| Zaddy | #295216 Tuesday April 15, 2008 at 18:38 | |
Heal Sauce and Assplosions |
Okay, so I have been watching other priests in raids that I have attended for a while now. I have determined that my approach to healing seems to be very different than most. The first difference I see is the one that puzzles me most. A lot of priests top heal tends to be flash heal. This seems especially true on trash, but I have seen it on bosses too. For trash this may seem to be less important because the encounters are shorter anfls the priest is not as likely to run out of mana. But the way I see it, mana is not the primary concern on trash pulls. It is the healing aggro that you can generate. One or two hits from an errant melée mo. And a priest tends to turn into an angel (especially if you have low stamina like my priest does in herain healing set). Now don't get me wrong. I am not saying that there is not a place for flash heal. Quite to the contrary, I thinkbthere are absolutely places to use it and I do. But seldom do I use flash heal in tanks. I tend to use it ok leather and cloth wearers who would not live long enough for the big heal to get off. I guess that what I am really trying to get at here is why do mavy priests seem to use flash heal as their primary staple heal? Is there something that I am missing? Besides that, I think that we could use some discussion here about healing techniques in general. We are, after all, the most versatile of the healing classes when it comes to healing tools. And at the risk of sounding pretentious, I feel that priests are the best healing class, not because we are the best in capability at any one thing, but because we are second best at all of the healing aspects (single target, HoTs, and AoE). Well more than that I have fun as a healing priest. My apologies for errors in this post. I am typing it on my phone. EDIT: Fixed some typos --
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| Zaddy edited this message on Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 20:09 | ||
| Tenatia | #295220 Tuesday April 15, 2008 at 19:32 | |
Warlock/Caster Lead Emeritus |
I haven't any BC raiding experience on my priest, mainly 5 man experience, so take this with a grain of salt, but I rarely cast flash heal, unless I'm worried about keeping up with spikey incoming damage. Back in the day, when I was healing in MC it was almost exclusively flash heal, but that was a different time altogether:)
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Grimjim Stonebreaker, Dwarf, 70 Protection Warrior, Health: 13.6k, Armour:16k, Defense: ~495 // Attuned for: Ony/MC/BWL/Kara Tenatia Saendar, Human, 70 Demonology Warlock // Attuned for: Ony/MC/BWL/Naxx/Kara Pietro Loyallar, Human, 70 Priest // Attuned for: Ony/MC/BWL/Kara Theraint Griffinforge, Dwarf, 65 Paladin // Attuned for: Ony/MC/BWL |
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| Rafiky | #295244 Tuesday April 15, 2008 at 22:40 | |
Roster Monkey |
flash heal spamming is used to top the meters. It's terribly mana inefficient, especially with the 2.4 changes. I flipped my shit a while back after watching the WWS of most of the charters and i was seeing pretty much all of the priest spamming flash heal. When i compare those numbers to numbers from my own guild or other progression guilds, i get a bit disappointed. I know that there are very good people in LO, but for the most part nobody takes the time to figure out their class. Sites like the Elitist Jerks, shadowpriest.com, ect are great resources for max/min-ing your character, and also trying to improve. Digging through the WWS from most of the charters i can see very few priests with what i could consider good healing habits (lots of gheal, prayer of mending, renew, binding heal) i see a lot of CoH spamming, and flash heal spamming, which are awesome for inflating numbers. edit: I love CoH for some fights and encounters (TK trash/bloodboil/RoS, for instance) pretty much require a CoH priest. i also love Flash heal for some things, but as a priest you have access to the most versatile healing in the game. It might not be the most powerful of each kind (flash heal vs FoL), but we have the best regen and, in my opinion, the biggest effect on if the raid is successful or not. There are certain fights in the game that are gear checks, dps races, and healing checks. The fights that i see most of the charters having problem with are the healing check fights (Vashj, Morogrim, Antheron, ect). When most guilds bring 7 or 8 healers to these fights, i see 10-12 in some of the raids. A lot of that has to do with using flash heal instead of greater heal, or throwing prayer of mending out there and letting it bounce. If you want to play a class thats 1 button mashing healing roll a paladin, they're better at it, and they survive longer anyway, but the best part about the priest class is the amazing versatility and the ability to adapt to almost any encounter. --
Listen to teh monkie 70 NE Hunter http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lightbringer&n=Rukhanu |
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| Rafiky edited this message on Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 00:42 | ||
| KeeRissa | #295249 Tuesday April 15, 2008 at 23:43 | |
Burn or Heal? |
quote: Originally posted by Rafiky: i see a lot of CoH spamming, and flash heal spamming, which are awesome for inflating numbers. CoH can make or break some encounters. Flash heal, though...yeah. Don't worry so much about where you are on the meters (for the most part, paladins and good shaman can kick your rear) and worry more about having the stats, the gear and the ability to respond to situations, especially the "oh shit" ones that make priests shine. There are some great healers in LO and there are great healers outside of LO. They tend to be the ones who are leading the charters into progressive content without trying to top the healing meters. |
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| Thrilas | #295255 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 00:34 | |
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Member |
Okay, I dont have much expierence healing 25 mans because im a shadow priest but here is the Elitist Jerks version for raiding holy priest. http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t23790-priest_holy_raiding_compendium_v2_wow-2_4_0_a/ However, I do hate hearing, "I had a big heal going on you." when our tank dies. So I really can't say one way or the other. --
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| Kahly | #295270 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 07:16 | |
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Life will find a way. |
I rarely use flash heal. Actually if you wanted to define my healing style you could say "The pursuit of not casting flash heal". I am a real mana hoarder. When raid healing flash heal sucks up your mana way too fast imho. What heal do I use the most? We actually that changes situationally. Sometimes it's renew. . sometimes CoH. . sometimes Gheal. You don't have to spam flash heal to get top healing numbers, you just have to heal smart. Who cares who is on top anyway? I am really happy anytime one of my healers out heals me. It means I am doing my job as heal lead in putting them in assignments that maximize their effectiveness. I do notice that I use flash heal more when we don't have 2 pallies healing. --
Kahly - Holy Priest Avril - Fire Mage |
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| Jerilynn | #295271 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 07:18 | |
IDK my BFF Dulin? |
I use Gheal for the most part... a low rank one, and a high rank one. Every now and then I using Binding Heal, if I'm starting to die and it's looking desperate (and this has saved my ass on many occasions). I use Flash Heal for encounters where a person starts to die really freakin' fast, like Infernals on Anetheron. (Yeah, hearing "I had a big heal on you, but it was a second too late" is really annoying in that case) I use CoH anytime I'm raid healing and 3 or more people in a group start getting low. I agree that folks shouldn't use Flash Heal as their main spell, but I don't think I've ever seen a priest I've raided with use CoH at an inappropriate time. If you're raid healing, it's gonna be used quite a bit at times. Screw healing meters. I don't even look at them, and I never have, nor do I think any healer ever should, unless they're looking at something that will show them their mana efficiency, like WWS. --
  Photography: My Anti-WoW: http://www.jennyzandstra.com Jerilynn - Healer Supreme Dhaliah - Wannabe Tank and Tinkerer Nhaliah - Dhaliah's Sister, MIA |
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| Maegrette | #295274 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 08:05 | |
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Makes the rockin' world go round |
quote: Originally posted by Thrilas:However, I do hate hearing, "I had a big heal going on you." when our tank dies. Which is why it's good to mix up different types of healers in a raid. Priests are all about the big heals, the group heals, and versatility. Paladins are better at the quick spammy small heals. And so on (HoT's, brain heal, etc). While the priest's "big heal" is winding up, someone else can be filling the gap with what they do best. (Unless you're in a heroic and the priest is the only healer. In which case you're screwed. Which is why I hate healing heroics. There's just too many of those heal-was-0.1-second-too-late moments.) I don't have experience playing the other healing classes, but I know when there's more than one priest in a raid (especially a 10-man), we get in each other's way a lot. We'll both queue up on the same target, both hit greater heal, and one of us will overheal. Meanwhile someone else is dying (so we both probably jump to that person next, rinse and repeat). Healing assigments help, but it always seems to go smoother when more than one healing class is doing the work. The different flavors of healer really complement each other well. I don't use Flash Heal much myself (my spec and my gear are all about longevity and I don't want to waste that), but due to the above issue, I could see a place for it if more than one priest was assigned to the same target. However, that seems kind of a waste of a priest. Ditch the extra priest and get a pally or druid in there instead. Healing meters? Bah, everyone knows CoH is the way to ninja the meters. (Says the slightly bitter IDS build priest.) ;-) One place I know I fall short is not using Binding Heal. When it first came out, it really sucked. I tried it, wasn't impressed, kept it on my bars as the heal of last resort, but after using it maybe once in two months, moved it off to make room for something else. Now that it's been substantially improved and is actually useful, I've gotten out of the habit. Given my infamous survivability (my guild refuses to soulstone me, considering it a waste of a cooldown), I should be using it a lot more. --
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| Alaunt | #295280 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 09:22 | |
Member |
quote: Originally posted by Kahly: ...I do notice that I use flash heal more when we don't have 2 pallies healing. Kahly brings up a really good point here that I'd like to expand on a little bit here. Many charters run with, from a min/max POV, a suboptimal raid composition. A particular charter may frequently lack a given class or spec on an occasional or fairly regular basis. These situations can and will shift your healing numbers around. As an example in AP all our druids are feral. We have one resto druid that has raided with us occasionally in the past but its the exception not the rule. So in turn the damage on the tanks is more 'spiky' without the HoTs to smooth them out as much (a couple of renews help but we tend to only have a few healing priests in the raid, and they might not be assigned to the same target). People may react to the damage spikes by using shorter cast time spells. Consider also the impact of non-traditional specs. My disc/holy priest doesn't have any points in empowered healing, even though the 'cookie-cutter' build for improved DS includes it. This effects her flash/binding/greater heals; but I do have improved renew so I tend to throw those out first (which isn't a bad idea anyway really). I bring this up not to advocate a particular talent choice but to highlight that people may demonstrate oddly weighted numbers as a result of unusual talent choices. Raf correctly points out that a lot of people here in LO take little interest in learning how their class works, how to do role X effectively etc. Historically, the removal of class leads has lead to a bit of apathy in most of the class forums in maintaining class guides and keeping that information right at people's fingertips. Updated guides would be a place to start but a lot of improvement can happen at the raid level, too. Some people are afraid to ask questions, and raiding (particularly farmed content) can be a great time to do so, although you might want to ask about that hot new hunter trinket in the DPS channel rather than raidchat ~_^ |
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| Kahly | #295281 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 09:44 | |
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Life will find a way. |
quote: Originally posted by Alaunt: As an example in AP all our druids are feral. No healing druids? *crys* Oh I would hate that. I love love love my resto druids. Truely. . a balanced healer group can make things a lot easier. Did I mention I love my resto druids? *Hugs her Trees!* --
Kahly - Holy Priest Avril - Fire Mage |
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| Dae | #295311 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 13:27 | |
Shadow carebear >.> |
So here's a question - I'm not a professional healer (or at least not until my druid hits 70!) on any of my characters, but I've experimented with priest healing (mostly offspec, respecced holy once for the hell of it), and I'm curious - how does Flash Heal "inflate healing numbers?" I know it's very mana inefficient. My use of it is typically to save a dps who's pulled aggro in a five-man, since they're usually dead if I try to get a Gheal off. Is flash spam actually a higher-output style when healing, say, just a tank? I guess I don't understand what's meant by "number inflation" - that to me implies that the priest in question looks like they're healing more effectively than they are. ("Effectiveness" defined here as ability to keep people alive, without considering efficiency.) Coming from a dps priest perspective, I've gotten knocked quite a few times for being *cough* somewhat reckless with my nukes. I'm specced to be able to Mind Blast (a fairly inefficient spell) as often as possible in my spell cycle, and I blast my MB/Death cooldowns as often as they're up, which results in a higher rate of mana consumption than more conservative shadow priests... but also a comparatively high damage output. I figure, if I've got the mana and I know I can keep going for the duration of the fight, I should use it. So the second part of my question, I guess, is whether Flash Heal is undesirable solely due to its inefficiency, or if (discounting mana consumption) it's actually less conducive to keeping a tank alive. --
  + Daevia, 70 'lock (happily Affliction again!), and Daelind, 70 rogue |
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| Maegrette | #295315 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 13:40 | |
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Makes the rockin' world go round |
Flash heal is a lower output healing spell, actually. Max rank flash heal: 1.5 sec, 470 mana, 1116-1295 (2.56 hpm, 804 hps) Max rank greater heal: 2.5 sec, 825 mana, 2414-2803 (3.16 hpm, 1043 hps) Greater heal receives a larger benefit both from +healing gear and from the Empowered Healing talent, so these effects are magnified the better gear the priest has. Spamming flash heal on a tank is not only mana inefficient, it's going to be much harder to keep up with damage. I'm guessing that flash heal priests go higher on the meters not because of healing output, but because it's easy to sneak in a faster casting heal while someone else is casting a longer heal, making that person either overheal (which doesn't count on the meters) or cancel their cast altogether. --
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| Jerilynn | #295364 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 18:51 | |
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IDK my BFF Dulin? |
quote: Originally posted by Maegrette: I'm guessing that flash heal priests go higher on the meters not because of healing output, but because it's easy to sneak in a faster casting heal while someone else is casting a longer heal, making that person either overheal (which doesn't count on the meters) or cancel their cast altogether. Bingo --
Photography: My Anti-WoW: http://www.jennyzandstra.com Jerilynn - Healer Supreme Dhaliah - Wannabe Tank and Tinkerer Nhaliah - Dhaliah's Sister, MIA |
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| Dae | #295368 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 19:31 | |
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Shadow carebear >.> |
quote: Originally posted by Dahlily: quote: Originally posted by Maegrette: I'm guessing that flash heal priests go higher on the meters not because of healing output, but because it's easy to sneak in a faster casting heal while someone else is casting a longer heal, making that person either overheal (which doesn't count on the meters) or cancel their cast altogether. Bingo Oh ew. Okay, that makes sense. I also was unaware that overheal isn't counted on WWS. --
+ Daevia, 70 'lock (happily Affliction again!), and Daelind, 70 rogue |
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| Jerilynn | #295372 Wednesday April 16, 2008 at 20:30 | |
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IDK my BFF Dulin? |
quote: Originally posted by Dae: quote: Originally posted by Dahlily: quote: Originally posted by Maegrette: I'm guessing that flash heal priests go higher on the meters not because of healing output, but because it's easy to sneak in a faster casting heal while someone else is casting a longer heal, making that person either overheal (which doesn't count on the meters) or cancel their cast altogether. Bingo Oh ew. Okay, that makes sense. I also was unaware that overheal isn't counted on WWS. It is, in a way... I think the percentage of healing on the raid charts is healing actually done (and doesn't count overhealing), but if you click on your name, it'll tell you what percent overheal you're doing on each spell. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, folks... --
Photography: My Anti-WoW: http://www.jennyzandstra.com Jerilynn - Healer Supreme Dhaliah - Wannabe Tank and Tinkerer Nhaliah - Dhaliah's Sister, MIA |
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