Beginner’s Guide to Priest Healing

Prayer of Healing – Priest Guide

This post will cover the absolute basics of playing a healing priest in 5-man heroic/normal dungeons.  It will touch on the difference in Holy/Discipline talent trees, provide a ’shopping list’ of items you should bring to a dungeon run, a rundown of when to use each healing spell in our arsenal, and a refresher course on basic Warcraft group etiquette. So if you’re ready to spec out of “Improved Fade” and learn why to stop rolling Need on plate armor, lets go!

Two Perfectly Acceptable Talent Trees

Priests have two healing trees; Holy and Discipline.

Prior to Wrath of the Lich King, Disc healing was regarded as “the PvP healing spec” since it contained the majority of our damage mitigation talents. However, it received major changes with the expansion and is now a very effective option for PvE dungeon/raid healing.  While adequate for healing damage to more than one player at a time, Disc excels at single-target, or “tank” healing.

Holy is the traditional PvE healing spec and is known for its wide-array of spells that are able to accommodate almost any situation. Holy priests tend to land spells that heal for very large amounts, and possess talents that improve their AoE healing abilities.

Since this guide is about 5-mans, and not end-game raiding, my recommendation is for you to chose the spec that is the most fun for you. They’re both great, and unique. I have done every heroic as disc, and most as holy and can say that neither spec made dungeon runs easier or more difficult than the other. Play the one that you enjoy most.

Preparation

What you should bring to a dungeon run will depend on your character level, and the classes you’re grouped with. I chose to bring every consumable possible to a run, but some people don’t want to spend the gold on elixirs and scrolls. Bah-Humbug, I say to them.

If you’re level 80 and want to be fully prepared, here is your shopping list:

• Candles for Fortitude/Shadow Protection/Spirit buffs
• Mana Potions
• Elixirs
• Scrolls
• Food for buffs
• Water

If you want to go cheap-mode, you must at least bring these items along:

• Candles for Fortitude/Shadow Protection/Spirit buffs
• Mana Potions
• Water

Mods

I wrote a post on keybindings and mods that covers the topic in depth, but here are the two mods that are almost a necessity:

Clique: This mod allows you to bind spells to your mouse clicks. So now you can simply hover over party members’ portraits and right click on that portrait to cast Greater Heal, middle click the tank’s picture to shield him, move one portrait down and Shift-left click to Flash Heal a DPSer. It makes healing so much easier since you never have to take your eyes (or cursor) off of the health bars, which is what we healers are sentenced to do.

Decursive: a mod that creates tiny boxes on your screen that represent your party members. If you’re in a 5-man group, you’ll have 5 small boxes. The boxes will illuminate if and only if someone in your party is infected with a magic/disease/poison/curse you can dispel. All that you have to do to dispel is click the box and the mod will automatically target and attempt to remove the debuff immediately.

The Healing Spells

Unlike tank and dps classes, healers don’t have a set rotation of spells. Healers generally react with different spells depending on the situation. As a priest, the beginning of each pulls starts the same (Prayer of Mending, Renew) but will almost always change as the encounter progresses. Here is a brief rundown of our toolbox:

Renew: If you’re Holy, chose the Improved Renew talent, and/or a glyph, it’s effective for throwing on party members when they take random damage. If you’re Disc, it’s more effective to use Flash Heal for random party damage. I always use Renew on the tank, especially in the beginning of the pull, regardless of the spec. Renew is very effective for fights when you know a stun/silence is coming, since the Renew still heals while you’re incapacitated.

Prayer of Mending: Use it as soon as the tank begins attacking and every time it’s available after. It’s a cheap spell in terms of mana, can crit, and can heal for a ton depending on how many ‘bounces’ you get from it. It is EXTREMELY effective for fights where the party will receive constant damage-over-time, like the statue room bosses in Utgarde Pinnacle; since the small damage from poison/bleeds will keep Prayer of Mending bouncing from player to player.

Flash Heal: Both Disc and Holy should use the Glyph of Flash heal, which reduces the mana cost by 10%.  Use it heal the random dpser, and to top off the tank. For Disc, use FH as your main healing spell if Penance is on cooldown.

Greater Heal: Our nuke-heal, especially for holy. If the tank has low health, but enough to survive the 2.x second cast time, nothing will bring him back to full health quicker than 2 or 3 consecutive GHs. Holy should use this if the tank is at 3/4 health or lower, Disc should use it only if they’re speced for it, and Penance is on cooldown.

Binding Heal: An underrated spell, Binding Heal is great for any time that you take damage. I hardly ever heal myself with anything besides Binding Heal since, chances are, somebody else in the party isn’t at full health so I might as well heal two players with one cast.

Holy Nova: An instant-cast AoE healing spell with a very small radius. It can be glyphed to increase its healing power to a substantial level, and can crit so it’s used as a quasi-replacement for Circle of Healing by Disc priests. Use it when the party is bunched together (Loken, in Halls of Lightning, as an example).

Prayer of Healing: An AoE healing spell with a 3 second cast. Heals for a very nice amount but comes with a high mana cost. This is a great spell to use when you KNOW AoE damage is coming. I recommend using ‘Inner Focus’ (which makes the next spell cast free and increases its chance to crit by %25) before this spell.  Since a Disc priest will not have Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing will be the main spell to heal mass party damage.

Circle of Healing: Holy’s 41 point talent. Instant AoE spell that heals for a small/moderate amount. Use it when the party has taken damage. It’s normally followed up with a Prayer of Healing.

Penance: Disc’s 51 point talent. Channels 3 bolts of light that heal the target. The 3 bolts can crit seperately. Use it whenever you can, since the mana cost is very low and it heals for a substantial amount.

The basic idea for tank healing as holy is to keep Prayer of Mending on cool-down (meaning: always use it), try to keep Renew ticking. If the tank is taking too much damage for those two spells to heal, fill in the gap with Flash Heal/Greater Heal depending on the amount of damage…then cast PoM again.

For Disc, still keep PoM on cooldown, and again I recommend keeping renew ticking. Fill in the gaps with PW: Shield, Penance, and Flash Heal, if necessary.

When Shi….Stuff Hits the Fan

There will be times when the tank accidentally pulls too many adds, or you as a healer get stunned at a bad time. The most important thing to remember is: “Do whatever you can to keep the tank alive.” The famous saying amongst the Warcraft community is: “If the tank dies, it’s the healers fault. If the healer dies, it’s the tank’s fault. If the dps dies, it’s their own damn fault.” To a degree, it makes sense. You should be working on keeping the tank alive while the tank works on prying adds from you. Do this while the dps watches their aggro and doesn’t stand in black holes and you’d be surprised what kind of mess you can pull your group out of.

My Rules for Grouping

• As soon as you get into a group, get your ’shopping list’ items together and head to the instance. Don’t immediately ask for a summon so you can toy around at the Auction House. Your time is no more important than anybody else’s. If others happen to get to the stone first, great, but nothing bothers me more than having all 5 party members in Dalaraan and one idiot already asking for a summon.
• Remember to repair your gear before entering the instance.
• Buff everybody with Prayer of… buffs. Don’t ‘ghetto buff’ people just to save silver on reagents.
• Resurrecting after a wipe is a sticky situation. If the group dies, the group should run back to their corpse. If it’s the first wipe, and a player lies there waiting for me to resurrect him, I’ll let it slide. The second time I’m telling him to run back to his corpse. Not only is it principle, but it also delays the run because we have to waste mana and time that we could be eating/buffing.
• If a Bind on Pickup item drops and you can’t use it, pass on it. If you can use it, it’s nice to ask if you can ‘Need’ it, then click ‘Need’. If a Bind on Equip item drops and you need it, beg the group for it. If you don’t need it GREED it.

That about wraps up this guide. I hope it’s been helpful for a few beginners. Have fun! Oh and if you have questions about glyphs, I wrote a post that recommends glyphs for each of the two PvE healing specs and why I chose them. Check it out here.