Starting Holy Priest HelpFollow

Most people who go holy mix talents from the disc and holy tree.

Get an idea what you want your end build to look like and start filling in the talents in the order you believe is important. I'd probably max out improved renew, then fill out my chosen disc talents as a starting point. There is no one right answer. Have fun doing it your way.

I leveled 1 to 70 as disc/holy, so it can be done.



As a low level priest, int, then spirit. You probably won't find much low level gear with +healing. When you do, I would start to build that up.

When you reach higher levels you will be pushing your +healing past +1000 and trying to go much higher. The good news is that the +healing gear will probably also have intel and either spirit or mp5.



Fade is used when you are in a group.

Let's say the tank attacks a mob and there are 2 adds. When you put a renew on the tank, you notice the 2 adds turn from the tank and run strait for you (you've gained agro on the adds). That's when you hit fade. Once you hit fade, you will most likely see the two adds turn around and head back to the tank.

So basically, fade temporarily decreases your agro, usually turning the mob to somebody else.



Edited, Jan 5th 2008 12:31am by dadanox

Yeah since even endgame healers take a lot of disc I'd take your early talents there. Go wand spec etc and then go for mana retention talents. Just having that mana regen will allow you to heal any pre-BC instance easily.

But I feel obliged to say level shadow anyway :]

You don't really need healing talents to be able to heal the low-level instance. What allows you to level faster is talents that increase your damage output or your mana endurance. Happily, many of the low-level talents in holy and Discipline aid in this. Discipline, in particular, aids your healing and your soloing substantially. Sprinkle in a minimum of Holy talents (the cast-time reduction being the most essential) and you're well on your way.

Don't feel obligated to pick up talents that increase your healing alone until you're into your 60s at least.

I had no problem healing any instances up until the upper 60's as a shadow priest.

Basically the more your spell heals for the more aggro you will get. At lower levels since the tank takes a lot more damage I usually started him out with a shield before he pulled, you'll get out of that practice at higher levels. Later on you will get prayer of mending too, which heals the tank and gives the tank aggro.

Try using down rank heals too as soon as you can. Basically once you get greater heal 2, you will still use greater heal 1. I still use greater heal 2 as a level 70 for my downrank heal. Hits for around 3500 usually and takes very little mana.

Just try to use as low heals as you can and still keep the tank up. If you pull aggro use fade asap, but if you still keep aggro that really isn't your fault. The problem is at low levels, sometimes even level 70, tanks don't know how to keep aggro on multiple mobs. Not to mention a lot of people are pretty new to crowd control. As long as you aren't throwing your highest heal right off the bat, you are doing fine.

Thanks for the replies! As always, very helpful. But...

One question. :)



Why? With each higher rank, Healing per Mana (H/M) efficiency is increased.

Using data taken from Priest Spell List and some simple math based on the lowest healing value (worst case) I truncated, not rounded, at 3 decimal places:

Name Level Mana Cast H/M Description

Flash Heal
Rank 1 20 125 1.50 1.544 Heals a friendly target for 193 to 237.
Rank 2 26 155 1.50 1.664 Heals a friendly target for 258 to 314.

Lesser Heal
Rank 1 1 30 1.50 1.533 Heal your target for 46 to 56.
Rank 2 4 45 2.00 1.577 Heal your target for 71 to 85.
Rank 3 10 75 2.50 1.8 Heal your target for 135 to 157.

Heal
Rank 1 Holy 16 155 1.903 Heal your target for 295 to 341.
Rank 2 Holy 22 205 2.092 Heal your target for 429 to 491.
Rank 3 Holy 28 255 2.219 Heal your target for 566 to 642.


Since I took the worst case, the efficiency could easily be better for each rank than what I have calculated. I suppose to really get into this, you'd have to calculate the best case and take into consideration +healing bonus.

Other than that, I'm beginning to learn when to use what spells. After seeing this, I will certainly use Heal more often. Usually I use renew and lesser heal. Flash Heal only if the tank suddenly is losing life very quickly. And up until now, I've only used Heal when I think about it (since it's a longer casting time).

Edit:
Apparently I couldn't get more than one space to seperate things. Hopefully you can see how it lines up.



Edited, Jan 13th 2008 3:41pm by gimmeit

Priests are no different from other healers you will downrank just like everyone else does. Sure the Mana/HP ratio is better up the healing chain but its all for naught if it is overhealing. You can also spam lower rank heals in later game to help conserve mana while proccing holy concentration etc.

Are you out of your mind???? So your telling me when i have 2k healing i can't spam greater heal rank 2 and out heal you? or rank 5 flash heal? you are wrong bc you will go oom before i do and aparantly you have not raided past kara bc these boss fights in SSC and Tk are over 10 mins or close when the bosses enrage.

So you can sit there and do nothing while i am going to continue to out heal you in every boss fight.

Dont get me wrong i do have the highest rank on my bar but they are just thre for emergencies.

If you'll be playing with a group 90% of the time, and you don't mind long, tough soloing the other 10%, holy can work out at low levels.

The talents you want are Improved Renew--basically free healing on one of your most common spells--and Healing Focus, which is great when a mob gets past the tank to you and absolutely essential for any kind of PVP. Then on to Divine Fury for shorter heals, Inspiration for toughening your tank, and Improved Healing for cheaper heals, filling in with whatever talents you like. Take Spirit of Redemption for the Spirit bonus and you get the angel for free, then load up on Spiritual Guidance and Spiritual Healing.

Most group fights at low level are so short that you won't run out of mana too often, but you'll eventually want to work your way up the Discipline tree at least as far as three points in Meditation and one in Inner Focus.

All that said, most people do well with Wand Specialization and Spirit Tap as their first ten talents. With those you'll solo well, and even without any healing talents you can probably heal low content just fine.