For The Wynn

I started playing as a priest at the very beginning of the Burning Crusade, and have raid experience through every raid in BC. I took a break for about a year and a half and then returned toward the end of the WotLK age, so the bulk of my raid experience is ToC and ICC. I have done all other WotLK raids, but only a handful of times; however, I will give you a user-friendly, concise guide on Priest healing. All the facts without the fluff.

Holy priests were once all about cheating the 5-second rule with Clearcasting; this is not the case now. With Surge of Light and Holy Concentration, we still have a sufficient chance to gain extra mana regen, but now our strength lies in our burst AoE healing. As holy, we are not meant to be tank healers; although our single target heals are just as effective as a paladin’s, our mana regen was not meant to work that way. By utilizing our abundance of AoE healing spells, we give ourselves a 400% increase in proc rate of our mana regen talents, therefore making us arguably not only the best raid healers for burst damage, but also the most efficient.

Discipline priests, in the pasts, have been considered PvP healers and nothing else. Now, with post 3.0 talent changes, they are extremely viable PvE healers, rivaling Paladins when it comes to tank healing. They have more damage mitigation abilities than any class in the game. Penance is arguably the most effective single-target heal in the game, giving as much health as Holy Light or Greater Heal in only half the time and double mana efficiency. If played correctly, the Priest will provide a constant raid-wide damage reduction buff. When tank healing, the Priest will be providing the tank with a constant 15% damage reduction and 2 constant shields.  Discipline Priests have a mana pool comparable to Paladins, with their mana regen relying heavily on the effects of Power Word: Shield.

Builds

Discipline Build- http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest#9fD4HKwFRe11,,9767

Holy Build- http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZrEzcbMqihhcuAo

The discipline talents are NON-NEGOTIABLE. You should NOT, under any circumstances, switch them around for either build. The Holy talents, however, are somewhat negotiable in both builds. For example, when I go Holy, Renew is a big part of my rotation, so I take all talents affecting it, whereas I don’t take any that affect Greater Heal, except for Serendipity.

Rotations

While there are no real rotations for Holy, PoM and CoH should constantly be on CD. Keep up Serendipity for an emergency PoH or GH by throwing out a FH every once in awhile, and when you get a SoL proc, throw it on the tank if you have no one else that needs healing.

With Discipline, Penance, PoM, PW:S, and FH will be your primary spells. Use Penance, PW:S, and PoM on CD, and use FH as a filler.

Gear

Your primary stats for Holy will be Spirit, SP, Haste, and Crit. For Holy, Haste has a bit more importance than Crit in my opinion, because the more heals you are throwing out, the more chance for a Holy Concentration proc. Crit is still important, however, because each target you critically heal gets Inspiration (10% damage reduced for 15 seconds.)

For Discipline, Haste is not nearly as important because of the Borrowed Time effect you get from the Weakened Soul debuff. It increases your haste by 25% for your next spellcast and should be up most of the time. Don’t stack more than 11% haste from gear/gems if you are Discipline. Crit is very important for Divine Aegis. Intellect is more important than Spirit because as Discipline, you receive 1.5% of your total mana each time your PW:S is consumed, so the bigger the mana pool, the better.

For both specs, you should gem Runed Cardinal Ruby for red sockets, Purified Dreadstone for blue sockets, and Reckless Ametrine for yellow sockets.

Glyphs

Holy- The only required glyph is Glyph of Guardian Spirit. I personally use Glyph of Flash Heal and Glyph of Renew along with that, but Glyph of Prayer of Healing is also another viable choice. Mix and match to fit your style. I don’t recommend Glyph of Spirit of Redemption, because if you play your cards right, you won’t ever have to use it.

Discipline- You MUST have Glyph of Penance and Glyph of Power Word: Shield. I also personally recommend Glyph of Flash Heal.

For minor glyphs, I personally have Glyph of Fading, Glyph of Fortitude, and Glyph of Levitate, although none are required.

Conclusion

Always remember that we will almost never be at the top of the meter. Discipline is more about damage mitigation, and Holy really only shines on raid-wide burst damage. We are, however, the most versatile healers and we bring utility to every situation. Priests are a very fun and diverse class to play, and don’t forget it!

This entry was posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 7:25 pm and is filed under Palus. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.