Monday, December 20, 2010

It's been a busy week here, and I went holy

First there was...


Then there was... and yes it took me long enough.

Then my guild leader had a request. That I go holy. Since I kinda need to relearn how to heal anyway, I figured why not try it. So far, well, I've managed to heal one boss. While I picked up some power auras from Tales of a Priest (which is a great resource, btw), I'm not sure what they mean yet. Plus, I keep forgetting I have this nifty group heals. Guess I spent too long playing whack-a-mole with flash heal and pw:s. But I'll get it, eventually.

But while figuring this out, there was also...



And yup, in that last one I'm healing as holy. It was the second try at the boss, who has a fairly brutal aoe (it might not be so brutal if I knew wtf was going on, but since I didn't...), and I got shiny shoes. You can see the power auras, and I know one is circle of healing's available, and maybe the other one's something to do with Chakra? While I understand the chakra thing in principle, in practice I'm a bit too busy trying to figure out which spells I need to be using to keep people alive without going oom. Quite frankly, right now the entire chakra thing is another layer of complexity, one I really don't need.

 As a disc healer in Wraith, I used pw:s, flash heal, penance, and prayer of mending almost exclusively. In Cat, disc throws in Archangel and smiting when possible, plus using heal and possibly renew. The challenge there is figuring out when you can dps, when you need archangel, and trying to make the two mesh somewhat.  Or at least that was my (very) limited experience healing while leveling.

As holy in Cat, so far I have Renew (which I like), Heal, Greater Heal, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, that other group heal spell that I can't remember the name of, and the occasional free Flash Heal. And I have three chakra states, each which makes that Holy Word thing do something different. Of course, that assumes I remember I have chakra states and that holy word thing and am not just fairly frantically figuring out how to keep the tank up as far as possible while keeping the dps above 50% and not running oom every pull. Okay, so I'd be worrying about the last bit as disc as well, but holy just seems to have this added layer of complexity that it really doesn't need.

I can't help wondering if that's one of the reasons holy was buffed so much. The OPness of it right now induces people to try it that otherwise would look at the complexity and go "nope, not for me".  I suspect part of my own problem comes from being a mostly single-target healer for so long. That, combined with new tools, old tools I actually need to use now, and a resource I need to pay attention to,  makes holy quite a challenge for me.  Good thing I can always queue as shadow and go quest for a while for a break, right? Or hit an alt.

2 comments:

  1. If it's any consolation, holy is pretty dang hectic even for people who have been playing it for a while <.< It's just how healing is for everyone I think. I on the other hand find disc alot more troublesome in heroics, but just shows how much practice plays a part :)

    I don't know if it's shameful to link to yourself *ahem* ^^ But I wrote a post on holy healing heroics just yesterday and it seems like a sign that you talk about your issues with it today! Hopefully it can be of some help;
    http://jinxedthought.blogspot.com/2010/12/holy-priest-healing-heroics.html

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  2. Omg those stupid chakras. At least there are only 2 of them now. For heroics, I *generally* do the following:

    (1) get into single-target heal chakra
    (2) hit the tank with a renew
    (3) hit the tank with pom
    (4) heal the tank with "heal" (which refreshes renew). Hit Gheal if things are looking ugly. Don't forget Holy word doodad.
    (5) hit any dps who take damage (enough damage to take them at least below 75%) with a renew.
    (6) Let the dps who are taking aggro get down to 30% or lower. Laugh. Seriously, they need to learn to quit that.
    (7) If multiple DPS take enough damage, do a single circle of healing. Yes, it's totally ok to do a circle of healing in single-target chakra.

    So when do I even use aoe-chakra in instances? In fights where the strat is something like "we stack on his toes and heal through XYZ." Ew. Now, healing through XYZ isn't like it was before. Technically nobody is going to die from the first XYZ, so you just have to get their health higher before the SECOND XYZ. So I go into AOE chakra, and during XYZ I primarily bounce around a prayer of mending, hit circle of healing, and then renew-up anyone who still looks bad afterward.

    This all sounds (and feels) so minimalist. Like you're just standing there as an overseeing manager. But it does work for mana conservation.

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