I've recieved a lot of varied oppinions on the merits of wearing 8/8 Transcendence versus wearing a lot of the non-set pieces, which can generally get you a lot more +healing, something many also like. I only have five pieces myself, and while I could see myself wearing all eight on certain fights, I honestly don't think I would use it full time, but the point of this thread is to argue the merits.

Looking at just the armor slots, with full Transcendence, you get the following stats:
1% Crit
Intellect: 176
Spirit: 127
Stamina: 114
7 MP5
+300 Healing
5 pieces: When struck in melee there is a 50% chance you will Fade for 4 seconds.
8 pieces: Your Greater Heals now have a heal over time component equivalent to a rank 5 Renew.

If you were to go all out +healing, you could probably rationalize replacing almost all of the set pieces. That being said, the three piece bonus is amazing, and I would never live without it. Keeping the helm, gloves, and pants(which in my mind, are the best pieces relative to other options), you could replace the shoulders with Ternary Mantle, the robes with Robes of the Guardian Saint, the bracers with Bracers of Royal Redemption, the belt with Grasp of the Old God, and the boots with Boots of Pure thought. Doing so would give you the following stats:
+108 Stam
+138 Int
+97 Spirit
+411 healing
21 MP/5
1% Crit

The difference being(From Full transc to 3/8)
-6 stam
-38 Int
-30 Spirit
+111 Healing
+14 MP5
- Set Bonuses

That stat loss sucks, but the +111 healing gain is pretty significant gain. The 5 piece bonus is great in a few fights, but useless in many as well. That being said, the eight piece bonus is obviously the selling point. I very rarely use greater heal at this point, finding that heal with the 900 or so +healing I have is more then enough to use Heal rank 1-4 to great effect. I'm curious why other people think it is, or is not better, and welcome any thoughts on the matter.

This is only debatable in your mind at the moment because you don't have 8/8. The 8-piece Transcendence bonus is basically broken. The mana efficiency of Rank 1 GHeal with 8/8 Trans is absolutely disgusting. If you're still missing several pieces, then yeah, you're better off giving up the 5pc bonus to min/max on a slot-by-slot basis, while keeping the 3pc bonus.

I have the ability to get it. I'll follow your advice and try it.

Gloves aren't really that good. Worst piece of transcendence IMO. I'd rather keep Robes of Transcendence (awesome looks) and take Gloves of the Messiah over transc gloves. If you're aiming for random +healing items, but want to keep the 3-set transc bonus that is.

Gloves are the worst piece of Transcedence due to the crit wasting itemization points.

I'm currently sitting at about +900 healing, wearing Halo, Leggings and Bracers of Transcendence. I've considered picking up the last four pieces of Transcendence, as the Robes would be the only hard part, but purely from a numerical standpoint it doesn't look like a huge upgrade. With a couple items out of early AQ, I could hit +1000 healing, compared to about +900 in full transcedence.

GH1 + full renew ticks would be 9.4 hp/mana, compared to 7.6 for heal2 with the +healing gear. Obviously a lot better, but only for one heal per 15 seconds, and the rest of the time you have to either cast heal (and be less mana efficient than the +healing build), or overwrite the renew. It seems easy to run into the problem druids have with Rejuv where the HoT portion does a lot less than it should. If you only have half the ticks actually healing, then GH1 + Renew drops down to 7.5 hp/mana.

Also, I'm not entirly comfortable with the idea of using 2k heals primarily. Spike damage on our tanks has been going down, and thier health up, but having a tank down 2k compared to 1k is as much of a difference as a flask makes.

I've been curious about how damage taken by a tank has changed with newer instances. MC is pretty much a static damage taken per second, with little in the way of spikes.

BWL was the king of spike damage, with Broolord MS/Cleave/Blastwaves, and shadowflame + forced berserker stances.

But BWL also introduced the idea of stacking debuffs. This seems to be blizzard's pet way of killing tanks, from flame buffets to ignited flesh, and the noxious breath from the green dragons.

Being relatively new to AQ, what are your observations on the type of damage output/healing required for tanks in this instance?

I'm at least glad it's not just flash heal spam anymore.

There's also the problem that the Trans renew takes 3 seconds before the first tick of healing. So if you have more than one 8/8 priest healing the MT, they may constantly overwrite the renew, preventing it from ticking.

Of course, this is easily solvable, but it is sad that a tier 2 8-piece bonus needs solving.

if you have access to it, an 8/8 will ake you one of the best healers in your raid. Not because you'll be landing the biggest heals 9albeit you will get some huge ones in) but because no matter what rank GH you cast you ALWAYS get the renew rank 5 buff on your target. With GH also now 2.5 second casting (with talents), and with 3 talent points in improved renew (no matter what priest build always worth gettign), you'll be landing 350+ ticks off of the buff easily for only about 3-400 mana. Which you will then regen insanely quickly.... Means effectively minimal downtime. C/f a screenshot shown by Gurg a few weeks ago where the guy with thr 8/8 bonus had headler 350,000+ hitpoints, the next closest 200,000.

edit: the way around having more than one 8/8 on the mt is to switch from them both using GH to one using Flash, should solve the problem, although spreading the 8/8 priests amongst the tanks will keep the raid up longer due to the fact nearly every raid encounter outside of molten core either benefits from having an off tank ready (Azuregos teleports at a very basic level), or Skeram if you are looking at Ahn'Qiraj at a more simple level. In fact, Skeram, The Bug Trio and Sartura all require at least 3 primary tanks so having an 8/8 (if possible) on all of them is hugely beneficial. Then put priests with miscelaneous gear (5/5 tier 2 and then 3 AQ/BWL miscelaneous pieces) as secondry healers on the tanks to pair up with the 8/8's.

excuse the grammatical errors :)

Uhmm, but i dont think that HoT component is affected by that talent. Its not even counted as "renew" in the first place.

If you are able to get the absolute ideal pieces for every slot, a pure +healing/mp5 build will be comparable to 8/8 transc. The ease of obtaining a full transc set makes it the better short term option for most.

I might change my mind when I see Naxx drops, but until then, I'll be hugging my Transc bonus tightly (well, once Nef stops being an unfair jackass) and focusing on getting the non-armor upgrades out of AQ. A priest with full transcendence and Ring of the Martyr/Augur Staff/Angelista's smashes a priest that blew his DKP load picking up the ideal +healing pieces and is still holding Benediction and other old options.

I lol'd at Zantetsuken's name change. Well played.

I'm not sure about the talent, I'll have to test that. But all your +healing counts, which is why it is so broken.

When I was a main healer on one of the tanks for Twin Emperors for example, over 10% of my healing in that fight was from that extra rank 5 renew, which has no additional mana cost. That means 8/8 Transcendence increased my total healing potentional by 10% without increasing any cost in mana.

It will be a long, long time before I get something that can replace this set.

Unless I misunderstand something you would need around 1400+ to get bonus ticks for 350+. That's only possible with trinkets right now.

Except for that you had to use a less mana-efficient heal to be able to get that 10%. How much of your healing is from GH compared to non-GH to get that 10%?

Rank 1 GH isn't mana efficient? Are you on crack?

Gurg beat me to it, but my primary heal spell is Greater Heal (Rank 1) now. I cast it more than anything else on my bar.

Flash heal is only something I use when I know I have to get a heal on there as fast as possible.

And yes, the fact that the set bonus triggers the exact same bonus on a Rank 1 Greater Heal as a Rank 5 Greater Heal is why its so amazing.

Guild insider info Edit:

Back when Blackwing first came out, I posted a thread in our internal guild forums called, "Why should I loot Transcendence?" Initially, Transcendence didn't look all that better than Prophecy. Of course, we all knew the 15% mana regen set bonus was awesome, but no one understood the effectiveness of the other two set bonuses: reactive-fade and the greater heal extra renew. We didn't know if the extra renew was affected by +healing or if it even stacked with a regular cast renew. My original plan was 3 Transcendence and 5 pieces of Prophecy giving the 15% mana regen bonus and a 1.4 second cast on Flash Heal. Of course, these days our primary heal spell is Greater Heal and not Flash Heal.

The 1.10 changes to the Priest class itself made Transcendence even better. I'm honestly a bit worried that I might be a prisoner of the set (and the 8 piece bonus) for a long time since its going to have to be some incredible loot to want to make me break the set. We already have better individual healing pieces being passed to priests who don't have the 8 piece set bonus. Other priests using a mix of the gear have more individual +healing than I do, but don't have the set bonus.

Compared to Heal2. For me, GH1 is 5.6 hp/mana, compared to 7.1 hp/mana for Heal2.

Same +healing benefit on both of them, but GH costs almost twice as much mana.

If only 10% of your healing is from the set bonus and the other 90% is from GH, you're only at about 6.5 hp/mana with the set bonus.

Of course, you're also spending significantly less time out of the 5SR, which I suspect is actually the main difference.

My usual method on a main tank is cast GH rank 1 when he's down a bit to stick on the 8/8 Renew bonus, then I throw a Rank 10 renew on him. Now I have two renews ticking on him. I spot flashes on him as needed for the next 15 seconds, then I repeat with another Rank 1 GH to stick the Renew back on, etc.

I've actually not tried out Heal (Rank 2) much at all. I think I remember reading it's the most effective health per mana ratio, but there's more to healing than just that. It's a lot more reactive in WoW than other games. I'm always starting to cast and dancing around to cancel it if I see the tank is full.

Do those of you that use 8/8 transcendence find yourselves gimped in the regen department considering the lack of spirit and mp5 on the entire transcendence set or with the amount of +healing do you find it more mana efficient?

I find that healing meters over a period of time can be quite innaccurate due to the overhealing that Damage Meters cant track properly so the output of true efficiency is somewhat skewed.

I myself have 8/8 Trans, Robes of the Guardian Saint, Shimmering Getas, Angelista's Charm, and Ring of the Matyr. Ive played around with both different types of setups and i constantly find myself favoring my +healing/mp5 setup over the 8/8 Transcendence. With mageblood, nightfin soup and mana oil (Put on Staff of Rampant Growth for midcombat switchouts) i can top out at over 120 mp5. I presume that since we only have 2 priests with full Transcendence in our guild and others with only 5/8 weve hadnt had much opportunity to test out having different specs in combo with 8/8. Kinda sucks when our best regenning priests are also the two with 8/8.

Comments welcome.

SW Stats

This is so much better than Damage Meters it's not even close. Effective Healing is the greatest thing since sliced bread. And even against 2 8/8 Priests, I can compete just fine in the Effective Healing department with 5/8 and +healing/mp5 setup.

I agree that in the long run swapping out 5 pieces of Trans for the high-end AQ40 loot (Fankriss robes, Huhu gloves, Emps bracers, Ouro hat, C'Thun belt) would yield a clearly superior set.

But in the meantime, if you aren't ever really having serious mana issues then the pure healing benefits of 8/8 Trans have no real downside. If longevity becomes a more serious problem, we may see a shift away from Trans down the line.

Ill have to try out SW Stats and compare. I just find Damage Meters highly overrated from a healing standpoint due to its inability to figure out "TRUE" effective healing.

Over the past few weeks with what i have now ive found a high mp5/+healing setup in my opinion to be far superior to 8/8. The sheer ability to have staying power as a healer with next to no downtime and using the occasional mana pot is invaluable in most long fights such as Nefarian. I think my SVI Addon topped out at 250 int/mp5 (equates to over 25,000 mana regened in a Nef fight).