Yesterday, I talked about how Serendipity brought the fun to Holy heals. The game’s fun isn’t just derived from strategic healing though; it’s also taken from pegging your role. And your role as a Holy priest is to raid heal, backed by your good ol’ pals Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing.

“But wait! Holy priests tank heal just fine,” you say. If this is you, I recommend checking out iPud: Discipline versus Holy in 3.3. Discipline priests fit the tank heal mold and are arguably stronger in 3.3, so there’s no need to stress yourself with Holy tank heals.

Back to raid healing… Serendipity gives you a 36% hasted Prayer of Healing to save a group in a pinch, but Circle of Healing is your smart heal. What makes it worthy of your 41-point talent?

1. It gives healing to the people that need it, rather than being group dependent like Prayer of Healing; think Chain Heal, but free of the range issue
2. It’s an insta-cast every six seconds (and you really shouldn’t need it more than six seconds; more on this later)
3. It usually procs Surge of Light for a quick Flash Heal for Serendipity, thereby fueling its Prayer of Healing cousin
4. It glyphs up nicely

Despite these merits, most non-priest players have never heard of CoH. Shadow and Discipline priests even give it a head cock now and again. Let’s get a quick history lesson on this spell so we’re all on the same page, then look at when to cast Circle of Healing and when to cast its Prayer of Healing friend.

The history behind Circle of Healing

Back in the cobwebs of 2008, patch 3.0.8, Circle of Healing got the nerf bat. Prior to that, Holy priests were treated like mana pits that spammed the insta-cast CoH relentlessly and received every Innervate known to man (remember Zul’aman days?). Holy priests were so enraged by the supposed nerf of CoH that the Discipline priest population skyrocketed; I played my Restoration shaman in those days and literally couldn’t find a Holy priest in all of Kalecgos.

Eventually the QQs died down though and priests accepted the 6-second cooldown on CoH as a way of life. Strategy and intelligence set in where the 1-button spam once sat. And the glyphed, 6-target smart heal that occupied Holy priest’s 41-point talent slot integrated itself cleanly into the strategy of Holy priest raid heals serverwide.

When to cast Circle of Healing

First and foremost, I use CoH as my stepping stone to Serendipity 3. I can rely on the fact that CoH will proc Surge of Light (and if it doesn’t, I writhe about like I have ants in my pants), which means I get an insta-cast, mana-free Flash Heal right after it goes off.

That doesn’t mean to cast Circle of Healing just to get SoL, though! Splash/raid damage in most of these Icecrown raid fights is inevitable. (And other WotLK raids, for that matter.) Use Circle of Healing the moment 3-6 people are hurt and the smart heal will find them over however many XYZ groups your raid has and allot the healing accordingly. It will then give you that quick FH that you can use for whatever leftover damage there is, even if that’s just a tank.

What if your raid is taking damage constantly?–should you use CoH every time it’s off cooldown? The short answer is yes, but the strategic answer is “consider if Prayer of Healing is better.”

Let’s look at when to use Prayer of Healing and hold your breath on that next CoH.

When to cast Prayer of Healing

While the knee-jerk response to when to cast PoH is, “Whenever Circle of Healing is on cooldown,” that isn’t the mentality I always follow. PoH has a bigger oomph to it than CoH, so a raid that has sustained considerable damage should receive the PoH if you have a lingering Serendipity 3 (regardless of if the six second cooldown’s over). Also, if CoH is on cooldown and the raid hasn’t taken enough damage to warrant the PoH, consider dropping some Renews or the FH needed to get to Serendipity 3 instead. You can even use Binding Heal to get yourself and another target and gain a Serendipity boost.

If the raid damage is slow and steady and you have Serendipity 3, it’s a good idea to hold out until PoH won’t overheal [considerably]. That way, you can immediately follow with CoH to get another SoL/Serendipity 1 and save some mana with the free Flash Heal.

When to NOT cast Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing

A Discipline priest said once, “I can’t raid heal.” I made the mistake of saying, “You have Prayer of Healing, don’t you?”

Suddenly this priest did raid heal; unfortunately, she also clocked 75% of the raid’s overheals and had over 60% of her heals dedicated exclusively to PoH.

Trigger-happy healing priests are easy to identify. Your CoH or PoH is taking the overheal charts by storm, and you show a 40%+ use of just one spell on the healing meters. Now, I’m not saying to turn into a meter whore; I’m suggesting that everyone download a meter to watch the percentages of spells they use, and to make sure that Circle of Healing and/or Prayer of Healing is not vastly different from Flash Heal and Renew.

If any spell is doing more than 30% of your heals as a Holy priest, you’re doing it wrong. The purpose behind priests, especially Holy, is versatility. Circle of Healing is amazing, but it should not be used on every cooldown without hesitation; and Prayer of Healing rocks, but if there are only two (or even three, depending on the speed of the damage in the fight) people injured, a Renew or FH would’ve sufficed. Healing Prayers won’t save you either, only slow down the PoH mana-piss problem by 20%.

Heal as little as you need to, as full as the bar can go. This is the best way to enjoy your awe-inspiring, Chain-Heal-crushing Circle of Healing spell.

I’m going to go into a huge 3.3 Discipline versus Holy priest healing war again, this time in regards to talent mechanics.

I’m sure if you’re a Wrath of the Lich King priest veteran, you’ve heard of Serendipity; it’s that Holy talent located near the end of the tree. Through its 3-point splendor, priests can lower the casting time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing by up to 36%. This is the equivalent to the Discipline Borrowed Time, which grants 25% spell haste to the next spell cast after Power Word: Shield.

Why Holy is a more enjoyable and strategic experience versus Discipline

I call Serendipity “the fun of Holy” because it requires priests to strategically rotate between Flash Heal/Binding Heal and Greater Heal/Prayer of Healing. It adds an extra dynamic to Holy healing that Discipline priests don’t have. Consider the two haste options:

• In the case of Borrowed Time, the priest can get 25% haste through one casting of one spell (Power Word: Shield) and may then apply the haste to any spell.
• In the case of Serendipity, the priest can get 12% haste through the one casting of two spells (Flash Heal or Binding Heal) and may then apply the haste to two spells (Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing.) Eww compared to the Discipline version! But then, the priest can get 24% haste through two castings of two spells or 36% haste through the three castings of two spells. Sounds cooler.

Discipline priest? No brainer, black-and-white rotation mechanism. Holy priest? Decisions, decisions, decisions, and a whole lot of strategy.

How to effectively execute Serendipity 3

When I try to explain to Holy priests how to use Serendipity, first I go over how to get Serendipity 3, or 36% haste. You’re going to want to get 3 Flash Heals as fast as possible, which is easier than you think thanks to Surge of Light (SoL also drastically helps the mana efficiency of three Flash Heal casts.) This is the rotation I use when raid healing and trying to get Serendipity 3:

1. Prayer of Mending, insta-cast
2. Circle of Healing, insta-cast, usually crits at least one of the five targets (CoH glyph FTW)
3. SoL Flash Heal, insta-cast
4. Another Flash Heal, at regular casting time and mana expenditure
5. Prayer of Mending crits, another insta-cast
6. Serendipity 3!

Of course, it’s not always that ideal, but you’d be surprised how often this magic flows. I call it the “music effect” because you develop a GCD beat, with a longer note / slightly more time spent on that regular casting time Flash Heal. After you reach Serendipity 3, you can choose to Greater Heal the tank or further beef your raid heals with a Prayer of Healing. You can also squat on Serendipity 3 if you think big damage is coming soon and you want to react fast. Keep in mind that Borrowed Time does not let you squat on its effects for nearly as long as Serendipity.

To make this even more complicated (and therefore fun), let’s go back to how Serendipity is proc’d with Binding Heal. I’d venture to say a good 50% of healing priests space on the fact they have Binding Heal; before Serendipity, I hardly cast it. There really is no excuse in wasting mana healing yourself though when you can use it to heal yourself and someone else; so whenever you take splash damage (or PvP ouchies), turn to your Binding Heal to get yourself to full–someone else to full!–and get your Serendipity proc. It’ll make you feel like the l33tsauce.

When to use Serendipity 1 and Serendipity 2

Now that you know how to strategically Flash Heal and/or Binding Heal yourself to Serendipity 3, let’s go back to Serendipity 1 and 2. Remember that Serendipity 1 gets you 12% haste and Serendipity 2 gets you 24% haste.

Serendipity 2 is dangerously close to the same effect as Borrowed Time, except it only applies to two spells. (When I healed Discipline, I strangely found myself Borrowed Timing my way through Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing 90% of the time anyway, so what’s the huge difference?) You can get yourself to Serendipity 1 in a flash simply through the Circle of Healing / crit! / SoL Flash Heal trick. Serendipity 2 doesn’t take much more, at a casting bar Flash Heal or an SoL Flash Heal from your bouncing Prayer of Mending.

And then you got to figure out whether Serendipity 1 or Serendipity 2 is worth casting.

In high-stress battles, the FH / FH / GH / FH / FH / GH rotation works like a charm. It could be because 24% from Serendipity 2 is so similar to 25% from Borrowed Time that I feel cozy with that method. When the raid is taking continuous, mind-throbbing damage, that’s when Serendipity 1 comes in; something as simple as a quick CoH / crit! / SoL Flash Heal on tank / Serendipity 1 PoH can do the trick.

There are situations for all stages of Serendipity and that is part of why the strategy is so much greater than the static Discipline counterpart. GG, Borrowed Time.

I missed the NaBloPoMo post yesterday (whoops!), but hopefully the Serendipity guide was well worth it. Feel free to ask questions or leave comments with your own Serendipity pointers.

While the changes to shadow priests in 3.3 are catastrophically orgasmic, we smite priests still aren’t wiped entirely away from the picture. (Not any more than they were already wiped since the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King, anyway.) There are priests that, regardless of the differences in DPS, will always prefer the play mechanics of smiting over shadowing; if you stuck us in pure DPS classes, you’d have an epic mage vs. warlock showdown. Because of this, while I strongly recommend any priest that wants to do l33t DPS should switch shadow, I also advise that the priests that love smite stick with the spec that’s faithful to them and deal with the ridicule. After all, you’ve already listened to it for years; for expansions.

And to really understand just how much you’ve screwed yourself, I’d like to turn to the the bread and butter of smite spec: Surge of Light.

Why is Surge of Light screwing me?

Surge of Light is located in the dead center of the Holy tree, deep enough that Penance is not possible but early enough that Power Infusion is capable of taunting you. It’s strategic placement in the Holy tree (along with Power Infusion’s placement in the Discipline tree) forces the real smite priest to abandon the notion that they can just “cast Smite while healing” and design a real Holy DPS spec that falls short of the pure Discipline and pure Holy healing counterparts. Surge of Light is your lifesaver and your doomsday bringer.

I REPEAT:

There are priests that have tried to Holy DPS with Penance; forget it. You need Surge of Light and it needs you.

There are priests that have tried to Holy DPS with the Holy tree alone; forget that, too. Surge of Light leaves you room for critical things like Power Infusion and Focused Power.

Surge of Light makes sure that you design a smite spec that gimps your healing, but still makes you a better healer than the shadow priest. You’re a schmuck middle man. But it gives you free Smite procs, so you can’t judge it too terribly!

Does Surge of Light have an internal cooldown?

According to Sinespe on WoWHead, yes. Granted, it’s mighty difficult to test something that only procs 50% of the time to begin with, but he managed to grab a piece of his combat log over 7.28 seconds that showed the internal cooldown:

0.00: Sinetest gains Sinetest's Surge of Light.
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Holy Concentration.
      Sinetest's Inspiration is refreshed on Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Flash Heal heals Sinetest for 0.(4985 Overhealed)
1.38: Sinetest's Surge of Light fades from Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Serendipity is refreshed on Sinetest.
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Inner Focus.
3.14: Sinetest's Prayer of Healing heals Sinetest for 0.(6381 Overhealed) (Critical)
      Sinetest's Serendipity fades from Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Inner Focus fades from Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Inspiration is refreshed on Sinetest.
4.52: Sinetest's Flash Heal heals Sinetest for 0.(7644 Overhealed) (Critical)
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Serendipity.
      Sinetest's Holy Concentration is refreshed on Sinetest.
      Sinetest's Inspiration is refreshed on Sinetest.
5.90: Sinetest's Flash Heal heals Sinetest for 0.(5032 Overhealed)
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Serendipity (2).
7.28: Sinetest's Flash Heal heals Sinetest for 0.(7306 Overhealed) (Critical)
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Serendipity (3).
      Sinetest gains Sinetest's Surge of Light.

Sinepse believed, from this data, that Surge of Light has a roundabouts ICD of 5 seconds. Pretty fast, but still there. You’re more than likely not going to push it unless your critical strike rating is out of hand. (And if that’s the case, I recommend Haste to get an extra Smite in during Holy Fire; see my Lvl 80 Smite Priest Guide for more tips there.)

How much mp5 does Surge of Light generate?

If you get a Surge of Light proc every 8 seconds (which is feasible with around 25% crit rating), you’re looking at 390.625 Mp5. This is also derived by Sinepse from the above combat log. One of the flaws to his research is that it’s taking Circle of Healing into account (which has the chance to proc on multiple targets), but I do not feel this should differ much given the fast-paced casting time of Smite with the appropriate Haste gear. I, for one, have no problems getting a Surge of Light every 8 seconds.

And what with mana being one of the key issues of smiting, you once again see how Surge of Light has destroyed your chance for Penance and yet taken over your smiting world.

Interested in reading about priests trying to find their way to smite spec? Then check out Surge of Light on WoWHead. You’d be amazed how many people know, either from reading or simple deduction, that this is the backbone of Holy DPS; the discussion of smite spec is always centered around these 2 talent points in the middle of the Holy tree bedlam.