Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsSpiritual 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 3 of 4)
omedon666 Feb 28th 2010 11:41PM
I can absolutely agree that healing is easy on the mana conservation front now. Once you put some effort into gearing, even through simply emblems, at 80, you have a mana pool that, in comparison to vanilla, is infinite.
The corner blizzard may have painted themselves into, on many fronts of difficulty (the death of crowd control and "challenging" trash packs in 5-mans comes to mind) is that you now have a community "baby'ed" into the WOTLK style of play. As we've seen with the difference in definition in "heroic" from TBC to WOTLK, (I'm largely a 5-man player, so I can't comment on raid difficulty too well) they have no problem progressing in the direction of "easier", but if they take any sidesteps in design toward "harder", they do risk losing players used to the "more entertainment than game" model that is the ethic of inclusion of much of WOTLK.
Tanking and healing will always come with the "stressful" stigma, and GC is right to be concerned that they have to be careful how they tweak healing (as well as tanking). While myself and many of my salty old vanilla vet buddies can adapt to a game with more CC in tanking, and more mana conservation in healing, Blizzard's not just building for us, they are building for a vast audience, many of which were brought on board in a very distinctively inclusive (you can call it "easy" if you like) period of the game's progression of development.
Redielin Mar 1st 2010 12:11AM
Avan, I just don't think that will happen.
If there's a story behind the Wrath development cycle, is that they don't want people brought (or sat) because of their class. That goes both ways. It means that more or less, if you spec for raid healing, you will be able to raid heal. If that's not the case, they will fix it. For example:
Shadow Priests were TERRIBLE in t9. T10? Fixed. Rogues? TERRIBLE in t7. Also fixed. Overall, there's been a lot more buffs and adjustments throughout wrath than there was in BC and certainly in Vanilla. If your class is doing so bad that you are being sat because of your class, then they fix it. If it gets as bad as you say, they will adjust us. I don't think it will, and if it does, they will adjust it before it becomes too much of a problem. I think they could do the adjustments a bit faster, but I have found more and more than really, when you are sitting someone in Wrath, it really isn't because of their class. If you are good enough at your class, you can find a way to perform, even if your spec has the short end of the balance stick. Its just part and parcel of playing an MMO, in my opinion.
Now on meters. Meters aren't everything. But they do *matter*. If you are having healing problems, and you see one holy priest doing awesome and the other doing terrible. They are on the same assignments, have similar gear. There's a problem. There's just a lot more ifs that go into healing meters that have to be considered than a damage meter. Even a damage meter doesn't tell the whole story. Sure, I can pull 22k DPS on Vrykul trash in ICC 25, but we'll still wipe because I wasn't focusing my DPS on the vrykul that was spawning a million healing adds.
and remember, bring the player not the class swings both ways. No more free invites because you're the only one with fort. Your buff is still better, so its still nice to have a Priest around. But not irreplaceable. Same for arena teams and dispels. The cool thing about this is that it puts a limelight on balance problems. Nothing is holding back raid leaders or arena team captians from dumping priests, especially once the dispel changes go through. That means, people won't keep them around if they're falling behind, and any balance issue will become clearer more quickly, and hopefully addressed. Yeah, it sucks that no one will be saying "we need to get a Priest for fort and dispels man" but did you really want to be brought to a raid so you can hit the little white fort button? Not me.
Now, if they make Priests the "jack of all trade" healers, they WILL be sat. The flexibility/effectiveness tradeoff just doesn't cut the mustard in the min/max raiding game. Being able to do your job as well as any other class is more important than being able to switch jobs on queue.
Swifty Mar 1st 2010 12:20AM
I don't like Ghostcrawler one bit. Unfortunately there are no rules that the devs cannot favor any class above the rest. Sure they have to keep their customers happy but the favoritism is still there. The fact is paladins are above and beyond the most desired healers in the game and it is not by chance Ghostcrawler's main is a pally. You can replace a Disc Priest with a Pally and most prefer too. You can replace a Holy Priest with a druid or shaman. It is hard...no nearly impossible to run without a pally. Looks at the logs of any site hardly anyone runs less a pally but many run less a priest.
Swifty Mar 1st 2010 12:24AM
hit the submit button too early.
I am sick to my stomach at the healing situation of WoW at the current moment. Priests are pure healers sure we have a crappy DPS tree but compared to the other classes we are a pure healing class. I think they gave us that dps tree to shut us up when we whine about not being the best healers. There are pure DPS classes but not a single pure healing class. It really is BS to me when Ghostcrawler types anything, just makes me mad. The Priest should be the true pure healing class and all other classes should get hit with the 10% hybrid tax.
Swifty Mar 1st 2010 12:29AM
I mean come on:
Paladin: Tank - Healer - DPS
Shaman: Healer - DPS - DPS
Druid: Tank - Healer - DPS
Priest: Healer - Healer - DPS (and before the latest patch laughable DPS)
So tell me why the priest is fine and we are considered a hybrid? Remove my crappy DPS tree and give me 3 Healing trees. Then make me the best healer and tax the others. The state of the priest in ICC and elsewhere is broken. I spit on the name of Ghostcrawler!
Avan Mar 1st 2010 12:32AM
Shadow is no longer a "crappy DPS tree." Before the recent buff to Warlocks provided in 3.3, Shadowpriests were able to put out more damage than them, a PURE DPS class. Shadow has come a long way, indeed.
There is NO SUCH THING AS A PURE HEALING CLASS. Pure would mean 3 specs of healing. Shadow is damage-centric, that makes priests a hybrid-class. Even HOLY has some damage-increasing talents, thus making even one of our healing trees a hybrid.
You want to know what a pure healing class is? A parasite. A leech. Dead weight. They would have NOTHING in the way of damage-dealing capabilities. Have fun leveling one without being able to kill anything! There are a lot of quests that don't have you killing mobs, right?
Redielin Mar 1st 2010 1:13AM
I'd like to see you heal a 25 progression raid with nothing but Holy Paladins.
Swifty Mar 1st 2010 2:03AM
Avan,
I played WoW when priests only had the Holy tree. Leveling was a pain and gruesome. But it made being a priest special and gave us a sense of pride. I don't care that we have a DPS spec more then that spec until just recently gimped the heck out of us. Our DPS now is up to par and woohoo (sarcasm) to that.
Holy priests as DPS is laughable.
My toon is dual specced Holy/Disc so that makes it a parasite? a leech? Come on now.
Redielin,
I agree but try and run 25 man content without at least 1 holy pally. Sure it is doable but very...very rare. It is far more likely to see a 25 man raid without a priest then a pally. I am just saying the paladin is pretty much essential to any 10/25 man raid where a priest is not. As a class that is mainly a healing class that equals broke to me.
bremic Mar 1st 2010 1:23AM
I don't know that I feel that Priests are the ones who watch their bars the most, but of the healing classes I have played (all but shaman), they are the ones that need to track the most information. Not just who needs the healing, but who they themselves already have HoTs on (same as druids), who currently has PoM on them and for how long, who is currently a valid target for their spells (PW:S), as well as watching all their cooldowns (PW:S, CoH, PoM) as well as position and... well basically the same as everyone else plus about 60%.
There is so much going on with a priest healer that I have no difficulty calling it the hardest healing class to play. No other healing class has the cooldown, target limitation, HoT tracking, current buff target tracking (PoM) and the variety of spells to choose from at any one time. I would love something in return for it, even if it was just something as simple as reagents stacking to 100 like Arcane Powder, or being only 8s each, like Arcane Powder.
nekorion Mar 1st 2010 1:25AM
I don't know where this "running oom is a thing of the past"
I'm a shaman, and I don't know about other classes but I stretched absolutely thin trying to keep my mana up during raids.
If I don't run oom, either we're vastly overgeared, or everyone in the raid was superbly trained on that encounter.
Maybe everyone is rocking out dual solaces, but I don't have access to that, and an encounter where I have more than 20% mana at the end is nothing short of amazing.
venomslife Mar 1st 2010 2:11AM
pretty sure the fix to lightwell is found in toc 5 man.
has anyone else noticed how the lightwell in that instance works? it is put down and a fountain of heals come forth to heal all the guys without them clicking on it.
i always drool over these mobs and this spell...if it was changed like that i would enjoy putting it down and maybe try holy again tbh
Gaurth Mar 1st 2010 11:37AM
I think you'll find that particular spell (cast by the trash before Confessor/Eadric) to be an attack. FYI
cool idea though.
Grendalsh Mar 1st 2010 2:27AM
I've been kinda annoyed at surveys and various stats that show priests are '2nd class' healers.. I mean, we're PRIESTS! 2 of our specs are healing!
But GC put it very eloquently.. Other classes may niche heal better than priests, but priests do every type of healing SOLID. You don't NEED a priest, but we make every other healer better. And when you think about a priest.. they don't sit out front, hogging the glory.. They're humble.. they do the job, and that's their reward. So thinking about it in this light.. Yeah, we're the rock that other healers can look great standing on.
GC also brought up the issue of communication, and of making healing 'fun'.. and it got me thinking..
I've used a mod called VisualHeal by xbeeps. When I heal, it shows a healthbar for my target, along with the projected heal effect. I can use this to figure out that a heal won't land in time, or that a heal is too big/small and switch to something else. What it also shows is any incoming heals from other healers using VisualHeal. I imagine there are other mods like this..
So what if this were elaborated into more of mini-game? Grid is a larger scale version of this.. but what if there were a more elaborate default UI, a visual communication channelf or healers.. instead of SAYING "BIG heal on ..", your heal marker would show up on your target.. Others would see it and not overcast and/or all healers would see sniped healing.
Staring at metrics after the fact is one thing, but SEEING what's happening as it's happening.. that might be both more fun and more effective.
Sayas Mar 1st 2010 2:44AM
I didn't realize my approach to healing was so "old school." I pride myself on efficiency. Yet I've lately heard from my raid leader that he wants me spamming. Basically he said, If you aren't OOM, you aren't overhealing.
Tes Mar 1st 2010 12:33PM
Caring about healing efficiency is definitely old school now.
As a classic priest, I felt everything was about the efficiency. You throw the best heal for the situation and spend as much time passively regenning so you'd have enough for another heal a little way down the road.
Now it is really all about spamming.
I can't recall when I last had time for a Greater Heal cast instead having to settle for flash heal's lower effciency.
kooda Mar 1st 2010 2:50AM
Lightwell would be awesome if it stalked the member of your raid with the lowest % of health it could just move towards them like a beacon so you could heal the person or they could use lightwell :P
Maxpowr Mar 1st 2010 3:06AM
Alot of healing priests on WoW forums are twiddling their thumbs. While priests may be the "jack-of-all trades" when it comes to healing, the one thing priests (especially holy) are known for is burst healing. Whenever spike damage comes at the raid, holy priests have a large arsenal to take care of that and it is where we excel. When Blizzard moved to steady but constant damage instead of spikes in ICC, holy priests had the stool kicked from under them and were basically forced to become sub-par resto druids or switch to disc to become bubble spammers.
I get the feeling that Blizz has no idea what they want to do with us (holy/disc). If you doubt that, just look at our T10 set. Blizzard seems to be stuck in the notion that holy and disc gear the same way and they don't. While there will be some stat homogenization in Cata, that is still far off. This is why you see many holy priests avoiding most of the tier and taking off-set pieces and disc priests taking the shadow set. When people deliberately avoid taking gear that is supposed to be designed for them, that should be a red flag.
Evlyxx Mar 1st 2010 3:28AM
I have healed as a Holy priest all the way from Molten Core right through to the 1st half of Black Temple in TBC and my passion for healing slowly dwindled as it became little mare than renew spam at the end of TBC as pally heaIing spam on tanks and the other healing classes just looked after the raid.
The changes to Disc in Wrath renewed the fun into healing as a priest all the way through to ToC and once you had convinced people that you were actually "healing" by mitigating damage rather than being not pulling your weight due to them looking at the HPS meters the role was very valued as a compliment to the pally spam on the MT.
However, the presence of raid wide damage through auras in ICC has resulted in many (if not most) Disc priests becoming a manual version of the Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings proc and if time permits throwing the odd renew and emergency Penance out.
The class is NOT broken and in 10 man raids both specs are very viable alongside any other healing class/spec (even a 2nd Disc). But in 25 man raiding the encounter design is forcing classes to become one trick ponies and while it makes raiding successful there is little fun involved in achieving the goal.
Draketh Mar 1st 2010 3:59AM
I'd like to see Disc + Disc work. Maybe there's someway to track who's bubble is who, so that when a 2nd Disc priest throws a bubble on an already bubbled target, the 2nd bubble either stacks or is consumed as a heal. If you track who's bubble is who's, then you can prevent a single Disc priest trying to double bubble.
Just seems like Disc is very popular, and I for one don't want to feel pushed into Holy just because of wanting to be useful for raids.
ken_thomas61 Mar 1st 2010 3:59AM
With regards to my thoughts: I far prefer the fast-paced healing. Communication also is not dead. We were doing lich king 10 man tonight and I'd see Soul Reaper get put on the MT. I'd say over vent burst damage on (tank's name) coming in 3,2,1 and we'd time heals so that they'd land a couple seconds before it ticked down to top him up, then the cast time of the following heal would make it land right after it had ticked down and he'd taken the damage. That's healer communication. Also, we had to organize healing up infest. I play a resto shaman, so I was chaining onto the melee, the paladin I was healing with had beaconed the tank and was direct healing the ranged.
We still need to communicate with the other healer when a player is out of our range , to let them know they need to get them or if we need to tell the player to move in.
We also communicate things like Divine Plea and Mana Tide, as well as several other things. Any more communication would frankly be vent spam and while that's not so bad for 10 man, it's terrible in 25's.
Secondly: mana regeneration and spell cost. I understand that the game is very bursty with the incoming damage as things stand. However, it's a mistaken and common assumption that this makes healing all about reaction time. Reaction time does help certainly, as it does in ANY aspect of the game, but the main thing that separates healers from each other is *incoming damage prediction* and knowing exactly what you'll do about it when it hits. Being smart about your healing choices will make you look like you're lightning fast, when really all that's required is to be prepared.
The only way the game would ever become about reflexes alone would be if they removed the GCD off of abilities and turned it essentially into an FPS. That will never happen.