Priest healing tactics

As a priest, you are the lifeblood of your group (in other words, you take responsibility for helping your group survive as much as you can with your healing). But be warned, part of their strategy is that you have to do what it takes to be both efficient and useful at the same time. This tutorial will help you get used to the daily routine of a healer, as well as the role you play in PvP.

For starters as a healer, think of a scale with two sides on it. One is your efficiency; this shows how well you save your mana during battle. The other side of this scale is reliability (or usefulness); how much mana you spend using your healing skills to help your group members survive. Now why are these two things so important to consider about? Well, for instance, if you're a healer and you hardly use your healing skills, it's great that you're not wasting all of your mana at once, but you're not helping your group survive enough. On the other hand, most beginner healers think that you should keep using your mana on spamming those healing skills. You may be helping your group survive by doing that for a while, but it's a big no no, because if you are standing there with 0 mana, you're just a sitting duck that is letting all of your group members get knocked out.

But first, here's one major point that you should consider. In most RPG games, you would think that there is no cooldown for potions. Well guess what? This game has a 2 minute cooldown when you use a single potion, so it's not going to help you at all unless you really need it; hence why every group requires at least one healer in it. Now, to continue from the paragraph stated above. The solution is that you want to be in the middle of this scale; basically you want to be efficient but also reliable enough.

Alright, now enough theory, let's move onto the priest skills that I believe that are commonly used themselves. The summary of below is this:

Healing priority to classes (from stronger spells to weaker spells)

• Tanks > Healers > Damage Dealers

For lower to mid level priests (order of priority of skills):

• Revitalise > Heal > Healing Springs > Surge of Light/Emerald Shield > Song of Harmony

For higher level priests (order of priority of skills):

• Healing Winds > Revitalise > Heal > Healing Springs > Surge of Light/Emerald Shield > Song of Harmony

Healing Techniques

Revitalise

• Revitalise is your standard cheap instant cast healing spell that may seem awfully weak at first. But remember that it heals health slowly over 12 seconds, meaning that you should only cast it once every 10 seconds or so on that damaged ally. Healers should consider to use it on players that have taken some damage, typically when their health is about 60-90%. You should choose to use Revitalise on your ally if they fall below 50% of their health while healing them if they're the one that is taking constant damage, as it may save them from being knocked out.
  • In diverse groups of tanks, damage dealers and healers, your damage dealers should only receive Revitalise from you at most while Tanks should receive both Revitalise and Heal. This is because damage dealers have less health than a tank and rarely you should feel the need to use Heal on them unless they have low health (about 10 to 30%).

Heal

• Heal is a powerful yet typical healing spell that restores a large amount of health in one use to a friendly target. You should avoid using it often and instead use Revitalise on your teammates more often. In times of emergency when one of your damage dealers is not expected to survive with a Revitalise that you placed on them, that is when you should use Heal on them. But for most cases, use it on a tank when they are at about 50% of their health or lower (if your Revitalise cannot heal them enough).

Divine Clarity

• This spell in particular allows you to instant cast a spell that would otherwise take too long to cast. This should be best saved for a Revive to instantly revive one of your fallen allies. If one of your heals will not make it, then you may choose to use this skill to immediately heal them once and immediately go ahead to cast for a second heal. Remember that it should be used sparingly, as this spell has a cooldown to it.

Healing Springs

• Healing Springs is a spell that heals all of your damaged allies multiple times that are standing in this spring, but the drawback is that you have to stay in one spot and channel it. In order for this spell to be effective, you want all of your allies to be standing on it at once. In cases where you are stacking (as many allies including yourself standing in the same spot), this spell can work wonders. Springs should be used when multiple allies are at 50-70% of their health, however you should refrain from using it if your group likes to split up a lot.
  • Using Healing Springs should not interfere you from carrying out your regular revitalise pattern unless you believe that one healing spring can consume less mana than multiple uses of revitalise and heal just as efficient.

Surge of Light

• Surge of Light is your alternative healing spell to Heal. But remember that Surge of Light's healing is based on the current skill level of your Heal. This spell should be only used in emergency situations when an ally has only 10% to 20% of their health left, and they won't be able to survive another attack within the time it usually takes for you to Heal them. Unlike Heal, Surge of Light serves as a panic button, and should not be used more often than Heal because of it's expensive mana cost.

Emerald Shield

• Emerald Shield is an emergency spell that when used on one of your allies, it absorbs a limited amount of damage, ultimately buying you time to recover their health with a Heal. As outlined in the skill's description, it should be used when your ally that you're healing only has 10%-20% of their health left and won't be able to survive another attack. Because of this, the skill should never be used consecutively.
  • The spell can be cast on yourself to buy yourself some time and prevent your revive from being interrupted while Divine Clarity is on cooldown. Other applications can include extending a target's health to prepare against a high damage attack.

Song of Harmony

• Song of Harmony is a last ditch effort spell that recovers health to all of your allies within a large radius, with a weighty cooldown of 7 minutes. You should never ever use this spell early, as later on in the battle you may need to rely on it as a life-saver. Ever considered a time where multiple allies are at around 10 to 30% of their health, one or more of them are likely not able to survive the next attack and all of them need to be healed at once? This spell should really only be used at that point of time in battle.
  • There are exceptions to Song of Harmony's use. You may have to use it early or mid-battle because a boss's signature one-time attack hits your group, or even pounding through your tank (even after he or she used Burning Determination to reduce the damage).

Healing Winds

• At level 37, you acquire this underappreciated spell with a master level of 1 with a cooldown of 15 seconds. To sum up it's effects, it almost replaces your Revitalise skill entirely, because of it's ability to slowly heal multiple allies over 15 seconds because of it's reliability and efficiency. Consuming one revitalise's worth of mana and slightly weaker than Revitalise itself, it is commonly used to heal off minor amounts of damage across each of your allies. Healers should use this spell as their main priority over Revitalise when multiple allies (particularly damage dealers) fall to 60% to 90% of their health and continue to use Revitalise on the tank of the group if he or she is not affected by Healing Winds.
  • If the group is under constant moderate amounts of damage, more than what Healing Winds can heal over, you should consider to combine both Healing Wind and Revitalise effects on your allies. Also, in order to boost the overall healing power for Healing Springs, you can use Healing Winds on them beforehand.

PvP Combat

In PvP combat, Priests are the main target out of any good player group. They're the one that gets picked on more than any other class because they are what keeps the enemy team alive. As a priest, you should stay behind your teammates and try to use Nightfall whenever you can to prevent one of the players from targeting you with a deadly spell. As a healer yourself, you should aim to use Revitalise as much as possible on your allies to outlast the opponent, but be sure to keep your own health in check as well.

• When facing Mages:
  • Mages are more likely the members out of the enemy team to target you specifically. If one of them has Flash Freeze, they can take you out of commission with it to limit your healing while focusing on the heavy-hitter members of your group. Other strategies include bombarding you with an AoE such as Ice Spikes, Blizzard or Fire Wall to take you out immediately, or having Mages cause a back to back disrupt on you.
    • Focus on the mage that is trying to take you out and quickly use Nightfall to stop their assault in it's tracks. Then you can let the damage dealers on the team take care of the other team's priest. If the priest is already down before you used nightfall on that mage, the player that is still sleeping cannot attack you, so let your team deal with the rest of the attackers. In addition, you should try and bait mages to use their expensive spells on you to waste their mana.

• When facing Warriors:
  • If a DPS warrior or Tank sees you casting one of your healing skills, they can rush to you and try to neutralize it by smiting or bashing you. They will try a number of approaches similar to a Mage to try and get to you, but they have an easier time because unlike Mages, Priests cannot use Skip to counter a Charge.
    • Try to position yourself in a spot that is hard to reach and far away from the Warriors but still capable of you healing your teammates. If a warrior is in pursuit of you and not a mage, you should try to use Nightfall to get away from them as far as possible.
    • Against Tanks, they may not pose much of a threat against you unless they are aiming to Smite or Bash you down. Only DPS Warriors will have the choice of trying to land as much melee swings against you to knock you out.

• When facing another Priest:
  • Against enemy healers, they have no choice but to rely on Nightfall to stop you in your tracks, while healing to protect their damage dealers. If you or another member of your team are not quick enough to respond, their healer may quickly get you with Nightfall.
    • Be able to recognize the enemy healer first in their team and try to use Nightfall as quickly as possible on them. Otherwise, try to stay out of their casting range so that they don't get a chance to use it on you.
  • Against damage priests, not only can they have Nightfall, but their Revitalize gives them a lot more survivability in the battle. Their skills (strong to Neutral) give them a deadly advantage in combat towards players who do not have elemental potions to change their defending element. Beware of these hard-hitting players in an enemy's arsenal, as they can act for part of the role of a healer.
    • One advantage is the fact that they cannot disrupt or smite you (even if they invested points into Curse of Silence, it would hinder their DPS). Try to stay back and let your warriors try to dispatch of them quickly. They are a bigger threat than Mages because of their healing capabilities that can soak up damage. By letting your teammates overwhelm them with amounts of damage for more that they can heal, they will be taken out more easily.

Remember that you are the most valuable player out of your group, as seen by your enemy team and allies. Because that happens to be the case for most PvP fights, make the enemy team think that their main priority is taking you out. Be prepared to expect this when that seems to be their game plan, so that you can have your team counter this by leading them into a trap. Knowing this fact is key unlike Mages where elemental match-ups are more important to them.