Priest group healing

[Zub]

Hi all,
i'm thinking i could tweak my priest better and seek advice.

She's the healer of a 5-man group, consisting of a paladin tank (30 yards ahead) and 3 dps caster (5-10 yards around her)
I don't raid, and basically just do heroics and old world raids.

At the moment she's Holy, with this build (14/57/0):
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bVcbuZcxtzf0qih0euAo
I have intentionaly skipped non MB friendly or pvp talents (lightwell, blessed recovery etc)

Now, her major problem is that she's running out of mana during harder fights.
None of my dps classes ever run out of mana, and my druid has innervate macroed to my priest.
Still, she runs out of mana even with shadowfiend and pots.
My macros are probably the reason, but i think the spec also could be optimised (probably better disc)

At the moment:
- my macro refreshes Prayer of Mending on the tank whenever it fades (commas matching my click rate)
- my macro casts Circle of Healing on the tank on cooldown (i guess this is useless, as only my tank gets healed most of the time, probably costs me heaps of mana)
- other spells (renew, flash heal and greater heal) are cast on an ad-hoc basis, using click/grid and repeater regions.
- i have PW:shield and renew in my macro as well, every 15 sec or so.
- i have a separate AOE macro that casts Holy Nova twice, then CoH then Prayer of Healing.

I'm thinking of respeccing her into a Disc deep build, and basically replace my Circle of Healing by Holy Novas, hoping to get bigger mana regen through the spec.
Any build suggestions?

looking at this one at the moment (54/17/0)
http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bVcbuhhVRhsffRtcxtzb

I fear my regen might be better, but that the overall healing will be weaker (apart from shield and penance)
also, is Holy Nova enough to replace CoH? (in 5 man groups perspective)

she's sitting at about 2300 spell power, 595 (ooc) / 337 (ic) regen, and 935 spirit

any advice?
thanks
-Zub

[ghonosyph]

It'll soak up more mana to holy nova more, but imo the shields will prevent lots of dmg if your'e good at it

[Nolife]

I love my disc priest. Shields absorb tons of dmg. My healing is split into basic healing and target healing. Basic healing routine keeps shield+pom+renew on tank and shields on party every 30sec filled in with couple of holy novas. Target healing casts penance+flash heals, but i rarely need to use it because shields are so powerful. I feel like my disc priest is almost better at keeping party alive than my resto druid even though druid has better gear... :P

[Zub]

well, i just respecced my priest Disc, and wow what a difference.
I had to change a couple macros to take into account the lack of CoH and the new PI and Penance, and only rand H VH since. But i didn't have to drink once. not once! basically the 5-10% missing are filled up by the time the next pull arrives.

As holy i had to fill up the 20-30% missing mana every pull or so.

My renews are considerably smaller (1350hp instead of 1800 i think) but the shield are nice, and penance is king of heals.

Thanks for feedback guys.

[Coltimar]

Repeater regions! Cast what you want, when you want.

[Svpernova09]

Remember there is a stat difference between holy and disc. If you're not having mana issues gem pure SP instead of SP/SPI or INT. SP = directly affects how much your shields absorb.

[pinotnoir]

I never had mana issues with my holy priest. I use repeater regions to manually heal. The only thing I have him auto cast is circle of healing on himself when the cooldown is up. Now that my group is around 5500gs I really dont need to heal much in heroics. Even when they were just starting heroics my priest had lots of mana. I think you are blowing too many spells on auto pilot that you dont need to be casting. Try repeater regions if you have isboxer and heal when needed.

[Zub]

- my macro refreshes Prayer of Mending on the tank whenever it fades (commas matching my click rate)
- my macro casts Circle of Healing on the tank on cooldown (i guess this is useless, as only my tank gets healed most of the time, probably costs me heaps of mana)
- other spells (renew, flash heal and greater heal) are cast on an ad-hoc basis, using click/grid and repeater regions.
- i have PW:shield and renew in my macro as well, every 15 sec or so.
- i have a separate AOE macro that casts Holy Nova twice, then CoH then Prayer of Healing.

i was using repeater regions, for flah, renew and greater heals.
now i have it set up for flash, renew/shield combo, and penance/GH sequence
I think my main problem was having CoH on cooldown actually, that must have eaten through my mana pool quickly.

remember my toons are ~1200GS lower than yours, it's a whole different world :-)

In any case, it seems the changes i made yesterday and the disc spec have solved this issue
thanks.

[Zub]

just to add on this topic, Disc seems definitely the way to go for me.
I never need to drink anymore, i basically run with 5 almost static full mana bars on my toons.

(holy) renews and (disc) pw:shields kinda balance each other, and the quasi-instant burst that Penance brings is invaluable.