Zackary wrote:
Renew and Prayer of Mending are all pretty simple spells to understand. The rest is knowing when it's safe to Greater Heal as opposed to Flash Heal. All that takes is a little bit of practice...Kind of a pointless argument considering hardly anybody will care what you do as long as the tank doesn't die.
Again, I have to disagree. A Priest whose main decision making is "cast Flash Heal when he needs health fast, cast Greater Heal when he needs a whole lotta health" is basically a gimped Paladin. Paladin healing is simple and effective. Ours is either simple or effective. No one will care how we heal so long as the mobs go down, but unless we're healing at top efficiency, we could be the weak link in a failed run. None of use have every boss in the game on farm, after all; there are fights that challenge all of us to use our abilities to the upmost.
Prayer of Mending goes on the tank, no brains required, sure. You can learn tricks with it like the SWD bounce and saving it for phase changes, but it's so good that it's hard to use it badly.
Renew goes on the tank, no brains required, sure. Except that you don't want it to tick before there's aggro on all the mobs, so that it's generally best to wait to cast it until you see PoM bounce. Not tricky.
Greater Healing downranking and cancel-casting require experience. You have to know how fast your tank's health is likely to drop to know what to queue up, and you have to know how the 5-second rule works to benefit from cancel-casting, and you have to keep an eye out for Holy Concentration procs during those long fights so you can follow it with Inner Focus and get yourself a ton of mana. Cancel-casting is what lets you rely on the power and efficiency of Greater Heal instead of wasting mana on the inefficient, lower heal-per-second Flash Heal.
Speaking of mana--mana potion? Or Shadowfiend? You have to know the fight and you have to know the 5-second rule. When do you pop your trinkets? When should you use your DoTs? When should you let the DPS die?
Prayer of Healing is awesome for AOE damage in 5-mans, but you can't just cast it every time the party takes a hit or you'll be out of mana in no time. You have to know when to cast it and when to rely on your PoM bounces and Renews. If you're specced for Circle of Healing, you have to know when the 5-second rule makes Prayer of Healing a better alternative.
Then there are your panic buttons, Flash Heal and Power Word: Shield. When do you use which? Think fast, because you're needed on dispel duty. Who do you dispel first, or do you need to lay down Mass Dispel? Or maybe you should land a heal on the tank before you start dispelling. Or maybe you're on Shackle duty this fight. Or maybe you're healing with a Mind Controlled mob's spells.
Binding Heal. Such a wonderful spell, if you're fast on the button. Actually quite useful even if you haven't taken damage at phase switches if you have the mana, since it's so low threat. Fade's great too, if you're aware enough to use it before you get aggro and have a plan to get your threat right before it wears off.
None of this is brain surgery, but it's substantially harder than Shadow DPS, where you're basically watching Omen and your mana and following a rotation as well as the mechanics of the fight permit. That's what most DPS is, that and keeping up your CC and your buffs/debuffs. Healing and tanking are both tougher than DPS, though I'd say tanking's marginally harder than healing. And despite the added complications of judgements and totems and forms, Priest healing is more complex than Paladin or Shaman or Druid healing when you're trying your hardest.