Spiritual Guidance: Ghostcrawler on priests
by Dawn Moore 
Feb 28th 2010 at 9:00PM
There was a great priest thread on the official World of Warcraft healing forums late last week. The thread caps at 30 pages, then spills into another thread for further discussion. The original post is from a priest who also heals as a druid, and is currently unhappy with the state of priests in Icecrown Citadel. The poster asks for in-depth feedback from other priests with healing alts who are happy with the priest class in ICC.
The thread remains on topic and doesn't get too trolly before Ghostcrawler steps in on page 7 and gives a simple breakdown of how he plays priest. He remains in the thread for quite some time and provides readers with a good insight on how he and Blizzard feel about various aspects of priests at this time. If you missed this thread, I will be summarizing the highlights of what Ghostcrawler said and providing some of my own thoughts and analysis.
Before I start quoting large chunks of blue text, I want to quickly explain why I want to break down Ghostcrawler's posts. First, beyond just giving advice, I'd like to keep everyone informed on class developments for priests. I've said before that the game is constantly changing and that players need to be adaptable; keeping up with the developers comments is just another way to stay informed. In this case, I felt that Ghostcrawler subtly touched on a mindset of healing that is steadily becoming a lost art, and I really wanted WoW.com readers to see his perspective and try to understand it. I have no doubt that Ghostcrawler himself is a skilled priest, and being so close to the community and development team puts him in an advantageous position to understand priests on a level we can't. While his lips are probably sealed on some matters, what he does provide is good food for thought.
Ghostcrawler -- How does GC play priest? What does he like and dislike?I won't give you a video, but I'll explain to you how I do it.
Disc: PoM on cooldown. PW:S as much as you can (esp. on the Arcane mage until 3.3.3). Use Penance often when you need burst. Resort to PoH if a lot of people need healing at once, especially in 10-player raids where you don't have a lot of other healers to pick up the slack. Keep Pain Suppression and Divine Hymn for emergencies. Use Power Infusion on a mage or lock if you don't need it.
Holy: PoM on cooldown. CoH on cooldown if there is any raid damage. Renew to handle the rest of the raid damage. Flash Heal if someone is still low after all of that. Save GS and Divine Hymn for emergencies or timed boss cooldowns. I tend to use Binding Heal a lot more than most priests because it makes me feel smart, especially when globals are in question.
What I like: Feeling smart when I mix the right tool with the right problem. Saving lives when someone thought they were dead. Sitting there at full mana halfway through a fight because I didn't heal when I didn't need to. Penance in general. Body and Soul. Borrowed Time. Serendipity.
What I don't like: Using CoH so much. Dealing with Weakened Soul (esp. as Holy). Lightwell. Seeing priests die. (In all honesty I don't die a lot, but I see Spirits of Redemption constantly. I guess as a sweeping generalization, priests have the stare-at-Grid syndrome worse than other healers.) Blowing 3 candles every wipe. Looking like a mage if I pick the wrong gear.
Disc: PoM on cooldown. PW:S as much as you can (esp. on the Arcane mage until 3.3.3). Use Penance often when you need burst. Resort to PoH if a lot of people need healing at once, especially in 10-player raids where you don't have a lot of other healers to pick up the slack. Keep Pain Suppression and Divine Hymn for emergencies. Use Power Infusion on a mage or lock if you don't need it.
Holy: PoM on cooldown. CoH on cooldown if there is any raid damage. Renew to handle the rest of the raid damage. Flash Heal if someone is still low after all of that. Save GS and Divine Hymn for emergencies or timed boss cooldowns. I tend to use Binding Heal a lot more than most priests because it makes me feel smart, especially when globals are in question.
What I like: Feeling smart when I mix the right tool with the right problem. Saving lives when someone thought they were dead. Sitting there at full mana halfway through a fight because I didn't heal when I didn't need to. Penance in general. Body and Soul. Borrowed Time. Serendipity.
What I don't like: Using CoH so much. Dealing with Weakened Soul (esp. as Holy). Lightwell. Seeing priests die. (In all honesty I don't die a lot, but I see Spirits of Redemption constantly. I guess as a sweeping generalization, priests have the stare-at-Grid syndrome worse than other healers.) Blowing 3 candles every wipe. Looking like a mage if I pick the wrong gear.
Most of Ghostcrawler's statements from this thread do stand on their own, so I'm mostly going to be providing commentary. In this instance I get two ideas from his words. The first is that Ghostcrawler does not necessarily have a set raid role, and wherever he does raid he's flexible to swap around to what the raid needs. This really is the greatest strength of priests, and I admire any raid team that understands each fight doesn't always work under the model that X class takes Y role, and swapping around a flexible class like a priest is an excellent way to let your other healers play that specific, focused role. Even I don't have that level of understanding going for me in my own guild.
My second impression is that Ghostcrawler doesn't play too aggressively. What I mean by aggressive healing is excessive heal sniping with the goal of topping an HPS meter. I have often tried to stress to players how HPS meters do not matter, and the people who do place so much emphasis on them (both healers and non-healers) seem to want to use them as proof that a player is good. Want to know one way to top an HPS meter? Heal the targets with the least priority in the raid so you can get full heals off with minimal overhealing. Sure, you're healing targets that need to get healed (and probably would be healed by HoTs if you hadn't sniped the damage) but are you helping your raid by ignoring the damage being fired onto the tank or melee or some warlock who walks into goo all the time? I'm not saying it's wrong to heal targets with lesser priority, in fact, Frostheim repeatedly reminds me to heal his pet, but I want to make an example of how an HPS meter can be cheesed by aggressive players and is not necessarily an indication of smart, helpful healing.
Ghostcrawler -- Priests are no longer "masters of healing."The shaman description says they can tank too. You used to be level 60. Onyxia and Bolvar used to stand in Stormwind. MMOs change.
As a general strategy, I would steer against any post that is going to lead to smart players dismissing your thread as QQ and moving on. Those are the exact players you want posting in your thread. Don't scare them away.
As a general strategy, I would steer against any post that is going to lead to smart players dismissing your thread as QQ and moving on. Those are the exact players you want posting in your thread. Don't scare them away.
This fits with the "adapt to how your class changes over time" idea I've talked about. In general, I still do think priests are masters of healing, it's just that we're not masters from the perspective that we are all you need. A paladin might do single-target better, a druid might do raid better, a shaman might do AoE healing better, but we do everything 2nd best. There is nothing wrong with being 2nd at everything - it makes us very employable in any raid team. That is of course, if your raid isn't willfully ignorant. If that's the case, look for greener pastures. If you are a skilled priest you shouldn't put up with being told you're worthless. This segues into:
Ghostcrawler -- Holy priest AoE Healing isn't astounding.Holy's AE healing is fantastic. If there's an "I'm the AE guy!", it's supposed to be the shaman, but even then I think that categorization is too narrow these days. Healers have different abilities that make them better or worse for certain situations. "I'm the AE guy!" belies the nuance that the 5 healers actually have. Stop worrying so much about your character being the missing puzzle piece that completes the raid. The "they can't raid without me!" mentality is best left behind in BC. A raid needs X number of healers, and ideally they're a mix of healers, and then you're good to go.
P.S. I'll admit that paladins as the best MT healer is still a little bit of cruft left over from the older model. Unless we were willing to really nerf the crap out of them and reduce everyone's mana regen, it's going to be hard to dislodge them too much from that role. Really though what we're going for, and what we'll emphasize even more in the future, is "bring healers" not "I must have a priest."
P.S. I'll admit that paladins as the best MT healer is still a little bit of cruft left over from the older model. Unless we were willing to really nerf the crap out of them and reduce everyone's mana regen, it's going to be hard to dislodge them too much from that role. Really though what we're going for, and what we'll emphasize even more in the future, is "bring healers" not "I must have a priest."
Ghostcrawler touched a lot on specific spells in a priest's spellbook. While I will not go over individually each spell he discussed, I felt the discussion Circle of Healing was quite noteworthy.
Ghostcrawler -- In response to not liking Circle of Healing.CoH is good. It's so good in fact, that it's usually a bad choice not to push it when it's on cooldown. This means playing Holy is really about what you use your other 4 casts or whatever when you can't CoH. I'd rather use CoH less often and other spells more often. I think Holy needs the talent and it's really tree defining. I just want to use some of my other cool toys too.
He talks more about it here:
Ghostcrawler -- Circle of Healing too brainless? What about healers spamming other spells?True, but many of those spells require targeting. Even PoH requires targeting. I'm not a big fan of the way Wild Growth has turned out either, but at least its hot prevents it from being the "nobody dies from AE" spell. Again, they are good spells, and they have their place. I wish there was more of a decision of when to use them instead of always on cooldown. I realize part of that is encounter design. Part of it may be that they are still too good. (But we aren't nerfing them anytime soon.)
A while ago I asked a trusted friend how to play holy. I was rusty at the time and wanted to know if my old methods still stood. He said "If more than one person isn't at full, use Circle of Healing." Surprised, I asked, "even just two people?" He responded, "yes, because it's a whore like that." If the quote makes no sense to you, let me explain: basically, CoH will find damage to heal for you. You don't have to look for it. It's like the 10-point ring in skee ball. Even if you put minimal skill or effort into it you'll still probably get something out of it. These quotes from Ghostcrawler back up that sentiment.
Ghostcrawler also touched on communication and the conflict between discipline priests and healing "territory."
Ghostcrawler -- On healing communication, and multiple priests.I think Holy and Disc work together okay. Disc and Disc definitely collide, but it's not the worst thing in the world to be asked to bring 2 of the 5 healers. As Holy, I would generally leave the shielding to the Disc priest, but if dude was going to die, then you did your job and the Disc priest was just too slow. I wouldn't worry about PoM collision. More PoMs tend to just provide more healing.
Now in general I wish there was a little more coordination among healers, but the current damage model we have just doesn't really allow it. I remember when tanking Molten Core, that the priest would say over vent "Big heal coming on the OT!" as he powered up a Greater Heal. You don't have that luxury these days. One of our designers was watching an old Illidan video recently and remarked how everyone was at 50% for so much of the fight. Now days someone is at 100%, will hit 100% in the next couple of GCDs, or will be dead. In that environment, you'd get "Big --" out of your mouth before it would be too late. Players need more health and heals have to be a little more expensive.
Now in general I wish there was a little more coordination among healers, but the current damage model we have just doesn't really allow it. I remember when tanking Molten Core, that the priest would say over vent "Big heal coming on the OT!" as he powered up a Greater Heal. You don't have that luxury these days. One of our designers was watching an old Illidan video recently and remarked how everyone was at 50% for so much of the fight. Now days someone is at 100%, will hit 100% in the next couple of GCDs, or will be dead. In that environment, you'd get "Big --" out of your mouth before it would be too late. Players need more health and heals have to be a little more expensive.
Don't be dissuaded in communicating as a healer just because Ghostcrawler acknowledges the game doesn't operate at the same pace it used to. Communication is still a great key to success in raiding, and it's something healers have gotten lazy about this expansion. If something bad happens, just saying "I've got [whoever] covered!" can go a long way at allocating healing resources properly. This is even more important for us since priests are the keepers of precious tank cool downs.
That said, it sounds like Ghostcrawler, and thus maybe Blizzard, would like healing to require more communication again. This is a multi-player game after all. So, developing good habits now will prepare you for any changes in the future - it might also drive down the constant meter competition if we had to start talking and working together again. Wouldn't that be the day?
Ghostcrawler -- Current fight design and high penalty of player deathFights are designed to be hard (to a degree). If you have a proposal for how they can be hard in a different vector, please share. Running OOM is a tool that we lost and want to regain, but I suspect that will lead to a lot of "Healing isn't fun anymore" responses.
This is one issue very near and dear to my heart. I personally enjoyed the game of mana regen when I played WoW in vanilla and Burning Crusade. While it's nice to see so many more players picking healers these days, I feel as if the whole fuss about meters lately comes from players who are new to healing, and have few ways of assessing skill other than meters. Because mana is no longer an issue, spamming has little to no penalty. Who can push more buttons fastest is the current game. This removes difficulty, which to me, removes fun. That's just me though, so I'd like your opinion good readers. Do you think healing is more or less fun than it used to be? Why? Leave a comment.
Overall, I think the thread is a good read. There were actually many posters on the forums who shared excellent, thoughtful opinions. While I know many of us are apt to read just the blue text, this is a chance to hear from other community members. Ghostcrawler says the forums are just one place Blizzard looks to for feedback, and likewise, if you typically just read WoW.com or other blogs, you might want to check out the thread for unfiltered priest discussion.
Was there anything Ghostcrawler didn't touch on that you'd like covered? I have a few things in mind, but just incase, leave a comment or e-mail me at dawn@wow.com for a current issue you'd like to see discussed.
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! Check out Holy 101 for an introduction to healing as a holy priest, or Disciplined raid healing to see new ways players are using damage mitigation. Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Zalvi24 Feb 28th 2010 9:02PM
nice pic
Elmouth Apr 4th 2010 10:18PM
All I'm getting from this is that GC still hates Druids & Pallies.
SunwellVialist Feb 28th 2010 9:30PM
I love it when GC explains stuff like that.
You get the feeling he plays the classes. Maybe not perfectly, but he at least has a knowledge about them that comes from actually experiencing it, instead of watching from corner of eyes while pew pewing.
wutsconflag Feb 28th 2010 9:39PM
Wow ... I remember hearing the healers in vent saying "Big heal on x". Come to think of it, I haven't heard that in a /long time/.
Qot Feb 28th 2010 11:14PM
With haste and the beefed up strength of little heals (1.5 second cast time: Flash of Light, Nourish, Flash Heal, Lesser Healing Wave or TW/Healing Wave), there really isn't time to say "Big heal incoming" because there are no big heals.
Also, the healer UI has improved (not by Blizz, of course): Visual Heal, Grid or Healbot will tell me where everyone else is casting, making life much easier for me since I can see that big heal if a druid pulls out a Healing Touch.
Angus Mar 1st 2010 12:47AM
Part of that is also the other issue.
"Big heal on X"
Combat log: X has died.
There just isn't time to use those big heals. Holydins are throwing their heals on the tanks and generally don't have to say "big heals on tank" because that's their job.
Raid damage has gotten to the point where you just throw the heals as fast as possible and don't wait for a big heal. Waiting for those big heals means the next bit of raid damage will kill that guy.
archbaotho Feb 28th 2010 9:42PM
i wish you/ghostcrawler had touched more on the Lightwell aspect of holy. i know he said he was unhappy with it, but plans to revamp it would have been nice.
I use LW in my guilds 10m's and tell my raiders if they are standing near it, then i consider their priority for heals generally lower than anyone not near it. Not that i wont heal them, just lower priority.
But when im in a pugged 25 and drop LW, which is macro'd with "/y Lightwell is down, use it" i just get laughed at.
Lightwell is a powerful heal, but one of the few (if only??) that requires the person who needs the heals to cooperate.
Dawn Moore Feb 28th 2010 9:59PM
GC did touch on Lightwell in the thread, and it was the same unsatisfying response its been this whole expansion. "We want to do SOMETHING with it, we just don't know what."
I'm a bit frustrated with it myself, because I've always loved the concept of it, but I sort of understand their logic. They want it to be unique, they don't want it to be stupid easy, but they don't know what exactly to do with it.
When looking at the 4-set tier 10 bonus, vs the other healer 4-set bonuses, I feel like Blizzard is really intent on keeping a higher learning curve on priest healing. I think they are very cautiously stepping around what happened in vanilla and don't want to repeat that mistake, and because of that they are overcautious about making the priest class OP. A smart priest can really do SO much that too much could easily tip the scale.
This all said Lightwell is already on my 'to do' list for topics I want to dedicate full articles to. Thanks =)
Methuus Feb 28th 2010 10:04PM
Well, to throw a dpser perspective on lightwell: we're expected to put out as much dps as we can and not stand in anything we don't have to, and lightwell causes problems with both of these thing. Finding, targeting, activating the lightwell takes precious seconds; and the place where it's set down often ends up becoming dangerous.
To put out an extreme example, last week my guild 25man beat festergut with 8 seconds to spare before enrage. There's just no way that dps can spare time to get to the lightwell and it would be crazy to risk coming together when he's doing vile gas.
Now, some fights are more lightwell friendly, but not many. Lightwell is really just another example of a clever Blizzard design that has just fallen on the wrong side of the way Bliz designs encounters these days.
archbaotho Feb 28th 2010 11:03PM
@methuus
i completely agree that lightwell is not a viable spell in all fights. infact most fights is near impossible to be useful. off the top of my head grobbulus like encounters would suck because you'd hit it one the way past, then wait for a full rotation around the room to hit it again.
however i LOVE LIGHTWELL on any fight where the raid must collapse as a whole, or each person must run to constantly. you said festergut was a challenge here. and while its true that perhaps targeting the LW would have taken the time your dps'ers would've needed, its also true that using the LW as a collapse point for a side of the raid is a good idea, and will save a healer much aggrivation healing through the first spore of each phase (heavy raid healing phase).
grats btw on downing it, my guild just got him on 10m
Zoena Feb 28th 2010 11:34PM
There is actually one class that is very easy to train to use lightwells; Warlocks. Whenever I drop a lightwell in our 10 mans, our resident warlock gleefully cheers for his "manawell". He cozies right up next to it and is on self service healing, allowing him to lifetap to his little heart's content. It shuts him up about asking for HoTs when he is low on mana, and I've got to say even ONE less person needing to be healed takes pressure off the healers.
If you're trying to train your raid to use lightwells, start with the locks; they will be great evangelists for you, happily telling everyone how much lightwell rocks. Other people will start to experiment with clicking the shiny light too. I actually find the bigger problem is trying to get people who aren't damaged not to touch it; they seem to think it will give some kind of buff or something and like to click the shiny while at full health, thereby wasting charges.... "But it's shiny!" is the normal reply to chastisement.
Avan Mar 1st 2010 12:04AM
@Zoena:
Warlocks in my raid group actually want me to spec into Lightwell for that reason. I would do it too, but I can't reallocate the talent point for this yet. If you've got a suggestion for where I can move points around, lemme know! My spec (it's renew-centric): http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuZfvzcbMqqhrcuAo:mfN0Vz
jasonkidd1234 Mar 1st 2010 12:17AM
I think the biggest problem is that you must target the lightwell. Healers can usually afford to target stuff( At least I can, I use all mouseover macros/clique) but DPS can't, as it means they must stop dpsing for a second.
I'd say the way to make it "useful" is to make it sort of a stationary aoe heal.
For example, Holy priest puts down Lightwell. Every 5 seconds, everybody in 15 yards gets a HoT for however much the normal one goes for. The hot has some sort of diminishing returns so ranged dps and healers don't just stand in that one area the entire fight, or perhaps it could work so that you can't get it twice in a row, or something.
I think the best way to fix it is to make it something that you don't have to click on. This removes the voluntery aspect of it, Lightwells usage depends entirely on the people in your raid. If they want to use it, they will, if not, they won't.
I know while leveling (I leveled 1-60 as holy), Lightwell was a spell I used a LOT. When soloing elites, or before a big pull, I'd throw down my Lightwell, mana up, then pull. I could usually focus all of my mana on dpsing (And by dpsing, I mean holy fire then smite spam), rather than healing.
Which reminds me, I'd really love it if holy had some sort of DPS spec =(
Maybe a disc/holy hybrid that puts out "viable" dps. REGARDLESS. Lightwell could be a priest staple spell. People look at druids and think "Hots" Shamans "Totems, reincarnate, Chain heal" Pallys "massive single target heals" and disc "Shields" but really, to your non-healing player, they won't really notice anything about holy priest heals. They aren't flashy like a shamans, or manuverable like a resto druid. CoH is kind of thier staple spell (Though I figure the spirit of redemption is more of thier icon) but I think if Lightwell was fixed right, it could be a good reason to have a priest in a raid.
archbaotho Mar 1st 2010 1:46AM
@ avan
this is my current holy spec
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbhZcxtcd0qiuhxuAo:0fNMVz
took out your inner focus, the CD on it is too long for the usual raid healing, though it does come in a pinch for the sudden tank heal need.
Also i find i've yet to cast Greater heal, and usually my renew/CoH/PoM spams are enough to raid heal so i dont use PoH. it just seems like a massive clunky heal. and my priest is smooth baby. So i dumped serendipity.
Also didnt like your spell warding or inner focus. spell warding is dealers choice i suppose. but inner focus is more pvp oriented.
kashback Mar 1st 2010 2:07AM
@avan
Honestly? I'd drop your 2 points in Blessed Resilience and put them into Surge of Light and Lightwell (if you want to get it that badly). Blessed Resilience is only a 2% effect on your healing spells, so you won't notice.
If you prefer, you can drop healing Focus, too. It's not been that useful since Ulduar, really, so the points can probab;y be better used elsewhere if you wanted to take a talent you wouldn't normally.
Noctune Mar 24th 2010 4:11PM
How about they make the Lightwell work like the lightwell in TrialofChampion 5man
you know splashing raid healing from it one player get healed every tic for X tics .... that whould have made it AWSOME. now its just a laughter in 9/10 times i never even put it out....
and if i put it out its never used.
Candina@WH Mar 1st 2010 3:49AM
@JasonKidd
That would be called 'healing stream totem'.
Lightwell doesn't work for two reasons.
1.) It requires DPS to find/target it.
2.) It reduces DPS output by using up time/clicks.
I think an 'interesting' change to lightwell would be to make it like the 'frozen orbs' in VOA. Where instead of it being stationary and need to be clicked on, it wanders about the raid doing a small AoE heal, chasing whomever is currently lowest health.
And I'd like priests to be able to do SOMETHING about poison.
But then again, I want a pony. :-)
Prissa Mar 1st 2010 6:10AM
@ Candina@WH
THAT WOULD BE FREAKING SWEET
...
sorry got excited for a moment there...
Dameblanche Mar 1st 2010 7:06AM
There is a very simple way to make lightwell more effective in the current era of "Targeting something else then the boss? No way I am gonna do anything that would decrease my dps even by 0.0003%"
Let the heal of the lightwell give people a 0.041 dps/haste/crit/fill-in-blank buff for 1.0034 seconds and people will scream L2PnOOb at any holy priest who dares to spec without lightwell.
Gulrick Mar 1st 2010 1:05PM
well as for the lightwell have you ever watched the npc lightwell in 5 man TOC? why cant it be like that? it randomly tosses out a ball of light that heals someone in its area make the heals small enough or make them a renew so it wont be to OP'ed. there problem solved