Holy Help

[Lazare 3]

I've switched to holy as my guild already has an established Disc priest in the core team, but my numbers seem very low.  I'm wondering where I'm going wrong.  The AMR logs from our last night of heroic BRM raiding are here, and for those who prefer WCL see here and here.  My armory is here.

 

For example, on Flamebender, AMR helpfully notes that my performance is in the 11th percentile; even adjusting for gear and spec, I'm 21st percentile.  I did a little better on Gruul (27%) but on Thogar I'm in the 4th percentile with less than 20k HPS.  My guild said the week before I joined the core team, they pugged a holy priest who did 50k HPS on Kromag; I can usually break 30k, but again, that puts me in the bottom 10% of holy priests.  And it's not like we're stacking healers; we only had 4 in a 20 person raid for most of the raid, and 5 on Kromag.  Which seems normal, right?  And we clearly weren't outgearing the fight; people were dying.

 

Where am I going wrong?  I'm gemming and enchanting for multistrike, based on the numbers given in the icy veins guide, as well as by AMR.  I'm told that holy should usually see renew as their biggest heal, but I often see circle of healing as my biggest heal.  I try to adapt to the situation, but it almost always ends up with me in sanctuary, spamming CoH, Cascade, and PoM on cooldown, filling the gaps with renews, keeping lightwell up and dropping sanctuary when it seems like it might be helpful (not that it does much when I do drop it, of course).  I often seem to get sucked into using flash heals to save people (usually tanks); I know it's inefficient but it feels like I have to, and I don't tend to run out of mana if I'm good about using my Mindbender on cooldown.  Speaking of which, I guess I could get less spirit on my gear, but that's mostly a question of waiting for gear to drop.  And I don't think a new trinket is going to give me the thousands of HPS I'm missing.

 

So really, what gives?  I know we're running with a pretty great disc priest and a couple of good druids but it's very demoralising to see them being ranked by AMR as all above average, when I'm always in the bottom 20%, if not lower.  (WCL reckons I'm in the ~8th percentile.)  I know it's hard to compare specs, but I'm the only holy priest, and I need some sort of benchmark.

 

Am I just not being good enough about using my skills on cooldown?  Should I just spam more spells?  Or should I stack some other stat than multistrike?  I've seen people suggest variously that haste and/or mastery are good stats.  Would one be better?  Should I try using glyphed binding heal more?  Or switching chakras to serenity?  Is my problem that I'm not focusing enough on mindlessly blanketing the raid in renews and letting the other healers do direct healing?  Or am I renew spamming too much, and I need to mix it up even more?

 

TL;DR:  I'm stacking multistrike and spamming CoH and renew, and my healing sucks.  My raw HPS sucks, and log sites reckon that other holy priests with worse gear can do much better.  What can I do to not be shit?  Do I need to reroll druid or something, or do I just suck?  I'm a very competitive person and this is killing me.  

Edited March 4, 2015 by Lazare

[Gwenymph 414]

I liked your post on the Atonement thread, I was surprised to see your having so much trouble in Holy!  You are having similar issues to the other Holy HPS post that went up this week.  I checked out a few fights and you are ending the encounters with over half mana on all but 2.  You definitely can afford to add more filler into your rotation especially your CoH cast on fights like Hans & Franz where you can use it evertime Aftershock goes out for limited overhealing (if any based on your Disc/Pally bubbles).

 

I will add that any time you are paired up with either a half brain dead Disc or an above average Pally your Holy numbers will show a significant drop compared to those Holy that run with one or neither.  Its just how the synergy of those three classes work.  That being said, yes there are those skewed Holy numbers that are tilting the percentiles way up while not playing w/ absorb classes but not enough for players to not try and make themselves a better team player and sitting in the bottom 20%.

 

Your using a pure MS build and it is not working w/ your comp, Try switching your gems and chants out to a Haste build.  I find it works better for me and suggest it to all those MS builds that are showing severe lack in HPS.  Even the old 6.0 and new 6.1 theorycrafter guides show Haste ever so slightly ahead of MS (even though you will see contradictory information on the Main Holy Priest Class guide here and other sites, they have not been updated in quite some time).  Even if you did find that the MS build works better for you, Haste is still number 2 on that build list if not equal based on Renew percentages.  In your case (maybe with bad luck in drops) your Haste is down last with your Versatility.  Definitely need to get it out of the basement and above your Mastery and Crit, even if you cannot get it higher than MS.  

 

Forums are a better place to get more specific help (logs) and more up to date info on weights, builds, comps, strats, openers, etc.  On fights where you are ending up with all that mana left over, go with more throughput and drop the Spirit, if you have the pcs ofc. 

 

I hope that you will get some more feedback to help ya out, I hate seeing Priests say "roll druid" bleh!

[Lazare 3]

Thanks for the feedback.  And yes, we tend to run with a solid holy pally AND disc priest, which I know doesn't help.  On the other hand, we have a bunch of resto druids too, and they seem to do fine.  :)  Okay, my provisional plan is:

 

Regem/re-enchant everything to haste, switch to haste food, and try and get as many haste drops as I can.  Then try and burn through more mana by spamming more renews and getting in more CoH casts.  The theory being is that if I stack enough haste and cast renew enough, my HPS has to go up.  :)

 

Followup questions:

1. How should I prioritise lightwell, PoM, Cascade, etc?  I'm thinking something like CoH > Renew  spam > Cascade > PoM > Lightwell > Sanctuary?  I'm pretty sure sanctuary is bad, and CoH and renew are great, but I'm not sure how important using cascade, PoM, and lightwell on cooldown is.  (Note:  I don't have any set bonuses yet.)
2. Any thoughts on my glyphs?  I currently have Deep Wells, CoH, and Renew.  Of those, CoH seems great, and I guess Deep Wells is fine...ish?  But I'm not sure about  the renew glyph.  Is it helping me?
3. What about talents?  I've got Mindbender, but I'm not having mana issues so I guess it's fine.  I also have PI; I think I'm fairly good at popping it when appropriate on fights (during breath on kromog, for example), but it sits on my bar unused a lot too.  Would Twisted Faith be better?

Also, the next progression raid is planning on downing Heroic Kromog (we've downed him a few times; we just ran out of time last night) and then working on Heroic Iron Maidens (which we haven't downed before).  Any tips for either fight?  The healing tips for BRM thread is pretty light on holy ideas.  Kromog seems simple; wait till breath or hands, then pop cooldowns and spam CoH/renew, yeah?  For Maidens I'm not on the boat team, so the fight seems like 10 minutes of dodging mechanics with very little damage to heal, followed by 10 seconds of terror and pain as we wipe.  Any talent/glyphs that might help here?

 

Thanks for the help, and I'd love to hear from anyone else with ideas.  I've been a priest since my guild was struggling to down Lucifron 10 years ago; I really don't want to change now.  :)

[Gwenymph 414]

1) Lightwell should be dropped prior to the pull so it comes up again during the encounter, yes drop it on CD. CoH on CD as long as 3 people need healing.  Sanc is bad but continue to drop it when the melee or stacked ranged groups wont be moving. PoM on CD yes. Cascade usage should be lined up w/ raid wide dmg abilities.

 

2) You glyphs are fine. Yes, take the Renew Glyph

 

3)  It depends on your mana consumption. Solace will give you more mana back.  Kromog is a fight where I usually fight to keep mana at the end and take Solace.  ToF is not better, even when gaming it to 40%+

[Lazare 3]

Well, I didn't mean "is lightwell worth casting" or whatever; more that I was wondering, hypothetically, how to prioritize GCDs.  If there's people I could be renewing AND lightwell and cascade are off cooldown, what's going to be the highest HPS per GCD?

 

Anyhow, I'v regemmed/reenchanted everything to haste.  As luck would have it I got a warforged Dagger of Blazing Radiance off heroic Flamebender last night, so I bought a Genesaur Braid off the AH and swapped my i660 crafted crit/multi staff for the pair.  Higher ilvl, and tons more haste.  I'm now at something like 1200 haste unbuffed, and while I've only ever been able to test in LFR so far it seems like it's working okay.  The real test will be our next progression raid on Sunday though.  :)

 

Thanks for the advice!

[Gwenymph 414]

Grats on the drop! And sorry about the GCD confusion. Lightwell is the largest HPMana we have but if you dont have a GCD to spare in a situation AND it will not proc, then yea, save it til u have a free one. If it will proc as soon as its down, then yes, use the GCD. Goodluck with the next progression!

[Eolri 0]

It is possible that I am doing it completely wrong, but my advice based on my playstyle is following.

 

If you have the mana for it, don´t be shy and use glyphed Binding heal as a filler and cast Prayer of Healing with Serependity stacks. On fights like Kromog, where is lot of raid damage, you will get lot of healing (I usually get something from 45k to 50k hps).

[Coussin 7]

 

It is possible that I am doing it completely wrong, but my advice based on my playstyle is following.

 

If you have the mana for it, don´t be shy and use glyphed Binding heal as a filler and cast Prayer of Healing with Serependity stacks. On fights like Kromog, where is lot of raid damage, you will get lot of healing (I usually get something from 45k to 50k hps).

 

The way you're doing it is not wrong, in cases where PoH will not overheal it is a very strong spend of your mana. Unfortunately in the current thread we're looking towards a haste build, which makes renew spam very interesting with haste.

 

I'd say, do you and whatever works. At the moment BRF calls for solid mana management, so if you see you can pull numbers (while everyone does well eh, let's not just snipe and wipe) and finish fights with good mana (aka 0 or close enough haha), I'd say there's no real way to mess up.

[Zelendria 0]

I'm having similar issues with my own Holy Priest. Frustrating me enough to be bringing up my alt Mage to start raiding. I'm very competitive as well so to find myself regularly propping up the healing table is not cool.

 

Despite my ilvl being very close to yours our stats are wildly different. Should you not have more MS?

http://www.wowhead.com/list=5827899/eu-magtheridon-wotusay

 

On average I'm probably around 25K HPS, but that is terrible in comparison to other healers in my guild, and also what sites reckon I should be doing.

[TheRaidBoss 11]

I'm having similar issues with my own Holy Priest. Frustrating me enough to be bringing up my alt Mage to start raiding. I'm very competitive as well so to find myself regularly propping up the healing table is not cool.

 

Despite my ilvl being very close to yours our stats are wildly different. Should you not have more MS?

http://www.wowhead.com/list=5827899/eu-magtheridon-wotusay

 

On average I'm probably around 25K HPS, but that is terrible in comparison to other healers in my guild, and also what sites reckon I should be doing.

What size is the raid / healing comp? Also, that link that was provided doesn't do anything.

[Zelendria 0]

The healing comp was usually Disc Priest, Holy Priest, Pally and a Monk/Druid. Raid size was around 15 man.

Yea sorry I couldn't edit my post to change the link for some reason

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/magtheridon/Wotusay/advanced

 

Coincidently my mage has now surpassed my Priests ilvl.

[TheRaidBoss 11]

The healing comp was usually Disc Priest, Holy Priest, Pally and a Monk/Druid. Raid size was around 15 man.

Yea sorry I couldn't edit my post to change the link for some reason

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/magtheridon/Wotusay/advanced

 

Coincidently my mage has now surpassed my Priests ilvl.

As I think I've seen Gwen say before, if you have a good pally and a decent disc priest, shaman, holy priest, and druid heals will usually dwindle as there isn't usually much damage to heal because of the shields going out. The smaller the group the more coverage they're getting from their shields. At fifteen, disc priest, holy paladin, and mistweaver monk, you're not going to be heading a lot as all three have some decent coverage and amazing shield potential.

On fights with a disc priest, druid, shaman, and me in about a 15 man, I'm pulling 20-25k. Without shielders I can pull 40k no sweat.

It's all about the group makeup and how much damage is going out. If everyone never stood in the flame lash on flame bender, or dodged everything kromog did, you'll see even lower numbers Compared to groups that took a few hits here and there