Duct Tape and a Prayer

Welcome to Duct Tape and a Prayer, a World of Warcraft blog largely focused on, but not limited to, healing as a Discipline priest. Please take a moment and subscribe to my RSS feed here.

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We’ve had a few months now to settle into Wrath of the Lich King. (Long enough that you’d think I’d stop typing “Lick King” the first time, every time. Entirely different game, that.) We have a major patch coming up, including a massive new raid dungeon and a class overhaul so large that Blizzard is resetting talent points. Given that, it’s no surprise that the WOWblogosphere has seen a proliferation in the last few weeks of posts about How To Apply To Guilds, How To Play Your Class, and How To Be A Good PUG Member, and as a WOW blogger I feel that I ought to contribute to the discussion.

As a healing priest, you have three major responsibilities:

• Give out buffs. You have two major buffs for other party members: Power Word: Fortitude and Divine Spirit. Yes, I know the Prayer buffs cost reagents; stock up on them. A good practice is to have at least 40 candles in your bags at any given time. You also have lesser buffs, Shadow Protection and Fear Ward. These can be used situationally – but when the situation comes up, do remember to use them. If you can, bring some of the party-wide Feasts to the group; they’re not particularly hard to make anymore, and especially if you’re PUGging, there’s a good chance you’re going to be running with someone who’s forgotten food. On the other hand, bring elixirs, potions, and flasks only for yourself (unless you have a prior arrangement). The beauty of Feasts is that everyone can use them; not so much for flasks.
• Deflect damage. Discipline priests are better at this than Holy priests, with various improvements to Power Word: Shield and the talent Divine Aegis. Every healing priest should also have Inspiration, which is a Holy talent that increases the armor of the target of a critical heal by up to 25%.
• Heal damage. Here is where I’m going to deviate from the conventional wisdom a bit: if your party is still alive at the end of the fight, you’re doing your job right. Ignore healing meters. Ignore overhealing. Ignore other healers telling you how you should heal. If your party lived, you won. That is the bottom line; don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. (Keep in mind, too, that just because the party died doesn’t mean it was your fault. There’s not a whole lot you can do when the tank, not understanding the concept of “soak the damage, we’ll heal you”, decides to drag a Whirlwinding boss back to the casters.)

That’s really it. Aside from your general responsibilities as a group member, that’s all you have to do to be a successful healing priest.

No, really.

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