I will start by posting a holy belf guide, which also holds tips and tricks for other races, it is just mainly minded on belfs.
Hello fellow Blood Elf holy priests.
(and other priests, there might be tips for you to gain here as well)
This is a quick tips and tricks guide to belf priests, if you got things I haven’t written down, please feel free to let me know, so I can add them to an updated version. This means it isn’t the ultimate guide, it is what works for me, what I have experienced will work, meaning it might not be the ultimate solution for everybody.
Enjoy, and hope you can use it.
There are a few things you will want to check, when you encounter new mobs/enemies in this game as a belf, hence I will go over your racials as a priest. As a belf priest you get two very useful things, when it comes to keeping your mana going for a longer while;
- Mana Tap/Arcane Torrent. This ability stacks 3 times (Mana Tap) and at 70 when consumed it will refund you 161 mana pr mana tap. Meaning 3 stacking taps will grant you 483 mana. The CD on Arcane Torrent is 2 minutes. Each Mana Tap will be active for 10 minutes, and they will be renewed, all of them, if you tap a new target. Also note that Arcane Torrent is a short range (8 yards) aoe silence effect. (I am aware of that all belfs get this)
- Consume Magic; This is your special priest racial. It is a very useful ability in longer fights, it is an instant cast spell, costs no mana. It consumes one of your priest buffs, and please note that is has to be a priest buff, meaning that things like mana tap doesn’t count, as they are a belf spell, and not a priest spell. Doing this will refund you 660-694 mana. It has a 2 minutes CD. On the bad side is that you cant choose which buff it will consume, this is random.
Now, when we have this clear, we can move on.
When you encounter something new, or just in general want to keep your mana on the good side, there are some things you will want to take into your planning, to achieve this goal easier. Mp5 is all good, but there are many other ways, besides pure regen, to make sure your mana won’t go too low, if administered correct.
Let us assume you are to prepare for a really long fight. The first thing to be aware of is your CD’s. After all, everybody wants you to keep your mana, including you, wants you to keep your mana going. You will approach this logically and calculate them, but firstly, let us go over what CD’s a blood elf has to use;
- The above mentioned Mana Tap/Arcane Torrent. 30 seconds CD on taps, and 2 minutes CD on torrent.
- Consume Magic, 2 minutes CD.
- Mana potion, 2 minutes CD
- Inner Focus (Disc talent), 3 minutes CD. Grants you a spell free of mana charge.
- Shadowfiend, 5 minutes CD.
The first thing you will do is check if the mob you are fighting is mana tap-able. If it is, tap it, and make sure to stack 3, before using Torrent, unless your tap is running out. Next is to use your Inner Focus, if you are talented for this one. This initiates your 3 minutes CD and will make sure you can use it twice in this fight.
When these things are put to work, we can talk about potting and your shadowfiend. When it comes to mana pots, then it is a very bad idea to wait with potting till you are almost dry, this can technically cause a wipe, due to you running out of mana too fast. Instead pot when you have used the first 3 or tops 4k of your mana. At this time the mana pot will return you almost to full.
As for your Shadowfiend, then use it when you are at 50-60 % of your total mana. At this point it should easily return you to full mana again. However, remember to calculate it with your other CD’s. It will be a bad idea to tricker the fiend just before your mana pot CD ticks in, as an example. We don’t need to abuse our CD’s, just use them correctly. Potting, and then using your fiend will cause you to go to full very fast, and hence your fiend will regen mana you wont benefit from, due to you already being at max mana.
Do however be vary of that in some fights you will use your mana faster, due to spamhealing or the likes, and in these situations you will need to calculate your fiend individually. This means the 50-60% mana rule, technically is just a pointer, and not really something you can rely on. Use your knowledge, and learn to time it right.
Always remember that you keeping your head cool and keeping the situation under control is very important. One ***** up can mean a wipe, so when you are in 5 man instances, test it out, learn how to use your CD’s for the optimal mana usage and regain.
Now, I didn’t mention Consume Magic in the above, because it is a dangerous spell in some fights. In most fights, it wont matter if you lack one of your buffs, or for that matter all of them, but if your health buff is what drags you above the required amount of hitpoints you need for an encounter, then logically enough, you can not afford to take the risk of consuming this buff. Therefore, get to know the mob you are facing, then you will know when this ability is welcomed and when it is not.
In some fights it is all about CD timing after all. This is what makes it challenging.
So, let us assume we are having a very long fight, you have consumed all your buffs by now, and think; what do I do now? I have nothing more to consume.
It is quite simple; you go into your spellbook and find Touch of Weakness R1. This spell costs you 25 mana to cast, and one Consume Magic will return 660-694 mana. Now that’s a fair trade if you ask me. Personally I’ve got ToW on my cast bar all the time.
Also keep in mind, that if you want your mana to last, then do not go into flash heal spamming. This you can get away with in 5 man groups, most heroics and even Karazhan. It will not work later on. Firstly, let us look at the differences between Flash heal and our normal Heal spell. To do this I will make an example.
Let’s assume we deal with this priest who obviously will be holy, meaning you get healing boosts and cheaper mana spells from your holy tree. In this situation we can put it up like this;
Heal;
2.5 seconds cast
259 mana
Avg. heal around 2000
Flash Heal
1.5 seconds cast
470 mana
Avg. heal around 2200.
As we can see, we trade around 200 mana, for 1 seconds longer cast time. This is a lot if you do a lot of lesser healing. This is one of the bad sides of Flash Heal, it is a good heal in some situations, but it will drain you dry very, very fast, it is extremely mana consuming, so don’t pick up the bad habit of Flash Heal being something you are relying on. Instead make it your last resort, when things ***** up. Use your other heal spells, as a priest you can have up to 11 different kinds of heal spells, not counting down ranking. (Some of these are talented though) This means you will want to train yourself into a decent routine, to make sure you use all your abilities. For normal basic healing use Greater Heal and normal Heal. Only Flash heal in encounters where you are either 110 % sure it won’t be a long fight, or if it is the last call to save someone from dying.
Should someone be close to dying, you will need to do some calculation. How much damage is this person taking, and how fast? This needs to be calculated up with your heal timers, so you can be sure the person is saved. To do this you have certain tools at your disposal, such as Power Word: Shield. A lot of priests tend to forget their shield, but it is actually quite a powerful tool if used right. But to return to the situation, then you can do one of several things, to pull this person out of danger;
Bubble – Flash Heal – Renew (Eventually a PoM, but read the PoM guide for more info about this specific spell)
Flash Heal – Greater Heal
Or simply go for a straight Greater Heal, if the target doesn’t take damage anymore. The options are many, and it is up to you, to make sure your calculations will suffice, to make this person survive. Therefore always calculate casting time versus damage taken. And this needs to be done in very short time, often less than a second, so do pressure train yourself. This will make sure you can adapt, optimize and get faster reflexes. It also ensures that you will keep your head cool under pressure.
I will also recommend keeping an eye on if people are continuing to take damage, or if they are just low on health. If they don’t take any more damage, then make sure they have more than 50 % health, and then use Renew. It is a powerful tool, and also an instant spell, meaning this won’t take time out of your casting schedule. You can renew, then go back to healing whoever needs it.
Now aggro. Boring topic, but needs to be talked about. Make it a nice habit to fade on CD, instead of fading when you get aggro, unless otherwise is clearly stated. This should suffice in keeping your aggro wonderfully low, meaning some nasty mob won’t come running to eat you. You dying can, in worst case, wipe the raid.
From here I will move very shortly to priorities on gear. This is very much an individual choice, it depends on play style and talents, but for myself this will be my priority list;
mp5
mp5
mp5
+healing
Stamina
Intellect
Spirit
+Crit rating
No I'm not kidding. I love mp5. In normal groups it lets me run a full run without running out of mana, nor spending downtime drinking, and in long fights it allows me to regen massively. I mean, in the long run, then it’s free mana, what’s to complain about?
Please do mind though, that until you have around 1300-1500 +healing, I’d rate +healing higher in most cases, and then start to compromise. Meaning that you can get upgrades where you will trade +healing for mp5, and can do it with good conscience, since you still have enough +healing to heal heroics without suffering. For the basic pointer then around 800-900 +healing will be enough for most normal instances.
Why do I rate +crit so low then? Because I can not calculate with a crit, like I can with a normal standard heal. If I know my heal will heal the target for 4.5k, then I can calculate with 4.5k damage taken on the target. Sure it’s cool to get high crits, but being a crit priest isn’t my thing, since you rely a lot on crits to keep people alive. Inspiration is a nice talent, but you can have it without going crit priest, and it is, after all just a bonus. Relying so totally on crits is a little bit unstable, and in high end raiding you will need stability, you will need to be reliable.
Stamina/Intellect gives itself. Stamina is survivability, intellect is more heals for the party.
Now spirit. Spirit is a funny thing, since a lot of priests are spirit minded these days.
Cant blame them since Blizzard put insane amounts of spirit on our high end gear, and after all hybrid specs are popular these days, and as a such your spirit will give you regen and +healing. And sure that is nice, but, and a big but; spirit is affected by the infamous 5 seconds rule, which so many priest doesn’t seem to know of these days.
This rule is why mp5 is so much better than spirit is when it comes to long fights, where you spam heal, as it makes you able to hold mana. While spirit boosts your out of combat regen a lot (around 60% better than mp5 does), then it is close to useless when spam healing. I’ll explain why with this example;
Yas casts gheal rank whatever.
5 seconds rule kicks in. For the next 5 seconds I don’t regen anything but my pure mp5. Spirit regen doesn’t kick in before AFTER these 5 seconds. Which means if you’re spam healing to keep the main tank up, your amount of spirit is close to useless. You don’t benefit from the regen it would normally give you.
However, since we are given a lot of spirit regen if we go into discipline, as I personally have, then a perfect combo of very high mp5, and the granted spirit on classgear and most cloth healing kit, these days, then your spirit will automatically go up, while your mp5 wont, unless you invest time in it. This allows you to utilize for longer fights and be able to keep mana during spamhealing, but still have a nice out of combat/not casting regen.
A short look at our competition;
We will have to compete with paladins.
Give them a shadow priest and they never oom.
They’re a steady healer, very reliable, however they lack HoTs and aoe heals.
They bring blessings to the raid. Individual buffs.
Plate users, high armor, higher hit points.
We compete with druids.
They’ve got higher heals than us with lower +healing, they get tree bonus and have very high HoTs. However, their casting time is longer than priests on heals, and their aoe heals have CD's. They also bring MotW to the raids.
Leather users, again more hit points, and a tad more armor.
Then we have shamans. They've got an extremely good way of keeping the melee party up, due to chain heal, they don’t have HoT, but they bring totems, which buffs in many different ways, and again: We have a mail user, more armor and usually also higher hit points. From what I have noticed though, the shaman often will have a lower mana pool than us, and often their mp5 isn’t that good either.
This is not a complete list over other healing classes’ abilities, there’s many left out, or not thought about, but anyone who scout the forums will notice that priests have to be very careful with their choice of gear, since other classes often get picked ahead of them these days. There has been a lot of talks about priests losing spots to other heal classes, and when I look at the general quality of priests, then I can’t really blame the raid leaders and recruitment officers.
As a conclusion to all of this, the best advice I can give to any one priest would be;
Love your class, it is an awesome class, as I mentioned above we can have up to 11 different heal spells, of all types, ranging from aoe heals, massive heals and HoTs to something like PoM that will jump randomly upon damage infliction and heal targets.
Challenge yourself, push yourself to the limit, so that you may become better, and above all, know your class, know its abilities, skills and use them. A good priest will easily get new groups, because god knows they’re hard to find, and when you do find one, they do an impressive job.
Edited, Nov 22nd 2007 6:29pm by Yasua