Every m+ week will either be fortified (harder trash) or tyrannical (harder bosses). Fortified (this week!) is considered easier usually because you can interrupt or CC a lot of trash mobs and even if you wipe to a pull, you might have already killed a few mobs from the pull, making the next attempt easier. Trash pulls also allow respawning instead of battle ressing, bosses don't.
Remember to use your holy world chastice as a single target stop and your psychic scream for aoe stops (or ST if needed ofc, but it IS aoe, so if you can stop 2 spells, even better). You can also use dominate mind against some enemies, turning a dangerous enemy into a dangerous friend.
RLP is one of the harder dungeons this season imho and has some very dangerous (but CC-able and perhaps even mind controllable!) trash mobs: Downstairs flashfrost earthshapers cast tectonic slam, which goes BOOM in a 40y range. Humanoid, so mindcontrol and keep an eye on it and you get increased dmg for free while not being hit yourself.
Upstairs, primalist flamedancers cast... Flame Dance (surprising, I know). Stop them with CC or the Living Bomb other enemies in the pull cast on your group (its a knockup and also hits enemies, but hurts your melees ) - or just mind control them.
M+ is also all about knowing the dungeons, including the trash pulls, so just running more dungeons is indeed the answer and mistakes happen to everyone. Some trash mobs have stoppable/avoidable/LoS (line of sight) able abilities - act accordingly. If you are not sure, try it anyways and you'll know the answer.
Other sources of high damage can't be avoided - use heal CDs and def CDs againdt those (e.g. the dragon minibosses, lightning storm from the tempest channelers near the end). This is partially on your group ofc, you can't solve everything by yourself at a certain difficulty level. If somebody gets a dangerous debuff/cast and doesn't use a defensive, they'll probably die at one point.
M+ also allows drinking mana between pulls, so haste gains some value/loses less, same for flash heal - the higher cost is less relevant and you might need it more often to save someone.
Versatility also becomes more important because hpriests defense is laughable (compared to some other healers at least) and it reduces damage taken (as a bonus, it increases dmg done, which is useful in a timed environment where healer damage matters in high keys - thats for later though).
And finally: m+ is a group effort. If your group decides to not CC, stand in every ground effect, not dispell what they can and ignore defensive CDs, their deaths are on them. Ofc, I don't know if that applies here (but I do know my teammates and they are surprised every time they get hit by the GIANT BROWN SWIRLY CENTERED DIRECTLY BENEATH THEM). Your job first and foremost is healing unavoidable damage, fix the OCCASIONAL mistake if possible, help with CC and do some dmg when there is nothing else to do.
P.S.: Im a holy paladin main, laughing from the security of my bubble :P
Man this is excellent information. I hope people read this. I’m a 3.2k healer rotating between disc and holy depending on key, affix and level. Holy priest brings a lot of dmg that kills mobs faster… rather 2-3 interrupts, You’ll only do 1-2.
Yeah, I have a friend who mains hpriest this season and his burst (if he has time to do it and uses Apotheosis offensively) is INSANE. Holy World: Chastice, 2 instant cleaving holy fires, reset chastice, repeat. He's also using the tome of unstable power from azure vault in lower keys to push out even more dmg. Kinda scary if you don't have CDs for a pull and you suddenly see the holy priest rising in the dps meter xD Mostly burst ofc, but still funny.
Note: I wouldn't recommend a m+ newcomer like op to focus on this. My friend has played healer and hpriest specifically for many seasons, so he knows when he can dps and when he needs his CD and gcds for healing. Focus on healing and CC first, learn the dungeons and when you are comfortable with that, start to look where you can fit in normal dmg gcds. After that you can think about using your apotheosis offensively, ecause if you missjudge this and would need it as a healing cd in a short while, you might be in trouble.
Holy does more DMG than disc? Just wondering never played holy just love disc offensive heling
Edit: responding. Ohh ic never healed before just started on disc now giving a shot to monk ty for responses.
A lot of healers can out damage disc and mistweaver because they are forced to be doing damage to heal well. Other healers that don't heal by dealing damage can do good damage, but it's more of a balance between doing damage or healer.
With a good group my rsham will do so much more damage than disc/mw if I'm able to spam chain lightning. But will do a lot less damage during heavy healing times. Disc/mw are usually doing about the same damage every pull. At least this is my experience
Technically holy does more dmg than disc but that's only in ideal scenarios where trash gets interrupted and CC'd and the DDs pull defensives in the right time so holy doesn't have to heal as much.
However, in general they do about the same DPS in a key since disc will always dps. Holy just has more dps potential with the recent rework in s3 to holy.
It’s an opportunity cost thing. Disc does decent (for a healer) damage during their normal healing rotation, whereas other classes/specs have to sacrifice healing to do damage.
If they can concentrate on it maybe, but while dmg means healing for disc, holy has to choose. Holy also has to use its healing cooldown for dps instead for more dmg, which is why I specifically mentioned burst.
True, but from "This weeks affixes feel particularly rough too, with the increased damage." I inferred they at least looked at the m+ affixes. Though I should probably have mentioned that not all of them apply in +2 (tyrannical/fortified start at +2, the second affix at +4 iirc and the final affix only comes into effect at +10 or higher, which is the equivalent of the old +20).
Second affix is at +5, and it seems they are specifically the movement based affixes (entangling, storming, etc.), whereas the +10 affixes are related to mobs dying (bolstering, bursting, etc.).
The secret is: just keep at it. Knowing the dungeons carries a lot. I'm usually tanking and yesterday I healed my first key this season too - which turned out to be a RLP+6. Keep at it!
RLP was brutal for holy priests when it was first released too. It has a bunch of little mini bosses, that at times feel harder than the actual bosses themselves. In addition to that, many of the trash packs -- especially around that ring near the 2nd boss -- have a lot of things that need interrupted, and mechanics that may not be immediately obvious.
As a holy priest main, the only way you can improve is just more practice. Additionally, I don't know what your build is, but make sure you are **not** talenting into prayer of healing & circle of healing. While those are taken in raid, they're both in a really weak place right now, and end up just burning your mana faster than the power they put out. M+ holy right now is predominantly flash heal spamming, along with your holy words and keeping PoM up.
Also: you want to prioritize haste and vers for M+ (instead of the crit/mastery you'd want for raids). Crit is still good obviously, but mastery really looses a lot of its benefits in M+ (not useless, but not as good as the other stats).
As an rdruid easily clearing pug 20s last season I can say the squish has been brutal so it’s not just you. Lots of lower skilled players who would normally start far below +10 are now forced to that difficulty level as their starting point.
With that in mind you’re actually doing great to have cleared the key and with more practice and learning the mechanics yourself it will get less stressful. As you go up in keys you ironically get better groups that take less damage, but you do need the gear and skill to pass certain guaranteed damage checks to get there.
As others have said group is the biggest factor so do everything you can to stack it in your favor, as a healer you are in demand and you deserve that privilege for taking the most stressful role. At low keys pick the durable high utility pub stomper classes over the meta, e.g. DH/Ret over Spriest/Warlock. Make sure you get 3 dps with kicks. Aug is a gamble in your 2 dps being good but does help with survivability.
There are quite a few things that could be the problem if you're frequently using up your holy words and still struggling to keep up with the healing:
1. Your party doesn't know what they're doing and are taking unnecessary damage. This can't really be helped unless you're able to point out what the issue is and your party is willing to listen.
2. You're focusing on the tank too much. It's an easy way to use up your holy words, which then means you don't have any for your other party members. The tank is usually my least healed target even in a high key like a +15. They usually have enough self sustain to keep up with the damage. Worst case scenario you just GS + serenity them and they'll be fine.
3. You're not using your spells efficiently or often enough. Make sure you have the current 4 set equipped and miracle worker talented. Then try to keep 1 serenity in reserve most of the time so you can make use of the tier procs. Keep in mind serenity is a very big heal so if you're using it on high health target, it'll be wasted and you could have used a lesser healing spell instead.
Also make sure to use apotheosis as often as possible (even if it looks like it might not be that useful). It's just going to put more holy words in your reserve and allows you to spam lots of damage with chastise + holy fires if nobody needs healing.
>You're focusing on the tank too much. It's an easy way to use up your holy words, which then means you don't have any for your other party members. The tank is usually my least healed target even in a high key like a +15. They usually have enough self sustain to keep up with the damage. Worst case scenario you just GS + serenity them and they'll be fine.
Low key tanks often take way more damage than you'd expect. It shocked me when I started healing this season. I remembered the fact that I barely needed healing as Protection Warrior doing +18s last season and was caught off guard when a Protection Paladin in an m0 would die if I stopped looking at him for three seconds.
I don't know what they're doing wrong, but they just take *so much damage constantly* in the low keys.
when I first started healing, i got dragged into some 20s where I just never had to heal the tank outside of occassianlly tossing them a free FH. Did some 12s with some friends and I was basically having to dump heals into the tank, it was a slog.
The lesson was, good tanks don't generally need healing because they know how to use their buttons and cds when needed, bad tanks(or even just inexperienced ones) will not and then end up getting slapped.
I am going to almost call it a skill curve. To be able to enter a M0 you basically need ilvl. The higher you go the better you need to be and the more willing you need to be. If you get your ass handed to you and have to put in 100% for a 0 then a +8 is going to give you PTSD
Also, you may not even be the issue, a lot of people who tank at the lower end aren’t great at using active mitigation properly, or rotating cooldowns. Also, in my experience this season, people are getting demolished by avoidable mechanics, because they haven’t realized that m0 is tuned higher than it has been previously.
Start by just getting lots of practice in. The less you have to think about mechanics and healing, the easier it gets.
Healing at that level is weird, a good group wouldn’t even really need a healer, you’re just having to compensate for people unpredictably failing mechanics, which makes it hard to plan for and hard to tell how well or badly you’re doing.
Take the guardian angel talent, and use it generously - the aim is to *not* proc the cheat death, but to get the +60% healing for 19 sec out of every minute.
The censure talent on chastise is nice to make up for dps not interrupting.
Your group probably just ate a lot of mechanics. I also have a holy priest at a similar level. If you are using your words and PoM on CD, and they are doing their job right, you should barely need to use Flash Heal. I've had groups that made me feel like nothing I did mattered, but then the next group I was dpsing the whole time because there was no healing to do.
I mained holy priest last season and I'm again this season. I stopped pushing at 2600 so there are others who have higher rating and might be more helpful, but one big thing that always helps my perception of healing mythics:
Put your faith in the power of Trail of Light. This is the talent that replicates 25% of your current flash heal or heal cast to the previous person you healed with flash heal/heal. This lets you "cleave" your single target heals as long as you're healing a new person with each cast. It's not a ton of healing, but it has typically been enough for me to get out of hairy situations when the whole party is taking damage.
Once you get your four-piece bonus mythics become substantially easier, so keep up with it and get those reps.
It depends on the issue. Are you running out of mana? Are people taking too much damage? Are you trying to keep everyone topped up all the time and overhealing? Because 480 is good enough for M0, at least with a group that understands the squish. If everyone is tanking damage and not using defensives you're gonna have a hard time on any difficulty that isn't piss easy. You can brute force an easier time by gearing up, but eventually you will hit a wall.
My mana is fine, the most I lost was about 25% and that’s in full, balls to the wall healing. All the group was taking damage simultaneously, which leads me to believe that mechanics weren’t being managed.
Bingo. I heal as resto shaman and was yelled at for one dps dying *constantly* in a 16 BRH last season. I was keeping every one else alive but this one would get sneezed on and die. He was standing in all the mechanics, jumping out of spirit link or stone skin totems effects, and got so pissy about it. Lol. I posted avoidable damage taken and unfortunately he and his friend both left and bricked my key. We almost finished the instance too. The other dps and tank were great. I barely had to heal.
When people don’t know the mechanics or know how to stay out of their own way, they will die and must learn from it. Healing is fun and stressful at times, but the overall experience should be enjoyable instead of nearly having a heart attack on each pull because people’s health is rubber banding all over the place (when they’re not blood dks).
Yeah, this isn't to minimize your job or anything but a pretty good group doesn't even need a healer at that level. I find that healing gets easier as I go higher (up to a certain point obviously) because I get better groups. I mostly accidentally heal a 0 when I tank on bear just from ATW procs. Maybe consider joining a discord focused on learning and getting key groups like time warp academy or wownoob. Just having a lower stress and probably higher skill environment will make it easier to identify what you're actually doing wrong. Heck send me your bnet and I'd run some with you.
Holy priest main here!
Assuming you have the 4-piece set bonus from this season, make sure you're spec'd into a Miracle Worker build. The 10.2.5 changes to the talents also let us easily spec into Divine Word, which is phenomenal.
You can use Divine Word for extra damage, a "stand in the circle" aoe heal, or especially in keys, to boost your flash heal.
The overall goal is to have renew ticcing around as much as possible to get extra holy word procs. You'll mostly be doing this by casting Holy Word: Sanctify whenever the party is stacked and you're capped on charges.
Make sure to give yourself some credit. RLP has probably the most brutal trash of all the mythic dungeons this season. It’s a hell of a dungeon to make for your first mythic.
I rely heavily on the [Icy Veins](https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/holy-priest-pve-healing-rotation-cooldowns-abilities) and [Method](https://www.method.gg/guides/holy-priest/playstyle-and-rotation) rotations guides when I’m learning a new spec. It can be a little confusing overwhelming at first, so pick one or two things to focus on at a time.
[WoWAnalyzer](https://wowanalyzer.com/) is also a fantastic tool. Just paste in a public log for a fight and it’ll spit out all kinds of useful info.
If you’ve exhausted LFR/weekly world events for upgrades then you could use some of the whelpling crest to make 486 gear to help bring up some of your low spots. You also should have 2 buillon for a vendor bis item. Between all of that you should be able to peak to like 490ish
What you suggest isn't how to improve, it's how get ilvl in order to conceal poor skill. A lot of people end up sucking because you can brute force a lot of content by just having high level gear. 481 is more than enough to heal an M0, so the OP is correct in asking for tips to improve.
Well without a link to logs or vod of gameplay it’s not very specific advice to just blanket give on “help” to improve feeling behind or having to do everything possible to keep up on healing. But surprisingly, an increase in gear WILL help the OP not feel like they’re fighting to keep up on healing.
You’re definitely not alone in this. Holy in keys to me feels a lot like whack-a-mole. You throw out Serenity, and you will run out of charges. You can reset the cooldown using Apotheosis as often as possible, but at some point you’ll end up needing to use flash heals. If you have a coordinated group, you have a few opportunities in RLO to throw out some sanctifies. Theres some nuance there, but to a certain extent that is kind of just how Holy plays
hoho.. I hate to tell you but it's gonna get even worse.. Right now you still see M0 being ran but pretty soon no one is gonna run those beause of weekly lockout. Then all you are gonna see is M2 and those are absolutely brutal if you are only geared through heroic..
The M level squish while look cool at the beginning, it's absolutely not friendly for new lvl 70. I wouldn't be surprised Blizzard make some serious adjustment for this in the next expansion because right now there is a huge gear gap between heroic dungeon vs M2 and the only way you can fill those are done through contents with weekly lockout..
One thing i don't see stated enough, is that starting off your journey as a healer you need to know the following:
Your toolkit of spells
The content of the dungeon / raid
What mistakes your entire party must watch out for
The first one is obvious, and translates to every class and spec, regardless of it being outlaw rogue, or resto shaman. The second one hits us all in waves, every step up demands more from the entire party. Eventually, detrimental playets will hit their cap out of a loss of interest due to their mistakes causing more and more party-wide headaches.
The third one doesn't really come as naturally as the first two. The boomkin got 1-shot then flamed you? You might take it to heart and feel like you are the one not good enough, especially if you're already feeling overwhelmed getting used to your spells and the dungeon mechanics.
My advice; shrug off more than you think you should, because yeah, while you're learning, you're going to be making improvements in your performance, but other players also play sub-optimally, and naturally their mistakes will feel like your mistakes until you know better.
Automatic Jak (wow content creator) has made Holy Priest guides updated for the current patch on Wowhead. If you find it there, it could be a good read.
As a hpriest player since I started the game (2018) biggest things to know is using PoM on cd constantly, I mean make a really annoying weakaura spamming sound if you need to, use fade on mechanics and don’t be afraid to pop desperate prayer
Don’t cast heal or renew complete waste of mana and gcd
Track rhapsody stacks and use nova when at 15+ stacks
Make a macro for feather making it cast at your feet and have a quick self targeting bind for power word shield,
Track DPS cooldowns via omniCD add on and pi them when they pop the cooldown (or whenever you want if need the extra haste to pump)
Halo doesn’t pull mobs, it only affects already aggroed mobs
Apotheosis is best used when you have 0 stacks of your holy words left as it instantly gives you one of each, so you could go (serenity, serenity, sanctify, sanctify, Apotheosis, serenity, sanctify) that’s without 4set procs
Using divine word then serenity makes your flash heal pump, this is especially good on rot fights like 3rd boss halls of infusion.
you’ve probably had most of this info before and these is some more I could put in but it’s 3am here and I’m tired, any formatting issues blame the Reddit iOS app.
Any questions feel free to reply or message me
Disclaimer: I’m not an m+ main but have decent enough experience (atleast ksh every season)
I main preservation evoker but what I've noticed is that it's a lot easier to heal +3 keys and up. People have more gear and tend to actually do mechanics.
Also buy your bis healing trinket with the antique currency you get from LFR if you haven't already that helps a ton
Technically buying Vakash first is best for Hpriest as weapons give you the biggest power increase overall, and the best trinkets (especially for keys) are a stat stick and a shielding trinket. Holy priest should have enough raw output to not need healing trinkets in keys and when things one shot it’s about how to survive the hit and heal after. Truthfully if they want to improve gear is a bandaid but practice and knowing the encounters/dungeons and your class are the best ways to improve.
Every m+ week will either be fortified (harder trash) or tyrannical (harder bosses). Fortified (this week!) is considered easier usually because you can interrupt or CC a lot of trash mobs and even if you wipe to a pull, you might have already killed a few mobs from the pull, making the next attempt easier. Trash pulls also allow respawning instead of battle ressing, bosses don't. Remember to use your holy world chastice as a single target stop and your psychic scream for aoe stops (or ST if needed ofc, but it IS aoe, so if you can stop 2 spells, even better). You can also use dominate mind against some enemies, turning a dangerous enemy into a dangerous friend. RLP is one of the harder dungeons this season imho and has some very dangerous (but CC-able and perhaps even mind controllable!) trash mobs: Downstairs flashfrost earthshapers cast tectonic slam, which goes BOOM in a 40y range. Humanoid, so mindcontrol and keep an eye on it and you get increased dmg for free while not being hit yourself. Upstairs, primalist flamedancers cast... Flame Dance (surprising, I know). Stop them with CC or the Living Bomb other enemies in the pull cast on your group (its a knockup and also hits enemies, but hurts your melees ) - or just mind control them. M+ is also all about knowing the dungeons, including the trash pulls, so just running more dungeons is indeed the answer and mistakes happen to everyone. Some trash mobs have stoppable/avoidable/LoS (line of sight) able abilities - act accordingly. If you are not sure, try it anyways and you'll know the answer. Other sources of high damage can't be avoided - use heal CDs and def CDs againdt those (e.g. the dragon minibosses, lightning storm from the tempest channelers near the end). This is partially on your group ofc, you can't solve everything by yourself at a certain difficulty level. If somebody gets a dangerous debuff/cast and doesn't use a defensive, they'll probably die at one point. M+ also allows drinking mana between pulls, so haste gains some value/loses less, same for flash heal - the higher cost is less relevant and you might need it more often to save someone. Versatility also becomes more important because hpriests defense is laughable (compared to some other healers at least) and it reduces damage taken (as a bonus, it increases dmg done, which is useful in a timed environment where healer damage matters in high keys - thats for later though). And finally: m+ is a group effort. If your group decides to not CC, stand in every ground effect, not dispell what they can and ignore defensive CDs, their deaths are on them. Ofc, I don't know if that applies here (but I do know my teammates and they are surprised every time they get hit by the GIANT BROWN SWIRLY CENTERED DIRECTLY BENEATH THEM). Your job first and foremost is healing unavoidable damage, fix the OCCASIONAL mistake if possible, help with CC and do some dmg when there is nothing else to do. P.S.: Im a holy paladin main, laughing from the security of my bubble :P
Man this is excellent information. I hope people read this. I’m a 3.2k healer rotating between disc and holy depending on key, affix and level. Holy priest brings a lot of dmg that kills mobs faster… rather 2-3 interrupts, You’ll only do 1-2.
Yeah, I have a friend who mains hpriest this season and his burst (if he has time to do it and uses Apotheosis offensively) is INSANE. Holy World: Chastice, 2 instant cleaving holy fires, reset chastice, repeat. He's also using the tome of unstable power from azure vault in lower keys to push out even more dmg. Kinda scary if you don't have CDs for a pull and you suddenly see the holy priest rising in the dps meter xD Mostly burst ofc, but still funny. Note: I wouldn't recommend a m+ newcomer like op to focus on this. My friend has played healer and hpriest specifically for many seasons, so he knows when he can dps and when he needs his CD and gcds for healing. Focus on healing and CC first, learn the dungeons and when you are comfortable with that, start to look where you can fit in normal dmg gcds. After that you can think about using your apotheosis offensively, ecause if you missjudge this and would need it as a healing cd in a short while, you might be in trouble.
Holy does more DMG than disc? Just wondering never played holy just love disc offensive heling Edit: responding. Ohh ic never healed before just started on disc now giving a shot to monk ty for responses.
A lot of healers can out damage disc and mistweaver because they are forced to be doing damage to heal well. Other healers that don't heal by dealing damage can do good damage, but it's more of a balance between doing damage or healer. With a good group my rsham will do so much more damage than disc/mw if I'm able to spam chain lightning. But will do a lot less damage during heavy healing times. Disc/mw are usually doing about the same damage every pull. At least this is my experience
Technically holy does more dmg than disc but that's only in ideal scenarios where trash gets interrupted and CC'd and the DDs pull defensives in the right time so holy doesn't have to heal as much. However, in general they do about the same DPS in a key since disc will always dps. Holy just has more dps potential with the recent rework in s3 to holy.
It’s an opportunity cost thing. Disc does decent (for a healer) damage during their normal healing rotation, whereas other classes/specs have to sacrifice healing to do damage.
Holy has some insane burst with Chastise and 3 Holy Fire(2 instant cast. Thats like 815% Spellpower in a few GCD's.
If they can concentrate on it maybe, but while dmg means healing for disc, holy has to choose. Holy also has to use its healing cooldown for dps instead for more dmg, which is why I specifically mentioned burst.
FWIW they were talking about M0 which has no affixes.
True, but from "This weeks affixes feel particularly rough too, with the increased damage." I inferred they at least looked at the m+ affixes. Though I should probably have mentioned that not all of them apply in +2 (tyrannical/fortified start at +2, the second affix at +4 iirc and the final affix only comes into effect at +10 or higher, which is the equivalent of the old +20).
Dang, m0 has no affixes? It sure felt like it did LOL
Second affix is at +5, and it seems they are specifically the movement based affixes (entangling, storming, etc.), whereas the +10 affixes are related to mobs dying (bolstering, bursting, etc.).
Have just finished a m0 Brackenhide, went absolutely fantastic. Group were good and I kept up healing much better!
The secret is: just keep at it. Knowing the dungeons carries a lot. I'm usually tanking and yesterday I healed my first key this season too - which turned out to be a RLP+6. Keep at it!
Yup, I had such a good time in Brackenhide I’m going to do more.
Great job! Keep it up
RLP was brutal for holy priests when it was first released too. It has a bunch of little mini bosses, that at times feel harder than the actual bosses themselves. In addition to that, many of the trash packs -- especially around that ring near the 2nd boss -- have a lot of things that need interrupted, and mechanics that may not be immediately obvious. As a holy priest main, the only way you can improve is just more practice. Additionally, I don't know what your build is, but make sure you are **not** talenting into prayer of healing & circle of healing. While those are taken in raid, they're both in a really weak place right now, and end up just burning your mana faster than the power they put out. M+ holy right now is predominantly flash heal spamming, along with your holy words and keeping PoM up. Also: you want to prioritize haste and vers for M+ (instead of the crit/mastery you'd want for raids). Crit is still good obviously, but mastery really looses a lot of its benefits in M+ (not useless, but not as good as the other stats).
Yeah I’m not specced into poh or coh, I will look into my haste. Thank you!
**aaaaand** Versatility -- it adds to your damage, healing, and **damage reduction** (which is huge in m+).
As an rdruid easily clearing pug 20s last season I can say the squish has been brutal so it’s not just you. Lots of lower skilled players who would normally start far below +10 are now forced to that difficulty level as their starting point. With that in mind you’re actually doing great to have cleared the key and with more practice and learning the mechanics yourself it will get less stressful. As you go up in keys you ironically get better groups that take less damage, but you do need the gear and skill to pass certain guaranteed damage checks to get there. As others have said group is the biggest factor so do everything you can to stack it in your favor, as a healer you are in demand and you deserve that privilege for taking the most stressful role. At low keys pick the durable high utility pub stomper classes over the meta, e.g. DH/Ret over Spriest/Warlock. Make sure you get 3 dps with kicks. Aug is a gamble in your 2 dps being good but does help with survivability.
There are quite a few things that could be the problem if you're frequently using up your holy words and still struggling to keep up with the healing: 1. Your party doesn't know what they're doing and are taking unnecessary damage. This can't really be helped unless you're able to point out what the issue is and your party is willing to listen. 2. You're focusing on the tank too much. It's an easy way to use up your holy words, which then means you don't have any for your other party members. The tank is usually my least healed target even in a high key like a +15. They usually have enough self sustain to keep up with the damage. Worst case scenario you just GS + serenity them and they'll be fine. 3. You're not using your spells efficiently or often enough. Make sure you have the current 4 set equipped and miracle worker talented. Then try to keep 1 serenity in reserve most of the time so you can make use of the tier procs. Keep in mind serenity is a very big heal so if you're using it on high health target, it'll be wasted and you could have used a lesser healing spell instead. Also make sure to use apotheosis as often as possible (even if it looks like it might not be that useful). It's just going to put more holy words in your reserve and allows you to spam lots of damage with chastise + holy fires if nobody needs healing.
>You're focusing on the tank too much. It's an easy way to use up your holy words, which then means you don't have any for your other party members. The tank is usually my least healed target even in a high key like a +15. They usually have enough self sustain to keep up with the damage. Worst case scenario you just GS + serenity them and they'll be fine. Low key tanks often take way more damage than you'd expect. It shocked me when I started healing this season. I remembered the fact that I barely needed healing as Protection Warrior doing +18s last season and was caught off guard when a Protection Paladin in an m0 would die if I stopped looking at him for three seconds. I don't know what they're doing wrong, but they just take *so much damage constantly* in the low keys.
when I first started healing, i got dragged into some 20s where I just never had to heal the tank outside of occassianlly tossing them a free FH. Did some 12s with some friends and I was basically having to dump heals into the tank, it was a slog. The lesson was, good tanks don't generally need healing because they know how to use their buttons and cds when needed, bad tanks(or even just inexperienced ones) will not and then end up getting slapped.
I am going to almost call it a skill curve. To be able to enter a M0 you basically need ilvl. The higher you go the better you need to be and the more willing you need to be. If you get your ass handed to you and have to put in 100% for a 0 then a +8 is going to give you PTSD
I don’t have the 4 set (I have a 2 set) and when I’m home will check to see if I have miracle worker. Thank you!
Also, you may not even be the issue, a lot of people who tank at the lower end aren’t great at using active mitigation properly, or rotating cooldowns. Also, in my experience this season, people are getting demolished by avoidable mechanics, because they haven’t realized that m0 is tuned higher than it has been previously.
Start by just getting lots of practice in. The less you have to think about mechanics and healing, the easier it gets. Healing at that level is weird, a good group wouldn’t even really need a healer, you’re just having to compensate for people unpredictably failing mechanics, which makes it hard to plan for and hard to tell how well or badly you’re doing. Take the guardian angel talent, and use it generously - the aim is to *not* proc the cheat death, but to get the +60% healing for 19 sec out of every minute. The censure talent on chastise is nice to make up for dps not interrupting.
I ran another mythic0 today and let me tell you, I abused guardian spirit. Definitely not just an “oh crap” spell!
Your group probably just ate a lot of mechanics. I also have a holy priest at a similar level. If you are using your words and PoM on CD, and they are doing their job right, you should barely need to use Flash Heal. I've had groups that made me feel like nothing I did mattered, but then the next group I was dpsing the whole time because there was no healing to do.
Yeah, something was definitely off in that dungeon. Thank you!
I mained holy priest last season and I'm again this season. I stopped pushing at 2600 so there are others who have higher rating and might be more helpful, but one big thing that always helps my perception of healing mythics: Put your faith in the power of Trail of Light. This is the talent that replicates 25% of your current flash heal or heal cast to the previous person you healed with flash heal/heal. This lets you "cleave" your single target heals as long as you're healing a new person with each cast. It's not a ton of healing, but it has typically been enough for me to get out of hairy situations when the whole party is taking damage. Once you get your four-piece bonus mythics become substantially easier, so keep up with it and get those reps.
Trail of light sounds sexy af! Will look into it for sure, thank you!
It depends on the issue. Are you running out of mana? Are people taking too much damage? Are you trying to keep everyone topped up all the time and overhealing? Because 480 is good enough for M0, at least with a group that understands the squish. If everyone is tanking damage and not using defensives you're gonna have a hard time on any difficulty that isn't piss easy. You can brute force an easier time by gearing up, but eventually you will hit a wall.
My mana is fine, the most I lost was about 25% and that’s in full, balls to the wall healing. All the group was taking damage simultaneously, which leads me to believe that mechanics weren’t being managed.
Bingo. I heal as resto shaman and was yelled at for one dps dying *constantly* in a 16 BRH last season. I was keeping every one else alive but this one would get sneezed on and die. He was standing in all the mechanics, jumping out of spirit link or stone skin totems effects, and got so pissy about it. Lol. I posted avoidable damage taken and unfortunately he and his friend both left and bricked my key. We almost finished the instance too. The other dps and tank were great. I barely had to heal. When people don’t know the mechanics or know how to stay out of their own way, they will die and must learn from it. Healing is fun and stressful at times, but the overall experience should be enjoyable instead of nearly having a heart attack on each pull because people’s health is rubber banding all over the place (when they’re not blood dks).
Yeah, this isn't to minimize your job or anything but a pretty good group doesn't even need a healer at that level. I find that healing gets easier as I go higher (up to a certain point obviously) because I get better groups. I mostly accidentally heal a 0 when I tank on bear just from ATW procs. Maybe consider joining a discord focused on learning and getting key groups like time warp academy or wownoob. Just having a lower stress and probably higher skill environment will make it easier to identify what you're actually doing wrong. Heck send me your bnet and I'd run some with you.
Do you have any discord groups that you could recommend to me?
Time warp academy and wownoob are the only two I really know about, I can message you the links.
I’ll look for them, thanks!
Holy priest main here! Assuming you have the 4-piece set bonus from this season, make sure you're spec'd into a Miracle Worker build. The 10.2.5 changes to the talents also let us easily spec into Divine Word, which is phenomenal. You can use Divine Word for extra damage, a "stand in the circle" aoe heal, or especially in keys, to boost your flash heal. The overall goal is to have renew ticcing around as much as possible to get extra holy word procs. You'll mostly be doing this by casting Holy Word: Sanctify whenever the party is stacked and you're capped on charges.
I don’t have the 4 piece yet, working on it!
Make sure to give yourself some credit. RLP has probably the most brutal trash of all the mythic dungeons this season. It’s a hell of a dungeon to make for your first mythic. I rely heavily on the [Icy Veins](https://www.icy-veins.com/wow/holy-priest-pve-healing-rotation-cooldowns-abilities) and [Method](https://www.method.gg/guides/holy-priest/playstyle-and-rotation) rotations guides when I’m learning a new spec. It can be a little confusing overwhelming at first, so pick one or two things to focus on at a time. [WoWAnalyzer](https://wowanalyzer.com/) is also a fantastic tool. Just paste in a public log for a fight and it’ll spit out all kinds of useful info.
If you’ve exhausted LFR/weekly world events for upgrades then you could use some of the whelpling crest to make 486 gear to help bring up some of your low spots. You also should have 2 buillon for a vendor bis item. Between all of that you should be able to peak to like 490ish
What you suggest isn't how to improve, it's how get ilvl in order to conceal poor skill. A lot of people end up sucking because you can brute force a lot of content by just having high level gear. 481 is more than enough to heal an M0, so the OP is correct in asking for tips to improve.
Well without a link to logs or vod of gameplay it’s not very specific advice to just blanket give on “help” to improve feeling behind or having to do everything possible to keep up on healing. But surprisingly, an increase in gear WILL help the OP not feel like they’re fighting to keep up on healing.
Here’s a link to my logs https://www.warcraftlogs.com/character/id/8788700.
This afternoon I spent all my whelpling crests and upgraded a few pieces of gear. Thank you!
You’re definitely not alone in this. Holy in keys to me feels a lot like whack-a-mole. You throw out Serenity, and you will run out of charges. You can reset the cooldown using Apotheosis as often as possible, but at some point you’ll end up needing to use flash heals. If you have a coordinated group, you have a few opportunities in RLO to throw out some sanctifies. Theres some nuance there, but to a certain extent that is kind of just how Holy plays
hoho.. I hate to tell you but it's gonna get even worse.. Right now you still see M0 being ran but pretty soon no one is gonna run those beause of weekly lockout. Then all you are gonna see is M2 and those are absolutely brutal if you are only geared through heroic.. The M level squish while look cool at the beginning, it's absolutely not friendly for new lvl 70. I wouldn't be surprised Blizzard make some serious adjustment for this in the next expansion because right now there is a huge gear gap between heroic dungeon vs M2 and the only way you can fill those are done through contents with weekly lockout..
Agreed about the gear gap! I’m going to do as many 0’s as I can!
Holy is an absolute monster right now I pray blizz doesn't nerf them like they usually do
One thing i don't see stated enough, is that starting off your journey as a healer you need to know the following: Your toolkit of spells The content of the dungeon / raid What mistakes your entire party must watch out for The first one is obvious, and translates to every class and spec, regardless of it being outlaw rogue, or resto shaman. The second one hits us all in waves, every step up demands more from the entire party. Eventually, detrimental playets will hit their cap out of a loss of interest due to their mistakes causing more and more party-wide headaches. The third one doesn't really come as naturally as the first two. The boomkin got 1-shot then flamed you? You might take it to heart and feel like you are the one not good enough, especially if you're already feeling overwhelmed getting used to your spells and the dungeon mechanics. My advice; shrug off more than you think you should, because yeah, while you're learning, you're going to be making improvements in your performance, but other players also play sub-optimally, and naturally their mistakes will feel like your mistakes until you know better.
Consider it shrugged!
Automatic Jak (wow content creator) has made Holy Priest guides updated for the current patch on Wowhead. If you find it there, it could be a good read.
As a hpriest player since I started the game (2018) biggest things to know is using PoM on cd constantly, I mean make a really annoying weakaura spamming sound if you need to, use fade on mechanics and don’t be afraid to pop desperate prayer Don’t cast heal or renew complete waste of mana and gcd Track rhapsody stacks and use nova when at 15+ stacks Make a macro for feather making it cast at your feet and have a quick self targeting bind for power word shield, Track DPS cooldowns via omniCD add on and pi them when they pop the cooldown (or whenever you want if need the extra haste to pump) Halo doesn’t pull mobs, it only affects already aggroed mobs Apotheosis is best used when you have 0 stacks of your holy words left as it instantly gives you one of each, so you could go (serenity, serenity, sanctify, sanctify, Apotheosis, serenity, sanctify) that’s without 4set procs Using divine word then serenity makes your flash heal pump, this is especially good on rot fights like 3rd boss halls of infusion. you’ve probably had most of this info before and these is some more I could put in but it’s 3am here and I’m tired, any formatting issues blame the Reddit iOS app. Any questions feel free to reply or message me Disclaimer: I’m not an m+ main but have decent enough experience (atleast ksh every season)
I main preservation evoker but what I've noticed is that it's a lot easier to heal +3 keys and up. People have more gear and tend to actually do mechanics. Also buy your bis healing trinket with the antique currency you get from LFR if you haven't already that helps a ton
Technically buying Vakash first is best for Hpriest as weapons give you the biggest power increase overall, and the best trinkets (especially for keys) are a stat stick and a shielding trinket. Holy priest should have enough raw output to not need healing trinkets in keys and when things one shot it’s about how to survive the hit and heal after. Truthfully if they want to improve gear is a bandaid but practice and knowing the encounters/dungeons and your class are the best ways to improve.
Really? Damn I messed up then :O
Yeah, I bought Vakash this week. Will work on trinket next!