World of Warcraft®

Here is my perspective from a Disc priest - who has done every heroic currently available - and is arguably the most mana starved healer out there. And these can probably be generalized to most healers, with a definite disc priest slant.

Mana is definitely tight, you will drink often. I've run in pretty much a full guild group, so my teammates know what they are doing, however I have an over zealous bear tank that likes to pull very quickly, so this has made me push myself and learn a few tricks. You will not be cc'ing anything, just be sure to know which mobs place critical debuffs on your teammates and purify early since you have an 8 sec cd.

For disco's out there, penance early (for grace), followed by a holy fire, roll a PoM if some minor aoe is going out. Utilize Inner focus whenever you need a guaranteed crit on Gheal or PoH. Your tanks are going to get hit hard! I barely use Heal anymore, which I was using a great deal at the end of cata due to the buffs in 5.0.4. And I occasionally use renew even in disc if I'm on the move, which you will be on certain fights. Heal just does not provide enough throughput imo. I've had 200k Gheal crits and I'm sure others have had larger. If you know a certain boss is going to hit the tank hard, line up spirit shell and with my currently gear I can get about a 300k absorb on the tank that lasts 15 seconds. Use your CD's, do not sit on them, I use Inner Focus, Spirit Shell, Power Infusion, and of course my mana cd's liberally, and not just during boss encounters. I've had to put out over 45k HPS during trash pulls, which is more than I've had to do on any one boss.

Bring water with you, if you can get the mage food, that is even better since it takes very little amount of time drinking to top you off again. Use your mana cd's early. I pop mindbender and arcane torrent (F you blizz for nerfing this) around 250k, and line up a PW:Shield when I pop Vial of Ichorous Blood Vial of Ichorous Blood. This buffs my spirit up to over 8k which provides a ~13k rapture return making the shield almost pay for itself. I can do that every two minutes and it definitely saves mana. Learn cooking, I can make spirit and int food that is a pretty good stat boost and hey, every little bit counts.

There is also a cape (Cloak of Hidden Flasks) out of the Heroic Brewery that provides a 1k spirit buff (two charges); stock up on these, I have two atm but have not used the effect yet. It may come in handy. Cloak of Hidden Flasks.

Understand that you will be pushed, but every healer is fully capable of doing these instances provided your group is competant. Be vocal, understand the bosses and enemies you are facing so you can instruct people on what they should and should not do. You are the conductor and need to realize a bit more responsibility is on your shoulders to get the job done, but hey you are up to the challenge.

Most importantly have fun, these instances provide beautiful scenery and sound and should be enjoyed. So pick your head up from scrutinizing your raid frames from time to time to enjoy your surroundings.

Keeping Renew up will help a lot more than people realize, PoM and Penance on CD, and I haven't had any issues in heroics. I only PW:S when the tank needs it and I know for sure it will pop, otherwise I ignore it unless it's a rare situation and I have the proc from penance for an emergency PW:S.

Ran heroic today and felt fine. Felt a bit like going in after getting raid gear but it was nice not being unable to heal. Start of cata our throughput was just so stinking low mana was in very short supply. Now our mana is capped and we must be careful *but* the throughput seems pretty comfortable.

Will say that fellow guildie that is healing priest is having mana issues. He's a great player, very skilled, so I feel safe saying I'm glad my main isn't a priest at the moment LOL. It's not always a case of 'bad player'. If enough players are saying 'there's a problem here' then there probably is. Hopefully they'll take the feedback and fix priests.

I feel as if holy priests' mana regen is poorer then the other healers yet again just like the last two expansions.

• Hit realm first priest, realm 2nd (to a hunter) so I know shadow works in solo mode.
• Hit the heroics hard with a guild blood dk tank (who was in all dps greens) and myself in greens with under 3k spirit. I have yet to fully wipe in a heroic.
• Hit up a BG as shadow and facerolled top kills and kbs, 3 deaths, so I know facing unorganized pvp is working. I'm not going to bother trying a random bg as a healer. Looking forward to arenas.
• Took down the only raid boss available (sha of anger) as disc. Came in 3rd hps wise, but I was solely assigned to tank heals. My mana was the fullest of the 7 healers at the end of the encounter (but mostly because I didn't die).
• I worked overtime to make sure my gear is close to BiS as possible before this Tuesday, and I get angry now when tanks don't chain pull in heroics.
• Going to flip on the holy spec on Tuesday and probably faceroll the LFR because I'm going in with 4 crafted epics by then.

Priests are broken! The sky is falling! We need buffs, uh...yeah, buffs!

So I've finished all the heroics out there and mana feels a bit tight.

But not horriffically tight it's just having players who know what the heck they're doing.

One area that I've had some problems is with melee DPS not getting out of stuff very fast and being a bit of a mana sponge. It's not even that they're bad dps it's just that they seem to have everything but the kitchen sink thrown in their way.

09/29/2012 12:13 PMPosted by Lilicia

If all the players are good, and the numbers show consistent trends favoring one class over others, what do we call the classes that aren't favored?

Weak argument is weak.

Its always been this way. Good players will still get results from maximizing every drop of mana from their class and by understanding every single encounter so they can time every heal perfectly to avoid wasting mana on over healing. Bad players will spam heals, go OOM or just look at meters and say "My class sucks"

Because minimizing and maximizing mana management is Soooo much fun!!! Wait no its not, really its not. Just because the top 5% love it you may want to ask the other 95% thoughts on the matter. Mana management has not ever been really fun nor epic.

So I've finished all the heroics out there and mana feels a bit tight.

But not horriffically tight it's just having players who know what the heck they're doing.

One area that I've had some problems is with melee DPS not getting out of stuff very fast and being a bit of a mana sponge. It's not even that they're bad dps it's just that they seem to have everything but the kitchen sink thrown in their way.

I agree with you, it just seems very tight, to the point its not as much fun anymore as stressfull.

09/30/2012 10:32 AMPosted by Demoses

Because minimizing and maximizing mana management is Soooo much fun!!! Wait no its not, really its not. Just because the top 5% love it you may want to ask the other 95% thoughts on the matter. Mana management has not ever been really fun nor epic.

Cry some more.

• Hit realm first priest, realm 2nd (to a hunter) so I know shadow works in solo mode.
• Hit the heroics hard with a guild blood dk tank (who was in all dps greens) and myself in greens with under 3k spirit. I have yet to fully wipe in a heroic.
• Hit up a BG as shadow and facerolled top kills and kbs, 3 deaths, so I know facing unorganized pvp is working. I'm not going to bother trying a random bg as a healer. Looking forward to arenas.
• Took down the only raid boss available (sha of anger) as disc. Came in 3rd hps wise, but I was solely assigned to tank heals. My mana was the fullest of the 7 healers at the end of the encounter (but mostly because I didn't die).
• I worked overtime to make sure my gear is close to BiS as possible before this Tuesday, and I get angry now when tanks don't chain pull in heroics.
• Going to flip on the holy spec on Tuesday and probably faceroll the LFR because I'm going in with 4 crafted epics by then.

I'm not sure why anyone would ever attempt to get a Realm First, and even worse, Why brag about it? As clearly your post is nothing but bragging.
This is actually a serious question. You litterally have to have no life to get a realm first 90. You're at the nerd convention bragging you are the biggest loser. Congratulations, don't forget to eat, sleep and change your World of Warcraft diaper a couple times a day.

• Hit realm first priest, realm 2nd (to a hunter) so I know shadow works in solo mode.
• Hit the heroics hard with a guild blood dk tank (who was in all dps greens) and myself in greens with under 3k spirit. I have yet to fully wipe in a heroic.
• Hit up a BG as shadow and facerolled top kills and kbs, 3 deaths, so I know facing unorganized pvp is working. I'm not going to bother trying a random bg as a healer. Looking forward to arenas.
• Took down the only raid boss available (sha of anger) as disc. Came in 3rd hps wise, but I was solely assigned to tank heals. My mana was the fullest of the 7 healers at the end of the encounter (but mostly because I didn't die).
• I worked overtime to make sure my gear is close to BiS as possible before this Tuesday, and I get angry now when tanks don't chain pull in heroics.
• Going to flip on the holy spec on Tuesday and probably faceroll the LFR because I'm going in with 4 crafted epics by then.

I'm not sure why anyone would ever attempt to get a Realm First, and even worse, Why brag about it? As clearly your post is nothing but bragging.
This is actually a serious question. You litterally have to have no life to get a realm first 90. You're at the nerd convention bragging you are the biggest loser. Congratulations, don't forget to eat, sleep and change your World of Warcraft diaper a couple times a day.

Several members of my guild (not me obviously) got realm first
- Druid
- Warlock
- Priest
- Warrior
- Shaman
- Mage
- Miner
As far as healing goes, my number 1 concern is not a repeat of firelands where shammys were just miserable.

• Hit realm first priest, realm 2nd (to a hunter) so I know shadow works in solo mode.
• Hit the heroics hard with a guild blood dk tank (who was in all dps greens) and myself in greens with under 3k spirit. I have yet to fully wipe in a heroic.
• Hit up a BG as shadow and facerolled top kills and kbs, 3 deaths, so I know facing unorganized pvp is working. I'm not going to bother trying a random bg as a healer. Looking forward to arenas.
• Took down the only raid boss available (sha of anger) as disc. Came in 3rd hps wise, but I was solely assigned to tank heals. My mana was the fullest of the 7 healers at the end of the encounter (but mostly because I didn't die).
• I worked overtime to make sure my gear is close to BiS as possible before this Tuesday, and I get angry now when tanks don't chain pull in heroics.
• Going to flip on the holy spec on Tuesday and probably faceroll the LFR because I'm going in with 4 crafted epics by then.

I'm not sure why anyone would ever attempt to get a Realm First, and even worse, Why brag about it? As clearly your post is nothing but bragging.
This is actually a serious question. You litterally have to have no life to get a realm first 90. You're at the nerd convention bragging you are the biggest loser. Congratulations, don't forget to eat, sleep and change your World of Warcraft diaper a couple times a day.

Anybody who got realm first probably spent a lot less time playing to get to 90 than you did, just saying.

EDIT: Also, we're all posting on a World of Warcraft forum. We're all losers.

I just finished healing a heroic where the tank was drunk, he was also pulling really fast, to the point at one of the boss encounters, I started the fight with 70k mana, I was able to keep everyone alive, it was a tough fight though.

So far, I have been enjoying healing as a shaman

havent been having any problems as disc in dungeons tbh O.o

literally topping damage meters and keeping group alive at same time sometimes, <3 atonement

really helps to make sure you drink immediately after every pull though

I can't say any healers are currently OP. I know that resto druids are still really squishy but blizzard gave us so many escapes that it makes up for it. Our heals aren't OP but a good resto druid is gonna be hard to sit.

Warrior/Hunter comps are gonna chew up and spit out resto druids.

i havent maxed my sham yet or gotten into the any big groups but i do not see were people keep saying shammy have mana issues. the biggest people that complain about sham mana also glyphed riptide and chain.

Healing heroics as a Shaman has been great. The only time I run into mana issues is when people ignore basic mechanics like standing in a puddle of green stuff or in whirlwind. Id say life is good as a shammy atm :D

09/30/2012 11:32 AMPosted by Tonydanza

You litterally have to have no life to get a realm first 90.

I'm not even a realm first, and I'm betting I spent less time getting to 90 than you did.

Healing heroics as a Shaman has been great. The only time I run into mana issues is when people ignore basic mechanics like standing in a puddle of green stuff or in whirlwind. Id say life is good as a shammy atm :D

the only thing i wish was that my mana spring totem lasted longer than 16 sec but i feel shammy are really great were they are at and have not been gutted like people are saying.