I Don't Know What To Do :(

[Taldryx 13]

I have been raiding on a Healy Priest since the day I hit 80 in Sept '09. I am an "older" person (I won't confess how old lol). I did very well during LK as Disc/Holy and moderately well in Cata as Holy. I suck now.

I changed guilds several times during that long lull between Cata and MoP. In fairness, I was in guilds that were above me. Each guild tried to "help" by instructing me to play differently, and they would recommend a way. Needless to say, I didn't really get any better, just increasingly confused.

I now am back in my "Home" guild, and I love them. Although I had been doing a lot of 25 mans the whole time I raided, I am currently a core healer in a 10 man which I am comfortable with - except that I am not sharing the load with the other healers. There is a large disparity in our numbers.

The last change I made to my healing was to add a "Gamepad" - a G13 - and start mouseover healing, and learning to move without using my mouse. I had always been a Healbot girl and always moved with my mouse.

My problems: I need to be able to do other stuff outside of Holy to damage so I can do all of the Valor, Charm, etc farming that we need to do. I had a Shadow Spec, but swapped it out for a Disc because my Raid Leader thought I might have to change to Disc completely since I am doing so poorly in Holy - which is my other problem.

I am having a hard time adjusting to this new way of healing - I find that I am constantly pushing the wrong buttons, and then I become frustrated, feel like a failure and just want to drop from raid. And btw, my Raid Leader and Raid Team are TOTALLY AWESOME and VERY SUPPORTIVE of me - which kinda makes me feel worse.

The best suggestions so far are that my Neural Pathways have not totally opened up to this new way of doing things yet and that I have to give it time, but that I should regularly Quiz myself on button placement, that I need to know the fights better so that I can anticipate damage and re-act or pre-act appropriately, that I need to set up "Weak Auras" for my many CD's and procs.

I just feel like throwing in the towel, but I love WoW, my guild, my team, and my Priest. And btw it might be helpful that I have another 90 Priest that I haven't really been playing. I know this is a lot, but I am sooo lost and unhappy. I am disabled so that WoW is really my primary social life and mental stimulation.

Any thoughts and/or comments are greatly appreciated, and I thank you in advance. I will try to link a WoL soon if possible.

[MoacaBogdan 23]

Sad to hear of your problems, I'll try to help however I can.

First off, regarding your addons, I never used Healbot so I can't comment on that, however I am using VuhDo and I know I can't do without it. Only using a 5button mouse (really cheap piece of $#!^, but it gets the job done). Yes the mappings usually are confusing and can get overwhelming, I'm guessing for all healing addons, and believe it or not, I actually had to print out all of my disc mappings and have it in a strategic position near the PC, to be able to easily see during raids. I still confuse mappings between PainSup and Cascade, and it does not end well, but meh, nobody's perfect.

Secondly, when your RL said you were doing poorly in Holy, what exactly did he refer to ? Were your numbers not high enough ? Were you going oom ?

I know I have been playing only since Cata and I cannot comment on how Wrath was, but the healing between Cata and MoP has drastically changed, and, as far as I saw, Holy took a massive hit in regards to mana regen. The 300k mana cap really forces us to prioritise Spirit over Int most of the times, especially as Holy, since Disc has Rapture and Solace Atonement healing for better mana conservation.

Also, this new revamp makes priests use their entire toolkit of spells (in 4.3 it was PoH spam ftw, with the occasional FHeal for emergencies).

Know what your abilities do, and the synergy between them. Also, a good tip is to look at whichever spells benefit from Tier bonus. Saw that those spells tend to be best, and used on cd (Penance/CoH). For Holy, if you are confortable with your mana regen, you can try using binding/fheal for serendipity, then blow a supercharged GHeal/PoH. At the end of the day, it all comes down to knowing the encounter, knowing when to expect damage spikes, and using the best ability for that situation. As long as you've given it your best and raid stays alive at the end, you've done your job.

Edited April 17, 2013 by MoacaBogdan

[Zagam 1,982]

If you have a good support group, feeling bad only complicates things. Instead of feeling bad, appreciate their sentiment and focus more on performing better instead of the negative stigma of feeling bad. Switching specs or playstyle hits players in various ways, and if they're more than willing to stand beside you as you adjust, take the time to pick people's brains. Disc healing is almost like Fistweaving Monks where you do about 30-40% of the DPS a normal DPS would do while utilizing powerful cooldowns such as Barrier, Power Infusion, and most impotantly, Spirit Shell. If there's one thing you learn and get used to before you move on to other things, learn and master Spirit Shell. I play a healing Priest on off-days, and I used to love Holy but switched to Disc because of Spirit Shell. It's that good.

The main switch that you'll need to get used to is you're no longer playing whack-a-mole with the healthbars when they go down. Instead, you're preventing the healthbars from even going down with the use of absorption effects. Disc Priests have amazing synergy with high throughput healers such as Druids and Resto Shamans. They're also suitable for minor jobs such as keeping Power Word:Shield on your tank. This will be different than Renew if you were used to doing that, but PW:S is so much better than Renew you won't know what to think.

For Disc healing, I would recommend learning the following in this order to maximize your Disc throughput:

1) Spirit Shell

2) Power Word:Shield & Rapture

3) Atonement and mana management

4) Cooldowns

Your best friends while healing are your other healers. If your Druid is blanketing the raid with Tree Form Wild Growth + Regrowths, you might not want to spam PW:S on the raid so that his heals are all overhealing. Exception is when a big attack is coming and he's pre-hotting. Your shields then might help top people off super fast that makes both of you manage your mana better. Work up some plans per fight on cooldown use or talk to your raid leader about when he wants to use them.

Best of luck, and continue to have fun!

[Chronis 1]

Hey Taldryx. I'm glad you posted. I mainly want to second what Zagam said about not feeling bad about your situation. Feeling bad about it is just a distraction that doesn't allow you to be at your full potential. Also, I'd suggest reading the healy priest guides here on IV. I don't mean causually skim. When I'm learning a new class/spec (or there's a new expansion), I try to memorize as much as I can about what I'm doing. I'd especially look at how they suggest using spells (Zagam had some very good tips to follow for disc in this threat). It's mainly what I do, and it works great. I use healbot and have success with it. Recently I upgraded to a 5 button mouse (yeh big upgrade ), and I had to reassign all my buttons. To be comfortable actually healing with my new set-up I had to just stand in Org for a few minutes and really get used to it. If you're not used to your set-up, it's going to be very hard to use each spell when you need it and where you need it.

Could we also get an armory link? If we have that, we may be able to help more. I know I'm not the only one who would really like to hear that you're enjoying your game more. Best of luck!

[Nemo 27]

First of all I echo the sentiments of the other posters. Hang in there; you'll get the hang of it!

Secondly I think you might need to lower your expectations regarding your own performance.

Healing can only really be evaluated by two measures; did you (personally) go oom and/or more importantly did you wipe because of unaviodable damage.

If the answer to these questions are no you shouldn't worry about it :) If the answer to one or both is yes, you need to establish why.

In my oppinion there are only two options as to why; either you are undergeared or you are not making full use of your healing toolset. I.e. you are doing one thing where another would be better. If it's a matter of gear your problem will solve itself over time as you progress and gear up.

If however the problem is the way you utilise your toolset I suggest the following:

Study and practice!

First off; check out guides, ask for suggestions, see some videos and try to compare the spells, talents, glyphs and reforges you use to those used by people who do better than you.

As a priest you have a lot of viable playstyle choices but you might be able to identify some major divergencies between yourself and other players.

Once you've found a playstyle you enjoy (play around with it in lfr and heroics) stick with it!

If you change your style, addons and keybinds too often you will always be unfamiliar with them and really familiarity is the healers best friend.

Now all you need to do is to practice and try to get as much gametime under your belt as possible.

Not only will you learn how to handle yourself, you will also learn the fight mechanics and what to expect from your fellow healers.

I really can't stress this enough; practice and patience means the world as a healer.

If you post an armory link and maybe some WoL if your guild uses that, it might help us to point out places where you could improve and which you need to look out for :)

I'm absolutly sure that you can and will become a great healer if you put an effort into these things. The trick is not to met falliure get you down. It will take some wipes and even if you're perfect you'll still mess it up every once in a while. That's okay; because you're always learning and you will get the hang of it eventually!

[Krazyito 521]

I would suggest sitting down with your spell book and reading each spell making sure you know what you have available.

For instance, Binding Heal is probably a spell some priests don't know about or know how to use. Basically this is the equivalent to flash heal but it heals you and the target. So if you are trying to flash heal a target, and you are low on health as well, binding heal is a good spell to use to heal both of you. As Holy, it also adds stacks of Serendipity which gives you faster Greater Heals or Prayer of Healing.

Serendipity is also a large toolkit that some priests just don't make use of. Though to use it effectively you need to try to reduce the overhealing it does and also know about a priest's "Triage" of healing. This is mainly going to applied to Holy, as Disc is a somewhat different play style.

The Triage consists of three things. Heal(cheap/weak), Flash/Binding Heal (expensive/fast), and Greater Heal/Prayer of Healing (expensive/big).

Heal: This is probably going to be your most used spell until you get more comfortable with mana and spell usage in general. It is a nice and easy spell to spam, that does relatively low healing, but spamming it on targets taking some damage is relatively efficient.

Flash/Binding Heal: This is your emergency spells for when people get low quick and you want to get them above 50% health (or more). When you use these spells as Holy you Do not want to spam it. You want to limit yourself to using it twice and then choose Grater Heal or Prayer of Healing depending on the situation. Usually 2 is enough anyway to bring him back to full, especially with a crit. Sometimes he gets to full with only one. You then want to make sure to not over heal with it and just keep your one stack of Serendipity and if you don't need to Flash/Binding before the timer runs out, you might as well use that one stack on a Greater/Prayer.

Greater Heal/Prayer of Healing: These two spells are the same in usage, but different in effect. Where Greater Heal excels for bringing a target to close to Full Health relatively quickly, Prayer of Healing excels as keeping a whole group of people alive. Prayer of Healing is the most unique spell where it affects the whole GROUP. And only those group members when they are near you. You may want to ask your raid leader to make sure to move people around in the groups if a specific set of people are taking damage, or if you are only going to be a specific group/ number of people.

Combine these with Circle of Healing and Renew, which can make up for some AoE healing (on top of Divine Hymn for raid healing), you have a pretty good assortment of spells at your disposal. You just need to read them and know them and where the buttons are, and make that split second decision of what to use and when.

[Taldryx 13]

First of all, thank you all soooo much for responding in such detail and with such compassion - I totally appreciate it! And I will immediately adopt the sentiment most of you echoed " I am really lucky to have such a great raid group, and being negative helps no one!"

Moaco RL feels I can do better numbers - the disparity between me and other healers is quite wide. But, no, Nemo, I am not letting people die and not going OOM - so your point is well taken that I am doing my job. I was going OOM until I overstacked Spirit to death!

It sounds like the conclusions that I had come to myself with a little help from some guildies is accurate: Just know your shit! Know your spells (which by the way I am very good about that, except knowing the lovely little things they trigger which is why I will stick with Weak Auras), know when damage is coming, be aware of the other healers actions, REALLY know the boss fights and REALLY know my class. Which I, oddly, think I know pretty well.

My main thing now is HOW am I going to heal? Back to Healbot? Set up VuhDo (which I have never been able to do because it is too confusing for me)? Stay with my current method? I don't know. I will log now and attempt to figure out how to link my armory - yeah, I''m that Derp. And I will try to get a WoL out here too.

http://us.battle.net...aldryx/advanced

Edited April 17, 2013 by Krazyito
Redundant posts, cleaning up.

[Krazyito 521]

If you're using a G13 I would recommend mouse over macro to complement your healbot/vuhdo.

Are you using default ui? Or elvui as suggested by IV?

[Taldryx 13]

Yes I am using Mouseover Macros with G13 and healbot. Have not ventured into ELVUI land, but know that I should. I am not good at setting stuff up. I am using default UI. Edited April 17, 2013 by Taldryx

[Krazyito 521]

Default isn't bad. Elvui isn't "mandatory". It's just nice. Your ui should look like what you want and what you're comfortable with.

Just get use to the keybinds and know when to use them.

[Nemo 27]

Just pick what you like best. If you're comfortable with your UI then that is all you need,

Personally I use ElvUI and mouseover macros and I like to think that I do very well. It takes a while to set up if you're new to it and there is a bit of a learning curve, so unless you feel you are lacking something important just stick with what you got :)

Otherwise I am sure the people on this site would be happy to help you with the setup.

Regarding your healing numbers you are probably (just) suffering from healing snipes. If the other healers in your guild have a little more burst than you then that will happen and you shouldn't feel bad about it :)

Your armory looks fine, but I'd swap out holy nova if I were you. It doesn't really add anything you haven't already got.

That being said I've seen holy priests with all kinds of builds that did well.

I usually raid ten mans with a holy priest who almost never (ever!) use a heal with a cast time and she's ahead of me on almost every fight.

Best of luck, it sounds like you're in a great guild, so go have fun and you'll top the meters eventually :P

[Krazyito 521]

Having logs too would be especially helpful for determining what is going on in the fight.

[druideena 14]

here are the logs for horridon raid attempts last night, started her off holy and then tried a simplified atonement healing,

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/ta0g2rkyp7m397rd/sum/healingDone/

[MoacaBogdan 23]

I confess I am a derp when trying to read logs, but from what I think I understand, Atonement is just inching past PoM, which, especially on a fight like Horridon, Disc absolutely shines thanks to Atonement. Take full advantage of the fact that after each gate closed, Horridon takes +50% damage => higher Holy Fire/Smite number => Higher Atonement numbers. Take advantage of this, and glyph holy fire, smite and penance, and use HolyFire/Solace, smite until DoT wears off, Penance boss, rinse and repeat.

I am not sure about what "Other" stands for in regards to spells used, but please feel free to correct me if I am not interpreting the log right.

[Krazyito 521]

For the two fights you played Disc on, I'm sorry to say that you pretty much just played it completely wrong. Like you've said previously I know you are new to the spec, but casting only atonement spells is NOT the way to do it (contrary to popular belief) You also did not use Archangel which helps make up a huge part of your healing while doing atonement.. I'm not going to thoroughly explain discipline at the moment, but really Atonement healing is only for those low damage periods where any thing else you do will result in major overhealing. When people start taking damage, you should start using Prayer of Healing, Power Word Shield, Prayer of Mending, Heal, etc. Inner focus gives you a guaranteed crit, which means the next spell you cast will give Divine Aegis shield. So Usually you can use that with a prayer of Healing, and you give that whole group an absorb. Spirit shell is also a very useful cooldown that you can spam Prayer of Healing on the groups to shield them from the incoming damage. You need to think before damage happens.

Lets focus on Holy now. Glazing over the logs, most of the fights you were very very low. The leads me to a couple things that might show the problem

• Other healers sniping heals before she gets a chance to. - This point, is possible, but its not really an excuse because most fights are 2 healable and even with 3 healers the total amount of healing done should not have that big of a disparity.

• There was pretty much no healing to be done, thus making point 1 more true. - If there pretty much was no healing to be done, then the above is more true and it is even harder to justify having 3 healers.

• Bad play. - This, unfortunately, is probably the reason. Your playstyle probably needs to change. Your way of thinking about healing probably needs to change. Or it could just be that you need to react faster. Reacting just as fast as the other healer would easily double your throughput.

Let me ask some questions. What was the raid wiping to? Was everyone taking a considerable amount of damage? or were they getting topped off fairly quickly by the other healers?

After writing all that down and taking another second to think about what could be wrong, I look at her spell usage and the BIGGEST thing I see is that she is not casting enough. Simply put, there are lapses in her healing where she is just not doing anything. It seems she is just sitting there waiting for some cooldowns to come off, such as Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending.

For example

She did 118 total direct heals.

The paladin did 392.

My final conclusion is that she is probably not reacting quick enough or that just is just sitting on her thumbs waiting for cooldowns, when she could be spamming Heal or Prayer of Healing. She should always be casting something. Renew is also great spell to put on the tanks, but just keep casting.....

If you want, private message me on Icy Veins here and I'll give you my battle tag, and sometime over the weekend we can run LFR or something with my alt priest and see what we can do.

Edited April 18, 2013 by Krazyito
Because I suck at Proofreading.

[Taldryx 13]

My apologies to you all who are so diligently trying to help me, and spending your valuable time doing so. Last night was just a cluster F*** all around. My assignment kept changing, I was actually in the middle of setting up Disc to be usable, then realized my bar was unlocked and I had lost key spells (hence, the lapses in me healing - trying to figure out which, find, and put back in the right place those spells), then I was instructed to DPS only in Disc and not worry about healing. Like I said - these guys are good to me, trying to keep me in there, but they did have to replace me as well they should have.

Today I will commit myself to total memorization of spells on my G13 and where ever - and tomorrow and the next day if need be. Sticking Holy for now cuz I know it better, and not even adding back in Shadow to do dailies etc. Just not gonna do it. Screw it - I will learn these, and my next step will be to immerse myself in LFR's til I want to puke. Hopefully by next Tuesday, start of raid week, I will at least be marginally able to keep up. I may take u up on your offer, Krazyito, again - MANY MANY THANKS to all. This is not the last you will hear from me - I plan to post next Tues raid

Edited April 18, 2013 by Taldryx

[Nemo 27]

That's the spirit!

[Ceraius 34]

I'm not a healer so I don't have much to say about abilities and such, but I use a similar pad. (Razer Nostromo)

I've noticed having an actionbar addon helps a great deal in button placement/memorizing issues. As you have multiple rows of buttons on your pad the default layout doesnt really complement that.

I solved this "issue" by customising my actionbar to fit the pad layout. It has rows of five+five+four buttons for abilities, so i set up my actionbars to also have five+five+four buttons and putting them in shape of the pad's buttons.

I cant recommend a single actionbar addon for this since I use ElvUI for mine, but you get the idea.

I hope this helps :)

[Taldryx 13]

Good suggestion, Cer! ty!

[Krazyito 521]

Bartender and elvui is all I can think of.

[Krazyito 521]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-asucbrka92ykczdy/

Logs she has in LFR with me. going to do some spell usage comparisons. Biggest thing is just active time. Just keep casting.

[Nemo 27]

I think that's right.

What you need to do is training to anticipate damage. When you know when and how much damage is incoming you can start casting before the hots land, meaning your reaction time is improved by a hell of a lot!

Also when ever you find yourself without something to do, start casting a heal on one of the tanks. Chances are he'll take damage before you spell lands.

[Krazyito 521]

I will now compare her healing spell usage with mine for these three bosses we did in LFR. I don't mean to be rude, but keep in mind that her item level is significantly higher than my priest (496 v 477). So technically she should be outputting more healing than me if we played the same. I will try to point out what she should do differently.

BEFORE I GO FURTHER: LFR is very dumb. Its a great place to practice, but its not at all the same as a normal raid boss. Atonement healing will be higher overall in LFR just because of the sheer amount of faceroll you can do. I play based on the incoming damage to top the healing meters (because I'm sort of a whore like that and I love the competition). In most real normal raids You will (probably) have more of a mix of other spells. But that is for her to learn and try to decide how to do it best.

Now, on with the comparison.

Stone Guard

Comparison

OK the first thing I see on Comparebot is this. For this fight, there is barely any healing to be done, so I pretty much just used atonement healing. I uses 4 more Archangels than her, Which made up a significant portion of my healing. I also used Power Infusion one more time than her, which I used for Spirit Shells, thus allowing me to cast more.

Here is just an example of the differences we had in our atonement healing. There is a SIGNIFICANT disparity.

Here, Spirit shell, Atonement, and DA were my top 3 heals. She and I used spirit shell the same number of times (3), but I did 1 million more. The reason is probably because I used Power Infusion before my 1st and 3rd (while she probably only used it on the 1st). My prayer of Healing was low, because Once I saw that the raid was leveled off and was not going to take much more damage, I started using Atonement again to top them off.

We both did something wrong though. We should be casting Power Word Shield more often to benefit from the Mana from Rapture.

You also only casted Penance twice. You should be using that on CD. Use it on the boss for atonement, or on a tank (mainly) when they need the healing.

Feng

Same thing, use Archangel more.

Use Spirit shell more.

Gara'jal is basically the same thing.

[Brutalpriest 60]

Hello. Brutalpriest from Laughing Skull. My guild is currently 2/13 and on track to kill h.iron qon this Sunday, and I'm the guy contributing to the ToT disc priest guides so damn much =P. This is how I heal, feel free to take from it what you will. I'll leave this forum page open for a day or two on my browser in case you have questions.

First of all, I'm an attonement healer. I stack int and crit as high as I can get it. My spirit is currently at 9345, a number which I find suits me well. Unless the raid is dieing horribly, what you'll find me doing most of the time is using Attonement, PW:Solace, or Smite (in that order of priority) on the boss. Occasionally I'll throw out SW:Pain, or PoM. I try to shield the tank more or less on cooldown (when weakened soul falls off) for the mana return.

I currently have PW:Solace as opposed to Mindbender. Mind bender is a popular choice, but if you're using Holy Fire on cooldown, it's proven Solace is better for your mana.

My preferred glyphs are Smite, Penance, Inner Sanctum. Obviously for fights with little or no magical damage (Blade Lord Ta'yak, for example) I might switch otu sanctum for Holy Fire, inner Fire, or Binding Heal. Keep in mind Glyph of Inner Fire only gives you something like 2.4% extra physical reduction, so there's that.

Always use Inner Fire. There is no situation, ever, in which it is better to have the mana cost reduction.

When the **** hits the fan, your go-to heal should be Binding Heal, or Inner Focus macro'd into Prayer of Healing.

As a Disc Priest, you are NOT the tank healer. Especially in 25m which I think you said. Focus on keeping the raid alive. Shield the tank if they need it of course, but really you should rarely/never be casting heal, flash heal, greater heal.

For addons, I swear by Grid + Clique (two seperate addons.) Grid is a simplified raid frame which is kind of a pain to set up but once it is, it's wonderfully compact and only shows the information you need. Clique is kind of similar to mouseover macros, but instead of pressing number keys and hoping you're pressing the right buttons, you use alt/ctrl/shift + left/right/middle click. For example, my Binding Heal is Shift+Left click, my renew is Right click, my dispell(friendly) is middle click, and so on for all of my heals.

Finally, I never Penance raid members. It's a waste. You heal MORE if you penance the boss. I think that literally the only time I Penance a player is when there is no boss to penance at all (Lei Shen transitions, occasionally while on nest duty in Ji-kun.)

Use Archangel more or less on cooldown. Use Spirit Shell any time there's aoe damage going out, as Spirit Shell gives your PoH a multiplier based on your mastery, which is always helpful.

Find any excuse to use Binding Heal. It's a fantastic spell, and even better glyphed.

I have a 1-button macro for all my mana cooldowns (shado-pan trinket, blood elf racial, shadowfiend). Once you get down to 220k mana or so, use it on cooldown. if the fight is long (iron qon, others) try to get in mana hymn early so you can use it twice.

Useful tip. If you have a DK tank, insist he spec into Purgatory so you can Void Shift him out of it if he accidentally dies.

[Taldryx 13]

So Brutal - a couple of questions: What about the high mana cost of Binding Heal? And do you exclusively Atonement heal? As in, when you see the raid going down hard, you just stick strictly to Atonement and don't switch over to "regular" healing which I am trying to accomplish with Inner Focus, Power Infusion and PoH?

Also, tyvm for your run down on how you heal - I am getting so much help from folks here on Icy Veins - I couldn't have done this without you all.

And a big thank you to Krazyito who has put in a lot of time running with me which was EXTRAORDINARILY helpful, analyzing the log, and counseling me.