Having mana issues in heroic

I recently ran Heroic Gundrak and was having some serious mana regen issues. I had to sit and drink at least 10 times during the instance, when usually I don't drink at all and only occasionally use Divine Plea.

I had a priest healing me and they kept bubbling (Power Word: Shield) me, which I just feel weird about, but wondered if that might be the problem or if something else was up.

Here is my armory.
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Norgannon&n=Knales

I can't tell you if the priest was disc or holy -- the bubbling lead me to believe that they were disc, but the general healing style, other than that, did not feel like other disc priests I've run with.

I do know that at least one of the melee dpsers was not hitting my target and was probably pulling aggro quite a bit, but no one ever said anything out loud so I considered it a non-issue.

My spell rotation is very standard and I really don't even use consecrate or hammer of the righteous unless there are at least 2-3 mobs, but I was still having issues. Yes, I'm using Blessing of Sanctuary.

Had 2 druids in the group as well, one boomkin and one feral -- think I was getting Improved Gift of the Wild buff and wondered if I was getting missed alot too. But I don't think my avoidance is good enough.

As I'm writing this I am thinking I should have talked to the priest some more and had a detailed look at my combat log to see if there was anything telltale in there, but, alas I did not.

Any thoughts?

Thanks in advance.

It's very possible that the priest was over-shielding you. When I run with a priest, I tell them not to pre-shield me, and only use it when I'm actually taking damage. On trash pulls especially, I hate having a PW:S.

I'd recommend you read this sticky as it contains very good information on how not to go /oom in heroics.

By not using Hammer of the Righteous, you're losing out on threat on all mobs. If there's a dps hitting them when you don't have aggro, bad things can happen.

Gear-wise, things look alright. How often did you find yourself under 50% health? If you weren't taking enough damage, mana return will hurt a bit.

Can't really see talents for some odd reason, that may or may not have something to do with it also.
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MT'd: [10]15/15 Naxx, [10]Arch, [10]Sarth+0, [25]Arch, [25]15/15 Naxx, [25]Sarth+0

Are you using divine plea on cooldown?
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Seal & Judge Wisdom instead of Corruption on the trash, and be happy you have a priest who knows where the PW:S button is in the first place.

in gundrak i usually run low on mana as well because there aren't that many opportunities for multi mob pulls so mana returns from SA or bosanc are going to be low. i don't like doing a pull with less than 4 mobs in it. any other heroic i never drop under 75% mana (divine plea clear that right up) regardless of pw: shield or not. however in a low return situation that can easily add to an already annoying problem.

tl;dr: try and pull more.
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I'm slightly better geared than you, and I don't drink in heroic Gundrak, I don't do multi-pulls. I use BoSanc and SoV to tank, but always judge wisdom. The only place I may find myself drinking is after the heroic-only boss, his spray hits your mana instead of hp, I think.

And I use consecrate liberally in there, too, just because I have the free GCD.

Let's see...I even single pull the elementals before the Colossus boss, and no mana problems there.

For shielding, the only one time I had a priest that shielded a lot, yes, I did indeed find my mana running low quite often. But it was never so bad that I had to stop to drink. That was in heroic Halls of Stone.

On 2 or 3-mob pulls, I always pre-cast holy shield, then AS and start the rotation with HotR. Then slip into 969 from there. As long as dps don't rush it, I don't need to break out of 969 at all even on 4-pulls. I like to spread out my judgement, though. So most of the time I'm hitting at least two targets that has JoW up, with my HotR.

I do always keep every mob on me, though. I'll taunt anything that's not hitting me and follow up with ShoR to build up some threat lead.

BTW isn't that leg plate a dps plate? Well there's no "wasted" itemization, I just don't like thing that don't have defensive stats.

I logged in today with the intention of making a similar post about how PW: S seems to gimp our mana/dps/tps and to find out how to address the issue. Since you've already brought it up, I'll just add my thoughts here.

I ran Heroic Drak'Tharon Keep yesterday with a priest that constantly shielded me before, during, and after each pull. At first I didn't really mind, but then I noticed that my mana regen was extremely low (I use Divine Plea on cooldown, judged/sealed wisdom), and I was being ridden pretty closely on threat. What irked me more was that the priest ended every single fight at full mana. It just wasn't fair!

At first I thought it was my recent gear changes which significantly improved my mitigation, but later on that night I ran H VH with a priesty friend of mine that doesn't shield, and had no issues on mana or threat at all, despite pre-placing consecrates etc. The priest even managed a decent 600dps while healing me since I can survive most of the trash fights with few/no heals, and he'd just heal me when needed or between fights.

Ok, so that being said, and as relates to the OP, what can be done? I dropped consecrate from my rotation and didn't holy shield until the PW: S wore off (since the hits are absorbed anyway). I managed to maintain a decent pace, but my threat was still pretty gimped. Fortunately, DTK is home to any undead, so it wasn't really an issue maintaining control of the mobs.

Is it okay to ask the priest to not shield us? I don't really know, and it seemed like the wrong thing to do. I didn't die, and it may be the only way that priest can keep me up (I don't know, I don't seem to take a whole lot of damage, and can usually handle any of the trash packs without heals). I've really lost touch with how priests heal, and how their healing changes between their specs. Is this a common healing technique? Is it something they learn from doing a lot of PvP? If it is the only way to keep us alive, how can we make up for the lost threat and mana (HS + whatever gets dropped for threat, BoSanc/SA for mana)?

I am at least relieved to see that I'm not the only/first paladin tank that has run into this issue. If anybody has arrived at other solutions, or could provide more detail on why priests are using PW: S, or even if it is just okay to tell them to cut it out, I'd like to know as well. To the OP: thanks for voicing this concern, I don't recall seeing a similar post recently and it was really bugging me too.

Note: regarding the following post, I don't recall seeing any block/miss/dodge results while the shield was up, and thus no mana returned through BoSanc.

I feel it's important to note that if you had a Discipline Priest healing him, he has every right to spam shield you. If you're doing it right and running with Blessing of Sanctuary, there should be no issue with mana, if you're running with kings and bitching at him then it's your problem, not his.

PWS is a core part of Discipline Priest healing.
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Levantine: 80 Frost [27k HP, 27k Armor, 544 Def]
Anzen: 30 Elemental [Resto in the making]

I run WoW together with my wife, who is disc priest healer since 70.

Based on our own experience through all the heroic / raid runs from fresh-80 to i226 gear, I can say this:

- When you are being hit enough, PW:S doesn't stand in the way of your mana regen. Really.
- When you are not hit enough, convince your priest to throw more actual heals than shields on you. Even if he's disc, he is perfectly capable of doing that. Explain that you get mana back from healing, and ask him to watch your mana bar and use heals over shields when it's low.

If the priest is good, that is not going to be a problem.
If not... why the hell run with a bad priest.
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Yeah, my girlfriend is a disc priest. It was the shields. If you're running oom, ask them to save the shield for when you're taking heavy damage. It's not like the disc priest is going to have mana problems healing you anyway.

<3 disc
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Thank you all for the input.

Yeah those leggings are dps, but they're the best i've been able to get my hands on at the moment, and they don't gimp me in any way.

I do judge wisdom ALL the time, but perhaps I will try sealing it as well on trash mobs if i'm having trouble.

If it happens again i will look closer at my combat logs and talk to the priest about not shielding as much.

Thanks again.