Raid Rx: Priest thoughts and the 100k mana club
by Matt Low 
Apr 3rd 2012 at 1:00PM
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poohbah of World of Matticus and a founder of Plus Heal, a discussion community for healers of all experience levels and interests Catch his weekly podcast on healing, raiding and leading, the Matticast.
Welcome to the 100k mana club! As you may have heard, healer mana is being normalized across the board so that everyone has 100,000 mana. We heard about this change way back around November. After getting into the second wave of beta invites for Mists of Pandaria, one of the first things I did after setting my keybinds and messing around with my spec was to head straight for dungeon queues.
Waiting 18 minutes as a healer? C'mon, guys! Throw me a bone here!
I'm going to write about two vastly different experiences. Like many other healing priests, I decided to run two different healing specs, discipline and holy. Leveling as a healer isn't going to be that bad when your Holy Fires and Smites are hitting for 40,000 crits.
My eyes were slowly getting crossed between looking at my mana bar on the top left to the center of my screen where I place my party frames. That's before I realized I could poke around in the settings and get mana bars to show up within the frames.
Way to go, default UI!
Anyway, the 100k mana pool does take a little getting used to. At this stage of the beta, I suspect the coefficients are going to be slightly off and not finalized yet anyway.
The first class I started healing with on the beta was my priest. I spent a good half an hour reassigning keys and modifying UI elements to get it to a point that I felt comfortable playing him. Configuring glyphs took some time. There are many choices at our disposal. It's like being a kid in an ice cream parlor. Do I go for the rocky road? The cookies 'n' cream? Mint chocolate? Durian-flavored? So many potential decisions!
Decided to use those for leveling: In my alternate healing spec, I opted to use these:
Beta healing as discipline
Spirit shell is the name of the mana-neutral workhorse spell that discipline priests have. Think of it as a counterpart to the holy priest version of Heal or a paladin's Holy Light. I'm not really satisfied with the way it functions right now. I think that might be due to the fact that I don't really see any healing done. If the shield effect wears off, the target gets healed for 80% of the amount. But if your healing target is sustaining constant and consistent damage, that heal never really gets done. Mind tricks are at work here.
Combat healing (5-man healing) felt anxious and stressful. Despite raid gear, I still struggled a little in some areas as discipline. I'm not sure if that was due to the party not properly executing mechanics or if it was just me. (Those of you who took on that second boss in the Temple of the Jade Serpent with that Anger boss will understand.) It was either that or because some spell I was using only healed for 1. Haven't been able to identify which one it was yet.
Atonement healing feels really powerful. We're talking 40,000 Smite crits. With damage like that, your party won't be dying that much when heals from Atonement reach your party. Be really diligent when it comes to mana management, since Smite spamming will drain your mana quickly. I found I had to be extremely aggressive with Shadowfiend and other mana regen cooldowns when healing my way through the Temple of the Jade Serpent.
Beta healing as holy
Holy feels amazing. I'm actually worried that it might almost be too good, before I realized that I was wearing a mix of Dragon Soul normal and heroic quality gear. No big change in the way healing plays out for holy. Make sure you put Heal back on your bars. Mana management's going to be a big deal at the start of the expansion. On the other hand, that might actually be the product of my trying to push and overextend my healing abilities.
Either way, it looks like holy is in a good spot from a mechanical perspective. Holy priests will need to adjust to having separate binds for Chakra now. For example, you don't have to cast Prayer of Mending after activating Chakra to activate Chakra: Sanctuary.
Since I know many of you are going to ask, spells like Halo and Cascade aren't available yet. We need to be level 90 to learn them, and right now, we're capped at level 86. We'll know more as we progress further into the beta.
Wielding wands
The other big change for me to get used to is the fact that I should be using wands in my main hand slot now. I didn't think it wold be that significant of a change, but to see myself holding a wand instead of a dagger or something is going to take some getting used to. Hoping we'll get some really awesome-looking wands now. Bonus: We actually get to see wand models being used more often.
Throughout the rest of the beta period, I'll continue to play with the rest of the other healing classes and their spells. I'm in the middle of leveling a monk right now (Erryday' I'm pandaren). I'm just rolling around all over the place and after hitting level 10, I'll be going into Mistweaver. Haven't had a chance to really check out their healing capabilities yet.
Need advice on working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered. Send your questions about raid healing to mattl@wowinsider.com. For less healer-centric raiding advice, visit Ready Check for advanced tactics and advice for the endgame raider.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Kia Apr 3rd 2012 2:06PM
I'm really, REALLY not a fan of the normalized mana pool. Even if it all ends up acting the same (which I doubt), one of my favorite things as a healer is getting gear and slowly watching my mana pool get higher and higher, knowing my resources as a healer are growing ever deeper to do my job better.
Being eternally stuck at 100k like it may as well be renamed Energy just removes any real sense of progression. Sure, I might heal for more, but meh.
Nut Apr 3rd 2012 2:53PM
You'll still see and feel yourself getting stronger. As you gear up, your spirit increases, which causes your mana regen to go up, which in turn makes you able to cast longer, or cast less efficient heals more frequently.
Same thing as now, its just been simplified to a single stat (spirit) instead of two stats (int+spirit).
Michael Apr 4th 2012 5:15AM
@nut:
You'll still want both stats. Int will serve to increase the throughput of your spells, while spirit will increase regen. You're not losing one stat, it's just not increasing your mana pool anymore. So it really hasn't been simplified, it's just one stat does slightly less.
Still not a fan, and it just seems like an incredibly silly response to what I think was an overblown problem. I'm going to miss seeing my mana pool grow as I level and gear, even if it was only slightly.
Anna Apr 4th 2012 10:17AM
I agree with you, Kia. A normalized manapool ... No thanks, Blizzard! :/
Caylynn Apr 3rd 2012 2:40PM
I'm really worried about disc. It's my preferred healing spec right now, but the way it seems to be progressing on beta, I'll be ditching my priest in favour of my holy paladin (who have a very complete toolkit right now) and having to respec holy on my priest (which I've never gotten the hang of, but maybe the changes will make it more appealing).
I really, really hope Blizz fix disc before MoP goes live. Right now it seems very broken. :(
Shinae Apr 3rd 2012 3:42PM
For real. With few exceptions, I LOVE how Disc has been in Cata. Atonement healing is such fun, as was getting the hang of how to change my strategy depending on whether I was in a 5-man or a raid.
Despite being main-spec Holy for BC and Wrath, I did not like Holy in Cata because I never got used to Chakra. Admittedly, I didn't try very hard because my priest is just an alt, but changes like these are just going to make me play that class even less.
palurien.alleria Apr 3rd 2012 2:41PM
Huh, I didn't see that toggle when I was looking at it before, but it's possible I'm just blind... I'll have to check it when I get home tonight. Saw the controls for height/width and borders, so blindness may be the culprit.
Been using the default raid frames on beta with mouseover macros, and definitely agree that they work well. Just want to be able to position them somewhere more helpful :D
Alja Apr 3rd 2012 2:52PM
tried healing on my disc priest and found it to be incredibly painful - it seems like they ripped out a lot of our signature abilities (being able to use multiple power word shields & rapture). Oh how I miss rapture, it seems so strange to have less mana than I do on live (like 50k less) and we don't have any good ways to get mana back without using one of the two cooldowns we have. I love being a disc priest so I really hope they take another look at what they are doing with them. Also, would like to know what spell it is that is only healing for 1 as I noticed that a lot during the dungeon runs I did.
As far as spirit shell, I like the idea behind it but I do wish the cast time was lower or it healed for more or there was just something else do it as it feels a bit lackluster.
Atonement does seem to be in a nice place right now but wish they would give the mana giveback component back to evangelism.
paul.marsico Apr 3rd 2012 3:29PM
More homogenization please.
K, thanks.
Katherine Apr 3rd 2012 3:43PM
So my AWESOME mace/OH tmog that I never completed is going to be nonexistent in Mists? :( Just as I feared.
Delta7525 Apr 3rd 2012 4:15PM
Yeah, I saw this coming as soon as I looked at the talent calculators months ago. Disc is losing half of its talents, most devastating is rapture (which if we still had would be shit anyhow since our max mana will be 100k) we lost strength of soul and borrowed time too. Our beloved disc model of a healer whos primary regen is from abilities instead of spirit and who prepare for damage with absorbs instead of reacting to it with heals is gone. I'm really bummed to be honest, the current disc model is godly, unbroken, perfect. Holy on the other hand has been needing love for all of cata, they didnt even have a raid cooldown till the last patch. They are getting some much needed attention in mists, I'm really glad they are revamping it, but disc really is a fun spec to play right now and I stand on that it should be left alone.
5.0 disc priests are probably gonna suck ass. Holy (I hope) should still be competitive with the other healing classes which are mostly being left alone.
As to 100k mana pools... my god what a bad decision. What I loved about casters, what made us casters, is that our power source grew as we accrued gear. Now we're just like every other damn class with an energy bar that caps at 100, ours is just blue. Worst design idea ever... ever.
A little more whining inc. Blizzard is going directly against everything its saying when it comes to priests development. They started by saying they want the two healing specs to feel very different to play (as if they weren't already somehow) and then turned half the disc talents into glyphs so holy gets them as well. Nice, nice way to keep them separate. Then they tried to make half of the class heals holy exclusive.. and then had to give em back to disc since they couldn't think of any way to fix holy nova as they planned, then they needed to give renew back.. and heal. Wait a couple weeks, I bet we get binding heal again. At first to compensate disc for the loss of PoH and Binding Heal they said "we got a lot of feedback from disc priests saying that they love bubble spamming, so we're giving you another absorb ability" (paraphrase). And bam, we get spirit shell. All cool, now we have more absorb abilities... oh shit, now our PW:S is on a 6 second timer. Kiss bubble spam goodbye, and no your not doing it with spirit shell now since its worth about as much as heal. Now instead of using bubbles when you need them your going to have to sit on it in case the tank takes a lot of damage. They keep saying one thing and doing the opposite, its really getting on my nerves.
Disc is good, holy needs love, shadow was fine too. I don't know why they have to destroy whats not broken in disc while they also make repairs to holy.