Priest healing tips and build?

Dcully

Hi folks,currently messing around with a few chars not sure which to put my time into.
I struggle to get decent groups with my 70s for heroics etc so im thinking of levelling up my priest.
Currently im shadow spec for levelling.
Just about to ding 66 but admit to only really healing SM ,ZF etc but that was well over a year ago with this char.
Id like to be a 70 healer as my mains are mostly dps.
The thing is im way out of practice so id like to go holy now to get practice in for when i hit 70 but that means a slow levelling build or does it?
Has anyone got a decent build for me?

Also im looking for general healing tips,i read in general chat the other day some healers talking about spamming lower rank greater heals etc is a good way to heal in general?

Im open to some training for a budding priest healer please

smellslikeshoes

Using lower rank heals isn't really necessary in my opinion until you get 70 and start building up your +healing. I had very little use for it until I passed 1300 or so +healing and only started being necessary after about 1600. The difference between leveling as holy and shadow is always overestimated. Holy is slower but if you want to be a healer at 70, I would spec holy now. Its only 4 levels for you to go anyway so shouldn't take much longer. I wouldn't worry too much about build until you have gotten 70 but I would definitely go at least 13 into disc for 3/3 meditation if you haven't already, then maybe a 23/38/0 build at 70.

Dustaz

Ignore the above post. Anyone who says that you need to spec holy to learn to heal is talking out of their lightwell :P


You DO NOT NEED to spec holy to 'learn to heal'. This is a complete misnomer. The way to learn to heal is to drop out of shadow form and use your holy spells. The spells you get from holy/disc are highly situational and the talents are all about mana preservation and improved healing (which arent nessecary until you actually need them - heroics and raids)

Best thing to do is take a break from levelling and just go do instances. People are always looking for healers for instances so you shouldnt have any trouble. Equip all your heal gear, ignore that shadowform button and heal. Youll be well able to heal everything in the game untill you start to do heroics.

You can easily get by in an instance with Renew, PoM, Flash heal and Greater heal. Learn to use these and the rest of the stuff will just augment.

I levelled my priest 1-60 and 60-70 shadow and did every non-raid instance as shadow with no real problems. I only specced holy on the way to Molten Core (about 10 seconds after i dinged 60) and once i started healing heroics at 70.

I've a 64-65 (i havent played her in a while) shadow priest and i've been healing through instances no problem, ramparts and coilfang etc
sure they were surprised at the end of one run to see i was shadow specced
if its going well i'd switch on shadowform cast VT+VE+SW:P (depending on mana) then turn it off and start healing
oh and if you respec, don't go full holy at all, use disc
once you have some healing gear you're sorted really

Anti

I've just rolled a priest myself after getting so annoyed with the lack of healers on my realm. I would be interested to know if there are any faq's/guides for teaching you to be an effective healer. And yeah lvling a holy spec priest is damn slow

smellslikeshoes

Dustaz wrote: »

Ignore the above post. Anyone who says that you need to spec holy to learn to heal is talking out of their lightwell :P


You DO NOT NEED to spec holy to 'learn to heal'. This is a complete misnomer. The way to learn to heal is to drop out of shadow form and use your holy spells. The spells you get from holy/disc are highly situational and the talents are all about mana preservation and improved healing (which arent nessecary until you actually need them - heroics and raids)

Best thing to do is take a break from levelling and just go do instances. People are always looking for healers for instances so you shouldnt have any trouble. Equip all your heal gear, ignore that shadowform button and heal. Youll be well able to heal everything in the game untill you start to do heroics.

You can easily get by in an instance with Renew, PoM, Flash heal and Greater heal. Learn to use these and the rest of the stuff will just augment.

I levelled my priest 1-60 and 60-70 shadow and did every non-raid instance as shadow with no real problems. I only specced holy on the way to Molten Core (about 10 seconds after i dinged 60) and once i started healing heroics at 70.

As usual the shadow priest police are out in force.
If he wants to heal whats the point in being shadow spec for the last 4 levels other than the small difference in the time it will take for 4 dings? As far as learning to heal yes you can learn to heal as a shadow spec but nobody likes off spec healers. If he hasn't healed in over a year and the only instances he has healed are sm,zf level instances he needs the practice of healing, the best way to do this is to spec for healing and HEAL. And before you say "but he can learn to heal when he is 70" Whats the point in learning to heal when you are 70 when you can get into MT, AC, Sethick halls etc. and get xp while improving your healing skill. And not have to grind as many quests for 70.

ZorbaTehZ

You'll have plenty of time to 'learn' to heal at 70, just stick with shadow and spec holy at 70.

nesf

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

As usual the shadow priest police are out in force.
If he wants to heal whats the point in being shadow spec for the last 4 levels other than the small difference in the time it will take for 4 dings? As far as learning to heal yes you can learn to heal as a shadow spec but nobody likes off spec healers. If he hasn't healed in over a year and the only instances he has healed are sm,zf level instances he needs the practice of healing, the best way to do this is to spec for healing and HEAL. And before you say "but he can learn to heal when he is 70" Whats the point in learning to heal when you are 70 when you can get into MT, AC, Sethick halls etc. and get xp while improving your healing skill. And not have to grind as many quests for 70.

The point is more that before heroics, being off-spec isn't going to make a healer useless. It's not that the only option to level in is shadow, it's that he's already shadow and there's little point in him paying for a respec he doesn't need.

smellslikeshoes

ZorbaTehZ wrote: »

You'll have plenty of time to 'learn' to heal at 70, just stick with shadow and spec holy at 70.

Read below.

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

And before you say "but he can learn to heal when he is 70" Whats the point in learning to heal when you are 70 when you can get into MT, AC, Sethick halls etc. and get xp while improving your healing skill. And not have to grind as many quests for 70.

nesf wrote: »

The point is more that before heroics, being off-spec isn't going to make a healer useless. It's not that the only option to level in is shadow, it's that he's already shadow and there's little point in him paying for a respec he doesn't need.

I agree your right before heroics with healing style gear a shadow can heal fine in most situations. My point is that leveling as holy isn't that much slower than shadow and if the original poster wants to spec holy at level 66 its not going to take him that much longer than if he was shadow and he will find it much easier to get into groups, which will mean less of his leveling will come from grinding boring quests and more will come from having fun in instances.

Dcully wrote: »

The thing is im way out of practice so id like to go holy now to get practice in for when i hit 70 but that means a slow levelling build or does it?

smellslikeshoes

smellslikeshoes wrote: »

Read below.




I agree your right before heroics with healing style gear a shadow can heal fine in most situations. My point is that leveling as holy isn't that much slower than shadow and if the original poster wants to spec holy at level 66 its not going to take him that much longer than if he was shadow and he will find it much easier to get into groups, which will mean less of his leveling will come from grinding boring quests and more will come from having fun in instances.

Not much longer? it's painful... I have a friend who is an amazing healer, he leveled holy, and in some cases killing a bunch of mobs was so slow they were respawning before he could clear the place

if you want to get into a group do ramparts a dozen times. mention your spec, say you can heal. people always welcome my shadow priest and i do a damn good job of healing
because shadow priests can heal noone is going to kick up a huge fuss about his spec
and speccing holy isnt going to make him a better healer.

OP: just keep your eyes fixed on the health bars, drink whenever you can, keep the fade button handy, and youll be fine

ven0m

Dustaz wrote: »

Ignore the above post. Anyone who says that you need to spec holy to learn to heal is talking out of their lightwell :P


You DO NOT NEED to spec holy to 'learn to heal'. This is a complete misnomer. The way to learn to heal is to drop out of shadow form and use your holy spells. The spells you get from holy/disc are highly situational and the talents are all about mana preservation and improved healing (which arent nessecary until you actually need them - heroics and raids)

Best thing to do is take a break from levelling and just go do instances. People are always looking for healers for instances so you shouldnt have any trouble. Equip all your heal gear, ignore that shadowform button and heal. Youll be well able to heal everything in the game untill you start to do heroics.

You can easily get by in an instance with Renew, PoM, Flash heal and Greater heal. Learn to use these and the rest of the stuff will just augment.

I levelled my priest 1-60 and 60-70 shadow and did every non-raid instance as shadow with no real problems. I only specced holy on the way to Molten Core (about 10 seconds after i dinged 60) and once i started healing heroics at 70.

+1 on this, especially the playing in instances part ..... best way to learn is do. I did this with my Shammy, made me a better played with it.



:::: ven0mous ::::

Splinter

have a 70 shadowpriest myself and have been both holy and shadow. bar raids i have healed pretty much all the instances, bar a few of the heroics and i find that because i can swap straight out of shadow to throw a few prayer of mendings then i can do some great healing. its a great way to learn and i do agree with the comment that if you can heal well in shadow you will heal well in holy - just gather some gear in the mean time. so what profs did you go with? tailoring would be the obvious one

nix

Tbh people you do not need guides or hints to become an effective healer, just simply read what all your spells do and go from there..

Heres some builds i posted on my guild forums the other day:

"The hybrid" as they would call it, buffer of groups if you will ! Gives good healing, mana pool and good buffs for the group.

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/priest/talents.html?5042000130504120000000232050032300150530000000000000000000000000


Heavy holy - focuses on yes youve guessed bigger heals and better group healing. but doesnt have DS ;(

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/priest/talents.html?5042000130500000000000232050032301150530051000000000000000000000

This ones mainly for pvp, if someone was dissing my fly girl id give them one of these !

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/priest/talents.html?5002220130525122031051230251300300000000000000000000000000000000

aha !

And then the shadow raid specc that is truely remarkable !

http://www.wow-europe.com/en/info/basics/talents/priest/talents.html?5002120130000000000000000000000000000000000053250310250103051551

So there it is, what i think are the perfect builds.. ;D

Splinter

have a look on www.shadowpriest.com for dps builds not really related but useful non the less

Dcully

Thanks for all the input guys,plenty of food for thought
I might stay shadow and try heal instances around my level.
Im so bored of questing its become a real pain.


Can i ask about usefull addons?
When i did heal way back i had a cool addon that made a sound and a little graphic i simply clicked on which dispelled a spell when a group member was inflicted with something.
Anyone know what im talking about?

Anything at all that isnt hard to set up but may help healing please.

nix

Dcully wrote: »

Thanks for all the input guys,plenty of food for thought
I might stay shadow and try heal instances around my level.
Im so bored of questing its become a real pain.


Can i ask about usefull addons?
When i did heal way back i had a cool addon that made a sound and a little graphic i simply clicked on which dispelled a spell when a group member was inflicted with something.
Anyone know what im talking about?

Anything at all that isnt hard to set up but may help healing please.

I think you mean decursive ?

If your planning on healing full time at 70 the below mods are a must:

Decursive: Dispell any magic/curse/disease affliction from a target with the click of a button

http://wow.curse.com/downloads/details/3011/

Visual heal: Shows heals going onto target and on yourself, handy for knowing if your target is about to get over healed. Or if you need to pop a health pot if ya dont see any incoming heals

http://wowui.incgamers.com/?p=mod&m=3749

Grid: The best raid UI ive ever used, shows all people in raid in a small square grid on screen. May take a bit of getting used to and you may want to adjust some settings in it to make it easier to read (i had to) but once i had it set up the way i wanted i LOVED it.

http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info5747-Grid.html

Joseph

Okay let's relax a bit.

Here are two excellent healing guides. E-X-C-E-L-L-E-N-T.

Number 1
Number 2

TheDoc

as an experienced priest i think ill throw in my ten cents

(although i aint played in some time things might have changed)

shadow priests where very powerful and were used alot, i was always taken into high end raids as a shadow.

However when i specced to holy i found my healing output insanely strong, and was attending 70 leveled raids from 66-67

if you wanna heal you go holy simple...

being a holy priest doesnt slow down leveling either, you can just constantly do instances compiling good gear and you get severe experience payback from completion.

i played 70 chars extensivly on both, if you want to heal go holy in mid 60's, there is not other way, you can heal through shadow, but not as effectivly as a holy priest

youll find your low level heals are well acceptable to use, but you SHOULD be so mana efficent you should be able to use big heals

i was able to constantly use big heals, renews and keep mana efficent

with a good holy spec flash heal becomes obsolete as you can big heal at the same pace

just my two cents, you wna heal go holy

if you solo alot go shadow

Dcully

Im on the doss today so i thought id try some healing in current shadow spec.
Off i went with a group to Mana tombs,pala tank,2 locks,dps warrior and myself as healer.
All going well until we hit first boss,4 failed attempts and one last successfull attempt later and the group disbanded.
I simply ate through my mana trying to heal the pala,granted he was lvl 63 but dear god his health just disapeared at an alarming rate.

It was a disasterous first attempt to heal in outland
LOL dont talk to me about the stress of it all
I have + 450 healing as i am now with current gear unbuffed,is this bad?

I basically used renew-flashheal-greater heal in that order more or less then i found i had to use flash heals as the palas health was diminishing so fast that my 3 sec cast greater heal was too risky.

Was this just a bad tankadin?
Is it my spec and poor gear or as im leaning more towards,my bad healing skills?

Im thinking now of respeccing holy ,giving a few more instances a go and see how it goes.
I have 1700 gold ,thanks to my alts so i dont mind the cost so much

I was looking forward to the change to healer from dps and tanking but this experience this afternoon has me wondering.

nesf

Dcully wrote: »

Was this just a bad tankadin?

Honestly, probably combined with him being slightly under the level the instance is aimed at making things a bit harder on him. You're not going to be able to keep a bad (be it gear or skill) tank alive unless you're over-geared/levelled/skilled/whatever for an instance. When you're learning to heal again and off-spec with middling gear you're not going to be able to compensate that much for problems with the tank or dps. You'll need to run a few more instances before you can figure out whether the problem is on your side or there's

Dcully

You'll need to run a few more instances before you can figure out whether the problem is on your side or there's

Fair point

BKtje

Are you sure he was tankadin specced? On top of that the first boss in mana tombs can be extremely difficult since he tends to hit like a ton of bricks. Shadow damage so not affected by armour, only shadow resistance which means that a tank with low dodge/parry/resistance rate is going to get pummelled.

I'd put this mainly down to the tank than yourself. Would have been easier as healing spec (duh ) but i've healed that as a feral druid, albeit with some problems. Rest of instance wasn't so bad.

Dcully

Yeah he said he was tank specced anyways which made me question my abilities.

Dustaz

[DM]-TheDOC- wrote: »

as an experienced priest i think ill throw in my ten cents

I keep getting chars to 70 and just leavin them

ok, how experienced?

However when i specced to holy i found my healing output insanely strong, and was attending 70 leveled raids from 66-67

What raids were you brought to at lvl 66? Dungeon != raid.

if you wanna heal you go holy simple...

Sorry, Thats just not true below level 70

being a holy priest doesnt slow down leveling either, you can just constantly do instances compiling good gear and you get severe experience payback from completion.

i played 70 chars extensivly on both, if you want to heal go holy in mid 60's, there is not other way, you can heal through shadow, but not as effectivly as a holy priest

This is misleading. Healing is not difficult. Its whack-a-mole. You are well able to heal as shadow spec just not as well as you would be able to if you were holy. However, below level 70, it doesnt matter.

with a good holy spec flash heal becomes obsolete as you can big heal at the same pace

LOL ?

Riiiiiiight, brb, just gonna whip the most used spell off my bars.

Dustaz

Dcully wrote: »

Yeah he said he was tank specced anyways which made me question my abilities.

He was more than likely ret spec. That combined with the fact he was a bit low for the instance made it difficult.

At the end of the day, maybe you should go full holy and do instances, it will show you the difference in mana-effieciency and the differences in healing strength between the 2 specs. Just dont go questing solo while your holy

Dcully

Yeah Dustaz i agree,i reckon the only way to know for sure if healing is for me is go holy.

Dcully

Well i respecced to the holy spec nix provided and have just come from 2 runs in shettek halls,healing went flawlessly.
I didnt run out of full mana once,really ehjoyed it i must say.
It was so much easier but then again we had a decent tank and group.
Currently i have +590 healing,not sure if thats any use for lvl 66?

sunzz

Dustaz is 100% right, I've both a holy priest and holy paladin at 70 now and healing off spec pre level 70 for ANY dungeon NOT RAID was absolute piss easy!

Dcully

Quick question guys.
Im close to dinging 70 with this priest.
I went back to shadow so i could quest away instead of waiting for groups all the time.
I want to go back holy at 70 but im concerned about questing in general and mob killing being slow.

Lastnight while doing some quests in shadowmoon i came across a NE priest questing but she was not shadow.

I did see her take down mobs very quickly with a spell ive never seen before.
It was sort or a blue wavey graphic that shot down onto the mobs,it seemed to do nice damage.
I just assumed she was holy spec but wonder what this spell is becasue it could be very helpfull for when i go back to holy and need to solo.

Sorry for my newbie priest questions

Joseph

Well dcully it's become easier now that all healing items have 1/3 dmg in ratio to healing e.g. item has 300 +heal has +100 spell dmg now so thats nice.

Blue spell might be mind flay ?? (sp)

Of course it's slower at holy but not THAT slower

have fun dinging

Splinter

blue spell was starshards which is a NE spell only im afraid