Since Blizzard gave us our love patch in 1.10, I've been using heal rank2 in basically every instance environment at a cost of 172 mana and healing for about 1300 with raid buffs.

My gear and talents are in my profile, but really I was wondering really whether Spirit is becoming more and more of a useless stat?

I remember the days when priests used to heavily rely on flashheals and spirit with healing rotations on most of the BWL encounters, these days I can sit through a whole instance spamming rank2 heal and not going OOM for absolutely ages, and never when drinking combat pots.

With my gear, I have been focusing heavily on MP/5 gear and +healing, I think atm I have a really good balance but I am looking for advise, particularly when it comes down to spirit. Is it turning into a useless stat to have? Should I look to go for purely mp/5 and +healing gear?? Why bother with spirit when in 99.9% of encounters I never go outside of the FSR, unless it is using innerfocus to give me a few seconds grace and I can spam heal2 forever with the current gear I am using?!

It seems to me that the +spirit gear is no way as good endgame as the +healing and spirit gear, however naxx does seem to drop more spirit gear of a half decent quality.

I get called an overhealer all the time by my guild, but I think it is a very naieve attitute to take when most of the wipes that occur on new content happens when the MT gets a nasty damage spike and dies, then wipes the raid.

I really would appreciate comments on this, I am wondering if really I should be going for a balance or whether I would be more effective getting stacking massive amounts of +healing and MP/5 gear.

http://ctprofiles.net/386391

I believe spirit to be more of a priest and druid stat, while mp5 more of a paladin and shaman stat.

The reasons for that lie in the mechanics of our healing, talents and different bonuses acquirable through spirit as opposed to mp5.

Futhermore, spirit imo, requires a bit more from the healer, as opposed to mp5.

But in the end i believe it is all about play style.

Optimally though, current itemization system suggests to get items that benefit from all of the stats, rather then focus on a specific one.

If this really is your heal style, then yes, spirit is not as important as mp/5. I don't use heal2, I use GH3 if I'm healing the MT and Flash Heals if I'm on DPS duty. I end up being outside the FSR quite a bit on many fights even in AQ40. Twin Emps is a classic example. If you are just spamming Heal2 over and over without actually paying attention to how much health the tank has, you are either going oom very fast, or using a metric ton of potions to keep yourself going. Using GH3 and interupting it if the tank is high on health allows me to heal the tank in a timely fashion if he takes a spike, but also get alot of use out of my spirit regen. So it comes down to style of play. For me, spirit is alot more usefull than mp/5.

Overhealing to a certain extent is required to prevent spike deaths, but there is such a thing as to much. If you are going over 40% overhealing, you really need to re-evaluate your healing style, imnho.

Overheal only matters if a) you really should be healing someone else rather than spamming heals at a person on full health or b) you go oom.

If you are chain healing an MT, get 50% overheal, yet never run out of mana then I see no problem. Also maybe I just react too slow, but ive lost count of the number of times shortly after mana conserve became broken where i was self cancelling alot, and just after I cancelled (but before the heal would have landed) my target took a large chunk of damage. To me the 'safer' method is to just never cancel, and stick to a cast you cant oom on. You then can throw in a pws or flash if the incoming dps to your target goes up significantly.

There's obviously no definite answer, it depends on your healing style. You have clearly built your gear around continuous healing so it's no surprise that this works out better for you. The "best itemisation" (wrt to ilvl) in the game currently favours mana tick so it's sorta decided for you. Not sure why, could be because mana tick favours paladins/druids/shamans more or because Blizzard have stated that they don't want people to have to be a specific spec to defeat an encounter (and mana tick is spec independent).

The benefit of continuous healing is that it can be done on the fly. Burn out and rotate maximises the benefit of spirit but requires some organisation and isn't so flexible; but there are other benefits - i.e. wanding for mana back during a regen cycle. My guild plans to equips all our paladins with Ashkandis so that they can keep up Judgement of Wisdom on bosses.

We had a period of time where overhealing was frowned upon but after awhile it came down to this, you want people to die or not? As long as people are using effecient heals and people are not being retarded and using Emergency monitors it should be fine. We have a good number of healers who are mana per 5 whores and some who are + healing whores, most are balanced. It greatly depends on your style of play, I have a friend who is a spirit whore and he regens a shitload since he has decent + healing.

Well fundamentally I agree that spirit is less relevant than it used to be.

From a main tank healing perspective getting a constant influx of moderate heals is much safer than a more spaced out stream of big heals. With everyone spamming low rank heals, there are fewer spirit ticks than we used to get.

When you take into account the mp5 that has been added not only in gear but in inexpensive consumables (mana oil/mageblood) spirit has really fallen from grace.

I am quite pleased to see no item level allocation wasted on spirit in the new shaman set.

As long as your are keeping your group and main tank alive, then your play style works. Overhealing is needed somewhat to prevent spikes killing people.

Overhealing is a different issue.

On paper overhealing seems like something that should be corrected. In practice I think overhealing is fine.

In the end overaggro/overdamage needs to be monitored because the raid can hinge on a mistake in this area.

Since they gave us tranquil air I do not recall a healer pulling aggro unless multiple tanks have died (first 10 seconds of the emps being the exception) So overhealing is really of no risk to the raid. As long as the healers are keeping people alive there is no harm to overhealing and having people topped off (even overly so) is always beneficial to the raid.

I used to be a M/5 whore like yourself (OP), then started really looking at how I heal, and why I do things the way I do. I was up around 1000+heal with 90m/5, and 230 spirit and decided to experiment a little - currently I'm at 800+heal, 79m/5, and 340 spirit, and with using HR2 constantly, and just on/off cancellations, my mana stays ridiculously high on fights, and when I factor in buffs, Mana Oil, Sagefish, etc - Its almost impossible for me to go oom just spam casting HR2, not to mention I can hit 4-5 DPS with a Renew (say an ill timed exploding bug or something) and resume flash spamming a tank for a few seconds to stabilize, then go back to HR2/GhealR2, and i'll be FM within a short while.

It does all come down to preference, and your guilds make up in the end, it wouldn't help if everyone healed the exact same way.

Does anybody else not feel that the mechanic for healing is just broken, everybody scales the heals down so far now it feels like the game is being cheated...then again I am a mage...

One of our priests uses the same spam hr2 strategy for keeping tanks up. The problem with a "big heal cancel" method is that if a tank gets hit with a big spike, it's a full 1-2 seconds before anyone can react. Lag, reaction time, etc. usually prevents you from an effective 2-3 person staggered big heal. The constant heal can tide a tank over until he hits a counter or he gets a flash heal. As long as you aren't running oom, it isn't overhealing.

I'm kind of surprised that you guys discount spirit that much since priests can get 30% spirit regen in FSR for 3 pieces of tier 2 + a talent (at the more advantageous spi/4 rate), as well as a talent that adds spirit/4 to healing & damage. Is the itemization cost for +spirit so high that you can't effectively duplicate mana/5 and +healing with one stat?

Do you think your views will change in 1.11 when every druid will have innervate and resto spec'd druids might be better able to handle spikes with their new 31 point talent?

Healing mechanics are almost as stupid as hunter mechanics. At least our gear upgrades make us better.

On overhealing: I've hit 80% overhealing on a few BWL fights, because there's honestly no reason to ever interrupt Heal2. It might as well not cost any mana, and there's always a slight chance that the person might happen to take some damage right before it lands (which actually happens fairly often with tanks). I don't think I've even used a major mana pot since 1.10 came out, simply because I don't run out of mana anymore. I've considered moving up to a higher rank of Heal as my primary heal, but I have no trouble keeping a tank up by myself that other competant healers in my guild need help on (i.e. Frank bugholder), and according to Recap I'm usually at or near #1 on health healed adjusted for overhealing.

It really does feel like cheating though, until I remember that paladins can do the same thing for half the mana.

Yes. At 75% of time spent under the 5SR (about what I do now), 1 spirit = .1875 mana/5 and .25 damage with all relevant talents/etc. 1 spirit is 230 points, while the regen costs 103.125, and the healing costs 25. With mp5/+healing, you get about 80% more benefit than with spirit. Of course, due to the diminishing returns you want some of both.

As people have stated, it really depends on your play style and gear.

M/5 with +healing makes a good combination for spamming low rank heals.

I tend to stack a little more spirit and use larger heals to take advantage of FSR. While it can take some time to recover if you just missed a damage spike, you generally aren't the only one healing the MT. And if it is really bad I shield and drop a flash to buy myself some time.

Anyway, both are viable strategies. Go with whichever floats your boat and makes you happy healing.

Just for the record: overhealing doesn't generate aggro so there is no reason why overhealing is bad if you are worried about pulling aggro. To test it out simply have a warrior with good enough tanking gear that he won't take any damage from a level 5. Now go out in Elwynn Forest and find a level 5 red creature. Have the warrior aggro using an unarmed hit. Use no aggro generating moves. Overheal as much as you want. You won't pull aggro.

My story:
Pre 1.10 I was pure mp/5 and flash heal spam. 3.5 sec heals seemed to take an eternity, and flash heal gets HORRIBLE returns on +healing.

Shortly after 1.10 priest review I finally (after close to 6 months of Nef farming) got my 8th piece of transcendance and have been focused on maximising my +healing since then.


My strategy:
My current MT healing strategy is to keep renew and GHeal HOT (from 8 piece transc) on the MT at all times. Currently that's about 600hp/tick of HOT healing from R10 renew and R1 Gheal (that heals for 1650 avg non crit) with +788 healign and 62 mana/5. In the 12 seconds or so between applying my HOTS I use heal R1 to help top up the MT. I can sustain this strategy in my current gear indefinitely.

Spot healing strategies are very dependent on the fight. EG stage 1 C'thun: anyone above 50% health isn't in imediate danger of dying, so a Gheal R1 that does 2.8k is usually suffiecent to get them to full. Topping people off with rank 1 renew for 27 mana (500 ish healed) can't really be beaten for mana efficiency (close to 20hp/mana spent). Heal R1 if they've taken 1kish damage. The only time I cast flash heal is after I bubble someone who is in danger of dying (under 30% HP).

Some situations still call for some vigourous flash heal spammage (like 20% nef zerg). Fights like the defenders before Twin Emps (heavy AOE damage) I can sustain spamming Gheal R1 (314 mana for 2.7k or so healed non-crit with HOT).

My current healing strat utilises, Renew R1 and R10, Heal R1, Gheal R1 and R5 (when Inner Focus is up), Prayer of Healing R1 and R5, PWS R10 and Flash Heal R7.


My gear:
I still like to keep a good stock of mana/5 items for any dispel intensive fights (like chromag).

As for item selection: Armour 8 piece trasnc. Jewlery/Weapon prioritisation: +healing > mana/5 > stamina > spirit > intel. Ultimately I plan to maximise my +healing by pickign up all the non-set armour items I don't have, but currently I"m happy with 8 piece trans.

That said, spirit isn't bad, it's jsut not as good as +healing or mana/5.


Your gear:
If you want to spam flash heal maximise mana/5 as you get BAD returns from +healign with flash heal. If you want to top healing meters and still have mana at the end of fights then maximise +healing and use scaled down healing spells like Heal R1/2 and Gheal R1. As for spirit, I don't believe it's viable with currently available gear to prioritise spirit over mana/5 or +healign and be as versatile as the mana/5 priest or as sustainable as the +healing priest.

I've pulled heal agro across the room from a warrior tanked caster emp from too much non-MT healing :( That was without any points in Silent Resolve or a tranquil air totem. I've also pulled healing agro on Visc from too much prayer of healing/MT healing/OOP healing.

Spirit is the strongest stat available to priests per budget point, as long as it's allocated within a normal three-point spread. Concentration comes close to that.

While I find low rank heals incredibly useful for certain situations, I do not want to trust spamming the same heal repeatedly when there are different damage intakes to different players occuring. And if I do not have spirit or concentration to recover from situations wherein I must rapidly restore the health of spike damage losses, I find myself dwindling in combat.

But I also find that you should go into different fights wearing different gear. I will often swap in more regeneration for fights like, as mentioned Chromaggus, or healing for fights like Skeram where things come in annoying spikes then a whole lot of nothing.

And of course sometimes I put on gloves of the immortal and boost my health/armor by a huge amount so I actually live the whole stupid fight. It really does depend. To say any stat, skill, option or ability is outmoded shows you've been farming the same content too long and need to hit something new.

I'm curious as to why you chose Transc gloves over Prophecy gloves. Aren't they better for your whole mp5 thing with a tiny amount of +healing lost?

8/8 Trans bonus. Only reason ever.

Edit: missread :(

Good question, especially when you wear 4 pieces so you can drop 1 and still have 3/8 bonus.
My guess would be - your guild doesn't do MC anymore / you are too lazy to get prophecy now / enchant them with +30 healing :)

removed, JC's numbers are much better