I am having trouble finding a small number of people that can agree on the bonus heal and the pots that you should take to Kara.  Should the bonus heal be around 1000 or 1200 for a bare min and also what would people suggest that you should take for pots and food for the run?

This entirely depends on the quality of other players with whom you are raiding Karazhan.  When our guild first started doing Karazhan close to a year ago (I think), we would run it with three healers, probably not much if any above 1000-1200 +Healing, and it took many runs before fully clearing it, and when we finally did start clearing it, it would take many hours over multiple Nights.  Nowadays, we run with two healers easily and because I could probably solo heal most or all of the instance, we coud afford to bring in a severally under-geared healer with the expectation that he would get some new gear.

That said, if your whole guild is just entering it now, three healers around 1100-1200 is probably a reasonable, place to start.  You can probably get higher than that as, IIRC, I had around 1400 or so because I had the PMC set and the rest was mostly 70 blues.  After that, it only took a few runs to get up to around 1700-1800, after getting just a few pieces and getting them enchanted.  For instance, getting the gloves off Attumen and getting them enchanted with +35 Healing is a major upgrade over a 70 blue that I couldn't justify spending the mats on to enchant.  It is similar for the Maiden bracers.  Both of those are relatively easy bosses that even a brand new guild can probably down fairly quickly that give pretty hefty upgrades over the 70 blues (or greens) you may have been using.

As for consumables, the best food for a Priest is Golden Fishsticks.  I ALWAYS have some on me.  You should also always have mana pots.  I tend to carry at least 20 on me (usually in the form of a Mana Potion Injector to save bag space).  I don't use them a whole lot, but my gear and group make-up in raids tends to be such that I seldom have mana issues.  You may need more depending upon how much time you spend raiding and how much you struggle with progression bosses.

Bottom line, if you have good gear, you can get by being a little cheap on consumables.  If your gear is lacking, you can make up for it by being willing to use lots of consumables.  The thing that's different about healing than DPS is that more DPS never hurts, unless they pull aggro, and you down a boss quicker, but more healing doesn't always help.  For instance, 5k Greater Heals don't help when you're running out of mana, and you really only need 4k.  Similarly, ending a battle with 50% mana left doesn't bestow any benefit over ending a battle with 10% mana left.

The point here is, as a healer, you have the benefit of trading some of one for the other.  If you don't need your heals healing for as much, down rank a bit and you can essentially turn a bit of +Healing into Mana.  You can uprank a bit to turn extra mana into essentially more +Healing.  As such, a direct comparison of so much +Healing and so much Mana isn't as helpful as you might think, because a glaring defiency in one aspect can be traded for another.

I would worry more about mp5, healing wise bout 1200+ should be enough.

I can't agree with this.  You have to remember that healers, Priests most specifically, have a lot of flexibility when it comes to using different ranks of spells.  As such, itemization between +Healing and Regen should be, within reason, geard toward the maximum itemization.

For instance, post 2.4, MP5 is only a little better than Spirit (maybe 1.6x), but it's worth a lot more in terms of itemization (work about 2.5x more).  Hence, favoring items of equal item level that have spirit over MP5 will provide more bang for the buck (about 1.5x better).

It is similar for +Healing and MP5.  MP5 is better than +Healing (about 2.8x), but is worth a WHOLE lot more in terms of itemization (about 4.5-5.5x, depending on what gear you sample).  Hence, favoring items of equal item level that have more +Healing than MP5 will be a lot better (almost twice as good).

IOW, go for the best gear.  If you are having mana problems, down-rank your heals, if you aren't healing enough, up-rank your heals.  If you have problems with both, either you're undergeared, or not playing optimally.

Downranking your spells is indeed very wise, but i dont know if i would reccomanded this if your highest rank spell barely heals enough, most important thing is to make sure you can heal troughout the whole fight that's true but if you have like 1200 healing and you're downranking greater heal..there might not be a lot of healing on that spell left. I always felt like you need a lot of xtra healing from gear to be able to tell a difference, with mp5 i could tell the difference quicker and noticed i was able to heal much longer. Just make sure you have enough mana for the fights, wherever its cause you use downranked spells already or some more mp5 or both. The most important thing is to be able to heal trough out the fight and not leave the raids with 2 healers when the boss is on 50%.
And 5 spirit used to be 1 mp5 and 9 spirit 1 healing, not sure if it's still the same after the latest patch

(also there is a great trinket from lowercity rep which can help you save a lot of mana, it's as epic as blue's can get:))

I use to be of the same mind, but once I started downranking, I noticed an immediate and huge effect in my longevity.  One thing to keep in mind is that downranking actually hurts you less with lower gear.  Also note that GH5-7 all get the same +Healing bonus, so you only do 488 less healing on average with GH5, but you save 98 mana per cast.

Really, the key point is to ask yourself what the fight needs.  Is it a short fight or one that has heavy HPS times and rest times? If so, use a high rank.  Is it a long fight?  You probably need to use a lower rank.  Gauging the appropriate heal not just for the specific situation, but with the whole fight in mind is what makes a good priest.


Spirit was never worth that little.  It's always 0.35 Healing, or about 2.86 per Healing.  Also, pre-2.4 it was 0.625 MP5 005SR, so even 100% I5SR it was worth 0.1875 Healing or 5.33 per MP5, but worth 0.275 @ 80% I5SR or 3.64 per MP5.  So the numbers you were using before are way off.

Post 2.4, the value of spirit has gone up significantly, which changed it to 1.23 MP5 OO5SR for me with my current gear.  That makes it worth 0.369 MP5 I5SR.  So 100% casting is 2.71 per MP5 and 80% casting is 0.541 MP5 for 1.85 per MP5.

If you want to read about the spirit changes, check out my thread about spirit changes in patch 2.4 elswhere in this forum.


Agreed here, it's an excellent trinket, it will last you for quite some time.

It always use to be that for me, checked with several gear,buffs etc and always ended up with 5 spirit= 1mp5,9 spirit=1 healing.

Okay, well FYI.  +Healing gets buffed by spirit in two ways.  One is from the talent Spiritual Guidance which increases Damage and Healing by 5% of your Spirit; if you put 5 points in it, you get 25%.  If you have Improved Divine Spirit, or are buffed by someone who does, that's another 10%, hence the 0.35 number I gave for healing.

As for regen, the new formula for 2.4 is OO5SR MP5 = Sqrt(Intellect) / 21.45 * Spirit.  I have about 700 Intellect raid buffed, hence my 1.23 OO5SR MP5 number.