I have been playing holy priest for the first time since WOLK. I love where its at right now but I do struggle with mana in dungeons. (I struggle with mana in pvp too but thats for a different time). After almost every mob pull I am down to like 50-60 percent mana. It doesnt help that the tanks healths yoyo like crazy and then on top of that also having to keep up with the dps health as well.
I would like to know what is the most efficient/plays style that you can get out of playing this spec.
I mainly use flash heal/renew as my main healing spells and then everything else by situation. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
This is actually a common mistake a lot of holy priests make, what you need to do is set up your macros correctly. Whenever you cast a healing spell (except for flash heal) you need to also include a /say (or /yell) line that has an appropriate prayer, letting both your teammates and your diety know what you want to do, increasing you HPS.
Now as for transmog, there’s a very clear way to do it (white robes), but folks have been theory crafting some new builds that rank pretty high on the Fun Per Second charts.
…Anyway, flash heal is the culprit here. It heals very little and consumes too much mana. My advice is to get Flash concentration legendary to boost it up.
Get Flash Concentration legendary, take SoL talent, use Mindgames on cooldown for free mana/damage/spike reduction, smite a bit in your downtime to get even more SoL procs to maintain the FC buff endlessly and HEAL HEAL HEAL HEAL HEAL HEAL HEAL like you’ve got spell casting Tourett’s… profit.
Renew and FH are both spells you shouldn’t be using allot because they are both mana inefficient.
What I do is drink whenever I can after every pull if I’m at or below 50% mana. Even if I’m only drinking for 5 seconds it adds up.
I also try and bring a mage to my groups for the intel buff, hero, and the free mana biscuits where I don’t have to worry about being wasteful with drinking.
Best thing to do is to get the FC legendary. FH to 5 stacks then just heal your way to victory while using your word spells and CoH when needed
I don’t even bother with PoM anymore. Without Harmonious Apparatus, it doesn’t reduce the CD of our Holy Words. And with Flash Concentration, our bread and butter are Holy Words and Heal… hard to justify a GCD even for a technically efficient heal because you have better options.
I do press PoM and Circle of healing just because it’s mana efficient. Since I’m Kyrian, my self sustain mana options are either Symbol of Hope, not casting, healing with Boon of the Ascended, or mana pot.
I really wish Ascended Blast was targettable to friendly targets to heal for 200% of what it normally does. Would make it a considerable healer cooldown and controllable on who it heals.
But yeah, I gotta conserve mana however I can on longer fights.
Get Flash Concentration ASAP. It’s almost like an on-demand single target throughput cooldown.
For talents, choose Trail of Light in row 1, Guardian Angel in row 3, Surge of Light in row 5, Divine Star or Benediction (situational) in row 6, and Apotheosis in row 7.
Learn what your talents do. Trail of light is like a mini beacon and needs some consideration to use effectively, you need to know when you can throw out a heal or flash heal on an alternate target so that they get healed while you’re spamming on the tank. Know how Apotheosis operates, it can be used both for high tank damage, or high group damage.
USE YOUR GUARDIAN ANGEL OR APOTHEOSIS if the tank drops to near 1/2 health. DO NOT HOLD ON TO THEM FOR EMERGENCIES (unless you know a big hit is coming up soon). Your output outside of these is pathetic, and you are meant to use them or you will run out of mana unless your tank is overgeared. Save your power infusion for true emergencies! It makes you burn through mana faster…
USE YOUR HOLY WORDS when they come off cooldown. Use serenity if it won’t overheal much, use sanctify if CoH is on cooldown and more than 2 people can benefit. Use Divine Hymn if the group is low and you think the tank won’t die.
The biggest mistake you can make is to sit on your thumb and not press your big cooldowns. You will go OOM if you save things.
This is a tough balancing act I struggle with too.
You can of course always smite for SoL procs and chastise for Resonant Words, but fitting that all in with the constant damage going out to conserve mana for later takes patience I don’t always have.
Plus, of course the bosses die faster and faster each week so less need to conserve anyway. Tough to balance.
Holy is so prone to ooming in the raid I can’t help but use on cool down. I have a big fat TMW notification that flashes and everything when PoM is ready. I think it’s just too efficient to just ignore like that.
With bene maybe, but I’m convinced by the theorycrafters arguing Halo is more efficient. Without that, really take a look at what PoM does for you and if you might not be better off investing that GCD into another Heal cast or even Smiting a bit for SoL procs.
And hey, it adds in damage which makes me feel better about myself
I’ve taken to mana potting the instant my mana hits 88% in a fight with no downtime phases. If it’s a 5+ min fight, I’ll have it again before the fight is over. On even longer fights like heroic sire, I don’t spam flash heal to build up FC, I just let natural SoL procs do it unless stacks fell off and I need the throughput like on phase 3.
Sometimes I drop to almost zero if the group decides to root their feet and eat everything because they are unfamiliar with mechanics or spoiled from having superb healers.
Healing, prayer of mending, Boon of the asended, and maximizing AoE heals is about efficient as I can get. Flash concentration is theoretically a bit more inefficient b/c of maintaining stacks but it usually increases my overall efficiency because I don’t need to cast as many flash heals. On bosses, I’ll use Symbol of Hope and Arcane Torrent as early as possible in case I will need a second use later on.
If I do dip to zero, at the end of a pull, I start mana regeneration. If the group goes on ahead and dies because they couldn’t wait, that’s on them. Tanks should be checking their healer’s mana at the end of every pull and certainly before every boss. If I have one of those yolo and/or overgeared tanks, then pressure is off and I can dps more.
