Healing Priest FAQ v4.0.1: Surviving until December, 7th
 

Healing Priest FAQ v4.0.1

Important: this FAQ only deals with v4 live, it is not applicable to the beta!

0. Version note

This FAQ is now out of maintenance. Patch 4.0.3 will bring a few changes, but it will hit around 2 weeks prior to the Cataclysm, so it doesn't really make sense to put in the effort. Cataclysm itself will hopefully be treated in a new guide.

I. Preface

As you know, Cataclysm prepatch 4.0.1 introduces lots of changed game mechanics,
forcing all players to reconsider talent builds, gear and gemming choices until the
leveling race to 85 starts in December.

This FAQ is meant to provide some initial guidance. It's not a comprehensive guide,
and you should not expect one to arrive for the short time until Cataclysm hits. It's
also not a FAQ that will be valid at level 85. Note also that it's quite an opinionated
FAQ. It needs to be, otherwise you'd have to wait until you no longer need it.

Feedback

While I appreciate feedback for this FAQ, please try and concentrate on things that
you consider to be objectively false or where you have a substantially better answer
or solution. Remember, we're not going to min-max for 8 weeks of farm content.
Also, please reference the exact point you want changed as my time is severely limited
currently.

II. Assumptions (4.0.1)

This FAQ is based on a number of assumptions. Please be aware of these:

• Converted WotLK raiding gear seems to be overbudgeted in terms of int. We're going
  to swim in mana, which will be fundamentally different at level 85.
• Since mana won't be an issue, and level 80 fights are spammy, we're going to focus on throughput.
• For smite builds, I assume not to use Holy Fire, because we don't have access
  to the spirit->hit conversion in the shadow tree (lacking talent points) and thus
  won't be hit-capped regarding Holy Fire.

III. Disc Priests

III. a) Important Gameplay Changes for level 80 (4.0.1)

• Disc has a new spell Power Word:Barrier, though with a longish cooldown of 3 minutes.
  Be sure to try it out.
• "Heal" is our new, slow but cheap standard heal. However, it will be mostly useless
  for raiding at 80 where healing is frantic.
• Expect overall absorb by your shields to be lower, so you will probably need to use more direct heals.
• Holy Nova is now raid wide (technically it's now only based on proximity)
• The new DPS-based healing talent Atonement allows us to perform semi-targeted passive healing my doing
  damage. It may well be that at level 85 raiding, this becomes the dominant disc way to heal, but we don't
  really know yet.
• With these changes, it's not clear which healing roles you will be good at when raiding at level 80.
  Disc seems to be more suited to tank healing than before, but that's really designed for Cataclysm
  encounters, not frantic ICC fights, where tanks can drop in less than 3s.
  Healing based on atonement requires proximity of the healing targets to the dps target, so we're
  talking about tank and melee range healing here. For raid healing, you'll have to look elsewhere.

III. b) Talent build for Discipline priests (4.0.1)

Discipline priests can choose between a pure healing spec and a dps spec that I
will subsequently call the Atonement spec, named by the talent that makes this spec
possible. In this FAQ, I will assume an Atonement spec.

Why? Overall, healing is going to be easy until Cataclysm hits. At the same time we're
already bored by the encounters, so I suggest to use the time to get some practice with
our new toys. For this purpose, I recommend a build containing the dps-related talents
and glyphs for effectively using Atonement while also learning to apply Power Word:Barrier.

Like this: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Note that this build will probably not be the most efficient one for raiding at 80, but
the one we learn most from for Cataclysm. Also note that you will need a specific healing role in order to make Atonement useful. You will either need to be a tank healer or be assigned to heal melee as you need a dps target close to the target to heal.

Regarding a pure healing spec, the fact that I don't recommend one now doesn't mean I suggest we're all going to use smite specs at 85. It's just the right time to get practice with it.

III. c) Q&A for Discipline builds (4.0.1)

Q: Should I use Atonement?
A: You should try it. There are consequences, though. 8 yards is a lot and not a lot at the same time, and depending on hitbox size and positioning you may end up healing the tank, melee, pets or a combination of these that may vary from second to second. It's also not predictable which target is going to be healed. If the tank is full right the moment the Atonement heal hits, a pet with just a bit of hp loss will be healed instead, including building a possible DA shield. A wounded rogue at 25% just entering the 8 yards range may pull the Atonement heal from a tank being at 60%, which isn't good if a large blow hits right then. Also, Grace isn't refreshed. Be aware of these things when deciding between direct heals and Atonement smites, especially when you're the sole tank healer in an encounter.

Q: Why no Strength of Soul?
A: WotLK raid content is very spammy. "Heal" is very slow and really designed for Cataclysm content,
so we won't use it a lot, and thus "Strength of Soul" shouldn't be an important talent.

Q: Why no Empowered Healing?
A: Since we mostly replace Heal by Smite, and also most Greater Heal by Penance, 2% haste
from Darkness looks like a better deal. Move the points from Darkness to Empowered Healing
if you find yourself using flash heal a lot.

Q: Why no Mental Agility?
A: Because it looks like we won't need the mana at 80 while also lacking talent points.
If you find you do need the mana, get 1 point from Inner Sanctum and 2 from Darkness.

Q: Why Dispell Magic as third major glyph?
A: There's not much else to take here and we actually do some dispelling. At 85 though,
The fear glyph looks very promising for running instances. It's just that nobody needs
fear in WotLK instances.

III. d) Random healing notes: (4.0.1)

• As there are no longer spell ranks, review macros and key/mousebinds from addons
  that may stick to a spell rank, for example stuff you used for Infest healing.
  These might possibly just fail now that ranks are gone, and you don't want to
  notice that in the middle of a fight.
• Multi-Rapture: has been tested to still work. Looks very much overpowered now in combination with the reduced cooldown of 6s.
• If you reforge to mastery as suggested, depending on gear Infest may no longer break your shields at the Lich King. You can work around this by changing you flask (at the cost of re-flasking), turning off Inner Fire, or even switching out your weapon, ideally a combination of the above with the minimum impact. Obviously, this only makes sense if you do have mana problems without multiple rapture procs.

III. e) Gemming, Enchanting, Consumables (4.0.1)

Due to the removal of our 6% haste talent and the nerf to Borrowed Time, we're not
as easily soft-capped regarding haste as in 3.3 and before. This makes haste far more
interesting to disc priests.

Now, for level 80, my suggestion is to stay with your gems and enchants as they are and
see how you do in actual raiding. Then adjust. Going for straight Int in order to gain both throughput
and efficiency is a safe bet. However, you may able to increase your throughput by going
for straight haste if you find yourself drowning in mana. For level 80, I would rule out
spirit and crit as candidates for gemming, enchanting, and consumables.

III. f) Reforging (4.0.1)

Since current raiding gear doesn't appear to have mastery rating, my suggestion is to
start by reforging for mastery rating. Mastery is efficiency and non-overhealing throughput
for all our non-utility spells, so let's get it here, preferably by reforging crit.

III. g) Haste soft cap (4.0.1)

Due to talent and raid buff changes, our haste soft cap (it's not a general hard cap, it's a hard cap for spells at or below 1.5s cast time and when BT is active).

The bolded rows are the ones that apply to the disc build this guide suggests.

Buffs	Cap(%)	Cap(Rating)
BT, 0/3 Darkness	31.58%	1036
BT, 1/3 Darkness	30.28%	993
BT, 2/3 Darkness	29%	951
BT, 3/3 Darkness	27.75%	910
BT, with 5% haste buff, 0/3 Darkness	25.31%	830
BT, with 5% haste buff, 1/3 Darkness	24.07%	790
BT, with 5% haste buff, 2/3 Darkness	22.86%	750
BT, with 5% hast buff, 3/3 Darkness	21.66%	711

IV. Holy Priests

IV. a) Important Gameplay Changes for level 80 (4.0.1)

• Chakra is our new ability to get into a healing mode where we are better at mode-specific healing tasks.
  While we don't know how good it will be at 80, now is the time to get used to it. I'd say forget about the
  "Heal" chakra in ICC at 80. Renew and possibly PoH chakra might do well.
• "Heal" is our new, slow but cheap standard heal. It will be used more at level 85, where healing should
  be less frantic.
• The Chakra state in combination with the Revelations talent transforms our new spell Holy Word:Chastise
  to a healing related ability. Like with the basic Chakra, use the time to familiarize yourself with it.
• Holy Nova is now raid wide (technically it's now only based on proximity)
• Glyphed Lightwell is seriously good and can now be used without switching targets.

IV. b) Talent build for Holy priests (4.0.1)

Holy builds for level 80 don't have all that many options. There's too much important stuff in the
Holy tree to try out, and some of the options we have require more points in disc (for example for
GcD based shields) or shadow.

Like for disc, I suggest we use the time until Cataclysm to get acquainted with new stuff
instead of wringing every bit of possible efficiency or throughput for farm content.

Suggested build: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

IV. c) Q&A for Holy builds (4.0.1)

Q: Why Surge of Light?
A: WotLK raid content is very spammy. "Heal" is very slow and really designed for Cataclysm content,
so we won't use it a lot, and thus "Surge of Light" won't see that much use. That said, we want
to get a feel for things, and holy priest used to have real lull phases in fights (as opposed to disc),
so let's find out. Also, holy priests might use Heal more than Disc due to Holy Word:Serenity making
it safer.

Q: Why no Spirit of Redemption?
A: The spirit bonus is gone, and priests dying often enough for the talent to matter are a disgrace.
This is a PvP talent now.

Q: Why Body&Soul?
A: Because you make me (and Lambi) happy if you do. Seriously, it's an amazing talent for
priests who delight in bringing the most benefit to their raid overall. If you didn't use
it so far, now is the time to try it out. If you find you don't get the hang of it, then by all means
put it away in Cataclysm.

Q: Why Dispell Magic as third major glyph?
A: There's not much else to take here and we actually do some dispelling. At 85 though,
The fear glyph looks very promising for running instances. It's just that nobody needs
fear in WotLK instances.

Q: But I need more mana
A: The choice between efficiency and throughput talents in the build is really a guess.
If you do run out of mana, switch to 2/2 Veiled Shadows (1 point from Darkness, 1 from
Twin Disciplines). Next, move the remaining 2 points from TD to Mental Agility. Like this:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft. Note that if your playstyle is using Renew a lot, MA may be more mana than VS, in which case you should go 3/3 MA first.

IV. d) Random healing notes: (4.0.1)

• As there are no longer spell ranks, review macros and key/mousebinds from addons
  that may stick to a spell rank, for example stuff you used for Infest healing.
  These might possibly just fail now that ranks are gone, and you don't want to
  notice that in the middle of a fight.

IV. e) Gemming, Enchanting, Consumables (4.0.1)

For level 80, my suggestion is to stay with your gems and enchants as they are and
see how you do in actual raiding. Then adjust. Going for straight Int in order to gain both throughput
and efficiency is a safe bet. However, you may able to increase your throughput by going
for straight haste if you find yourself drowning in mana.

IV. f) Reforging (4.0.1)

Since current raiding gear doesn't appear to have mastery rating, my suggestion is to
start by reforging for mastery rating. This is mostly to find out how good it is. Overhealing
from HoTs is brutal in ICC with the 30% aura, so I'm not sure it's actually the best choice
for raiding at 80. We really need to see overheal quotas from 4.0.1 to give a better recommendation here.


V. List of changes

2010-10-12: Initial post for disc. Replaced Infest rank hint by general notice. Fixed typos.
2010-10-13: Holy Nova clarification, added holy part.
2010-10-14: Added Multi-Rapture testing results.
2010-10-15: Fixed critical spelling mistake. 8-)
2010-10-19: Added Atonement role hint, note regarding disc healing specs.
2010-10-30: Added haste soft cap section for Discipline done by Nysem, Infest notes, added Atonement Q&A, some minor edits
2010-11-13: Maintenance note

Reforging tidbit of none of the gear having mastery is a notable one, however how low are we willing to take crit? I can't see taking mine much below 20%, though I tend to favor crit/haste in my gear. I know as disc priests some of your bubbles still proc off of crit. As a holy priest my crit as not nearly as important, though I would still hesitate to drop too low.

Do you forsee any regen issues for our level 80 selves, or only as the 80-85 scaling begins to step forward? Mostly what I have seen from other Beta-involved healers is that at 80 we are going to be fine, however when we step closer to 85 our mana is going to start skipping out of whack.

I'm hoping these changes are smoother than the horror stories we are getting from many level 85 beta players.

Especially if you want to continue using lots of shields, I suggest you reforge as much as you can to mastery. If you plan to mostly spam smite with some Penance in between, then it's obviously not as important, because increased dps from crit will also increase the amount healed. Mostly a gut feeling though, things depend a lot on what kind of healing style works now at 80. We really need to wait for the first set of good combat logs.

Regarding regen: beginning level 82 or so we should notice mana beginning to become an issue. Of course, even at 80, especially holy priests will find ways to be oom, but only in longish fights. Most ICC stuff is over in 4 minutes today, so that alone reduces any problems we might have. We'll have better answers after the first id of raiding, though.

You should note that Glyph of Shadow turns into Glyph of Power Word:Barrier and Glyph of Hmyn of Hope into Divine Accuracy!

I would also suggest using this macro for smiting while tankhealing/or doing 5mans without losing your target and attacking the maintarget of your raid:

#showtooltip smite
/cast [harm] [target=targettarget] Smite

Note: If you have a enemy targeted u can also smite with this Macro

There are no longer any spell ranks, so this point doesn't really make any sense (anymore).

Indeed - I wonder how 3 seasoned priests missed that during review. This may also be a general point to put in the FAQ - to review possible macros and keybinds that may stick to ranks and possibly just fail in 4.0.1

I think they can still be in macros and not do any harm. As in technically the rank attribute/parameter is still valid, it just doesn't have any effect. I only heard that however and didn't test that out myself, so a word of caution is probably not wrong until someone confirms it.

My macros with a specific rank in them, even max rank, were broken and not working.

I'm not sure if this is the best place to ask this, but I'd like to get some other input on the current holy priest mastery. When chain casting on myself the HoT tooltip is updated with each cast. After trying to build up the biggest HoT I could muster though I've frequently run into an issue where the HoT ticks actually decrease in size. Is this happening to anyone else?

Holy Nova is healing the closest targets regardless of group/raid, including random people in the bank in Org.

ive spent the day in disc and holy specs. been running heroics. based on heroics alone (our raid night has been moved to tomorrow. ill post again then) heres some tips

i was gemmed for disc before. pure sp with sp and haste in yellow, sp and spir in blue.
i kept the gems i had so im in all int with int haste in yellow and int spir in blue.
with these gems (and full chants) ive been swimming in mana. so i reforged all my spir on gear to mastery and im still swimming in mana. especially with archangel but the reforge is helping a lot.


Disc:
i know the guide says heal isnt as good. I disagree to an extent. i dont raid heroics so my raids are lower on damage. but the tanks usually dont take more than 50% damage. so i specced for heal and shielding and it works well. i keep tank very very high on health. i shield, wait for his health to begin to drop, and heal until next shield.
with heal taking off 2 seconds from weakened soul i can keep a shield up pretty easily. if i was to just ignore mana entirely (which with the spec i actually can) i can just shield, spam heal, and reshield once damage is started. keeps tank at 100% for the most part.

now when it comes to group heals, stationary fights are great for power word barrier. if things manage to get hectic (which unless you just arent paying attention they shouldnt) you can pop the barrier and a prayer of healing and its a pretty big hit.

for the most part if you have enough mastery your shields and DA's should be near invincible in heroics. (keep in mind im in t10 2piece with 2 icc10 and 2 icc25 pieces. so im not horribly overgeared... but pretty badly. also max enchanter so im in full enchants for sp and healing. tailor so lightweave on cloak)




Holy:
holy is a bit harder to work with but for me it always has. circle of healing is still your AoE goto heal. but your real focus is going to be on chakra states and keeping them up during fights.

know the fight your in, determine what you need most, and choose your chakra state based on that.
holy has another mana regen talent in holy concentration so you will be drowning in mana regardless of how your specced or gemmed unless your in dps gear.

so since mana isnt an issue, pick your chakra state. IE if you get feared or lose control a lot in the fight, go for renew based chakra. if your tank takes a lot of damage, go for heal based chakra. if your group takes damage, go for prayer of healing based chakra.

no matter which you choose your going to want to do 1 think. spam heal on someone. because it extends the life of the chakra state and between states its not as easy. if you spam fast enough and have enough haste youll end up keeping your chakra state until the next cd.

heal based chakra gives you a very powerful instant cast heal. renew based chakra gives you a second renew to work with so you can have double the HoT's. and prayer of healing is amazing chakra state because it gives you a targeted healing area that heals over time.

I tried both a heal centric and a smite-centric build on the PTR.

I think you understimate the tank healing potential of a heal-centric build even at 80.

Since heal reduces weakened soul by 4 secs you can use a PWS-2xheal core rotation to reduce weakened soul to 7 seconds. Then each rotation you can add 1 penance or 1 gheal. I am not saying it will be better overall than the smite-centric healing, but it may be a viable alternative if we can get some mastery through reforging.

Overall I see two separate strategies in the disc tree even at 80. Either focus on reducing PWS CD with SoS+heal or penance CD by replacing heal with smite. This may be important in cases where you have to save raid targets who take a lot of damage. E.g. Saurfang Marks.

Here are some haste caps for holy and discipline. Additionally, I will include when Renew gains additional ticks, as well as a table of haste rating numbers for each combination of haste buffs/talents. Let me know if I've made an error somewhere or if you would like me to add something, and I will correct it.

Discipline

The only haste buffs we have now would be Borrowed Time (14%), the 5% haste raid buff, and Darkness (1% per point). Hegen's recommended build has 2/3 Darkness so those rows are bolded.

Buffs	Cap(%)	Cap(Rating)
BT, 0/3 Darkness	31.58%	1036
BT, 1/3 Darkness	30.28%	993
BT, 2/3 Darkness	29%	951
BT, 3/3 Darkness	27.75%	910
BT, 5%, 0/3 Darkness	25.31%	830
BT, 5%, 1/3 Darkness	24.07%	790
BT, 5%, 2/3 Darkness	22.86%	750
BT, 5%, 3/3 Darkness	21.66%	711

Holy

Basically the same thing but no Borrowed Time. I won't include anything over the GCD cap. "5 ticks" and "6 ticks" apply to Renew, Divine Hymn, and Hymn of Hope. They gain ticks at the same points in haste:

Divine Hymn/Hymn of Hope/Renew - 4 ticks base

Ticks	Haste
5	12.5%
6	37.5%
7	62.5%

Buffs	5 Ticks	6 Ticks	GCD Cap
0/3 Darkness	410	1230	1640
1/3 Darkness	374	1186	1591
2/3 Darkness	338	1142	1544
3/3 Darkness	303	1099	1497
0/3 Darkness, 5%	235	1015	1406
1/3 Darkness, 5%	200	973	1359
2/3 Darkness, 5%	166	931	1314
3/3 Darkness, 5%	132	890	1269

Edit - Fixed an error I made in the discipline table assuming BT granted 7%/15% instead of 7%/14%. The numbers have been redone.

Would it not make sense to take away the points from Divine Fury and put them into Empowered Healing if you are using Flash Heal often? The way you have it doesn't make as much sense as the way I am seeing it at the moment.

No, because Divine Fury makes your Smite faster which in turn makes you heal more through Atonement. If you don't intend to try to smite as much as you can, an Atonement build doesn't make any sense.