I have a couple of questions that couldn't be answered by reading the guide at the beginning of this thread. I'm currently in Kara with my guild on my rogue (listed here), but leveling my holy priest (Ceel, Drenden). I'm level 69. I'm picking up tailoring and making the Primal Mooncloth Set to get into heroics as soon as possible because our Kara groups really need healers. Our guild is pushing to get as many geared as possible for SSC to start.

My spec. Since I'm going to be running the higher level dungeons, and then heroics with a variety of geared players, what is a good spec? Sometimes I find myself having to let some of the dps die (mostly because they don't know what they are doing and fight in front, etc). Sometimes the tank is trying to gear himself and is a little light on defense and aggro abilities. Therefore, trying to heal one person at a time is causing me some problems. But the advice here seems to be that CoH and aoe healing isn't too effective for low-level content.

Gear/Gemming. The guide above and several of the posts gave great advice, but I'm still a little unsure of the best choices to make myself as effective as I can as fast as I can with the aim of being able to handle Kara without wiping the raid. If I shoot for the 1200 +healing and then just balance my int and spirit, is that going to be effective?
Appreciate any thoughts

Ceel, you are heading in the right direction. The PMC and Whitemend sets are the best for Kara level priests. You are human, so you will benefit greatly by spirit. You can supplement your lack of stamina using elixers and food buffs. CoH will generate a lot of threat and with your current gear will probably lead to very quick deaths, and if you are the only regular priest you will definitely want to get improved divine spirit. If I were you I would drop two points from Holy Spec and one or both from Holy Reach and max silent resolve and pick up and max IDS. In addition to gemming and gear you want to make sure you get the best enchants you can. That would include sublety to your cloak and vitality to your boots. The gear will come in time as your guild comes together and gets more efficient in Kara.

You don't need PMC for heroics. In fact tailoring is completely superfluous unless you want to rush as fast as you can to T5. BoJ rewards, some of the new shattered sun items and drops from heroic MgT are what you should be aiming for. Getting the PMC set sorts out 3 equipment slots with very high quality items with little effort, but you can get equally good items without tailoring if you need to.

I always have and always will consider losing a DPS in any 5-man dungeon a personal failure.

Your spec does not really matter until you enter t5 content. Play with both specs and see which one you like the most. I have had CoH since level 55 or so and I found it very helpful to have in nearly every instance from the sunken temple to the end of t5, even before the massive buffs the spell received. Some people prefer impDS.

As far as gear/gemming is concerned there is a clear indication of what you need in the begining of this thread.

Also consider reading this: forum posting guidelines

If your raid clears kara you will get there the needed item, soon. If you have problems healing your group I dont think it changes simply if you wear epics instead of blue. Most people do not play concentrated or "safe" while leveling and in normal instances. This normaly changes if you start raiding. In kara there will be another one or two healers who will help you. But you have to learn how to react to healing on more than one person. And you have to learn when not to heal anybody to let him probably die for the survival of your group/raid. As a healer its your first youb to let your group/raid survive (no wipe). Only if you can do that its your job to let nobody die. After thet you can think about trying to heal everybody to full life. So if somebody is pulling aggro from the tank or standing in the wrong place or something it's not your overall goal to heal him. Heal him if you have time and mana and communicate your problem.

And about CoH: It does not help you much to heal up your group since it does not do much to one player. If you only have to heal two people dont consider using it. Even with 3 people getting some dmg in a 5man I would not use it in most situations. What I would do is putting PoM on the tank on CD and not let renew fall off. Most of the occassional group-dmg can be healed with a simple renew maybe combined with a shield. Concider your instants they can free you so much time for healing somebody else. If I need to heal everybody I would prefere PoH over CoH but it has a very long casttime with little heal for the tank so you only can do it if you know he can deal with it (maybe give him a shield before). CoH will give everybody at least some healing sooner, but it does not heal as much as PoH and at least your tank will need more healing than you can give him with CoH-spamming if he is at your gear-lvl in 5mans. If he can survive your CoH-spamming for 3s he probably will survive those 3s without healing. PoH will buy you the time you need for regaining control afterwards. (But dont think about PoH if only some people need healing.)

For healing you and your tank use binding-heal.

If you are not in BT or behind I would not skill CoH if there is not another priest with IDS.

I see this popping up so much that I have to comment on it.

I think that is a bad thing to say to a new healer. Why? I have seen too many healers that simply refused to heal people who pulled aggro, for example. They could have easily kept the aggro-pullers alive, but didn't simply because they didn't care. Saying something like "have to learn when not to heal anybody" sounds like it is something that happens all the time. It doesn't. In my whole holy priest career there have been very, VERY few cases where "not healing somebody" saved the group. Unless you count prioritizing your assigments in raids or prioritizing thanks to low mana, but those can be said with better words than "not healing somebody".

However you want to say it, I don't think you should tell new healers to hold back. Healer who doesn't use his mana is worse than healer who blows his mana straight away.

re: ToT issues: The only fight I have issues with ToT is Gurtogg, who has a nasty tendency to wait a couple of seconds in between the phase transition and actually changing targets. You just have to be careful with smashing your assist-GH7 macro there.

I disagree: they're both bad. But that advice is more intended to mean "DPS is lower priority than keeping the tank alive" than "don't heal DPS". If a mage and the tank are both about to die, or if the mage is about to die and the tank MIGHT die, the tank dying is much more likely to wipe the group than the mage dying, so you should absolutely prioritize the tank first. And yes, if there's a particularly bad DPS in your group, sometimes you stop healing him so that maybe he'll catch a clue. But that's a matter of priority (even the second example, where your priority is to make sure that the idiot DPS stops pulling aggro) rather than holding back.

That advice comes about because there are very few ways to distinguish a "good" 5 man healer from a "great" one, and how you handle bad situations is a fairly straightforward one. The same goes for tanks: a good tank holds aggro, and a great tank also keeps the group alive during difficult situations by appropriate use of taunts/cooldowns/potions.

I agree on that both are bad type. The difference is why. Not healing "so that he may get a clue" may in my opinion show an attitude problem (healer needs to make decisions in 1/10th of a second: it's better to have an in-built instinct to keep people alive no matter what happens). Blowing all the mana you have shows lack of skill. Attitude is harder to fix than lack of skill, that's why it's worse.

I agree with example you gave, yes, prioritizing is extremely important for a healer. Plus, I don't blame you for "educating" particularly bad dps a bit. What I didn't agree on, was making it sound like healer should let people die. No, you don't "let mage die and heal tank", you "fail to keep both mage and tank alive". A good healer catches people's shit before it hits the fan. A great healer is able to keep the walls clean even after shit hits the fan.

But I guess this comes down to matter of "Which one looks better on me, red or blue shirt?"

Hi there,

I am my guilds heal the raid/AoE healer Was just wondering how my gear is for this currently we have only vashj to kill in ssc and we've done 2 bosses in TK.

So any helpful input would be greatly appreciated if I've made any gemming errors, not that we wipe all the time due to healing I just want to be in my best form
If my riding crop is on it , I raid with ribbon of sacrifice usually

From what I can tell your gear is very good for your current level. When you can replace your lights justice with the badge mace.

I'd probably use [Essence of the Martyr] over your ribbon of sacrifice. Also, what's with the heal/crit heroic gem in your robes? I'd recommend a Pyrestone or Crimson Spinel instead.

Other than that, you've made good gem choices and spent your badges well. Why have you got herbalism? For cash? With [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone] currently one of the best obtainable trinkets, it may be worth searching out an alchemy powerlevelling guide and gathering the herbs you need to (re?) level alchemy for it. At least you don't have to grind any SSO rep!

Sorry, it was late in the morning when I wrote my last comment.

I did not want to say, that non-healing healers are good healers. But I've come to the conclusion that sometimes you simply have to make the decission that you let someone die. Yes it is a big part about healing-priority. Sometims you simply decide that you only have time and mana for the tank. Maybe there are the educational situations. I dont like them but sometimes it is much better for the group (and especialy the tank) if you dont put the aggro-puller on top of your priority-list.

And yes, while raiding it sometimes IS the best way preventing a wipe to let the aggro-puller die fast. Because then the tank has a much better chance that he will not be passed by another one. It's not about educating bad players or being too lazy to switch target or something. Its about aggro, its about helping the tank with his job before it is too late. It's when the mob comes back to the tank just after killing one person and not eating the whole range instead. (Btw: Good nukers know this and they expect you to let them die. They know thet they are playing with death if they dont calculate the aggro right.)

Its not fun if somebody dies while you are the healer. (Well, it should not be.) But it hurts much more if he does not simply die but if you decide that he will die.

I will rephrase my above sentence: You have to learn when to fight with everything you have left for someones life and when not to.

With your stats the 5 spirit on your boots is worth (raid buffed) about 5.5MP5 OOFSR, and ~ 1.6MP5 ISFSR, and with IDS, about 1.75+heal, and without IDS 1.25 +heal.


I would still strongly suggest boards speed. If the enchant is too expensive for you, there is a cheaper version, just called "Minor Run Speed".

I've been a faithful reader of this site for several months now and I would like some feedback on a question that I have. I have noticed from studying the WWS reports from multiple raids that I use PoM FAR more (in excess of 50%) than the other priests in my guild. On a ZA or Kara run where I am the only priest I will do over 1M in healing with PoM. I try to throw it on the tank (if it isn't already there) every time the cool down is up. Can a priest overuse this spell?

Obviously there are some very threat sensitive pulls and encounters where you don't want to use this spell and that is not my question. Also, if I'm main tank healing during an encounter where I'm spamming GH, I don't cast it at every cool down but I still try to get it in there frequently. Thank you.

I don't think a healer should be intentionally letting people die. In a 5-man, you likely have enough time/mana to heal the idiot who has pulled aggro. If someone does it repeatedly, you might want to say something to them, rather than passive-aggressively letting them die.

In a raid boss fight, dps players quickly learn not to pull aggro. It is usually near-impossible to keep someone alive if they do, so there's no reason to intentionally let them die. If the confluence of events is such that you can save them, you tend to be congratulated for going beyond the expectations of what a healer should be capable of.

Raid trash is where a lot of dps die, and they can often be saved with some fast-response shielding and healing. That's one of the few places where I see any decision-making required in terms of whose life to save at a given moment. The other decision-making time I see is whether to heal the guy who's standing in the fire. If I'm between tank-heals, he'll often get a renew and a "hey, mage-dude! get out of the fire" over vent. If it's mid-tank-heal, he may die.

No you can't overuse PoM. It's very cheap to cast and it gives the tank threat, it's a great spell and it almost never overheals. Ofcourse you can mis-use it if you're using it when someone is very low and will die from the next damage he takes or if the tank needs a bigger heal.

Yes, maybe you. But think about the poster who at the posting time did not hit the 70. If is other 5-man-mates had not a chance to get the realy good stuff, he will be struggeling in some of the instances (especialy on heroic mode). You my find it arrogant to let players die. I think its arrogant to say that one will never get into those situations in 5-mans. Think about pugs. Think about runs without CC. Think about heroics with a blue-equiped tank.

That depends on the boss fight and the reaction of the player. For example if someone pulls aggro at Bloodboil you maybe can hold him for a short period of time - especialy if he uses some CDs to survive (and yes people sometimes do such a thing). But if you do not want his breath (or what ever he uses in front of him) and its cleave. You want it blow it back at the MTs. And you want to go there as soon as possible so that everybody else knows how to position themselves. Same with RoS P2. Everytime someone pulls aggro he will produce twice the aggro he normaly would - making the task of regaining aggro nearly impossible for the MT. Yes the player will die eventually but if you trie to heal him you can hold him for a while. All the while everybody else has to stay behind the poor MT with their aggro - you will get much less dps than if you let the one person die as soon as possible (maybe with a br afterwards) and maybe could finish P2 fast enough...

You may argue that something like this should not happen. - Yes. But we are speaking about exactly this situations where someone pulls aggro. And in those fights the DPS has a hard job to give whatever they can with just not pulling aggro. So, those are the fights where aggro-pulling is not unheard of. Yes, you can heal the one person bravely and getting some shoulderclapping afterwards for doing so while preparing for the next try - or you can try get everything to normal as soon as possible (with one player less) and maybe not loosing the chance for a kill.

I agree with just about everything you said. I am always amazed with the difference in guilds and healing tactics. Hydross is one of those threat sensitive encounters where I DON'T use PoM due to it's unpredictability of who and when it will hit. I could see this being different though if we were out gearing the encounter. I'm not saying one strategy is right and the other is wrong. We all have to do what works well for our group .

Yes, the "Mark of Hydross" in poison form can force PoM to jump on the transition, which can cause unexpected transitions and groups to wipe. However, if you just make sure to reapply PoM to one of your OTs right before your group shifts him either way, you shouldn't have any problems.

Alhough it might be possible it sounds to me to be a very unlikely thing to happen, at least if your hunters are on their toes and do not completely miss out their Misdirection.

Apart from that, I do not think that you can overuse PoM, also not on aggro-sensitive pulls if you apply it to a tank in the first place since the tank will always receive the same amount healing (and thus the same amount of threat) as succeding jump-targets.

The timing posts above on when *to* use it are quite good, another instance is hex lord: setting it up so you have 4-5 charges out and the cooldown will come up in the middle of spirit bolts to get another 5 charges out of it helps tremendously.

More situations when I don't use it: pally tanks in any non-dangerous situation, usually kara/heroics. You can save a significant amount of drinking time between pulls by just using heals that return mana to your tank.

PoM heals not returning mana to paladins was fixed a while ago.

Re: Not healing people, you should simply always be healing. It's triage. You heal the person who needs the heal the most (which is a judgment call based on both each injured person's importance in the fight and on how likely the injured person is to take additional fatal damage in the immediate future). If the tank is not about to die, you heal the DPSer who is standing in the fire. If the tank is about to die, you heal the tank and you let the DPSer standing in the fire die. If you can save both the tank and the DPSer standing in the fire, you do that.

In a raid 99% of the time you're not going to save someone who pulls aggro. You can save people who are slow to avoid fire though, and you should, assuming doing so does not compromise saving other, more alert, people. Just because someone messed up (and anyone who pulls aggro or takes unnecessary fire damage did mess up) does not mean you shouldn't heal them. (In a raid anyways; if you're in a PuG with a complete idiot who refuses to assist, stands in cleaves, or - and I've seen this one - is a DPS warrior in DPS gear and taunts mobs off the tank, well, you have my sympathies.)

I actually hadn't realized this was fixed, but a quick check of the log from tonight shows the PoM heal resulting in a Spirtual Attunement proc immediately afterward. Very interesting.