Spiritual Guidance: Is Greater Heal on Life Support?
by Matt Low 
Jan 25th 2009 at 8:00PM
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. Is the Priest usage of Greater Heal fading away? Matticus shall answer!
An excellent thread on Plus Heal has caught my attention and it's a topic that's also been picked up by Kestrel.
It's about the current use of Greater Heal (or lack thereof).
Check your meters. Specifically, check your cast sequences. See if you can determine how often you use Greater Heal on a typical night. If you're a player who uses it often, I applaud you. From a mathematical and healing efficiency stand point, Greater Heal has the edge.
Under lab conditions.
Except raid environments aren't lab conditions. Let's go into detail about when Greater Heal is used in Discipline and Holy after the break.
HolySurge of Light is one of the talents that have given Priests a reason to use Flash Heal.
Two reasons:
- Free: Does not place Priests into the 5 second rule. Does not trigger in combat Mana Regen.
- Instant: Possible to wait until the last possible moment to cast it.
Perfect for sniping them pesky Resto Shamans, right?
The side effect of this is that as one spell's use rises, the other falls. During the Burning Crusade, Greater Heal was the single target heal of choice. But with the various changes and bonuses to Flash Heal, Priests will opt to use more of that.
Having points invested in Improved Holy Concentration hastens a Greater Heal or a Flash Heal cast. This drops Greater Heal down to about a 2.1 cast and Flash Heal to ~1.0 second cast.
The Flash Heal glyph gives even more incentive for Priests to use Flash Heal. It knocks off 10% of the mana cost rendering the heal per second and heal per mana cost almost the same as Greater Heal. So if you're trying to manage your mana, it allows you to control it that much better!
Unfortunately, there is no Greater Heal glyph. If there is, it might result in more uses. What effects would a Greater Heal glyph do?
- A minor stacking spellpower increase to healing spells
- Chance to increase haste on next spell
- Increased critical strike chance
I'm not the most imaginative. But it is a start.
Discipline
A neat trick (or staple) I like to use is a Shield, a Penance and a Greater Heal. The Penance does not consume the Borrowed Time effect which means the Greater Heal can be pulled off in a little over 2 seconds.
I know that as a raiding Disc Priest in my guild, I find myself often staying within the 5 second rule. I don't queue up Greater Heals as much as I'd like to since the tank I'm healing doesn't take much damage (usually).
Now Flash Heal does offer a feeling of control in a raid environment. You can hit more targets with Flash Heal then with Greater Heal.
Let's put it another way.
You may not whack a mole as hard. But you can whack more of them within a same period of time.
There's also the server lag issue to take into account.
Set bonus
The 4 piece set bonus for Faith reduces the cost of Greater Heal by 5%. I personally don't find the bonus that great because I don't use Greater Heal often enough to justify it. 5% off of 1050 is 51 mana. Most Priests I know do not run into mana problems since they're either deep Discipline or deep Holy.
When is a good time to use Greater Heal?
That's a loaded question. Let me give you a real raid example of how and when I use Greater Heal. Remember that I am a Discipline Priest and your mileage may vary.
Let's say that it takes 3 decent sized hits for the Megatron raid boss to kill our main tank. I also know that the amount my Greater Heal can heal for can mitigate a hit from Megatron.
Use Greater Heal if it means the tank won't die within the cast time. So if Megatron is one hit away from killing your tank, it's a bad idea to use it because your tank might not live long enough. In most cases, you won't be the only healer on the tank.
To hammer the point home further, Greater Heal shines if you're the only healer on a tank. This means you're at the point where it is not possible for other healers to cross heal your tank because the encounter is that stressing.
In a non-raid environment, I find myself using Greater Heal more frequently in certain heroic instances.
Maybe it's the encounter
Maybe it's just a little more convenient for Priests to use Flash Heal instead on present encounters. I remember running Karazhan with T5 and up gear. I got lazy and just flashed more often because my regeneration allowed me to do that. I have a hunch that may be the case here for some players.
In the grand scheme of things, we have just started raiding. The only direction our health pools can go is up. Feral Druid tanks are breaking the 50k health barrier. As instances become harder, I suspect Greater Heal will see increased usage.
Either that, or raid groups are stacking way more healers then are necessary. An entry level raid will pack 6-7 healers. A group with Naxx on farm will be equipped with 5-6. I would say 4 healers, but I have never been able to successfully heal a heroic Patchwerk with under 5 healers (20% was the closest for me).
In any case, the use of Greater Heal may be dying. But I don't believe it's quite dead.
All hail Megatron!
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 out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries!Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
TheAdamant Jan 25th 2009 8:13PM
As a Discipline priest, I only use Greater Heal out of combat to top off our tank. Penance, Flash Heal, and our fascinating little Shields of Returned Death have been more than enough for me to keep our tank (and raid) alive.
Mind you, I'm only in five mans and ten mans.
I dislike the Holy tree for the sake of I'm obsolete in comparison to the Druid and Shaman I'm often healing with. Sure, my healing is the lowest, but I've probably saved more than enough people with my shields on Grobulus and Thaddius. (Go six thousand damage absorption!)
Discipline all the way, it's how I manage to maintain my position as a healer. Shield-Priests FTW.
TheAdamant Jan 25th 2009 8:19PM
I apparently got off-topic. . . Whoops. Long story short, Greater Heal is far too slow, even talented. Sorries. D:
Wyred Jan 25th 2009 9:14PM
No need to be sorry. As a deep holy priest, I've found things a bit topsy-turvy since Wrath. In TBC one of our guild holy priests mentored me, and a point that was hammered home was 'don't use flash heal unless you need to'.
Point was, it may have been fast, but GH healed for more, CoH healed more people, renew was more efficient. Now, CoH has a cd, renew is less efficient if FH is glyphed (I'm assuming you've all glyphed it), and GH returns mean you might as well use 2 FH's rather than risk the tank dying in between heals, there's not much difference. So we holy priests what, flash heal everything?
Remember, Holy doesn't have the mana returns, shields or penance that disc does, or the haste. With the CoH nerf the only thing we do have is a 7 sec cd on PoM to put us above disc priests. Doesn't seem to cut it imo. The tactics that put us above noob healers before (stopcasting, cheating the 5 sec rule) just don't seem to matter in these fights.
Sorry for venting on wowinsider, but I'm really beginning to feel like a TBC-era ret pally.
Ever Jan 25th 2009 10:43PM
Well, Wyred has basically listed the reasons I've switched to disc this week.
My first reaction to the CoH nerf was, phew I've not become so dependent on it that i've forgotten how to heal. I'll admit it had become a staple of my healing, especially after raiding Black Temple where a lot of encounters were very suited to it. While I can see the reasons for changing the spell to a smart heal (encounter design) and can understand that adding that mechanic to an already fast and spammable heal was probably too much I now feel blizzard have tweaked it to the point where they don't really know what it's supposed to be for anymore. They have turned a situational party healing tool into a boring "top up the raid" button.
So okay, I'm not a fan of CoH now. What else does Holy give me? A shorter cooldown on PoM (quite nice but it never felt essential) a bunch of procs (surge of light, holy concentration) which I have very little control over and are therefore wasted half the time and bigger heals which really just leads to overhealing once you have halfway decent gear. I looked at all of that and the way that spirit now seems overshadowed by intellect-based mana regeneration effects and I thought: If I'm going to be a flash heal spammer, I might as well be a fast one and I might as well have some extra shields and buffs.
I've been far more impressed by the new PVE-capable disc talents than I expected to be, however I feel sorry for those who love their raid healing holy priest and aren't as excited as me about becoming a shield throwing priestadin. Many people have claimed that priests are the obvious healing class and should therefore be the best healers, this would obviously cause major problems and upset the other healing players. I really hope Blizzard can bring the Holy spec back to it's former glory because I think offering priests the choice of two distinct healing styles might be the answer to making them the ultimate healers many people expect them to be without creating game balance issues.
Flackbash Jan 25th 2009 8:30PM
I'm a disc/holy hybrid (Improved DS + CoH), so pre-casting Greater Heal is the only way to go on many boss fights where I'm the main-tank healer (yeah, you, Patchwerk), and cancelling if the tank's hasn't taken damage during that time.
Since the CoH nerf, I do find that I'm using Flash Heal more often, but mostly while CoH is on cooldown, for raid-healing.
I will say that when I was specced deep disc with Penance, I wasn't using Greater Heal nearly as much as I do now.
SJames Jan 25th 2009 9:01PM
For raiding (Holy) priests, these are dark times, and I haven't logged onto mine since raiding twice after the patch.
With the cool-down, Circle of Healing (CoH) is now a very different spell. Generally, it is cast on rotation and it heals for such a small amount, it is almost irrelevant in saving anyone's life. While making the healing meter look ok, it really doesn't create as much "value" as it appears. Despite being a 41-point talent, it is now a very second-rate spell, even if it contributes 30 - 40% of a Priest's healing.
If we want to accomplish the main task of a healing (saving a player's life), we really have to rely on Flash Heals. In most cases, (even with haste) Greater Heal takes way too long to land. As a result, we are now pretty much a Flash Heal spamming class, embedded within a ritualistic rotation Prayer of Mending and CoH. Renew, binding heal, Prayer of Healing can be useful at times, but are fairly marginal in a raiding environment except for very specific circumstances.
Note -- I'm not arguing to reincarnate CoH as before, but just to say that (holy) priest healing, while not "broken", is lackluster and uninteresting.) I know that there has been mention of new exciting things for priests, but quite honestly, my past experience with Blizzard's understanding of priest issues leaves me somewhat skeptical. Priests have heard this before.
Heleriath Jan 25th 2009 9:17PM
@ SJames
most of the time I just can't seem to get my head around what people are complaining about priests for, but I've just known that I've been very dissatisfied with my time spent raiding.
you hit the nail on the head brother, maybe will get something fun coming at us soon.
vern Jan 25th 2009 9:23PM
From the moment downranking was removed from the game, Greater heal was gone.I barely use it besides Patchwerk.
The future of the holy priest is instant casting !
AyaJulia Jan 25th 2009 10:02PM
Greater Heal is just way too slow for me to use anymore. I used to do the whole /stopcasting dance, but the moment I cut that crap out and started spamming Flash, I became a much, much better healer.
As others have said, I only use GH out of combat.
SJames pretty much nailed it with "we are now pretty much a Flash Heal spamming class, embedded within a ritualistic rotation Prayer of Mending and CoH." PoM is about the only thing that makes me glad I'm a priest at all.
neadamthal Jan 25th 2009 10:21PM
i have to agree. i was asked to respec holy from disc for naxx25 the other night and was not casting GH at all. with so many other healers by the time GH is finished casting, the tank is back to full HP, so it's better to throw a FH in there and help out some.
discipline (even with its stacking issues, bugs, low standing on heal meters, and group healing limitations) is a much more satisfying spec for me. i may not show up with big heals but i keep my assignments alive. i find holy healing clunky, monotonous, and lack-lustre.
i am crossing my fingers that blizz will do some good for the class in general in 3.1. but i would LOVE to see the disc issues dealt with, and holy given a new play style. i am going to stay discipline for the forseeable future, even with its issues.
Medved Jan 25th 2009 11:14PM
I have a few questions for you Matt:
1. Thoughts on what the "exciting changes" to priests in 3.1 will be? I've heard that they wanted to make healing more fun...could this be it?
2. Now that you're disc, whats your stand between the two specs? Will we be seeing a comparison post?
3.The first hero class (dk) basically solved the tank shortage so the next hero class will probably solve the healer shortage. Any speculations on what it might be? Since dk is tank/dps viable in all specs, i think the healer one will be too, so I'm think the Keeper class mentioned before, or the shadow hunter class with wowwiki saying that they "walk the line between darkness and light" and can cast curses and heals on a whim.
Thoughts and comments on any this? As always, keep up the fantastic work!
Hisevondil Jan 25th 2009 11:39PM
COH has been made totally useless by this "nerf". I don't even bother casting it anymore because I get more healing out of a hasted flash heal than any coh can do. They didn't nerf it, Blizz destroyed it.
VSUReaper Jan 26th 2009 1:06AM
Granted, I'm still leveling (74 atm) but I'm deep disc and the only time I bother to cast greater heal is when I make a point of letting the tank get below 40%. Other than that, penance and flashes are more than enough to top people off.
VSUReaper Jan 26th 2009 1:21AM
I think something that no one has mentioned yet, except Matt in the actual post, flash heal is faster, therefor reducing the chance that the other healer is going to snipe heal your targets.
Many a times back in T5 content, the 2 paladins were always sniping my targets, making the majority of my heals useless overhealing and making me look like a terrible healer.
I dont know if this is still happening or not, but I think it is still a reason why we are using the faster heals.
Anid Maro Jan 26th 2009 2:30AM
I haven't hit raid content yet, but I'm thinking I might be cutting down on GHeal a lot in the near future. I mean, I'm level 76 and the thing hits for at least 7K and crits for over 10K! That's at least half of a tank's health bar for a crit, it's friggin' huge.
Feels like I'm playing "How low can you go?" whenever I'm healing with GHeal, which happens to scare my friend (a warrior) who frequently pops Shield Wall or Last Stand. I'm starting to think I should just FHeal and save my buddy a cooldown.
Banaoil Jan 26th 2009 3:10AM
Can't I just spec into MT healer, or Raid healer?
I don't like being crappy at both.
AOE heals? Jesus beam.
Tank heals? Better have a pally.
The only thing I can heal is my party. PoH rocks for that.
Can you change the set bonus to 5 or 10% haste on a gheal? Then I would shank someone for my fourth piece.
I would like to see more complexity in the healing. Mitigation options or a channeled CoH would rock. Heals for x per sec for as long as you keep the link. Any channeled heal or mitigation would pretty much rock.
What about diversion instead of mitigation. x% of damage will be deflected from target onto the 3 closest friendly targets.
Drop a power world shield bubble on the ground like a dk anti magic shield for a disc talent. Give a greater shield, or a specific school shield, only taught by quest or glyph. Hooray class quests!
Would love for a lfg discusion to go:
are you a holy prizzle?
Yah fo sheezy.
Wut spec?
GHeal.
OHNOES we needs shield/flash/channel spec LATERS.
I just want to be able to personalize my priest so that I heal my way, and the next holy priest that comes along can control damage in an equal and different way.
As it is now, I push as many buttons as a mage. Don't make my class a 3 button chump.
Oops. Ramble.
Turtlehead Jan 26th 2009 5:56AM
"What about diversion instead of mitigation. x% of damage will be deflected from target onto the 3 closest friendly targets."
You might want to go into hiding. There are now an awful lot of rogues looking to kill you in your sleep.
Madokachan Jan 26th 2009 3:19AM
I switched to Disc since I read the news about CoH will have cd last year, and very happy about it.
First of it's more fun, Penance is fun and now in 3.08 Bliz's changed it so you don't need to face the right way to heal with Penance anymore, used to be harder because it's like you cast damage spell, you have to face the target. Now when you cast Penance your character will rotate to the right way. :) love it!
It just so many things you have to track with Disc style, shield debuff, grace, agis, Power Infuse, Pain Suppression on your raid members on top of usual Holy tracking PoM, Renew, I have to set up my Grid almost every corners has 4 tracking marks :P
Don't talk about meter coz we'll never be on top in 25 man(coz if you top it, it's kinda wrong) and in 10 man if it's only 2 healers,.... well you're second lol.
Once I respec to Holy to heal, I feel so weird coz my heal is kinda slow...... very slow.... I missed my Borrowed Time'd 1sec(or lower) FH
And on the topic, I rarely rarely cast GH now, why you need GH when Penance do the job faster, less mana and with style! when my Penance is on cd I just use FH to keep topping my target up.
now I'm considering getting Shadow set shoulder coz its stats are more Disc orient and I don't really need set bonus. :)
Begemotike Jan 26th 2009 4:33AM
Apparently, I'm the only person reading this who doesn't feel this way. I use Greater Heal on a very regular basis, because I find that I heal best if I am pre-emptively healing for damage that is going to come. As a result, nothing, for me, does a better job of quickly topping off a tank or party member when they get severely whacked by a boss and I need to buy myself a moment to heal them, and then heal another member of the party.
Maybe this is because I simply never found CoH that much. My bread and butter are renew, flash of light, prayer of mending, and greater heal.
As someone who has only ever played healers, I still find a holy specced priest to be the most enjoyable as a party specific healing member.
Esk Jan 26th 2009 4:56AM
The choice between GH and FH depends a lot of the boss fight.
For Patchwerk for example, I'm using GH 99% of the fight. We usually have 2 healers / tank in 25man. The tanks take steady, calculated hits. If I start my GH when the tank / OT is 100%, it will land just when he got damage, thus topping him again. And so on.
For highly dynamic bosses (where the raid repositions a lot, or where a lot of the raid members take damage), it's mainly FH + prayer of mending + some AoE heal (QQ for CoH nerf).
All in all, for MT healing I usually use GH (since MT is crit-immune, he takes steady damage, I know he won't die on the 2-2.4 secs of my cast time, and when GH lands it gives a nice big heal).
For raid healing it's FH + mending + AoE healing.