered by a couple things:

• Inclusion into Improved Water Shield’s proc, increasing mana efficiency.
• Changes to Tidal Waves so that Lesser Healing Wave (Chain Heal’s previous WotLK replacement) no longer gains any haste and Healing Wave (and therefore Healing Way) actually become useful additions to the rotation.

There are still two fundamental flaws though:

1. Being in a raid where the raid members will not stick together. This is not a case for larger, organized guilds, but many guilds that are not as accustomed to strategy will encounter this frustration [that is often shortened as N00bism]. Prayer of Healing has 30 yards, so it’s more prone to cover the raid-tards.
2. Casting time. Prayer of Healing is going to have this problem too, but then there’s several other spells besides Lesser Healing Wave and Riptide that a priest can rely on when you’re in that speedy crunch, such as Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending. And trust me, when someone’s about to die and one second feels like a hundred years, the shaman goes with the Lesser Healing Wave over Chain Heal.
   1. First argued caveat: “The Tier 9 set bonus further bolsters of Chain Heal.” The priest’s Tier 9 set bonus, however–at two pieces instead of four–bolsters one of their unique raid healing spells, Prayer of Mending.
   2. Second argued caveat: “Chain Heal is a ’smart heal’ and will only target those that need healing; therefore, it is the superior raid healing spell.” Priests have a smart heal as well, Circle of Healing. You might have to spec for it, but then again, if you’re specced as a Discipline priest, aren’t you more interested in tank healing than raid healing?

Thus, priests are more reliable healers than restoration shamans. (If you’d like to see my totally borked counter-argument for shamans, visit the “Forget Priests!: Seven Reasons to Play Another Healing Class” post at Kourtnie the Shaman.)

Smite the world away, priests! On those days when your guild has too many healers on, why play elemental when you could be doing something really cool like HOLY SPELLS? And when you could heal with two different specs, no less? Priest healing wins.