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The latest patch 5.4 newsSpiritual Guidance: Healing heroic Cataclysm dungeons as a priest
by Dawn Moore 
Nov 7th 2010 at 8:00PM
I intended to write about holy and discipline priest PvP in beta this week, but after spending a few days trying to test out battlegrounds, I think I'd do well to give Blizzard more time to fix things. Between the 100,000-damage rocket blasts in Strand of the Ancients one-shotting players, and randomly getting ported to The Barrens when you're dead
While we wait for the developers to finish tidying up the battlegrounds and PvP, I figured we could tackle something in the beta that has stabilized for priests: heroic dungeons! Pretty exciting, huh? Yeah, that's what I thought.
Word on the street is that heroic dungeons in the Cataclysm beta are way overtuned and bordering on the difficulty of pre-nerf heroic dungeons in The Burning Crusade. While I can't personally deny or confirm the latter statement (I was slow in leveling), I can tell you that heroic dungeons in Cataclysm aren't that bad.
Dispelling the "too hard" myth
A lot of people are saying the new heroic dungeons are too hard, but that couldn't be any farther from the truth! Are they harder than Wrath heroic dungeons? Yes, definitely, but that doesn't mean they're overtuned.
Let's consider a few things. First, we've been outgearing dungeons for about a year and a half now; we've probably forgotten that heroic dungeons used to require some effort to be completed. Remember when you had to work really, really hard to get one of those bronze drakes in the Culling of Stratholme -- but after you got decked out in Ulduar gear, you didn't have much more trouble? Well, you might as well accept that dungeons are going to take effort again (at least for a little while).
The new dungeons are also ... well, new, and just like with any new content, players need time to get the hang of fight mechanics they aren't familiar with. It's not good enough to just see a fight once for most people; they have to see it several times to get comfortable. I would expect several months to go by before we can queue into random dungeons and have the majority of groups cruise through the content.
This leads me to my next point, which is that it's now more important than ever to learn and understand how to properly handle the fight mechanics in boss fights. Remember how in Halls of Lightning you were supposed to run out of Loken's Lightning Nova, but most people just healed through it? Well, now you can't heal through the Lightning Nova, because it will one-shot you if you try to stand in it. So the stakes are raised -- but other than that, the pacing and complexity of the tasks you have to perform are any more challenging. You just need to your allies and yourself time to master it all. Be patient -- earn that title!
Preparedness is key
After my last section, the best advice I can give to any player going into heroic dungeons is preparedness. If you're prepared, you'll understand and learn all the new boss mechanics much faster. Just approach heroic dungeons like you would new raid content by doing a little bit of research on each boss beforehand so you know the abilities you need to be aware of. (I'll link some video guides in future posts, as they become available.) Most bosses will only have one central gimmick you have to learn to master the fight, but some of those gimmicks are more complex than others. To ensure you understand them, it helps if you do a little research outside of the game, rather than relying on some grumpy party guide to explain it to you. Let me give you an example of what you're going to be dealing with.
Ozruk is the third boss in Stonecore. The most complex thing about this fight is that he'll periodically apply a stun to you and the rest of your party. The stun can be broken by damage but if it is not broken before it expires, you'll be dealt 50k damage. That 50k is about half your life, and the stun is frequent enough that if more than one player takes damage to it, you won't have enough time to heal both players up to full before the next stun.
So what do you do, Mr. Smarty Pants Healer? Well, since the stun can be broken on damage, you need to find a way to take damage. What are your options? Hmm ... It looks like players who attack the boss physically will be afflicted with a Thorns-like ability called Elementium Spike Shield, so maybe I could try hitting the boss? Wrong! Come on, man, you're a healer! Melee damage is super-unfashionable! You could fray those pretty hems of yours.
Let me tell you what the cool kids (read: priests) do. Ozruk has another ability called Elementium Bulwark, which is essentially a spell reflect, so what you want to do is toss out a Shadow Word: Pain whenever he uses that ability. If you time it properly, your spell will reflect back onto you and now, as long as you don't dispel it, when the stun comes around you'll be fine because your DoT will be ticking along. (In actual execution, you may need to cast the spell twice or thrice if it misses.) Sounds pretty cool, huh? Well it is, but just look at how much space that took to explain. That's at least 2.5 inches of text on my screen. Just imagine how many PUGs are going to die to that one mechanic alone ... And there are tons of boss fights just like that one in Cataclysm heroic dungeons. See why you need to be prepared?
All right, let's move on.
Next, crowd control
One of the main reasons people are complaining that heroic dungeons are too hard is because they require coordination. Coordination, of course, takes time, and that's far too inconvenient for Mr. PUG Wonder Tank, who likes to run in, ignore party chat and promptly pull the first trash pack. In the absence of crowd control -- even if you try to heal him -- he'll be dead in ohh ... 20 seconds? So the next thing you need to know is your group needs to use crowd control!
Priests have never been ones to handle CC in the past though, save for Shackle Undead, which you won't get to use too much anyway (this is the elemental expansion, remember?). Shadow priests will be able to channel Mind Control, but you can't do the same, since you need to be healing. Fortunately, if you recall, we have one more option to help out the party these days: Glyph of Psychic Scream. Remember that this glyph just got an overhaul, so now you'll be able to CC!
But that doesn't mean you should volunteer to be in charge of the green triangle target just yet. There is still a high chance for a healing priest's shadow spells to resist, and the duration isn't anywhere near comparable to the timers on other classes' CC. Instead, you can use Psychic Scream in emergencies. For example, if a target breaks CC early and is freely casting on your party while everyone is preoccupied, run to that target and fear it! This will give your party time to respond. You can also use it to handle incoming adds or accidentally aggroed trash packs. I highly recommend you keep it equipped.
A need for focus
The next thing to note is that the new dungeons take a lot of time and concentration. You cannot rush these things, at least not at first. Also, you can't really multitask at the moment, so toss any plans you had for watching Dexter or eating your lunch while you grab a few justice points. I recall going to take a sip from my water bottle and in the 5 seconds I was preoccupied, a player lost enough health that I had to use a cooldown to keep him alive. So take my word on it: focus!
Mana regen and you
I've talked a lot about how mana actually is a concern in Cataclysm, and I know the rest of the community has too, but after some tweaks from the developers, I'd say things aren't that bad in heroic dungeons anymore if you know what to do. So let me lay it on you ... You will want to take the talents Evangelism and Archangel. I'm talking to both disc and holy here. I know a lot of holy priests are suggesting two points in Veiled Shadows rather than grabbing Archangel, but Veiled Shadows only lowers your Shadowfiend cooldown by a minute; that's not going to be enough. If anything, you might want to grab Veiled Shadows in addition to Archangel. Don't know where to get the points? Just don't max out Twin Disciplines. I know, I know, Twin Disciplines is a "mandatory talent," but you need to get out of that mindset; healing is a different game now. One of the developers made a statement a while back (and, of course, now I can't find it for the life of me) about how in Cataclysm, not all of discipline's talents are as mandatory as we think they are. So keep that in mind, whether you're disc or just grabbing a few disc talents as holy.
Anyway, let's get back to Evangelism and Archangel. The key to not going out of mana with these talents is upkeep. Especially with holy (and all the Chakra maintenance), it's pretty easy to forget about your Evangelism stack and just heal until you realize you're nearly out of mana (OOM). When this happens, you can freak out a little and pump out four or five Smites in a row -- and hell, you might even pull it off without anyone dying. But if you do that, you fall behind. You fall behind by dedicating all that time to offensive, and then you have to use less efficient spells to catch up 5 to 20 seconds later in the fight.
This isn't a big deal on trash pack where you might only need to use Archangel once, but in a boss fight where you need to use Archangel three or five times to get through the entire encounter, you'll find the time between each Archangel becomes less and less and you'll spend more time trying to restore mana than healing. Very quickly, a fight that looked like a kill is gone because you went OOM. So that's why you upkeep your Smite stack from the very beginning -- even if you're sitting at 95 percent max mana. You don't know when your free seconds will be, so take them when you can. Upkeeping your stack might mean canceling a Smite to switch back to healing really quick, but stay disciplined; it pays off.
As disc, it's been pretty easy to work in Archangel due to Atonement,
While we're talking holy, I also recommend using Lightwell to help buy you time and mana. When you need to Smite for mana, tell your party (with a macro or over voice chat) that you're doing so and they should click the Lightwell for extra healing while you're preoccupied. Using Lightwell also saves you a ton of mana in combat for things like topping players off when they aren't taking direct damage.
If you want to have players help with topping themselves off, just say at the start of an instance, "Hey, if you're not taking direct damage but someone else is, and you just need a little topping off, please try to click the Lightwell. I'm having trouble with mana, and it will spare me some mana if you use the Lightwell." I know it sounds super-polite, but you guys will manage just fine, I'm sure. Just to give you an idea of how important Lightwell is to holy right now, when heroics first came out and no one had very good gear to run them in, you had to use Lightwell as a holy priest to keep from going OOM. So you better believe that it's good now.
Oh, and as for cooldown usage for Shadowfiend and Hymn of Hope, I like to use those abilities to catch up. Instead of restoring mana through Archangel one round, I'll use a cooldown instead and spend the free time healing.
Those pesky healing spells
If you've got all that, from here all you have to do is use the healing you're learning to use in live with patch 4.0.1. Swap out your Flash Heal usage for Heal; with holy, you'll want to use Serenity (the Heal stance) instead of Sanctuary (the Prayer of Healing stance), since your focus in 5-mans is single-target healing.
You'll probably find you have way more spells than you need to heal the dungeon, and that creates a lot of choices for healing. None of the choices are really wrong provided they work for you. I find that I'm using very little Renew, despite all the buffs it's been getting. I'm still using Prayer of Mending on every cooldown, and I'm honestly never using Prayer of Healing ... it just doesn't satisfy me. But I'm yet to crunch all the numbers on the specifics of what is more efficient, so we'll talk more about spell efficiency in a future post.
How was that? Do you have any questions about Cataclysm heroic dungeons I didn't cover? Ask away in the comments!
Want more tips for carrying out your priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered. Check out Holy 101 or Disc 101 for an introduction to healing as a priest; for the party-minded healer, see a priest's guide to tanks.Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 4)
Sisterpam Nov 7th 2010 11:46PM
I actually kinda like that lightwell is needed. Honestly, it is the only thing in the expansion that encourages holy priests to diversify the spells they use. Most of the holy tree seems rather broken actually.
If you look at the disc tree, it's really well put together. Most of the talents are aimed at interconnecting spells; one spell encourages another, which in turn encourages another, which encourages another. As a disc I could see using a lot of spells with great regularity to increasing effectiveness, both in mana management as well as total heal done. You could argue that the numbers aren't right or that many bugs need to be dealt with but the fundamentals of the tree are strong.
The holy tree has virtually none of this. In fact, it has the opposite effect. It discourages the use of spells in our lineup. It's insane. Now the fact that mana is an issue makes lightwell attractive and necessitates the use of heal as a base spell. Good. But there is nothing in the tree that makes an attempt at making the other spells seem worth while. You almost don't have a choice anymore. Just cast heal, you can't afford anything else.
This is particularly insulting when you consider the number of tools at our disposal. The more spells one has to achieve a certain task the more interesting the potential casting combination could be. For example, a dps smite priest of old had very few attack spells available. This makes for a very boring dps class (just cast smite dummy!). When you have many spells to do a task inventive ways of combining them can be created to make for a more fun playing stile(for dps, rogues stacking for a finishing move, clearcasting as a mage, etc). It therefore stands to reason that the holy priest aught to have, potentially, a very interesting healing class. We don't. How many heals are we casting?
One example of where we took a major turn for the worst was with surge of light. Under the old way (a crit results in a 50% chance to have an instant cast smite or flash heal), you get a crit or three which gives you a free flash heal which triggers serenity, then you have fairly good chance of triggering surge of light again before serenity expired. The old talent would really encourage the use of flash heal, greater heal, poh, and maybe even (for triggering) holy nova. Doubly so under mana tight situations. See how a talent tree can encourage diversity. Under the tree we have now if we cast heal 20 times we might trigger sol once. Oh. I guess we're just casting heal, can't even build up serenity I guess.
We're given so many tools and a tree that fundamentally sucks. To me it shows that either Blizz has ignored the potential fun of holy priest or they were so caught up in trying to come up with something new that they lost site of the basics of tree building. Either way, until major changes happen to the tree itself I can't imagine holy being near as fun as other healers
Sakkula Nov 7th 2010 11:21PM
I may be missing something, but I've heard people on multiple sites say that archangel only returns 1% base mana per stack, yet in every tooltip I've read it's 3% per stack. I think the 3% may be a little over-powered, because in longer fights that have a lot of healing in the beginning of the fight but slow down as time goes on, or ones with lulls in the damage, I can find myself all the way back to ~60-70% mana just through Smite/Archangel.
Sakkula Nov 7th 2010 11:30PM
I totally meant total mana, not base. Aren't I smart.
Hydden Nov 7th 2010 11:44PM
Honestly Dawn, I'm finding these articles frustrating and I think it's because you heal as Holy very different than I do. I focus on five mans and don't raid at all so here are my thoughts - and I'd really appreciate if you could give this playstyle a try and report back.
- Get on your Heal Chakra
- Put Renew up on the tank
- Spam Heal *constantly* on the tank, as if it's your auto-attack. Your Renew duration will be constantly refreshed, the crits will give the -%dmg buff, and your Mastery hot will keep ticking.
If one other party member takes damage, get a Renew up on them, maybe hit them with a Heal, then go back to your tank Heals. Maybe flick in a PoM or CoH if there's a bit more group damage.
- don't Flash unless the char is under 30%, and don't Greater unless the char is under 50%
I'm finding that my regen at 80 is high enough that I can spam Heal constantly without mana going down at all, so it irks me that you suggest using the more expensive heals to give yourself a cushion for evangelism/archangel - it just seems counterproductive. Sometimes I can keep Renew tcking on three party members just by sharing the Heals around, which is much cheaper than a fresh Renew cast and usually plenty to keep non-tanks up.
Please give this a go, I really want to hear how it goes at 85.
Sisterpam Nov 8th 2010 12:30AM
I agree. Needing to do evangelism/archangel does not add fun to a holy priest, it adds irksomeness (great word by the way Hydden). However, just casting Heal also seems irksome (it's too slow) considering how many spells we do have. Have we become brain dead pallys?
Stilhelm Nov 8th 2010 2:22AM
Keep in mind that healing at 85 is much different than 80. At 85, it will take more than one flash heal to top someone off from under 30%. Health pools will triple, but your heals will not increase much at all. In addition, your crit and haste will be in the dumps (maybe as low as 10%) at 85 in beginning heroics gear. Also, mana costs will be much higher at 85 as well for all your spells (much higher as a percentage of your total mana).
LittleHamster Nov 8th 2010 4:53AM
@Hydden Sorry but you are talking about healing 5man at level 80. No one is running out of mana at level 80 heroics. No one needs any healing. No on needs any tank. You can easily do all the heroics at level 80 in current gear by rushing in and dps everything down as fast as humanly possible. Did you also miss the part about CC? Dawn is talking about level 85 heorics heroics here.
Celeane Nov 8th 2010 7:33AM
I mentioned earlier in the comments that I had had some success in the beta heroics, and this is the method I was using. I also fairly frequently used Lightwell (this was the period Dawn mentioned where no one had gear and people were definitely clicking it), Guardian Spirit, lots of Prayer of Mending, and the delightful Holy Word: Serenity.
Dawn Moore Nov 8th 2010 12:35PM
Er... /facepalm.
Okay, here is something you guys have to understand. I DO use Renew. As holy. You throw it on the tank and it auto refreshes. Duh. I appreciate that you guys are trying to help but give me some credit. I said to use the Chakra Heal stance just one paragraph before.
I play disc something like... 70% of the time, so when I write up these articles and I make these throw away comments like "I don't use Renew much" it's me thinking in disc most of the time. That comment was just me thinking in disc. That's my fault so no big deal, but I am using Renew. It's actually kind of impossible not to actually, because the way my interface is set up, Renew swaps out with PW:S if I'm in holy - and you know I'll hitting that keybinding.
In this article more than any other (and this is something I already said in the comments) I had so much information I wanted to talk about and didn't get to. What spells to use were actually the least of my concerns, because I've already talked about what exact healing spells to use already in previous articles, in complete detail, and I didn't think I needed to rehash it when the primary motive of my article was to give you guys a rundown of what heroic healing is like. Reading over the article again, I should have been more clear as to what those last two paragraphs were meant to serve as. They're unclear as it stands.
Anyway, this week on beta I'll be getting much more play as holy since I'm raiding so expect my raiding article to be written from that perspective (Disc has no business in a raid right now.) These articles are meant to serve more as a "here's the 411 on heroics/raids/pvp" not "do this, profit." I'll talk about what precisely to do when Cata comes out - I've found that trying to write articles on what to do weeks before people can actually do them lowers their usefulness quite a bit. I also don't theorycraft with beta numbers so my tune is likely to change a little when I start combining experience with theorycrafting.
Picviewer Nov 8th 2010 1:22AM
Why is equating stupidity with hard the new norm? That's basically all I've gotten from reading up on what is coming. People whining it's too "hard" since they actually have to think instead of just plowing on through for a few points and drops at the end.
Nevermind the whole game is based around stupidity anyways, same gear and a level cap is just a excuse to be lax on actual content development so you just run the same thing over and over until the next expansion.
Matthew Nov 8th 2010 2:54AM
Hi Dawn - a question I've been wondering about re PvP (so you can consider it for your article)
With heals that are meant to be considered and not thrown lightly in dungeons etc due to mana being an issue - how are healers supposed to heal in BG's?
I'm scared. I mean, I am usually the FOCUS of many attacks and so I'm always healing - both ME and my team mates.
How can this be sustained in BG situation ?
I don't expect a personal answer - but if you might address this in your upcoming article I'd be quite happy! (even if the answer is - tough cookies, you're gonna die)
Dawn Moore Nov 8th 2010 12:38PM
I'll be sure to keep this in mind when I write my article. After Cata I'll also do a new PvP 101 guide too. Thanks for the comment. =)
Sisterpam Nov 14th 2010 10:50PM
Unfortunately, the philosophy adopted by Blizz at the moment bounds us to suck at pvp I'm afraid. If it is stipulated that a healer is going to have mana issues but a dps is not (how could they when 4 dps classes don't even have mana), then successful implementation of this will doom healers (particularly priest) in pvp. Dps can come at us high and hard ad infinitum while we, on the other hand, can only heal ourselves for a limited time.
The reversal of this while maintaining mana issues in pve would require: (1) large increase in self healing and (2) dramatic decrease in damage done onto healers. It is then inevitable that paladins are going to be the best healers for pvp. With plate armor and protector of the innocent they get a natural buff to both aspects without really effecting pve performance that much.
Priest, on the other hand, do not have much in the way of addressing either need effectively (cloth armor, and only a minuscule buff to self healing). It used to be shields were the answer, however, a shield powerful enough to be viable in pvp means there will be a market for the bubble priest on raids. Something boring, spamable, and mana efficient with rapture. In other word exactly the opposite of what Blizz wants. This is, of course, only compounded by our very low healing numbers and low mobility, but the trouble will persist even when those numbers are brought into balance. Furthermore, our 'go to' low cost heal is so slow and so week it simply cannot be taken seriously by pvpers
I think addressing the mobility was tried with inner will but it seems like they failed. Inner will + mental agility turns us into a fast moving low mana cost instant caster. What instant casts do we have? Unfortunately, they aren't that great keeping you alive and taking inner will means we have to give up +60% (+90% glyphed) bonus to armor (damage reduction being pretty big in pvp for healers). But hey, remember when they were playing with the idea of the talent improved holy nova (-.5 gcd, +50% chance to crit with nova)and surge of light would prock on crits to make either the next holy nova or flash heal a free, instant cast. Now that would have solved some issues in pvp! Always healing yourself, always procing an effective instant cast heal. It also wouldn't have been a viable pve way given low heals for holy nova. Alas, it was not to be.
If pvp is going to be viable for us ever while upholding the new challenges Blizz has been gracious enough to give us (and only us it seems) then something dramatic has to change. Something like making us immune to stuns, or heal ourselves for equal amount of everyone else we heal, or making it so we can move while casting Heal (like the fire mage!). Maybe a combo of all three of those! Hey Blizz, you wanna solve a pvp problem for me and get me to cast Heal all at the same time? Make it so that while I cast Heal I can move and can't be interrupted and/or stunned. Also make it so that whoever I cast Heal on (including myself), I heal myself for an equal amount too.
Hydden Nov 8th 2010 6:20AM
@Sisterpam Heal is slow, but it's not meant to react to damage - it's in anticipation of it.
Heal = Maintenance (the tank is above 80% health but is in combat & getting hit)
Greater Heal = Catch up (you need to get the tank from under 50% up to 80%)
Flash Heal = Emergency (you need to get the tank from under 30% up to 50%)
Guardian Spirit = Do or die (you need to get the tank from under 15% up to 30%)
Heal is not the Holy Bomb that Pallies had, which was the solution for everything. Mana matters, so the Heal+Renew combo is the solution to counter boss auto-attack damage. You'll still need GHeal, FHeal, and PoM/PoH/CoH to counter the boss' abilities, or for when you've had to run around / focus on other things.
@Stilhelm I don't raid, so my gear is Ulduar level (ie. whatever I've been able to get through emblems and Icecrown Heroics) - something like an average 233 ilevel. I'd never recommend using Flash Heal to top anyone off - I'd recommend it to save their asses from death.
@LittleHamster Try reading the last line of my post again - I'm asking Dawn to give it a try since she's 85.
The crux of the issue is this: Dawn says "I find that I'm using very little Renew, despite all the buffs it's been getting", which strikes me as a critical flaw in her 5-man healing playstyle. Heal Chakra refreshes Renew whenever Heal is cast, so if you don't have Renew up on the tank for the entire duration of the fight (refreshed by Heal), you're probably doing about 30%-50% less healing than you should be. It's also frustrating to hear about all these supposed mana issues when Heal - the spell that doesn't dent mana at all - isn't being cast constantly.
However, I'm not 85 yet and can't test it myself, so I tried to suggest as nicely as possible to Dawn that she try healing again, this time with Heal Chakra + Renew refreshing on the tank. If Dawn posts in response saying "tried it out, didn't work" then that's fine, but I cannot accept that a convoluted Smite build is the acceptable way to heal when Renew isn't a major player in the repertoire.
Hydden Nov 8th 2010 6:24AM
This was supposed to be a reply to the thread above, bah.
Rob Nov 8th 2010 7:23AM
There are probably many ways to heal. Dawn has one way. You have another. I doubt either can be seen as 'only'. Your way seems more like a resto druid. My advice is to try out a couple of play styles and see what works. renew+heal may or may not be enough any more (and that's pretty much how i healed from 1-80).
Dawn Moore Nov 8th 2010 1:19PM
We already discussed the renew thing above but your closing comment interested me, since I spent a good chunk of last night staring at my ceiling and thinking about it.
Last night I was talking to a friend about the comments on my article. My thoughts were wandering but it went something like: "I'm starting to wonder why I'm even using Archangel as holy. Everyone commented about the net loss and they're right. But I was using Archangel the whole time in 5-mans and it seems to help a lot. Maybe it's completely superfluous." I dissected exactly what I do as holy and I'm thinking the 15% buff to healing after using Archangel probably plays a big hand in my thoughts.
Do you know what a deer scare/deer chaser is? It's a Japanese water feature that you put in a garden. In concept it's basically a hanging "bucket" with water dripping into it. When it fills with enough water it tips and hits a rock, creating a loud noise to scare deer away. The water drip is meant to be irregular so that the sound doesn't come at regular interval. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1qMrKCuYQY
Anyway, this is largely how healing works on beta right now in 5-mans. You'll be focusing your heals on one target typically and everyone else will take damage but not as much as your focus. You can toggle off one spell at a time, and give them say… 1 Heal, but you need to go back to your focus. Eventually though, there is a tipping point where the bucket falls, so to speak, and you have to do more than one toggle off to heal someone else. Oftentimes the tipping point of one DPS will line up with the tipping point on yourself or one other person, so this is when you use Flash, Binding, and Greater Heal. After I do this I was using Archangel because in my mind this is when I'll have burned off a lot of mana. From there I go back to my focus, and start using Heal again. I've ignored the focus for a bit at this point but I seem to catch up just fine.
So what is at play here? Heal + Archangel is pretty powerful because Heal is such a cheap heal in cost so you can spam it and get a lot of mana back simultaneously. Combine it with the 15% Archangel buff and suddenly it heals for a bunch more for 18 seconds.
I'll be playing with this during the week to see how holy plays without Archangel and see if I'm absolutely crazy or not.
Boobah Nov 8th 2010 4:38PM
TV Tropes refers to that Japanese deer chaser thing as "The Thing That Goes Doink."
spherissa Nov 13th 2010 10:41AM
Hi Dawn,
I really ought to sign up so I can post here properly but I was thinking with your Archangel technique maybe it's not the Absolute amount of mana you get but When you get it. I mean if you're finding time to cast a smite then you're probably feeling a safety margin in healing at that moment so you end up having in effect lower mana casts at that point eg you'd just be standing regenning and you regen at the same rate casting as NOT so you're sort of funnelling some mana away to be used in a burst when needed. It's the difference between the amount of liquid you'd get in a shower to a dam break.
At the moment I'm personally leaning away from the evangelism/archangel playstyle on my holy priest -- mainly cause, at least in the heroics I ran today (first real day in beta) I don't think I'd've had time to. Yay DPS sure that green spray on that boss in SFK won't hurt you. Nope: standing in things that hurt you is smart... Any how I was fidning I was having mana issues at times BUT my renew wasn't getting refreshed by heal (ARGH) which was.. causing me some issues in the whole no trickle heal going in.
Anyhow--
thanks for your perspectives,
\
Maddi
Asaron Nov 8th 2010 6:33AM
You did it! I just read your article, and I came away excited to play my priest!
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