Hiya all, thought I would ask for some advice on priests although feeling a bit ..erm nervous considering the response to the rogue topic

As you all know I have a priest, Andais who I have played as shadow in the past but as Anna is dps I have 'slowly' been trying out holy spec.

Just wondering if anyone had any opinions or tips on the priest class/taletnts/spec or anything, useful silv before you start rofl,(just teasing) thank you

To start with here is the spec i go when i am holy.
If you want you can put 5 points into Divine Fury instead of Spell Warding if you find yourself casting lots of greater heals.

With this build you will be most suited to raid healing, as our group heals are among the best in the game especially when glyphed, Prayer of Healing/Circle of Healing/Holy Nova and your emergency heal Divine Hymn.

A typical pull for me in 5 man groups will be to cast Prayer of Mending on tank for initial boost to his threat, renew to absord some of the first hits as most likely tanking more than one mob, then i usually pop a shield on him so i can heal the DPS who started nuking to early.

My number one tip on playing a priest healer is to not let the group (especially the tank) tell you how to heal. If you want to use PW:shield then use it, if you like letting the tank take damage before pulling a big heal out the bag then thats fine too. Its all about finding your personal preference to healing.

Some like to keep everyone at full health as much as possible with small frequent heals, whereas some like to keep out the 5 sec rule(for mana regen) and just use slow big heals.

For group healing if 2 targets need healing at same time i would suggest using flash heal on both, if its 3 or more taking small damage then pop a circle of healing, if its the whole group taking massive damage you want to make sure you got 3 stacks of serendipity then Circle of healing followed by a hasted Prayer of Healing.

Be aware of cloth dps in your group, i try to keep PW:shield on them if possible and a renew just to absorb any aggro damage they inevitably get.

One more important factor to being a succesful healer.....remember to heal yourself

This may seem like a simple task but you are so focused on healing other people you sometimes forget to heal yourself......this is where desperate prayer comes in very handy for a quick self heal followed by a binding heal while you got the tank targetted to heal you both up.

Thank you Shinz that really helped. I always wondered about putting PW:shield on the tank incase it interrupted them getting aggro but what you said makes sense.

That was once true (a rather long time back), now the get aggro from damaged absorbed as well.

Looking into Shinzens and mine spec made me realise I need to respec.
It doesn't correspond with the way I'm healing now a days.

http://www.ensidia.com/forum_topic.php? ... c_id=28845 (Part 1)

http://www.ensidia.com/forum_topic.php? ... c_id=28846 (Part 2)

This site use to help me alot with specs and rotations etc, so May be some help

Thank you both and I will take a look

I just found this text on wow.com.
I wish I had read it years ago - and then maybe been a far better priest by now.

My first step as healer was to not do anything but heal.
Right now I'm training at quickly finding my strife buttons