How to heal with priest efficiently in levelling dungeons?

[u/Bobbimort]

Hi all,

kinda new to the classic scene, but i've played a whole lotta wow before.
I'm a level 33 priest, healing in a group of friends. I struggle leveling alone because I went full healer, but i don't really mind cause i tend to grind dungeons with buddies. My question is though, how do I heal efficiently in dungeons? Again I have full healing talents and runes, including strength of soul, soul warding, circle of healing and pain suppression.
I generally bubble tank (paladin) and slap a renew on him, then I use lesser heal to top him off when he takes more damage than renew can handle, or heal when he gets chunked. when i see a dps pull aggro, i shield him. if needed i also slap a renew, otherwise lesser heal is fine.

My biggest question is if lesser heal is worth it at level 33 or if i should abbandon it in favor of heal/flash heal. Or if I should use different ranks of healing spells...but that seems like a nightmare and honestly I would avoid it. Is there anything different I should be doing? Any tips for dungeoneering? We're trying to run scarlet monastery now, we cleared graveyard and library, we might do a few more runs tomorrow or try armory.

[u/rigid_dirigible]

Since this is SoD it probably works a bit different. First of all k would drop circle of healing in favor of penance for leveling dungeons. That should make it a lot easier to keep the tank up. Penance tank, put prayer of mending on him and use rank 1 empowered renew to force prayer of mending to bounce if it gets stuck on a dps. Pain sup if you get in trouble. Those three healing spells should be enough to handle 99% of cases..

[u/Bobbimort → u/rigid_dirigible]

I'm a bit hesitant to drop CoH because the tank Is a new player, One DPS Is a veteran and Will pull because "he's bored" or Simply pull aggro because of damage. Another DPS also pulls aggro sometimes. So having an AoE Is often helpful.

But i Will try penance and see how It works out, thanks!

[u/ardent_wolf → u/Bobbimort]

Couple things here.

First is that you shouldn't shoulder all the responsibility of keeping DPS alive. If your friend is experienced enough to be bored, he should also be experienced enough to know what they're capable of taking aggro on without dying. If they can't do the latter then they're not as good as they think and need to temper their ego.

Second is that you'll probably still get more value out of single target heals than AOE if two people are being hit. I'm just going off tooltips here, and not considering spellpower, but a single penance heals for more than circle of healing on one target while costing 16% base mp instead of 56%. Two penance casts will do more healing than a circle of healing cast while costing 24% less mp, just over more time. 

If more than two people are getting hit regularly, at that point you don't have a tank and need to address that. Being new is a good explanation but ultimately that would be the issue and not your gameplay. 

As for down ranking, that's not necessary without decent spellpower, so it depends on your gear. Downranking is to utilize +healing gear on lower mp cost spells to make them more efficient, which isn't relevant when you lack that gear. However, I would lean toward your longest cast time spells as those will be more mp efficient, and avoid flash heal in particular unless you really need to get healing out now. 

One thing to keep in mind is that you can use renew, shields, prayer of mending, etc before a pull and drink. As long as you drink far enough away to not be pulled into combat, you will generate healing threat but it won't actually be applied to you until you get into combat. So you can put out healing on the start of the pull without risking pulling threat. Once you enter combat, it'll all be front loaded onto you but by that point the tank should have consolidated threat onto themselves.

[u/SugarCrisp7 → u/Bobbimort]

Having two people take damage is actually ideal for priest. Just drop prayer of mending and go afk for the next three minutes while PoM takes care of everything (slight exaggeration)

[u/gameboytetris888]

Drop pain suppression for dispersion. U will be able to heal without ever stopping for mana

[u/ajrbyers → u/gameboytetris888]

Can second this. There is power word barrier for damage reduction.

[u/skyturnedred → u/gameboytetris888]

Even better is having an extra pair of boots with dispersion on them that you use between pulls.

[u/UD_Lover]

Prayer of Mending should do the vast majority of the work for you. Are you actually running out of mana? Are people dying? What problem exactly are you trying to solve?

[u/Heatinmyharbl]

Penance and prayer of mending are your 2 most efficient spells by miles

Holy priest in SoD is actually super fun in dungeons because of the PoM changes. PoM came from wrath/ cata and in those versions, it only bounces if a player takes damage

In SoD, PoM can bounce if a player is healed as well. Try to practice throwing out a PoM and "bouncing it" between your party members with renews and low cost single target heals

If you can get the hang of this you'll save yourself a ton of mana every pull. Use Penance for big "oh shit" moments or just to keep the tank topped off.

Make sure you take 5/5 spirit tap in shadow tree and try to snipe kills in dungeons with mind blast to proc it for extra regen. And use Dispersion boots rune and your Shadowfiend for more regen as well

Happy hunting!

[u/m_fn]

I'm not a healing expert, but generally speaking down ranking spells is not worth doing until you have a decent amount of +healing on your gear.

I just leveled a priest to 60 recently on SoD healing dungeons for the most part. Basically all I used was PoM and Binding Heal with the occasional CoH used when a lot of damage is going out. Dispersion and the shadow fiend should be enough to keep your mana topped up.