Since starting to play WoW, guids on the internet have been a major part of the learning process; now it’s my turn to part with some advice.
The following guide and advice is the first of many for holy priests just getting into the raiding spot, you wont find specific boss guilds (maybe a few examples), what you will find is plain common sense that will see you plain sailing and becoming a comfortable healer.
- Know your roll
It may seem like an obvious thing to say but it’s the absolute most important thing you should do in a raid. If you are in a guilded run, the raid leader will be competent enough to tell you what your roll is, if it’s a pug it’s usually left up to the healers to decide. You should usually find yourself grouped with all the other healers in the raid so use party chat and discuss with them who will do what. It certainly goes along way to having a set target rather than throwing heals all over, your mana will be thankful for it.
- Know the other healers roll’s
If a healer dies – it can and will happen to the best of players – there is a high chance that other people will die too. Many people seem to over-look this while raiding, more often with PuGs than guilds. With the tanks in the raid, they automatically know that if one dies the other should be ready to get aggro. The same should apply to every healer, so that if one dies then you know what they were doing and if that needs covering.
- Avoid Temptation
Have you ever seen an ambulance with lights and sirens going, you know why they are going that fast? No, it’s not because they’re in a race to beat the other ambulances to the scene, it’s because they have been assigned to that scene and have to be there as fast as possible. More often than not while raid healing you will find yourself with nothing to do, at this point it can be very tempting to send a few heals the tanks way. This has two damaging effects, first, the raid or someone in it might need a fast heal and if your focus is on the tank you could miss this. The second is the tank healer will not be able to maximise their efficiency with extra heals coming in unexpectedly. If the tank dies to the main tank healer, it’s better to get the problem sorted early rather than later on.
- Prayer of Mending
I often see this statement on this spell
“Many peoples mistake is not having this spell up often enough”
This couldn’t be further from the truth; it’s what I call a ‘Logic Based Spell’. The Spell has various uses, which are all defined by the situation and your assignment. The spell has its lease use (though by no means no use at all) while tank healing. The reason is, once you set it on the tank, it will go off somewhere else, which only under very certain circumstances it will return. In addition, if your keeping the tank topped up and raid damage occurs it will stay with the raid. It’s tank use come as a buffer; i.e. just before the tank runs in to take damage, or combined with another spell straight after for a big health top up, not much else. However, for a single heal, the mana cost to amount healed is poor so use sparingly.
As a raid use, its power is still limited, however, when the situation arises, it can shine quite well. The two factors that should determine its use are, how often does raid damage occur and how many people will be affected. If, for example, raid damage is burst and 10 seconds apart, you will manage a maximum of two heals, still not very effective for the mana used. The only time you will be able to get good use from this spell is constant raid damage. The best example of this is Saffron, who has a constant damage debuff on the whole raid, meaning it will get maximum jumps when ever cast. By understanding the damage mechanics of a boss, you should be able to calculate its effective use to determine when to use it, that’s why I call it a logic based spell.
That’s it for now, however, I will post more soon.
Any questions please don’t hesitate to ask.
Craig
