Getting Ready For KaraFollow

For the first few bosses your stats are fine. Your biggest weakness is health, but that is partly blizz's fault for having no stam on the primal mooncloth set.

Shade would be difficult without more stam. The attunement comment in the referred to text is quite funny. If anyone is getting charged by Attumen then they are doing the fight wrong. No one other than the tank in the 3rd phase should be taking damage.

When I heal yeah all im generally looking at are bars. If you dont already have healbot I'd install that. When you get used to the fights you will know what is coming up and what to pay attention to.

Not really mentioned before but also make sure you have a focus macro for shackling as you will be a key element of cc on moroes.

Edit: A good test of whether you are ready for kara would be Sethekk Halls on heroic.

Edited, Feb 11th 2008 10:20pm by Minxete

Can't give any tips on priest specific healing as mine is still on her way to 70, but in regards to watching health bars and being aware of the fight I'd suggest you get a boss addon.

Either Deadly Boss Mods (my favourite) or Big Wigs will give you various timers and warnings (big raid warning across the centre of your screen) about various things that are going on. This can help you react when necessary to aspects of the fight that you might otherwise miss.

Another tip: When shackling, keep in mind that in your healing gear you will have low spell hit and they will break shackle early and often. Don't rely on your shackle duration like you do in normal 5-mans. The priest shackle can often make the difference in partial or full wipes in kara. When on Moroes adds, I usually throw about 3 heals and then a reshackle initially ... then you can get in a good cycle of renewing the shackle each time Moroes vanishes. Again when shackling the skeleton guardians leading to the Opera, renew that shackle often as those guys can one shot clothies.

Also, when shackling, try to get good distance from your shackle so you have time to reshackle if it breaks and they head to you. Oh, and don't have the paladin Moroes add as your shackle target ... his first move when breaking shackle is usually to stun you and that sucks. Have the holy priest or prot warrior as your target.

On long fights where you will need mana, take a mana pot early (like when you are at 70-75% mana so you can repot later. Also think about the timing of your shadowfiend in that cycle. For some bosses you have to be careful when using the shadowfiend due to aoe damage from them dropping it immediately (like Prince's shadow blast, Nightbane's charred earth, etc.).

Definitely get decursive for fights like Maiden. Your ability to see which holy fire debuffs are within your range to cleanse and immediately get on them is paramount.

Thank you all for the responses, most appreciated.


I completely agree, when we first started Kara it only took us 2 attempts on Attumen before we realized we should just group hug him on phase 3.


Happen to have an example? =D


I will definately try this, thanks.


I actually use Grid + Decursive and find them to be invaluable. I never really found an updated Healbot mod, so I stayed away from it. My only main gripe with Grid is the fact that you can't set specific area's where you want it to go when it gets bigger. For example if I'm in a normal group (5-man) I like the grid to be right under the party portraits on the left hand side. But for BG's I prefer the grid to be on the far right hand side, and display just about everyone there is, so I can easily just click a square and hit renew. Other than that though, the mod is great.


Mine too, and I'm quite used to it already because of my hunter. I'll just need to pay a little more attention to it while also keeping an eye on my Grid UI.


Yea my health is my biggest concern atm. I'm saving up for the Primal Mooncloth, and creating more mooncloth when I can, but that obviously won't help out my lack of stamina.


Restore Mana Prime a little better then the +15 spirit? I mostly went with the +15 Spirit to add to my spirit for a little extra healing + Mp5.


I laughed when I read this, because just last night I obtained those exact gloves. However I don't want to switch out just yet until I have my Robe. As you can tell from my head piece, I kind of need my current gloves in order to keep my Meta Gem activated =P I'm sure there's better options out there for me in terms of meta gems, but it was a cheapy at the time, and I already had the gems to make it active. The +Crit on my current gloves was actually to raise my enchanting skill. As you said, you wouldn't waste the 6 primal life on those particular gloves, so I never did either.


I'm definately working on it. I really do what the +Healing to my rings and can't wait to get it.

Velluna your whole post was most helpful. I was a little worried about the shackle duration and wondered why in the past it didn't exactly stick so well. From lvl 40 on I've only played Disc/Holy, since my brother was a prot paladin, it was very easy to instance grind. I know in Kara I can go down pretty quickly, unfortunately I've experienced this with my hunter as I've had to pick up an extra add after a priest was killed by his shackled add.

I'm slowly getting used to my pet, but unfortunately I haven't completely remembered that I have him. It's usually when I'm scraping the bottom of my mana pool that I actually remember I do have him, and that I probably should have used him a little earlier. Now a quick question as I haven't noticed this personally, but do our pets try to stay behind the mobs? I know they changed it on the hunter pets and the warlock pets, so that the pet will constantly try to get behind it's target now, the same applies for ours too right?


Now I know this may sound stupid, but would you advise using Inner Focus with PoH? Or save it for a completely different heal all together? Hopefully by the time I need to use the tank has sufficient aggro already and the PoH will do more healing then harm (so to speak).


Being a complete noob to the whole 5 second rule, can you briefly explain this to me? And what do you mean by getting out of it?

Thank you all again for the responses, most appreciated. I feel more confident now in my ability to heal through Kara. Now one more quick question... as if I haven't already asked enough. If anyone could take a look at my spec, and perhaps suggest something a little more specific? What I mostly mean is, a good spec for a pure raid healer, or a main healer, or just an off-healer while in kara. We typically run with 3 healers, mostly just for safety purposes and it makes things a lot easier.

My Current Spec

I know Holy Nova isn't that great, and I mostly only have it now for farming purposes (you have to understand with a protection paladin all we did was instance grind, so we're just now doing the outland quests, Holy Nova has proved to be very useful when we're grinding low lvl mobs, later on I will probably just respec out of it completely). So please ignore the fact that I have Holy Nova =P

Lucky for you I just made a rather lengthy post on my guilds forum because two people leveled up priest alts and have never healed before so I'll just copy/paste it here for you.


The 5SR essentially halves your mana regen for 5 seconds upon completion of a spell. You can check your i5sr v. o5sr on your character sheet by mousing over "regeneration" and you'll get two numbers one is inside 5sr the other is o5sr. Obviously the goal is to spend as much time o5sr as possible. But how do you do that in raids when you are constantly chain casting?


What the 5SR Really Means
First lets get into the very technical wording of 5sr. The 5sr begins upon completion of a spell that costs mana. I know that sounds very basic but read over it again and soak it in. The 5sr on your character sheet says "x mana regenerated every 5 seconds while casting" and is very misleading.

Basic Stopcasting
Now lets go on to stopcasting. Stopcasting is basically a way for you to always remain on the edge of casting but never completing the spell. Here is the first part of why I had you reread the 5sr definition. 5sr only begins when a spell is completed. So a Gheal time is 2.5 seconds, basically with stopcasting you'll always be 1-2 full seconds into the heal. This is important because bosses hit hard and if you wait for the damage to actually occur before you begin to cast you give that boss an extra 2.5 seconds to land another hit before you get your Gheal off. So set up your stopcast macros as such:

/stopcasting
/cast Greater Heal(Rank 1)

/stopcasting
/cast Greater Heal(Rank 2)

/stopcasting
/cast Greater Heal(Rank 7)


When the tank charges in select them and start your stopcast macro. If the tank does not need the heal, press the macro again and you'll begin a new heal and be ready to let it go off if the tank takes a hit.

This all sounds relatively basic and you may be asking "why not just sit there and cast nothing" but it'll come into larger play later.

Clearcasting and Inner Focus

Clearcasting is a result of the Holy Concentration talent while Inner Focus is its own talent. The important thing both talents share is that they allow you a free cast. Remember that 5SR definition? Go reread it if not. The words "cost mana" should be sticking out like a sore thumb now. Bells should be ringing, light bulbs should be going off, you should be able to see the beginnings of a loophole.

Bringing it all Together
Clearcasting procs on FH and GH 6% of the time. Obviously you cannot control when it procs. You can however, control Inner Fire. So enough of the kiddie pool its time to toss you in the deep end.

When chain casting GH over and over, even with clearcasting procs, you will spend at best one tick o5sr. Why?

1. Cast GH2 (2.5sec) and complete.
- 5sr begins.
2. Cast GH2 (2.5sec) and complete.
- 5sr begins again.
3. Cast GH2 (2.5sec) and complete with clearcast proc.
- 5sr does not begin again, BUT you are still approx 2.5secs in the 5sr from your 2nd GH.
4. Cast GH2 (2.5 sec). Now you probably aren't getting your casts exactly 2.5 secs apart so around here you'll finally get a full o5sr tick. If you are chaining them exactly together by using a mod like Quartz (and you should be) you may not get any o5sr at all.

How that rotation should have gone:

1. Cast GH2 (2.5 sec) and complete.
- 5sr begins.
2. Cast GH2 (2.5 sec) and complete.
- 5sr begins again.
3. Cast GH2 (2.5 sec) and complete with clearcast proc.
- 5sr does not begin again, BUT you are still approx 2.5secs in the 5sr from your 2nd GH.
4. Stopcast GH7 (* sec) and complete.
* Use stopcasting to delay this cast as long as possible, meaning you'll hit the macro once, twice, maybe three times depending on the situation. You can allow the tank to take an extra hit or two because your next heal will be a big GH7 not GH2. Also, you are playing the clock here. After one stopcast you'll be o5sr and get a full o5sr tick. By the time the spell goes off you'll have been o5sr for an additional 2.5 sec. At this point you should now be somewhere between 7-10 seconds o5sr, maybe even more if you're lucky.
5. Cast Inner Focus
6. Cast GH7 (** sec).
** Due to Clearcast in step 4 you are STILL o5sr and your next spell again is free of mana cost. Stopcast this GH7 again like you did in step 4.
7. Cast GH2 (2.5sec) and complete.
- Finally go back i5sr.

Ideally you can spend 10,15,20 or more seconds o5sr while you are still casting. Obviously the mana returns of o5sr v. i5sr are huge.

Hope this helps :]



Edited, Feb 12th 2008 10:19pm by MookusOU

Edited, Feb 12th 2008 10:22pm by MookusOU

It took me a while to get the full gist of Mookus post. So correct me if I'm wrong here as I try to sum it up in my own words.

Basically the Tooltips should read:

"Mana Regenerated every 5 seconds after waiting 5 seconds of casting a spell that costs mana"

&

"Mana Regenerated every 5 seconds starting from the last cast that used mana (i.e. if you continue to chain cast and not wait for 5 seconds in between casts, this is the best you can get for MP5)"

If I'm understanding the meaning correctly that Mookus gave.

Now with the addition of the /stopcasting macro's. I believe what Mookus is saying is that I can constantly have a heal in the works, while waiting for my tank to take damage. Keeping myself constantly o5SR until I really need to heal the tank, at which point it will be probably be close to instantaneous since I've been constantly casting/interrupting. Then I just repeat the cycle again, keeping myself in the constant o5SR.

Obviously the problem occurs when I'm chain healing for the most part, or some one drops suddenly and I have to toss them a quick heal, interrupting the transition from i5sr to o5sr.

Extremely helpful post Mookus, I hope I'm getting the basic idea of it down ;)

Yeah it all has to do with spell completion (that costs mana) and the time between. The actual casting length (as the cast bar fills left to right) doesn't restart 5sr and that is what I'm trying to get across about the tooltip being misleading. Looks like you understood me just fine.



Yeah thats exactly what I mean although you don't "constantly" stay o5sr, you want to spend as much time in between cast completions as possible.

Do you get the clearcasting / inner focus part? Thats where the huge mana returns come from.



Edited, Feb 13th 2008 3:59am by MookusOU

Edited, Feb 13th 2008 4:13am by MookusOU

True. But I still think it is a good habit to get into. Not to mention practice helps you to attain a more instinctive reaction of noticing you've clearcasted and then using IF which will bring you nice mana returns even if you are unable to stopcast.

But yeah you're right as you progress there is less and less wiggle room to stopcast. Thats why Bliz gave us that sweet T5 2 piece set bonus. Which I noticed you have /envy.



Edited, Feb 13th 2008 4:07am by MookusOU

Yep good point, will stop you from panicing in a tight spot when you use it. My mention of fights were you can't do it are really less than fights you can do it. If you can coordinate it with another healer even better.

Good for you to learn it no Joob, I learned it a lot later than I would have wanted. Damn blizzard and their out of date tool tips.

Ya the 2 peice T5 bonus is pretty sweet, when i get my next peice of T6 I'm gonna see how helpful it really is. Might have to switch back to T5 2 peice again esspecially for certain fights.