Much Ado About Renew
I’ve seen many a Discipline Priest argue about whether or not one should use Renew. There are plenty of pros and cons to consider, but in the end how you use it is up to, well, you!
Personally, I keep Renew ticking on any tanks that I am assigned to along with making sure they have a Weakened Soul debuff in any fights where mana isn’t an issue. When mana is an issue, like on General Vezax, I do not cast Renew. Why? Three reasons:
- It’s expensive and offers no mana returns.
- I didn’t glyph for it.
- The healing it could have done will most likely be taken care of by another one of my spells or someone else’s.
Renew is not considered a bread-and-butter spell for Discipline Priests, and with good reason. Only two of the talents in the Disc tree affect Renew: Twin Disciplines and Mental Agility. However, these are not Renew-specific talents and a Disc priest is not taking them specifically to benefit Renew. These talents also affect Power Word: Shield and Prayer of Mending, two very important spells for a Disc Priest along with Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Shadow Word: Death for the occasional DPSing (when healing is light, of course!).
There is a talent available in the first tier of the Holy tree that does buff Renew specifically, Improved Renew. However, I only know a handful of Discipline Priests (including myself) who prefer to take this talent over Divine Fury and Spell Warding. The reason I chose to take Improved Renew over Divine Fury is because I cast Greater Heal an average total of 0 times during a raid. My rotation—if it could be called that—involves Prayer of Mending, Power Word: Shield, Penance, Flash Heal, with Renew following as a buffer and perhaps another Flash Heal until the Weakened Soul debuff drops and/or Penance comes off cooldown. For me, Penance has basically replaced what I used to use Greater Heal for back in BC, so I have no real use for the Divine Fury talent. However, since I do cast Renew as a buffer taking the Improved Renew talent was the next best choice.
On the other hand, I haven’t seen Renew make up more than 5% of my healing on any given night even with 3/3 Improved Renew. As such with HoTs, the healing offered by Renew often gets sniped by other heals landing and topping off the target before Renew has the chance to tick. This, of course, also gives the spell a high overheal percentage. And even though I opted to take the Improved Renew talent, I did not fill a glyph slot with Glyph of Renew. The glyph’s usefulness is up for debate as well. It reduces the amount of ticks Renew has but increases the healing per tick, basically resulting in more-or-less the same total healing amount but in less time. Since I use Renew as a buffer, I don’t really want to shorten its ticking time even if the ticks were healing for more.
So, the bottom line is:
- Can you live without casting Renew? Yes. Casting a Renew certainly won’t make or break your healing rotation. It won’t save a tank in a crisis, either. It does help, but only a little.
- Are you a bad Disc Priest if you do cast Renew? Only if you’re running out of mana because of spamming the spell.
- Should you talent for it? If you never, ever use GHeal, don’t see the point in taking Spell Warding, and do cast Renew as a buffer then yes.
- Should you glyph for it? Probably not.
Tagged as Discipline Priest, HoT, Renew, Spells + Categorized as Priest
I tend to agree with your ideas.
Personally I often try and maintain Renew on the tanks even if i’m not assigend to heal them, and always if I am. Renew offer extra throughput.
However if you are having mana issues, or need the global cool downs for other more important spells like PW:S and PoM, not casting Renew doen’t mark you as a port Dicipline priest.
I don’t spec for Renew at all as Disc and if Discipline wasn’t my solo spec also i’d be taking Spell Warding instead of Divine Fury.
Gobble gobble.
Healing with both a resto druid and a disc priest (they are amazingly similar) I find that I tend to use renew like a single lifebloom. Probably not the most efficient use of this spell but it’s so difficult to break my HoT habit from my druid when I switch over to my priest.
Altogether a nice post and a great looking beginning to a new healing blog that I’ll certainly be adding to my blog roll. Feel free to check out my weekly ramblings too. :-)
Though I’m Shadow at heart I have healed and it’s become more frequent for me to heal especially for PvP. I’ve found my healing techniques are a bit different than most priests. Which on one hand is good.. and on the other hand can be pretty bad. I’ve always healed as Disc. Makes me feel I haven’t totally been brought to the evil side of Holy. :D
But anyway! On topic eh? I normally use Renew. Unless like you’ve stated I’m pretty low on mana. Renew allows me to top off a DPS without having to divert a lot of my attention. I like it. Of course, I don’t heal during raids.. at least not yet. *crosses fingers to never cross that road*
Spot on. Good stuff.
It makes me want to try disc priesting to see what the subtle differences are, but one of the things I think really differentiates good healers from so-so healers is what they do with those rare “spare” GCDs… can a person analyze quickly and determine whether they have spare mana, and whether they can afford to pre-heal/renew/buffer/whatever you have, or is it better to conserve for a more stressful time, etc.
Anyway, nice write-up. I look forward to reading more about disc priesting, it’s one of my weaker spots.
-Crutches, who probably shouldn’t read blogs at 5:30a
I use Renew a lot in my Holy spec is easy 25% of my healing done; in Discipline(pvp) spec maybe 10% but(here comes a big BUT) it helps a bit beteween casts; when properly speced Discipline(pve 53/18/0) i use a lot more Greater Heal than any other spell.
Good post, i’m def on the same page as you, as a Disc Priest i mostly find myself tank healing and i like to keep that renew ticking on the tanks if i need to help around with raid healing (note: i do my share of “helping raid heal” tossing PW:S around to those who need it, specially when i’m healing with a resto druid friend because i know that by the time my shield absorbs all it can, the HoTs will already have people on the safe zone if not already topped off).
I think overall Renew will always be a spell i keep handy even if is not my most used one, after all if Blizz gives us the tools might as well use them the best as we can.
Looking foward to your next post :)
Its like you wrote down my thoughts!
I had a look at my discipline priest and realised that i was casting renew all the time (i constantly keep it up on the tank, and usually throw it on dps at the first sign of them getting some threat or AoE) but had no points in improved renew. So i fixed that.
I didnt get the glyph for the reason, that i would prefer renew ticking over longer. If i need a lot of healing quickly i use a flash heal or penance.
I didnt get divine fury because i hardly use greater heal.