Udivka's Big Guide to Priest Healing (WoW)

Hello ladies and gentlemen, today we're discussing the mechanics of healing as a priest. First off, we'll start with some basic notes about builds.

Builds

If you're looking to mainheal raids, then holy is the way to go. Stong efficient heals, with some room to manouver. It's important to remember that certain talents benefit PvE more, or PvP more, so pick your talents wisely! I won't place a 'this is your talent build' but I will make some recommendations.

Holy
2/2 Healing Focus
3/3 Improved Renew
5/5 Divine Fury
3/3 Inspiration
3/3 Improved Healing
1/1 Spirit of Redemption
5/5 Spiritual Guidance
5/5 Spiritual Healing

Discipline
2/2 Imp PW:F
4/5 Silent Resolve (or 5/5, depending on how confident you are about aggro control)
3/3 Meditation

The above talents you need. There are no iffs or buts, those talents SHOULD be in your build. Now, the rest of the points are up to you. At the
moment I personally go 36 points into holy and 25 into Discipline, as I pick up Imp DS and 2 points in Mental Strength to bolster my mana pool.Other healers may prefer to go further into Holy, but I recommend against picking up Lightwell or Circle of Healing. In their current states they are highly situational, and not worth the points.

Stats

The 3 key stats you will be looking at are spirit, mp5, and +healing.
Spirit and mp5 go hand in hand, as they allow you to keep on regenning mana when casting - this is why meditation is a must, to make the most of your spirit. Spirit is also added to your plus healing, so a large amount of spirit will help to boost the strength of your heals.

Prior to karazhan I would recommend:

+1000 healing
100mp5 while casting.

Whether you gain the mp5 from spirit or mp5 itself is up to you, although I would recommend an evenish spread of the stats - ie, don't try to stack mp5 at the expense of spirit or other stats.

Tactics

There are some very simple ways to do well as a healer.

1 - Pre-pom. Before a pull make sure you put PoM on the tank. This allows you to wait longer before landing the first heal, and generates a bit of extra threat, as PoM counts as the person who gets healed doing the healing.

2 - Keep PoM and renew up at all times. This is VERY important. Remember to use PoM whenever it's off cooldown, as it's a free, cheap, threatless heal. Renew is also very useful as it means you have to use direct heals less, and adds a bit of a buffer against you being unable to heal fast enough

3 - Try not to use Fheal. Flash heal is very inefficient. The best way to heal is through Gheals, as these are much more efficient and heal for a large amount.

4 - Queuing Heals. Remember this one. If a pull is going to hit hard queue up a heal so it's ready to land a second or two into the fight. If you get it
right the tank will have aggro and it will mean you're not going to have to start emergency healing, as you've anticipated the first hit. Queuing heals is also very important during fights. Keep queuing a heal and then cancelling it if the tank doesn't need it. Why? It means that if the tank does get hit you can let the heal cast, meaning you respond much faster to the tank being damaged. Remember to queue heals in kara especially.

5 - Don't overheal. Overhealing is a waste of mana. If the tank has taken 2000 damage, and your Gheal heals for 4200, don't use it. It's a huge waste of mana. Overhealing leads to you running oom quickly in a fight, and can lead to wipes on many occasions.

6 - Stay outside of the FSR. The FSR is the 'Five Second Rule'. After casting a spell you don't regen mana fully. Example - if you cast a Gheal, then 2 seconds later a renew, then a few more second a PoM, and so on, you won't take advantage of your full regen. However, if you cast a large number of spells at once, THEN wait until you're out of the FSR you can regen mana much more quickly. Chain all your spells together then wait to cast the next one (still queuing of course) so you get the most of mana regen, eg Casting a Gheal on the tank, and also refreshing the renew on him and the dps, and casting PoM

7 - Don't waste big heals on the DPS on AoE. If a DPS is taking AoE damage, use a renew. It's more mana efficient, and means there isn't a time period where you're casting and the tank isn't taking any heals.

8 - Pot before shadowfiend. This is simply a cooldown game. Pots have shorter cooldowns, so use one of them before your shadowfiend - it will usually allow you to have another pot later in the fight rather than running oom earlier.

And there we have it! Your guide to being an efficient healer! Of course, this is just the bare bones, but it should help you to maximise your healing for now. The more advanced stuff you should pick up as you go along.