Going from tree healing to priest healingFollow

I've played a tree since BC, and I still enjoy it. But I want to expand my healing horizons, so I've been leveling up a priest. She's 49 and dual specced Shadow and Holy. I'd like to start running instances with her so that by the time I get her to 80, the rhythms and reactions will be natural.

In the attempt to iron out my macros and addons, I've run a few battlegrounds. I do alright, but I've realized that I rely almost exclusively on Renew. I throw out a couple of Shields when I remember, but my instinct is still to throw as many hots as I can. Is this alright? Or should I force myself to get used to the wide variety of direct heal spells I have available?

On that note, I saw that my Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal spells all have the same cast time and mana cost in their tooltips. If that's the case, why would I ever cast anything but Greater Heal? I suppose it's the result of Divine Fury, but it seems strange to render two spells completely obsolete.

When healing with my tree, I use rejuvenation as my primary raid heal, with wild growth thrown in every cooldown. I toss up a regrowth to set another hot on the tank and/or to catch up if any raid member is taking more damage than the rejuv can cover. If they're really hurting, I'll use nourish, but that's pretty rare. Unless I'm tank healing (or hell is hovering around 25 degrees Fahrenheit) I never use healing touch. I always feel like the timing has to be too perfect when using direct heals - in the 2-3 seconds it takes to wind up a big spell, my tank gets awfully close to dead.

I had assumed I'd be able to do a nearly direct translation when switching to my priest. Renew by default, shield if incidental damage gets heavy, Circle of Healing (when I get it) for splash, and Greater Heal in emergencies.

This is kinda like trying to learn Russian. Enough of it looks similar to what I know that I just seem to get more confused :P

EDIT

And one more thing, my regular tanks are a warrior and a pally. The warrior strenuously objects to being bubbled, and if I remember right, pallies get mana regen from being healed. So, should I avoid shielding them whenever possible? How do discipline priests heal warriors without ******** with their rage?


Edited, Nov 16th 2009 1:39am by Laecy

I wish I could help but I was resto for like a week a year ago.

To be more tree similar go with a CoH and Renew based build, you get free Nourishes(FH) and hasted PoH which is like um, group Nourish.

You will only notice a difference when you try and cleanse poison or people yell at you for not clearing diseases.

Keep PoM on CD. PoM is sexy regardless of spec. Get PoM tracker. Its SWEEET.

A couple of things regarding your build. SoL procs come from crits. Renew and PW:S will not crit (Empowered Renew and Glyph of PW:S will, but that comes later). If you are merely rolling Renews and shielding, you will not see any SoL procs.

The glyph of Renew does not add any more healing, it merely squeezes the same amount of healing into a shorter timeframe. If this is what you want, fine. Just thought I'd point it out as it is the source of much confusion.

Lesser Heal and Heal... You will never use them again. Flash Heal and Greater Heal are the only single target direct heals you will use.

With pallies, I will keep an eye on their mana bar and refrain from using shields when they are low, if possible. If you need to toss a shield to do your job effectively, by all means put it on them. If the choice is between a starved tank and a dead tank...

If a rage tank balks at shields, have them pull a mob without attacking while shielded. They should see their rage building before the shield breaks.

Thanks much all.

There are a couple other changes I think I'm going to have to make. First of all, I've never had to be aware of overhealing. When I'm healing on my tree, I see a little bit of movement on someone's Grid square, and I pop a hot on them and move on. Without having any little heals, there really wasn't an option. Besides with idols, talents, and regen, my rejuvs were practically free.

The result of this was that I had an instant set-and-forget reaction to anyone taking any damage at all. Now, I wonder if I need to develop an awareness of how hard each spell can hit, and wait for someone to take that much damage before spending the time and mana on them. Or is Flash Heal intended for just this issue, and I need to figure out when it's appropriate?

I guess what I'm trying to get adjusted to is the idea of timing. With hots, you have to set them ticking as soon as damage starts so they can balance it out. With direct heals, it seems you have to wait for a given amount of deficit to accumulate before hitting the target with a lot of health.

Or is that balanced by having cast times? Do you start winding up a heal as soon as someone gets hit so that by the time your spell lands, they need it?

I don't even wait for heavy AOE. If there are more than a couple people without full bars and CoH is up, I hit it. Even just to top off people who aren't going to be taking damage again anytime soon. I love Surge of Light that much. I'm sure there is some math that will tell you that the cost of casting CoH that often if it's not healing 5/6 people is not worth the reward of the Flash Heal or Smite. But I don't care. I love Surge of Light that much. It's not even the mana return so much as the instant cast. Laecy, you mention battlegrounds in the OP. In raids these days I suspect you can't mess with efficiency much (although I shamelessly spammed not-quite-necessary CoH's all the time in Naxx ). But if you're doing PVP, that instant Flash has saved someone's butt (often my own) for me many, many times.

Regarding tanks, their rage will be fine if you stay disc and make heavy use of shields. Rage basically comes from doing damage now, not so much taking it. And pallies are fine with divine plea + bosanc.