Yet another installment in the unfinished posts series. What the heck was I rambling on about here? Yeah, if it has Spirit it's good for holy priests, but did I really need to say more than that? I think I see where I was going here...
Showing posts with label holy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label holy. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Friday, September 25, 2009
Style!
A thread over on PlusHeal got me thinking about my PvE healing style. One of the reasons I have trouble as DPS is the notion of ability rotation. There IS no rotation as a holy priest. Well, after the inital tank cast. It's like as series of IF... THEN statements.
I lean heavily on shield/renew to prevent damage and keep people topped up. In the current patch, I've been stopcasting GHeals on the tank, and only using flashes when they're free or I have to hit multiple people in a short time span. I've gotten pretty good at always using the free flash. Having sparks shoot out from under my feet helps.
1. Open with PoM, Shield. Keep tank in range and hit with renew about 1 tick after the tank gains aggro.
2. IF the tank is a DK, I try and keep my shield up the entire fight. I leave gaps with rage users and pallies when the fight's not too intense to help them do their tank thing.
3. IF I see an aggro indicator on another player, I throw them a renew. If there seem to be a lot of people with aggro, I'll toss a PoM on the person who seems to be taking the most damage.
4. IF the damage is being caused by disease or magic I will abolish/dispel as needed. This is a pretty high priority for me. I spend a lot of time keeping debuffs to a minimum.
5. IF a player other than the tank has lost about a quarter health, I'll flash or gheal them when I can, depending on how much health is lost. 9k is about where I switch from flash to gheal. If it's more serious than that, I'll throw a new shield->renew->PoM on the tank, then renew->flash->greater the DPS.
6. IF things are really getting hairy with the DPS and myself taking damage, I'll usually damage control with PoH if it will heal more than the incoming damage.
7. If multiple people are going critical or the tank is taking massive damage, I'll activate a trinket if I'm wearing one that requires it, throw a guardian spirit/renew/PoM/shield on the tank, do a circle and a PoH if I have time, then start shield/renewing the DPS. At that point I usually have to start deciding which DPS is the priority to keep up.
8. MSBT tells me when my health/mana is running low. I have it set to a pretty high threshhold. IF it's health, I'll generally shield->renew->flash. IF it's mana, I'll let out my puppy if it's available, or use the Hymn of Hope. If I'm out of options, I'll use a health or mana pot.
9. IF I get bored because I'm overgeared, which happens more and more lately, I switch to my second bar, which replaces some of my emergency heals with dots, pw:d, smite/blast, etc. I still have the DPS part of my holy nova "turned on" so I like to run in and start spamming it when I'm really bored. I've outDPSed people in lower level dungeons before.
10. On top of all this, I'm constantly moving. Running, jumping on top of stuff, repositioning, watching for fires and pats, etc. I love having so many run and heal possibilites.
Things I could improve
-I could probably wait to throw on the renew until after the first shield wears off. I would need more Grid indicators for that.
-I could probably pay more attention to where the PoM bounce is so I don't overwrite one already present on the tank. I don't think that happens very often though.
-I could do more dispels on the tank's target. I'm sure there are occasionally things that I can dispel to help out the DPS
-I always forget about binding heal
-I should use Divine Hymn more. I know it's awesome, but I have this thing against using it unless I'm really desperate, which isn't really the best way to use a group heal
-I'm better about Hymn of Hope, but I should still use it more
-I'm bad at using lock cookies and mana potions early in the fight, which is really the ideal time to do it.
-It's been a while since I revewed my talent tree. A few patches have gone by, so there may be some tweaks to do
That's all of Zully's secrets! Have fun!
I lean heavily on shield/renew to prevent damage and keep people topped up. In the current patch, I've been stopcasting GHeals on the tank, and only using flashes when they're free or I have to hit multiple people in a short time span. I've gotten pretty good at always using the free flash. Having sparks shoot out from under my feet helps.
1. Open with PoM, Shield. Keep tank in range and hit with renew about 1 tick after the tank gains aggro.
2. IF the tank is a DK, I try and keep my shield up the entire fight. I leave gaps with rage users and pallies when the fight's not too intense to help them do their tank thing.
3. IF I see an aggro indicator on another player, I throw them a renew. If there seem to be a lot of people with aggro, I'll toss a PoM on the person who seems to be taking the most damage.
4. IF the damage is being caused by disease or magic I will abolish/dispel as needed. This is a pretty high priority for me. I spend a lot of time keeping debuffs to a minimum.
5. IF a player other than the tank has lost about a quarter health, I'll flash or gheal them when I can, depending on how much health is lost. 9k is about where I switch from flash to gheal. If it's more serious than that, I'll throw a new shield->renew->PoM on the tank, then renew->flash->greater the DPS.
6. IF things are really getting hairy with the DPS and myself taking damage, I'll usually damage control with PoH if it will heal more than the incoming damage.
7. If multiple people are going critical or the tank is taking massive damage, I'll activate a trinket if I'm wearing one that requires it, throw a guardian spirit/renew/PoM/shield on the tank, do a circle and a PoH if I have time, then start shield/renewing the DPS. At that point I usually have to start deciding which DPS is the priority to keep up.
8. MSBT tells me when my health/mana is running low. I have it set to a pretty high threshhold. IF it's health, I'll generally shield->renew->flash. IF it's mana, I'll let out my puppy if it's available, or use the Hymn of Hope. If I'm out of options, I'll use a health or mana pot.
9. IF I get bored because I'm overgeared, which happens more and more lately, I switch to my second bar, which replaces some of my emergency heals with dots, pw:d, smite/blast, etc. I still have the DPS part of my holy nova "turned on" so I like to run in and start spamming it when I'm really bored. I've outDPSed people in lower level dungeons before.
10. On top of all this, I'm constantly moving. Running, jumping on top of stuff, repositioning, watching for fires and pats, etc. I love having so many run and heal possibilites.
Things I could improve
-I could probably wait to throw on the renew until after the first shield wears off. I would need more Grid indicators for that.
-I could probably pay more attention to where the PoM bounce is so I don't overwrite one already present on the tank. I don't think that happens very often though.
-I could do more dispels on the tank's target. I'm sure there are occasionally things that I can dispel to help out the DPS
-I always forget about binding heal
-I should use Divine Hymn more. I know it's awesome, but I have this thing against using it unless I'm really desperate, which isn't really the best way to use a group heal
-I'm better about Hymn of Hope, but I should still use it more
-I'm bad at using lock cookies and mana potions early in the fight, which is really the ideal time to do it.
-It's been a while since I revewed my talent tree. A few patches have gone by, so there may be some tweaks to do
That's all of Zully's secrets! Have fun!
Friday, January 16, 2009
Work and Play
I never actually got around to what I wanted to talk about yesterday. No sidetracks this time.
Ever since I heard that Blizzard will (eventually) allow dual-speccing, I've been waiting for it. And waiting and waiting and waiting. Some days more patiently than others. I would run a Holy spec for instances and raiding and a Discipline spec for questing and PvP. That's pretty much the way I've been set up since I joined my guild and needed to be able to do both effectively. As far as the actual spec goes, I like both of them just as much for their purpose. However, the way I think about respeccing and the length of time I spend in a spec tells a lot about the way I play WoW.
I think of my Holy spec as a 'work' spec. I'm only in it when I need to be to do the big heals. I really like doing instances and raids, and my real talents shine when I'm doing that kind of healing. But to me it's still a chore to be in Holy spec, and I get out of it whenever I can. I'm in Disc spec right now because I know I won't be raiding for a little while, and if I'm running with Zon it's good enough for heroics.
I have the most fun in my Disc spec. I can get out there and kill mobs non stop if I'm wearing my heal gear (my heal set is good for questing this time around, unlike the old Mooncloth gear) or if I'm in a dailies area and worried about allies, I can pull out my resilience set. The spirit on it is terrible, but that's what Honeymint Tea is for. Out in the world my resilience set is good enough to keep me alive for quite a while, and even beat some classes if I've got full mana. In battlegrounds and arenas, not so much, but as I've said before instanced PvP is really not my thing.
I think a lot of it has to do with being on a PvP server. If I were on a carebear server I wouldn't have to worry about getting jumped, so I could just suck it up and quest in Holy. It's not a bad spec, Disc is just more DPS and "armor".
Maybe this kind of attitude does mean that Blizzard needs to fix healing. I don't mind the way it works now, but when I'm doing heavy duty healing it is a lot of work.
Ever since I heard that Blizzard will (eventually) allow dual-speccing, I've been waiting for it. And waiting and waiting and waiting. Some days more patiently than others. I would run a Holy spec for instances and raiding and a Discipline spec for questing and PvP. That's pretty much the way I've been set up since I joined my guild and needed to be able to do both effectively. As far as the actual spec goes, I like both of them just as much for their purpose. However, the way I think about respeccing and the length of time I spend in a spec tells a lot about the way I play WoW.
I think of my Holy spec as a 'work' spec. I'm only in it when I need to be to do the big heals. I really like doing instances and raids, and my real talents shine when I'm doing that kind of healing. But to me it's still a chore to be in Holy spec, and I get out of it whenever I can. I'm in Disc spec right now because I know I won't be raiding for a little while, and if I'm running with Zon it's good enough for heroics.
I have the most fun in my Disc spec. I can get out there and kill mobs non stop if I'm wearing my heal gear (my heal set is good for questing this time around, unlike the old Mooncloth gear) or if I'm in a dailies area and worried about allies, I can pull out my resilience set. The spirit on it is terrible, but that's what Honeymint Tea is for. Out in the world my resilience set is good enough to keep me alive for quite a while, and even beat some classes if I've got full mana. In battlegrounds and arenas, not so much, but as I've said before instanced PvP is really not my thing.
I think a lot of it has to do with being on a PvP server. If I were on a carebear server I wouldn't have to worry about getting jumped, so I could just suck it up and quest in Holy. It's not a bad spec, Disc is just more DPS and "armor".
Maybe this kind of attitude does mean that Blizzard needs to fix healing. I don't mind the way it works now, but when I'm doing heavy duty healing it is a lot of work.
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