Healing Heroics

[Kulia 39]

Okay, so a bit about the background. I'm a priest who started playing in MoP. I mained disc for the entire expac and am planning to do the same this expac.

But, I levelled up and hit heroic dungeons and found out very, very quickly that it appears I couldn't keep up with the healing as disc. This made me really sad as I didn't really like holy at the time. But, I wanted to gear and I wanted to heal, so I sucked it up and went holy, turns out holy wasn't so bad!

But, I still found myself falling behind in healing a lot. and I got really confused because when I saw Gwenymph's videos on youtube healing heroics and cms as disc he kept up perfectly fine with the healing. It got me a bit discouraged, but some of it I just put down to the fact he was in a guild group so he didn't have a bunch of random scrubs to heal.

So, basically what I'm looking for is advice on healing in heroics and not falling behind on the healing, especially as disc since that is truly what I want to play. 

And don't worry, I wasn't just using atonement the entire time because I know that's pretty dogshit at the moment. 

I have read the guide on icy-veins, several times but it still didn't really tell me what I wanted to know. 

I know, I'm rambling. I'll stop now and just repeat what I'm really looking for out of this. I just want a few tips for healing heroics(with randoms, guilds not big enough for guild groups) as a disc priest so I don't fall behind on healing all the time.

 

 

p.s. I can't link my armoury bc it won't show since I'm on an oceanic server and Blizz still hasn't fixed the armoury yet :(

[Brewmonksta 157]

You can log a dungeon and we can check out your "rotation" there are a few pulls that are just a pain (looks at grimrail depot).

Maintain CoW and shield on tank. Lvl90 talent to topup and AA prayer for a groupwide heal. PoM if it will bounce and penance on cd to topup.

When non tanks take damage I will usually shield them and then decide if they get another heal or if the tank still needs the attention.

[Kulia 39]

Yeah, okay I'll do that. I'll try get some logs up if that's gonna help. 

Thanks for the tips. I'll put those into play.

[Kulia 39]

I got some logs: http://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports/wJMxBR72LdCPpDgZ/

two dungeons, both times I got shoved right into the middle of it. Ahh well. 
Got upgrades from them both tho :D

 

They're not particularly hard ones though, unfortunately. But it's something to look at.

Although, on Yalnu (very last boss I did) I never really got behind on healing, which was nice. 

And I seem to be doing a lot better now with disc, better than I did with holy actually. Which makes me happy. I don't know though, it could just be due to the fact I got easy dungeons, I'll try get into grimrail or something and see how things go :P

[Brutalpriest 60]

I've found healing Heroics to be fairly easy so far.  I'm assuming I've just had good tanks. 

 

Since I'm gearing up for shadow, I'm using gear with no spirit and two dps trinks.

 

Use Heal and Flash Heal frequently.  I'm glad to see that Bliz doesn't punish us nearly as much as in MoP for resorting to Flash Heal.  You should try to avoid it, but keeping on top of the healing is far more important, and it won't OOM you if you use it occasionally.

 

Try to Shield the tank as soon as Weakened Soul falls off. 

 

Because of how weak Prayer of Mending is, I recommend against ever casting it manually, except before a fight.

 

Penance on CD, and NEVER offensively.  I recommend the glyph to keep moving while you penance.

 

Smite is worthless.  Feel free to use it if the entire party is topped off for evangelism stacks, otherwise ignore it.  I wouldn't use Holy Fire on CD either, unless you need filler while you move and PW:S is inappropriate. 

 

When the group is taking damage, holy fire something for a stack of evangelism if you don't have one, Archangel, and cast PoH until you're happy with group damage. 

 

When the tank is getting hammered, use Penance, PW:Shield, Flash Heal until he's out of the woods.  Never be afraid to Pain Sup. the tank, or drop a barrier on top of him.  Both are off the GCD, so become proficient at doing both very quickly and immediately continuing the next Flash Heal or whatever. 

 

No.  Really.  Learn to cast those two CD's very quickly.  If the tank is in that bad a shape, he can't handle you stopping healing to buff him.  Learn to cast it FAST. 

 

I haven't looked over glyphs like I should have.  I tentatively recommend Weakened Soul duration reduction, Penance while moving, and EDIT: Purify heals 5% HP.

 

If you want to meet up some time in game, I'll run through a heroic with you and show you how I heal.  (I hope you have a shadow offset.)

[Kulia 39]

I've found healing Heroics to be fairly easy so far.  I'm assuming I've just had good tanks. 

 

Use Heal and Flash Heal frequently.  I'm glad to see that Bliz doesn't punish us nearly as much as in MoP for resorting to Flash Heal.  You should try to avoid it, but keeping on top of the healing is far more important, and it won't OOM you if you use it occasionally.

 

Try to Shield the tank as soon as Weakened Soul falls off. 

 

Because of how weak Prayer of Mending is, I recommend against ever casting it manually, except before a fight.

 

Penance on CD, and NEVER offensively.  I recommend the glyph to keep moving while you penance.

 

Smite is worthless.  Feel free to use it if the entire party is topped off for evangelism stacks, otherwise ignore it.  I wouldn't use Holy Fire on CD either, unless you need filler while you move and PW:S is inappropriate. 

 

If you want to meet up some time in game, I'll run through a heroic with you and show you how I heal.  (I hope you have a shadow offset.)

You must have had pretty good tanks then, because I've had it rough at times.

Yeah, I'm using heal occasionally, flash heal when things get hairy.

I hardly ever cast PoM.

I'm always on-top of keeping penance on CD. It's generally only defensively, only offensive when there is literally no healing to be done. Smite, I only use when there's nothing to be done as well.

I use Holy Fire on CD bc I take PW:solace and generally always need the mana from it; but I'll probably switch back to using mindbender when raids come out, only taking solace so I can keep on top of my mana better throughout the entire dungeon. PW:S I try to keep up on everyone if there's group-wide damage. 

Yeah, I'd love to do that at some time, I don't have a offset since I'm planning to only heal, but I can spec into shadow and do okay

Edited November 23, 2014 by Kulia

[Brutalpriest 60]

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/character/illidan/Brutalpriest/advanced

 

This is what I'm rocking at the moment.  Surge of Light may or may not be a good idea, but it's working out really well for me.  Heroic fights don't usually last long enough for me to go OOM and the extra oomf helped cover my lack of gear when I first started Heroics. 

 

I just logged off for the day so I don't have my bnet account on hand, i'll post it tomorrow.  See you then!

[Kulia 39]

I just logged off for the day so I don't have my bnet account on hand, i'll post it tomorrow.  See you then!

Well, I do have my bnet account on hand, so I'll post mine then, since I'll probably forget to check this post again tomorrow. So just chuck me an invite when you get on and I'll see it when I'm on(timezones might be a bit iffy, but seeing as we were on around the same time I guess it'll be fine) : Sasha#6160

[Gwenymph 414]

Late to the party!  Was streaming some CM and Heroics.  You are getting sound advice though!  I hope that the turnaround is already in progress.  Holy and Disc are in a place where you can play the spec you have the most fun with or even prefer to play and you are not handicapped by being compared to the other spec or forced to change by your RL.

 

I'll throw in my thoughts so far for your concerns and my group make ups:

 

I always run with a guild tank and it makes a huge difference compared to PuGs.  For CMs we usually PuG one Heroism DPS, the rest guildies.  I have stuck with L100 CoW for Heroics and CMs except for the 2nd boss of Skyreach I carry a second Disc spec paired with L100 WoM as a replacement.

 

Everyone is on board w/ Smite being garbage for healing and should only be used to speed up Evan. stacks or for emergency IF procs.  Which leads me to a big change that you may have been accustomed to and that is not stacking Evan. to 5 anymore.  Especially at 1) early gear levels  2) PuG tanks  3 )CMs,  AA is best used at your discretion regardless of the number of stacks.  Getting that AA to IF proc PoH>Penance>FH string w/ any % healing buff is extremely valuable when recovering group health AND buffering DA from eminent danger from a timed ability.  Holding out for max 5 stacks or even just one more Atonement cast is not worth the recovery you will need to make by delaying the use of the IF proc.

 

Stacking CoWs and PoMs prior to boss pulls is great practice.  I think the one contradictory approach I use to the ones already mentioned is throwing out PoMs, I try to keep up as many as possible.

 

ATM the glyphs I run with are Weakened Soul, PoM, Penance.  For my rare WoM L100 CM spec I run with Fade for survivability.

Edited November 23, 2014 by Gwenymph

[Kulia 39]

Late to the party!  Was streaming some CM and Heroics.  You are getting sound advice though!  I hope that the turnaround is already in progress.  Holy and Disc are in a place where you can play the spec you have the most fun with or even prefer to play and you are not handicapped by being compared to the other spec or forced to change by your RL.

 

I'll throw in my thoughts so far for your concerns and my group make ups:

 

I always run with a guild tank and it makes a huge difference compared to PuGs.  For CMs we usually PuG one Heroism DPS, the rest guildies.  I have stuck with L100 CoW for Heroics and CMs except for the 2nd boss of Skyreach I carry a second Disc spec paired with L100 WoM as a replacement.

 

Everyone is on board w/ Smite being garbage for healing and should only be used to speed up Evan. stacks or for emergency IF procs.  Which leads me to a big change that you may have been accustomed to and that is not stacking Evan. to 5 anymore.  Especially at 1) early gear levels  2) PuG tanks  3 )CMs,  AA is best used at your discretion regardless of the number of stacks.  Getting that AA to IF proc PoH>Penance>FH string w/ any % healing buff is extremely valuable when recovering group health AND buffering DA from eminent danger from a timed ability.  Holding out for max 5 stacks or even just one more Atonement cast is not worth the recovery you will need to make by delaying the use of the IF proc.

 

Stacking CoWs and PoMs prior to boss pulls is great practice.  I think the one contradictory approach I use to the ones already mentioned is throwing out PoMs, I try to keep up as many as possible.

 

ATM the glyphs I run with are Weakened Soul, PoM, Penance.  For my rare WoM L100 CM spec I run with Fade for survivability.

Better late than never. Yeah, I'm glad holy and disc are on the same playing field pretty much. Although, at the start I thought I'd have to hold off playing disc, my preferred spec, until raids game out. But then I got frustrated enough at not having the fun I wanted mindlessly running heroics that I got annoyed and made the post to see what the hell was happening with disc when I played it. 

Yeah, a tank you know would definitely make a huge difference, I've been *TRYING* to get in with a friend who's playing a brewmaster when he runs heroics buuuuut no luck with that. Why WoM for the second boss in skyreach? Just curious there.

I miss IF being an actual ability and not something now tied to archangel, but at least it's back now in some form considering they took it away just when I was really starting to use it. But I didn't realise the proc happened at lesser stacks of evangalism.. I thought it was 5 stacks that it proc'd. That's good to know I can proc it early! Thankfully it never really became an issue in the few dungeons I've been able to do as disc now.

Yeah, always pre-casting CoW and I try to remember a pre-cast PoM since I don't find myself using it in the fight because it never comes out doing much for me.

As for my glyphs I don't really have many glyphs because I don't want to bother scribe friends, level my own scribe or spend a ton of gold on the AH for it, so I just run with Penance, fade and purify. I don't own the weakened soul glyph, but I see people using it a lot, even before WoD and the perk the reduced weakened soul duration. So I guess it's even better now - especially for tank healing, so I should probably try get my hands on that glyph.

[Brutalpriest 60]

Hope you found the runthroughs helpful. 

 

As general policy, I recommend you eventually fill out all of your glyphs, even if you don't plan to use any of the immediately.  The prices will eventually come down to a reasonable price.  Find someone in your guild who has inscription and ask them to fill in any holes in your glyph book.  You never know when a glyph will somehow be useful for a certain raid boss fight. 

 

Let's dungeon again sometime =)  If I'm ever on feel free to whisper me.  I had funs. 

[Kulia 39]

Hope you found the runthroughs helpful. 

 

As general policy, I recommend you eventually fill out all of your glyphs, even if you don't plan to use any of the immediately.  The prices will eventually come down to a reasonable price.  Find someone in your guild who has inscription and ask them to fill in any holes in your glyph book.  You never know when a glyph will somehow be useful for a certain raid boss fight. 

 

Let's dungeon again sometime =)  If I'm ever on feel free to whisper me.  I had funs. 

Yeah, definitely found those helpful.

Mmmhm, I probably should do that.

I'd love to do that again! Definitely was fun :P

[Peelyon 416]

At the moment I'm mixing it up between holy and disc - just to keep getting a feel for both.

 

After being holy for 6+ years until SoO where I finally decided to try disc - its nice to be able to swap between the two (dont ask me why I didnt try disc sooner I dont know either!).

[Gwenymph 414]

At the moment I'm mixing it up between holy and disc - just to keep getting a feel for both.

 

After being holy for 6+ years until SoO where I finally decided to try disc - its nice to be able to swap between the two (dont ask me why I didnt try disc sooner I dont know either!).

 

The longer I play the greater the skew is, leaning in Disc direction.  Eventually I'll be redoing all the vids in Holy as well BUT what I want to QQ about is...  All but one of my 640+ pcs are Holy pcs w/o crit ... WoWGods want me to play Holy more.

[Kulia 39]

The longer I play the greater the skew is, leaning in Disc direction.  Eventually I'll be redoing all the vids in Holy as well BUT what I want to QQ about is...  All but one of my 640+ pcs are Holy pcs w/o crit ... WoWGods want me to play Holy more.

Yeah, I'm with you on definitely preferring disc.

...oh boy. The WoWGods seem to REALLY want you playing holy. But funnily enough I had the opposite problem. I was playing holy and I got all sorts of gear with crit on it.

[Espiee 161]

Holy can definitely work in heroics or even cms, but it feels like a lot of maintenance just to keep renew flowing. Discipline has a more engaging play style in that sort of content. I tried holy today in UBRS CM, but it was a lot easier as discipline.

[Peelyon 416]

Agree.

 

Finding now gear is a bit better I'm preferring Disc and lol smiting a bit when theres down time rather than trying to keep up with renew as holy.

 

Nice to swap and change though to mix it up when I'm bored