After two months of healing in Cataclysm, I'm still learning and changing my healing strategy. I started out as discipline and tried holy after a month of struggling in most heroic dungeons. Ask me which spec is easier to heal with and I'll answer it really depends on the fight you're on. Sure discipline is challenging and deals with a lot of damage absorption rather than reactive healing with holy, but it has it's own merits. On fights with tons of AOE damage, I suggest going holy. On fights that's tank specific go discipline, but I assume you already knew that.
After I switched to holy, I didn't know what Chakra, Serenity, or Holy Word is, now it's my bread and butter. I only healed with Heal and Greater Heal and the occasional Flash of Light. Imagine how mana starved I was! I had to drink every pull and oom every time a tank didn't want to mark for crowd control.
I looked for advise on elitist jerks and quickly found out my gear was not optimized as well. I was healing like I was still in Wrath. I quickly made some changes and now I can successfully heal most heroics minus Stonecore. For the life of me I can't find a single PuG group that can pull off the first pull without dying. I know, I know, go get guildies to do it with me, but when you're in a night server and you can only play in the morning that kind of narrows down your options.
I listed some helpful tips you can use that people take for granted or just think it's too trivial to post in guides.
Stack Spirit! For the love of all things Holy!
- only equip intellect+ spirit gear unless you're comfortable with your current spirit gear. You never know when you're gonna need the mana regen.
Power word shield and renew before tank pulls!
- Before he even starts running toward the mobs. I can't count the number of times that priests have gotten aggro because he put PW:Shield too late. And in cata, you can be one shotted even before you scream Fade!
- keep renew up with Chakra, Heal. It automatically refreshes your renew.
Prayer of mending only when PW:Shield goes down and on mobs with AoE damage only.
- when PW:shield goes down, that's the time to PoM, why? It's a waste of mana. Tank doesn't get damaged and wasted 7k heal. It's also a waste of mana if u PoM if it's only the tank who gets hit consistently.
Make a chakra macro for your Heal and Prayer of Healing spell.
- might get negative responses here but for me, combining Chakra and heal/ Prayer of Healing in one macro saves me time, spell button space and I don't have to think about Chakra anymore. It automatically activates every time cool downs are finished when I use heal or PoH.
use Holy Word: Aspire and Sanctuary!
- aspire heals for more than Heal and uses less mana too. Use it on the tank or the pesky melee that always get damaged from god knows where. Holy word sanctuary: for the AoE damage pulls. Tell the group to stay in circle tho, most players aren't accustomed to this spell yet and quickly move away thinking it's a damaging spell.
- if you're like me who only skims most of the description on tooltips, Aspire only pops up from your Chastise spell button when you use Chakra then Heal; Sanctuary when you click on Chakra then Prayer of Healing.
Don't hesitate to put Guardian Spirit on yourself or the tank
- use it on yourself when you know that you can't stop healing the tank to heal yourself. It's on a 2 min cool down so it'll be up again by the time you get to the boss.
Glyphed Psychic Scream helps minimize damage from tank.
- run to the tank, pop Psychic Scream and you have a few seconds to cast greater heal. this is purely situational of course.
Leap of faith the tank!
- I've posted about this before and it helps to use the spell on the tank to buy you some time to get him healed before he gets smashed by mobs. Just make sure the tank has complete aggro before doing it lol.
Prayer of healing
- use when three players are taking damage. It's faster and more mana efficient than casting three Heals or three renews.
Haste and Mastery > Crit
- no brainer. Haste makes your spells cast faster, mastery gives Echo of Light for more +healing dots! Keep in mind that haste cap is 12%
Lastly, read advice from bloggers and wow enthusiasts, but it also depends on you to hone your skill and use whatever tip works for your healing style. Don't hesitate to change things up a bit, you never know, it might work better for your style.
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