Comments on: Priest Efficiency vs Overall Success

By: Kaelieh

Kaelieh — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 17:32:25 +0000

Um, so I like love you. You’re insight, knowledge, and experience into raiding as a holy priest is astonishing. You awe me. Especially, because I’m used to the days when our former priest CL was stuck in the past and pre-BC raid healing (he’s been gkicked for other reasons).

I want to level up a healer to raid on (currently I’m raiding as a warlock) and I was thinking about being a holy pally, but everytime I read your articles I end up leveling my holy priest. Alas, plate does not seem to be in my future. Thanks for all the great articles.

By: Luvs

Luvs — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 19:59:26 +0000

With a lvl 67 priest, I’ve only begun to experience the joys of healing. I started the healing alt because the guilds I raid with are in need of everything but DPS, my main being a 70 Hunter. But coming from the DPS side I knew PW:S was a handing spell for your teammates.

I do not intentionally use PW:S on a warrior tank. Too much HP and other stats to stay alive.

I do use PW:S on Pally tanks. Less HP than they’re warrior brothers and aggro pull like a beast.

What I do use my PW:S for the most is: The aggro mage(or clothie) that pulled a mob to themselves and with an uninterrupted spell cast with kill that mob. The PW:S give the mage the chance to kill its target and not have me on the menu next. I also use the PW:S for myself as when the tank isn’t prepared for a pull while I am with that heal that pulls the other mobs. With PW:S on I am able to run that mob back up to the tank and get away for another.

Again, I’m pre-raiding at this point but I have great things in mind for when I get to Kara and beyond.

Thanks you everyone commenting and writing so that us young healers can be prepared.

By: luke

luke — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 17:18:34 +0000

what i’m unsure about in the sequence is renew. sure, it is instant cast, but it will be 3 seconds after the cast until the target heals from the first tick. wouldn’t those three seconds bewteen the initial cast and the heal be better used on a greater heal?

of course, i’m a noob priest who has healed RFC only once, but still…

By: Evergreen

Evergreen — Thu, 12 Jun 2008 16:25:06 +0000

Well, I’m not a Priest, I’m a Restoration Druid. I have to say I’ve always been a little envious of he priests’ “oh ^&*%!” buttons. I have a couple myself, sure, and they’re alright, but the ability of the priest to preempt a bad situation for other players (and themselves) is something I can’t match. Even if I anticipate an overeager DPSer snatching aggro from the tank, my responses are very limited: HoTs or more HoTs. If I see a mob making a beeline for me after I drop an early heal, my only hope is that the tank has also seen the mob and is going to use 1 of THEIR “oh ^&*%!” buttons to keep me alive. I don’t know how many times I might have been able to save a party or raid member if I had PW:S, or some equivalent, to throw. Instead, they died, because NS was on cooldown, and Swiftmend is effectively 2 gcd on anyone but the tank, OR they took more damage than they had hp. PW:S takes up 1 gcd. As a healer that lives and dies by their ability to manipulate the GCD against a fixed timetable, I know the cost of that time all too well, and a properly timed PW:S is well worth the cost. In terms of mana efficiency, there is probably nothing more inefficient than popping NS, leaving Tree of Life, hitting a max rank Healing Touch, and returning to Tree of Life. All in all, that is probably around 1500 mana expended (not to mention I’ve probably lost my Lifebloom stack on the tank)for an instant 5kish heal, and I do it without a second thought if I believe its needed. So, yeah, do what you have to for the group to succeed. I’d rather have a group wipe because I ran oom than because I didn’t do enough to keep the party alive.

By: Sante

Sante — Fri, 16 May 2008 17:35:11 +0000

The problem with putting Prayer of Mending on a tank is that for it to heal him, he has to take another hit. If he’s got 3k health and he takes a 4k hit, he’ll die before the heal goes off. Now if you use a PWS on him, he’ll absorb 1.2k or whatever of it and still live. It seems small, but shield allows you to then use a heal instead of POM. I like to PWS, Flash Heal/POM in that order, so that he gets a shield, and then a boost of health, with more coming when he gets hit next.

By: Totally Off Topic « For the Horde

Totally Off Topic « For the Horde — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:00:17 +0000

[...] to level 62 before I put him on the shelf.Ã‚Â During that time I decided to search out resources for a Priest.Ã‚Â The first I found was the World of Matticus, which I read with much enthusiasm.Ã‚Â I still [...]

By: Matticus!

Matticus! — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 21:59:51 +0000

Prayer of Mending is usually on cooldown for me. So my next option is PW:S. Granted, it may not be for everyone, but I do what’s needed.

If you HAVE to spam it in order to play catch up during an intense part of a fight (such as Leo’s whirlwinds), then do it. If you don’t have to spam, it then don’t spam it. I don’t think I said that you have to spam it the whole time. But I frequently shield DPS who took a big hit and I let another healer take care of them while I revert back to the tank.

By: Keruen

Keruen — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 20:48:46 +0000

I hate to argue but I agree with Bruthah that the 1.5 sec cooldown makes PW:S a fairly poor choice. I would rather use my GCD on a prayer of mending or max rank flash heal either of which would provide more benefit to the tank.

By: Blori

Blori — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 16:40:53 +0000

Without this sort of forward thinking, You would make my life very difficult.

/salute

By: Bruthah

Bruthah — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 15:26:00 +0000

I love this post. I never raided as a healer “old school”. I always felt guilty as I was leveling up when i HAD to use our “mana inefficient” heals.

I think Blizzard has done an outstanding job giving us a tool for every situation, and I try to use them all as often as they are useful.

I was a bit confused about some of the Power Word: Shield advice.

I do not hesitate to use PW:S whenever it is needed. On Illhoof (back when we used to do Illhoof a lot) it is teh awesome. I am finding many uses for it on Al’ar.

HOWEVER, my biggest concern with using PW:S is that it procs the GCD. Not only am I dropping a huge ton of mana on what is, essentially, frontloaded healing , I’m preventing myself from casting anything else for the next 1.5 seconds. Honestly, PW:S’s heal per second is quite weak compared this way to flash heal – which has the same 1.5 seconds of grief, but grants a much larger chunk of heals.

So honestly…. WHY would you PW:S over Flash Heal?

A.) The target has less than 1.5 seconds to live
B.) You have to get the hell out of the fire/voidzone/pileofmurlocs you are standing in, and they need a heal NOW.
C.) The target is taking lots of splash damage and their casts are too important to get interrupted (TK trash, Illhoof)
D.) The target is ABOUT to take a bunch of damage (as in, half their health bar or more), you have to go over here and flash heal Mage Number 5, and you will get back to them one that saw blade starts ticking (you just saved yourself some time there).

That’s about it. Granted, bad things happen, you cannot predict every little chaotic factor in a raid. But if you get to the point in which you have to spend every 1.5 seconds putting a shield on your tank for fear they will die, I would ask: How did you get there?!

If you have to throw a shield on someone to keep them alive DO IT, I agree. But advising people to “spam” it just made me /boggle.