Stress Free Heroic Instance Healing as a World of Warcraft Priest

Healing in heroic instances and level 80 WOW dungeons as a priest can be difficult but the tips in this guide will help you quickly learn the best spells and macros to keep your entire party in top shape. Take on difficult boss encounters and turn around near wipes using these simple tactics and you will be on your way to being a respected healer on your server without losing your sanity.

When you first join a party, take a moment to check out their gear and achievements. Players who know the instance well and have the proper gear are going to do much better and take less damage in the dungeon which makes your job much easier. Achievements and statistics give away the experience and success vs. failure rates of the other WOW players in your party.

The most critical gear is what the tank is wearing, it doesn't matter what kind of gear or skill you have, if your tank isn't properly geared, you won't be able to keep them alive. Once the tank dies, the entire group will wipe and they will blame you for not healing even though it is not your fault. To tank in level heroics most classes need a minimum of 535 defense. If the tank isn't geared up enough, politely leave the party and go back into the looking for group channel.

Alright, so assuming you have found a well equipped tank and decent party the first thing that you will want to do is to make a macro to quickly bring up your tank as your target and to cast prayer of mending on him or her. Prayer of mending is a great spell for instance healing, once your tank is hit, the prayer of mending will randomly jump to another member of the party and heal them also. Prayer of Mending is great for fights where you are being thrown around or taking damage like the Grand Magus Telestra encounter in the Nexxus instance.

Tank Prayer of Mending Macro

/Target (tank's name)

/Cast Prayer of Mending

The next spell you will want to cast on your tank is renew, always keep renew on your tank. If your tank still needs healing, cast the flash of light spell. When party or pets take damage use circle of healing and renew on them and save flash of light for an emergency individual heals. I have found that this method is very simple to do, and always gets me compliments as a healer in heroics. Often fights will end with everyone at full hit points and I will only be down to 80% mana.

Since patch 3.1 world of warcraft's developers changed how mana regenerates now you can cast continuously and WOW players no longer have to use the old five second rule so that mana regenerates smoothly. When the holy concentration talent is triggered, you will receive a huge spirit based boost in mana regeneration. The trick to playing a priest well is to conserve your mana and to heal wisely. I've found from experience raiding and instancing after the patch that mana regeneration is largely the same if you are careful about using your spells.

Don't heal pets in WOW instances because pets do not have repair bills or cause wipes when they die, let your circle of healing and prayer or mending spells heal pets, save your mana for players. Hunters and warlocks can heal their own pets if they are worried about them dying.

In dire situations where your tank is going to die to a boss, use guardian spirit, renew and spam flash of light on them. If you use the guardian spirit glyph, you can use the guardian spirit spell frequently and use it to conserve mana by greatly increasing the healing your tank receives from your spells.

Talents For A Healing Priest: 17/54/0

This healing build is different from most because it does not take Serendipity or Healing Focus. The reason why Serendipity is not taken it only increases the rate you can cast Prayer of Healing and Greater Heal; both spells are very situational and costly, you aren't going to need to cast those often enough to justify the talent cost. Healing Focus is useless because you should never be getting hit, secondly if you ever do get hit you will just use the fade spell.

In the off chance that you do get hit, chances are you are going to die long before you could cast a heal if you do not have fade ready, power word shield or a tank who is going to intervene to save you. Any WOW tank worth his platemail isn't going to let the healer get hit. Situations where you are taking lots of area of effect damage that would interrupt your spells, Healing Focus still isn't going to help you because you will cast instant heals like renew, prayer of mending or circle of healing.

Add Ons:

If you want to be a stress free healer, get a good add on like Healbot from Curse. Once you have configured Healbot you will have a health bar for each party member that you can set up to use a specific healing spell on a click. I like to have Healbot set up to use my highest rank renew, flash of light and greater heal. Some players like to target people by hand but I have found that it takes longer to heal and that delay can cause someone to die in a difficult encounter. If you use a game pad or programmable keyboard you can use key bindings to target specific players in the party and cast spells on them without using an Add on.

Entry Level Gear:

BobTurkey's Blog has an entry level heroic healing gear guide, which covers each quest that you will need to do to be ready for heroic instances, read it here. Wow Insider also has a great holy priest gear guide Pre-Naxxaramas, check it out here. Loot Rank has a complete list of the best gear, enchants and gems for a holy/discipline priest in order of desirability, check it out here.

Do not worry too much about getting gear, healers are in such high demand on most servers that the instant you turn level 80 you will likely be picked up to help heal in Naxxaramas 10 man and get showered with epic gear. Once you have mastered your role as a healer, you can get into almost any raid or heroic run that you need.