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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsSpiritual Guidance: Don't be that priest
by Matt Low 
Oct 20th 2009 at 6:00PM
Every week (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 No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. Ever wonder what separates good priests and thoughtful priests to downright annoying priests and careless priests?
This week's post is inspired by a post about shamans I read the other week from Healing Way. It was about typical things that shamans sometimes do which they should not do. Just for kicks, I felt like compiling a similar list for priests.So without further adieu, don't be that priest:
...Who blows Hymn of Hope when everyone's mana is topped (or is too far away). Your raid frames are up aren't they? My frames are set to display the mana bars of everyone in the raid. Browse through it and check once in a while to determine if it really is needed. If the mana's still full, there's no sense in using it.
...Who is way off on Pain Suppression or Guardian Spirit cooldowns. I admit, coordinating cooldowns with big attacks can be tough to do. You're too worried about healing the raid and sometimes you might be off from dropping a defensive cooldown on the player who needs it the most. This used to be me.
...Who never dispels on a fight like Hodir. When I play on my alts, it continuously pains me to see players stuck in Frost Nova or in a constant state of fear when such effects can be easily removed. Priests have an AoE dispel at their disposal. It's not difficult to point and use it. Sometimes a simple Dispel Magic can be more important than a heal.
...Who Power Infuses melee. I saw a priest cast Power Infusion on a ret paladin once. Please don't do it. There's other casters who will benefit more from it.
...Who Pain Suppresses a tank with an extremely minor threat lead. This is frustrating. I understand that some tanks take a huge beating and you can't bite back the urge to drop a cooldown on them. It's even worse when they have such a colossal time generating threat. Keep an eye on your threat meter for this one. If there's a DPS that's just under the tank, a simple Pain Suppression could tip that DPS player over and cause a bunch of problems.
...Who drops the Psychic Scream fear bomb on trash when there is no need to do so. There is absolutely no need to fear on trash. Raid groups should have plenty of crowd control already without a priestly need to fear. By screaming, who knows where the feared mobs will run to, right? They could pick up even more trash mobs. Or worse, they could yank the boss over. Do yourself a favor and don't voluntarily fear unless your raid leader green lights you to do so.
...Who comes into the raid completely devoid of candles in their bags to buff. I make an effort to keep a stack of 60 candles on my priest at all times. There are times when I've run out mid raid and it's embarrassing. It also sucks when you have to cast 50 individual buffs (between Fortitude and Spirit).
...Who just stands there. Do something! Heal! Dispel! Look productive! Don't stand there and look AFK! Run around and keep players alive!
...Who forgets to Fade when new mobs crop up. Whoops! I pulled threat once on an incoming mob. Fade is your friend. In fact, keep hitting fade every chance it becomes available. Watch as your survivability increases.
...Who forgets to activate Inner Fire. It's an extra spell power buff. Have it keybound to something handy and convenient. For me, I like to use Shift C. Don't ask why. It just happens to work out.
...Who loves to jump into melee range of trash mobs and Holy Nova spam. Don't be like me. I once ran into a group of trash after the tank gained aggro on them all thinking I would be safe. I figured I could keep shelling out Holy Nova and do some damage as well as heal right? Well 3 seconds later, I found myself face planted on the ground. Turns out those mobs like to whirlwind. I learned my lesson and kept my DPS to a distance.
...Who like to chain Levitate people especially when triggering Anub'arak. This is actually really annoying. And yes the debuff is removable by clicking it. Still, it does irritate people especially those who can't click it off if their UI doesn't display it. There's no real reason to levitate the entire raid. Doing it to run across the ocean is one thing. But don't do this crap during raids.
...Who don't remember to buff Fortitude after someone gets back up during mid combat. When players are dead, their buffs are wiped. When they get resurrected mid combat, they're going to be weak. It causes me to lose precious time when I try to look for them on my frames. I just slam Prayer of Fortitude and rebuff everyone in the raid to guarantee they've been hit.
...Who forgets they have anti-disease spells. So we've got two dispels. One removes magic and another removes disease. Keep it bound on your bars. I like to have Dispel as my E key, Mass Dispel as my Ctrl E key, and Abolish Disease as my Shift E key.
...Who continues to heal after a wipe has been called. You're slowing the raid down! Your leader just called for everyone to die! Stop healing and wasting time! Run to the nearest fire and die!
...Who doesn't realize they have mana potions and flasks for tough encounters. Unprepared raiders who are tackling bosses without the necessary consumables? What's up with that? Get some flasks when you're working on progression stuff. You might not need mana potions now, but it's better to have it just in case you do.
...Who never heals hunter pets. Want to really stand out from the rest? Have some pet frames shown. Watch as hunters lovingly gaze at you as Spot The Wolf manages to live.
...Who doesn't DPS during burn phases. If it's a straight up max DPS phase, don't simply stand there twiddling your thumbs waiting for someone to take damage. Be proactive and start healing. Chances are, your raid is alive. Take the time to pile on some DPS.
...Who DPS's when they shouldn't. Know when is not a good time to DPS. Stop tossing Holy Fires when the raid is taking massive AoE damage.
...Who fails to use Fear Ward when it is known there are mobs that fear. This is me. I sometimes forget to use Fear Ward. I'm a Dwarf too! I've had access to this spell since forever! Don't be like me! Make notes on which bosses fear and use it then. Faction Champions is a great time to use it.
...Who rolls on hit gear with no intent on ever DPSing. Don't rob another player in your raid of gear that they will use. If you're a healer for life, stay that way.
...Who rolls on PvP gear without future plans of setting foot into battlegrounds or arena. Again, same thing as above. Give it to the players who intend to PvP.
What else would you add to this list?
(Thanks for your help, Wyn!)
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
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 6)
obarthelemy Oct 21st 2009 4:40AM
As a side note, for healing, buffing, and decursing.... Grid shows it all.
I find it much much more convenient to have just one addon instead af several. Plus, it's very easy to have important debuffs (Jaraxxus's Incinerate flesh, Snobolled!... prominently displayed as an icon inside the player's health bar.
Combine it with Clique, and you can do all your healing, buffing, and decursing with the mouse. Mine has 8 buttons, which just covers all heals, and I use button+modifier for buffing and decursing. It's incredibly convenient to have you left-hand fingers not moving at all, but fixed on the move +modifyer keys, and doing everything with the mouse, in one single step.
Azgoth Oct 20th 2009 7:05PM
One more thing to add- Healers who spam heal a warlock through every single life tap - fair do's in a fight but above say 75% I dont need your heals - conserve your mana.
Ekin Oct 20th 2009 7:22PM
To be fair on any fight with random damage flung around its near impossible for a healer to notice the difference between your lifetap and that 5K-10K random fireball. Also depending on the fight the section of your health bar that's just been eaten may mean life or death for you, rule of thumb if the healers mana looks fine be thankful if they are almost OOM and wasting mana on your lifetap that's an entirely different matter.
Prime example razorscale most locks that lifetap basically look exactly like they just got nailed by one of the fire balls (or two) and thus will receive a heal if its like patchwerk i probably wont waste my time :-p
Celeane Oct 20th 2009 7:29PM
As far as I'm concerned, you get a Renew and if you kill yourself before it heals you, it's your problem :-)
crispsnotchips Oct 20th 2009 7:12PM
I'm gonna disagree with #15. Back before 3.1, when guilds would mention that they had Sarth 3d down while recruiting, and I was still playing a feral tank me and some friends ventured into Naxx. Despite all of us having the most baseline gear needed for naxx10, we got to KT with minimal difficulties... aside from KT himself. 2nd attempt we lost everyone except for myself (OT) and our healer (I believe it was a holy pally, but can't quite remember). A wipe was called, but I picked up KT and the healer managed to keep me up through both KT and his adds for quite a while. I finally went down when KT was sitting at around 25k health. While #15 is correct in saying that we held up the raid, the fact that we got so close to downing KT with nothing but a tank and healer, and how the rest of our raid was cheering us on (I still remember being called a "beast of a tank" after we lost, even though all props go to the healer) makes me less likely to follow it like the law. I guess it really all depends on how hopeless the situation really is, and how your raid leader or raid itself feels about you taking some time to keep the fight going.
I play a Priest now, either holy or disc depending on what we need, and you can be sure I'll do the same thing that the holy pally did for me.
Alithoe Oct 21st 2009 3:46AM
This is the reason I don't call wipes on my guild anymore. Whenever I think to, I just end up wasting my breath and we pull a kill out of nowhere. We did a KT kill from 25% to dead with two healers, two dps and our tank. When the OT died I was ready to call it, but I'm glad we didn't.
Now that's not to say you should always keep healing when things look grim. When a wipe is obvious (e.g. 3/4+ of a raid is dead, though it depends on the fight) you should keep in mind that the more you heal, the more damage the person you're healing is going to take. More damage taken by the player means more durability damage taken by the armor.
Please, wipe responsibly.
Rollo Oct 21st 2009 4:18AM
Not wiping when you're told might save time one day and waste time another day. But it's up to the raid leader to make that call and it's disrespectful to ignore him.
Zenith Oct 21st 2009 9:50AM
As a warlock that tries to hellfire suicide hellfire when a wipe is called I can't even begin to say how annoying this is - you just screwed me over with a repair bill
If you deny us this then the spell is completely useless!
Clevins Oct 21st 2009 12:55PM
First off, it's rude to the raid leader to ignore a wipe call. Do it in my raids and you'll get booted. Wanna make those calls? Become the RL.
Second, depending on the fight it can be faster to wipe, run back, rebuff and just do it over. Sometimes not. I'm often thinking of that when I decide on a wipe. KT, with that annoying trash event, might not be one of those fights though. But it's annoying for the rest of the raid to sit there for 10 minutes dead while some people indulge themselves. Remember... you're part of a team.
Zanathos Oct 21st 2009 7:25PM
This isn't really a good example, as you still failed to kill KT. Did you get close? Great. Would it have been quicker to just wipe with everyone else and get to the next attempt? Yes. If your usual raid leader is too quick to give up and call for a wipe, then that's something you might want to open a dialogue with him about. If a wipe is called for, at least half the people alive are probably going to listen. Making it even less likely you're going to succeed by pushing on. The correct way to handle this would be to wipe it up, and then suggest something along the lines of "hey, i think we might have still had a shot there, maybe we could try to push longer before wiping it." The incorrect way is what you did.
Jespar Oct 20th 2009 7:23PM
Does spamming levitate on Anub in 25 man ToC count? ... I do have a macro to spam levitate on a specific warlock in the raid (when it's a farm boss, sometimes i try to keep him from the top of the meters).
not gonna lie, I have been guilty of some of those things but never during a progression boss or a boss that we have any issues whatsoever.... then again half our raids members are drunk during the last half of raid time.
Absoli Oct 20th 2009 7:33PM
...Who like to chain Levitate people especially when triggering Anub'arak
While it is not Anub'arak, there is a valid point to chain levitate during the NRB encounter in ToC. If the snobolds tossing fire around target a levitated person, the fire does not spawn at all. Of course in a way this is kind of counter productive as it helps condition people to not run out of the fire as they should but it is helpful in surviving if necessary.
GI_Prophet Oct 20th 2009 7:37PM
I have very nice and pretty raid frames set up just how I like them. And hunter pets are not on there. If the pets are taking enough damage that the hunter can't heal them himself/herself then that means the rest of the raid is taking damage also. I supposed I could put the pets in a corner on my screen, but the most they would get would be a renew once in a blue moon.
Also I remember having mana issues attempting XT hardmode a long time ago, shortly after even more mana regen nerfs. I was fine as long as I didn't have to dps, if I tried to dps on the heart phase I was already oom near the end of the fight.
vocenoctum Oct 20th 2009 7:52PM
Something again, not specific to Holy Priests, but...
When healing, remember to switch out of DPS gear...
Dysmorphia Oct 20th 2009 7:59PM
And if you've been killing time in a BG while waiting for the raid or sitting for a boss, for Elune's sake remember to switch out your PvP trinket.
Candina@WH Oct 21st 2009 7:14AM
I healed 1/2 of H TOC in my PVP gear. I could NOT figure out why I was OOM so early....
brucethebest Oct 20th 2009 8:01PM
lol I read this as "Don't be a priest" for some odd reason 0.o
ummeiko Oct 20th 2009 8:02PM
Don't be the priest who forgets to take care of himself--
- Who still has his healthstone in his bags after every wipe.
- Who doesn't talent Desperate Prayer but always seems to "get gibbed".
- Who won't use a health potion, even when mana is of no concern.
- Who is so intent on healing EVERYONE ELSE that he doesn't realize he's standing in fire.
Don't be the priest who forgets we can offensively dispel too. And not just pally bubbles.
Rollo Oct 21st 2009 4:23AM
If mana is no concern, I'd rather heal myself than chug a health pot. I'd rather use a binding heal than use that health stone as well.
I wish those stones gave health and mana btw.
crsh Oct 20th 2009 8:03PM
Hahaha.. oh my, way too many point there where I went "oops, I did that.. about a million times", way more than I'd like to admit.
I'm a bad priest.
You know what's worse than a bad priest? A bad priest who insists he/she's a good priest, there's way too many of those around.