gotmilk0112 wrote:Was I just doing it horribly wrong or what? I was successful in healing, managed to heal BRD, Strat, Scholo, and DM West, but it just didn't feel as fun as Burning Crusade healing.
You're doing it wrong.
Or rather, raid healing is different from dungeon healing and it can take a while to get used to it. You won't be using Renew because Druids have way better HoT's. You won't be using Flash Heal because Paladins OR you won't be using Prayer of Healing because Shamans. So you have to adjust your healing habits.
Note, this is all from my POV as an Alliance-side raiding priest. 1. Learn to cancel your casts. You're not there to get the quick 400hp heal in, that's a job for the paladins. I still have Flash Heal binded for emergencies but I honestly have used it only few times, usually after all pallies have bitten the dust. So get in the habit of casting Heal (you don't usually need to use Greater Heal unless your talents/gear sucks donkey balls) while keeping a finger on W/A/S/D buttons to cancel it if someone else tops them up. LunaUnitFrames shows me how much over/under healing my spell would do at almost realtime, meaning that I can decide whether to let the spell land (if it's only little overhealing) or cancel it. Get it or something similar.
2. Organize the healers. Discuss this with your healing lead or the raid leader if there is no healing lead (you really should have one though, especially as harder raids become available). Every healer should know exactly what they are doing during trash AND bosses. Each tank should be looked after by 2-3 healers, depending on situation, the warlocks should have 1 healer keeping them topped up, melee might have a dedicated healer or two and so on. If your raid leader is busy and just tells you to "heal raid wide", you could always discuss with the other "raid wide" healers to split the groups between you. Why? Less overhealing, less wasting mana, less stress and annoyance since you're not competing with other healers. Poor organization shows in raids where one rogue gets overhealed while the second rogue is killed - because all healers started casting on the first one.
3. Remember the 5-second rule. You don't want to be spamming heals all the time, unless it's a boss encounter and it's really required. Your massive amount of spirit should mean that you get 90+ mana per tick outside the 5-second limit, but your talents mean that you still have decent mana regen inside it - I think mine is now around 35ish or so. Combined with down ranking, you really shouldn't be going OOM except for those boss fights where you are needed to spam greater heals. If you're really struggling, discuss with other healers and check stats - someone might be slacking off while you're pulling double-duty. I've been in a pug UBRS where the second healer had more than 60% mana left after each pull while I was between 5% and zero.
4. You should stack up on Dark/Demonic runes for emergencies in any case.
So yeah, leveling a priest is not that bad and raiding can be fun - it's just the adjusting from 5-mans to 40-mans that takes a while. I think I got comfortable with it after 3-4 raids or so.
Posted: Fri Jul 17, 2015 12:09 am
Ask other priests for help if you struggle with something. Tell us what exactly you feel is going horribly wrong.