Priestly Bubbles

After wanting to murder my guildies for not spreading out in phase 2 of heroic Northrend Beasts on 25, I made a suggestion in the healing channel that we move on. But the raid leader said, "Head to Sartherion!" Abuh?? So we slowly start heading there... While on the way there, our raid leader gives a nice little speech. "3d is all about situational awareness and coordination. If you get hit by fire walls or void zones, you do not get to roll on the drake." So we're practicing coordination and situational awareness with the reward of a cool looking mount? Okay. So we down it with a ton of people dead. Uh huh...and we wonder why we can't do hard modes. Anyway, we loot the dragon and move on to Ulduar.
We called a wipe on Hodir at 4%...once again, situational awareness. Raiders dying or not standing in the right buffs. I was #7 in damage done in my offspec shadow gear. I beat the new shadow priest. >_> Bad times. Both the guild leader and one of the officers applauded my dps and told me that it was bad that I was outdpsing an spriest in better gear than me. One of the officers asked me why my main spec wasn't shadow! I told him that shadow isn't very good except on gimmick fights.
So we didn't accomplish much except for realizing that most of our raiders lack situational awareness…but I did get a nifty title. Twilight Vanquisher woo!

Okay updated healing Priest Tier 10
2 piece bonus - Your Flash Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over 9 sec.
4 piece bonus - Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.
2 piece bonus I can definitely deal with. The 4 piece bonus I can see as viable. I assume whenever it procs you will get some sort of buff letting you know that if you flash heal you can use another Penance/Circle of Healing right away. Much better than the original. I think I may get this 4 piece.

Healing Priest Tier 10-
2P Bonus - After your Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit talents expire on your target, they grant your target 10% increased healing received for 10 sec.
4P Bonus - Your Flash Heal spell has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance Spells.
Okay the 2 piece bonus sounds fantastic. That is well thought out. The 4 piece bonus-what? Penance has a 8-9 sec CD if you're specced correctly and have the glyph. So if it's a 15% chance, what are the odds that it even resets it before it's already up? I hate math so I'll let others do the math but I don't see this as viable. Also, as a priest, it annoys me slightly. I like playing priest because we have so many different viable healing spells for different situations. This 4 piece bonus will just make us FH spammers...like paladins. No thanks.

I reread my very first post on beginner discipline healing. It's still pretty accurate for what I was healing then, but now that I'm into hard modes I don't heal like that anymore. It's only been about a month and a half and I've already changed my healing style due to these hard modes I've been getting into.
Well I'll keep posting tidbits on stuff I learn. It was just amusing to see how far I've come in a month.

I'm on a constant quest to improve my healing as I'm sure most players are in whatever they do. Tanking, healing, dpsing, even PvP. It's been pretty slow at work so I decided to try my hand at this math crap some healers talk about. I calculated each one of my spell's average healing per second and healing per mana and pretty much backed up what I thought about my healing. I used the logs that our guild uses from our last raid. Gonna post it here for anybody to review.

Starting with Prayer of Mending
Average ProM heal-5296-Jumps up to 5 times
Mana cost w/Mental Agility-521
It is difficult to determine what ProM's healing per second is due to the fact that you don't know when it is going to do each jump. I did calculate what its healing per mana is however.
Healing per mana-46
46 healing per mana is highest out of all the spells I use. This is why I have this spell constantly jumping on high AoE raid damage fights.

Penance
Average Penance heal-4143-Typically 3 times
Mana cost-618
Healing per second-6215
Healing per mana-20
Fairly high healing per second and fairly high healing per mana make this spell my best single target spell.

Power Word: Shield + Glyph
Average PW:S Absorb + Glyph heal-8235
Mana cost w/Mental Agility & Soul Warding-666
Healing per second-8235 Instant absorbs and healing
Healing per mana-12
Surprisingly its healing per mana was not as high as I expected it to be. I guess this is why shield spammers stack lots of intellect. This spell has very high healing/absorbs and this is why shield spamming is viable. I use shields quite a bit even when I'm tank healing.

Flash Heal
Average Flash Heal-5469
Mana cost w/Improved Flash Heal-591
Healing per second-4558
Healing per mana-9
Flash heal's healing per mana is fairly low compared to the other spells. Its healing per second isn't bad and as it is a very quick cast time, it is a decent spell to use.

Greater Heal
Average Greater Heal-12371
Mana cost-1236
Healing per second-5176
Macro'd to haste trinket healing per second-6217
Healing per mana-10
Contrary to popular belief, Greater Heal has higher healing per second and healing per mana than Flash Heal. I do tend to use this spell more than the average priest but typically only with the haste trinket, so that my target doesn't die while I'm casting it.

Binding Heal
Average Binding Heal-4470-2 heals
Mana cost-1043
Healing per second-7450
Healing per mana-9
This spell is basically a double flash heal. Its high healing per second makes it very useful but it is still very situational. I have to be taking damage for this spell to be used to its max potential.

Prayer of Healing + Glyph
Average Prayer of Healing Heal + Glyph HoT-5155-5 heals
Mana cost-1854
Healing per second-10,785
Healing per mana-14
Macro'd to Power Infusion
Mana cost-1483
Healing per second-14399
Healing per mana-17
According to the math, this spell is very valid for AoE healing. I had to do this math at least 3 times to make sure I wasn't doing it wrong. Even with its decent healing per mana, this spell still costs enough mana to make a priest pause before they spam it. The other issue with this spell is the overhealing. It should not be used unless that entire group is low.

Renew
Average Renew tick-2092-5 ticks over 15 sec
Mana cost w/Mental Agility-591
Healing per second-697
Healing per mana-18
The healing per mana isn't bad but the healing per second is. I only use this spell on the start of pulls or in between phases like in Northrend Beasts. Otherwise, it's a waste of a global cooldown.

And just for my curiosity-Divine Aegis
Average 2186 instant absorbs for every crit

My math is probably wrong somewhere since I did this in between doing timesheets/physician visits/orders here at work. Feel free to correct me.

As an after thought, to those who think I'm a strong advocate of "Discipline/Shadow is fine!!", I'm not. I think these two specs could use a little love to get them on par with the rest of healers/dps. However, just because the two specs are a little behind doesn't mean they suck. And honestly, the game is about having fun. If you're not having fun because you're not the best, play an overpowered class. Don't just sit on the forums and bitch to everybody else. No one wants to hear it. With that said, if you've got some good ideas on how to fix these specs, feel free to share. The "QQ my class sucks" helps no one. The constructive "this is how I think we should fix it" helps people get to thinking and could possibly get Blizzard's attention.

Just typed this up for my guild:
Hey guys!! I had some ideas floating around in my head for progression and such and thought I'd share them!!

Ulduar is still progression for us. We haven't done all the hard modes and some of them are possible for us. Most of the time we just run out of time or people become tired of the place. I think our issues with Ulduar is that it's such a long instance and feels like a drag sometimes. I know that's why I hate it. I wish it was shorter.

So! My idea is this:
Obviously, we want to roflstomp Onyxia and ToC25 every week. VoA25 too. It's free loot. We also want to work on ToGC25. But we don't want to spend 4-8 hrs wiping on the same boss.

We need to do Ulduar but trying to do a fresh Ulduar every week causing us to become tired and run out of time. So I think we should extend each raid lockout while working on hard modes. Like say, we finish Onyxia, ToC25 and VoA25. We work on ToGC for about 2 hours. If we don't wipe on easy content, that's basically one raid night. So we go into Ulduar and that week kill FL 4 tower, Ignis, Razor and XT hard mode. And then we start working on IC hard mode.

So maybe we won't get IC hard mode the first night. We may move on and kill Kologarn or we may not. But we'll extend our raid lockout and move into the next week.

The next week, we do the easy raids. We work on ToGC for a bit. Then we start on IC hard mode and perhaps down it! Then we can move to the next hard modes.

This counters the "Ulduar drag" and allows us to progress. A little slower maybe, but more enjoyable and possibly more efficiently.

Well we finally got it. And I think we FINALLY have a solid raid group. Some of them hadn't done Yogg yet. >_> Anyway, the paladin got his hammer and according to one of the more annoying healers in my guild, that's gonna make healing SOOO much easier. Some of my guildies are under the impression that that hammer will make or break our raid. Reality check loves, hard modes are still hard!!! I hate that hammer. With a passion. It basically makes that stupid paladin a paladin and a disc priest in one. I wonder if those stupid bubbles stack with all of my bubbles...
Moving on from the paladin and his OH SO AMAZING hammer. We didn't get to try any hard modes this week, due to sucking on Yogg for 10 billion years. But we did finally get in and roflstomp ToC25. We wiped on NR Beasts. On REGULAR NR Beasts. Because people were getting charged...
Anyway two new loots for me. QQ all you shamans and pallies on the cloak. It's an upgrade for me and I think only one shaman rolled against me. And he's a back up healer. So I didn't bother bidding low for it.
Cry of the Val'kyr
Maiden's Adoration

So since I know how to heal all of ToGC on 10 man, I thought I'd share my strats on keeping my tanks and raid alive.
Northrend Beasts

• Phase 1-Gormok the Impaler

Best spells:
Power Word: Shield
Prayer of Mending
Prayer of Healing
Penance
Flash Heal
Greater Heal

Start this fight by shielding the first tank. Send a ProM and give him Renew. Don't spam your heals but as soon as the tank gets the first debuff, start using Penance whenever it's up. Here you must use your own judgment. Flash heals must be used in between Penances. If you have a Scale of Fates, macro it to your Greater Heal and use it whenver Scale is available. If you are doing this correctly, you and your other tank healer should be focusing on the tank tanking, but should be able to keep the second tank up. When the boss's aoe goes off, your ProMs should be bouncing in the raid. Macro your Power Infusion to Prayer of Healing and use this spell on the two groups. This will help your raid healer. If you get a snobold, use shields, ProMs and Renews until it's gone to avoid getting spell locked. One thing we noticed is that when DBM announces Fire bomb, if you strafe into an empty spot you will never get hit.

• Phase 2-Acidmaw and Dreadscale

Best Spells:
Power Word: Shield
Prayer of Mending
Penance
Flash Heal
Greater Heal
Hymn of Hope

You want to heal your tank basically the same way as phase 1. Don't forget that if you're burning Acidmaw down first to switch to Dreadscale's tank when Acidmaw dies if you were healing Acidmaw's tank. Dreadscale's tank will start taking a lot more damage. Shields are perfect for this phase. Shield anybody who gets poison or fire. Don't forget to spread out! You may also want to use Hymn of Hope here when you get low and the worms are underground.

• Phase 3-Icehowl

Best Spells:
Power Word: Shield
Penance
Prayer of Healing
Shadowfiend

You will probably be very low on mana at the beginning of this phase. Pop your shadowfiend as soon as the tank gets aggro. Keep up your tank healing rotation and shield+flash heal those who get caught in Icehowl's Arctic Breath. If Icehowl charges you ro someone near you, look around while you're stunned and plan your path. Use your strafing keys to follow this path. After he slams into the wall, use this time to top off your raid.

Jaraxxus
Best Spells:
Power Word: Shield
ProM
Dispel
Penance
Flash Heal

Heal your tank just like normal. Shield+Renew the offtank as well. Be sure to help dispel the tank if he gets the debuff and dispel Jaraxxus's buff. Your tank won't be taking a lot of damage but the raid will. Pay attention to who gets Incinerate Flesh and spam heal them til it's gone. Throw a shield on whoever gets the Legion Flame. Make sure that there are 15 yds between you and the other raiders to avoid heavy chain lightning damage. A new mechanic of the fight is a type of charm cast by the Mistress of Pain. If you see the hearts above your head telling you she has charmed you, target the boss and cast Mind Blast. It will spell lock your shadow spells and you can go back to healing.

Faction Champions
Best Spells:
Power Word: Shield
Penance
Mass Dispel
Psychic Scream
Pain Suppression

Dispel, dispel, dispel. That's your main job here. Your only real healing spell you will use is Penance. Throw it on raiders taking massive damage. Shield the raiders who are taking hits from the champions. Make sure that you are dispelling any dots or debuffs on the raiders and be sure to dispel the champions' bloodlust/heroism. If you get aggro, fade (it actually works oddly enough) or psychic scream. If these abilities are on cooldown or the champion resists and you are taking a lot of hits, pain suppress yourself. You will get a lot of aggro this fight for mass dispel. I don't know why but it happens. So be careful and keep yourself alive.


The Twin Val'kyr
Best Spells:
Power Word: Shield
Prayer of Mending
Penance
Flash Heal
Binding Heal

Since you constantly take damage in this fight, Binding Heal is a very good spell to use. Be sure to not overheal too much with it. Prayer of Mending shines in this fight as well. It will be bouncing all over the raid to tackle that raid damage. Get the opposite color of the majority of your dps near you and be sure to avoid orbs of the opposite color and touch the ones of the same color. Not much else to say here. Just make sure that when one casts the shield, the other one's tank is being spam healed. She will do more damage when she is shielded.

Anub'rekhan
Best Spells:
Power Word: Shield
Penance
Flash Heal

I haven't actually downed this but I know how to do it for the most part. This isn't a heavy healing fight until phase 3. Just typical tank healing. Phase 2 is the critical phase. You have to stay alive here. On phase 3, designate one healer to keep the tank up and the other two to keep the raid at 30% or so. If you are tank healing, use your usual tank healing rotation. If you are raid healing, shield your group and flash heal those that get below 20%. Keep them at 30% so Anub'rekhan does not heal too much.


And that's all I got! Critiques are welcome.