What I like best about the darkmoon card is that it scales best in the situations where a normally spirit-heavy build would suffer. If I'm on Gruul and spamming renew for the whole fight, keeping me from ever exiting the five second rule and using the spirit to my best advantage, the uptime could double and offer me 16% extra spirit regen while casting (20% uptime times .8 for someone with meditation and primal mooncloth). Now I'll never sit somewhere and spam instant casts a whole fight, but the darkmoon card will almost always be better than the bangle of endless blessings and works well with a spirit-heavy build.
I find myself doing the same on gruul, however I do get seem to get some ticks based upon shatter timing.
In regards to switching from a Spellsurge weapon to a weapon with +81 healing between the 50 second cooldown; if you are paired with another player that has Spellsurge, is there anyway to seperate your spellsurge from the other player's so you know when yours had proc'd and when to switch the weapons? Also, I do not use Deadly Boss Mods, so is there a timer you have found that works to count down those 50 seconds (that you could start up in a macro)?
I looked into this when I added support for Spellsurge weapons to CasterWeaponSwapper. There is no way I can discern to tell whose Spellsurge procs are whose. They appear to give the same message and same event.
What I do is assume that if you get a Spellsurge proc while your Spellsurge weapon is equipped and it's been >= 50 seconds from your last one, then it was your Spellsurge (and thus you can swap back to the non-Spellsurge weapon). This may generate some false positives and thus deny you some Spellsurge mana, but it's the best way I can think of.
In regard to the repair bills, that's one thing I love the Daily Quests for. These three below, are perfect for an herbalist healer-type and can net you 33g a day pretty easily and in very little time.
I see a lot of priests are using the 9 healing 2 mp5 rare gem lately. I did some math to see what would take for the 8 spirit rare gem to regen at least as much as the 9 healing 2 mp5 one.
I'm not gonna assume PMC set yet. Therefore 8 spirit increases regen out of the fsr by 8/4 mana/tick => 2 mana/tick => 5 mp5 and 15%*5 = 0.75 mp5 in the fsr.
x - time spent in the fsr
y - time spent out of the fsr
t - fight time
So in order for the 8 spirit gem to regen more than the 2 mp5 one I would have to stay out of the fsr at least 30% of the fight time. I consider the blue dragon to be the staple of any spirit oriented playstyle because it's the only passive way of getting out of the fsr.
Staying 30% out of the FSR while wearing the blue dragon means you need to have 2 procs and get the duration of both buffs within 100 seconds because that would take you out for 30 seconds (30%). Now this is so that regen wise the + 8 spirit gems do more than the 2 mp5 ones only by blue dragon procs during the spamming of any healing spells. In practice priests are gonna manage to get out of the fsr on their own even through spamming fights.
Depending on spec the spirit gem will give some healing also but less than the 2mp5 gem. Why the comparison? Because if you're trying to max out regen in the FSR youre going to get the 3mp5 one, if youre trying to max out +healing youre gonna go for the 9 healing 4 spirit one and if youre going for spirit you're gonna get the 8 spirit one. So i guess most people choose 9 healing 2 mp5 because it seems the most balanced.
So what i'm curios about is this:
1. Is the math correct?
2. Is there an add-on that tracks time spent in and out of the fsr during combat
3. Is there any other trinket that scales with spirit except the bangle? I didn't find any and bangle isn't really good.
RegenFU will give you the stats you are looking for. I found a simple table on the officials that uses meditation and compares spirit to mp5. It is as follows:
I would like to use +8 spirit gems, however I cannot rationalize it. +9heal/2mp5 gems provide more.
If you have five points in spiritual guidance and are self buffed with improved divine spirit you will receive 35% of spirit as +healing.
That means a +8 spirit gem is equal to 2.8+heal that number is static. The mp5 you receive from the spirit gem depends on how much time you spend in the fsr. Some priests can actually generate more mana using the +8spirit gem versus the +9heal/2mp5 gem. However that does not make up for the loss of 6.2+heal.
The +9heal/2mp5 seems to be the most balanced and I believe that is why people use it.
I too am starting to hit a "healing stride" even though there are still a ton of upgrades for me out there.
I really find this to be true. I've had my pick really of SSC gear, as I was a lone Holy Priest on raids for a while, but basically it took two or three SSC pieces and the T5 2 set bonus to have me hit that stride.
As far as gearing priority, I've given my near full attention to regen wherever possible. As mentioned in this thread by several posters, the amount of +healing gained simply by picking up some of these upgrades is huge. I was pretty specific on a few things:
Insightful Earthstorm Diamond (Chance on spellcast to restore 300 mana).
Spellsurge
+9 Heal +2mp/5 gems in every socket except in two, where I need to match bonuses for the meta.
Alchemist's Stone
Earring of Soulful Meditation (For any fight you could feasibly find 10+ seconds of regen time per 2 minutes)
2piece T5
As a general rule, Stam + Int + Mp5 + Heal > Stam + Int + Spi + Heal, even in times where you're taking a significant +heal hit.
Priests do have good numbers to toss around for theorycraft, but I see it very much as a gradient. Inexperience and entry level gear can be coped with by higher mp/5. It allows for more "mistakes," like not canceling gheals that don't need to go off, or overexerting oneself with flash heal on raid detail. To some extent, you need to prepare for that. MP/5 is more multi-situational than is spirit for the purposes of extending a Priest's staying power, so I feel it pertinent to err in that direction. I don't go with straight +3mp/5 gems only because it seems foolish to not trade 1/3 of my budget for a particular gem for half of another. Let's call that compromise.
Toward the other end of the gradient, Priests can start to take advantage of spirit regen to great effect. I've found a ratio of 3:1 between your outside the 5SR regen and mp/5 regen to be a good "all round" stance, ideally with a set of gear that allows you to favor one style or the other.
This gets shuffled around a bit when you hit your 2piece T5. I've become a 4 heal priest:
Flash: Emergencies
Gheal r2: Consistent HPS output on a single target, or as a non-emergency raid heal, spammed in either situation (i.e. on people within ~3k of max health)
Gheal r7: Start-and-stop MT heal
Renew: Tanks and those less likely to be hit again, particularly when preparing to find some regen time.
Mending and Shield are of course on my bars, but are used when I'm expecting to be separated from the heal target(s) that I am responsible for and for wedging a bit of life between someone in my raid and certain doom, respectively. The T5 set 2 bonus has been so critical that I've reviewed combat log parses where I was responsible for a particular tank, spamming Gheal r2, I was sustaining myself nicely with pots and had recieved over 11k mana from the set bonus alone over a 10 minute fight. Any Holy Priest should be fighting tooth and nail to get this 2 piece set bonus prioritized. It gives Priests a step toward that dreaded Paladin efficiency when employed correctly.
My priest is just a reroll, and will probably not get Mag's staff for a good while (especially since my main is a warlock), or any other SSC+ weapons. There is just a slim probability for Nightbane's staff, tough.
The way I see it, the Epoch Mender is better for PVP (until you get a weapon with resilience), so I'd give it a good PVP enchant: +81 heal.
For the Life Staff it doesn't really matter, even unenchanted it's a great PVE staff.
20 spi requires you to learn to use the 5 seconds rule, and only then can the enchant be a noticeable bonus. Might be a good and cheap idea if you're into perfecting your own healing.
You'll get exalted with the sha'tar relatively soon; I'd save the spellsurge for the exalted healing mace, and put either 81 healing or 20 spirit on the Serpentcrest.
To answer your direct question, I would put +healing on the Epoch Mender. If you only swap to the spellsurge weapon to get a spellsurge proc and then swap back, you will spend more time with your +healing weapon, and so I think it would be good to have the 227+81 healing and 12 mp5 active more most of the time.
To go into a little more detail, I might recommend using some of the great +healing maces (shatar, maiden, crafted, etc) with an offhand for +healing and for spellsurge. Then I like putting +20 spirit on the Serpentcrest Life-Staff or Staff of Divine Infusion (boe) for regen breaks, and +30 int on Staff of the Redeemer (quested) or Seer's Cane (Scryer) for starting fights.
You can even use CasterWeaponSwapper or other similar mods to automatically juggle your bag full of weapons.
I did similar calculations regarding spirit the other night.
Assuming a 3sec average cast time (and procwatch confirms that as my average on a boss fight) Blue Dragon will have a 10% uptime. With meditation and 3 piece primal mooncloth that means you're gaining 8% spirit regen from blue dragon, 15% from meditation, 5% from the tailoring bonus. 28% spirit regen isn't bad!
But it doesn't make 8spi gems *good* either. Assuming spirit of redemption and a non-human priest (theorycrafting for myself here!) with 30% outside the five second rule you're gaining about 2.5mp5 from spirit and (improved divine spirit and spiritul guidance) about +3 healing from the gem.
Now, I like the idea of stacking spirit. Priests have plenty of ways to duck outside the five second rule for a tick or two here and there, and with all the neat spirit gems/tricks available I haven't given up on the stat. But I can't seem to figure out regenfu to tell me just how well my FSR tricks are working. I installed it and can only seem to get the 5 second cast bar up. What's the command to pull up more involved mana regen details? I see allusions to all sorts of additional functionality on the forums but for the life of me can't seem to enable it on my end.
I thought i remember hearing something about a spirit rework in a future patch. This would apply to all caster types that use mana. I wish i could remember where i heard about it.
I thought i remember hearing something about a spirit rework in a future patch. This would apply to all caster types that use mana. I wish i could remember where i heard about it.
I remember the devs talking about Spirit having the same effect as Resilience, but that was pre 1.10. I wonder why they ditched the idea?
Not difficult to imagine why spirit wouldn't work as resiliance.
First off, you'd have to stack it on rogue leather, DPS plate, and all sorts of places nobody would normally make use of spirit.
Secondly, you'd also have to stack it on resto druid leather, priest healing (or lolsmite) cloth, mage gear, and places where spirit might come in handy.
Can you imagine the outrage if everyone were sporting 300-500 spirit and half the wow population got to double-dip on that?
But let's not focus on what the devs might make spirit. In the year or so we have to play around with the stat the way it is, how might it be optimized? And in what ways can we make it superior to mp5?
Personally I think Spirit is broken in the current raidcontent.
When do you have time to get out of the FSR ever?
On Vashj yesterday it was only when phase 2 started.
With 40 men raids you could just have a quick break or time ur heals right and other ppl would cover but in 25 men raids every healers in important with a speccific task... I am allways ending up with constant GH-FH-Renew-PoM-CoH spamm thoughout all bossfights
which is why I went for PMC + 2xT5 to max my regen while casting...
I thought i remember hearing something about a spirit rework in a future patch. This would apply to all caster types that use mana. I wish i could remember where i heard about it.
It was first mentioned at Blizzcon, and the details were wildly vague but it seemed that Blizzard was leaning towards reworking Spirit in the WotLK expansion. There's a great compilation of Shaman changes on the EU forums, where this is mentioned along with the free spell damage on Healing gear.
I searched the thread but found nothing. Has anyone given any thought to the value (if any) of spell haste to holy priests? My guild is not anywhere near the point where spell haste gear will be available but I was revising my gear spreadsheet and I was thinking about how to value it vis-a-vis spirit/mp5 and +healing. It seems to me that increasing the speed at which Greater Heal casts would be useful (particularly if you possess 2/5 T5 and are downranking). But is it worth the loss of mana regeneration stats (the itemization trade-off that Blizzard seems to be making)? Any thoughts from those with first-hand experience would be appreciated.
Longer answer:
Haste let's you hit higher HP/S, but at the cost of higher mana usage. If you currently have more mana than you can spend, are using GHeal a lot, but occasionally have targets die due to spike damage, then being able to spend your mana faster in exchange for being able to do more healing is nice. So in theory you benefit from haste.
There are two problems here. One is that much of what priests cast doesn't actually benefit from spell haste. CoH, PoM, Renew, and Flash do not benefit, so really you'd only stack haste if you find yourself casting GHeals. As an IDS priest, you may well be in this situation, but this leads us to the second problem.
Haste is EXPENSIVE. The three items you linked have a total spell haste rating of 92, or about 4.4%. That brings your GHeal from a talented 2.5s to an impressive...2.4s. That's right, the net effect of all three items is to knock of 0.1s from your GHeal. Is that good? Undeniably. Is is noticable? Sometimes. Is it worth the stats you'd have to give up? No.
For reference, compare [Bracers of Martyrdom] and [Swiftheal Wraps]. They're the same item level, but if we assume the Bracers are socketed with a [Royal Nightseye] they have -9 stamina, -2 int, +28 spirit, +13 healing, and +2 mp5. Both are solid items, but I can't really imagine ever deciding I preferred the Swiftheal.
Disclaimer: I am not a holy priest, nor do I play one on TV. I have not used any of the items linked in this post.
If your guild runs with some combination of 5-6 shamans/paladins, you should know that using only greater heal will make you fairly worthless. Greater heal is simply too long of a cast to be the only thing you use; and as Lazare pointed out, spell haste just doesn't decrease the cast time enough. Pom, renew, power word: shield, binding heal, flash heal, and CoH all receive no HPS increase from spell haste (yes binding heal and flash will be cast faster but the hps is the same).
So short answer, no, spell haste isn't worth the item budget for a priest.
Edit: It also probably has to do with when blizzard nerfed spell haste by 50%, they never reitemized these pieces of gear. I used to love my [Scarab of the Infinite Cycle] before the spell haste nerf. But after they cut the haste in half I just couldn't justify it over a regen trinket.
The only times I found Spell Haste useful as a Priest is in PvP for Mass Dispell, and on ROS pre-hotfix where you could sneak out a rez between Essences. I've been curious as to Blizzard's itemization of Spell Haste for cloth healing gear in PVE end-game content, but with all of BC content clear, I really haven't come across any encounter where my PVE playstyle would benefit from itemizing my gear for Spell Haste over any of the main stats. I'm not against it, but it does not offer a significant benefit as far as I can tell to cause me to specifically choose an item for that stat.
In regard to gems...I still see so many people raving about the [Royal Nightseye]. In reality, +Healing and MP5 do not scale like Spirit does, especially with Blessing of Kings, Improved Divine Spirit and Food Buffs. Keeping in mind that this depends on your chosen spec and an individual's healing style (depending on raid assignments), I personally prefer [Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire].
The mp5 stat is the most easily "fixed" stat in terms of Flasking, Potting, Trinket Usage, and Talents. Having reached my own personal goal of 2000 +healing unbuffed, I chose to focus on Spirit next. I believe it's important to consider stat goals for the content you're working on and will be progressing into so that you can make sure you properly gem and enchant for that content and anticipated gear upgrades. Having a plan for how you want your gear to look at the end of the day really helps you get an idea of complimentary gems and what areas you may need to refocus on. This will help you have a balanced set that doesn't lose sight of supportive stats. More importantly though, as you progress, those thresholds should increase as the content becomes more challenging. Basically, don't set a goal of 1800+healing when you're working on SSC/TK and expect that to get you through BT/Hyjal.
As an aside, I'm not sure who said it above (or if this is what they were implying), but I really feel like the mp5 stat lets you make mistakes and recover without too many risks and/or repercussions. The Spirit stat itself requires much more discipline in playstyle; however if utilized correctly will offer the greatest reward.
As an aside, I'm not sure who said it above (or if this is what they were implying), but I really feel like the mp5 stat lets you make mistakes and recover without too many risks and/or repercussions. The Spirit stat itself requires much more discipline in playstyle; however if utilized correctly will offer the greatest reward.
That's very well put Kass. I've focused more on +healing mostly because, as human, I always have plenty of spirit. If black temple had an 11 healing 5 spirit gem I might reconsider; but I've yet to run into a wall where more raw output is unnecessary.
In regard to gems...I still see so many people raving about the [Royal Nightseye]. In reality, +Healing and MP5 do not scale like Spirit does, especially with Blessing of Kings, Improved Divine Spirit and Food Buffs. Keeping in mind that this depends on your chosen spec and an individual's healing style (depending on raid assignments), I personally prefer [Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire].
As previously mentioned, part of the attraction of Royal Nightseye is that it's overbudgeted: it has 67% of the mana/5 of [Lustrous Star of Elune], while other stats get 50% of a single-stat gem on a two-stat gem ([Teardrop Living Ruby]). They rounded up on it, presumably so it would have more mana/5 than [Royal Shadow Draenite].
This post is some mixed opinions I have about holy priest raiding now when the current game is completed.
Talents:
I have lost long time ago all hope for any significant changes, but the talents are after all quite well balanced. Of course some talents could be better, but this is the case for almost every talent tree of every class. The talents are still spread to 2 trees, but even with 14/47 you will get a solid raiding spec. Meditation/Inner focus are only talents in disc tree I find impossible to pass.
End of holy tree however has some talents that are very hard to pass. Clearcasting proved to be much better than the tool tip would suggest, getting out of 5 second rule, free 5k+ heal and a very likely 2xtier5 proc are huge everytime clearcasting procs. Combine this with Inner focus and priest class trinket from Lurker, you have a chance for decent manaregen even when forced to chaincast. 5/5 Empowered healing is also something I can't pass, greater heal is my main heal on most encounters.
Also, Circle of Healing is something I just love and simply can't spec out of it. It might require some spamming to have an effect, but it certainly adds one new element for our healing spells. This allows priests to be even better on different roles, on some encounters CoH is even better than Chain Heal. CoH priest also has 5/5 empowered healing, so they can swap roles really well.
Lightwell has always been really crappy, and we usually use it for marking a spot when explaining tactis. After 2.2 patch ~1500 healed every 2 sec makes it a lot better, but long cooldown and 5 charges will limit it still too much.
Divine Spirit:
I writed some time ago on this topic about how I feel about Divine spirit and Improved Divine spirit, and I still believe both are in most cases overrated and many take them just because they think they or the raid needs them, without actually thinking it properly. I went though my guilds armory some time ago, and all regular warlocks/paladins/shamans/spriest had maximum 1 item with any spirit, and some mages wore few parts that brought their spirit above 200 unbuffed. This 20 damage/healing increase is sadly nothing.
How about the healing priests/druids then? With the shadow priest era with cheap mana pots, there simply is no wipes because healers are oom, provided that the amount of healers in raid is correct for the encounter and groups are optimized. You could say that "try doing encounter x with 6 healers and you know how important divine spirit is", but that is in most cases just not optimized setup and you are making the encounter harder than it should be. Tier5 content could be done easily with 6-7 healers, but in tier6 content the amount of healers is in most cases safer to be a bit higher at least when learning.
We have 4 active holy priests, and since we do not force to spec for DS or IDS, all of us have been CoH specced for most of tier6 content. Can't even remember when I have last time seen Divine Spirit in raids, and certainly can't remember a situation where I missed having it.
Survivability:
This has been one of the arguments on general forums why limit the priest spots in raid to 1 (divine spirit argument does not apply to our guild). However, with the Binding Heal changes, I see nothing wrong in our survivability. On the contrary actually: in my opinion we are best class for surviving while keeping our tank alive. Every other class needs to stop healing the tank if they want to heal themselves, and paladin bubble has a long cd to be used frequently enough. The further we progressed, the more important this spell became for me. Also, it really does not matter in most cases that we wear cloth, other classes are as dead as we are if they get hit by melee.
Itemisation:
I really hated how Blizzard seem to force us to either go for high spirit or high mp5 when concerning regen options on items. Very few items have both spirit and mp5, tier6 being the prime example how set should be done. However, when I realized how good 2xtier5 bonus was, my thinking changed from balanced healing/spirit/mp5 to healing first, regen will come as a bonus in form or in an another. With high amount of +healing and 2xtier5, you can do either low rank spam or cast/cancel high ranks when single target healing, depending a bit of the situation and how many other healers assigned for your target. At some point I simply decided to gem my future items with +22 healing gems since the moments when I'm limited by manaregen from gear are not happening very often.
Also, the Earring of Soulful Meditation is almost as important for a priest as is the 2xtier5. Most of the fights have some moments when you can pop it and wait a bit before casting, whether it's because of phase shift on the encounter, clearcasting+innerfire combo or simply cast/cancelling until tank takes apike damage.
Lightwell object increased in size to make it easier to click.
Divine Spirit:
I writed some time ago on this topic about how I feel about Divine spirit and Improved Divine spirit, and I still believe both are in most cases overrated and many take them just because they think they or the raid needs them, without actually thinking it properly. I went though my guilds armory some time ago, and all regular warlocks/paladins/shamans/spriest had maximum 1 item with any spirit, and some mages wore few parts that brought their spirit above 200 unbuffed. This 20 damage/healing increase is sadly nothing.
Would just like to comment on this as an active Priest and Mage raider. Myself and the Priest CL both spec Imp. DS, and the others don't as one of us will be playing Priest on any given raid. That said, I think that it is certainly worthwhile to have at the very least a single Priest spec into Imp. DS, as it's well worth it--especially if you have 4 Priests in the raid.
The average Mage, for instance, will have around 200 unbuffed spirit from a set item or two. (Human will have at least 160 base.) With DS, that will go to 250--which is raised to ~275 by Blessing of Kings. Thus, the average Mage will get around 28 +dmg from Imp. DS, and a bit of additional regen if running Mage Armor (and a bit more if Arcane spec for Meditation.) To put this into perspective, this is more than a Mage could hope to get at the high-end game from 1-3 item upgrades.
The average Priest will get around 60 +healing from DS/Imp. DS (considering Spirital Guidance provides an additional 14 +healing from DS Spirit of Redemption and BoK running), and 55 spirit is a fair bit of both OO5SR and Mp5 regen.
Druids who itemize for Spirit will get a bit more +healing benifit, especially considering their +15% spirit talent and 25% of their Spirit to +healing group aura (+12.5 healing) netting something like around 70 +healing for them (if targetting someone in their group, around 55 otherwise.)
Of course, all of these are not huge numbers. That's true. But, they are substantial numbers when you look at it. If you have 7 healers in a raid, you are probably getting over 300 +healing out of the buff. If you have 8+ DPS casters in the raid, you are getting over 200 +dmg. Everyone will be getting additional regen to a lesser or greater extent, depending on the class.
Regardless, it's a pretty large raid-wide upgrade for 1 person to spend a mere 3 talent points on. It does add up quite quickly, and when you're talking on the level of -multiple- gear upgrades or consumables in equivalency, it's not that much of a sacrifice to have a single priest lose Circle of Healing from my perspective.
It's a bit hard to think of it this way sometimes, but realistically you are providing the equivalence of 15-20 next-tier epic upgrades to your raid in an abstract way. It's not exactly the same, but one has to consider the equivalence on a larger scale when working with something like an otherwise non-existant potential buff. Even the effect on a Priest themselves is equivalent to the stat budget of something like 10 gem slots. It is a bit of a non-trivial upgrade from my perspective.
This is not to say that you guys aren't right in not forcing specs, because I'm not a fan of it either. Just trying to point out some numbers to support why many of Priests, myself included, opt to spec into Imp. DS for the overall raidwide benifit.
I was thinking exactly the same thing. In addition to the benefits you listed, having an extra 55 spirit is a huge boost to the effects of both Evocation (880) and Innervate (687 mana). As a shadow priest, it's extremely good in conjunction with meditation and/or spirit tap as well, and like mages I also get around 30 +damage out of it. The total value it provides to the raid is well worth one priest losing three talent points.
It's not that Divine Spirit is overrated. It's just a talent you'd greatly prefer someone else to pick up, like Malediction or Improved Demo Shout.
08/07/07, 12:19 PM
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