5 Priest Raiding Commandments

[Squirllz]

The 5 Raiding Priest Commandments


Now with 1 bonus commandment!

1. Positioning:
It is important that you learn where to be and where not to be, no one wants their priest standing directly in the line of fire of a cone attack that will instantly kill them that just screams “this can’t be good”. If you are taking damage you should not then you are more focused on yourself then the others that matter.

2. Mana Efficiency:
You will hear me talk about it again and again but nothing is worse then a priest that is always oom. There are plenty of tricks and preparations that can be made to avoid having this macro’ed to shout to your raid team but something that does not require extra hours outside of the raid is to be mindful of what spells need to be cast. Do not just spam heals, I have seen priests overheal for 70% of their mana so 30% of their mana pool actually helped the fight while 70% did absolutely nothing.

3. Awareness:
This is basically realizing that you are not a bot but an actual player so you need to move around; you need to be able to heal and take notice if the boss is pounding your face in. Hey! Wake up the MT is not the only raid member, sometimes a rogue needs a renew or even *gasp* a heal; you are not a 1 trick pony so do not fall into that trap.

4. Aggro:
A dead priest is only useful for 10 seconds if you have SoR other then that they are useless, aggro is a sticky situation and it needs to be controlled, drawing aggro will not only irritate the raid team it will also get people killed and possibly wiped depending on the encounter.

5. Know your role:
Learn what you need to be doing, every encounter is different and you need to know what is expected of you, it is not just healing, as the game matures so will your role in the raid. Being able to adjust to a situation is priceless, learn the encounters and learn your role within each of them.

6. *Bonus*
Stop using CT Raid or (insert mod) to cut off your heals, it is embarrassing. It will hurt in the long run as a gamer, practice does not make perfect in gaming especially the MMO world, practice makes you a good player and having mods do things for you will put you back a few years.


Talents Ranking:



I am using the A, B, C, D, and F ranking system with color to jazz it up for the following talents here is a quick description:

A – Must have talent, you will be hurting your character if you pass on this talent.
B – There is no downside to this talent just depends on how you heal as a priest if it should be picked up or not.
C – An average talent, if you are unsure where to put your points these talents are an option.
D – Not really useful as a raider but there is a minority out there that refuses to not pick up these talents so I gave it a rating above completely useless just for you guys!
F – Wow, yea you do not need to even mouse over these talents, move along, move along.


Discipline tree

C: Unbreakable Will – It is nice when you do resist an effect however the main reason to put 5 points in here is because it is simply a better choice then Wand Specialization.

F: Wand Specialization – Stop shooting and heal, some alliance priests will wand to get mana back but even then it is not a source of dps.

B: Silent Resolve – Everyone plays a little differently some will pull agro off the tanks on a regular basis and should look into SR while others will never draw agro. It depends on your heal style, roles in different encounters if you do not wish to drop talent points in here then first test without it but be prepared to spend the points if you continually draw agro, that is Commandment #4 of healing on raids.

A: Improved Power Word: Fortitude – Any priest casting Fortitude on even pets better have ImpPwF, now if you REALLY want to spend the 2 points elsewhere you will need to convince the other priests in your raid team that they will have to take over your Fortitude buffing duties.

C: Improved Power Word: Shield – It is horrible mana inefficient but there are some fights that priests will need to and should spam PwS like Vaelastrasz for example since you have an endless mana pool for 3 minutes, it is also your oh $#!* button.

D: Martyrdom – With 2 points in here you have a 100% chance to gain Focused casting but hopefully that never happens, you really do not want to be critically hit in a raid encounter but could be nice for specific fights where priests are constantly beat on, in a perfect world you can pretend this talent does not exist.

A: Inner Focus – Uhhh, free cast, +25% chance to crit with said spell… aside from the 5 minute cooldown is there any other downside to spending 1 talent point? I would not mind picking this skill up 51 times if they allowed me to.

A: Meditation – I like to pretend that all priests’ value spirit over everything else and this talent is impossible to live without, I will keep dreaming and you better keep this talent maxed out.

D: Improved Inner Fire – Again we are trying to avoid taking damage here, only put points here if you feel you have to and even then please rethink it until you feel differently.

C: Mental Agility – It will help the mana efficiency of Renew and PwS but it is kinda 50/50.

F: Improved Mana Burn – Nothing to see here keep reading.

C: Mental Strength – Like Mental Agility I am 50/50 on this talent, sure it is nice to have but I am bigger on regenerating my mana pool then having a large one to draw from since after the first few heals go off how often are you really sitting at capped mana wishing your pool was larger?

A: Divine Spirit – Every raid team needs a priest with DS.

F: Force of Will – Damn Bobby! You are dealing massive damage! Ok now stop and heal the MT he is about to die.

C: Power Infusion – I am not going to slam it but I just don’t see why you are spending so many points to get down here.


Holy tree

A: Healing Focus – It is nice to avoid having your heals being slowed from aura effects and puny mobs beating on you, for example Vaelastrasz or Baron Rivendare but I will not hold it against you if you opt for points spent elsewhere, take that back, yea, yea I will.

A: Improved Renew – There is only one downside to Improved Renew and that is if you don’t use the spell…get this talent.

A: Holy Specialization – More crits = better mana usage and more Inspiration procs. Do not leave home without it.

D: Spell Warding – Less damage is good but only put points in here if you can swing it but you should not be able to.

B: Divine Fury – I gave this a B because not all priests spec for pure Heal and G Heal some rely more heavily on Flash, PoH and Renews but if you are going to be a major healer for MT you can not beat Heal and G Heal mana efficiency just do not get into bot-mode where you just spam G Heal on MT letting CT Raid cut your heals off for you.

D: Holy Nova – Single talent for an instant aoe heal that causes no threat is nice, but the mana cost for this spell makes it not so nice.

F: Blessed Recovery – Stop getting hit by crits and spend the points on more useful talents.

A: Inspiration – Tanks will love you and you will love Inspiration, reducing melee damage the tank receives only makes your job easier.

B: Holy Reach – This is great for increasing the range of Prayer of Healing, with PoH giving the best mana-to-health ratio you do not want it to miss a party member or its efficiency goes down. Having a bigger range allows for greater positioning.

B: Improved Healing – Same as Divine Fury, I gave this a B because not all priests spec for pure Heal and G Heal some rely more heavily on Flash, PoH and Renews but if you are going to be a major healer for MT you can not beat Heal and G Heal mana efficiency.

F: Searing Light – Stop smiting and start healing!

B: Improved Prayer of Healing – Any improvement to an already incredibly useful skill is worth picking up.

A: Spirit of Redemption – Only 1 point and you get 10 seconds of free healing? Hard to beat that… well if you never see it that would be a good thing but, you will die and when you do you and your team will be glad you grabbed this.

A: Spiritual Guidance – Load up on spirit and learn to love it, you will never make another talent spec without Spiritual Guidance.

A: Spiritual Healing – 10% to all heals is juicy, there is not much to say about it except why wouldn’t you pick this bad boy up?

F: Lightwell – In theory it sounds cool, ok even in theory it does not sound cool, I see no use for Lightwell please someone give me an example of this talent being worthy of being at the bottom of the talent tree. I do not want a justification for 1 point to get it I want a justification for putting 30 points in holy to get the uber elite Lightwell.


Tips and Hints



For the time being do not disenchant or sell your Prophecy set, the 8 piece bonus is still useful even in Naxx on certain encounters. Hold on to it until you see what is in BC because you do not want to have to go back to MC at 70 for lewts.

Any well prepared Priest should have at least a couple sets of armor outside of resistance for healing purposes. For example a solid mana regen set, +healing for when bigger heals are needed, and high intellect set for encounters like Lord Kazzak that are only 3 minutes long and you will not get a chance to regen any mana.

Practice timing with Heal and Greater Heal, they are incredibly more mana efficient then spamming Flash Heals.

Communicate with other priests and/or healers in the raid, an example of pre-Burning Crusade of bad communication is every priest in the raid try to cast renew on the MT only 1 priest needs to be casting renew. Or say there are 8 priests in the raid and all 8 cast Greater Heal on the MT at the same time well if GHeal hits for 4k on average and you have 8 Gheals going off at the same time, unless the tank has over 32,000 HP there is not much use for it.

Share your ideas with the other priests and healers, the raid team will often not understand the complicated strategy of its healers so sharing ideas to improve the raid’s healing with the entire raid will not get the desired results. Discuss and improve your team’s healing by communicating directly with the healers.


Come Prepared



Here is a quick list of items that you can farm or get your hands on pre-raid time to improve your usefulness


Mana Potions
If too expensive you can use Superior Mana potions just make sure whatever you bring you are willing to drink them down like water, it is preferable that you drink as soon as you will get the full affect of an avg drink.


Mana Oils
Blizzard was kind enough to add these bad boys in the game take advantage of that kindness and do not raid without them.


Demonic Runes or Dark Runes
Demonic Runes are bind on pick up and Dark Runes are not but the effect is the same so either buy Dark or farm Demonic but make sure you have some


Nightfin Soup
Restores 8 mana every 5 seconds for 10 minutes just for eating some soup? Yes, please!


Runn Tum Tuber Suprise
+10 Intellect for 10 minutes, not hard to get so why not.


Mageblood Potion
+12 mana every 5 seconds for an hour, these potions are cheap to make for an hour long buff.


Bandages
Yes, bandages, if you get the chance to bandage yourself instead of use your precious mana you might as well.


Blasted Lands buffs
You can easily get the potions to increase any stat by 25 here but it can be a pain since they are unique, but if you got the time to hit it could be helpful.


Tivo
Healing requires focus so turn off the tv and set up Tivo to snag the shows you are going to miss during the raid ahead of time.


Example Builds



15/36/0 Heavy Holy

One of my favorite raiding builds, giving you the major heal bonuses to get the most out of Heal, Greater Heal, and Prayer of Healing. In the Discipline tree you still get your Inner Focus and Meditation the two most important Discipline talents in my opinion.

21/30/0 Divine Spirit

If you want to get Divine Spirit then I suggest you stop there in the Discipline tree and dump the other 30 points into Holy. You are free to adjust the Holy talents to adjust to your healing I removed the points in Improved Renew in favor of some more useful talents in my mind for heavy raiding. As it stands now only one Renew can be active on a player at a time and if other priests in the raid team are willing one of them can handle keeping Renew active on the MT.

[Gatx105]

Thank you for the guide