Holy Priest Theorycrafting

constantius · 05/06/07, 2:50 PM

Basically, I did a search on the forums for keyword : "priest" ... and found only two or three threads talking about actual holy priest healing in TBC.

There was a lovely trinket thread, which basically concluded "use any of these, depending on play style / gear / etc, etc".

Our guild still runs with 2-3 holy priests, mainly because we've always had them, and the players enjoy playing the class (masochists, all of us!). We heal tanks in Gruul and Magtheridon, we do everything (including shackles) in Karazhan. We moan about how we can't farm anything.

I'm curious how other holy priests are itemizing their gear, say, up to a maximum of Magtheridon. What items are you using? What things do you consider indispensible? Do you stack pure spirit? If so, what kind of play style do you use, and how do you compensate for the incredible consistency of damage coming out of TBC raiding? If you are Mp5, what kind of +heal do you push for inside that scheme, and what kind of spells do you use?

I always used to try to balance spirit and Mp5, back in Naxx. I liked Mp5 the most, because with my primary spell being a 2.5s cast, I rarely got the chance to get an OO5SR proc, but I wore Blue Dragon, so higher spirit meant a chunk of mana returned.

In TBC, I'm running 204 Mp5 inside the 5SR, self-buffed. This is with just over 350 spirit (again, with Imp DS, self-buffed). Spirit is low, and I'm only at 420 Mp5 OO5SR (self-buffed). This scales with BoW and full raid buffs (food, oil, and mageblood) to about 300 / 500 Mp5. My primary spells are Heal (3), GH (1), GH (7), along with Renew (10) and Prayer of Mending.

My typical tank healing will be GH (1) or GH (7) when reactionary healing (i.e. Gruul), or Heal (3) if I'm just bored and have the mana to burn. I try to keep Renew (10) up on tanks, because my ticks are pushing 650+, and it's fire-and-forget.

If this thread is a little ... unfocused ... give it some focus. I'd love to see what some intelligent people think about the current State of the Priest. The priest forums are a cesspit of despair and misery, and finding intelligent feedback there is as difficult as finding ... a holy raiding priest. :p

To our shadow brothers: I respect your raid role, and love your mana-battery-ness. I feel for your nerfed state, in patch after patch. I sympathize. I don't have much to offer you. i r healbotz.

(http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/ch...&n=Constantius to save you lookup time, if you care what I'm currently wearing)

Lightshadow · 05/06/07, 5:24 PM

Eh, the current state of the holy priest is "just fine" as far as I'm concerned--I'd love to see the 31 and 41 point talents become raid viable, but in the meantime I'm holding my own against everyone except well-played pallies (in terms of both versatility and total output) so nothing seems to be all that broken. Once we start to see more priests in 2 pieces of T5 I think things are going to start swinging the other way--100 mana back on every gheal that tops a target off is a significant effective mp/5 boost.

Itemization-wise I basically trade off using the following rules of thumb:

1 spirit ~ 1/3 healing and 1/4 mp/5
5 healing ~ 1mp/5
stamina = good
+spell crit = wishful
all else = secondary

Clearly not precise rules, but with imp DS and spiritual guidance you get roughly 1 healing per 3 spirit, and a few back of the envelope calculations (assuming I'm in the 5sr 70% of the time, and the primal mooncloth set--4.5 spirit per mp/5 otherswise) give me the 4 spirit = 1mp/5. 70% seems pretty reasonable from my combat log parsing, good use of holy concentration procs and inner focus can keep you out for quite a while ;-)

The healing vs. mp/5 tradeoff isn't something I've done simulations for, but rather what appears to be available via gear. For instance, if I feel like I need more mp/5 and less +healing then I can swap out my 30 healing to bracers for 5mp/5. Likewise, if I wanted more healing and less mp/5, I could resocket my 9healing 2mp/5 gems for 18 healing. Basically the same tradeoff is possible via pots/elixers in 2.1 as well.

Stamina... honestly given the damage flying around in BC, I've come around to the opinion that the correct gear mentality is "just enough +healing and mp/5 to get the job done and then stacking as much stamina as possible" to minimize the chance of random death. Exactly where "just enough" is is a pretty difficult thing to determine, but especially for progression I've been swapping in high stamina pieces that are otherwise not as good until we're near winning.

I think the most often underappreciated contribution of priests is inspiration: 25% increase in armor is a 12-15% decrease in physical damage the tank takes, which given the kind of damage that magtheridon and gruul are pushing out turns out to be really signficant. Shaman get it as well, but depending on raid makeup, etc sometimes it's better to have them chain healing the raid. Either way, keeping inspiration up really needs to be a raid priority, and so having enough spellcrit accross your relevant healers is important. There's definitely room in all of my talent builds for full holy spec, but itemization wise there are very few realistic options and they're almost all better off in the hands of pallies (hence the "wishful"). I was honestly a bit sad to see the crit taken off our T5, but I don't think I'd get very many people agreeing with me ;-)

Spell wise, I'm using 3 ranks of gheal (7/3/1) depending on what I'm doing, max rank renew, PoM, and flash heal. Flash may have terrible HPM, but some days you really just need something asap and it's still better than PW:S. Tanks starting at full with other healers get rank 3 gheal pre-cast, tanks down at all or in fights with massive burst get rank 7 all the time. Melee DPS gets left to people better suited to doing it (if possible) or rank 3/1 if I have time--xperl's casting monitor is your friend =)

poiza · 05/07/07, 5:35 AM

At the moment I think the primary raid encounters arent really adressed towards priests, or may require too much of the tank gear to be.
As far as I see Major Priest Role in PvE envirement is to land GH in time with minimum ammount of overheal. As far as I am concerned we are designed around GH and 5sec rule.
Pre-BC encounters let us to land a huge heal every X sec, due to non-spiky damage coming over the primary healing target.
Greatest example is Shadow Flame, which had it casting time etc and the primary damage even crashing, was pretty much normalised around gear.

Nowadays from what I see all the damage in starting 25mans is spiky, and you cant let your tank go below 90%. Maybe its caused by our current guild itemisation (tank wise), but so far Gruul Lair - Both High King and Gruul at last percentages are either you top off the tank within/less then 2 seconds, or he is dead.

Normally we are getting rawhealing done by paladins, which cause mt getting cascade topping off. If you include Hots and crits, MT is normally topped off, and I barely found any possible ways to have GH raw healing same effective as paladins fast heals.

I`d really love to see the comparison
Raw healing :

Flash Heal
Greater Heal
Renew Ticks

Chances to have successfull lands

If we take into concideration that tank is supposed to be topped each "Variable" seconds.

Dunno, just a theory, but it seems fast heals got more chances to be usefull in raw healing.

Mearis · 05/07/07, 5:46 AM

You can be productive even in scenarios where big heals are not viable by spamming downranked greater heals nonstop. They have pretty bad HPs, but the efficiency is fantastic and you can sustain it forever.

If you proc a clearcasting, click your bangle, and chain two big heals back to back using IF.

etalon · 05/07/07, 6:09 AM

Nice thread constantius.

I just wanna add what i experienced in the past weeks that the hardcore guilds started to bring less and less holy priests to raids whats really confusing to me since i thought that we (holy priests) will never lose our raid spots.

I know that holy paladins are overpowered these days even with blue gear but with their nerf incoming imo raid leaders shouldnt forget us clothie healbots.

Anyone of you also experienced this?

Mearis · 05/07/07, 6:19 AM

Originally Posted by etalon

Nice thread constantius.

I just wanna add what i experienced in the past weeks that the hardcore guilds started to bring less and less holy priests to raids whats really confusing to me since i thought that we (holy priests) will never lose our raid spots.

I know that holy paladins are overpowered these days even with blue gear but with their nerf incoming imo raid leaders shouldnt forget us clothie healbots.

Anyone of you also experienced this?

I tend to bring the best healers that are available, regardless of class. While paladins are more powerful, the biggest factor is still the player behind the keyboard - I think situations like given an absolutely amazing paladin and an absolutely amazing priest, who do you take are just hypotheticals that do not really play out except in a very tiny majority of guilds.

If you are an excellent player, priests are still useful enough that you will be taken almost all the time.

healmuth · 05/07/07, 6:54 AM

Finally a holy priest theory thread!

When it comes to mp5 i think its overrated at this point. I haven't seen an encounter that would force me to stack mp5 on my equipment. Through bufffood and basic elixirs you can easily push your mp5 by 40 or 50. Right now I'm running with only ~150mp5 unbuffed and i haven't come across an encounter where i felt that i ran OOM too quickly. Since mostly healers are paired in groups with shadow priests, your mana gain is significant more than it used to be.

Right now, I rather have 100+ heal more than 50mp5 more. In encounters like Hydross or Tidewalker, spike damage can be significant and landing a 8000 gheal7 without overheal is something that was pretty much unknown Pre-BC as far as im concerned.

In the long run, and especially with the 2.1 "nerf" to flasks and pots, mp5 could become more important again - until then i will put my focus on +heal.

Babe Bridou · 05/07/07, 8:29 AM

I did a bit of theorycrafting on the spirit vs mp5 balancing.

Basically I took two holy priests with meditation, one who itemizes with spirit and the other with mp5, using the 4 spirit = 1 mp5 rule of thumb.

The stats where:
mana, including mana pots: 15000
heal used: greater heal max rank, talented for reduced mana cost and casting time
spirit = 400
mp5 = 100 (base, including group mp5 buffs)

PriestMp5 = +50mp5
PriestSpi = +200 spirit

gameplay strategy = chaincasting greater heal max rank, minimizing the time spent outside of the 5 seconds rule. That means that whenever the mana pool is superior to 700, the priest starts casting a greater heal max rank.

The gameplay strategy is designed to favour the PriestMp5. I choosed to let aside the whole clearcasting/innerfocus/bangle of endless blessings, assuming those were all favouring the PriestSpi performance.

At around 1 minute of fighting, PriestSpi is out of mana, while PriestMp5 can still cast exactly one more Greater heal.

At around 3 minutes of fighting, PriestSpi has cast one more Greater heal max rank than PriestMp5. But the interesting result is:

Over 3 minutes of combat, PriestSpi spends overall less time outside of the 5 seconds rule than PriestMp5, thus benefitting less from his itemization than PriestMp5 - and does better overall.

In my opinion the debate over %time spent outside of the 5 seconds rule is irrelevant - because on any fight that lasts over 1 minute, both priests will be technically out of mana if they chaincast without any interruption, with the Mp5 itemized priest still standing for one more spell. The one with spirit gear will, from then on, spend less time outside of the 5 seconds rule and generally perform better. The whole point is to adapt the gameplay and gear in order to not being out of mana when people need a heal, be that at the 60th second or the 200th.

So in my opinion Blizzard did a good job when balancing Sparkling Star of Elune (+8 spi) and Royal Nightseye (+9 healing and +2mp5). And I fully support Lightshadow with his conversion rate

(the spreadsheet I used is on my computer at work, if you are interested I'll post it - but not until a couple days because I'm on holidays)

Fitch · 05/07/07, 9:06 AM

Originally Posted by Babe Bridou

So in my opinion Blizzard did a good job when balancing Sparkling Star of Elune (+8 spi) and Royal Nightseye (+9 healing and +2mp5). And I fully support Lightshadow with his conversion rate

Except not really. While he asserts that 2mp5 = 8 Spirit, you are leaving out the 9 healing (7 depending on talents) which, according to his conversion rate, would be between an additional 1-2mp5.

Furthermore, I don't really think your theorycrafting proves anything, to be honest. Why would a Priest ever chain-cast GHeal(7)? It's totally unrealistic. Will you even make it to 3-minutes if a Priest must stop healing while a mob continues outputting that sort of damage? Sure, other healers could be told to step it up, but why not just have everyone use actually efficient heals? Why would a PriestSpi who spends LESS time outside of the 5SR, MORE time inside of the 5SR, benefit more from his itemization?

Again, I'm just asking. I haven't done encounters like Hydross with enormous spike damage, but I can't imagine how an additional +200 healing or so (crit + talents) like Healmuth says would be superior to 50mp5 in these situation. I guess it is in part because we never have used a Shadow Priest, but is gear available that would allow 100 healing to outweight 50mp5, honestly?

healmuth · 05/07/07, 9:21 AM

I honestly think that its totally unrealistic to chaincast a greater heal over rank 3. Looking at Hydross when you tank him through with the 250% mark you can chaincast rank 3 quite efficiently.

But as Fitch said, chaincasting rank 7 is just way out of the window. Perhaps when facing Illidan you will do so - which i highly doubt as well

Babe Bridou · 05/07/07, 9:29 AM

Originally Posted by Fitch

Why would a PriestSpi who spends LESS time outside of the 5SR, MORE time inside of the 5SR, benefit more from his itemization?

While I let other people mention their opinion, I just think you're a tiny bit mislead here: it's just that even if you're going all-out "minimizing" the mana you gain from spirit, then over a long fight, spirit will still have more mana returns than mp5, allowing you to spend even less time outside of the 5 seconds rule.

We all know the study isn't realistic. But the point is, anything that's not minimizing the mana gain from spirit will favour spirit mana regen even more than on this study, and this study tends to show that in the worst case, mana gains from 4 spirit are superior over 3 minutes than mana gains from 1mp5.

Jo_ · 05/07/07, 10:09 AM

Originally Posted by Babe Bridou

gameplay strategy = chaincasting greater heal max rank, minimizing the time spent outside of the 5 seconds rule. That means that whenever the mana pool is superior to 700, the priest starts casting a greater heal max rank.

Your example is unrealistic which sadly hurts your conclusions to the point where they become without any worth. The spirit priest wins in a scenario where both stand around doing nothing for the better part of the fight after 1min? <insert oh rly bird>.

I'd love some comparisons but the data will have to be better. Some combatlog statistics from priests with different styles/gearing would be a good place to start.

Without 3-set trans and with the constant topping off issue explained above it feels natural that spirit and raiding doesen't match but I'd love to be proven wrong.

edit: esa, what about the case of 5min constant casting with very little time spent outside of 5sec rule which is a much more realistic model?

poiza · 05/07/07, 10:16 AM

Guyz, you cant compare spirit and mp5 undependant to healing strategy.

Problem being is - that SPI Priest is not able to produce same efficient raw healing. And the thing is - current encounter design, doesnt let you time your long casts, cuz margin of landing is barely less then 1.8 seconds.

Lyreth · 05/07/07, 10:24 AM

I'm currently shadow but i was previously holy, up till SSCanyways when my old guild broke up because of lack of interest - I found chain casting max rank greater heal to be pretty effective actually. The reality of the situation is that you can't wait until damage is done to start casting to use greater heal rank 7 effectively. Think patchwerk, if you will - spirit does come into play quite a bit in this situation. If you're cast-cancelling, you can actually get a fair amount of time out of the FSR into a scenario. Additionally, you can use inner focus immediately after a clearcasting proc and get even more time out of the FSR.

My point is not that spirit is superior and you should stack it to the exclusion of other stats. Actually my feelings, from my experiences were that attaining a decent balance worked best for me, when i was holy-priesting i had about 1600 + heal, 400 unbuffed spirit, and 160 mp/5 - i didn't have the 3/3 PMC set, but it worked out well for me. I would have never stacked soley MP/5 to the exclusion of spirit either though. I've always liked mp/5, but not having enough spirit to maximize those little breaks in casting you get by pre-emptively healing and exploiting the FSR with holy concentration/inner focus would have been a real pain in the butt from my point of view.

I mean assuming you even only get a break of about 5-6 seconds, which is realistic with concentration/focus back to back - how much mp/5 would it take to give you that same amount of regeneration - you're getting some out of FSR time every time you get holy concentration basically, in any scenario where you're focusing on a tank, you're getting extra out of FSR time when you can pair focus with it, and when you're cast-cancelling you're getting even more out of FSR time out of that. You can't really 'replace' having spirit in that situation by stacking mp/5 - we all know that mp/5 is not as effective when you're having casting breaks.

Comparing spirit to mp/5 doesn't really work for me unless i'm comparing a peice of gear to another peice of gear, and even then i'm pretty sure i'd take a peice of gear that had both. The best peices of gear do have all three - + heal, mp/5, and spirit.

Lightshadow · 05/07/07, 10:30 AM

Just for the record--the gains from downranking are pretty strongly from 'not overhealing' rather than the spell having an inherently higher HPM. At 1200 +healing the difference is ~.2 HPM between rank 7 and rank 1, and while that gap increases as your +healing increases, it's still ~.6 HPM at 2100 (effective). Not insignificant, but nothing like it used to be. The T5 2 piece bonus is going to throw that out of whack again (/sigh) but that's life.