The organization of raid healing

Grital · 07/28/06, 3:13 PM

Since I just got into this discussion with something concerning priests, they say healing is a competition that makes slower heals (Gheal, Heal, HW, and the like) useless in raids because every other healer is using 1.4-1.5sec heals. Not withstanding the best priest in our raids uses Gheal and the best Shamans all use HW with Healing Way and the -cast time talent. We're a new guild with some people in BWL gear, mostly blues otherwise. Mowing down 20mans/Ony/MC (this week). So, raid wide, how do you organize healing? Do you assign MT healers and do group configs so each group has a healer and they are supposed to heal those people? Do you let people Flash Heal the EMs? Do you care about a priests overheal when spamming Heal Rank 2 even though they never run out of mana?

Genuinely curious. Every priest in every "high-end" guild on my server really seems to hate Gheal. They don't even have it on their bars. I don't particularly hate Flash Heal, I simply don't think it's the best heal for all situations and that Gheal is 100% worthless. I also find it very, very odd that our best priests healing is made up of 5% Flash Heal, total, and the rest is Heal Rank2 and Gheals of varying ranks.

Razzberry · 07/28/06, 3:19 PM

I also find it very, very odd that our best priests healing is made up of 5% Flash Heal, total, and the rest is Heal Rank2 and Gheals of varying ranks.

Your best priest plays using the best healing strategy and has appropriate results. That's not odd at all.

Dozer · 07/28/06, 3:26 PM

I was told and told (and I saw the math for myself) that HW+Healing Way was better than LHW in every way, but I could never get used to it. I, for lack of a better term, raped every shaman in effective healing using rank 6 and rank 3 LHW with about 640 +healing.

So to you query I say: to each his own.

Mythic · 07/28/06, 3:29 PM

Any priest that solely uses flash heal and never uses Heal and Greater heal has a lot to learn about their class. They're all much, much more mana efficient then flash heal, and get much better returns on +healing gear. As far as who you're responsible for, generally, it changes from fight to fight. I personally have RDX showing me all the melee in order of health, all the ranged in order of health, and all the healers, in order of health. If you know the dynamics of the fight, it's generally fairly predictable which of those groups is more likely to take damage, so I tend to prioritize whomever I think is more likely to take damage, with an obvious emphasis on anyone tanking anything if they get low. I don't use GHeal a whole lot because usually the damage just doesn't call for it, but it's not like I'm adverse to it. My heal rank one heals for about 1150-1200 and I can spam it forever without running out of mana, so that's generally what I use. I should probably cancel it more then I do, but I like to let it land since the consequences for casting the spell are minimal in mana cost, and I like to try and keep inspiration up.

Tuco · 07/28/06, 3:30 PM

We have MT healers. Generally OT healers are the healers in their group. People are responsible for those in their group, but most(all) of our healers heal outside of the group when theirs is secured.

Most of our healers use whichever heal is correct in the situation, and use all their heals from healR2 to GH5 to FH7. Which times you use it is dependent on you. Hell we fought Gluth our first time last night and all I did was HealR2 the EM for about 7 minutes or however long it took. On Patchwerk on the OT I use GH3. In TE I use Healr2 to heal the bug tanks.

Overall, I use heal/greater heal 6 times for every 1 cast of flash heal on average.

Razzberry · 07/28/06, 3:30 PM

I tried editing my previous post, but kept getting an error.

So, regarding some of your questions:

Do you assign MT healers and do group configs so each group has a healer and they are supposed to heal those people?

This way works. At the very least it lets you determine which healers are slacking or being overassigned healing duties.

Do you let people Flash Heal the EMs?

Exclusively? Hell no. That's the laziest type of healer I can possibly think of.

Do you care about a priests overheal when spamming Heal Rank 2 even though they never run out of mana?

Well, no. Overheal is only ever an issue if the healer is running out of mana. Otherwise, it just means that the tank's health is 100%, which means the tank's health isn't 0%, which is a Good Thing(tm). If a priest is running out of mana and overhealing, then you have a legitimate issue. That said, if he is only spamming Heal Rank 2 and consistently overhealing for the entire fight without mana issues, it does mean that he could probably split his time healing other people in the raid and use bigger heals on the tank less frequently.

Prague · 07/28/06, 3:30 PM

We don't really assign healing on trash that we have on farm unless it is known to consistently give us trouble like lab packs. What you have is another case of pre-1.10 priests unable to cope with change. Unfortunately you will probably have a hard time convincing them to change as Ony, MC, and the 20-man content don't really have any fights that test your healers mana pools endurance. Especially since they can yell out for an Innervate any time now.

Here is something that I wrote to the other healers in my guild as we close in on downing Huhu and beginning Twin Emp attempts. A lot of it came from the EJ forums in a thread about raid healing or healing efficiency, something like that.

After talking with another priest guildmate at work today in regards to healing and raiding, I decided to make a little write-up. Before patch 1.10, it was pretty standard for most healing classes to spam fast heals and rely on CTRA to cancel any heals that were not needed. Patch 1.10 brought about two major changes: the priest revamp and the breaking of the ability for CTRA to cancel heals. Before the Priest revamp, heals and greater heals were rarely used due to their long casting time, whereas now if specced properly can be reduced by up to 0.5 seconds making them extremely viable spells depending on the situation. As a bonus, Heal and GHeal retain the +healing bonus as if they were casting time was still 3 seconds as the actual benefit of +healing is not affected by talents that reduce casting times.

Due to this, spamming Flash Heal, as your one and only heal, has become an archaic way of healing. The best thing you can do as a raid healer is to balance healing efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainable heals per second. In most cases, a rank 2 Heal will provide this balance. This is of course circumstantial because if our main tank gets down to 1000 hit points, he is going to need heals and he is going to need them very fast, efficiency be damned.

There is a definite time and place where Flash Heal is the most effective. When mana is not a concern due to gear and consumables or simply the type of mob we are fighting, Flash Heal is wonderful. It ensures that we won't have to stop during trash pulls to rez and rebuff somebody. Again, the thing to remember here is that this is the case when mana is not a concern. As you will see, the price Flash Heal pays for being so fast, beyond it getting less benefit from +healing, is that it is very inefficient.

Another aspect that comes up is overhealing. Some overhealing is okay. The main tank getting healed for 4000 more than he needs be is better than 5 healers all cancelling their spells a split second before he eats some spike damage and dies. Obviously you don't want to blindly spam heals with no regards to your targets current life but if a situation arises where you think the heal will be useful but aren't entirely sure, then it is best to let the heal fly. Again, overhealing always trumps a dead tank.

As many of the rogues can attest, I would not start spewing out random advice without some numbers and math to back me up. An extremely useful site is http://www.ctmod.net/calculator.ct. Use this, toy around with it and see what numbers it generates for your current build, for your dream build or even just to see what happens when you switch one piece out for another that you are considering picking up next time it drops. When looking at the site, find the heal that provides the highest sustained heals per second (hps) and use it as your backbone. A little side note here is to ignore rank 1 Heal. Spells learned before level 20 suffer a penalty to +healing (and +damage) at a rate of 3.75% per level below 20. Rank 1 Heal, learned at level 16, would have an additional 15% penalty to it's +healing modifier.

Just to give you an idea, here are my current stats and results for a 10 minute fight where I spend 75% of the fight in the Five-Second Rule (FSR). These results focus around what you can do before running completely out of mana with no other means of mana regen or consumables. For the purposes of testing, I went ahead and gave myself the 3pc Trans bonus taking me to 30% mana regen (Trans + 3/3 Meditation) while in the FSR.

Stats: 6776 Mana, 323 Spirit, +532 Healing, Mana per 5: 21 (yeah, it sucks I know).

Results:
Rank2 Heal: castable every 4.47 seconds, average heal of 1015, 6.01 hitpoints healed per mana spent, 226.99 sustainable heals per second

Rank7 Flash Heal: castable every 9.39 seconds, average heal of 1290, 3.65 hitpoints healed per mana spent, 137.39 sustainable heals per second

Rank5 Flash Heal: castable every 6.69 seconds, average heal of 906, 3.59 hitpoints healed per mana spent, 135.38 sustainable heals per second

My Heal has a 2.5 second cast meaning that if I am cancelling about half of them, I will not run out of mana for just over 10 minutes. Mana pots and mana regen through consumables, totems, and the occassional innervate will give me even longer lasting power. This calculator shows that my rank 2 Heal is just coming into a useable area for me. My goal was to have a Heal that healed for right around 1000 hit points. I had the same thinking for my Flash Heal and was using rank 5 but, as you can see, this was an error of mine. I'm gaining very little from using the lower ranked Flash Heal especially considering the instances I use Flash Heal.

To give you an idea of my healing strategy, I first try to keep a Renew up on the MT. I know for some fights in BWL we will actually assign a HoT priest and druid but it really is useful in most cases. After that, I keep a rank2 Heal almost constantly channelled. Now, I will end up cancelling several of those but the benefit is that I always have a Heal ready to land when it is needed. When my tank takes spike damage, I mix this up by letting the current Heal finish. It will very rarely be faster to cancel your current Heal and getting a Flash Heal off so I find letting the Heal finish is best. I will then hit my Power Word: Shield key (if the spike was large enough) and immediately start casting Flash Heal until the targets life is stabilized. This strategy has worked great for me and has left me with enough mana to heal through stage 3 Nef and Bug Trio and Sartura fights when I really should not have been in those situations with my gear at the time. I should mention that I will occassionally replace Heal with my rank1 GHeal as it is the same casting cost but heals for 50% more on average (1500). GHeal will also most certainly be my opener when I'm cruising around in 8/8 Trans (a boy can dream).

I know this is quite the essay but it is important. We are on the verge of beginning attempts on the Twin Emperors and we are going to need to heal through the 10-15 minute fight without running out of mana. What will get us through that is liberal use of cancelling spells, rank 2 Heals, and when necessary, Shields and Flash Heals.

Above all, the most important thing we can do is to communicate with one another. Every step of progression our guild makes now is going to require some amazing work by everyone in the raid and us healers will need to do our part. This starts with Huhuran but after that, even trash will need some sort of assigning done. When we communicate and announce who we will watch, we save the class leaders and officers the extra hassle of having to assign healers for every little thing. Make no mistake, the Anubisath Defender "trash" after Huhu is by no means little, but you know what I mean.

Finally, with communication brings trust. It is something every healer needs to have in regards to the other healers and that can even be extended to the raid and the guild. When I trust the priests standing next to me, I don't have to have a wandering eye on the CTRA whack-a-mole game. I don't need to do this because I know that the people any other healer is watching will be healed and will stay healed. Of course, this is not to discourage a little spot healing from time to time. ;)

Of course, I am a post 1.10 priest (raided as a paladin when MC was new and a rogue before switching mains to my priest) so I don't have a special attachment to Flash Heal or anything. If anyone sees any misinformation in my quoted content, please let me know. I am new to high-end raid healing, afterall.

Also, the best thing I probably ever did as a healer was to disable Emergency Monitors.

LucidityAxel · 07/28/06, 3:31 PM

"How do you organize healing" is akin to asking "how do you defeat raid bosses"? One size doesn't fit all.

A mindless LHW/Flash Heal spam works when your raid is cruising in easy mode against content you could probably beat with half the people in the raid. If your healers don't run out of mana when spamming their least efficient heals, then start putting more of them on light dps duty to speed things up. You don't need 14-16 healers for things like trash pulls.

If they start running out mana and whining for innervates on boss encounters, then they probably need more organization. This is where you do things like putting 4 priests on the MT, all of whom chain Heal Rank 2 regardless of his current life bar (they should be able to do this more or less indefinitely), and you tell the spot healers not to touch him unless his life dips below a certain threshold, like 50%. If one spot healer won't take you through the whole boss fight this way, then use two in a rotation.

• Chicken · 07/28/06, 3:38 PM

Finding out the usefulness of the slower heals is largely a gradual process as it becomes necesarry. For the most part at the level your guild is on, Flash Heal is good enough to sustain healing throughout the entire fight, as you'll advance in content your more intelligent healers will usually find out about the virtue of slower heals. But for some, slower heals just don't work with how they heal.

The thing is, it's not necesarrily a bad thing to have some people who use the quick inefficient heals mixed in with people using the slower efficient heals, this is partially achieved naturally (Druids not having any spammable quick heals).

What matters most in the end is that you get through the encounters; as long as it's not hurting you, I wouldn't worry overly much about people overhealing or healing inefficiently.

Personally the only thing I use Flash Heal for is healing squishy targets during AoE, the rest are slow heals, but it took me a month or two after the Priest talent review to actually make this switch; before that I was, much like you're describing, convinced that it was practically impossible to use any heals with a cast time of over 2 seconds effectively. We still have a number of Priests whom primarily use Flash Heal, and a bunch of who prefer the slower heals like I do. The same thing basically with our Shamans.

We rarely fix up any particular healing plans; it's mostly limited to what is necesarry for the encounter (for instance, at the Emps we obviously have two "camps" of healers for each side).

Agrimat · 07/28/06, 3:38 PM

I am personally of the belief that healing meters and overheal meters are overrated. They're useful tools, but not valid indicators of how good a healer someone is. A healer's goal is to keep people alive, not to maximize the amount of healing he does. The information that meters give is at best incomplete, and at worst misleading.

A healer who spams low level slow heals on a MT will get a ton of overhealing, but will often be the guy who makes a clutch heal in a string of big hits. If he doesn't run out of mana, who cares if his overhealing is high and total healing is low? Guilds that take things to the extreme of rewarding the highest healers on the meters with gear get bizarre situations like priests in 3/8 prophecy for 1.4 second flash heals that race to make unnecessary spot heals, but have to chug mana potions through entire dungeons. It's dumb.

Copernicus · 07/28/06, 3:38 PM

A lot depends on the encounter.

For trash we usually have one healer in each group. Usually everyone is healing everybody with out of group heals though. The in-group healers are mostly used to touch up people who get hit for 1-2K or so, but aren't really in danger of dying. Flash Heal and PW:Shield are kings here because HPS is the most important thing on trash, not HPM.

For a standard boss, being Alliance, 90% of the fights we assign all the Paladins, 1-2 priests and 1-2 druids to healing the MT. The Paladins spam their 1.5 second heal while the Preists/Druids work with the HoT and mana-effecient big heals. They also cover emergency healing with PW:S, Nature's Swiftness and Swiftmend. The rest of the healers heal in group, out-of-group, or on the tanks, depending on the encounter.

Note that a lot of fights or trash require special healing requirements and sometimes assigning healers.

-------

As for the best heals, the most mana-effecient heals are the ones that are the lowest level heal that is level 20 or higher. Higher levels are a better HPS and worse HPM. HoTs and PW:Shield are usually the top-ranked one though.

Malorum · 07/28/06, 4:02 PM

It really all comes down to playstyle and the specific encounter that your doing. What we have found over time is an addon called Healing Groups Suck that really streamlines the process on those encounters that have to have specific setup healing. It makes healing assignments a breeze.

As a priest it was a big adjustment at first to me to get used to the timing of Gheal in conjunction with the encounters that i use to primarly use Flash Heal. One thing ive noticed over is that with the new changes MP5 isnt as important to me as it used to be. In full Transcendence with Blessed Qiraj Augur and other AQ / BWL Trinkets/Rings im at about +778 healing with approximately 81 mp5 unbuffed. I find it a great mix of both ends of the spectrum. It gives you alot of added flexibility in that you can downrank your spells properly and yet remain mana and heal efficient.

A good priest understands the backbone stats of his class and mixes gear up to appropriately complement them. A good priest knows what heals to use and at the right times. The same holds true for just about any healing class. A healer who mind numbingly presses one heal over and over or just spams Flash Heal on the Emergency Monitors is not a good one. Most of the time i dont even use it but to monitor the raid or a specific class as a raid leader.

Most of the time our MT healing consists of 4 priests, 1-2 druids, and 1-2 shamans. It gives a good overlap of HoT's and the appropriate buffs of Inspiration, Healing Way, and etc... Having a tank consistently hotted up is one of the best ways to mitigate burst damage on specific encounters. I normally assign one priest with 8 pc Trans (Its usually myself) to keep the Trans Hot on constantly with Gheal Rank 1 then i switch over to GHeal Rank 3 or Heal2 depending on the situation.

I then take the remaining druids, shamans and priests and spread them evenly on specific classes or groups and make them responsible for them the entirety of the fight. More often than not the shamans that are the melee dps groups are also responsible for healing those warriors/rogues/TSA Hunter. Ditto for the shaman that i place with any leftover Hunters that want GOA. If positioning with healers isnt much of an issue i tend to keep them in their own groups with a resto shaman for mana regen and mana tide. Ill then switch out appropriate shamans within groups to maximize a mana tide rotation. We normally bring around 14-16 healers to each raid.

Sinndir · 08/03/06, 1:50 AM

Originally Posted by Grital

Since I just got into this discussion with something concerning priests, they say healing is a competition that makes slower heals (Gheal, Heal, HW, and the like) useless in raids because every other healer is using 1.4-1.5sec heals. Not withstanding the best priest in our raids uses Gheal and the best Shamans all use HW with Healing Way and the -cast time talent. We're a new guild with some people in BWL gear, mostly blues otherwise. Mowing down 20mans/Ony/MC (this week). So, raid wide, how do you organize healing?

Hiya Grital hopefully with my experience I can help out with some info/ideas I have found out through playing WoW a lot (130 played days) and also reading a lot of theorycraft etc. here on EJ forums or other forums. First off organizing healing can be both difficult and easy. I would say a new guild with lots of raiders who are new to the MMORPG scene (non-EQ experienced and such) should have their raid leader or healing leader to be telling them specifically what to do. After that I think the healers learn and you just need to give a brief overview. I have found that each specific healer (priest/druid/pally sorry no experience with shamans) heal differently. For example here are a few of each type of healer:

A. Spirit focused healer - likes to stack spirit and have talents/gear to reflect that ie. Meditation, 3pc trans, also use larger rank heals of Greater Heal and Healing Touch etc.
B. MP/5 focused healer - usually low in spirit, these healers often use quicker heals because their regen can keep up to it
C. +Healing based healer - Grabs all the +healing they can and then downranks their spells for efficiency.

Those are just a few, as the saying goes different strokes for different folks and at the end of a boss if you are all alive and the mob is dead... then grats it worked! Lastly for organization it is good to put healers in groups so that say each healer has either 2 healers (priest/pally, druid/pally) or one priest. And during trash/bosses have those healers look after their specific group of 5 if not assigned to a target like MT or OT1/OT2 etc. etc.

Originally Posted by Grital

Do you assign MT healers and do group configs so each group has a healer and they are supposed to heal those people? Do you let people Flash Heal the EMs? Do you care about a priests overheal when spamming Heal Rank 2 even though they never run out of mana?

EM's is more about the trash pulls because things can go sour very quick on trash pulls and are less predictable than bosses. Also same with efficiency. Overheals don't really matter on trash pulls, as long as it is still reasonable... I'd say sub below 40% on trash pulls and try to shoot for below 20% on bosses. Even some bosses overhealing isn't bad, afterall it is better to overheal than to underheal and have a dead tank...

Originally Posted by Grital

Genuinely curious. Every priest in every "high-end" guild on my server really seems to hate Gheal. They don't even have it on their bars. I don't particularly hate Flash Heal, I simply don't think it's the best heal for all situations and that Gheal is 100% worthless. I also find it very, very odd that our best priests healing is made up of 5% Flash Heal, total, and the rest is Heal Rank2 and Gheals of varying ranks.

Personally I use multiple ranks of Heal and Greater Heal and one single rank of Flash Heal... Out of 100 casts during bosses I would say 3-5 are Flash heals the rest are Heal/Greater heals... during trash however it is about 90% flash heals.

I use the following heals:
Heal Rank 2
Heal Rank 4
GH Rank 1
GH Rank 3
GH Rank 5
Renew Rank 10
Flash Heal Rank 9
PW: Shield Rank 10?!?! I don't shield much

Couple the Heal and Greater Heal with Divine Fury (-0.5 sec off of the cast time), Improved Healing (-15% mana cost) and the other healing talents they become SUPERIOR in every way to Flash Heal... except for Emergencies like the EM!!!

I'll post efficiencies and stuff on these heals here including Mana cost, HP Healed, HPS (Health per second), and efficiency of the average heal:
NOTE these are with the following gear set, unbuffed => http://ctprofiles.net/2943123

Heal Rank 1 - 131 MP:: 988 - 1040 HP::430 HPS::7.71 HP per MP
Heal Rank 2 - 174 MP::1254 - 1323 HP::546 HPS::7.41 HP per MP
Heal Rank 3 - 216 MP::1409 - 1494 HP::615 HPS::6.71 HP per MP
Heal Rank 4 - 259 MP::1572 - 1675 HP::686 HPS::6.28 HP per MP
GH Rank 1 - 314 MP::1781 - 1908 HP::782 HPS::5.86 HP per MP
GH Rank 2 - 386 MP::2060 - 2215 HP::906 HPS::5.54 HP per MP
GH Rank 3 - 463 MP::2382 - 2572 HP::1050 HPS::5.36 HP per MP
GH Rank 4 - 556 MP::2759 - 2989 HP::1219 HPS::5.16 HP per MP
GH Rank 5 - 603 MP::2927 - 3179 HP::1294 HPS::5.06 HP per MP
Flash Heal Rank 9 - 380 MP::1294 - 1456 HP::971 HPS::3.61 HP per MP

I use Heal Rank 2 and GH Rank 1 as my workhorse spells... however there are times when I need to step Heal to Rank 4 and GH to Rank 3/5 (Patchwerk >.<) But usually on those fights mana becomes less of an issue due to mass consumables lol. Anywho I think it is very important for healers to utilize all of thier spells... and using just one spell makes you quite obsolete and sucky :P

fivehundred · 08/03/06, 12:14 PM

Originally Posted by Sinndir

I'll post efficiencies and stuff on these heals here including Mana cost, HP Healed, HPS (Health per second), and efficiency of the average heal:
NOTE these are with the following gear set, unbuffed => http://ctprofiles.net/2943123

I'm really surprised you elected to put 37 points into holy and not get spell warding.

Sinndir · 08/03/06, 3:27 PM

Originally Posted by fivehundred

Originally Posted by Sinndir

I'll post efficiencies and stuff on these heals here including Mana cost, HP Healed, HPS (Health per second), and efficiency of the average heal:
NOTE these are with the following gear set, unbuffed => http://ctprofiles.net/2943123

I'm really surprised you elected to put 37 points into holy and not get spell warding.

I never step foot into battlegrounds and am on a PvP server. Also all of the Magic AE's in Naxx I have found can either be avoided through positioning and timing or healed through with ease. Trust me I did consider it, but am more and more happy that I didn't put points there.

◊ chalon · 08/03/06, 3:34 PM

Spell Warding is also far more appealing to Horde priests than Alliance, simply because Alliance ones will have more HP.

Sinndir · 08/03/06, 3:39 PM

Originally Posted by chalon

Spell Warding is also far more appealing to Horde priests than Alliance, simply because Alliance ones will have more HP.

Very true Chalon!

Here is the basic spec I use: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxG0sZfotcfMqt

Then I have tried to allocate the last 3 points into the best possible way, and I have found that there is nothing else to really put it into. My focus is 100% PvE endgame raiding (Currently 7 bosses into Naxx) with zero time spent in battlegrounds or PvPing. Nothing further than Meditation has appealed to me. Many say mental agility and swear by it, however I use longer casting spells (Heal/Greater Heal) far more than renew, so justifying 5 talent points for something I do not use terribly much... meh.

fivehundred · 08/03/06, 3:53 PM

Originally Posted by Sinndir

Originally Posted by chalon

Spell Warding is also far more appealing to Horde priests than Alliance, simply because Alliance ones will have more HP.

Very true Chalon!

Here is the basic spec I use: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxG0sZfotcfMqt

Then I have tried to allocate the last 3 points into the best possible way, and I have found that there is nothing else to really put it into. My focus is 100% PvE endgame raiding (Currently 7 bosses into Naxx) with zero time spent in battlegrounds or PvPing. Nothing further than Meditation has appealed to me. Many say mental agility and swear by it, however I use longer casting spells (Heal/Greater Heal) far more than renew, so justifying 5 talent points for something I do not use terribly much... meh.

Your build just kind of puzzles me. (I'm asking for an explanation here, not flaming) I don't understand the two points in Holy Reach when you say your focus is 100% PvE endgame raiding. When do you feel the extra range on smite and Holy Fire benefit you? You have Inspiration, yet you only have one point in Holy Specialization. If your focus is 100% PvE endgame raiding, I would think those points would be better spent there.

I'm also 100% against Spirit of Redemption, especially when the reward for it is Lightwell. Any ability that requires me to die to use is not really that attractive. I guess that's just a personal preference.

Kalince · 08/03/06, 4:00 PM

Increased range on poh is useful, I think my holy reach allows me to poh on thaddius.

Sinndir · 08/03/06, 7:51 PM

Originally Posted by fivehundred

Your build just kind of puzzles me. (I'm asking for an explanation here, not flaming) I don't understand the two points in Holy Reach when you say your focus is 100% PvE endgame raiding. When do you feel the extra range on smite and Holy Fire benefit you? You have Inspiration, yet you only have one point in Holy Specialization. If your focus is 100% PvE endgame raiding, I would think those points would be better spent there.

I'm also 100% against Spirit of Redemption, especially when the reward for it is Lightwell. Any ability that requires me to die to use is not really that attractive. I guess that's just a personal preference.

No problem I would be happy to explain. First off let me start by saying that the 1 point in Holy Specialization is to get to further tiers in the holy tree I also left 3 talent points blank because someone commented on it earlier. I actually have 4/5 in Holy Spec. 2 Points in Holy Reach is designed for fights that utilize PoH or, Lord willing, Holy Nova! (Razor, Vael(Nova!), Firemaw(prayer through the wall), Flamegor, Skeram, Bug Trio, Sartura, Huhuran, Emps, Cthun aside from Naxx!) I figure PoH can be very efficient if your group is hurt... why end up missing someone because they are 31 yards away, 36 yards is quite the difference. Here is my actual spec with those extra talent points filled up: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxG0sZfLtcfMqt

Though I m not a fan of Spirit of Redemption, Lightwell is actually becoming more and more useful. It is warlock crack on fights like PW and other high DPS demanding fights. Worked great on Twin Emps for Hunters who took a tick of blizzard or other damage, infact I use two lightwells on emps. As well I use it whenever it is up because hell the HP per MP ratio of efficiency is through the roof at 21.9 HP per MP!!!

My spec suits me but I am very open to other spec's... I find it very interesting the way people choose talents because everyone plays differently. I have tried tinkering with something like this: http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=dxG0sZfyxccMVx

But I know that the 5 talent points I moved from SoR/Lightwell/Holy Reach(x2)/Holy Nova I use more than I would Spell Warding. I just find that if I am being hit by spells I need to find a way to not be hit by them via using Line of sight, out of ranging it, or even bringing a consumable :)