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Priest Flash heal, Lesser heal, Greater heal - What to use?

mariusdahl

New Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2016
Hello Kronos,

I've started rolling a priest. My first priest in the realm of Azeroth, ever. I've been raiding a whole lot since vanilla release, and also on Nostalrius before shutdown. But as a Druid.

What spells do you find yourself using? I don't believe that Renew and Shield is mana-efficient.

Flash heal, Lesser heal, Greater heal, Heal, Prayer of healing? How do I get most out of my mana as a newbie priest?

I would probably be riding a spec like this:

3lHosvI.png


Kind regards,
Daedalos
 

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I'd suggest something like this until you're a bit more geared, it gives you some extra mana to play around with. If you plan on using prayer of healing, pick up holy reach and the imp. poh talents. Picking up or not picking up inspiration depends on your guild's stance on it. I'd say it's not very necessary in the current content, but can provide some extra safety for undergeared tanks during progression.

Shield isn't very mana-efficient, but it's still useful for saving people (as it's your only instant "healing" spell) and you might want to shield some of your casters or melees prior some encounters (shazzrah, imps, vael, goblin packs in BWL for example). On the other hand, Renew is a really good spell and your main raidhealing tool. Spreading downranked (I use r3) renew on the raid can be very efficient. You might also want to max rank renew melees on certain encounters depending on your mana and how/if your guild assigns their healers.

For healing spells, heal rank 2 and greater heal ranks 1 and max should be the ones you use the most, heal rank 2 being the most mana-efficient. If you want, you can also keybind lesser heal r3 for some minor healing when you're OOM/tanks aren't taking much damage. I wouldn't use flash heal much, especially with low gear, as it's bound to drain your mana rather fast.
 
Don't use that spec, use this spec: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bxRhsV0oZdxtcc0Vx

You want to use a variety of healing spells depending on what you've been assigned to heal and how much damage your target takes.

If you are tank healing, you will want to use your slow, efficient heals. Then you just have to choose the right size heal. Downrank your heals to increase efficiency. Think of Heal and Greater Heal on a continuum instead of different spells since they both have a 2.5s cast time (with talent, which is a must have talent and is not optional). Your max rank greater heal is usually only used for emergencies. Heal rank 2 will likely be your primary healing spell depending on your gear.

Flash heal will eat up your mana quickly and should be used primarily for raid healing, but it again is situational. You can raid heal just fine with slow heals and you will be able to heal for longer due to higher efficiency. Renew can also be good for raid healing. Use at least 2 different ranks of flash heal, a lower rank for higher efficiency and max rank for emergencies.
 
PW: Shield is very mana inefficient, but it's also basically an instant cast Flash Heal. Should always be used in tight situations, like the MC Lava Packs at Geddon or the BWL Lab Packs.
Renew should only be used by the Priest(s) with the highest +healing from gear.

Both spell, unlike other Priest spells, should never be downranked.

What other spells you use depends on your guild, your playstyle, alot of things. What Gardash writes is true, but if you find yourself in a strong healing roster you will find that Heal and Greater Heal are casting too long to ever result in effective healing so you will basically use only Flash Heal unless in very specific situations. Also Mana is rarely an issue because fights are so short in MC and BWL.
 
I wouldn't use flash heal much, especially with low gear, as it's bound to drain your mana rather fast.

I agree with most of what you said, but flash heal r1 is actually more mana efficient than the greatest rank of greater heal and heals for a decent amount with good gear.
 
Good thread. I'm new to priest healing (mained a druid pre 1.12)
Can someone explain the mechanics of why r2 Heal is generally the primary heal used? and is this true while leveling or just after you have stacked up +healing gear?
 
H2 is the first heal that doesn't get any penalty on +healing bonus due to being a low level spell.

That being said, you can usually nuke with H1 to save mana once your gear is decent (H1 gets a penalty but it's not huge). That's of course unless your target takes heavy damage and warrants more HPS.

When you have like, zero gear (leveling or fresh 60), it's often good to use H3. Your tank is probably still squishy then, some more HPS as needed may be of use, and fights in pre-raid content don't generally last too long so you shouldn't have mana issues.

You will generally want to have several different heals on your bars /mouse regardless of situation. With like 400-500 bonus heal, H1 + H2 + GH1 + GH4 is a good combo to have. Plus max Flash for emergencies, plus max Prayer for huge emergencies, plus Prayer1 if you know how to use it (it's a fantastic spell but very situational). Put Flash1 somewhere if you wanna snipe paladins' heals and piss them off, it's fun.
 
Good thread. I'm new to priest healing (mained a druid pre 1.12)
Can someone explain the mechanics of why r2 Heal is generally the primary heal used? and is this true while leveling or just after you have stacked up +healing gear?

Most bang for buck (as in heal per mana). Heal 1 has a higher heal per mana value, but it scales less well with gear (only adds 0.73 heal per +heal from your gear, while rank 2 and higher (as well as all Greater Heal ranks) add 0.86 heal per +heal).

The recommendation on Renew you got above is rather dumb because while Renew is the only spell with a 1:1 +heal ratio, it's expensive and ends up mostly in overheal. It will also be overwritten by other Priests who want to snag some on the meters. Only the best geared Priest in the raid should be using Renew at all, and while some guilds even have a dedicated Renew Priest who does nothing but Renew, that's a rather *****ic thing to do. If you end up raiding with a lot of Paladins you will use 80% Flash Heal anyway because that's the only way you can get some effective healing in against their quick casts.
 
Downranked renew is hardly expensive at all, especially compared to "80% flash heal" spam. If you really find it impossible to do any healing without spamming FH you're either not precasting enough, or your guild is gimping itself down by bringing too many healers for current content. I've never heard of someone having a priest just casting renew (which I agree is dumb) though. I disagree on the "mostly overheal" part as if you use the spell properly and situationally in the right encounters you'll hardly do much overheal with it. You can lessen the amount of renews getting overwritten by other priests by having all of the priests in your guild use some raidframes which display current hots.

In blizzlike vanilla most bosses don't last long enough for it to really matter how you heal and spamming FH is (sadly) viable if your raid is geared/buffed enough. It however has it's limits and scales rather poorly with gear so I wouldn't really recommend it for anyone. What Naice fails to understand is that there are mostly other guilds that aren't his own, and that take a lot longer with encounters while not having as many and/or as geared healers, where his way of vanilla priest is hardly viable.

Please at least avoid using a lot of flash heal if you and your raid are not very geared/buffed or still progressing the content, as it's bound to OOM you really fast.
 
Please at least avoid using a lot of flash heal if you and your raid are not very geared/buffed or still progressing the content, as it's bound to OOM you really fast.

Well, definitely true if gear is not up there. No argument.

if you use the spell properly and situationally in the right encounters you'll hardly do much overheal with it.

But Renew is not situational, you put it up and that's that, you lost your influence at that point. I can't think of any encounter where periodic damage is coming in often enough to not make at least half the Renew ticks end up in overheal; and even then you might end up unlucky with timing.

Take Broodlord Lashlayer for example. Sure you can put a Renew on all the melees before he swipes, but the Melees will be healed up much faster if you use Flash Heals, or even regular Heals if you lack the gear.

What Naice fails to understand is that there are mostly other guilds that aren't his own, and that take a lot longer with encounters while not having as many and/or as geared healers, where his way of vanilla priest is hardly viable.

Name one boss except Chromaggus, Nefarian and Twin Emperors that takes long enough/causes enough tank damage to make Flash Healing improper with adequate gear level.
 
Razorgore heh
Maybe Raggy unless by "adequate gear level" you mean one tier above content in question. Though you can always spam flash and use mana pots in MC. lol
 
But Renew is not situational, you put it up and that's that, you lost your influence at that point. I can't think of any encounter where periodic damage is coming in often enough to not make at least half the Renew ticks end up in overheal; and even then you might end up unlucky with timing.

Take Broodlord Lashlayer for example. Sure you can put a Renew on all the melees before he swipes, but the Melees will be healed up much faster if you use Flash Heals, or even regular Heals if you lack the gear.
Sure, I agree Renew isn't super good on Broodlord, it's a lot better on Firemaw, for example.

Name one boss except Chromaggus, Nefarian and Twin Emperors that takes long enough/causes enough tank damage to make Flash Healing improper with adequate gear level.
If you're only healing tanks I doubt there's a single encounter that OOMs you on Kronos no matter what you do apart from the bosses you named. If you want to heal the raid in addition to the tanks which a skilled priest can very well do, it's possible to run out of mana on a lot of more bosses if they last over a minute.

I doubt majority of the people reading these topics looking for help have "adequate" gear level and are new priest players for the most part.
 
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Ok so if the goal is to be able to use down ranked heals with an adequate amount of +healing gear, should it be a focus or worthwhile leveling to collect and use (while 5man) greens with +heal or should it still be spirit > all?
 
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