The great tragedy of healing is that the better your team gets, the more boring it becomes. It’s been said many times that while DPS can strive for bigger and better results on farm bosses, healers just see their numbers dwindle. Easy farm content leads to boredom, and in my guild bored healers lead to trouble. All of us enjoy the crazy chaotic fights with lots of running and stuff to do. Healychat after the first couple of Festergut wipes read like wide-eyed kids in a candy store: “Did you see that? There’s so much raid damage. It’s .. it’s AWESOME.”

This is particularly applicable to LFG pugs at the moment. Given a halfway decent tank, I can get away with Prayer of Mending and a shield or two, leaving me to space out and spin around in my chair for half the instance. So what’s an overgeared healer to do? SMITE!

I know a lot of healers queue up with DPS gear and specs now to help out with damage, but I’m not that brave. I burn through mana really quickly in my shadow set, and my hotbars and keybindings are all wrong for the kind of panicked “oh shit” healing that might be required. Besides, you never know how good your next Heroic tank will be. Instead, I like playing the Battle Priest, Smiter Extraordinaire. I’ve beaten DPS on many a pull, which is vastly more entertaining than dancing in the back of the room.

The secret to healer dps is this macro, which you probably already have in use somewhere:

/cast [harm,nodead][target=targettarget,harm,nodead] SpellName

Set up all your offensive spells to use this macro. Now you can DPS a mob without ever leaving your friendly target — instead it will hit your target of target. I use this to pop shadow word: pain, devouring plague, and shadow word: death on a boss as much as possible (assuming you can give up the GCDs). Hey, every bit helps, and I’m pretty sure my 200 DPS on Rotface was what put us over the top. Totally.

Anyway, this can be used with smite too, which is your friend on pugs. Throw SW:P on anything, and pop devouring plague and SW:D on the big baddie. Is there a single target? PoM and shield your tank, and Smite away! Is it a pack pull? Oh, you lucky dog, it’s MIND SEAR time. I love mind sear. I love it so much. All the tanks in my guild can testify to my love of mind sear, as it’s killed them each at least once. (What? I can’t stop and heal you, I’m clearly MIND SEARING. Duh.)

It helps to have a bit of +hit. I have 70 incidentally from a wand and offhand in my main gearset, which is good enough for me. The hit cap for Heroic bosses is about 130 for Alliance and 160 for Horde, not that it’s a huge concern.

A well geared healy priest can easily pull down 1-2k DPS during a Heroic (again, assuming a good tank), which means that you will clear the instance that much faster. Being a Heroic Battle Priest and occasionally beating Mr. Mouthy Noob Hunter on the charts has made LFG much, much more fun.

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Fitzcairn’s Macro Explain-o-matic: Feed it a WoW macro, and it will explain what the heck is going on in those many square brackets. Oh, clever website!

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Healing, WotLK LFG, priest

So before you read this I should probably mention that I haven’t truly “theorycrafted” any of this. I’ve barely even done any independent research on it (although really there doesn’t seem to be a lot out there). Instead this is all just based on my observations and own sense of logic. If you see a flaw in my logic, feel free to correct me in the comments.

So you have a Val’anyr! First, let’s look at the proc for a holy priest:

1. It can come from any direct heal, as long as the target has less than 100% health.
2. It technically is supposed to proc off of each Prayer of Mending bounce, but I’ve only personally observed it going off the first one.
3. It does NOT proc off of Empowered Renew, much less regular Renew.

Okay, so far, so good! Now, how effective are some popular heals? For this, I’m just going to use my stats, which are pretty much, I think, your average “farm regular TotC” gear levels, averaged out with crits.

• Circle of Healing: heals for 2500, shield for 375 (2250 total if glyphed)
• Flash Heal: heals for 3400, shield for 510
• Prayer of Healing: heals for 3400, shield for 510 (2550 total, glyph agnostic)
• Prayer of Mending: heals for 5700, shield for 855 – 4275 (inc. 2pc T9 bonus)
• Greater Heal: heals for 6400, shield for 960

There it is, the closest I possibly have ever come to mathcrafting. There was division and everything! Anyway, okay, now we have our information mostly in line, what can I figure out from this?

First, if you are in a fight with regular raid damage, Circle of Healing with the bubble is badass. For 21% of base mana, assuming you have the CoH glyph, you have 2250 in shield damage thrown around on the average CoH. That’s the equivalent to having an entire extra person included in your CoH! Note that the shield is not large at about 375, but that’s not the point. 375hp will probably not save an individual, but 2250 damage absorbed by the bubble is 2250 damage that did not have to be healed, and that saves mana, time, and GCDs for all of your healers.

Depending on how well you keep track of your bounces, PoM is also potentially a really efficient way to use your Val’anyr proc. Even with just one bounce, an 855 hp shield is not insignificant, and it gets ludicrously good the more bounces you have. I admit, I am fairly bad at keeping track of my PoM, so I probably only 3 bounces off each one, for a predicted shield total of ~2500. This is probably less important during a fight with very occasional raid damage, and totally amazing during something like Heroic Twins with constant raid-wide damage.

As a holy priest we aren’t often called upon to heal the Main Tank, but he or she should not be ignored when it comes to bubbles. Suddenly our mana-inefficent large heals become better when served with a large bubble. I always try and hit the MT with a Serendipityx3 Greater Heal when Val’anyr procs. If there is a lot of damage on the tank, follow that up with a Flash Heal and a fresh PoM — you just threw a 2300 hp bubble on them, too! I deeply enjoy this on a fight like Gormok, when the incoming tank damage is crazy.

Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and hasted Greater Heals are three really good ways to use your Val’anyr procs. Adapt to the specific fight and the kind of damage you’re combating, and enjoy the bubbles!

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Healing gear, priest

Look, I try to be nice and not complain about stuff too much, particularly stuff on the PTR. But the Tier 9 graphics.. in all sincerity, this pushes me to flip out in despair more than anything else I’ve ever seen. All armor classes look alike.

I am going to look just like a mage and a warlock. In our raid of nine different classes, there will be 4 different armor designs. Is this supposed to make us excited? I remember getting my Prophecy Robes in MC and feeling like a “real priest”. Even before the arrival of TBC I yearned for the T5 wings, and I admit my eyes watered a bit when I finally got them. T6 had the hood and shoulders of justice, and currently Liore is strutting around in a T8 ninja mask, which is entirely pleasing.

Call me vain, call me shallow, but I like Liore to look good. And this.. this is not good.

And don’t give me that lame RP excuse nonsense that, “we’re in an army now, we have uniforms”. First, nice decision to suddenly plead realism as we JOUST our way to Arthas. Secondly, I have to spend enough time looking like everyone else in real life as part of the office worker army, thanks. I really don’t care to do that in a game. And finally.. Liore the elf character is an anti-authoritarian fabulously sassy priest, and she doesn’t wanna wear a uniform. Yeah, take that RP excuse.

You know what? I’m feeling stubborn and reactionary this morning, but I’m not doing it. I’m not going to take any T9, if I even go to the Colosseum at all. Hopefully there will be offset gear, and if there’s not then I’ll just heal the whole damn thing in my Ulduar gear, and I’ll still rock. I. Am not. A mage. I’m not even a caster! And I won’t even get started on how my DK friend feels about looking like a PALADIN. It’s not pretty.

3.2 in general is just making me nuts, although I’m trying to not think about it too much while everything is still in flux on the PTR. Why are they bringing out another raid instance so soon? It feels cheap and rushed, with us locked in a big empty room with a big empty monster, wearing identical clothes. (And yes, I know the spoiler for the end of the instance, but still.) Oh, and more priest nerfs. And multiple overcomplications of the raid lockout system.

Really, really not impressed.

/rant

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Raiding Ruminations, Random, WotLK gear, patch, priest, rants

In the week since 3.1 was released I’ve been focused on getting the guild pumped up, leading raids, learning new bosses, figuring out dual specs, and recruiting, not to mention the new fishing daily and Argent Tournament quests. In fact, it was only today that I sat down with the Armory, Elitist Jerks, and a pen and decided that it was time to work out exactly what happened to holy priests with this patch and what I was going to do about it.

A couple of months ago I wrote about how my mana regen in mostly Naxx-25 gear was kind of silly. And it was! There was little consideration for regen mechanics, and mana pots were some archaic concept that we joked about in the healer channel. Fortunately — and unfortunately — Blizz was paying attention to that, and nerfed the 5 second rule into oblivion. My o5sr regen was decreased by 40%, and, oh man, do I feel every single percent. Ideally this will get better with Ulduar gear, but for now it’s back to mana pots, mana flasks, and any other tricks. Another interesting effect of the change is that I feel quite lost without a source of replenishment. Whether it’s heroics or just farming old instances for mounts, all this Int isn’t doing me a whole ton of good without a shadow priest or ret pally or someone similar around.

Along with the changes to mana regen came changes to our spells and talents. I’ve said before that one of the great joys of playing a holy priest is all the options we have in our toolkit, and I’m exceedingly pleased to see that pattern continue in 3.1. Prayer of Healing is targetable, Renew is vastly improved, and wonders of wonders, I actually have Divine Hymn on my hotbar. There are a few different play styles available to holy priests now, and the talents to suit it.

I was always an unrepentant Renew spammer in Vanilla and TBC raids, and I missed that in WotLK. (Renew was grossly inefficient and just not quick enough to be worth it after 3.0.) I quite happily sunk six points now into Renew and Empowered Renew, and use it much as I suspect a Discipline priest would use shields — bored? throw some Renews around! Prayer of Healing has become pretty outstanding, although I admit I’m still training my brain and my fingers to use it as often and as correctly as I should. And I was never one to fuss too much with the o5sr tricks (Clearcast! Inner Focus! Trinkets! Surge of Light!), but I am entirely diggin’ the new Serendipity. Weaving Flash Heals and Prayer of Healing has already proven to be very nice, and will only get better the more I get used to it.

So what of Greater Heal, our eternal staple of heals? If your healing style includes GHeals, then it’s supported by both the old and new talents. If it doesn’t, though.. now, since 3.1, you can free yourself from all your old talent point ways! Let go of Divine Fury, or say goodbye to Improved Healing. The new math even shows that Empowered Healing is not as essential as it once was, depending on what spells you usually use. (Remember, if you want to tank heal, you should probably go Disc and do it right. Holy priests are for raid healing now.)

Tonight I’m going to respec to something like this, if not exactly that. I’ve given up Inner Focus, Improved Healing and Empowered Healing in favor of Healing Focus, Body and Soul, Test of Faith, and most of Blessed Resilience (for the healing bonus, not the damage reduction, natch). It’s a very, very, very “raid healing”-oriented spec, with bonuses for Renew, PoH, CoH, and PoM, and reductions to GHeal and Flash Heal. I’m a little concerned about giving up Inner Focus and not 100% convinced about the usefulness of Body and Soul, although the brainiacs over at EJ say it’s a good choice.

We’ll have to see how it plays in Ulduar, but I’m initially pretty intrigued. Ghostcrawler promised a long time ago that healing Priests would be made more interesting to play in 3.1, and by golly he may just have been right.

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Healing, WotLK patch, priest

There is excitement in the air, and a buzz on the streets. It’s.. almost.. PATCH TIME. My money is on April 21st, and I cannot wait. It’s been six months since we’ve received any new content, and fortunately this patch is stuffed full. So, in an attempt to both provide a moment of reading entertainment and sort out my own scatterbrain, I give you:

Liore’s Big List of To-Dos For 3.1

-> Read up on any changes and write strategies for the first few Ulduar bosses.
- Ask officers to help!
- Flame Leviathan, Ignis, Razorscale … I think.

-> Finalize both my specs. Buy glyphs and gems now before prices go up.
- Test of Faith as useless as it looks?
- I have no idea what’s going on with the Shadow Tree. Go read EJ, you scrub.
- If I’m going to spend 6 points on Renew, I better start using it more.

-> Encourage guildies to do the above.

-> Create and publish Val’anyr policy
- Thinking we’ll go with officer vote to set priority 1 and 2, with healy officers excluded.
- Read a rumor that shards are BoE. Check on this!

-> Read up on most recent Argent Tournament info, and plan which pets/mounts/treats I want
- Hint: All of them.

-> Review recruitment info, do another advertising blitz when 3.1 arrives
- DPS DPS DPS DPS.
- Keep in mind that some bored Cats will be returning.

-> Stare at list of core raid team, ponder implications of dual specs

-> Anything I can make gold with as a herb/alch in 3.1?
- Probably not. Boo.

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Guild Management, WotLK guildleading, patch, priest