Holy priest, need help understanding what I'm doing wrong

[Airetari 1]

I've always loved holy, but I feel like I'm just not performing well in raids. The other healers are always well above me on the meters, and sometimes I'm even lower than the warrior and monk  tanks. My overhealing is also very low, which accounts for some of it, but I've never struggled like this before. I didn't raid in WoD or much of Pandaria, and I feel like although I'm still rusty my reflexes are almost back to where they were before I stopped. Some of the problem feels like the spec itself - I feel like I cast a heal on someone and it does almost nothing. I've been playing long enough to know, however, that it's usually a combination of problems with the spec and problems with the player. I've looked at guides and tried different things, but nothing seems to help. I try to keep PoM up as well as a renew on the tanks when I can (we don't have healing assignments). I use HW;Sanctify often, but it feels kind of useless. I mostly use it for the buff to PoH.  HW: Serenity I save for someone who needs a big heal quickly. Flash Heal is my go-to heal, as rarely have time to use Heal. I use Divine Hymn when called for. Anything you can think of to help me would be greatly appreciated! My character's name is Airetari.

Armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/lightbringer/Airetari/simple#talents

Recent log: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/wxWVq7PBcpd64HGX

[novater 4]

Hey. Holy priest main here, and I'll try to help out. Holy priest is actually in a really good place now. If you play it correctly that is. We're one of, if not the strongest raid healer out there right now.

First of all, this is my armory: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/illidan/Sylvanitia/simple

And this is my warcraftlogs profile: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/character/21185334/latest/#metric=hps

And a recent log: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/4MtjAyZGLb3hgzVk# (HEROIC)

As well as a normal log where we ran 2 healers for most fights: https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/aDfNjR6C7TkZ2QzA/#

ROTATION:

From what I can gather, there two main things you are doing wrong in terms of rotation. First, you're casting FH way too much. With nighthold, the meta of HPriest has changed to taking enlightenment, and using Sanct and PoH for most of your HPS. If you look at my logs, most of my healing comes from Sanct, PoH and EoL. What you should be doing is during down time, where there's low damage, use HEAL instead of FH. Only use FH when targets are dangerously low. But, since most damage is raidwide burst damage now in Nighthold, what you should be doing instead is when that damage happens, cast a Sanct followed by 2-3 PoH, or more depending on if your raid is back to full. 

Second, you should be casting PoM off CD. You should always be aiming to have at least 10% of your healing come from PoM. You're not there looking from your logs. 

Also, I noticed you have the cake trinket but in your logs I don't see you using it. It's a big HPS (30-40k) increase so you should use it for burst damage. 

The general guidelines I follow is casting PoM off CD and using Heal until burst phases happen, in which I switch to casting Sanct + PoH spam. I'll use Serenity if someone gets bursted really low and I need to spotheal, but I prioritize Sanct -> PoH. I rarely ever use FH. You can see in my logs it's the spell I do the least healing from usually. When I need to use Hymn, I almost always prep it with a PoM + a Sanct. Sanct will increase healing because of Divinity that increases healing after a Holy word spell by 15%, so It'll increase your Hymn healing a lot.

STAT DISTRIBUTION:

Stat distribution looks good except for the abysmally low haste. You don't want to stack haste, but you want your haste to be at least around 17-18%. 6% haste is way too low. Your crit stat looks fine. Drop your mastery down a bit. 

Also you'll want a MANA sustain trinket. I suggest you get the Darkmoon Deck: Promises and upgrade it up. It's 865 iLVL but by far our BiS mana trinket for NH. It'll help you spam Sanct and PoH during heavy raidwide damage since PoH and Sanct are so mana draining. I've had no mana problems b/c of this trinket. During downtimes when you're casting Heal and PoM, you actually regen more mana than you use, which is nice.

TALENTS:

Always take Enlightenment. Take Light of Naaru over Symbol of Hope, as you need your Sanct to be up as much as possible. Piety over Binding Heal, since you'll want to be casting PoM off CD and it'll help your Sanct come off CD. 

 

I've parsed extremely well in NH so far with this set up, getting within the top 50 parses on certain bosses on Heroic and Normal. Thus, I can say that this set up works. I pretty much never get beaten in the HPS meters (except for by another guildie HPriest who is always neck to neck with me), and when I do it's probably because I messed up and died early in the fight. 

Edited February 16, 2017 by novater

[Airetari 1]

Thank you so much for the suggestions. I have a raid tonight; I will make some changes and see what happens. :-)

[novater 4]

Np, let me know how you do.

[Airetari 1]

My numbers went up significantly, so I'm very happy! Thank you again!

[novater 4]

Glad I could help :)

If you need more information/help lemme know! I've pretty much figured out what CD's you wanna use in certain phases of fights.

 

Edited February 19, 2017 by novater

[AshJ 2]

Thanks so much for your advice.  It's been beneficial for me as well.  And I really appreciate a good priest sharing their expertise.  Have you thought of writing up an encounter specific guide?  I've found those very helpful in the past also.  Again, thank you.

[novater 4]

If you want one I can I can write one on this post, let me know.

[Veruca 1]

I would be interested to read a fight specific guide for H priest.