Spiritual Guidance: Should a healing priest learn to shadow?
by Matt Low 
Jul 18th 2011 at 9:00PM
Greetings, minions of the light! As you can tell, resident priestess Dawn Moore is not here this week. That means you are
As a priest, you have the luxury of blowing stuff up or healing damage. Your leaders may periodically ask you to switch roles because of the nature of the encounter or composition in a raid. I have recognized the usefulness that the flexibility offers, but I also understand that my lack of shadow skill can be detrimental to the team.
So just how important is it to learn how to DPS? I'm also going to add a minor comment about priests in Firelands and the dominance of discipline over holy.
As a guild leader myself, I appreciate the efforts that my players go through when they learn and gear up additional specs on their own. Tanks who can DPS and healers who can tank and other such combinations make my life and my job incredibly easy. I don't have to "train" additional players and get them acclimated to our guild way of life. I don't have to go out and recruit a specific role if another player in the raid can do it with a simple spec switch. It doesn't hurt as much whenever someone decides to take a leave of absence, because we have players who can easily cover for them. Anyone who can play two roles essentially doubles their level of usefulness to the team.
There have been cases in which raid leaders have asked shadow priests to switch to a healing role simply because they didn't have enough healers. In my guild, I have the opposite problem; I see if any of my healers are willing to switch to DPS because I have a slight excess number of healers.
If you're ever going to ask a player to switch, you need to break it down to short-term and long-term windows. If it comes down to it, I think players are more receptive to switch roles for a week or two. This gives you enough time to find and recruit someone to fill in that slot.
A skill worth learning
I think shadow DPS is a great skill to pick up -- and not just from the additional value you can provide. Shadow is a style of play that's fairly calming. With all the DOT spells and the channeling, I find it a pleasant change from something like a retribution paladin or an elemental shaman. Not to mention, the gear picked up for healing can easily double as shadow gear, with a few reforging tricks. It may not be 100% optimal, but it is quite serviceable. Unless you're at the top of progression, you can work with what you have and still get the job done. When I play shadow spec, I know I won't be cracking a top 10 parse in my raid group, but I know enough to still do the necessary damage.
Something I've noticed about healing priests who play shadow is their common ability to read the situation and what's going on. If a healer or two dies, I've seen that same shadow priest stop DPSing and just start dropping Prayer of Healing bombs (or other healing spells) to keep the raid going until the dead healers are back alive again. Sure, it cuts into their DPS, but at least they're trying -- and they're making up for it in other areas.
If you want to get started, look no further than WoW Insider's own Fox Van Allen and his Shadow Priest 101 post.
What about what players want to play?
Yeah, it does matter whether or not players want to play as DPSers. I learned this lesson a long time ago. You pay a really heavy price when you force a player to do something that he's not willing to do. Not every priest wants to go shadow, and not every shadow priest wants to resort to healing. Maybe they're just not wired for it in some way.
Bottom line: It'll be an incredible boon to your raid group if you can and want to pull off being able to DPS. Don't sweat it if you can't. And if you're thinking about forcing a player to switch specs, make sure you impose a time limit so that they can revert back at the end.
Discipline favored over holy?
I know there's big perception right now that discipline is way better than holy. I prefer being a holy player, myself, but I've been asked recently to optimize and respec over to discipline for the sake of progression.
I can't deny the data I'm seeing showing that discipline is making some fairly large absorbs. I attribute that largely to the modifications made to the crit rating when 4.2 came out. Contrary to popular belief, I don't think holy is quite dead. The distinct lack of cloth drops with spirit from Firelands is a little painful and means that holy players have some work and catching up to do. It's not their fault, though. Call it a hunch, but I suspect that in a few months, holy will get right back up when they have the additional gear. (Not making any guarantees, though.)
Another thing that's granting discipline the nod over holy is Power Word: Barrier. Holy doesn't really have a raid-wide 3-minute cooldown spell like discipline does. There is Divine Hymn, and then there is Guardian Spirit. The counterpart to Guardian Spirit is Pain Suppression, but the fact that there isn't a holy counterpart to Power Word: Barrier means that discipline has a slight leg up.
During the early weeks of new content, raid leaders are always going to want to optimize and bring as many "outs" and cooldowns as possible. One suggestion that might work is folding a talent into the holy tree where the cooldown of Divine Hymn gets dropped to 3 minutes (but the healing component gets nerfed and the healing bonus it provides to incoming spells also gets a modification). But that's just an idea. I'm not sure if there are any plans to buff priests at this point.
I'm hoping we can sort ourselves out in the next month or two, but I won't be holding my breath. I raid in a 25-player environment. At the moment, I'm not convinced that holy is on the verge of dying and is in emergency mode or anything -- at least, not for what I'm doing.
Spiritual Guidance has the inside line on pre-raid gear, valor point and raid gear, and healing strategies for bosses such as Atramedes and Chimaeron. Newcomer to the priest class? Look into Discipline Priest 101 and Holy Priest 101.
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Jack Spicer Jul 18th 2011 9:28PM
I just think its hilarious that people are being asked to spec out of Holy into Disc. Hilarious because I remember being vote kicked from PuGs in early Cata before one single mob had been pulled because I was Disc. "Sorry, we need a healer."
Rmatulac Jul 18th 2011 11:35PM
I find that rather odd because when playing my priest I've always found it to be much easier to heal 5-mans as disc rather than holy. I prefer holy spec for raids although there are certainly some instances that holy did just as well or better (SFK for one)
LynMars Jul 19th 2011 12:39AM
Goodness, had those people not played since Classic/BC?
Desmentia Jul 19th 2011 3:04AM
Hah, that happened to me once too.
That occasion aside though, healing as Disc in Cata's extreme infancy was an exhilarating and bracing experience. I think successfully playing any spec that's just on the near side of viable will really make you a superb player of that spec once it gets buffed back into line.
Tfish92 Jul 19th 2011 11:03AM
I have shared similar experiences as disc. I've been disc for as long as I've been a priest, then when we get to cata all of the sudden people say it's a terrible spec and I must be fail for not going holy when I can heal just fine. It especially felt bad to get kicked form a group after arguing with someone that clearly doesn't know a thing about priests in the first place. Back in the first couple months I had an argument that started as a "why aren't you holy, you just bad?" thing and ended with him telling me I'm fail because I'm using greater heal...
Katherine Jul 19th 2011 8:32PM
@LynMars "Goodness, had those people not played since Classic/BC?"
Well, since you could heal dungeons in classic (raids too!) as shadow, classic players would be happy to just have a healer, no matter their spec ;). I don't know what BC was like.
scotlandap1 Jul 18th 2011 9:42PM
This article touches on a lot of things I'm thinking about literally this very moment.
I'm MS shadow this xpac but had been holy since vanilla, which is now my OS.
My RL called the raid a few minutes ago because our third healer in our ten-man group couldn't make it. Interestingly, she happens to be Disc, and this would have been a "progression" night for us as we were going to be facing Alysrazor for the first time. While honestly, I don't want to get "forced" back into healing, I do find it a little bit insulting when there's a perfectly good OS Holy priest that can heal just fine (with the gear to back it up, including the 4-pc. T11) but the perception seems to be growing that holy is not viable...and maybe it *is* not as good as Disc at the moment, but really? Call a raid because of that? Sigh.
zubbiefish Jul 19th 2011 8:29AM
My experience is almost exactly the same.
I've been a healing priest, in one form or another, since I started in BC. I dabbled in Shadow when dual spec was introduced, but never really played it seriously. Once Cata came I decided to "see how the other half lives". I specced Shadow, practised my butt off, found a guild who would take me as a DPS, and went to town.
I've used my healing spec in a raid once. It was in a pinch, and they reluctantly "let" me heal. The reasons for that? I have no real idea. I don't know if they don't trust me to do it, because they never see it, or our regular healers are just so good the they can't do without them. Maybe it's because I'm pretty good deeps, #1 or #2, in most of our 10's.
Regardless, it's not all bad, I like Shadow. It's not the same kind of challenge that healing is, but it has the benefit of keeping stress low. That's a good thing for your leisure activities.
Jason Jul 18th 2011 9:55PM
I would be one to believe that Shadow Priests melt faces, as opposed to blowing stuff up.
Samuel Jul 18th 2011 9:57PM
Shadow aoe is the laziest thing in the game. (1) Target tank, (2) Hit mind seer, (3) Repeat (2) as necessary.
Jehosaphat Jul 18th 2011 10:10PM
You'll get much higher damage spreading some dots around first, unless the mobs are so weak that damage doesn't matter.
Noodlenose Jul 18th 2011 10:22PM
I love using Mind Sear in Disc spec also. Its great on trash like scorpions where theres not a lot of damage flying around, but even gets brought out in boss fights. I was tank healing on Rhyolith the other night, but didnt have to do a lot of actual healing in Ph 1. Most of my time was spent doing DPS; Mind Searing the small adds, and then atonement healing on the big add (which works really well due to the stacking Infernal Rage).
denyeverything_1013 Jul 19th 2011 11:43AM
It's lazy if you do it incorrectly, which is what you're suggesting. You also need to maintain evangelism stacks and ES.
tchiakovsky Jul 19th 2011 12:52AM
that would be kind of like a fire mage just popping flame strike. You have to keep enough sw:p out to practically guarantee an orb proc withint a 15s window (I tend to go with 3), and keep up mind flay for evangelism if you want to get the best out of it. Maybe not as hard as others still, but it's not quite as simple as you make it out to be.
Tfish92 Jul 19th 2011 11:08AM
What about frost dk? Just put your diseases up on one mob, pestilence, then continue your normal attack on one mob and let howling blast do the work for you.
Brent Jul 18th 2011 11:40PM
Why don't people count lightwell as big CD. it is 3 minutes for it plus you can have it down for when people actually need it. The only real problem with it is you got to click and I have to yell at people before ever fight to make sure you click the lightwell or you will die. The range of the lightwell has been increased too so what is the real problem with it.
Normally if everyone actually uses the lightwell it is number 2 the holy healers most used healing done heals.
kuri Jul 19th 2011 1:10AM
If Lightwell were a 6-charge clickable ground effect that decreased damage or healed for the full effect immediately, I think it'd be considered a great tool. Sadly, Holy's cooldown kit is shared between Priests of any spec (Hymns) and geared solely at individual protection (Guardian Spirit). The way fights are geared, the raid's taking the brunt of the beating. Individual-centric cooldowns are lowly valued.
Mix that with Sanctuary being underwhelming relative to Druids' / Shamans' ground effect heals and mastery lending to more overhealing than anything and you have a mix for disaster. Body & Soul is situational at best.
Disc at least has a healing niche (bubbles as preventative healing), is scaling well, and offers a 3-minute raid cooldown. Hence its inclusion on most progression-level content.
Revnah Jul 19th 2011 3:50AM
I completely agree on Lightwell as a healing cooldown. I've trained my guildies to actually click the thing and it features prominently on my Recount "Effective Healing" list.
Holy is not in the best place right now, but neither is it the poor cousin if played well. I love well-played disc priests but disc just doesn't suit me at all and so I'm going to stick with holy. So far, nobody has complained about my performance ;-)
AltairAntares Jul 19th 2011 6:15AM
As a resto druid who's been experimenting with holy priests, I can definitely tell you that likening light well to amazing tools like wild growth or even efflorescence is pretty silly. Wild Growth is something that you can perfectly time to hit right as the boss does his Massive Stroke of Doom to bring everyone up to a much safer level (and it's pretty dummy proof as well). Light well on the other hand is a mana saving tool, since you can't rely on people to hit it, and it doesn't heal fast enough anyway to really accomplish anything that you couldn't have done in the course of normal healing, and people are often too far away to click it anyway.
Even the chakra spell aoe, though nice, is really just a slightly stronger version of efflorescence, a spell looked down upon by quite a few resto druids.
Artificial Jul 19th 2011 8:22AM
Let me know when they fix it so you can /target lightwells with a macro again. Until then... I can't function as a mouser -- I use my keyboard to fire off abilities. If I mouse around clicking on things to activate them, I might as well have a several second GCD... turning is the only thing I can do with my mouse without taking an inordinate amount of time to do it, because it doesn't require precisely clicking anywhere specific. Placing a healing item on the screen somewhere to click... I suppose that's fine out of combat, or maybe in combat if you only needed half my normal DPS. But a good cooldown ought to be useable at times other than only when you have no need for a good cooldown.