I’ve been thinking about going healer for the war within and I’ve been trying a bunch. Priest seems really fun, I just love how they do their damage and they’re more a traditional healer maybe, and at range. I like it, but damn they have a lot of spells. How do you fit them all into your keybinds?!? It’s almost enough to turn me off from the class to be honest.
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Short answer: I don’t.
Longer answer: It helps to use modifiers (I use 1-6 & shift 1-6), rebind some other keys (I use f,g shift f shift g), and some extra hardware (I have logitech g600 which has 12 side buttons. I bind those as well as the shift modified versions of them). I don’t do this on my priest, but you could also make help/harm macros (for example the same button will cast renew if the target is an ally or shadow word pain if the target is an enemy)
Sure I could do more (alt for example, or change my Q,E,R, Z,X,V ect) like others do, but I’m super happy with how I have it set. That said there are still spells I don’t bind which off the top of my head include: rez and mass rez, mind vision and power word fortitude.
Priest is definitely up there as a contender for the most buttons, but I think that title belongs to either shaman (maybe not so much now with fewer totems) or druid (especially if you count all forms)
A good mouse goes a long way when playing priest. It helps to be able to divert a lot of stuff to your right hand with mouse buttons and use shift and control to triple the amount of mouse bindings you can have. Addons like healbot further help the situation as heal bot bindings remain independent from your regular key bindings so you can effectively double the amount of mouse bindings you have that way. Healbot allows for 15 mouse bindings using control and shift within it’s UI and you can use those same bindings to bind different skills within the regular WoW UI giving you at least 30 bindings just to a standard 5 button mouse. The rest the keyboard can handle.
After spell pruning, we don’t have many spells anymore.
Rip Shadow mend.
Get a 12-button mouse (pretty much a must-have for MMOs)
Use modifiers like “shift+” “alt+” and “ctrl+”
They make life a lot easier.
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Not sure if it will help but I bind Angelic Feather to my Mount button as a @player version.
What this does is if I am standing still and able to mount, I start casting/calling my mount. If I am moving then it will use Feather and if I am not able to mount like I’m in combat or in a non mountable area then it will always be feather regardless if I’m moving or not.
But the moving bit is not really a factor because it would be silly to not be moving when you want to cast feather on yourself.
I use similar tricks like this for many of my classes to save keybinds as I just use clever macro conditionals in the right order to merge multiple spells into a single keybind.
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Disc is a well oiled machine. No spell out of place. But holy still has a little bloat. It makes sense though because we’re kind of a Jack of all trades healer. Definitely too many spells for the base set of hotkeys.
Personally, I think Renew IS out of place for disc.
Nothing more then an atonement applicator when moving.
I am sure we as disc players can use something more impactful.
It used to be Plea. A tiny heal that did less than nothing. Literally only existed to spread atonement.
Renew is at least a HOT. It does its job well enough and preferable to plea imo.
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Better than plea? 100%
A good spell that makes sense with Disc? Not really lol
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For sure. It’s an inelegant solution. But if it’s one spell that only sort of fits, I’ll take it. At least until they figure it something better.
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Yeah I might try Disc. I’ve played it a bit in the past and I do enjoy it, and it seems to be more manageable as far as keybinds.
How is disc? I know it’s generally considered harder to play because it’s more proactive, but I’ve read that with updates with dragonflight and stuff that has been made a bit less of an issue, is this correct?
For the most part, yes. Power word: Radiance helps a lot with spreading atonement quickly. You still want to have them out before damage hits, but it’s not as time consuming. It is still generally a GCD capped spec. You’re always pressing something. So if you like that sort of busy, active healing style, it might be a good fit.
Disc has been in a weird spot at the moment. It’s good, in regular keys you’ll be fine, but there are some pain points atm. AutomaticJak is the expert on priest healing and he’s been talking about some awkward CD timings that line up weirdly. But numbers wise they’re fine.
It’s not the end of the world, and for most of the content any of us will do, disc will do well. It’s a fun spec, and that can help smooth over any wrinkles that might appear.
Holy has the most amount of buttons and needs the most trimming.
Not sure is a Priest thing as much as a Healer thing… In general I tend to need more buttons on healer specs than DPS or Tanks.
But yeah for me the MMO mouse is a must, along with Shift and some Ctrl modifiers.
Some people use help/harm macros, I personally don’t… I think it would be awckward since I heal with mouseovers so I’m always targeting enemies… In fact sometimes I do kind of the opposite with spells like Penance that can be used to heal or DPS, I use macros to split it to have a dedicated offensive penance and a dedicated defensive penance button.
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you use renew for ramps in raid.
Again, does it do something? Yes, atonement application.
Is it an insta cast which makes putting on atonement while moving possible? Yes.
Is it giving Disc Priest Fantasy? No. (on a personal level)
What’s my solution?
Nothing, I have no idea what will replace Renew. MAYBE, huge MAYBE, I am not saying it makes sense. But if we have to have a Holy spell which is insta cast and applies Atonement. I would like to have Prayer of Mending replacing Renew for me.
Possible Flaw -PoM works after the person takes damage. Applying PoM atonement to all 5 in the party will be an absolute nightmare, so idk where I stand on it lol
I dont think priest has a lot of keybinds at all, at least disc doesnt. I have like 2 or 3 freed up keybinds when I swap to disc and I have everything keybound that is necessary.
Holy has a bit more, but I still have more than enough without having to do any weird key mapping.
Shadow also seems fine, I dont play it that much but it doesn’t have that many either. I have like 2 keybinds free when I play it.
Try Rsham, that is a spec that has so much niche utility but you need all of it keybound, it is the healer I play with the most keybinds by far.
I think a problem with healers is that so many keybinds are absolutely necessary. A DPS misclicking anything but a kick generally just prolongs a fight for a few seconds. A healer misclicking any one of a dozen heals/dispels/CDs, or playing go-fish with their bars, results in deaths.
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Struggling to remember who did it but some one did a vid on amount of buttons healers had an disc has the least
Yeah I was mostly referring to holy when talking about lots of keybinds, disc isn’t bad I know.