Holy Priest Help

[atoms 5]

Hi friends, sorry to add to the growing number of Holy Priest help posts, but I am desperate and very torn about my performance as Holy.
 
I usually main Disc for guild runs, but have recently had to Holy heal for many pugs. I'm slowly making the transition from Disc to Holy MS, and was brought into a Mythic Beastlord raid as the latter. In comparison to the Disc (understandable) and Resto Druid, my HPS appears to be abysmal, as is my ranking. At that point in time I was stacking multistrike gems/enchants, but have since changed to haste gems/enchants after browsing other Holy Priest help posts.

 

Here is the log for the M Beast fight: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/JxLt2Ky3RHCnQ1MN#fight=53&source=15

And my armory link (may not be logged out in Holy gear/spec, although I will try to remember): http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/frostmourne/Atoms/simple

 

Apart from the awfully-timed Divine Hymns (58% overheal), what else have I done wrong? I found myself stance-dancing very rarely during the fight, and most of it was spent in the aoe-heal-stance. I would love to hear from you guys on how I can improve, be it on this fight, other fights and/or in general.

[TheRaidBoss 11]

While I won't give fight specifics as I have no real world experience in any mythic, I see only 1 use of Power Infusion in a 10 minute fight, which helps the Renews and keeping more mana. Try to remember to use it when you'll be needing to do a lot of burst healing, otherwise just use it on cooldown.

 

Trying to fix what was done wrong in a pug group is a little rough as you won't be able to be consistent from week to week. After playing Holy for a while you'll get more of a feel for it, promise. Additionally, pre-pot int potions and be sure to mana potion in the fight too.

 

Also, use of healing tonics or health stones is important too, don't forget them. Depending on the mana and the boss life, as holy there can be a benefit to causing yourself to die and enter the free casting spirit of redemption. It's incredibly risky to force it, but there have been a few pulls where I killed myself to proc the free casting. (There was one time where I was so oom during beastlord I impaled myself on a spear and my jerk raid wouldn't just let me die, making me waste the entire time spent in the spear.) So if you do this, make sure the other healers and any paladins are NOT going to save you!!!

 

Also, use the mindbender earlier, you could have gotten 2 more casts up in the beginning before your first use. Haste procs/power infusion will make it hit faster = more mana back.

 

Changing stances can really help because of Serenity's 25% more critical chance will help on when a person is going to take considerable damage, additionally using binding heal can keep renew refreshed on you+target(+another if glyphed) which is very nice as 3GCDs in 1 short cast time+gcd is always good, but don't expect it to hit the bonus person you want :(.

 

In general, throw the lightwell down about 1-2 minutes before the pull, as you get a little more out of it. I always try to have it up before the readychecks are going out. Had you had lightwell out at -2 minutes to pull, you would have a full extra use out of it, which would be 17 more hits. 

[Gwenymph 414]

Heya and welcome!

 

Theraidboss hits on all very good points and agree with the approach he recommends.  So I'll just suggest some things you might look to change. 

 

You went OOM twice during the fight and are using Mindbender, swap to Solace and use a WA to track it to keep your mana up.  There are theorycrafting trees where Mindbender is just as good as a "use and forget" option to Solace but at a higher Haste level than your armory is showing.  When used on CD at your current stats, Solace will net you a little more mana.

 

You have 4pc, and with the constant damage at the most important parts of this encounter DI really shines w/ the Holy tier set bonus.  It will cause a playstyle shift with less Renew and more Heal and/or PoH fishing for procs (with appropriate mana usage) but will net you more Heal/Mana and more pure throughput than Renew spam.  Just taking a quick look at our guilds last kill to compare output of 4pc w/ DI: 90seconds shorter, same number of hard cast PoM, but double the hits(DI), double the output and half the overheal vs the same GCD for a Renew.

 

Between these first two posts there I hope you find a nice little jump in your output!  Let us know how it works out.

[atoms 5]

Thanks for the feedback, your responses were so quick!

 

I have a confession to make; I healed mythic beastlord without knowing I had absolutely ZERO major glyphs on. I only noticed when I posted my armory link earlier and had to cover up my shame hastily. Not saying that this was the sole reason for my bad performance, or that I would have healed much better, but still a slight consolation.

 

Will keep these tips in mind as I go along. Thanks for pointing out DI, Gwenymph. I completely forgot that existed. Will spec into it for future fights. Also very interesting point about forcing spirit of redemption, will be sure to try it out if/when the conditions are right, TheRaidBoss 

 

I'm currently travelling but will try to get into a raid to test out my new knowledge and update you guys on my performance. Thanks guys!

[atoms 5]

I'm back! Managed to get some Heroic kills done, although no Mythic Beastlord. Keeping in mind Gwenymph's note that Solace will yield more mana return, I specced into that for all the fights. Absolutely awful tracking of Solace CD, as I was running without my addons, so I didn't manage to cast it every 10 seconds perfectly. Lightwell uptime was awful as well. Will have to work on that.

 

Here are my logs from tonight's kills: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/YcZWBfjFrJ2Mhm1L/#fight=5&type=healing&source=1

 

Loving the DI procs especially on Kromog. I feel slightly more confident, but not good enough yet. For now I will continue working on improving my holy spec. Would appreciate any kind of feedback. Thanks so much again guys.

[Gwenymph 414]

Yea, not having an addon, like WeakAura, to track your Solace is a big disadvantage.  Glad you had a positive feel for the swap to DI.  Sometimes it can be a hard shell to break taking that talent, and using/proccing it.

[Bobbyjensen6000 17]

Currently 9/10 in Mythic BRF and I still haven't used Divine Insight once, I keep a +50-60% uptime on ToF on Gruul/Kromog/Blast Furnace and will probably on Blackhand too. I play Holy on every boss except Maidens where we run a double disc setup due to the nature of the fight, but I cannot think of a fight where i'd want DI over PI and ToF. I find PI to be a much stronger talent for on demand healing in short periods of heavy damage than DI.

[atoms 5]

Currently 9/10 in Mythic BRF and I still haven't used Divine Insight once, I keep a +50-60% uptime on ToF on Gruul/Kromog/Blast Furnace and will probably on Blackhand too. I play Holy on every boss except Maidens where we run a double disc setup due to the nature of the fight, but I cannot think of a fight where i'd want DI over PI and ToF. I find PI to be a much stronger talent for on demand healing in short periods of heavy damage than DI.

 

Thank you, I'll keep this in mind as we go along with mythic progression. I can't wait to jump back into regular raiding once I'm back home. Will give the other 2 talents a shot on different attempts. Do you think I could take a look at your mythic kill logs? I would be delighted to learn from you, if you don't mind. If there aren't any readily available, then it's cool. Thanks again for your input