Priest Healing
From Coteriewiki
Priest Healing: More than just target & click
By Dominica of Coterie
For those of you that don't have priests or are new to the healing priest world a few things before we get into the spells.
What? There's more than just the healing spells to consider?
Why, yes, of course. Unlike pallies (illumination), druids (innervate/treeform), and shammies (mana tide totem/water shield), priests have the crappiest mana return abilities ever, and less efficiency. So we have to maximize what Blizz did give us.
Mana efficiency, the Five Second Rule (FSR), and you. HPM - Healing priests have some great talents to choose from to make their spells less costly, and pack a bigger punch. So far as mana efficiency goes here's a rough guideline I can throw for single target heals: Renew > G.Heal > Flash Heal. If you have any points in empowered healing at all, then G.Heal becomes better than Renew, but Flash Heal will always be the least mana efficient. Use http://priestheal.googlepages.com/priest_heal.htm to help decide which are your best heals/ranks for your spec.
Spirit and FSR - As priests are built to get max usage out of spirit (moreso than resto druids, given the talent Spiritual Guidance, and the priest regen model), a good deal of a priest's regen comes from their spirit. However, regen while casting tends to be half of what you can get while not casting. To get outside of the casting penalty, you have to wait 5 seconds from the completion of your last cast. This is known as the Five Second Rule (FSR). Given the priest's rather poor mana regen abilities, you are best off casting in bursts, and spending as much time outside the FSR as possible. This can be aided by talents, like Holy Concentration (clearcasting) and Inner Focus. The free spells these talents grant count as 'not casting'. So if you proc a clearcast, it is to your advantage to wait until the end of the timer (til about 4-5 seconds left) to cast your free spell, maintaining as much time outside the FSR as possible. For a priest, mp5 is only superior to spirit if you are not spending any time outside the FSR, or very close to it.
--Post 2.3 - The buff to the Meditation talent has basically made spirit better than mp5 for priests in any healing situation. While casting, 5 spirit ~ 1mp5. This is even greater when spending any time in the FSR (which if you have the clearcasting talent, you will automatically). This equivalency is not including any +heal you may get from spirit with talents. This makes gearing decisions easier than ever. Take the spirit!
--Post 2.4 - The mana regen buff improving Spirit regen by a factor of your Int has made stats the thing to stack. It was my position after 2.3 that spirit was better than mp5, and this patch just solidified that even further. Even if you spend all your time casting, spirit > mp5, always. Add raid buffs like Blessing of Kings and it increases yet further. When gearing your priest for pve healing, look for spirit > +heal > stamina > intellect > mp5. If you are around 2k +heal, you should start picking up haste gear, which at that point will be increasing your effectiveness more than extra +heal.
While it can be tempting to 'top off' the tank with Flash Heals, this is not a good idea for a priest. 'Topping off' is for pallies and their FoL, or a Renew in 5-mans. Priests are better off simply not casting, and getting their bigger mana regen tick outside the FSR.
Shadowfiend - Oh, but priests have shadowfiend, you say. This is true, and it is intended to return mana to the priest. However, I have seen some theories that place the damage of the shadowfiend (to which the mana it returns is directly proportional) to the amount of shadow damage the priest has. In which case, a healing priest is even less likely to get a good return on the silly thing. Add to this the fact that the shadowfiend lasts a mere 15 seconds, and is subject to misses and parries, mitigated by armor, and can be easily killed by splash damage, and the healing priest can get little to no benefit. Also, shadowfiend moves at normal speed, so if the target is running around it is possible for shadowfiend to trail behind and never hit him. If all goes well, the shadowfiend is equivalent to a mana potion, in my experience. (The exception being Curator's evocation, where its as good as an innervate.)
--Post 2.3 - Adding +dmg to healing gear made a nice buff to shadowfiend! Throw him out there after popping healing/+dmg trinkets for an even bigger boost. You can easily get 1/2 a mana bar out of him. In long fights, pop him early to alternate with potions! Just make sure he isn't out when there's expected splash damage. Can still be an iffy prospect, you have to be very careful on when to throw him out there, but better than it was before 2.3.
Choose your spells wisely The priest has the most healing spells to choose from of any healing capable class, so picking which ones to use in which situations is not particularly easy. Renew - Only priest HoT, gets 100% of your +heal, is instant cast, and can be cheap as hell with talents for the amount of healing (Mental Agility + Imp Renew). There's no reason not to use it. It's good for tossing on an ailing raid/groupmate who isn't taking continuous damage, before getting back to focusing on the tank. It's good for tank maintenance in 5-mans, and can't hurt in raids. Use it, love it.
Greater Heal - This is the priest's bread and butter heal spell. It belts out tons of healing for a decent amount of mana. Talent it, and it just gets better (-0.5 cast time, -15% mana cost, +20% bonus healing). This spell is for tank healing. "It has such a long cast time!" Not really, unless you don't talent it shorter (a terrible faux pas for a healing priest). But in situations where the tank is taking a lot of damage in a short period of time, you should 'pre-load' your heals. Fire up that G.Heal before the tank needs it. If the tank is still topped off halfway through your cast, you can easily interrupt it. On the other hand, if the tank suddenly takes a crushing blow, your heal is ready to land. "But 4-5k healing is more than is needed!" Downrank! Dominca has G.Heal rank 2, and G.Heal rank 7 (max rank) on her bars. This gives me the option of casting a 3k-ish heal, or the 4.5-5k-ish heal. For more options you can use more ranks. Downranking helps prevent more overheal/oom situations than any other single strategy. Try it, learn to love it.
Flash Heal - This is an emergency heal. Even with full points in Empowered Healing, it just isn't as good as G. Heal. This should only be used in emergency situations, where death will come before the 2.5 sec cast timer of G.Heal (like low tanks, or aoe'ing mages), or where mana isn't a factor(like some trash). You pay for the quick cast time in extra mana. You can also downrank Flash Heal, and probably should. Dominica has the max rank of Flash Heal, and Flash Heal rank 3 on her bars. The former heals for about 2k, while the later is right around 1k. I reserve Flash Heal rank 3 for 5-mans, or when neither mana nor healing are tight for Inspiration(+25% armor) or clearcasting procs. Max rank Flash Heal is for tanks after silences/in emergencies, or that nearly dead raid/group member who may yet take splash damage and expire. Anyone else will do with a Renew, which heals more, for less.
Prayer of Mending - Single best heal for priests, provided it discharges all 5 of its heals. Even using only 3 of its 'charges', it is well worth the mana, particularly if you talent it cheaper (anywhere from -10 to -30% mana for it). However, it does not stack. If 2 priests each cast PoM, and it is on the same player, or hops to the same player, the stronger one will overwrite the weaker, and the weaker will be lost. So while having more than 1 PoM hopping around the raid is quite nice, the probability that some will be lost due to overwrite, is pretty high. Multiple PoMs are best in aoe damage situations, and much less useful in fights such as the Gruul fight, where only 2 targets take the bulk of the damage. Still, its a 'must cast' before any silence/incapacitation effects, as much as any HoT. Also, in expected multi-damage situation, like Hex-Lord in ZA or Bloodboil in BT, cast this before spamming CoH or PoH, and it will bounce at each damage tick. Even if you are a CoH priest, you should still throw this out every cooldown in those mass damage situations, then get back to your CoH spamming. Total healing done by PoM is greater than that done by CoH, for the same cooldown.
Binding Heal - Emergency heal for self and target. I fairly recently put this spell back on my bar, after Blizz reduced the mana cost a little. However, I use it mostly in pvp, and very little in pve. Its mana efficiency is much better than Flash Heal though, so if you're both close to death, pick this spell. Of late, I've taken to using Binding heal more frequently in the 10-mans, where I get hit by splash damage, and just can't afford to stop healing the tank to throw myself even a renew (like on Halazzi in ZA if the totems don't go down immediately). In 25s, I find other healers are generally only to ready to top me off, so its gets little use there. Binding Heal is one of the most efficient heals a priest has, but its usefulness is limited.
Any priest not using *all* of the above spells isn't working at their max capacity/efficiency. There are others worth mentioning of course.
Prayer of Healing - group heal. Its use is rather limited, given raid make-ups these days. Very nice for some Kara trash where there's heavy raid damage. It has a fairly high mana cost, but the actual heals per mana is fantastic. So if everyone in your group is low and in range, it is a great spell.
Circle of Healing - You have to spec deep holy to pick up this spell. It only hits the target for around 800-1000ish, but hits everyone in the target's group within range for the same. Handy for melee taking splash damage (provided they are in the same group). Ranged tend to be too far apart for it to be useful for them. This is the only way for the priest to heal a group not their own. --Post 2.3 - CoH now gets more benefit from +heal. However, the base heal was reduced, so I recommend higher +heal before you pick it up (the magic number for more healing is 1338, Bliz's number, not mine). With a decent amount of +heal (~1800ish), CoH will hit in the 900s, and crit around 1300 at max rank. I find most CoH friendly fights end with me spamming it, with only occasional breaks. If you find mana is an issue for casting CoH, you can downrank. CoH rank 3 is within 100 heal of rank 5, costs about 70 less mana per cast, and has no nerf% on your +healing. When you end up spamming this spell, the 70 per cast mana break will be noticeable, the 100 healing loss per target will not.
If you use Prayer of Healing and/or Circle of healing with any regularity there's a couple recommended talents to go with 'em. Healing Prayers for Prayer of Healing, and Mental Agility for Circle of healing, for 20% and 10% mana cost reduction respectively. Also if you cast PoM regularly (say, every cooldown) Healing Prayers will give you more benefit per talent point than Mental Agility.
Note: Holy Reach is recommended by most priests for Circle of Healing. It will increase the diameter of the affected area by 5 yards total. However, I personally am skeptical of the practical use. "But Dom," you say, "it increases the area affected by Circle of Healing by 40%!" And doesn't that look good on paper! But, what it really means is an extra 2.5 yards distance from the target of the heal. The spell radiates from the target, and it has been my experience that if everyone in the target's group is not within the 15 yard range of the untalented CoH, that extra 2.5 yards isn't going to cover it. I suggest you try it yourself and draw your own conclusions.
Power Word: Shield - Gets much less use than it did pre-BC. It didn't scale well. Still, very useful for absorbing damage to squishies in expected damage situations: Shatter, Aran's drinking pyroblast, aoe'ing mages/warlocks. With the Mental Agility talent, its worth saving yourself the healing in these situations, as well as possibly saving the skin of the target if their hp aren't that high to begin with. I usually use this to help (ranged)caster-tanks with spell push-back. Generally not worth it on real tanks, who are better off getting a big heal. --Post 2.3 - Now gets more benefit from +heal, base amount absorbed reduced. Shadow priests are up in arms, healing priests are better off. (Again, the magic number for seeing better absorption here is 1338.) Still, high mana cost for the amount absorbed, better used in emergencies, or to give squishies the illusion of higher hp when high raid damage is expected.
Heal - I don't use this spell though some do, as another kind of downranking. In my opinion, it takes too long to cast for the amount of healing it does. I feel I'm better off not casting at all, exploiting the FSR as much as possible. It can proc Inspiration, but not clearcasting, nor is it effected by Empowered Healing.
That's all I can think of at the moment. Feel free to throw questions of any type into the mix.
Added: You don't have to take my word for it! http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17086-priest_holy_raiding_compendium/
