My first character created was/is a Holy Priest. I’ve never specced Shadow and I’ve only just recently started throwing talents into Discipline. Leveling has been slow and about level 35 I rolled a warrior that quickly became my main.
But I haven’t given up on Gius. I have gone for weeks without loggin onto him but recently I’ve been playing him more. He’s level 67 1/2. I use fractions on him so I can feel like I am making some progress. I’ve been slowly getting through the quests in Nagrand and here and there making my son come help me with his mage.
I have run many instances but all were months ago until Saturday. A group of guild alts plus one of our main tanks took a venture into Crypts. We had fun and cleared it out pretty easily. But it was a good learning run for me.
In many ways healing is a lot easier than tanking. But I am realizing that even with healing there are so many things I need to learn. How to I keep healing aggro to a minimum? Spamming renews is probably not such a good idea. How do I maximize my mana pool? What? Spamming flash heal is bad for mana? Lol. Getting used to Heal Bot presents new challenges as well.
Anyway, I’ll get Gius into the raids before long. I already have his 3 Primal Mooncloth set ready (how come they don’t have any Stam stats?!) and his white remedy cloak. I fear he will be geared for raiding long before I’ll be skilled at playing the toon. He’s already up to 850 bonus healing in just his level 67 gear.
Tankette's Rambles 
A full five points in Silent Resolve can be a wonderful thng, especially when looking to PuG with people who may not be exactly top-notch players. That 20% threat reduction is mighty and even though many raiding healers say to drop it once you hit the latter end of tier progression, my perky priestess still has five points and I love it.
I know you mentioned that you just started to put points in the Discipline tree, but in the future you may want to reconsider that. Leveling as a healer, the Discipline tree has some awesome talents in there that are intended for longevity and survivability — both traits that priests typically aren’t known for. However, if you get any talents in the Discipline tree, make sure to pick up that Silent Resolve!
You may not want to spend the gold now, but there are also two other options:
* Enchant Cloak – Subtlety: 2% threat reduction.
* Bracing Earthstorm Diamond: if you have the meta slot, that’s another 2% reduction.
So, if you have Subtlety on your cloak, the meta gem, and five points in Silent Resolve, you’re looking at:
0.80 × 0.98 × 0.98 = 0.76832,
or approximately 77% healing threat. While it’s not alot, it could be the difference between you staying alive to heal or finding your pancreas plastered against the back wall.
Also, Flash Heal is the bane of mana-efficient healers. Not only does it have a low Bonus Healing coefficient (approximately 43% whereas Greater Heal is 87%), but it’s Healing Per Mana (HPM) is actually pretty low. If you have the time, try a downranked version of Greater Heal. I’ve been using rank 1 since around 1,400 Bonus Healing buffed, but a lot of people prefer rank 2 or even rank 4. It’ll save you mucho mana.
If you want to achieve higher sustainability in your healing, there are a couple of tricks you can use. First, if you don’t know the Five Second Rule, learn about it and live it! Basically, the more time you spent not casting, the mana you’ll regen. This is especially important if you don’t pick up Meditation in the Discipline tree and, frankly, I’d be shocked if any healing priest I met at 70 didn’t have that maxed out. Being able to regenerate 30% of your mana while casting is beautiful. Also, with Meditation you can begin stacking more Spirit than MP5, which will benefit you further in the Holy tree with Spiritual Guidance and if a friendly priest gives you Improved Divine Spirit.
And on the note with Spirit, if you haven’t snagged Spirit of Redemption in the Holy tree, you may want to consider it; the 5% increase to Spirit can be a huge boost, especially in this post-2.4 Spirit-based mana regeneration system.
Hehe, sorry for the rambling. I’m an avid priestaphiliac (I have three priests on a single server: Holy sans Circle of Healing, Discipline, and Shadow) and I really enjoy babbling about the class. I hope that some of it was helpful! If not, feel free to disregard my inane babbling. Good luck with the priesting!
Comment by Cynra — June 9, 2008 @ 6:00 pm |
Cyrna, thanks for the “babbling”, lol. You gave me a lot of good tips and some good direction. I think getting my spec right is the first step. I have spent so much time researching ways to be a better tank that I am not sure I’ll have the same dedication for learning to heal. Your post gave me an easy start though!
Comment by tankette — June 9, 2008 @ 6:25 pm |
Tankette,
Cyrna gave you all the tips you needed to go Holy and heal like a pro 🙂
Maybe I’ll just add that you should stick to healing normal instances until you have at least 1200 healing bonus, anything below and you’ll have a hard time healing heroics.
Anyone *demanding* more (e.g. PuGs etc.) either have no clue or are using a Cover Your Ass mentality. Of course it depends on the heroic, and the tank, but I would say 1200 is really the bare minimum, even if you have an OP team boosing you through a heroic.
> I’ve never specced Shadow
Until you’re 70, spec full Shadow and forget about being Holy (or disc, although I’ve seen some interesting shadow/disc builds in the past). I can say from personal experience that only a BM hunter is easier to level than a Shadow-Priest. Even my mage was not as easy to level – spriests have more survivability and less downtime compared to mages, even though a mage can kill single mobs faster. I’m surprised you actually managed to level as a holy priest – that must have been painful!
Personally I respecced to Holy at level 69 in order to start getting gear and practice healing a bit early, so maybe this advice is a bit late for you. But if you ever level another priest, try the Dark Side for a while, it’s plenty fun 🙂
Comment by Solidstate — June 10, 2008 @ 6:23 am |
I’ve never played a healer (I’m a keyboard user, and scared of having to select raid members) but I’ve started noticing the differences in healers since playing this tank in heroics. Good healers go like this:
– Don’t heal me until I’m about 60%
– Use big heals and always find spare mana
– Heal and shield themselves until I can take mobs off
Bad healers, who for some reason are almost always paladins:
– I pull
– Flash, flash, flash, flash, flash…
– The healer is OOM and we killed the mobs just in time
Drink and repeat. I’m not sure if they’re used to very low HP tanks, or PvP, or whatever but their mana efficiency is terrible.
Comment by Machus — June 10, 2008 @ 10:54 am |
Good stuff. Ya, I’ve learned that less healing and later healing means less aggro.
I’ve always stayed Holy because my plan has been to level from instances instead of quests. But then I get tired of LFG and end up questing, lol.
Comment by tankette — June 10, 2008 @ 6:34 pm |