I came back to Wow after a 10 year break with the intention of giving a raiding heals a shot. I figured the best class for that would be priest. Discovered I love healing and the responsibility even though parties don’t seem to recognize just how much I am doing to keep them alive.
I am trying to push my mythic rating up and I am dying frequently trying to keep my party alive. Mainly because I miss boss mechanics since I am so worried about my team’s health bars. It’s costing me allot of money in repairs as well as allot of personal grief. I am considering quitting wow altogether again over the stress it’s causing.
So… generally speaking is a good strategy when a boss starts throwing fire, or whatever it’s doing to kill the party, should I only worry about keeping myself up and avoiding damage and if dps dies it’s their own damn fault? And then heal after the boss calms down? Advice appreciated.
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I wouldn’t beat yourself up too much. The first time I healed an M+ key after having not played the game for a decade was a terrible experience. However, it was a learning experience that helped nudge me towards improving myself.
I learned a lot by watching how others play. Back then it was Hellokyu, but one of the bigger Holy Priest streamers now is laroqetv.
Learning bosses takes experience. Usually 2-3 dungeons runs at minimum until you know what’s going on and by 10+ runs you know everything like the back of your hand.
Your main priority should always be with your own survivability before others because a dead healer can’t heal the group. If DPS die from mechanics it’s their own fault, but if it’s due to a lack of incoming healing it’s just something you need to improve upon.
I’m assuming you’re playing Holy?
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Definitely work on learning the fights. After a few runs, you’ll hopefully remember when damage usually comes out and be prepared for it.
Remember you can Flash Heal yourself for 10% damage reduction if you have that talent, and Fade also reduced damage by 10% with a talent.
I tend to try to stick to lower keys until I’m really familiar with some of the add/boss mechanics, then slowly scale my key level up. Twitch/youtube also offer runs from players so you can see a birds eye view of how they use specs.
Gear wise your ilvl isn’t looking bad, maybe look into some crafted pieces/making tier to work towards bis secondaries.
Also don’t be afraid to be aggressive on mana/cds if needed (you can always drink between pulls if necessary).
Good luck with healing, even when you’re comfortable you can get into bad groups (I know that bums me out).
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Arguably the best priest healer in the game, Moadmoad (albeit he plays disc over holy) heals tons and tons of keys. My point is that it takes practice to master.
Second, there are things you can do outside of just healing tons. You can watch guides about your class and you can watch guides about the fights themselves via dungeon guides.
Third, if you have a computer for it, you can record your own runs. I did that for a long time. The value in that is you can watch the trouble spots and see what happened. Then you can dig deeper, for example, via researching the specifics of boss fights. In my case I use Grid2 which is highly customizable. And if debuffs are not showing up on your party frames you can learn about them when researching and then add them to your frames in a customized way (ie bigger, in a place on them you watch a lot, etc).
Fourth, you can watch other healers streaming. Healers like Madskillzz (MadskillzzTV) and AutomaticJak (Yumy too but he doesn’t play priest much) will answer your questions right in their streams. And these guys usually give pretty good answers at a minimum.
In my case when I was learning disc priest I started off healing keys. They did not go so well so I made a few more priests and levelled them via dungeons. That way I learned the spells and when to use them gradually as they were add to the healing kit. You can also make your toon OP so that you have more room for error when learning. Stuff like mana oil, enchants on BOA gear, low level flasks etc can make you super OP for dungeons so that you wont stress and can try different abilities, combinations of them, etc as you go and not worry nearly so much about mistakes as in hard content when you might be struggling.
Lastly, join casual battlegrounds. You can try out a ton of stuff in them and not worry about it too much if you dont get it right. You wont brick a key and often you are one in ten or 15 or more and your mistakes wont matter all that much while you are learning. You can also get not bad gear from them with conquest.
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I would argue it. He is a FoTM player. Not a true die hard disc player and there are disc players last i checked above him. I think it was BFA that he last mained disc tho im happy to stand corrected.
I PvP alliance mercenary only. That said, you also along with keeping the group you are assigned to healed. So go to PvP pug BG’s or epic BG’s it’s crazy there and those people are depending on you even more. Great place to practice stuff you’ll start tweaking stuff game after game. You’ll get into a groove where if the dps is good you be rock and rolling.
The other healer are your friends in the game, there will be next to no time to talk to them because like you and me we are so busy watching our teams groups raid what ever your game is there is no time to talk. No time to type, you got to learn you.
While at first it’s crazy, you feel like signing off and crying maybe you should. We are all thinking about each other and I for one will heal healers to keep them healing. I’ve got so good at healing over the last 19 years I know when I see a healer that is new, I can see that sometimes you have to sacrifice one player for another to save your party, raid whatever.
While they are yelling at you try to remember a good leader can not yell like a stupid child that is 12 years old. You’ll run into the blamer’s, the player with the mind of a field mouse.
You’ll even start to laugh at them and learn how to read between the lines for important information you need to see.
Sometimes they thank you but remember if you make a mistake they be sure to call you a bunch of names because it makes them feel better about themselves vs saying we’ll get it don’t worry.
Saying we had few bumps in the road we had to get around but after we got to know each other we were flying high in that instance.
You’ll know that you’re a healer like millions of boys and girls ,men and women that have played the class from disc, to holy, to the witch called shadow. You’ll be one of us standing proud emotionless trying to save a life.
Never ever forget about you when you heal!
Sincerely Xissa Holy Priest of the alliance that only plays horde PvP.
My alt.
I think it depends on how your learn. Some people learn by reading, some by watching others, some by doing. Or even a combination of those or all.
I usually have to jump in and learn by doing.
Jump into 2s and learn the dungeons. It all takes practice. Give yourself grace and don’t worry about mistakes. I feel like people know those keys are where people are learning.
Ilvl will make your life so much easier. So, don’t get discouraged as you are building your character. I noticed a huge difference when I popped up from 420 to 430 then to 440+.
I also noticed a difference when I got Rashoks heart, so run lfr or whatever for it if you can. It is just so good.
Anyway, you’ve got this!
Also, I feel like I personally learned a lot more about dungeons when I played my alt tank. It helped to see a bigger picture of what was going on and what was hurting the group as that can be harder to do as a healer when you are mostly watching health bars and not mobs as much.
Good luck!!!
I believe there is a talent in the class tree, which is usually taken, called “Binding heals” where 20% of the healing done by flash heal or heal also goes to you. Therefore, I thought binding heals meant any flash heal on anybody else kept the 10% damage reduction on you?
It also makes applying atonement on yourself easier by flash healing someone else.
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Yes it does! Super fancy to get the 10% DR from healing other people. 
I dunno. I like him and love his stream and really wish he would stream again. He tells it like it is, is direct, would complain openly about the same kinds of things I think most healers can relate to (like mages not using their decurse on themselves or others, dying instead) and I liked a team with whom he played regularly and who were a gas to listen to. He and his team often implemented strategies that were amazing, such as on the first boss at Sanguine Depths and so rare that you wont EVER see any other groups even attempting. He also used great weakauras that I found extremely helpful. He heals other specs now, healing holy paladin now as Easymoad and he healed Evoker early in this xpac.
As for being the best healer, he got the title Dread Gladiator as a disc priest, which put him in the top 0.01% of pvpers. He also heals without healing addons, essentially using target healing–which nobody else does and is quite difficult to master, a style I now use and find to be incredibly good for various reasons I will not go into, but essentially allowing you to do things you cant with addons like Voodoo.
To me he will always be the best disc priest healer. Jak, Yumy and Madskillzz are also healers you can learn from, but in my view, Moad is in a league of his own, and that is an understatement.
You guys can discuss your favourite streamers in another thread… I’m sure any high level key/raider streamer is helpful.
OP Don’t forget that every wipe is another pull at a fight. If you have a patient group this is not necessarily a bad thing as you’ll be seeing more of the mechanics. Just keep your cool and know that you can do this, it’ll come 
I wouldn’t run that spec for m+. I would go with a lightweaver build. You also want more haste for m+ as holy. Haste and crit and then as the keys get high haste > Verse > crit.
When your moving out of fire you have a few things you can do instantly, circle of healing, renew, holy word serenity and sanctify. Make sure you keep your PoM up at all times.
Lightweaver build is fine, but I strayed away from it, specially if you are using chastise frequently (more divine image procs). Not having to keep track of LW buffs is a headache I can do without!
I personally have found the DI + MW build to be far superior than LW + DI in M+.
The main reason is the DI + MW build generates Holy Words a lot faster and you can maintain a high uptime of 60-75% on Divine Image on boss fights and usually around 50% on trash.
That high uptime = more healing/damage output than a LW build. Also, you can get all the PoM + CoH talents in a LW + DI build which buffs your passive group healing up even more. Overall you’re more mana efficient because if you generate 50% more Holy Words = they cost 1/2 as much mana as Flash Heal.
The last reason is that the LW talent is annoying to use. You only get 2 charges and once those charges are out you have to fish for more using Flash Heals.
My build in particular is designed to hard counter those nasty RoT aura fights because I can push up to 180k hps and most of that’s coming from PoM, CoH, Renew, and Divine Image instead of me having to spam single target heals on one person at a time.
I’m going to switch I think. I was doing an 18 last night and just didnt feel the healing was there compared to the heal cleave i get from my MW.
It’s not you it’s blizzard making us heal for the entire party’s mistakes.
Don’t feel bad. I have KSH, and I still Levitate off the ledge of Vortex Pinnacle like an idiot.