Here is a wonderful wow priest guide for raiding Ulduar, written by Poptisse, a member of great Ensidia guild on Magtheridon,EU.
WoW priest guide for Ulduar
A few of you might have read my Sunwell holy priest gear guide. I'm back this time with a wow priest guide for raiding Ulduar where I will include as much as I can of what might be useful.
First of all I want to make clear that I'm not trying to say what's right and what's wrong in this guide. I'm writing if from my own personal point of view of the game. I know from personal experience that all priests have very different opinons from each other when it comes to gems and certain pieces of gear specifically. If you have any questions you can PM me here on the site, post on the forums or post a comment.
So what tasks should a holy priest be assigned to?
I am 90% of the time put on raidhealing, apart from the exceptional boss now and then. Putting a holy priest on maintank healing is a waste of effective raid healing unless you have no other choice. A Shaman or a Paladin is better for that task.
There's basically 2 different kind of specs that I could consider using myself, it really depends on what fight, your playstyle and what your gear is like.
-This spec
here has Mental Agility. This is the spec I usually raid with due to the fact that I use renew, POM and COH a lot, so the 10% less mana is very useful.
-This spec
here here however, does not have mental agility. Instead it has Test of Faith and Healing Prayers, a nice spec for a short fight that requires high HPS.
These are two very viable specs for a Holy Priest, although the first spec is best overall (you really want mental agility).
I'm not really going to go into depth on why I picked certain talents, but the revamped Serendipity is a must because the hasted Prayer of Healing is insanely good.
If we look back in time you can easily see that the best stats for a priest have changed a lot. In TBC spirit and haste were the kings, especially with the 5 second rule regen. But since the 3.1 spirit nerf I can't see spirit being prioritised at all. I get what is on my items, but on sockets and enchants it is last priority.
For manaregen I would strongly suggest intellect over spirit, at ANY time. As long as you have replenishment in your group that is (which you should, even in 10 man). Intellect is by far the strongest mp5 you can obtain at the moment, it beats spirit by far. You can't afford standing for 30 seconds regaining mana anymore. That will most likely kill your entire raid, at least in Ulduar.
Spellpower is not hugely important for a holy priest even though your spells do scale well from it. You gain a lot from inner fire to start with. You get a lot of spell power from pieces of gear and your enchants. Due to this I'm focused a lot more on regen instead when it comes to the parts I can choose. To be able to last longer and spam heal is more important then every heal healing for a little bit more, most of the time that's overhealing anyway.
Haste is also an important stat, but not game breaking. It's really useful when casting a lot of Prayer Of Healing's, but also to lower your global cooldown for your instant cast spells. I'd say around 450-500 is good enough for Ulduar 25 man.
When I entered Ulduar, my gear was basically focused around the fact that I wanted to last through longer fights. I was around 21k mana unbuffed, 500 haste and 2350~ spellpower with inner fire. Completely buffed that was around 26k mana, 500 haste, 2450 spellpower (not including totems) and 22k health. I never had any big mana issues, although I used shadowfiend more then I ever did in Naxxramas. Of course for the longer fights I always popped a mana potion. I have to say that since WoTLK, rejuvenation potions are superior to mana potions. This is because you can pop them if you ever need a healthpot and you get mana at the same time. Instead of using a manapot OR a healthpot.
For the set bonuses, the t7.5 2-set bonus is extremely good. You want to keep it as long as you possibly can. For the Ulduar tier 8 sets the bonuses aren't really that amazing. The seperate parts are good, but don't focus too much on the bonuses.
Trinkets is really a personal choice. For myself I use the Jewelcrafting Intellect trinket - Figurine Sapphire Owl with dual 16 int gems in it.
My second trinket is dependent on what fight it is. Sometimes I use the Egg of Mortal Essence for when there is a lot of raid healing and the Forethought Talisman for the more single target fights. If you can afford it I would recommend Je'Tze's Bell also for additional mana regen.
Remember that it is and will always be about balance. You don't want 1500 spellpower and 35k mana. Neither do you want 3000 spellpower and 15k mana. Balance it so that you know that you can heal through a whole fight, rather then going out of mana halfway through. In that situation the extra spellpower won't help you at all.
There's a whole universe of different food, elixirs and flasks you can use today. On PTR I used flasks basically all the time only to see how it worked out, but came to the conclusion that elixirs are my personal choice.
For the Ulduar progress I had stacked up on:
Guru's Elixir (20 all stats)
Elixir Of Mighty Thoughts (45 int)
Spellpower Elixir (58 spellpower)
Pure Mojo flasks, which I never used
Frost Wyrm Flasks, never used those either
Stoneblood Flasks, you never know when you need extra HP.
Wellfeds:
40 Haste / 40 stamina
46 Spellpower / 40 stamina
40 Spirit / 40 stamina
In the end I always ended up with SP or Guru's Elixir and Mighty Thoughts + 40 haste food.
I found that combo to be the most balanced choice for me.
Using elixirs might be expensive during progress if you wipe a lot since they dont persists through death. If you plan on using a flask, the Frost Wyrm one is way better then the Pure Mojo since the tiny amount of MP5 is not worth it.
-Gems:
There are several different gems that you can consider being viable, although I would never use them myself.
I socket this way:
Red: 9 sp 8 int
Blue: Prismatic 27 int (8 int 3mp5 works aswell if you're not a JWC)
Yellow: 16 int
There's other options though:
Red: 16 sp / 9sp 8 spirit / 9 sp 3 mp5 / 9 sp 8 haste
Blue: 9 sp 8 spirit / 9 sp 3 MP5 / 16 spirit / 8 int 12 stam / 8 int 8 spirit / 8 spirit 8 haste
Yellow: 16 haste / 16 crit / 8 int 8 spirit / 8 spirit 8 haste
It all comes down to your own personal taste. If you have problems with manaregen I would always suggest int before spirit and mp5 however.
For metagems there are a few different ones to pick from as well, some being better then others.
Insightful Earthsiege Diamond is overall the best meta for a healer. It gives you 21 int and chance to restore mana (600) on spellcast (45 sec internal cd). It's the only one I'm going to mention since it's far ahead of all the others.
-Enchants:
This is a little bit easier, there's not much to pick from.
Head enchant = 30 spellpower 8 mp5. Wyrmrest Accord (revered)
Shoulder enchant = 24 sp 6 mp5 (sons of hodir exalted)
Chest = 10 stats
Cloak = I'm a tailor so I use the Darkglow Embroidery and I guess even since the buff to Lightweave Embroidery that's viable as well. It gives 250 spellpower for 15 seconds and does not seem to have a internal cooldown at the moment.
If you're not a tailor I suggest 23 haste.
Bracers: 30 Spellpower
Gloves: 28 Spellpower
Legs: 50 Spellpower 20 spirit (Brilliant Spellthread) The Sapphire Spellthread with 50 sp and 30 stam is a good choice aswell if you have low HP or are doing a high raid damage boss.
Boots: Tuskar's Vitality (15 stam + run speed)
There's other options for some of the slots but I wouldn't suggest them at Ulduar raiding level.
Every wow priest going to Ulduar needs certain glyphs. I included them into this guide.-Glyphs:
Minor:
Glyph Of Shadowfiend: A must. It will restore mana to you even if you fiend dies early and we all know how bad the survivability of our fiend already is.
Glyph Of Fortitude: It's really good if you have to buff in combat for example.
Glyph Of Levitate: You never know when you have to use it, there is no more "Missing reagent: Light Feather"
Major:
Glyph of Guardian Spirit: Really good glyph, I went through wotlk until 3.1 without Guardian Spirit because 3 mins CD was too much for something that might not even be consumed. With this glyph the talent becomes way more viable.
Glyph of Circle of Healing: A must for all CoH specced priests, no discussion about it.
Glyph of Flash Heal: Good glyph that I suggest all priests to have.
Glyph of PoH: Awesome for HPS fights.
Glyph of Renew: I've been using this a lot myself, usually in 25-man renew doesnt get all their ticks anyway, so might aswell increase the healing on the ticks they do get.
-Preheal and predict dmg:
As most of you probably know by now, there is no real rotation for a healer. You have to make quick decisions and a situation can change in a millisecond. A really good healer can predict incoming damage and from that start healing before the damage actually hits.
Take an example, Mimiron p2. You know that he will do Heat Wave, you know that people will take damage. How do you help yourself and other healers keep people topped before they take dmg?
What I usually do is that I keep renews rolling and PoM on cd all the time so it starts bouncing as soon as the dmg hits.
A nice rotation for quick raid healing however is to CoH -> PoM -> Flash Heal preferably on surge of light proc (atleast 1 stack of serendipity is nice) -> PoH.
Its a lot different from fight to fight though. You might have to move a lot which prevents you from casting PoH and you might want to use renew instead.
A holy priest does not have a lot of cooldowns to keep track of. Inner focus, Shadowfiend, Guardian Spirit (counting long cooldowns) are our main concerns. For the shadowfiend, I suggest using it at 60%~ mana, maybe even up to 70% depending on the length of the fight. It has a 5 min cooldown, but in most cases if you use it early you can actually use it again.
Make sure you don't cast your fiend for example when Ignis is casting flame jets. What will happen? Your fiend will die. You want to gain as much as you can from it, so cast it when you know there isn't going to be any AoE damage for at least a few seconds. A dead fiend is a wasted fiend.
-Addons:
Configuring your UI for optimal healing is also an easy shortcut to becoming a better healer.
Centering Raidframes/Unitframes/actionbars will make it way easier too keep an eye on everything on the same time. Avoid of having unitframe in top left corner, grid in bottom right, and bossmods in bottom left. You see the problem. The less you have to scout around your screen, the better it is.
Grid is really good raidframe, combine with grid quickhealth (updates healthbars way faster using combatlogs).
Pitbull is my personal favourite unitframes, mainly because you can set them up in basically ANY way you want. Ag_Unitframes and pearl have their limits.
Forte Xorcist for keeping track of renews.
OmniCC for cooldownmonitor on your actionbars.
It's also very good to have an addon that keeps track on your Surge Of Light / Serendipity / Trinkets etc. Personally I use SatrinasBuff Frames with one filter: d<60&my
This displays all my own proccs that are less then 60 seconds long in a seperate frame close to my unitframe.
-Keybinds:
Use them and use them for everything. Bind your most used spells to your favorite keybinds (try them out, see what you prefer). Don't forget that you can also modify them with shift, ctrl and alt.
Clicking to heal is one of the worst things you can possibly do. Nobody can be a good, fast reacting healer that way.
-Macros:
Another thing that I use myself is OnMouseOver macros for all my heals.
I got the impression that it saves me a few milliseconds by not clicking to swap target, seeing as I'm often using instant casts.
OnMouseOver macro I'd say is however a MUST for Abolish/Dispel magic.
#showtooltip Circle of Healing(rank 7)
/cast [mod,target=player]
[target=mouseover,help,nodead]
[help,nodead]
[nogroup,target=player]
[target=targettarget,help,nodead]Circle of healing(rank 7)
Thats how my macros look, I just change the spellname. From what I've heard Clique works somewhat the same way, but I've never really tried using that addon myself.
I love playing priest more then anything else. I've been playing it from day 1 and I will continue until I stop. It's a fun class due to its many ways of healing and the many different abilities we have. I also love raidhealing, esp fights where I push my hps to the max and right now priests are extremely strong at that.
I find healing interesting in many ways though, I also have a holy paladin and a resto druid, I guess its the responsibility and the fact that it's never the same game.
Hope you find some useful information in this
guide for a wow priest. Remember, we're all different so no blaming and shaming. It's written from my own PoV and even though it might not be what you prefer, many of these things are down to personal preference.
Feel free to ask questions on our forum or send me a PM through the website. I very rarely reply in-game.
Enjoy Ulduar!
WoW priest guide for Ulduar
WoW priest guide for Ulduar
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