Spiritual Guidance: Measuring a Priest
by Matt Low 
Jul 27th 2008 at 11:59PM
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. With summer half way through and some guilds in various states of disarray, Matticus will help you figure out what to look for when recruiting a Holy Priest!
Stop me if you've heard this one. A guild you know of has stopped raiding due to the summer season. Players are losing interest or are leaving the game or the guild entirely to go pursue other activities. It just so happens one of the characters lost is a really good Holy Priest! The replacements picked up just didn't perform up to the standard of the old Priest! Even though the new Priest has more healing, more regen, and better gear, they're still struggling on their healing jobs! What gives? Don't worry! This week, I plan on helping you dispel (get it?) a few myths, provide some raiding benchmarks and provide a few places to go to get your raid back and running in full gear again.
Before I get started, let's get this important question out of the way first.
What does +heal really mean?
I'm looking at the little stat in your character screen that we all value so heavily. Every healer, no matter what class, has been taught to rank this stat highly. It's clear as day why because the higher the number, the more health we can restore.
But is it an accurate measure of a player's skill?
Your healing is not so much a measure of skill. There will never be one true objective and accurate way to measure a player's healing skill. Throughout my experience in raiding be it a pickup group or guild sanctioned, I have noticed that healing has been frequently viewed as such. That is not what it means.
At its core, healing is the amount of healing a player can potentially do. In other words, only capability can be measured. That's all. I've seen my share of overgeared and underskilled players out there. Heh, I used to be one. I'm not the best Priest in the game but it doesn't mean I'm going to stop striving for it.
Playing ability does not change drastically over time. How you heal in Karazhan a year ago and how you heal in Hyjal are going to be about the same. The spells you use, the target priorities, and all the other details will be similar. What does change over time is the gear acquired between just turning level 70 and entering Black Temple. The gear allows you to hold your own in such a high tier instance.
I've seen various opinions that believe it's the skill of a player that determines everything. I don't think that explains everything. The nature of World of Warcraft is set in such a way that your gear and skill are both intertwined with each other. Eventually you will hit a ceiling in your skill level where you just can't get any better. The gear you sport now will define the level of raid instances a Priest can successfully do. It's easy to bring an overgeared, underskilled player to Karazhan. On the other hand, it's nearly impossible to find success in bringing an undergeared, overskilled Priest to Black Temple.
What stats should you be looking for when picking up a Priest anyway?
Before we can answer that, it's best to look at what raid instances you plan on working your way through. Before you light up the flames, keep in mind that these are really rough and general numbers. You can overcompensate or undercut the numbers based on the other healers if the raid. For example, if you bring a T6 decked Paladin to Tempest Keep, you can get away with a slightly less than geared T4 Priest in theory. Obviously if said T6 Paladin has a hard time healing or is playing from the opposite side of the world with bad latency, then no amount of healing is going to help ease the healing stress. I'm going to provide a few benchmarks for raiding Priests based on what I think is comfortable. Again, treat these as ballpark numbers.
T4 – Gruul/Magtheridon: ~1500 healing, 250 MP5 while casting
T5 – Serpentshrine Cavern, Tempest Keep: ~1750 healing, 300 MP5 while casting
T6 - Black Temple/Mount Hyjal: ~2100, 350 MP5 while casting
I won't prioritize these in any particular order. As the main scout (or recruiting guy) for my guild, I'm stuck with the pleasant job of sifting through the various applicants that do apply or head hunting for players that fit our needs. But let's look at Priests from a tangible and objective point of view. The first step is to gauge how much of a challenge their gear can handle. In no particular order:
- Stamina: A dead Priest is a useless Priest. There's got to be a certain amount of damage that Priests can absorb before die. Several raid encounters involve damage taken by everyone. If a Priest can't even survive a single hit or two, then they may as well not be brought in. It's not just a stat for.
- Healing: This is our bread and butter stat. Like I mentioned earlier, the more the better. Keep in mind that it is possible to have too much healing. When that happens, a Priest will end up overhealing more. In this case, it's best to switch around a few gems to help emphasize mana regen instead.
- Mana regen: A lot of players overlook this stat. Mana regen is a measure of how much mana a player gets back over a period of time. Like Stamina, without mana a Priest is also useless. Later raid encounters will be stressing a player's mana because they're endurance fights. Illidan can take over 20 minutes. Illidari Council will take about 10. I have no idea about the Sunwell ones but they seem pretty taxing as well.
Great! Where can I find me one?
WoW Forums: This is the number one place to look when you're searching for players to add to your guild. New players and guilds post all the time and you're bound to find what you're looking for.
WoW Lemmings: What's better than the WoW forums? An organized version of the WoW forums. WoW Lemmings sorts threads on both Alliance and Horde forums and displays them in a fashion that's eye friendly and also based on your search criteria.
Might there be other places one could go to pick up and recruit healers? Anyone know any pseudo-classified places?
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know!And don't forget to check the WoW Insider Directory for more priestly info!
Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Tips, Raiding, Classes, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
DL Jul 28th 2008 12:23AM
I disagree that "a person can have too much healing so that they overheal more".
If something causes my hots (I actually use that silly draenai one more than once a night) to tick for more, I dont care if it means some of the heal gets wasted on my flashes or greater heals. Yes, balancing it with mana regen is important, but the idea of "too much healing" is silly. Your mana regen is either equal to your playstyle and encounters or its not, once it is, stack +heal like its going out of style.
Schadow Jul 28th 2008 1:04AM
In a completely fictional scenario, let's say your tank is getting hit for 4k damage. If your heal hits for 5k, then you could probably stand to lose a little +heal in favor of mana regen. That's what the author is talking about with regard to having too much +heal.
If your job is to toss HoTs everywhere, then that particular bit of advice probably doesn't apply so well to you. But if your job is to cover the spike damage with big heals, then your heal size should be appropriate to the task at hand.
Stacking any more +heal than your tank needs doesn't do much good, and can cause you not to have enough mana to continue lobbing those big heals by the end of the fight.
If you look at the extreme case - a person focussed entirely at +heal over any other stat, they will likely not have the mana regen or mana pool to last through a 10-minute fight. Therefore there must be some point between balance and extreme at which there is too much +heal.
Eisengel Jul 28th 2008 1:23AM
I think the stat/skill divide is definitely visible when healing. I think healers need to have possibly the most situational awareness, best class knowledge, and best view of party status out of any role. Your tank needs to look out to make sure he stays on the top of threat list and try to catch mobs that run for other party members... but the healer needs to know, in short, everything else going on.
There are definitely healers that lean on their gear. I leveled until about 50 to be sure I knew how to operate as Holy & ran heals for a few different instances. Recently while in heroic Arcatraz on my Spriest the MH priest got 1-shotted within the first few seconds of one of the 5-pulls of ethereals upstairs. I healed the party and kept everyone up in my shadow gear.
I've also been in kara groups where healers have gone down on the aggro wipe when Nightbane lands. In these cases I usually switch to heals and often heal better than the offhealer. I've seen healers watch the main tank's health fall and start casting a greater heal about a second before Nightbane fears... when I'm on the job and know a fear is coming up, I renew and shield the tank and if I'm quick enough pop a Prayer of Mending, then when I run back if I need to I can flash heal the tank once and be ready to start on greaters again. This usually does the trick even with my pitiful +900-ish healing in my shadow gear. I'm often surprised by number of Holy priests who don't cast HoTs or fast heals when they're about to be CCed.
Charlie Jul 28th 2008 1:36AM
If you have 'too much' +heal, stop using GH7, and use GH6 (for a priest). Downranking is the answer.
Less mana, less overhealing. Nice.
Also, you'll notice that most bt/hyjal healer's spam spell is a downranked spell. At least for priests. I spam GH2, as my healing isn't quite up there yet for GH1. If the is down more than 1k health, i let the heal land. Because GH2 costs so little, i dont care about overhealing iwth it, and i won't overeheal with it that much anyways.
Satorri Jul 28th 2008 8:05AM
Healing, as simply as I can put it, is a balance of three basic quantities (four if you go far enough):
Healing Power
Healing Stamina
and Healing Style
(#4 in case you're wondering is Healing Speed)
Healing Power is how much bulk healing you can spit out.
Healing Stamina is how long you can keep healing at the level required by the instance.
Healing Style is player skill and knowing how to get the heals where they're needed, when they're needed.
Style/skill is very important and gear won't give it to you no matter how good your gear.
Power and Stamina have to be balanced such that you can heal through the entire fight with heals big enough to match the requirements. This can be accomplished in many fashions but it is balance that is still needed, especially for priests.
Healing is unique in all the raid roles in that it is a product of necessity. Tanks have to survive and drive as much threat as is needed to out pace the dps required. More often than not, DPS just cranks as hard as they can (thus allowing for charts to have some meaning, and indication). Healing has to go where damage is taken, which as you go on is more spread out and more widespread. Tank healing is mind-numbingly easy, especially if you out-gear the instance. Being a good raid healer gets harder and harder as the raid damage rises.
Charts are only meaningful enough to gauge the efficiency and reflexes of your healers. Competing for the "top heals" is silly and self-defeating.
And, I have to say, if you're overhealing a lot, that's usually a matter of player skill and tactics, not +heal. You can downrank effectively, and cast/cancel to be more efficient in your delivery. In 25-mans this becomes key because you're actually working with a half-dozen other people, overlapping each other too much is wasteful and will end up with people dying if you don't vastly out-gear the instance.
Candina@WH Jul 28th 2008 8:59AM
There is such a thing as too much healing.
I took my Resto Shammy on a rep run for a guildie into Steam Vaults. I overhealed the group by over 100k. Because I was bored. I would cast my small, fast heal when the tank was down 1500, and heal for 3k.
I would throw a chain heal, and over heal the secondary targets by 2k apiece.
Yes, I could have down ranked my spells. In this case it was not really necessary as we blew through SV like a cannon through a feather pillow. It was messy, bits of naga everywhere. ;-) But if this was Gruuls? I would have wasted A LOT of mana for no reason.
He makes a valid point. He needs to also talk about spell selection. I ran a H Ramps with TWO Resto shammys (Mine and another). The other Resto was the healer, I was geared for DPS (such that I can-- btw, two earth sheilds ftw). But the other healer, who out geared my +300 heals couldn't keep the tank alive. The tank was undergeared for the Heroic, but the other healer would only use his big slow heal once the tank was down 20%. Needless to say, he needed to be spamming small heals to keep the undergeared tank alive. We ended up having to dual heal the undergeared tank, while I off DPSed.
Shadd Jul 28th 2008 12:07PM
@Schadow
Actually there is no such thing as too much +healing. If your heals hit for more than the tank gets hit for, the only thing that means is that you can downrank spells. Downranking spells means you are spending less mana per cast, which means you are more mana efficient. You can never have too much +healing although you need to be careful to balance it out with regen.
Harond Jul 28th 2008 1:04AM
Good stuff, I'm frequently trying to teach my guildies that +healing isn't an end-all/be-all stat for healing. Case in point, I was helping with a Kara run when a guildy wanted a relative to come along. His armory showed +1700 healing. Now, you'd think "great! bring him along" butI also checked his while-casting MP5 which was 57! No, I didn't leave out a number, fifty-seven. He also had some odd spec with more than 50 points in Holy. Hmm, looks like someone that will dump all his mana into CoH and go OOM rather fast.
While the raid values are good, you might want to mention that they're buffed stats, not unbuffed.
Cetha Jul 28th 2008 1:15AM
could you add some numbers for Kara to that list? My priest just hit 70 and I've been trying to find some +heal/+mp5 numbers to shoot for, while also just trying to get a sense of what works for me
DL Jul 28th 2008 3:23AM
Depends, to two heal kara comfortably, 1700 probably, a third healer only needs maybe 1100 (and this is how many of us got our gear, the charity of two healers who were better geared) mp5 wise, make sure you have a spec with full meditation. Maybe an mp5 of 150-200?
Chris Anthony Jul 28th 2008 10:52AM
+1700? Good Lord, no.
With an experienced group, you can probably start healing Kara at around +1100 healing; with a new group, you'll want it to be more like +1500. +1700 is overkill.
Throughout the spectrum, you'll probably want 150-200 casting MP5.
Chris Anthony Jul 28th 2008 10:53AM
...unless, DL, you're talking about buffed healing, in which case +1700 sounds a little more reasonable.
Cetha Jul 28th 2008 12:09PM
ah thanks for that Chris..I thought 1700 sounded a bit high..I feel much better now about 1200 unbuffed, though I need to work a lot more on my mp5
arcady0 Jul 28th 2008 1:29AM
Effective healing is so much more about player skill than +healing or any other gear.
I've routinely outperformed healers with as much as 1.5 times my healer's +heal. Not everyone mind you, but quite a few healers I used to group with were just plain slow on the trigger and not very effective at managing their mana and choice of spell or target.
I've seen shadow specc'd priests in raids who could outheal the holy priest in the same raid, without equiping healing gear.
And I've seen quite a few very well geared healers respond so slowly that their icon greys out as AFK in mid pull...
I have met some fast and well geared healers, but no more than I have met bad ones. You really always have to judge it by skill rather than gear or spec.
Karmakin Jul 28th 2008 1:56AM
There's a LOT of skill involved in healing. Reaction and judgment speed are what's at play. Who do I heal, what heal do I use, do I need to move first, etc, and how quickly that can be done.
I think skill might be just as or even more important than gear. However, this may be different for different classes. Honestly? I'd say that Druid healing is the most taxing, and offers the biggest skill gap. And Gift of the Earthmother, plus two new healing spells is going to make it even more so. (Actually, Gift of the Earthmother alone is going to create a huge skill chasm IMO).
Most gear dependent is probably the pally, I think. Shaman and Priest in the middle, with the Priest more complex.
But skill is really important and shouldn't be overlooked. How do you judge it? I'm not sure you can, other than the worst cases. But it's there and it's real.
obarthelemy Jul 28th 2008 3:59AM
Apart from knowing how to choose their gear, and have sufficient bonuses, and good gems/enchants, I expect good priests to:
- have a reasonnable template. i.e. my guild (Hyjal clean, BT@reliquary) still has at least one priest with un-improved Divine Spirit. That does not make any sense, whichever way you spin it
- have some healing-specific addons and macros. Grid + Clique for the sophisticated ones, Healbot or some such for the other ones. A shackling macro (with focus, and ccbreakwarner, for Malacrass for example), a heal [target=targettarget] macro, /stopcasting Greater Heals...
- use a wide range of healing spells. We recently guilded some priests that had been trained to spam Flash heals even on boss fights, 90% of their total healing was flashes. I'm not perfect there myself, I never ever use Binding heal. One spell too many for my small brain.
- also, and above all, be open to discussion, and at least mildly curious and willing to improve. I'm amazed so few priests actually look into healing per mana spent, and healing per cast time... and on top of that, that so few are willing to discuss the subject, and maybe change the way they heal. Our current Priest lead won't have anything to do with deranking...
- and at last, manage to remain aware of the fight, while healing like crazy ^^
Lenyssia Jul 28th 2008 4:07AM
As a priest, I don't think MP5 while casting should be the way to go in terms of mana regen. I believe spirit is the way to go.
Of course, this might very well depend on my playstyle, but I try to keep as mana efficient as possible, and I spend quite some time out of the five seconds rule.
I think spirit is worth a try if you find yourself spending a lot of time OO5SR, which is doable if you're not healing the tank.
Jane Gray Jul 28th 2008 7:48AM
A lot of priests are going to disagree with you here, this isn't pre-BC where you've got 10 other people helping you. Time you spend not healing is time you aren't helping the raid (and with the significant raid damage thats common in the current raid dungeons, especially as you get higher, that time might be fatal).
Jane GrAY Jul 28th 2008 4:31AM
These are more retroactive measure of a priest than a way to pick one for a kara or whatever but here you go: (lol I could write a whole article)
I've found that the healers I respect most are those that turn out to have been using the largest variety of spells with regularity. (this tends to be true across classes). This is especially true of priests. A priest that doesn't POM a lot (recount measures this now, sort of) loses my respect. A priest who isn't renewing, same. (its 1.5 seconds every so often, you can spare that for the tank regardless of what else you're doing)
For some stuff you are going to see a high % of flash heals. BUT, if someone is flashing a lot and the tank dies... that's a priest with mixed up priorities. Ignore overheals on COH-- its still the most mana efficient thing with an overheal of 40%.
The priest is arguably the most complex/difficult healer to play (druids are the only ones who get to argue with this, but with them I'd say the difficulty comes more from reflexes and timing and less from complexity) so you'll come across a lot of mediocre ones.
marj Jul 28th 2008 4:41AM
Let's keep in mind that mp5 numbers listed on your character window do not necessarily reflect your true mp5. That number does not take into account regen trinkets such as Redeemer's Alchemist Stone (increased effect from mana potions), Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon (chance to allow 100% mp5 while casting for 15sec), and use effect trinkets which increase your spirit (Bangle, Earring, etc....)