Getting the Most out of Prayer of Mending

Prayer of Mending is unique in the way it operates. It is completely unlike any other spell that is available to any other classes. Not only can this spell be used as a “Where the hell did the tank run off to” leash, it also adds an incredible heal to your healing arsenal.

Places a spell on the target that heals them for 1043 the next time they take damage.  When the heal occurs, Prayer of Mending jumps to a party or raid member within 20 yards.  Jumps up to 5 times and lasts 30 sec after each jump.  This spell can only be placed on one target at a time.

How can we get the most out of this spell?

Habit and UI

The first thing priests need to get used to is to cast POM on cooldown. Create a Power Aura or watch your cooldowns, do whatever you have to do to remind yourself that POM is off cooldown and can be cast again. My current UI has 2 visual queues (3 if you count Mik’s Scrolling Combat Text). The first being ForteXorcist providing me a quick flash of the POM icon at the base of my character’s feet, the second queue is a Power Aura I have set up that provides a  icon to the right of my character whenever POM can be cast again.

I also recommend priests getting one of the many addons that track POM. I personally use Prayer of Mending Tracker. This allows me to quickly see who has my POM currently, how many charges remain on it, as well as how much time is left on the buff. What this allows me to do is decide if I want to recast the spell or leave it on the current target. For example, if there are 4 charges left and the POM is on the Main Tank, casting POM on someone else (unless they really need the heal) is likely a waste of mana– and more importantly a waste of that GCD.

Get in the habit of communicating with your fellow priests. For example, when Avalonna and I are raiding together we try to communicate who we’ll be launching POM off of. For Marrowgar, since Ava is typically disc, she will bounce it off the MT and I will bounce off one of the OTs. The reason why we do this, is because POM doesn’t stack. Having either one of us overwrite the other’s POM is a waste.

Earn Those Heals

With my current gear it is not unheard of see a POM crit for upwards of 11,000 – 12,000. Non priests often times view this spell as ‘easy mode healing’  and that “you didn’t do anything to earn that heal’. With fights that have constant raid damage, and a priest is just launching it aimlessly – I might agree with them. However, every time you cast this spell you should be thinking: Am I casting this at the right time? Am I casting this at the right player? Why am I casting this spell – is it a raid heal or is it a direct heal?

When you are using POM as a raid heal during constant AOE fights, do not just aimlessly launch it. Make a quick decision- Who do I want to guarantee a heal from the first charge? Is it the tank? Is it a warlock that just lifetapped? Is there a raid member notably lower in health than the rest of the raid? Cast intelligently!  Don’t just faceroll heal.

POM as a Raid Heal

One of the best ways to use your spells more effectively is to know the fights. Know how the damage is coming in, where it is coming from, and how fast it is coming in.  Raid healers need to know this, and be ready to mitigate it as fast as possible. Holy Priests typically are bursty healers; in raids our jobs often are to quickly put out a lot of healing while the druids keep a constant and consistent amount of healing on the raid.

If you know a certain fight has constant raidwide AOE damage you should be casting POM on every cooldown. It seems that nearly every boss in Icecrown has a good deal of raid damage – that means as Priests, we can mitigate a good deal through consistent use of POM. Looking at Logs of fights with consistent damage, POM can and should be in the top 3 heals for a Holy Priest (and often times Disc too). Holy has the benefits of a lot of spellpower and talents that buff the effectiveness of POM. Holy Priests should be prepared to capitalize on these buffs as much as they can. Fights that provide an ideal situation for constant POM raid healing include Professor Putricide, Blood Queen Lanathel, and Festergut.

POM should not only be used often on fights with consistent raid damage, it should also be used in situations that I like to call “clustered damage”.  “Clustered damage” is when an encounter has some ability or mechanic that causes a specified group or area of people to take damage together. Northrend Beasts comes to mind. Boom! All the melee got the Paralytic Toxin: launch POM into the melee and let those heals bounce around them until the Burning Bile can purge them. Blood Queen Lanathel’s Pact of the Darkfallen, Bwooong! Launch it on the group collapsing together, or even onto a group standing in Deathwhisper’s Death and Decay when your COH is on cooldown. (Because, no one EVER stands in the proverbial fire… ever. Wait… No thats not right, is it?)

POM as an Instant Heal

POM also has the benefit of being an instant cast. This means we can cast it on the run: mobility FTW! You can cast it while kiting the flames on the Lanathel encounter; you can cast it while you are moving to collapse on the Spore target during fFestergut. Icecrown has a lot of mobility requirements, remembering to use POM during those movement periods can sometimes mean the life or death of a raid member.

Not only does this mean you can cast the spell on the move, you also can heal a target “instantly”. Yes, technically the spell is not an instant heal, as it does require the target to take damage before it actually heals them. However, you can cast this on that target and often heal them faster than a Flash Heal (and often for MORE) could provide. During Marrowgar, you can instantly toss and heal a Bone Spike target near instantly. Disc priests should be using POM in their healing rotation as a instant heal on the tank, and many Discs keep POM on cooldown for that reason alone.

Gearing

Do not underestimate your 2-piece Tier 9 bonus. 20% buff to this spell is a lot of buffage! As Holy, I am not breaking this set bonus until I get 4-piece Tier 10. (However, I am not expecting much from 4-piece T10 and may try to maintain 2-piece iLvl 258 Tier 9 for as long as I can).

Personally, I love POM. Not only for the fantastic healing it provides, but also the fun sound it makes! Knowing a bit more of how the spell works, and thinking before casting it can really increase the effectiveness of this great spell.