Holy Priest Guide from Ensidia

There is new sheriff in town of holy priest guides for World of Warcraft!

poptisse of Ensidia treats us with comprehensive guide to all things holy, recommended read to anyone running around in their pajamas throwing frisbees.

Ensidia - Holy Priest Guide, part 1

Ensidia - Holy Priest Guide, part 2

One of the best guides I've seen about Holy Priests, and I've read a lot of them over the years.

Blog Watch: Ulduar Healing Guide by Matticus

Yay, Ulduar is here! And for us Healers, Matticus treats us with Healing Ulduar: Flame Leviathan for the first boss. Although, it's Nice guide for non-healers too if you ask me :) To get things rolling, Razorscale and XT-002 Deconstructor 25-man guides are there too already.

For those who've lived under a stone and are unaware of World of Matticus blog, go check it out! If nothing else, check the healing guides for raids, like the needed-this-week Ulduar Healing Guide, which the mentioned Healing Ulduar: Flame Leviathan is part of.

Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

Yes, more useful healing addons right here.

The most popular post on this blog was posted a year ago, and it's time for continuation of the oh-still-so-valid Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All.

In the previous installment of "healing addons that rule" series, I highlighted two essential ones: Quartz and VisualHeal.

A year after Quartz is still the best casting bar there is, so go get that if you for some non-sense reason haven't already! (Even if you are not a healer, Quartz is for you, as it has has useful plugins, like flight time and tradeskill timer)

VisualHeal is also still an essential addon, but note that several addons (including the most popular raid frames addons like X-Perl and Pitbull) use LibHealComm-3.0 too, so check if you have one installed already.

VisualHeal, PitBull, BunchOfBars, oUF, Grid, PerfectRaid, ag_unitframes, X-Perl and sRaidFrames all use LibHealComm-3.0 for communicating healing. Ideally all healers in the group should have VisualHeal or another addon that uses LibHealComm-3.0 installed. VisualHeal will continue to function even if some healers don't have it, but it will not be aware of healing cast by these players.

Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

After you have Quartz and VisualHeal (directly or through LibHealComm-3.0), you'll be wanting these three too:
Clique
Grid
SmartBuff

Why these, you ask?

Clique

Easy mouseover casting

When healing in a party you can manage targeting each player and casting a spell to'em, but on raids you will need simple mouseover casting (which helps you in 5-man teams too). And Clique makes setting up your keystroke+mouseclick shortcuts to all your spells so simple that adding tailored macroes yourself would be a waste of time.

Grid

Very compact and highly customizable unit frame

Grid gives you compact view to the whole party/raid, and through some configuration, you'll have all the information you on one glance. For example, you can see who has your renew or Prayer of Mending on them and if you need to recast one soon, see incoming heals to the whole raid (as all healers are using VisualHeal or some mentioned LibHealComm-3.0 addon right?).

If you setup your unit-frames nicely, you can go without Grid, but I like it's compact view a lot, and use it as my only raid frame. And Grid works superbly with Clique, so there you do, get'em both :)

SmartBuff

Super easy buffing

I don't want to check if someone needs that Stam or Spirit buff, or if I should renew my well-fed buff, or even worse, have someone in the raid shoud "Stam buff please!". Smartbuff does it for me, and all I have to do is roll my mousewheel and it's all done. This way I always have my Inner Fire up and the lone one who took one for the team at last boss gets the needed buffs from me before we rush on. Works for all classes.

Bonus Addon

Some people say you don't need Decursive if configure and set-up Grid as your decurse/cleanse point, but I like to have those curses and sicknesses in different area of the screen, so I prefer Decursive. Every class with any curse- and/or disease-removing abilities, should have this.

Where to Download Addons

Download the addons from wow.curse.com or WoWUI or any site you prefer (those two are the biggest and get fast updates for the popular addons)

You also want to set-up a system to automatically check updates for your addons, because to avoid using old/buggy version, and skip the manual work of checking, downloading and installing the new versions.

Unfortunately WoW Ace Updater is no longer with us, as wowace integrated with curse.com, and for me, curse updater just isn't very good (tbh, it sucks big time).

But you have at least two great options: Wowmatrix being the most popular I believe, and WUU - WoW UI Updater which I'm using at the moment (because I happened to find that before wowmatrix).

Both Wowmatrix and WUU support all the possible addon sites and give you one-click version check and update of the addons while at it = Less time updating addons, more time enjoying the game you love.

More "Healing Addons That Rule"

Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All

Do Not Downrank that Heal (to Save Mana)!

10 months ago and at level 70 downranking your heals was a standard way to save mana, e.g. by spamming downranked Greater Heal continuously but still staying with almost full mana (because of mana cost and mana regen).

However, this all changed in the patch 3.0.2 (Downranking from WoWWiki) :

With the release of patch 3.0.2, downranking was essentially eliminated for its ability to conserve mana, as all spells are now reliant on current base mana. It can still be used as a choice should a player want to use a faster spell

So if you downrank your heal, you'll be using the same amount of mana but heal a lot less. Generally this is a bad thing (there are exceptions, if downrank is faster to cast but this is pretty rare).

And this is exactly what I did all the way from level 70 to 80, and even *on* the level 80. I downranked all my heals, I was healing about 2/3 of my max heals but I was using the same amount of mana. I did Heroic Culling of Stratholme like this (not easy), I did Spider Wing of Naxxramas like this. Basically using level 70 heals all the way.

Why?

For the sake of it? Because I'm crazy? Well, yes, but that's not the case here.

I use combination of addons called Grid and Clique for my heals. Grid is super simple, but modifiable, group/raid frame. And Clique enables you to bind any spell in your spell book to keypress-combinations used with different mouseclicks & cast them on mouseover (so no "targeting" in a sense). All this works beautifully apart from this one small thing...

When you "map" a spell with Clique (e.g. by holding down Alt and right-clicking a spell in spellbook with Clique config open, that spell is mapped to Alt + Right-click), it essentially maps the certain *rank* of that spell. Now you probably see why I was using level 70 heals all the way...

I've been using Clique for a very long time, so of course, I had mapped my level 70 heals to it. In came the expansion, I never went to see Clique's config - why should I, spells were already mapped and I was mostly dps leveling my way up - so all the spells were at level 70 rank.

I'm so happy the fellow priests noticed this when we were doing Naxxramas (don't remember the exacts, but I was throwing 7-8k crit Greater Heals, when it should be closer to 11-14k range). So I remapped all my spells and now it's good.

Conclusion: Addons are very helpful, but don't rely on them to work as you think they work, make sure they do :)

Zemalf out, See You in Northrend!

Forum Watch: (Priest) 2 years healing in raids, now losing spot

A Human Priest named Lizarb made a rare thing in WoW forums priests community and created nicely structured post about the problems of the healing priest in raids. She has been 2 years healing in raids, now loosing spot (repost on US Priest Forums too).

As a summary of the post: in her guild healer spots previously filled with Priests, have now been conquered by other healer classes for greater Utility and Survivability. Priests are no longer needed for raids as other classes can do the same job better.

I'm relatively inexperienced raider compared to her, as I don't know pre-2.3 WoW, but from what I read from the post, makes sence:

I get one-two shotted in raids/instances if something bad happens. I'm still using Primal Mooncloth Set as the +healing and mana regen is ridiculously good, compared to early/mid raid drops. My Power Word: Shield hardly saves anyone.

I've been relatively happy with my priest, and I think I still am, but I still feel that many aspects of the (healing) priest could be improved.

But you better read the original post by Lizarb yourself, and if you feel like it, post your comments to either the original European thread or the re-post in US forums, whichever you have access to.

Two (Healing) Addons to Rule Them All

The most useful healing addons right here. Individual needs and preferences apply, but these ones I love the most.

I'm addon "freak", I use them a lot, so I reckoned to make another topic out of it.

I'm constantly tuning my UI, removing unused addons and adding new ones. I like it simple but my screen always ends up cluttered, as I feel that I need this and that.

I prefer Ace addons, as they're constantly maintained (a blessing after patches). With WowAceUpdater it's easy to install new addons and it keeps all my installed Ace addons up-to-date with single click. As all Ace addons use the same library, the addons are lightweight for cpu (compared to having same number of independent addons)

I use Omen and BigWigs, which help a lot in raids/groups.

I have Pitbull unitframes (even more important after, for some reason, my Grid started malfunctioning).

For heals I use Clique (different mouse clicks with different modifiers (alt/ctrl/shift) to do mouseover heals on frames/player).

For decursing I use, well, Decurse. And tons more (e.g. Fubar,Bartender3,Buffalo2,AuctioneerAdvanced,etc)

But if I would recommend two addons to all healers (and all casters, and they benefit melee too), it would be these:

Quartz
VisualHeal

Here's why Quartz and VisualHeal are sooo good:

Shamelessly ripped from my own posts on several forums (as I love these addons so much I'd love to more people getting the benefits, and as they will benefit even more if others would use them too).

QUARTZ

CastingBar

Holy efficiency! I stumbled upon this castingbar replacer - and even that it's very very simple - Quartz is absolutely, hands-on, the best addon I've ever seen!

Why?

Because Quartz adds "latency" to your casting bar. Without going into any client-server jargon, you're normal casting bar is showing how your client sees the casting time, but because of latency, your spell is actually going off at server before your casting bar reaches the end.

What this means? And How Quartz helps.

It means that if you have 200ms latency for example, you can see that visualized in Quartz and start your next spell / action 0.2s before your casting bar is actually full and the spell still goes off! So with ten spells, you have saved 2 seconds. With 500 dps, that's free 1000 damage more. make it 100 spells and it's 10000 damage! And all this just by tackling the latency with Quartz. If you experience 500ms of such latencies, it comes even better! Don't let lag and latency get you, get Quartz

VisualHeal

Healing Visualizer for both Healers and the ones healed

For healers: VisualHeal shows where target's health will end up after the heal hits
--> cancel unnecessary casts which would cause too much overheal

+ it shows if someone else has same target and is also casting heal on it
and it adds all this to the estimated health after your heal hits --> you can cancel cast if it would mean too much overheal, as the other healer has the target covered.

For others: VisualHeal shows incoming heals to you = where your health will end up when heal hits you --> can use abilities accordingly.
- low health & no heals coming? better use some "saving" ability!
- low health, but two heals incoming. Great! Keep pounding.

For all this to work, everyone needs VisualHeal, so once again, get it!
Must for healers. Recommended for everyone else too

+ VisualHeal shows up in unitframes too if they support it (PitBull does), so if every healer uses VisualHeal, it can be easily seen who is not healed yet = less parallel healing

So I'd say that every healer (if not everyone) should install VisualHeal (make the bar invisible if you want, but do have it). I'd think it will help you and your guild a lot, especially in 25-mans.

Where to Download Addons

Get WowAceUpdater! Keeps your addons up-to-date, and easy installs for every Ace addon. That is the best way to get Quartz and VisualHeal (and Omen, BigWigs + loads of other goodies), and keep them up-to-date.

EDIT: Unfortunately WoW Ace Updater is no longer with us, as wowace integrated with curse.com, and for me, curse updater just isn't very good (tbh, it sucks big time). New and improved alternatives for easy addon maintenance: Wowmatrix and WUU - WoW UI Updater.

There are many other places too to get addons, like Curse.com (they also have installer, which isn't nearly as good as WowAceUpdater) and WoWInterface.

More "Healing Addons That Rule"

Three (Healing) Addons to Rule Even More

Baby Steps to Better Gear

I have wrote about gear quite a bit in the past, don't know why, but probably because that's one of the forces that drive me in WoW (getting better).

In case you've missed the earlier pieces, you might want to check out the older posts:
Evaluating Gear Upgrades
Forum Watch: Crafting or raiding for gear?
Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70
Healing Priest Badge Gear
Blog Watch: Pants of 100 Badges

I'm currently stocking Badges of Justice for 2.4 to get all the goodies from there. I think I'll go for some current BoJ rewards before the patch thou, like Light-Blessed Bonds and Essence of the Martyr.

Which brings me to the first problem; Trinkets. For some reason I just love Bangle of Endless Blessings, it seems to proc often enough for me to never run out of mana. And I can't seem to let go of my last blue. And when spirit gets even better in 2.4 (with better regen with good int), I just might stick with Bangle for good :)

The second problem is that every upgrade seems so small nowadays, I get like +10 healing, and maybe +3mp5 out of the new gear. I'm taking baby steps with gear upgrades and still I'm very happy with it :) WoW is so odd sometimes. I have Robes of Heavenly Purpose sitting in the bank, as I can't let go of Primal Mooncloth Set yet (I don't have belt and/or shoulders to go with the RoHP). Well maybe I figure it out, Belt of the Long Road maybe (as I have Pauldrons of the Solace-Giver from Curator already).

Lootzor ranking I'm using now (All non-PvP healing gear)

Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70

So you level your priest as shadow (you should, it's just way faster), but you want to heal when you hit 70. What to do? How to get gear?

Leveling a Priest as Shadow, but Gearing to be Healer at Level 70

Tailoring is not needed, but the tailored sets are soo good that it's recommended.
The sets are better than T4, maybe even T5 in some uses.

Primal Mooncloth Set
Whitemend Wisdom Set

Here's what I would suggest (what I did):

Plan your gear ahead. Use the resources, for example:
Kaliban's WoW-Loot List (Priest)
Best Casual PvE Healing Gear by A Dwarf Priest

1) At around lvl65 (or whenever you hit Nagrand), start taking healing gear as quest rewards over the dps gear.

2) And start going to outland instances as healer (you can very well as shadow) and pick up gear there. Or if you go in instance as dps, ask if you can roll for healer gear if such would show up.

3) Work on the reputation for certain factions to get healer gear from rewards (Like Watcher's Cowl from Cenarion Expedition, Lower City Prayerbook, etc.)

4) And if you like, level tailoring, and work on the PMC set while doing the above

This way I had couple of pieces of PMC done when I hit 70 and I had healer gear from normal instances and some quest rewards. When I finished last piece of PMC, I respecced holy, and started doing heroics for even more healer gear.

Downrank that Heal

I mostly use Greater Heal Rank 1 as my "main-heal". And throw Greater Heal Rank 7 only if max heal is needed. With Renew+Prayer of Mending and occasional emergency Flash Heal, I'm set.

There's no point to overheal if downranked spell does the job.

This saves mana, and thus, might be the edge you need to conquer some battles.

Especially as a Priest, you will still need to dance in-out of the 5 Second Rule (Mana Regen at WoWWiki), but don't overlook downranking.

What I do is this:

I have macroes for max and min rank for each spell (and some middle ranks too, like GH Rank 6).
I cast different ranks of spells on myself several times, and count the "average heal" for each rank.
I then update the macro names like:
"2000 GH1" - for Greater Heal Rank 1 which heals 2000hp on average
"3800 GH7" - for Greater Heal Rank 7 which heals 3800hp on average
.
.
etc.

I update the macroes/buttons every now and then when gear has upgraded.

So when I place the buttons on my action bar, I can easily see what I need to cast if I need to heal, let's say, 2500hp or 1200hp = I can throw big or small heal depending on what is needed.

I use Clique for heals, but the buttons are there to remind me that Greater Heal Rank 6 heals this much and Flash Heal Rank 1 heals this much and so on.

In most cases you do fine by spamming the max rank, it saves mana and makes you more efficient healer.

For theorycrafters, it's about Heal / Mana. Use the Priest Healing Calculator to see the differences of the ranks.