Did you get what you wanted from 3.1?
With 3.2 due out very soon, patch 3.1 is really winding down. It seems like we’ve come a long way from the days of levelling up, gearing up in heroics, and guilds finding themselves clearing Naxx in their first couple of lock outs. 3.2 dawns on a very different world (of Warcraft) from the one we started with, but are you done with 3.1?
Ulduar
In my view Ulduar has really vindicated Blizzard in terms of the raiding scene. It’s proved hard enough and enjoyable enough to keep most of us going back. I would say if anything there has been too much Ulduar content. Few guilds heave their Rusted Proto-Drakes, or have completed the really tricky hard mode achievements. Many more casual guilds, including my own haven’t cleared all the content, or got their full Tier 8. There would be room for another few months of raiding.
Back in the day we’d have seen all the regular raiding guilds move on to the next tier while the rest of us languish in Ulduar for another few months before hitting Tier 9 content. This time around it seems like Blizzard don’t want us to gear up in Ulduar, we’re supposed to push on through badge gear and “normal mode” raids straight into the next tier of content. So Ulduar really is looking like it will be left behind.
The first legendary healer weapon since Atiesh dropped by the waydise. A relatively quick patch, a slow weapon to collect from 25 man only raids, and offered in a conspicuously mid tier raid. Even with a stat makeover to make it good in tier 9 content, I would say Valanyr will be one of the more forgettable legendaries. Inevitably a few will still farm for it, but it’s missed it’s chance to have the impact of a Thunderfury or a Warglaives of Azzinoth.
I think it’s fair to say that Flame Leviathan was better than most people feared. I know some dislike it, but I found it very well balanced on the hard modes, and a lot of fun even after repeated clears. I’d put it up with Mimiron as my favourite boss of the instance. It makes for a very impressive opening to the instance, and a bit of variation in terms of the role you can play.
Achievements and the Argent Tournament:
Achievements got old real fast. I think somewhere around the Argent Crusade I stopped caring. I like mounts, pets and titles probably more than the next guy, but achievements for their own sake quickly lost my interest in 3.1. If an achievement drives you to try new content like Glory of the Hero then that’s great. Too many achievements only reward points, and a quick bit of guild spam and I think I’ve really grown out of that.
What glyphs should I take?
Picks first, then there is a run down of all the majo glyphs incase you want a little more information.
Picks
Discipline Picks
I raid with Glyph of Penance, Glyph of Flash Heal, and Glyph of Power Word: Shield. In ten mans I would consider dropping Flash Heal for Glyph of Prayer of Healing if you can spare the mana.
Holy Picks
My picks would be Guardian Spirit, Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing. If you need more mana take Flash Heal over Guardian Spirit for 10 mans, and over Prayer of Healing for 25 mans.
Shadow Picks
My picks would be Shadow, Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay as they offer the best DPS boosts and the range advantage from Mind Flay glyph can be a massive boost in certain situations.
Rundown of all the options:
Shadow
Dispersion : Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 45 sec.
You should not really have mana issues as Shadow so being able to use Dispersion more often would only really be useful for avoiding damage. It doesn’t work on many dangerous boss abilities. Essentially this is a PvP glyph and not worth it for PvE.
Mind Flay : Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but it only reduces the target’s movement speed by 10%.
A definite PvE glyph and not a bad one. For fights with positioning advantages like Hodir, Iron Council, Vezax etc where you don’t always have a choice where to stand, this glyph is a really nice one. Even where it doesn’t matter where you stand, any time you spend chasing the boss to get in range is a huge amount of wasted DPS.
Should I gem for…?
I was chatting to a fellow guild healer today and I realised we held different opinions on something I thought was really straight forward. I had always been told, and looking at complicated maths, it seems correct to say, Discipline Priests and Holy Paladins share pretty much the same gear preferences. Spirit is not fantastic, Intellect is great, Spell power, Haste, Crit are all good stuff. So I was surprised to find how much the two of us disagreed about how to gear our characters.
Holy Priests, if you’re about to stop reading because it’s a Discipline article, I promise you it isn’t.
He’s a Holy Paladin and the guild Jewel Crafter, and when I got a new hat from Flame Leviathan 10man, I was looking to gem it. The hat wants a blue gem, but given how bad the socket bonus is (+8 spirit), I decided to ignore it. I was weighing up 16 intellect, versus 19 spell power. It ought to be the most cut and dry decision. Spell power is the best way of increasing my healing. Intellect is the best way of increasing my mana. So it ought to be simple, do I need more mana or more healing?
My thinking is, I’ve got enough mana, you can’t have enough healing. His opinion was very much, I already heal for a lot, you can never have too much mana.
Healers, more than anybody, have to be responsible for their own gearing decisions. Whether you heal the raid or you heal the tank. Whether you usually heal along with a Shaman or a Paladin. Whether you heal aggressively or conservatively. Whether you glyph Guardian Spirit or Flash Heal. All these things influence how much Intellect you need versus Spell Power. Glyph of Flash Heal means you can get away with less intellect, but because you don’t have Glyph of Guardian Spirit, you might want more more Haste to make up for that. Just an example.
I think, I’ve got enough mana for now. If I don’t usually run out of mana, then I am in a sense “over the mana cap”. That’s to say, just like a player who has more hit rating than they need, that extra hit is wasted. If I’m ending every fight with 50% mana, then I don’t need as much mana as I have. Mana sitting unused in my mana pool is wasted stats. If I never need to use Shadow Fiend, then I should ditch some intellect because clearly I’ve got too much. Thus I’d rather gem for Spell Power so I can heal bigger if the boss is doing lots of damage. Or gem for Haste if I find that sometimes my heal lands just that half a second too late.
My Paladin friend on the other hand feels differently, and justifyably so. His feeling is, Paladin heals already land for fourteen thousand, he commonly has overhealing because of it and so, for him, more spell power is wasted. On the other hand, more intellect means for those fights where the other healer dies, he’s almost always got enough mana to see him through to the end. If it’s possible to solo heal the fight, he’ll almost always have enough mana to do it. So who’s right?
Power Aura’s in (too much) Depth
This may well be the most boring post you ever read, but I’ve been asked to post up my Power Aura configuration strings so people can easily try them out. If the amount of them scares you, I’d say by far the most useful are Serendipity, Renew, Surge of Light, Borrowed Time, Penance, and Circle of Healing. If you aren’t interested in Power Aura’s at all, don’t read this post.
What it does:
Last post I talked about Power Aura’s which is a mod for tracking all kinds of things and displaying them by popping up teenie tiny, (or huge) icons or small pictures on your screen.
For example, you can use it to track when spells are available for use. When targets have debuffs, when they are missing certain buffs, when you have certain buffs. You can use it to track your mana, health, runic power etc. You can use it to show when you are silenced or stunned. You can use it to show when a specific ability has procced. Basically, for all sorts of things.
It’s not the best mod for all of these things. For example, if you’re a shadow priest you could use Power Aura’s to track your DoTs and spell cooldowns but I wouldn’t suggest it. You can get the same sort of effect, with more precision, and more detailed information, using an addon like Face Melter or Event Horizon.
How to use it
For the most part the mod is very straight forward.
You open the main screen with the /powa command.
This will give you a screen that looks something like the macro creation screen WoW uses.
You select “New” to create a new aura, you can import, export, edit, preview, etc etc.
When you press “New” another screen appears in which you create the aura itself. There are essentially two things you need to make sure you have. The first is a icon or a picture which is displayed, and a position for it to be displayed in. The second is a condition which says when the picture is displayed (for example, when you have a certain buff, or when a spell is available.
Tracking your cooldowns
It’s hardly news, or it certainly shouldn’t be, that Priests, just like every other class, spec and mob under the (fake) sun have cooldowns. As a DPS you use your cooldowns in a straight up rotation. Unless you are waiting for a DPS burn you spend cooldowns pretty much as soon as they are ready. As a healer you’re blowing cooldowns in response to the positioning of all the pretty multi-colored health bars and the abilities of the boss. In either case it’s important to keep a tight track of all your cooldowns. As a DPS player if you don’t recognise that Mind Blast is ready, you lose DPS. As a healer on the other hand the danger is not a loss of DPS but possibly the loss of a player.
There are two things you can do wrong. The first is to forget to use a cooldown. I’ve talked about this a little in the “Being a Hero” posts: If players are dying and you are consistently finding you have Pain Suppression, Guardian Spirit, Divine Hymn, Face etc off cooldown then you could probably of handled things better. Don’t assume the mistake occurred when the player died. Often I realise that the mistake was not letting that player die, but occurred ten to fifteen seconds earlier when I ought to have used Divine Hymn or Pain Suppression to get control of the situation. The death is result of something which I failed to do much earlier.
The other mistake, and the one that I usually make, is to try to use a spell when it is on cooldown. Most commonly this occurs with very short cooldown spells like Penance where you want to use it very often. It also occurs commonly with very very long cooldown spells like Divine Hymn where I try to use it and forget that it is still on cooldown from the previous boss attempt. Trying to cast a spell while it is on cooldown is often the worse mistake. If I try to cast Penance on the tank and nothing happens I usually will hesitate. “What happened? Am I silenced? Oh Penance is on cooldown, is it almost ready? Should I wait one second for the cooldown to end?” Usually the tank dies about now.
Whilst these mistakes will always occur, they are definitely reducible if you find ways to better keep track of your cooldowns and display this information. My suggestion is Addons and, in my view, displaying the same information in multiple places on the screen makes a big difference. Providing redundant information means that wherever your eyes are looking, whether it’s health bars, action bars, or you’re trying to manoeuvre around the battle field, you’ll always have the important information right in front of your eyes. Obviously don’t make the information too intrusive, if you’re obscuring big parts of the screen that’s bad, but I think the mistake I used to make was thinking that I only needed to display each bit of information in one place.
My Addon suggestions are:
OmniCC – Displays the cooldown of your spells numerically on your action bars. This is much much easier to see than the standard blizzard effect which is neither quantitative nor very obvious at a glance. Works fantastic without much tweaking at all.
PowaAuras – A very popular Addon amongst DPSers to track important debuffs but this mod is extremely powerful. You can make it display icons, or shapes on the screen in response to all sorts of things. It will show you when spells are available, the cooldown remaining, when you, your target, your focus etc have certain buffs or debuffs on them. All kinds of things. For example: When a spell becomes available the icon appears, when the spell is used the cooldown timer appears. When I get a Serendipity buff the icon appears, additional stacks of the buff are displayed by additional icons stacking up in a tower so they are easy to take in at a glance. Anyway, definitely 100% recommend it for pretty much anything you want to do.
Satrina Buff Frames – A very powerful Addon for displaying buffs and debuffs for your player and your target. I use it for displaying things like Renew, Weakened Soul on my target so I know when these spells are worth recasting. It’s also great for showing up important debuffs. For example, Bosses with uncommon but key abilities like Ignis’ Slag Pot can be displayed very very clearly on your screen when they occur without otherwise intruding on your play. Again, like Powa Auras this mod takes a while to tweak with.
So, if you are finding yourself failing to use, or trying to use cooldowns you can’t, then consider ways of better displaying that information in your UI
Serendipity & Prayer of Healing
By far the biggest heal in a Priests arsenal is Prayer of Healing and even with the upcoming 3.2 nerf it out heals every other Priest spell by a long way. Greater heal crits for around fourteen thousand, Prayer of Healing currently crits for twice that! What Serendipity gives you is the ability to blast the raid with giant Prayers of Healing at a moment’s notice.
Using stacks of Serendipity you can be dropping a Prayer of Healing as fast as you could cast a flash heal. The key is being able to build up Serendipity stacks as fast as possible, and being able to use them at the right time.
Serendipity wills stack whenever you cast a Flash Heal or a Binding Heal. Flash Heal is not a fantastic raid heal spell. It’s fast but it’s only one target out of the whole raid. Binding Heal is usually the better choice so long as you aren’t overhealing too much. However Surge of Light procs give free, instant cast Flash Heals which is not something to scoff at. Flash Heal is not the best raid heal, but it fills a role.
The Circle of Life:
The result is a really neat synergy.
Circle of Healing will do AoE healing and probably proc Surge of Light.
You spend you free Flash Heal for healing and a Serendipity buff.
Throw out a renew on a player for a small instant heal (and possible Surge of Light proc).
You cast Binding Heal for more healing, more chance of crits, and more Serendipity buffs.
You cast Prayer of Healing with 2-3 haste buffs and in the process probably proc Surge of Light again.
Back to Circle of Healing and repeat.
So the idea here is to let Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Surge of Light and Binding/Flash heals top up the people really in trouble whilst Prayer of Healing takes massive advantage of the Serendipity buffs to land giant splash heals on whole groups at a time.
So that’s how we get Serendipity buffs, but how to best use them?
Making the best use of Prayer of Healing
Prayer of Healing will hit 5 people in a specific group. So it’s important we think very hard about which 5 players to heal. Because it’s not a smart heal we can’t rely on it to heal the 5 people most in need of it. Therefore it’s up to us to ensure that the people who need healing are all in the same group.
We do that by careful use of our “filler” spells, the things we used to generate our Serendipity buffs. So for example, we cast Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending, Renew, Flash Heal and Binding Heal to help generate our Serendipity stacks. If we were to throw these out randomly we would not expect to have a good target for Prayer of Healing. Chances are that no single party would have 5 players on low health, they’d each have a mix of players near death and players at full.
This is what I call spot healing, and it’s the bread and butter of a good healer. You aren’t just healing anybody who needs it, you’re being careful about the sorts of heals you use, and who you use them on to create a situation where you can benefit the most from your real powerhouse heals. If you just go crazy with Prayer of Healing straight off the bat individual players may not survive long enough to see that Prayer land. So topping up players before trying to cast a Prayer is an important stage, and with Serendipity you benefit even more from this Spot Healing stage. Once people are out of danger and you have created a nice juicy target group, that’s when you come in with the big slow heals like Prayer of Healing.
So the process of generating our Serendipity buffs is important to helping us make the best use of our Prayer of Healing. We want to spread these heals out to leave us a good target for Prayer of Healing: A party of 5 players on more or less the same health, and with plenty of health deficit so we aren’t wasting mana on overhealing.
Some of our heals will do this automatically. Prayer of Mending and Circle of Healing will heal targets on the lowest health so they automatically help to balance out everybody’s health. All we need to do is be thoughtful about Binding Heal, Flash Heal and Renew.
An example of what I mean: I’m in group 1 and we’re all on low health. I want to heal a Player in group 2. Usually I’d cast Binding Heal because it’s healing me and another player at the same time. But if I’m about to cast Prayer of Healing on my party anyway, then it would make more sense to cast Flash heal on that group 2 player. If I used Binding Heal I’d just overheal myself a moment later when I cast Prayer of Healing. Binding Heal is a fantastic spell, but in this situation it’s essentially just wasted healing because I’m going to heal my group with Prayer of Healing anyway. So in this situation I should cast Flash heal and save some mana and overhealing even though Binding Heal looked like a good choice.
The goal here is to try and heal the raid in such a way that you have a nice big target for Prayer of Healing every time you cast it. If you find the other Healers in your raid are treading on your toes here, then chat to them about having specific groups you are responsible for. Perhaps you pick a group and let everybody know that you will be targeting them with most of your Prayer of Healings. Make sure it’s a group who regularly stand close to each other, perhaps a group of melee characters, then you can be sure they will take similar damage, and be in range of each other. In 25 man raiding you may find that other healers will happily do the spot healing for you, leaving you free to top the groups off. It may seem less glamarous than throwing out fast heals to save lives of individual players, but ultimately it’s all the same thing. You’re landing the big heals which are keeping the raid healthy, confident and out of the danger zone, and in the process probably doing substantially more overall healing that those focusing on catching low health players.
Tip: Glyph of Prayer of Healing is rediculously good. Rediculously rediculous. If you’re raiding as a holy priest it’s a no brainer. If you raid 10 mans as discipline you will probably find that you still do a reasonable amount of raid healing and, as such. it’s probably still worth taking a long hard look at even over something like Glyph of Flash Heal. We’ll talk later about breaking down healing meters to see how best to glyph yourself out for your style of healing.
Being a Hero: Serendipity
Serendipity: When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 12%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 sec.
I plan to post several articles soon focusing on Serendipity because I still see Priests not taking it. Equally I think it’s a very complicated ability and it’s something I find it very hard to use correctly in raids when there is so much to think about. Serendipity doesn’t buy you mana, only time. Therefore you only benefit from it is when you are hard pressed to heal. You need it most when you don’t have time to think about it. Hopefully if I get this down on paper it will help me get it straight in my head and allow me to make the right decision with less thought.
Just like Power Word: Shield, or Renew, or Prayer of Mending, what Serendipity gives is stress insurance. The contract goes something like:
I, the undersigned, being of sound mind and body bla bla bla…
…Promise to pay the sum of a little bit of time now, because I’ve got plenty to spare while Hodir pansies around gently patting the tank. I’ll cast a few single target heals like Flash or Binding Heal. In return, Serendipity promises to give me a whole bucket of haste when Hodir starts throwing around Frozen blows and things get dicey.
The key is knowing when to cash in the insurance.
You only get the benefit for your first Prayer of Healing or Greater Heal. After that you have to build your insurance back up again. So it’s only worth taking advantage of when you are hard pressed for time. Unfortunately you don’t get a choice. You can’t decide not to use up your Serendipity stacks unless you just don’t cast certain spells at all. If you want to cast Prayer of Healing, you will use or lose any Serendipity stacks you’ve currently got.
So the worst thing that could happen is that you cast a Prayer of Healing at a time when it’s quiet rather and so don’t have it when the “OH S**T!” moment hits a few seconds later. Where possible then, save your stacks for a time when you need them. I suppose that’s what having other healers in the raid are for, let them heal a little and save your Serendipity stacks for when they are needed. Don’t squander your resources if you can help it.
On the other hand if I sit sit back miserly protecting my Serendipity stacks the raid could die a long slow death because I don’t pull my weight.
Serendipity is a nice thing, and it can do a lot for you when it comes to something like Freya’s exploding daffodils. However if I sit back and don’t cast my best heals (Prayer of Healing) just because I’m waiting for the ideal time might cause more problems than it averts. Sometimes trying too hard to be the hero means you cause the exact harm you were trying to prevent. Every movie involving time travel proves this to be true.
So there is a balance to adopt in terms of knowing when you should wait and when you should not. A big part of that will be knowing the fight and the likely abilities. XT-002’s Tympanic Tantrum is the only real AoE in the fight. So can safely spend your Serendipity for quick help on the Tank, or topping up people wandering too close to the Bombs. Once it gets close to Tantrum time you need to be thinking ahead and saving up those serendipity stacks ready to go. If you know it’s soon, save your Serendipity.
On a fight with more single target damage it’s much easier to save your Serendipity for important moments. For the most part nobody casts Greater Heal in their standard rotation so you can easily make do with Flash heal and Renew and save Serendipity for a big Greater Heal when somebody gets caught in the fire, or takes a big hit you were only half expecting.
It’s a fine line to walk, but knowing the fight, and being able to rely on the other healers in your raid will help a lot in terms of helping you stack Serendipity and helping you spend those stacks at just the right time.
Tip: Use a mod like Powa Auras to show your Serendipity stacks in a more visually explicit way. For example, mine is set up to show a tower of 1-3 icons rather than a number because I find it much easier to read at a glance. Also it allows me to locate Serendipity away from my other buffs which I care much less about.
Being a Hero: Power Infusion
Power Infusion Infuses the target with power, increasing spell casting speed by 20% and reducing the mana cost of all spells by 20%. Lasts 15 sec.
The fact that it reduces mana cost means it is particularly powerful when use with Divine Hymn, Prayer of Healing and other expensive spells. Even if you use it with cheaper heals you will almost always save more mana than Power Infusion costs, so it should be used as often as possible at least to increase your mana efficiency.
Because it also increases your haste rating it’s also fantastic with long cast time spells, or times when you need to really up your healing output. Fights like Hodir come to mind. When Hodir uses Frozen Blows there is a lot raid damage and you will want to start casting Heals like Prayer of Healing as fast as you can. Something like Power Infusion increases how fast you can cast Prayer of Healing, and decreases it’s cost. So effectively you’re increasing the healing you are doing during this period by 20% for no extra cost. It will make the difference between surviving through tricky raid damage or not. Plus it’s fun to see your Priest flail his/her arms around like a fairy as she casts her little socks off.
Power Infusion doesn’t active the global cooldown which means you can use it even during the global cooldown, and you can macro it into your other spells like Penance or Prayer of Healing so that both cast in just one button press.
I macro Power Infusion into my Prayer of Healing spell (replace anything in bold with the appropriate name for you):
#showtooltip Power Infusion/use name of first trinket /use name of second trinket /cast Power Infusion [target=player] /cast Prayer of Healing
Prayer of Healing is not something I cast particularly often so it’s a good choice for macro’ing to Power Infusion. If I macro’d Power Infusion into Penance it would probably get used as soon as the cooldown finished and never give me a chance to cast it on another player, or save it for an important moment. By macro’ing it into Prayer of Healing I can be sure that I will have the haste benefit when casting my slowest, most expensive spells. Also it gives me a chance to cast it on other players as well:
Whilst it’s not strictly the theme of these articles Power Infusion is also good for a DPS boost on other raiders. It’s more powerful in 10 mans than 25 mans because one Power Infusion on one player will have more impact in a smaller raid. Use it on high DPS burns like getting Razorscale grounded, Mimiron’s heart, General Vezaxx’s Shadow Residues, Thaddius’ stacks of Postitive or Negative charge etc.
I find in a hectic fight I often forget to use it, or don’t think I have time. So to make it as easy as possible for me to use I’ve got a macro which causes it to automatically cast on certain guild members who I know benefit from haste. So for example:
#showtooltip /cast [target=Player1,exists] Power Infusion /cast [target=Player2,exists] Power Infusion /cast [target=target] Power Infusion
Tapping this button once will cast Power Infusion on Player1 if they are present, otherwise on Player2 if present, otherwise it will cast it on my target. So if I’m in a guild raid and the first or second choice players are in the raid then it will cast it on them. On the other hand if I’m in a Pug it will cast it on whoever I’m currently targeting.
Don’t accidentally cast it on Paladin tanks, it makes faeries lose their wings and kittens cry. Leave them for foolish druids to innervate.
Tip: When it comes to tank damage somebody like a paladin will benefit far more from the haste than you will because of their more powerful direct heals. Consider using it on another healer if that will benefit your raid more.
Being a Hero: Guardian Spirit
Guardian Spirit: Calls upon a guardian spirit to watch over the friendly target. The spirit increases the healing received by the target by 40%, and also prevents the target from dying by sacrificing itself. This sacrifice terminates the effect but heals the target of 50% of their maximum health. Lasts 10 sec.
Guardian Spirit looks similar to Pain Suppression but in some ways it is a very different animal. There are basically three parts to Guardian Spirit.
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40% more healing on the target
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Prevents one killing blow
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A 50% heal if the target dies.
40% more healing means that Guardian Spirit is fantastic to cast on the tank. If you have more than one tank healer (in a 25 man for example) then casting Guardian Spirit on the tank can be used very similarly to Pain Suppression. All the same principles apply. By casting Guardian Spirit on the tank you free up one of the tank healers to help heal other targets. It can also be used just like Pain Suppression to get through difficult boss abilities like Flame Breaths or Fusion Punches. The danger to watch for is if you cast Guardian Spirit when the tank is already on low health. If a quick hit from the boss “kills” the tank the Guardian Spirit buff is removed and whilst the tank will be protected from that death he will no longer receive the 40% more healing so he may die again without the benefit of it.
Preventing a Killing Blow means Guardian Spirit can be used to make up for raider mistakes in certain cases. If a player is slow moving out of a Rocket Strike on Mimiron you can Guardian Spirit them to prevent them dying. On the other hand, it wouldn’t help a player caught in Spinning Up on the same fight because that hits multiple times so absorbing one killing blow would probably not be enough to keep the player alive.
The 50% heal if the target dies means that often Guardian Spirit will heal for 15-25k on a tank. It’s a dangerous game you play, but if your raid is in trouble casting Guardian Spirit on a low-health tank and letting them die can give you a chance to heal other targets. Keep in mind the time Guardian Spirit lasts for. I’ve seen tanks die because a healer overestimated the time left on Guardian Spirit and didn’t bother healing them.
Tip: If you value the 40% healing buff rather than just relying on the kill prevention then the glyph for Guardian Spirit makes a massive difference to how often you can cast it. Equally, having Guardian Spirit on the tank more often increases the chance of it being present if the tank takes a string of unexpected blows and dies.
Being a Hero: Pain Suppression
Pain Suppression:
Instantly reduces a friendly target’s threat by 5%, reduces all damage taken by 40% and increases resistance to Dispel mechanics by 65% for 8 sec.
Pain Suppression does a lot of heavy lifting for the raiding Discipline Priest. It’s on a short enough cooldown that you can use it several times in a fight and it can be a very versatile tool. In some fights you pretty much have to use Pain Suppression at a particular moment to save a tank. I’m thinking of things like Sartharion’s Fire Breath with two or more drakes. Or Mimiron’s Plasma Blast in Phase One. Here specific boss abilities have to be countered by the tank or the healers so there is not much choice.
In other fights you are free to use Pain Suppression whenever you like so you can use it whenever things are getting dangerous. My Super-Number-One-Awesomest-Pain Suppression-Tip is: If things start to go wrong, or look like they might, cast Pain Suppression on the tank.
If the tank is in trouble, cast Pain Suppression on the tank. If another player is in trouble, cast Pain Suppression on the tank. If you are in trouble, cast Pain Suppression on the tank. If the whole raid is in trouble, cast Pain Suppression on the tank!
That may sound stupid but hear me out. You have a limited attention and can at best only be healing a few players at once. If you cast Pain Suppression on the tank that frees you up to heal other things. The point of Pain Suppression here is not to buy the target time to live, it’s to buy you time to heal other people. You cast it on the tank because then for 8 seconds you can heal whoever needs it.
Imagine that ten people are taking raid damage. Pain Suppression would only protect one of them. If that one person is the tank then you are free to cast big AoE heals on the other nine.
Imagine that one person has aggro from a mob. Casting Pain Suppression on them might be wasted. If they are fast they might Feign Death, Bubble, Fade, Ice Block or have the mob taunted off them. If they aren’t they might just die. In any of these situations you’ve wasted your Pain Suppression. On the other hand, cast it on the tank and you will never have wasted it. You are guaranteed to have absorbed fifteen thousand damage or so and you’ve bought yourself eight seconds to heal the rest of the raid, regenerate mana, re-position yourself or giggle at your dead raider.
Finally imagine if you cast Pain Suppression on a shaman. It will absorb 40% of the damage they take. A typical shaman has maybe 20k health which means at best they can be hit for 28k before they die. On the other hand, cast Pain Suppression on the tank and you can spend the next 8 seconds healing that shaman and helping them survive much more damage. Casting PW:S on them would absorb 6k, and a Penance another 12k. That’s already much more healing than Pain Suppression would have given them.
So ultimately casting Pain Suppression on the tank gives more guarantee that it will:
Prevent more damage
Last the full eight seconds
Allow you to do more healing to a larger number of people.
Tip: Often cast-able on NPCs which can be very powerful in boss encounters like Razuvious where the NPCs take much higher than usual damage.
Spot Heal 