Every week, WoW Insider brings you Spiritual Guidance for discipline, holy and shadow priests. On Sundays, Dawn Moore covers healing for disc and holy priests and fails to play the heartstrings of young priests. Some people just arent cut out to be teen idols like Fox Van Allen.

I was hoping to be done talking about 4.0.1 (mostly because Im sick of typing out all the little periods), but it seems there are still a few things to be said. At this point Ive talked specs, talents, new abilities, glyphs, gems and reforging -- and now the last thing I seem to have missed is the part where I tell you how to play. Or at least how to adapt. Or ... something. Either way, I suspect its one thing for me to tell you guys how to play in a theoretical sense, two or three weeks before the patch, and then another thing to tell you exactly how to play when the patch is actually out. I had one reader ask, What abilities should I be using? I had another ask for a flowchart. Pft! Do you think Im funny enough to make flowcharts? Silly readers, I leave flowcharts to the pros.

Anyway, I thought on this relevancy vs. redundancy idea for a while, mostly because Im extremely paranoid that I bore you guys at every second. (Dawn puts on a silly hat. Are you not entertained!? /Paranoidparanoidparanoidparanoid ...) I eventually decided that the best thing to do was in fact leave it to the pros -- though Im still not giving you guys flowcharts. Instead Ive got our regular priesty friend Kinaesthesia on board to give a full testimony on playing holy right now, as well as a new name you guys may not know, Mr. Raegx of Vigil. Raegx approached me a few months ago, asking if I needed any help, and I stuck him in a file box. Hes out now, though, so lets see what the two of them have to say.

I questioned both Kina and Raegx on various topics, but Raegx and I discovered a mutual appreciation for the machinima artist Paus, which kept getting us off topic (stay out of my dreams Paus!), so our interview was a bit disjointed. For that reason, Im going to offer both their answers in a slightly different format. Dont let it distract you.

Kinaesthesia on holy healing in 4.0.1

Theres really no wrong way to heal in 4.0.1. The addition of Chakra and Holy Words make it so healing can be a lot more complex, but there is nothing wrong with keeping it simple. You can heal just like you used to if you want.

Right now, were playing with a lot of excess. There are lots of new talents and abilities that we have but dont need for the current content. But if you choose to utilize them, youll have a lot more fun. Chakra is the big ability that stands out; you dont need to use it at all, but if you choose to use it, you get a lot from it. Now, everyone is going to suck at using Chakra at first, but if you try to use it, try to get better at use it and really work at maximizing what you do with it, you will get better at it. Plus, youll be ready to use it in Cataclysm. Right now, playing holy is like learning a new class; its a really different experience, even if you have the same core abilities.

This week, I tried all the Chakras at least a couple times to get a feel for them. Renew Chakra was boring, because youre just spamming. Ooh, I can put more Renews up! But youre just doing the same thing you did before, faster; thats really boring. I tried Heal Chakra, but theres no point in using it or Heal right now. With Prayer of Healing Chakra, you have to ask yourself: How do I maximize this? Youve got 30 seconds, and you dont want to just keep spamming Prayer of Healing to keep it up and neglect your core abilities. Its almost like learning a rotation. Youll ask yourself, is this off cooldown? OK, let me do that. Oh, this is off cooldown, lets use that again. Is Sanctuary off cooldown? OK, now lets use that. Youve got to watch your timers and procs. Its a lot of fun, and if you get good at it, its really going to help you a lot in the next expansion. If you dont take the time to learn Chakra now while the mana is easier to come by, youre really going to suck at using it in the next expansion.

So its not really a rotation, but more of a priority. It goes like this: Refresh your Chakra, but try to keep your Prayer of Healing useful -- if you see an opportunity to use it, use it, so you dont have to refresh it for no reason a few seconds later. Use Holy Word: Sanctuary on cooldown, and if youre on top of it, your Sanctuary will overlap a little. Use Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending on cooldown as well. Use Renew as your filler when you cant do anything else. Use Flash Heal only if absolutely necessary, because your hands will be full handling everything else.

It is kind of hard on mana to upkeep this, but it really pays off. I was a good 10 percent above everyone else in output on the meters. You have Renew ticking on maybe 8 people at a time and Sanctuary on at least 10 if you get it in a good spot. Everyone else is getting Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending bounces. You have an insane amount of coverage as a raid healer.

I didnt change any of my gems when I logged in. I had nothing but spellpower + haste and spellpower + spirit gems before. I did reforge some haste. Im using a spellpower flask still, but I considered using a regen flask (Flask of Pure Mojo or Flask of Distilled Wisdom) and would definitely recommend that if I was in a raid with longer kill times. Just remember you dont need to do this, but if you can it will be easier to learn now.

For addons, I definitely recommend Power Auras. Its a mandatory addon for reaching your maximum potential. For Chakra, you can set an icon indicator with a countdown timer for how long is left. Right now, I set Prayer of Healing Chakra to have a meteor icon, because its overkill. I also had to tweak few things, like Serendipity only having two stacks now, and I got rid of my Surge of Light alert because it never procs anymore. There isnt much reason to take crit anymore for talents.

And Im back. Curse that Kinaesthesia, undermining my preachy You should try to stay balanced everyone! jargon. Anyway, I just wanted to add a few things. First, right after that last sentence, Kina and I talked more about Surge of Light, since we are both healing on beta and casting both Smite and Heal. We agreed that Surge of Light just doesnt proc enough -- maybe once per dungeon, if youre lucky. So just in case you were thinking, Wait, he said he didnt even use Heal! -- thats why.

Next, if you want to check out Power Auras more, this article from Mat will have a lot of information for you. Ill try to get some things together and do an addon article for you guys once Cataclysm launches, but so much will be breaking when we get the new game that I dont want to have to do it twice.

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Finally, Kina encountered a pretty crazy bug while healing this week. His guild worked on Icecrown Citadel on Wednesday evening in the United States. Blizzard hotfixed a bunch of things early the next day, and one of them was this bug. Kina told me that before the fix, the bug related to holy priests using the Glyph of Dispel Magic, and that if you cast Dispel Magic, your Echo of Light mastery would stack indefinitely. Ill try to get a log to show you guys in the comments, but he said he was doing something like 68k HPS on Valithria because of it. All gone now, but still fun to think about. Kind of like when A Team mage tanked Instructor Razuvious, only for healers.