Healing as a disc priest, is it basically mandatory for you to use all your cool downs all the time now?

Pain Suppression
Power Infusion
Inner Focus
Shadowfiend
PW:Barrier
Divine Hymn
Hymn of Hope
Any others?

As a DPS player I usually macro cooldowns and trinket /use effects to abilities to make sure that I use those cooldowns whenever they are available but in WOTLK I can count the number of times I had to use a CD in a 5-man with my disc priest on one hand.

Are you priests macroing these abilities to ensure you use them somewhat indiscriminately or are you intelligently using them and saving them for "just the right time"?

I would love to hear priest players' thoughts on the use of these cooldowns who have more experience on their priest than I do on mine (which is pretty much all of you).

 

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I definitely try to hit Inner Focus every cooldown, and I definitely need Shadowfiend on boss fights.

Power Infusion, I know everyone says "use it on yourself!" now, but I can't break the habit of using it to haste a DPS caster.

Hymn of Hope I pop if we get a safe moment (e.g. impale phase on Magmaw). I try to synch it with Shadowfiend so I have the increased base mana while the Fiend is active.

Divine Hymn, as always, is the "omg everything is going horribly wrong!" cooldown. Although it feels pretty feeble compared to level 80, it hasn't scaled at all well with the increased health pools and damage.

Pain Supp I've always been bad at using ad-hoc (as opposed to planned "Banq, Pain Supp on phase x" type stuff. Power Word: Barrier I'm even worse since you need to position it. That's what I have to work on to get better as a level 85 healer.

 

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save hymn for boss fights, use your CDs all the time.

 

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