Anyways I have had over a month of blogs and forum posts to sift through in the last week and let me tell you…ugh!

First off: Holy priest gear…where the eff is it? I suppose I should have went over the forum posts BEFORE I started to make my BIS list and the easiest way to obtain this gear. I thought to myself “why oh why can I not find the FULL list of gear? This cannot be everything, blizzard really doesn’t hate hpriests that much do they?”. Ha, so I went to the healer forums and started sifting…there were two main posts that had maxed out on replies QQing about the gear list. I could not begin to even read all of the “I am quitting wow, EFF you blizzard” vs “STFU the gear list is fine”. I found myself thinking about whether or not to QQ or just go with the flow. Blizzard has been known to in the past give you what you want after you whine enough but did I really want to take the energy to do that?

So I put my little BIS project on hold and just decided well I will try to get in on a couple of runs and see what drops. El oh El! It wouldn’t have mattered if I had made the list or not..everything that dropped was plate, leather, plate, more plate. And then there it was, a beautiful trinket from Majordomo Staghelm. I had no where near close the amount of dkp to compete with the other healers for it but it gave me the motivation to make my list. I am not going to make a list of BIS gear in this post, but there will be one shortly!

Secondly: This goes hand in hand with the gear, many many posts about holy priest mana regen. Shadow fiend not picking the right target to attack, hymn of hope only giving marginal returns..blah blah blah.

Lastly (for now): I know healers claim to “not watch meters”. Give me a break! Yes you do, there are just different things that we analyze than dps. So I was hearing all this “holy priests suck now” so I headed over to World of Logs.  I am all for having good healers in my raid but all resto druids? Really? Of course there were a couple of holy pallies mixed in there but few and far between. For normal modes (25 man) that I looked through the top 150 healers; here is the spec for priests that do well:

Beth’tilac: Holy (This may change once they “fix” Holy Word: Sanctuary)

Shannox: Disc (hello smite spec!)

Rhyolith: Holy (PoH/PoM/CoH spam on stomps and P2)

Baleroc: Disc (super powerful bubbles)

Alysrazor: Disc BUT holy can also be viable if you can pump out the numbers for when everyone is grouped up

Majordomo: Disc (preventative healing rather that throughput for scythes is win)

Ragnaros: Holy (if you spam renews it appears holy is great for this fight)

So number wise it appears that holy and disc are pretty close on viability of healing per fight. I think that the gear check comes into play for the mana regen for holy, yes there is less gear for holy priests but with more intellect on pieces and the usefulness of reforging you can still reach a comfortable level for regen. The argument of “well I am sacrificing reforging to haste/mastery” is just something we are going to have to deal with.

So death to the holy priest? I don’t think it’s quite that extreme. We may not be as powerful as we once were but that’s just what happens. My advice is to learn both disc and holy so that you as a player can do what is needed to help your raid succeed rather than pouting in the corner saying “but I am a holy priest and my Holy Word: Serenity doesn’t scale with the flame buff on Baleroc.”  Learn both specs and be a great PRIEST!

Up next: My late BiS gear list for both disc and holy and also as I become involved in more kills the “how to” heal each fight in each spec.

1. Body and Soul~ For all the bouncing in between Nefarian and Onyxia to heal raid or tanks in need as well as for getting to my platform in P2.

2. Chakra~ To be able to heal the tanks in P1 comfortably but then to switch to raw raid healing in a push of a button.

3. Holy Concentration ~ More power to the spirit regen! This is a long fight and this talent is a god sent!

4. Lightwell~ On the platform when things are getting overwhelming it’s a simple click for a nice heal!

5.  Serendipity ~ Binding Heal + PoH = more bang for your buck on heavy raid damage (IE: Crackle, Tail Lash, Cinders, Magma, Shadow flame Barrage)

6. Guardian Spirit ~ Tank is taking a ton of OH SH*T damage, GO GO 40% more healing to him!

7. Circle of Healing ~ When is this not useful?

8. Surge of Light ~ Healing the tanks and getting a free Flash Heal for Serendipity, oh hell yes!

9. Rapid Renewal ~ The ability to use Inner Will, Renew Glyph, and Rapid Renewal for some guilt free HOTs to boost up healing on platforms!

Now here is where it gets sketchy. Healing Nefarian as Disc. My first thoughts were YUCK! Let me tell you, my first attempts at it didn’t go so well, I had no power auras set up the first night so tracking CDs in a spec that I wasn’t completely comfortable with was less than awe inspiring. I think I went through an entire attempt without using Inner Focus because I forgot about it.  I was more comfortable the next night having had practiced a bit in some random heroics with pug tanks that had less health than I did.

1. Power Word: Barrier ~ Crackles? Oh those are supposed to hurt? Not with this bad boy placed at the right time and place.

2. Power Word: Shield ~ Well this is a no brainer, damage absorbed whenever it is needed on people.

3. Divine Aegis ~ PoH on platforms + Power Word: Shield and you have yourself some serious damage reduction!

4. Inner Focus ~ Free spell + 25% more crit to it? USE on CD every 45 secs (less if you are specced for it)

5. Penance ~ 3 instant stacks of Grace (healing increased by24%  on a target), renew and then proceed to smiting!

6. Archangel~ Well at first it was hard for me to weave this one in there but I made sure to Holy Fire on CD and pop my “wings” at crucial points of the fight (IE: pre Crackle, on CD while on platform, on CD in P3)

7. Power Infusion ~ Well depending on my mana situation I either used it on myself for some Bubble Spam, or watched to see when our power players had high stacks from dominion, not going to lie…I was usually selfish with it!

8. Atonement ~ Love Love Love, if things are going ok in the raid and I am not a dedicated tank healer, I will spam holy fire/smite for the added benefit of DPSing=Healing. I haven’t quite figured out my rotation with it yet but it looks a little like this: Bubble, Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Bubble, Smite….etc. Tracking the Rapture Procs along with using Borrowed Time seems to be a win win for me. Like I said though, I need to use it more often to be able to judge what is most beneficial for me.

9. Pain Suppression ~ Well pretty much a nice mitigation CD for my tanks when timed right!

So depending on what your group make up is and the amount of experience you have, having at least two disc priests is a must have. To have so much damage reduction happening when this a heavy damage fight is a no brainer. Holy is great for raw healing but lacks the essential “don’t die I will save you!” spells that Discipline provides.  If you are a holy priest I highly advise learning all of discs little quirks so that you can be of help with it for when the fight mechanics call for it!

Next off we have Binding Heal able to proc Surge of Light. Always good to add more spells to cause procs IMO. Other than those 3 things, priests in general had a few changes. Inner Will/Inner Fire now last until canceled.  Awesome, the previous version didn’t really bother me too much, no fights lasted more than 30 minutes so to me it was always easy to remember to refresh pre-pull.  Something less for people to track was the aim for this one I suppose.  100% push back protection while channeling Divine Hymn or Hymn of Hope is a good change, these are cool downs that should be highly utilized and having them go for full duration is a plus!  Healing priests now have the Absolution ability, therefore being the main dispellers for offensive dots/hots. In PVE shadow priests rejoice! Although I am sure it’s a sad time in PVP.

So overall holy priests really didn’t gain or lose anything to lose sleep over!

When I first started raiding I was using this spell on CD to help with anytime people were grouped up but soon realized that it was a mana drain and a POH provided more throughput rather than placing it. So I then started using it on the major AOE events only (such as feuds on H Chimaeron or on the pillar for H Nefarian) but it just was not meant to be, I couldn’t justify using it when I could waste my mana on other spells.

So the patch came out and I was excited to see just how well it would work now. It sure is pretty but the numbers are just not there. I would use Holy Nova over Sanctuary, at least then I wouldn’t need to yell at people to “stand in good stuff”.  It may be possible that it is part of the patch day problems just like placing the circle or placing Lightwell but I very much doubt that. Thank you for more spells that I will never use Blizzard <3

This boss ended up being a bigger pain than expected. To be honest I just don’t think people were too focused while we did the first few attempts.  There were arguments on vent over where to run when you had the Sonic Breath. There were arguments over who was doing the gongs, there were arguments over holy priests using Body and Soul. By the time we downed this boss I was completely drained and not too happy with our overall group coordination.

To start we ran into problems on our initial strategy of the whole raid grouping up on the gong. There was slow reaction times, bad visibility (because Blizzard thought it would be funny to put a bright lighted gong on top of him that didn’t despawn.), there were range problems with healing the tank. After a lot of grumbling and finger pointing we decided that hey, let’s try this the way we did it on normal.  That was one of the best calls made all night.  Our first attempt at trying it the way we normally spread out by the door we got him down to about 15%. After that it went downhill.

The main problem we had was the Sonic Breath.  Atramedes would choose someone and they were to kite the breath in a circle around him without getting caught. Most of the time that person was safe but anyone in his path that wasn’t paying attention died. Then spawned the blame game. Well you were too close and he went to fast and the person couldn’t move, or you used Body and Soul and you aren’t suppose to use a run speed boost for kiting. OMG after minutes of debate we finally got it through to everyone that if you have low to no sound you can use any type of run speed boost as long as you DO NOT run through him causing him to wig out. While I understand that melee has a harder time coordinating together due to his butt being in their face most times, blocking all view, there are still boss mods that have handy things called timers. I admit at first I may have died once or twice to being caught between the Sonar Pulse discs and the flame breath, I learned to watch the timers like a hawk making sure I was always in a safe place when Sonic Breath was about to go off. At first there were issues with the person having the fiend maxing out on sound but I believe that was worked out fairly early. Once we had most of the kinks worked out for this phase came the kiting of the Roaring Flame Breath.

Sigh. So the first person targeted would forget all reasoning and just run. Sometimes they would run the right paths but more often then not they would cut right across the room causing a flame wall that made positioning when he came down a pain in the butt. I always try to Body and Soul the kiter and we also decided to use life grips (correct term is Leap of Faith) on the kiters due to the fact that we have at least 4-5 priests in our raids at any given time. Until we got the hang of when and where to do this it caused a whole new set of problems. Life grips would end up causing the target to land in a pile of Sonar Bombs maxing out their sound, or the angle would suck and the flame would catch a couple people in its path. Or the priest that life gripped would get it done perfectly but they themselves would get caught in a bomb/fire.  After awhile we got the kinks worked out of this phase and were able to work on the fight as a whole rather than as phases.

So now onto my point of view for healing the actual fight. Each group had a side of the room where they were stationed to “group up”. A few raid members questioned why we were to stand like this. It is for the simple fact that we have 3-4 healing priests, so to get more bang for you buck, you are stationed near other members of your group to gain PoH. My lightwell is usually positioned between my group and the melee so either group has immediate access to it. Also it is near the middle of the room for the simple fact that if you are dipping low on health during the air phase it is a simple click.

Most of my time is spent in Chakra: Sanctuary, seeing as there isn’t a lot of need for single target heals from me. Depending on my mana situation I will put down Holy word: Sanctuary for right before the Searing Flame to have those additional ticks of mastery/heals. I make sure I have the Serendipity buff for my group when Searing Flame goes off, Fheal/Bheal a lower member and then PoH another group that is low. There is really no set time to use Guardian Spirit so it is more at my discretion if a tank is getting low. Divine Hymn is the same way, I either use it during a Searing Flame or near the end when people are getting low and healers are running on fumes. I prefer to use it when I have a decent amount of mana and/or we have Heroism for the simple fact that the lower members get 10% more healing done to them. I always have a renew rolling on the tank and for this fight ProM is always on CD. CoH is usually on CD always, mainly being used on melee.

Now I will admit this was one of those fights where I just wanted to scream over vent (I rarely ever speak on it) at people that just weren’t getting it. But it also showed that we as a guild were able to overcome the cattiness and get it done. Now that we have killed him more than a few times on  heroic, things have gotten easier and the arguments are almost forgotten.

Big Wigs is nice for the customization of what your role needs to be most aware of. For example, as a healer I need to know on Heroic Magmaw when the tanks will get Mangle so that I can have my Gaurdian Spirit ready. As a raider I need to know when the skeletons/lava parasites will spawn. Dps classes will want to have different timers emphasized. Such as when the Magmaw’s head is about to come down so that they have the right dps increase cool downs up or when they need to switch off on the different Omnotron bosses.

DBM is nice for the simple fact that as a healer you do not need another raid frame addon for the boss you are fighting. It has one built that is movable to anywhere on your screen. Also it’s handy to have the built in “say announcer” for when your player has a certain debuff where people need to get away from/group up on you.

Both of these boss mods have customizable bars/fonts/placement/range finder/colors and alerts. At the beginning of a tier release it’s always nice to have both up and running for accuracy, sometimes one is more updated than the other, you just have to find out the hard way.

On to raid frames! This is all about customization of what you as a healer want to see. I know quite a few people who stick with just the default blizzard frames. For me those are just not enough. There are many healer customizable frames out there. The most used are: Grid/Clique, Healbot, and Vuhdo. I personally use healbot so I will start there with the advantages to it.

Healbot has a completely customizable interface. You can change the color of the health bars, the color of the names, the size, the shape, and placement of where you want it. You can make it show when players are missing your buffs or show when they have a specific debuff that you want tracked. I have already mentioned this in my previous post but as an example I track when my raid members are standing in the black ooze puddles on Heroic Maloriak. You just need to find the correct name of the debuff and you can make the entire raid frame change color while someone is afflicted by it. In this case it is “Dark Sludge”. This is one of the main reasons I like healbot, you don’t need to know the icon for every single debuff out there.  As a priest I use on an average fight 12 different direct healing spells. That is not including my chakras or holy words. Healbot allows you to shift/click, ctrl/click, alt/click, and combo of all three for each of your mouse buttons. There are many other features that I haven’t even touched upon but this isn’t a how to, it is just an overview.

Grid alone is a customizable raid frame addon, showing names, health, mana, debuffs, icons, etc. You can change the color of the frame, where the debuff and aura icons are shown, filter through classes, and many other statuses. Combine this with the addon Clique and you have something similar to healbot. Clique allows you to bind all your spells to mouse keys or key binds to interact with your unit frames (they don’t have to be grid, it’s just a common combination).

Vuhdo is also a similar addon. You can view all player buffs/debuffs, status, health, aggro, and HoTs. You can bind any type of macro, usable item, spell to 40 different mouse click combinations.It also allows you to sort frames into different rolls.

Each addon has a user guide and “how to” on setup. It is recommended when you are not familiar with one to browse through these until you feel comfortable customizing on your own. Each one of the three I have listed each come with a function to decurse/dispel also. A recommended addon for dispels is Decursive. This is a compact addon that allows you to place small boxes to wherever you prefer so that it is just a simple click on a box to dispel/decurse raid and party members.

Power Auras is great addon to alert you when there are certain spells available to you, when you are low on mana, when you have a certain amount of stacks of a buff, pretty much anything you want to track is able to be done. I personally use it to track CDs, when my Darkglow and Power Torrent procs, when I gain heroism, and when I hit around 40% mana. It is just a helpful reminder type tool so that you don’t consistently need to sort through your buffs. It can also be used to track a certain debuff that you want to be watchful of.

If you aren’t a fan of the Blizzard default cast bars I recommend Quartz. It allows you to place where you would like your casting bar, your targets casting bar and your focus’ casting bar. You can change the color, the font, the effect, and the size.

To track your healing done, compare your spells to other healers, and to just an overall judge of perfomance you can use either Recount or Skada. Both mods allow you to track: damage done, damage taken, healing done, healing taken, dispels, interrupts, deaths (and details leading to that death). Both addons allow you to click through to track what you want. It is a nice way to evaluate how you are doing compared to others or to track healing amounts of a certain spell if you are trying out a different play style. I prefer recount because it appears to be more accurate and user friendly to use. On the other hand Skada is more forgiving when it comes to performance while in a raid. Recount seems to bog down a system while skada is much lighter.

All of these are recommendations, not must haves. Many people are successful in playing while just using default setting in World of Warcraft. This is just an overview of highly used addons that make gaming life a little easier.

One of the things that is a big controversy right now is the fact that a lot of priests say that a point in Spirit of Redemption is a waste because you shouldn’t be dead. Now I do agree with the “you shouldn’t be dead” part but at the same time when you are working on progression there are going to be deaths. There’s no way around that, it’s not an aggro problem or even a standing in fire problem, it’s a “HOLY CRAP this is a long fight and I am running on fumes for mana and there is huge incoming damage” problem.

From personal experience you can save the day with Spirit of Redemption. We were working on HMagmaw, there were 4 dps left alive, a tank and me. The head was about to come down but there was one of those darn flaming skeletons up running around causing destruction in his path. I just couldn’t find the regen to keep going so I found the fire, stepped into it and died BUT bang I was still healing with unlimited mana,  Asgeroth (one of our guild warlocks) was still up and going, the tank was almost dead from the skeleton, the head was down. I made my decision, the tank was as good as gone but there was less than 2% left on the boss, I popped Guardian Spirit on Asgeroth and spammed the ever living sh*t out of him. Spirit of Redemption ran out and I almost cried except for the fact that the next second ACHIEVEMENT SPAM, we killed him!  Now while I hate to say this because it will inflate his ever growing ego but the reason I went down this path was because I KNEW if we were going to pull this attempt off it was with Asgeroth alive.

Now I am not promoting character suicide by any means but it comes down to what you think you can do to save the raid, your not going to be the hero every fight by dying but it alleviates the pressure on the other healers if you do happen to die. Once we have all heroics on farm I will probably go ahead and skip that talent point but until then my OPINION is that you can’t raid without Spirit of Redemption I don’t care how good of a healer you are, wipes happen and people go OOM, this is just a “darn it guys, I am still trying even though I am dead”. The effort is there, as long as you don’t die and slam the keyboard away (which I have done, not gonna lie) you are still in the fight for another couple of seconds.

Who out there has stories of saving the day? Who out there wants to tell me how wrong I am? I am all ears, show me some facts to support your theory and let’s have a debate! In all reality there is no right or wrong, its all in the play style and what you/your guild wants from you.

As we set up positioning I am constantly spamming my PoH to make sure my group is always in range of me so that none of them dies from that lovely little debuff of low health (creative name there blizzard). With the increased effectiveness of CoH I am able to cover two groups with ease, allowing more heals to be focused towards the tanks. Until the last phase I spend my entire time in my AoE heal stance to get the bonus effectiveness of it, the lower CD on CoH, along with the benefit to renew which I always place on all 3 tanks during the fight.

So I use healbot (OMG what a baddie :P) and make a customized debuff called “low health”, this way when any raid member is in the “oh sh*t might die zone” their raid frame turns pitch black for me, and only once they are healed up to above 10k do they go back to normal on my screen, it helps me track it a little better rather than number watching. Generally I use binding heals on single targets to gain Serendipity for when 3 or more in a group get the debuff so I gain the hasted Prayer of Healing. Binding heal is one of the best spells in the game for this fight as a priest, for one it guarantees that I am always in the safe zone, for two it gains Serendipity as I already mentioned, and lastly it is a fast cast. Often there is the situation where 2 in one group have the debuff and 3 in my other group have it, this is where priest OPness comes into play. I ALWAYS have at least one stack of serendipity up at all times so i do a power PoH on one group and CoH the other, BAM everyone is safe. Mastery plays a huge part in this fight due to the fact that if someone I just healed gets the debuff again, they have my mastery and my glyph of PoH ticking on them right away, sometimes making my life easier not having to direct heal them again.

Prayer of Mending on this fight is a bit tricky, sometimes it is great and bouncing between all 3 tanks repeatedly and other times it’s being useless and sitting on a random player. So during the “spread out” phase it isn’t my number one priority to keep on cd. If you don’t know the fight it looks deceiving for the healing department but truth be told there is a lot of down time for regen, which is great :). I have adopted the role of guardian spirit on the main tank  for Feuds 1 and 3. In theory this sounds great but blizzard can’t be relied on to make the encounters timers span apart perfectly so sometimes it is a little touch and go but for the most part it works out great.

For the Feud I place my Sanctuary circle, start running and apply GS/renew as I make my way to the group up point. I discovered the addon Recount hated this fight so I always have it disabled or else I am in a lag fest for when we group up. Once there I use CoH, one binding heal followed by PoH, rinse and repeat on all the groups. I am so proud of my guild members because I have an alert set up to tell me who clicked my lightwell and during that phase it is constantly going off! Directly after the first shut down I use my trinket to return ~6k mana to bump me back up a little bit. I also use shadow fiend fairly early to ensure I can use it twice, usually the 2nd time is during Mortality.
Our raid leader has it set up for when all the players with healing cds (tranquility, divine hymn, etc) should use them, I am not going to lie, when it is my turn and the group appears to be doing fine on heals I save Divine Hymn for the time right before we hit mortality. This is all dependent on if we fell behind on healing during the shutdowns. I don’t recommend doing this for fear your raid leader will have your head, mine likes me I think so when he reads this I won’t be in too much trouble :P.

Alright so we just transitioned into mortality. Here is our disc priest’s time to shine. Due to the high mana cost of the shields he throws out we have a rotation of Hymn of Hope set up so he can continuously spam. For this specific encounter I always glyph smite so that I can think I am helping a little bit. To be honest I have no idea how much my dps contributes during this phase due to the fact its around 2k but it makes me feel better and useful so I just don’t care. I usually pick a spot near the wall so that I can life grip one of Chimaeron’s targets away from him to buy us some time and then proceed to dot/smite/chastise until he is dead or I am dead. Depending how the disc priests mana looks I may or may not bubble myself to let him focus on others.
If you are a priest struggling to do this fight or just hate it, hopefully after reading this you may think of it differently on how well designed it is for a holy priest!

So if Blizzard had decided that ONLY inscriptionists could create Dust of Disappearance they would make a fortune from me on our server.  Each night before a raid I buy a stack of 20 to make sure I do not run out due to the fact that I reglyph numerous times throughout the night.  In a week I use about 80 dusts. Pain in the rear!

I will say though it is nice to have that column of glyphs to pick and choose from rather than buying stacks of a bunch only to find out during an encounter you don’t have the one you want with you. As a holy priest I swap between almost all glyphs that are available for my spec depending on the encounter.  The only glyphs that I do NOT switch out are:

• Glyph of Lightwell ( I have finally trained all my fellow raid members that they better click that darn lightwell or I start calling people out, and that is just plain embarrassing.)

• Glyph of  Circle of Healing (there is never a fight that this is NOT useful so it stays put.)

• Glyph of Fortitude (deaths happen during an encounter, who wants to pay the full amount of mana to rebuff the way regen is right now?)

• Glyph of Shadowfiend (honestly I don’t mess with the minor glyphs too much so if this little guy dies I will at least usually always have this in.)

Okay I will just go down the list of when and where the rest of the glyphs are useful to me.

PRIMES

• Glyph of Flash Heal (bleh, I don’t think I have touched this one at all yet.)

• Glyph of Guardian Spirit ( Well it is better than nothing I suppose. When I tank heal during Halfus, Maloriak, and Chimaeron I always have this one glyphed.)

• Glyph of Prayer of Healing (I rarely take this one out just because of the extra hot tick, its helpful on the Feuds for Chimaeron, the spew from Magmaw, Shadow’s Orders from Cho’gall, black out from Valiona/Theralion, Electric Instability from Ascendant Council, Magmatron’s jets, Searing Flame from Atramedes, Red phase/Black phase/Green phase damage on Maloriak, Electrocute/Shadowflame Barrage from Nefarion. This list goes on and on but those are the main example on when this glyph comes in handy.)

• Glyph of Renew (The way Chakra: Heal state is set up, if you are focusing on tank healing you will always have renew on your tank, adding 10% effectiveness to it is a no brainer. It is ecspecially nice for when you are tank healing the add tank on Heroic Maloriak, the tank usually takes damage from puddles along with melee damage so always having a renew that you never have to refresh is pretty nice.)

MAJORS

• Glyph of Desperation (AWESOME for Halfus’ roar, other than that I haven’t ran into a fight where I am stunned and cannot cast)

• Glyph of Dispel Magic (It isn’t needed but I use this for when we are on Cho’gall to dispel the corruptions.)EDIT: Pouring over the top healing priest logs for Sinestra, top healing spell is “dispel magic” so make sure you are glyphed if you are an assigned dispeller!

• Glyph of Divine Accuracy (Perfect for when you literally can not heal, Mortality phase on Chimaeron.)

• Glyph of Fade (meh, I don’t use it)

• Glyph of Fear Ward (So far we haven’t come across an encounter where anyone needs a fear ward.)

• Glyph of Holy Nova (I have played a little with this one for the air phase on Atramedes but honestly haven’t found much use for it because of the mana cost of the spell.)

• Glyph of Inner Fire (meh, in raiding I don’t find myself being beat on too often so really no use for me.)

• Glyph of Mass Dispel (I love this glyph just for the simple fact that it is no longer a disc talent point, Cho’gall is about the only fight I sometimes will use this one, for the fears/dragon breaths/corruptions.)

• Glyph of Prayer of Mending (while I am not crazy about this glyph I usually always have it in due to the fact that I mindlessly use PoM and having an extra heal out of it is nice for any situation.)

• Glyph of Psychic Scream (I use this for Cho’gall’s MCed targets, that way they aren’t running crazy around the room.)

• Glyph of Scourge Imprisonment (while I don’t use this on our 25 man raids, if we have a 10 man for some crazy reason, this glyph is nice for CCing the skeletons for Nefarion’s encounter.)

• Glyph of Smite (great concept but I don’t have the spec or the hit for this to be of any use to me.) EDIT: Glyph of Divine Accuracy was changed to affect Holy Fire as well, nice to keep in mind for extra dps on not so heavy healing fights.

MINORS

• Glyph of Levitate (Always nice at anytime not to carry a reagent but especially if your raid levitates pre-Nefarion like we do.)

• As for the rest of the minor glyphs it all comes down to personal preference.

Today I will talk about heroic Halfus, he was the first boss we downed on heroic.

~Heroic Halfus: This fight is almost a perfect example of swapping between the healing states that we holy priests have. Starting out everyone spreads out and the tanks start to release the drakes. Our healer make up is usually 2-3 smite priests, 1-2 holy priests, a resto shaman, resto druid, and 1-2 holy pallies. The pallies each have a tank that they focus/beacon. The disc smite priests focus on tank heals for the first 50%, the shaman and druid each are assigned to tanks and so am I. To sum it all up our main focus as healers is tanks! There are 2 healers assigned per tank and the rest are back-up on tanks when we have tank switches for Halfus (the MS effect).
To start out we spread out in a circle around tanks/dragons.

The damage is pretty spiky dependent on who is getting hit by fireballs. We have no raid heals assigned so it is up to the dps to make sure they aren’t standing in fire. Although I am a tank healer for this fight my tank is never the first to tank Halfus so I usually start out in my AoE heal “stance”. At the beginning everything is pretty chaotic due to positioning/aggro so I place my lightwell near tanks and throw a healing circle on the ground. This in itself is some what hurtful to melee due to the graphic of the spell. Word is blizzard will be changing the opacity and ground effect of it so that is going to help greatly. Weighing the pros and cons of doing this took me awhile but as melee has gotten used to what the spell looks like and what the fight mechanics are I went ahead and placed it, making sure it was under all tanks along with the majority of the melee. Along with renews and PoHs on the tank group this helps tremendously with trying to balance out the initial incoming damage. I have timers set up with the add on power auras to alert me immediately when I can switch healing stances. Sometimes it works out perfect for when it is my tank’s turn with Halfus, sometimes it’s not. This is where adapting comes into play. If I am not able to switch immediately it’s not that big of a deal, it just means a little bit more effort on my part.

Halfus tank damage is extremely spiky due to the ms effect along with all other sources of incoming damage (fireballs, random fire breath, whelps, etc.) so I can’t afford to lose focus on my tank. Anything in your healing arsenal helps. Shields, renews should be constant, PoM on cd, and taking advantage of your serendipity stacks is a must! While your tank is on Halfus you honestly don’t have the luxury to watch you mana and use your efficient heals, make sure you know when this is about to happen and you have already hymned, used your fiend, use trinkets (mana trinket) or potted. Any second wasted on trying to regen while your tank is getting beat on by Halfus could potentially cause a wipe or at the very least a tank death. It is all about timing on this fight. Prior to the fight make sure you have a mana pot, appropriate food buff and flask along with all beneficial raid buffs to help with regen!

As a healer it’s just as important to know the kill order as any dps. If you think of the fights in stages then it becomes easier to keep track of your mana and regen. If you are one of those healers that just spams until the fight is done, not knowing what is going on your almost definitely going to run out of mana. When do we pop hero? A great part of regen is knowing when exactly during the fight heroism/bloodlust is used. It is important to have your fiend out early enough to get the heroism buff for bigger and better mana return. If you only listen for when the raid leader calls for it you are 8 times out of 10 going to pop fiend a second too late and therefore miss out on a crucial part of taking advantage of class mechanics. So if I know after the slate dragon dies we immediately pop hero I will watch him like a hawk until a split second before his death and then send my fiend in, usually the shaman/mage knows as soon as he switches targets it’s time for hero, your fiend will already be out and gain the buff and therefore you will benefit more and be able to make it down the home stretch!

On this fight lightwell is crucial for the roar Halfus does, if RNG is not on my side and I get a fireball when I can’t move, lightwell is able to be clicked during the stun, 9/10 times it saves my life, I have explained the mechanic of lightwell in this phase to everyone in the raid, many people take advantage of it but the few that do not are usually the ones dead from roar/fireball. This doesn’t include tanks, while its still insanely beneficial for them to use lightwell, most of the time during this stage they are completely submerged in the middle surrounded by people/graphics/drakes that they cannot even come close to finding the lightwell. This is where the perfect glyph comes in handy. Guardian spirit/Pain Suppression being cast on tanks while stunned is AMAZING during this encounter.

During the end of the fight healing actually starts to get boring, insane right? Well with the added bonus damage taken by Halfus the smite priests get to go to town! This combined with their barrier is a crucial part of being successful. Priests are such an added asset to the raid, having a combination of disc/holy guarantees a win!

When we attempt any type of hard mode I have a strange heavy feeling that gets lifted little by little as the fight goes on. To be more descriptive, At the beginning of Halfus I feel a heavy burden but as each drake dies I feel it lift until all drakes that need to die are dead and we can focus on Halfus. For me this is the home stretch. Others may feel the same or differently, I have never really talked about it with anyone. It helps me focus on what my job is and it applies to EVERY single fight we have progressed through. Subscribe to LoD’s blog to find out how I deal with healing each fight on heroic mode! My strategies, my feelings, and overall state of mind when it comes to wipes and kills! There are some bosses I will discuss that I just wanted to beat my head (along with some of my fellow raid members) against the wall, find out which ones and why!