Everybody asks me how I played Frosty so well. I never let people die, and if someone was going to die I would sacrifice myself over a tank anytime.
The main thing to understand is that playing a healer in a Priest is a lot harder then playing lets say a Restoration Shaman or Holy Paladin. While Paladins and Shamans can basically spam heal with Flash of Light or Lesser Healing Wave, a Holy Priest has to time each and every heal for efficiency in spell damage, and Spirit for your regeneration of mana.
Many people ask me if it’s worthy just adding spell power to everything and forget about the mana regeneration or Spirit. I tell them no because while your spell damage might be high, that does not truly matter. You can have little to no spell power and you can heal better then someone who has the spell power. That is because you have mana regeneration on your side. Having Spirit above 800 will show you that you will never go out of mana. I had about 650 Spirit before Wrath of the Lich King came out and I could go into any raid and never run out of mana, while I see Paladins, Shamans, and other Priests running out of mana in insane amounts.
The secret of playing a Holy Priest is deciding what spells to cast and when. For example lets look at a normal trash scenario. Before the tank pulls, put a Prayer of Mending on that tank. This will allow you to gain back mana, while he takes damage. After that wait until the tank is at 80% health and then put a Greater Heal on him. Even if it over-heals, it is OK. At the same time put another Prayer of Mending on him as well. If the trash do any sort of AOE damage, this will help your group as well being that Prayer of Mending is a smart spell. If one of your DPS members or yourself is at 80% health put a Flash Heal on yourself or that member. If three or more members are at 70% health or less, do a Prayer of Healing to heal the group up. After that put another Prayer of Mending on the tank. Your basic strategy is put a Prayer of Mending on the tank when ever the cool down is up, use big heals on the tank even if it over-heals, you will get most of your mana back. Use little heals on DPS as a quick Flash Heal should be enough to get them up. Finally stay away from two spells. Binding Heal and Renew. Now I know what most of you will say is that Renew is a nice heal spell that can heal for over 1200-1500 every three seconds. As a Priest you do not care about healing over time spells. If you want healing over time spells go roll a Druid as their heal over times are much better then any Priest’s Renew spell. Also do not forget Renew eats up about 8% base mana, so for mana efficiency it is better to just use Direct Heals. The reason not use Binding Heal is because well your not getting hit enough to use it. If your the target of someones nasty spell then maybe it might be useful, but in general it’s just faster to use Flash Heal on yourself, Shield for an absorb buff, and if is getting really bad put a Prayer of Mending on yourself so that you can pass it on to someone else.
The main thing about Prayer of Mending is the passing factor that it is. You want the spell to pass to someone else after the target you choose. This is why it is best to put it on the tank. Circle of Healing and Lightwell have always been considered a waste for me. While I will specialize into Circle of Healing, if you look at Recount, I hardly ever use it. I see most Priests around just spamming Circle of Healing. This makes that Priest bad because Circle of Healing is a mana wasting spell and it does not heal for very much. It does about the same as a Flash Heal for everybody. It is not useful in a group environment unless everybody is taking damage including yourself. You also do not need to spam it, you can use it once and then use your Prayer of Healing spell. Flash Heal is not our most mana efficient spell, Greater Heal is. This is why you should always be using Greater Heal on the tank, no matter if you over-heal or not. If you get some threat, Fade or Shield yourself so it can give your tank time to reestablish the threat. In all the raids and groups I have been apart in, I have only pulled a few times off the tank. Usually that’s because I hit the tank with a large Critical heal, and has nothing to do with over-healing.
About over-healing, it is a misconception. You have no guarantee if you are going to over heal or not on a tank, you might Critical heal, you might not. If anybody tells you that you are over-healing too much, send them over to me. Over-healing is perfectly fine.
