I used to hate healing – then I was um.. uh.. encouraged to get a healing set when my last raiding guild broke up last year by the new guild I was apping to.
I’ve discovered I don’t mind it. It got me places easier. ( everyone loves a healer) – Any means to an end to get me better gear for my main set – badges, runs, quicker Lfgs – I sold my Shadow Soul for convenience – and had been getting extra practice on my 2nd healing only priest. ( Yes I’m a nut) whose gear is getting better then my mains healing offset.
I’m on holidays still ( more time = less desire to be productive and write stuff) so I was able to do lots of stuff today
Today I dpsed a 25 toc Gdkp – with a pot of over 1200 each ( some of that was because I won Reign of the Unliving ( finally!) for 8k ( cheap as.. )
Healed a Toc 10 for fun.
Healed the Heroic Daily because I couldn’t be bothered waiting
I also picked up a ICC 25 GDKP needing a holy priest on my main – and the ‘mantle’ I wore to get into that was a 5.5 k Holy priest – it was a 6 boss run, and ended up with a pot of 2190 each (that includes minus 40 gold each to pay the 1k to a Kingslayer to unlock heroic boat.)
I did good! Was even told I had awesome heals, and I was the top healer – which upset a pally healer who ‘begged to differ’ ( I’m sorry beacon is cheating 😛 Free double heals *grumbles) – but there were no wipes! so we ALL did a good job.
The other priest was a 5.8k offspec holy healer ( I checked) 3 piece Healing T10 – I couldn’t work out why on all the fights I was beating her by so much.
Then I noticed that they didn’t seem to like renew. Like at all.
Here is mine. Now I don’t like Greater Heal. I don’t use it. I think its a waste of heals, and while your busy casting, even with serendipity at 3 stacks, some druids hots have already beaten you to the punch. I also have the 2 set t10 bonus ( Chance to heal 33% of your flash heal ) and the T9 2 set ( increase prayer of mending by 20% ) and until I get my 4 set healing Tier I will keep using it, because losing that 20% is not worth it yet –
I don’t think I’m a great healer, if anything I’m a brute force healer – I stick hots on people likely to take damage. Always on the tanks, try and prehot during mass aoe damage, bounce my prayer of mending off the tank. Try and stick to ‘the always be casting rule’ if I have the mana. But my gorilla healing style is Worse now I have Sliver of Pure Ice set up as a Power aura to use as soon as it’s available Every two min. The Sliver, Fiend, Hymn of Hope, mana pot means I am mana happy, and not afraid to use it. It’s the healing ‘style’ I picked up – which will probably make me a terrible healer in Cata unless I relearn to heal a little more conservatively.
Either way – awesome healer – Mana happy healer – I feel I’ve come a long way from my refusing to heal stage, but I think that’s also mainly because I heal on my own terms now. I’m freelance. I heal or dps what I want – and I’m geared enough to do it. No guild – no real obligations It’s a slightly ‘lonely’ way to do it – and probably just another symptom of my independent streak, but I like that I don’t have to deal with asshats for more than one raid, I’m not being pigeon holed into a role because our other healer just quit, can’t make it ect. – but I also know its realm dependant – I can’t do all that on my home realm, and I’m leaning now towards moving my 2nd priest over to BR too
But one day.. I will settle down again. I just don’t have to yet.
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Pugnacious Priest's Warcraft Blog 
I think you should play a druid. As a priest, healing with renew gets you top of the chart, but it doesn’t actually heal people. It only delays their death or gives someone else time to heal them.
That, usually, is the druid’s job.
as a Priest, you should use FH, CoH (if holy) alot more. If empowered renew is your third most powerful heal, then you are not being as efficient as you can be. Better play a druid
In 10’s and Bg’s there’s a little more time to get some bigger heals off, and I’ve felt better healing when we 2 heal a toc 10 – theres a lot more pressure on mana, and I have had to be more efficient, and maybe our lack of efficiency was also because there was no healing assignments other then Pallys should be knowing who to beacon, we could have been a little more efficient. Though I was 4th or 5th in the overhealing ( pallys were 1st and 2nd
Priests are wonderfully flexible healers. The best priests will modify their healing style on the fly based on what your fellow healers bring to the table.
Looking at your healing charts, I see two paladins, a druid, and a really pisspoor shaman with you (or maybe he was only part-time heals, one of the two). With two paladin healers, that’s got your single-target healing covered, both for tanks and raid, so of course FH spamming won’t be the most productive use of time. Now one tree, no matter how good, can’t HOT up an entire raid by himself, so with that healing makeup, blanketing the raid with Renews is going to get great results.
But with no Shamans? CoH. Every time it’s off cooldown.
Healing is only good enough or not. Your healing sounds to be good enough for now, so there is no problem. Why worry about Cataclysm? We’ll all have our time to learn it.
because there is no finesse – I at least am throwing whatever to the wind, I’m acting like a dps with an unlimited mana pool
I was also going to mention how odd it was to see two holy priests without CoH in their top 3. It’s usually my second if not first.
I think that was my number 4 – depending on the fight, and how spread out everyone is I’ll use it more, I did some Bg’s today, and while it maybe be a different type of healing in a bg, It definitely gets used.
I’ve been reading your blog for the past few weeks, and I’m beginning to regret doing so, not because your biased, or because I don’t like your opinions, but because you finally convinced me to start leveling my priest again… and for that there can be no forgiveness. >.<
It gets easier past level 20 – I think you shall forgive me when you finish your priest and love it as much I as do. Shadow! Shadow!
Never shadow, I already have my mage lined up for when i want to blow something up, I’m all for trying out disc raid healing o.o
(I have a holy pally, but that’s just beacon something, spam on the other)
Shadow is definitely the spec you want to use for leveling as a priest, though – unless you’re planning to level by running instances. With shadowform, dispersion, vampric embrace, and devouring plague, a shadow priest can basically just grind through mobs more or less non-stop. Holy priests? Not so much. I leveled my priest as shadow, and picked up dual spec somewhere in the 60’s so I could start healing then.
Oh, and disc raid healing is fun fun fun fun fun 🙂
I have a shadow offspec, but at the moment smite spec is faster for questing (less mana drain).
The typical evolution of a WoW player, or any mmo for that matter: Start as a DPS class => move on to a healer => get sick of healing crappy tanks, and roll a tank yourself. At least this has been my experience in WoW. So, start deciding which class you want to tank with because that will be your next move. It might not happen soon, but a ways down the road. Trust me.
Lol – Already working on my Warrior Tank level 32 😛
LOL. Wow, this is soooooo me. I was to be an enhancement shaman if it killed me, no matter what nobody could sway my plans. Now I’m the top Resto Shaman in my guild, and I’m sick of it. My tank is one level from 80. Wow, I mean wow, spot on mate!
p.s. I’ve got a Disc priest, so I never have to worry about topping the healing charts but I’m still just as valuable with my pretty little bubbles. If you still got mana after every fight, and your group wins, it’s all cool!
I’ve gone the opposite direction. lol
Started with a Protection Warrior, then leveled a priest in tbc and raided as holy then as disc after 3.0, and now i’ve leveled a hunter to 80 and am getting him geared up, only for Bg pvp this time.
I wish my server had GDKP runs… QQ
Your comments on how you heal are really interesting and pretty helpful! Not sure if you remember but I used to heal a lot on my alt healy priest in BC – and I was pretty good at it. Now I’ve tried to start healing again only to find it’s COMPLETELY different to BC. My healing sucks pretty bad. And your comments have given me a clue as to why – I’m (or I *was*, having now changed to disc) sticking to trying to use greater heal and flash heal and prayer of healing. I’m too used to POM and renew being secondary ‘assistants’ to the main heals. I’m constantly shocked at how different healing is to what it used to be.
Its changed my healing style some too, its affected more my overhealing though, then my healing, but I seem to be doing ok with using COH a lot more