WoW - Holy priest raid introduction

[Crow]

Disclaimer

I have promised few people to write a short introduction for Holy Priest raiding. This text is prepared for people who know the basics of the game and already leveled their char till 80. It will focus mostly on holy priest, but I will cover disc priest a little bit as well. Note that we are at a breaking point at the time of writing – quite a lot will change with 3.1 and noone can yet tell how certain aspects of our gameplay will change.



Throughput vs Efficiency – main issue


Throughout your career you will face this question all of the time – starting with picking talents through deciding about value of certain piece of gear for you and finishing with picking a spell to cast. Everytime you need to decide whether you need to be pumping more HPS (health per second) or you need to conserve mana, have better HPM (health per mana) and regen more mana.

This is the balance you need to discover for yourself. As your raiding days begins you will suffer from lack of efficiency and will find yourself running OOM quite often. As you gain few Naxx pieces however you will more and more often find yourself in a situation where you have plenty of mana, but you could have prevented a death, if you were pumping more HPS.

Majority of what is written below is focused around those two aspects of our gameplay.


Stats


Since I assume you already know the baisics I will make it short.

Best throughput stat is spellpower. In terms of throughput you can assume crit rating is roughly equal to haste rating (this is far from being true, they just help in totally different cases) . For holy priest spirit is also a throughput stat. In theory int is also a throughput stat as it increases crit, but that factor is too low to consider for now.

Best regen stat is int. It is totally overpowered for disc now, and it is your pick in raid setting as holy too (note, that in some 10 man runs you will see a rapid drop in your mana regen, as you gain a lot from external sources, Replenishment most noticeably). Spirit is as good as int for holy, especially since it is a well balanced efficiency&throughput stat. For disc spirit isn’t utterly bad, it just isn’t as amazing as int. mp5 is an obvious regen stat, but most of the time you will want to avoid it, as it doesn’t scale with raid buffs nor your talents and is generally more expensive than other alternatives. Finally Crit is also a decent regen stat.



Talent build


Talent builds are easily found throughout net but just for the sense of completeness I put this section here as well.

As a holy priest you will be using 14/57/00 build. You will want something along those lines:
14/57/0 . Disc part of the build is pretty much what every holy priest will take. In holy some talents may vary.

The obligatory talents are: Holy specialization, Inspiration, Improved Healing, Spiritual Guidance, Spirit of Redemption, Spiritual Healing, Holy Concentration, Serendipity, Imp. Holy Concentration, Circle of Healing, Divine Providence and Guardian Spirit.

Talents that will most often vary compared to sample build: Improved Renew, Holy Reach, Healing Prayers, Surge of Light, Lightwell and Test of faith.

Note that Healing Prayers and Surge of Light are very good mana efficiency talents. While many geared-up priests will skip those, you probably want those talents while your gear is still weak.

For start you might actually consider playing discipline rather than holy, as at the moment they have a much better mana efficiency and can perform much better when undergeared than a holy priest can.

Standard Discipline build is 57/14/00, similar to this: 57/14/0 and there aren’t really many variations. Note 14 points in holy and inspiration talent. It is very strong for disc priest and shouldn’t be skipped.

Obviously right now we are getting close to 3.1 and new talent trees. Most of the rules mentioned above still apply. Holy build will be similar to this: 14/57/0 . Note that you want at least 1 point in emp renew, just to allow your renew to crit. Points from ToF may go to some of renew talents. Disc build will be similar to this: 57/14/0 . You may want to move 3 points from Focused Will into holy tree. Some players also suggest going deep enough in holy tree to get Improved Healing, but that will be probably only used if blizz accidentally nerfs disc priest mana efficiency too much.



Addons


As a healer you need a one click healing addon on top of normal raiding addons such as DBM/BigWigs, Omen and Bartender4. For a start I always recommend HealBot as it is powerful, requires next to no configuration and works straight out of the box. I am using HB up till now and I didn’t find a reason to switch to something else. Official HB page is here (it looks crappy but don’t be put off): http://healbot.alturl.com/ .

Your other option is to combine and addon alled Clique with some raid frames, such as Grid, Pitbull or X-pearl. You can find a quick guide to Grid configuration for priest in section IX b. of this post: http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t35208-wotl ... specs_etc/ .

One more addon that is useful for priests is Quartz. http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addo ... uartz.aspx . Quartz is a cast bar replacement, which will allow you to time your heal interruptions better.



Gearing


For a start you pretty much want every ilvl213 cloth item without +hit or +mp5 on it. +hit is not needed for you and +mp5 is too costly in terms of ilvl points (meaning same ilvl items without mp5 on it will be overly more powerful for a priest, than items with mp5). Spellpower, spirit, int, crit and haste are all good for you.

In 25-man raid setting int is slightly stronger than spirit in terms of regen, but spirit is much better in terms of throughput (due to Spiritual Guidance). For a start don’t bother too much and just assume 1 point of spirit = 1 point of int for you. Also note, that crit is a regen stat almost as much as throughput stat, due to how our talents work. Haste is purely for throughput (and reaction time).

Your BiS gear is mostly level 226 items from K’T, Malygos and OS+2. Not likely you will get most of it till 3.1 though. The only slot in which there is no ‘really good’ item is neck. Unlike most classes our Malygos quest neck isn’t too good (as it has mp5 on it). Good options here are Malygos10 neck, Naxx trash neck, or Sapphiron neck with haste&crit.

As far as trinkets are concerned strongest options are Soul of the Dead, Forethought Talisman, Spirit-World glass, Majestic Dragon Figurine and Je’Tze Bell (boe world drop). Before you can get them you can use badge trinket and one of the HC HoS trinkets.

As a discipline priest you aren’t as keen on spirit as holy, due to lack of Spiritual Guidance and a bit different play style. Best stats you should look for on gear are spellpower, int and crit, with spirit and haste still being good, but slightly weaker than for holy.

Note that t7 bonus isn’t particularly strong for either holy or disc, so feel free to pick off-pieces whenever they offer better stats than tier ones.



Enchanting and Gemming


Most of the time it is worth it to get socket bonus. For a start your regen will be slightly low so you will want +spellpower/+int gems in red slots (later can be replaced by +spellpower of +spellpower/+crit) and +spirit/+int gems (pure or mixed) in yellow and blue slots. For both holy and disc the same rules as when choosing gear apply to choosing gems.

Also the meta gem for both holy and disc is Insightful Earthsiege Diamond.

Enchants are mostly quite obvious. You want +spellpower on weapon, gloves, rings (if you are enchanter) and maybe bracer, + int or + spi (holy only) on bracer and boots, +haste on cloak and +10 all stats on chest.



Glyphs


Holy: FH and CoH are almost mandatory. Third one can be Renew, PoH, PW:S or even Holy Nova. When 3.1 hits, GS glyph looks amazing, but PoH might get better too.

Disc: FH is almost mandatory. Second one most of the time will be PW:S. There aren’t any really good options for third one, you should pick something from holy list. When 3.1 hits, Penance glyph will be a must.



Consumables


Most of the time you will be using throughput consumables: flask of the frost Wyrm and Fish Feast. If you know the encounter will be taxing for your mana, you might want to use +spirit/+stamina food instead.

2 Elixirs give you a better balance between throughput and efficiency than flask. Best guardian elixir is still TBC one – Elixir of Draenic Wisdom (+30 spi and int). Best Wotlk option is Elixir of Mighty Thoughts (+45 int). Guardian elixir would usually be Spellpower Elixir ( +58 spellpower) or Guru elixir (+20 all stats).



Your role in raid


A very important rule to remember as a healer is not to try doing everything. If you try to heal every member that is not on 100% health you will overheal with other healers a lot and run OOM very fast. Most of all – don’t try to heal tanks and raid at the same time, unless you rally know what you are doing. If you are not assigned to specific role just pick one yourself.

While as a holy priest you can heal a tank very well, most of the time you will be assigned to raid healing. If you are not assigned a task, you should heal raid on any boss that requires raid healing at all. When all raid is up you can help with healing one of the tanks (especially by bouncing PoM off him), but make sure you don’t run OOM because of that later in the fight.

As discipline priest you are a powerful tank healer. You can handle raid healing a bit, but it would be a huge waste of your potential to assign you to such a task.



Raid healing


Even with nerf CoH is still an amazing tool. You want to cast it on each colldown when dealing with raid damage. Depending on nature of the damage PoM is usually very good as well (especially on Sapphiron and Malygos). In between those spells you will be using flash heal and occasionally Prayer of Healing, which is very good, but limited to your party only.

With 3.1 PoH will be party-targeted and will likely become one of our most used spells when dealing with raid damage.

As mentioned earlier – when you are high on mana and there is no raid damage to deal with at a given point of time, you may help with tank healing. PoM is very good for that, but FH and renew may be also used. PW:S is good as well, provided that no disc priest is healing that tank.



Tank healing

When healing a tank as holy, you want to be cast-cancelling greater heals most of the time. You can keep renew on him, but it is nowhere near as powerful as it used to be pre-wotlk. Bounce PoM off your tank every now and than to help with raid damage or other tanks (many fights you want to use PoM as soon as it is off cooldown).

Your mana efficiency isn’t as good as disc, so be careful. Do not overheal too much, try to chain HC proc with Inner Focus, to get additional OO5SR ticks, use mana restoring cooldowns wisely.

As a discipline priest you have a powerful combo PW:S+ Penance +Greater Heal, where Penance doesn’t consume Borrowed Time buff. This can pretty much bring anyone from almost 0 to 100% before next boss swing. The only problem is weakened soul debuff, which prevents you from using it too often. You have two options here: you may either cast PW:S each 15 seconds and gain the benefit of Renewed Hope or save the combo for a damage spike. Due to second options Disc priests are very good at reactive healing.

While Penance and PoM are on cooldown you most likely want to cast FH rather than GH. Renew can be used as well, but again – it isn’t too strong.



Flash Heal vs Greater Heal


For entire WoW history Greater Heal was a much better spell than Flash Heal. This has changed in Wotlk. With FH glyph, no downranking and new talents FH is roughly the same HPS and HPM as GH. GH is still slightly better, but most of the time it is not worth it to sacrifice casting speed of FH to get better throughput and efficiency of GH. Some priests use GH only on Patchwerk nowadays.



Further reference


Probably the best place to look for in-depth info about holy/disc pve raiding is Elitist Jerks forums. Constantius Healing Compendium is a great summary of most important theorycrafting results. He opens new thread for each major patch change, but for 3.0 compendium can be found here: http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t35208-wotl ... specs_etc/

You may want to take a look at listing of gear you are going to choose from here: http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t48058-heal ... reference/ , look for specific raid situation tips here: http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t39858-raid ... _0_priest/ and ask simpler questions here: http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t36780-prie ... e_answers/ . Discipline raiding compendium is also an interesting read http://elitistjerks.com/f77/t46027-disc ... ompendium/ but it is not as well managed as Constantius one and you will find much information about disc raiding in Healing Compendium as well.

[1WingedAngel]

Lol, thanks! I actually just started a holy priest. ;) Granted, the lvling will be slow cause I barely have time to play anyway, but I've been looking for a good guide, hehe.