Single-Target Priestly Healing in “Echoes of Doom”

Priest, Raiding

Friday night the fine people of the Drunken Badgers decided it was time to return to Black Temple and get our progression on.  In prior weeks, we managed to get to get up to Teron Gorefiend, but had never progressed beyond that point.  As many other people have noted, Patch 3.0.2 changed everything.  We trounced Teron Gorefiend.  We ganked Gurtogg Bloodboil.  We mauled Mother Shahraz.  We ran into a little bit of problems with the Council of the Illidari, but it was still impressive for a raid full of people who had never even seen the fights, much less participated in them.

While I might lament how our sense of accomplishment has been minimized by the nerfs applied in “Echoes of Doom,” it really wasn’t that that made the evening so unenjoyable.  It was more how ineffective I was as a healer.

As I’ve noted many times before, I’m a Spirit-obsessed priestaphiliac.  While many other healing priests gleefully opted to learn the forty-one point talent Circle of Healing, I clung tenaciously to my Improved Divine Spirit, lavishly sharing my Spirit bounty with friends, party members, and fellow raiders alike.   It meant that I not only brought my healing prowess to a raid but also some added utility that the other Holy priests were unable to do.  Despite lacking a group heal that was capable of being used on the raid, I was often near the top of the healing meters or even the top healer.  It ascertained that I was in fact a viable and contributing member of the raid.

Patch 3.0.2 has changed all that — especially in regards to Circle of Healing, which now heals the five people within range who have the lowest health.  I decided to stick with a variation of my 23/38/0 build that allowed me to remain mana efficient with decent heals while retaining my beloved Improved Divine Spirit; the two other Holy priests in our raid went a full sixty-one points into the Holy tree.  The disparity between our performance was so ridiculously enormous that I found myself disappointed by the changes.  Between two Circle of Healing priests and a Restoration shaman with Chain Heal, single-target healers such as people with my build or Holy paladins just couldn’t contribute in the raid.  By the time we managed to get a single heal off, some three so-called brain heals had managed to top off everyone who needed a heal.

I had effectively become superfluous.

I think what disappoints me most is not that I wasn’t beneficial to the raid, but how I felt that our priests were being pigeonholed into using a single spell for most of the instance.  While I’ve jokingly made derisive comments in the past regarding healers that only spam Circle of Healing¹, it seems like this is the only spell of use for the Holy priest.  And this saddens me because I love healing as a priest so much because I have so many spells within my arsenal, ranging from single-target healing, group healing, a preemptive heal, a spell that prevents damage, and more.  I was proud that I had a variety of spells at my disposal and knew which ones to use at the right time for the most effective and beneficial results.

Honestly, I chose to heal as a priest because pre-expansion I had grown tired of casting only one or two spells on both my Holy paladin and Restoration shaman.

While intellectually I realize that these talents are intended for upwards to level 80 instances and that I will be acquiring ten more talent points within the upcoming months, it still pains me that for the remaining weeks until the Wrath of the Lich King expansion a single target Holy healing priest who chooses to pick up the Improved Divine Spirit buff will be unable to contribute effectively or efficiently in a raid.  And I refuse to pick up a single talent so that I can mindlessly spam that heal and feel like I’m contributing.  So, rather than mope or decry how Blizzard has ruined me personally², I decided to take an entirely different approach.

Perky priestess Csilla Kovács — who has become my priestly pride and joy, standing well above my bevvy of other priests³ — has forsaken her Holy ways and gone Discipline!  And I’m loving it!

I’ve long wanted to try raiding as a Discipline priest, but had chosen not to because I was typically relied on heavily by my raid leaders to bring unadulterated healing power.  However, Discipline has found further utility in raids due to a number of changes made to the tree and the new talents that have appeared there since “Echoes of Doom.”  I’ve chosen a 59/2/0 Discipline build that lets me pick the talents that I think would make an effective single-target healer while bringing a lot of utility to the raid.  This build will morph into a 59/12/0 Discipline build once Csilla reaches the new level cap.

There are a couple of things of note with my new build.  The current lack of Holy Specialization means that my critical effect chance with Holy spells is pretty low at the moment, especially for what seems like a very crit-heavy tree.  By not having Divine Fury, the vast majority of my heals are currently ponderous and slow, but that is easily rectified with both Borrowed Time and the vast amount of Haste that I’ve collected on other pieces in the past.  In fact, I was amazed when Borrowed Time and a proc on the Scarab of the Infinite Cycle⁴ allowed me to cast a Greater Heal in under 1.5 seconds.  With Divine Fury, I could very well be casting Greater Heals in under a second!

The build focuses on single target healing prowess with added utility, especially with Power Infusion and Pain Suppression.  The goal isn’t to get the large heals of the Holy tree⁵, but rather reduce the amount of healing that is required.  This is accomplished by making heavy use of Power Word: Shield and talents such as Divine Aegis and Grace.  The build also has a very different emphasis for gearing.  In the past I would select gear, gems, and enchants that increased both my Bonus Healing and my Spirit; instead, I’ll be stacking for Bonus Healing, Intellect, and Haste — a combination of stats that will supposedly be very common in Wrath of the Lich King where much of the gear appears to be Haste-heavy.  The lack of Spiritual Guidance and the changes done to Improved Divine Spirit that grant a flat increase to Spell Power as oppposed to a number based on a percentage of the player’s Spirit stat means that Spirit is significantly less important to me now.

At the moment, I’m trying to decide if it would be best to select gems with the Critical Strike Rating such as the Potent Pyrestone or Intellect like the Luminous Pyrestone.  While five Critical Strike Rating is near 0.23% crit, five Intellect is both a little over 0.06% crit and 75 mana.  Though I will have less mana regen due to the reduction of Spirit on my gear, Rapture seems to be very effective in keeping my mana pool mostly full.  Furthermore, as a human Discipline priest I have both The Human Spirit⁶ and Enlightenment, both of which are likely to increase my Spirit so that I still have some semblence of Spirit-based mana regeneration.  As a result, I’m not sure if I really need to increase my mana pool further.

Oh, and Penance is a simply amazing spell!  I was using this both in grouping with people and on the battlefield and it’s just an incredibly versatile spell.  If I chose to use a Power Word: Shield prior to casting Penance, I was able to quickly top off a player or strike my enemies.  It’s the priestly version of the paladin spell Holy Shock, but so much more fun!  Plus each hit of the channeled spell has the opportunity to give a Grace buff, which means that in two seconds a Dicipline priest could both reduce the damage taken by his target by 3% while increasing the healing she does by 6%.  Some basic theorycrafting shows that this spell may have both a higher Health Per Mana and Health Per Second than the staple priestly healing spell Greater Heal.

Discipline truly is love.

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