Whether or not CoH will help your raid is mostly dependent on how many Restoration Shaman you usually have.
If you have 2-3 Restoration Shamans in a raid, CoH is just something to make people overheal more. If you only have 1 Shaman, it would definitely be more useful.
a) Sharing loot tokens with the two primary tank classes meant your gear is worse than everyone else's. (Primal Mooncloth doesn't count. I have big enough survivability problems with 0 pieces of armor with 0 stamina on it. I shudder to think of using 3 items with 0 stamina)
The obsession with Priest's low stam is about as crazy as prefering Imp DS over CoH. I've been running with full primal mooncloth and whitemend and will probably continue to until I can get my hands on Bloodboil's Chest and T6 Shoulders (at that point I'll craft the belt of the long road). I run anywhere from 7k to 8k hp raid buffed and I usually only have problems with fire patches on Al'ar when I have a flame buffet debuff or if I absolutely have to land my currently charged GH.
I have numerous raid members who think that my hp is a problem but in all honesty dropping the stats from Primal Mooncloth for the trash that is T4 or T5 gear would only let me die w/o hearing complaints about my hps Granted I do carry around a lvl70 of stam wand and have chosen Veteran's bracers with Solid Star and Fort on them... but other than that the only other piece I'm hoping for is Mag's staff (which hasn't dropped in all our kills). I should also include that I do carry some green stam gear for when its absolutely needed though I rarely find myself using it (we haven't really done doomwalker yet of course). In all you just have to be aware... moving out of fire and using binding heal are the two best things you can do for your HP. As long as I'm not getting 1 Shot or dropped in less than 2 seconds... I'm golden.
As far as Imp DS. Those who exclaim its leetness over CoH should actually research the actual spirit carried by their raid members. For our Locks/Mages/SPriests/Shammys/Pallys its about 20 extra dmg or healing. For our healing priests and druids its about 40 extra healing. Those numbers are averaged of course.
CoH for me with a touch over 1.7k +healing provides a 900hp heal every 1.5 seconds to a group. On VashJ with a rooted Melee group with a Static Charged member or a rooted group in sporebat crap spammed CoH can keep the entire group up long enough to get unrooted or top them off. The same can be said for FLK with spitefire totems (on any group) & frost bolt spam, Hydross tombs on melee/ot's, Moro healing AOE during murlocs, Void Reaver melee groups, Solarian after moonfire spam, Kael healing AoEr's and my favorite Raid wide Dmg from Trash.
In the end I can keep a group alive from incoming dmg long enough for the mob to be resheeped, the group to move outta slime or whatever may be happening. To me that's tons better than providing a rocking extra 150 healing and 150 dmg to the raid because we all know that Alive DPS > Dead DPS no matter the buffs. IMHO... Imp DS is the spec for the Second Priest in the raid.
The key to being a viable Holy Priest at 70 since 2.0 has meant using all of your spells. Keep your GH's charged for those times when all of your pally's are weaving off the tank (Rank 7 if the boss hits like a truck). If you aren't using Binding heal every time you heal yourself you should be. If you aren't Downranking GH to Rank 1 or using Prayer of Mending liberally you should be. If you are just using Renews and Flash Heals... you just lost your raid spot to a Pally.
Shamans are diabolical MT healers, and alot of encounters do not favor chain heal, whereas with Inspiration you just can't miss. Not to mention priests are perfectly capable of going 'healing forever lolol' on the MT if they wish(be it gh1-3 odd without a shadowpriest depending on the dmg your tank takes, or gh7 with) while at the same time flash healing constantly without a problem for a fair while (rage winterchill if your on iceblocks, solarian if your playing it safe, teron if your making up for the lack of 2 chain heal...) if its needed.
No offense but can I have some of what you're smoking? I used to raid as a priest now I raid as a resto shaman and if anything I find it better for MT healing. If you weren't aware shamans have inspiration, it's just called ancestral healing (it acts in exactly the same way). Shaman healing wave (gheal) has about the same hpm as priest gheal. In fact the only difference is having shield vs. having NS, and personally I prefer NS (although shield is undoubtedly better against enemies that MS, and I can possibly see some ppl prefering it in general). Oh and shamans have ES to better mitigate sudden spikes although since it's not neccesary to MT heal to keep it up on the MT (just easier), you can I guess take that off the list of advantages for MT healing.
Now it can be argued that in general priests have more mana available for healing overall compared to shamans and that is probably true - shamans also need to refresh totems, cast heroism and refresh ES, and they don't have shadowfiend (but have mana tide which helps both them and their group), so even if all else (gear/talents/base stats) was equal that would be a problem. Then again with potting mana concerns are really not that much of a concern for MT healing at least in my experience, it's more about being able to help survive spikes and in that sense priests/shamans are about equal.
As for CoH, if the above poster is correct then at 1700 healing you get at best 900 healing*5=4500 healing for 360 mana (or is even less with talents?), i.e. 12.5 hpm.. which is somewhat better then the 11.3 or so I get with 1950 +healing (it's really about 1870 with an extra 87 from the CH totem). So a somewhat more efficient but I think far harder to get the full benefit from as compared to CH where there are many situations where you'll get the full healing out of it without any OH.
As far as Imp DS. Those who exclaim its leetness over CoH should actually research the actual spirit carried by their raid members. For our Locks/Mages/SPriests/Shammys/Pallys its about 20 extra dmg or healing. For our healing priests and druids its about 40 extra healing. Those numbers are averaged of course.
As a shadow priest, it's 30 extra damage for me, but even 20 is a significant amount for a raid-wide buff-- it's as much as another well fed buff. I would also not discount the extra mana regen from gaining 55 spirit. I can really tell the difference on long fights like Kael'thas when I do and don't have the buff.
All that said, the question isn't whether circle of healing is a useful ability. The question is whether a small amount of extra damage helps turns wipes into kills more than access to another kind of heal.
The simple fact is that for most fights, there is more than enough healing to go around, and the amount of DPS you can do is the single most important factor in whether you win or lose. The faster you kill the boss, the less healing you need. A small amount of damage really is better than a moderate amount of extra healing.
The only fights where circle of healing would be better than divine spirit are those fights with so much AoE damage that other multi-target heals like chain heal and vampiric embrace are amazing-- like Naj'entus and Gurtogg Bloodboil. These fights account for the minority of bosses, while almost all bosses have some kind of a DPS check. There are plenty of guilds that have no circle of healing and do well, but very few that lack divine spirit.
Don't forget the additional 2 points in Emp Healing you get with the CoH spec. With a decently geared Holy Priest that goes a long way towards making up the overall raid +healing.
My problem with CoH is that shamans do the same thing better and even when there isn't a shaman in the raid I can simply renew every member of the group which with my gear is about 80% the mana efficiency and 80% the HPS of CoH spam. Obviously renews don't work when they need to be topped off ASAP but on something like Hydross or VR, they don't, so it works fine (if not as well as CoH would). I would love to have CoH but I can function without it so I find it hard to justify giving up a good (not amazing but not irrelevent either) raid buff. Of course, if there were another holy priest in the raid with Imp. DS I would spec CoH.
I took CoH a few weeks back and left the other holy priest with Imp DS, and I find it ... useful. It doesn't dramatically change the way I play the game, but it's a tool in my arsenal, and I use it often.
I use it on Morogrim once on a group that's about to get hit with a chain-heal, because chain won't *quite* top them up. We've found that 2 chain heals + 1 CoH = perfect top-up, very slight overheal.
I use it constantly on VR, because 2 CoH + 2 chain heals pretty much tops up an entire melee group, maybe 3 chain heals if the tanks eat a couple of the bounces.
I use it on trash all the time, when the mage mobs do AE fireballs or pyroblasts or arcane bolts or whatever the flavour of the day is (depends on the instance; SSDD). I use it on Vashj on melee in roots. I use it on Solarian anytime she uses MotA.
It's a very very useful tool. Now, if I could somehow have *both* CoH & 5/5 *and* Imp DS ... I'd be all over that like stink on cheese. But Blizzard actually, for once, gave us a decision to make that wasn't "lolwell vs imp ds" - i.e. a decision so easy a blind chimp could make it.
I still want to see an end-tree talent for holy that is OMG GOOD. Where's our Innervate (since nerfed to stock)? Or Tree Form? Or Mortal Strike? Or Felguard? Or even Divine Illumination?
It just really annoys me that our 31st talent point is so situationally *useless*, while the same is true for our 41st talent point. For most classes (not all, but most) their 41st talent point fundamentally changes the way they play, or provides a focus for their spec.
Unstable Affliction -> DoTs, then SB : THE affliction warlock
Devastate -> i r tank
Felguard -> I like pets, and 1500 shadow damage
Mutilate -> excellent cap to an excellent tree for its purpose (pvp)
Mangle -> try tanking without mangle as a feral druid
Earth Shield -> nuf said
Shamanistic Rage -> nuf said
As a shadow priest, it's 30 extra damage for me, but even 20 is a significant amount for a raid-wide buff
...
All that said, the question isn't whether circle of healing is a useful ability. The question is whether a small amount of extra damage helps turns wipes into kills more than access to another kind of heal.
The combined spelldmg increase as I said over the entire raid is 150dmg. For my raid atm that's less than a 1.5% increase in +dmg. If you believe that 1.5% spell dmg increase to be a better Enrage Timer beater over an extra 1 or 2 dps living due to instant heals you're sadly mistaken.
As I said bringing in Imp DS is a nice addition to raid buffs but when you lose 1 or 2 dps during a fight because the chain heals or other direct heals didn't get to them in time... no buff can replace that.
My problem with CoH is that shamans do the same thing better and even when there isn't a shaman in the raid I can simply renew every member of the group which with my gear is about 80% the mana efficiency and 80% the HPS of CoH spam. Obviously renews don't work when they need to be topped off ASAP but on something like Hydross or VR, they don't, so it works fine (if not as well as CoH would). I would love to have CoH but I can function without it so I find it hard to justify giving up a good (not amazing but not irrelevent either) raid buff. Of course, if there were another holy priest in the raid with Imp. DS I would spec CoH.
CH's are fantastic. CH's combined with CoH's can keep damn near anybody up through AoE against the raid. The best thing about CoH in that regard is it will cause enough Pushback against incoming dmg to allow the CH's to land and hit. As far as overheal caused by CoH to Shammys... that argument can be made for just about every heal ever tossed out agains the raid so its kinda a moot point.
As far as Renew's being more mana efficient I'd highly disagree. Even if all of its 4 charges hit you're probably seeing about 7HpM and 186HpS all 4 charges will most likely never hit though. With CoH assuming you hit 4 targets you'll get 8.75-9HpM and 2.4kHpS. I only use renew's on Tanks as Pushback wasting a renew on a raid member who will be topped off before 2 or even 1 tick goes off is a huge mana drain.
The combined spelldmg increase as I said over the entire raid is 150dmg. For my raid atm that's less than a 1.5% increase in +dmg. If you believe that 1.5% spell dmg increase to be a better Enrage Timer beater over an extra 1 or 2 dps living due to instant heals you're sadly mistaken.
As I said bringing in Imp DS is a nice addition to raid buffs but when you lose 1 or 2 dps during a fight because the chain heals or other direct heals didn't get to them in time... no buff can replace that.
I made a post a couple pages back doing a more full analysis of the raid benifit of Imp. DS. Honestly, it's rather huge. Any raid that isn't running with 1 person with Imp. DS is losing a lot of damage, regen, and healing. Hands down.
(Imp.) DS also happens to be one of those things you can more or less count on in terms of raid contribution. On the other hand, CoH is a bit hit or miss--sometimes it's great, other times it's pretty much useless. DS also brings something to the table that is otherwise irreplaceable, whereas CoH can be substituted by Chain Heal rather easily.
I didn't say renews were more mana efficient. I said they were about 80% as efficient (i.e., 20% less efficient than CoH) and had about 80% of the throughput. What I meant is to express is that 90% of the jobs that I want CoH for I can do with renew by chugging a couple more potions. (Some exceptions apply, of course - renews aren't going to be fast enough to keep a rooted static charged melee group alive on Vashj I'd imagine, for example.) I would love to have CoH but unless another priest is providing Imp. DS I think the choice between the two remains a no-brainer. (150 damage to the raid is a woeful underestimate - assuming 15 raiders who can make use of spell damage/healing, you'll get more than half of your 150 simply from the 10% of the spirit provided by DS and MotW, and you still have to count the base spirit that everyone has.)
Nice list Jade, but I think you picked a couple of the wrong pieces of Absolution - the hood, chest piece, and legs that you have on there for example is from the Regalia set or the DPS set, not the Raiment/Healing set.
(or the site might have picked it on it's own, I haven't looked into how it works yet)
lootzor is apparently missing the +healing on a few of the pieces of the Absolution healing set, which means it values them drastically lower.
What makes a Shaman a better MT healer than a Priest is the gear itemization. Just comparing the T5 sets for each you're looking at a 62 crit rating on the Shaman set as compared to 0 for the Priest set. Overall, they're likely to proc Ancestral Fortitude more often than a Priest will keep up Inspiration. Both are very capable healers, and either works well on the MT...Shaman will just proc the AC buff more.
Now comparing COH to CH...
COH: Instant, Up to 5 Players, Knowledge of exactly who is going to be healed.
CH: 2.5 Second Cast, Maximum of 3 Players, "Random" factor as to who you're healing.
CH is a great spell, especially when an entire party isn't taking damage at the same time, but multiple raid members are. On the other hand, COH is a better spell when an entire party takes damage. I found COH to be an incredibly useful tool on many occasions and just about every BT/Hyjal encounter. I've raided every encounter in BT/Hyjal with it and without it. Like Constantius said above...it's not a critical spell to have, however for me, if there's another Priest willing to spec Improved Divine Spirit, I'll always pick up COH just for that additional option.
Realistically, it's been proven that there is no point in bringing more than one Improved Divine Spirit Priest to a raid. The second Priest, whether or not he/she chooses to spec COH is entirely up to personal choice. In my opinion, a good player can make do with just about any spec. I personally prefer COH just because it gives me another option that no other class has. Nevertheless, what makes a player great is the the ability of that person to identify the best spec for his/her typical playstyle and role, and then know that even with all the Theorycrafting and number crunching, what it comes down to in the end is experience, confidence, and most importantly, the ability to anticipate situations and adjust on the fly.
To Constantius: Apparently I never checked the T5 Leggings after they adjusted the itemization. Yeah, I know...that was forever ago. Anyway, I believe you are correct and it was just a piece I never updated on my Wishlist. Thanks for the observation.
No offense but can I have some of what you're smoking?
I have not been smoking anything, the last time we tried shaman MT healing was when we were doing najentus (as Chain heal is useless there, we thought it made sense)
However we wiped constantly due to MT deaths, then we switched things around...and the MT did not die again.
I am speaking from personal experience, not the reports of others and my opinion is my own.
And I don't think your argument for the shaman equivalent of inspiration(which yes, I am aware of) is valid given the shaman doesn't have the priest 2piece bonus, so whereas 2 priests will be happy to spam rank x of GH all day to keep the tank with inspiration, I doubt the shamans would be so willing to step forward and do the same in the long term. Correct me if I am wrong.
Shamans have their own almost identical equivalents to priest flash heal, greater heal AND inspiration, in addition to that shamans have their earth shield and NR. With those, if they want to, they can do a good job with MT healing.
It varies by encounter of course, but in general we have at least 1 paladin healing MT (steady hp/s), druid for hots (focus on mt but others too if he can find time) and then we have a priest healing with big heals. Shamans take care of raid healing most of the time because of chain heal. Now, if I had a choise between a priest or a shaman for healing mt why would I choose a priest?
First, priest mana regen model supports burst healing over steady and continuous healing (spirit, clearcasting, inner focus). If you can get time out of fsr you can regen very nice amounts of mana assuming you haven't ignored spirit completely.
Second, fade. I don't have to be careful with my healing in threat delicate situations. In middle of phase change hydross hits mt for 10-15k for example, and thats just one situation. There are several other places I'm sure you know of.
As third, last, and severely underrated in my opinion: binding heal. Unless boss can 2-shot tank with his normal attacks, only way MT is going to die is because of a huge damage spike. And when healing a boss with that potential you can't afford casting spells anywhere else. Even 1 global cooldown can result in MT death. With binding heal a priest can keep himself alive without having to use a global cooldown to heal someone else than MT.
With those 3 priests are more suited for MT healing (at least with our style of doing things) than shamans. However, I don't think shamans suck at MT healing.
As third, last, and severely underrated in my opinion: binding heal. ... Even 1 global cooldown can result in MT death. With binding heal a priest can keep himself alive without having to use a global cooldown to heal someone else than MT.
I'm glad you mentioned this. Binding heal is a really powerful tool priests have, I'm surprised more people don't use it.
Unless there is someone assigned to healing the healers (sometimes the case for fathom lord because of spitfire), your healing priority is yourself (hey, can't heal other people if you're dead) and then whoever you're assigned to. Now, every other healer has to stop what they're doing (with the possible exception of druids because of their instant hots, it may not be an issue to switch off) and take time to cast a heal on themselves, and then go back to healing whomever. This is anywhere between 4 and 6 seconds lost and in that time other people could have died because you weren't there healing them.
Binding heal allows you to take care of number one without losing precious time on anyone else. This has allowed me to heal the MT on fathom lord without requiring someone else heal me through spitfire or has saved me and someone else after a bad Doomfire + Fear combo.
The combined spelldmg increase as I said over the entire raid is 150dmg. For my raid atm that's less than a 1.5% increase in +dmg. If you believe that 1.5% spell dmg increase to be a better Enrage Timer beater over an extra 1 or 2 dps living due to instant heals you're sadly mistaken.
As I said bringing in Imp DS is a nice addition to raid buffs but when you lose 1 or 2 dps during a fight because the chain heals or other direct heals didn't get to them in time... no buff can replace that.
A 1.5% increase in raid DPS is incredibly valuable. If you have 15 DPS classes in the raid, giving the 15 of them a collective 1.5% DPS increase is mathematically equivalent to giving one of them a 22.5% increase in damage:
Before DS: 15 people deal X * 15 DPS
After DS: 15 people deal X * 15 * 1.015 = X * 15.225 DPS
X * 15.225 DPS is the same as 14 people doing 14 * X DPS and the 15th doing X * 1.225 DPS, a 22.5% increases.
That's equal to a 7.5% increase per talent point spent. If a priest could spent 1 talent point to increase one other person's damage by 7.5%, would you take it? Of course you would-- that's amazing. All the DPS classes gladly take talents that increase their individual damage by 2% or even 1% per point. And here priests have a talent that gives 7.5 to 1 returns, an order of magnitude better than any other DPS talent in the game, and you claim the extra damage really isn't worth the talent points?
Keep in mind I haven't even factored in the bonus healing and mana regeneration. Point for point, the returns on divine spirit are amazing, and while you don't always need a situational heal, you always need damage.
Not having an Imp DS in the raid is like having all your casters and healers show up without their gloves enchanted. Will it wipe you?....no; but its just poor raiding practice.
Its also very necessary regen for priests/druids/mages.
I have not been smoking anything, the last time we tried shaman MT healing was when we were doing najentus (as Chain heal is useless there, we thought it made sense)
However we wiped constantly due to MT deaths, then we switched things around...and the MT did not die again.
I am speaking from personal experience, not the reports of others and my opinion is my own.
And I don't think your argument for the shaman equivalent of inspiration(which yes, I am aware of) is valid given the shaman doesn't have the priest 2piece bonus, so whereas 2 priests will be happy to spam rank x of GH all day to keep the tank with inspiration, I doubt the shamans would be so willing to step forward and do the same in the long term. Correct me if I am wrong.
Heh and I could tell you that we have had the same thing happening in reverse when we forced to make shamans CH on VR and the other healers kept letting tanks die. All this proves is that in our guild our shamans are better players and in your guild your priests. The main mechanics and benefits of shaman and priest MT healing are nearly identical (heal with gheal alternating between max rank when neccesary and some lower rank spammable gheal), just with different perks (shield vs. NS and the like). Shamans can spam HL rank 7 (heals for about 2.6K for me btw) practically forever as well - and while we do not have the benefit of priest t5 2 piece bonus, our gear is itemized for mp5 rather then spirit so we don't loose nearly as much as priests do for staying always inside the 5 sec rule.
Which factor wins out in the end is a matter of personal playstyle, the fight and so on - and probably doesn't matter too much since chain potting still dwarfs these differences. I do think that priests are ultimately capable of outputting more MT healing then shamans (and rightfully so in all honesty) but I don't believe the difference is big enough to matter much. Mostly I'm just trying to disprove this whole notion that shamans should raid heal solely - there are fights where CH cannot be used effectively and in that case shamans are the worst raid healers since obviously you can't have healing way stacked on the whole raid and without it healing wave is a rather inefficient spell (compared to gheal and the like).
One last thing before I really get on the nerves of all the priests - The targets CH jumps to are not "random". CH always jumps to the person in range (15yards IIRC) missing the most hp and then jumps again to the next lowest person. I.e. the jumps almost never overheal (unless there is no one missing enough hp in range).
A 1.5% increase in raid DPS is incredibly valuable. If you have 15 DPS classes in the raid, giving the 15 of them a collective 1.5% DPS increase is mathematically equivalent to giving one of them a 22.5% increase in damage:
Before DS: 15 people deal X * 15 DPS
After DS: 15 people deal X * 15 * 1.015 = X * 15.225 DPS
X * 15.225 DPS is the same as 14 people doing 14 * X DPS and the 15th doing X * 1.225 DPS, a 22.5% increases.
That's equal to a 7.5% increase per talent point spent. If a priest could spent 1 talent point to increase one other person's damage by 7.5%, would you take it? Of course you would-- that's amazing. All the DPS classes gladly take talents that increase their individual damage by 2% or even 1% per point. And here priests have a talent that gives 7.5 to 1 returns, an order of magnitude better than any other DPS talent in the game, and you claim the extra damage really isn't worth the talent points?
Keep in mind I haven't even factored in the bonus healing and mana regeneration. Point for point, the returns on divine spirit are amazing, and while you don't always need a situational heal, you always need damage.
I feel like nitpicking:
Unless you raid with 0 melee DPS, Divine Spirit does not have the DPS impact you claim it does. Only under absurd circumstances would 15 DPS classes benefit from DS in a 25 man raid. Obviously tanks do not benefit, nor do melee DPS of any kind, nor do Hunters. Realistically you only have 5-8 caster DPS.
Of course, the benefits of +healing and +regen to the healers is noteable, but... again. Just nitpicking.
Unless you raid with 0 melee DPS, Divine Spirit does not have the DPS impact you claim it does. Only under absurd circumstances would 15 DPS classes benefit from DS in a 25 man raid. Obviously tanks do not benefit, nor do melee DPS of any kind, nor do Hunters. Realistically you only have 5-8 caster DPS.
Of course, the benefits of +healing and +regen to the healers is noteable, but... again. Just nitpicking.
Read the calculations again. He claimed that DS was a 1.5% increase in overall raid DPS. The calculations I did worked out how much a 1.5% RDPS increase would be if it were all attributed to one person so that the effectiveness of the talent could be compared to other talents that give a fixed percent increase to one person's DPS, like Malice and Darkness do.
If the 15 DPS classes were all casters, the RDPS increase would be around 3%, which obviously changes the calculation.
Unfortunately it isn't a 1.5% increase in raid dps... only in +dmg stats, as I said above, on the casters (give or take of course). The increase translates into something considerably less than 1.5% of the raids overall dps. Of course considering my basic point of raid members surviving through incoming pulse or aoe dmg due to CoH you can see a significant % of the overall dps saved by keeping a single person up for an extra 30Seconds.
I will more accurately depict the mild increase in actual overall raid dmg during a boss fight shortly using real numbers and stats from both my guild's top mage and lock in Nihilum's top mage and lock (by Earned dkp). The data will depict that the overall increase in caster dmg is minimal (<20k dmg even at Nihilum's stats) for a 3mage/3lock raid setup. I will also introduce the concept of alternate uses of resources since comparing the usefulness of Buff Food to Imp DS seems popular.
Unfortunately it isn't a 1.5% increase in raid dps... only in +dmg stats, as I said above, on the casters (give or take of course). The increase translates into something considerably less than 1.5% of the raids overall dps. Of course considering my basic point of raid members surviving through incoming pulse or aoe dmg due to CoH you can see a significant % of the overall dps saved by keeping a single person up for an extra 30Seconds.
Ah, I misunderstood your previous post. I still disagree with the contention that you can attribute to Circle of Healing the additional damage from saving someone from dieing. The vast, vast majority of the time, another kind of heal will save them. I mean, dozens of guilds raid Black Temple without access to circle of healing and they do just fine.
Regarding the value of spell damage from Divine Spirit, lets rework my original math from the correct starting point, still with the objective of determining the value of Divine Spirit as a talent option relative to other DPS increasing talents like Darkness and Malice.
Assuming 3 warlocks (+20 damage each), 3 mages (+25 damage each), and 2 shadow priests (+30 damage each), DS adds a total of 195 spell damage to the raid. Again, this is completely ignoring the non-trivial amount of healing and mana regen your healers get.
As a rule of thumb, to convert spell damage gained to DPS gained on average, multiply by 9/20. (The actual derivation of this constant isn't difficult, but it is tedious since it requires analyzing many special cases.) That is an increase of 195*9/20 = 88 raid DPS.
Now lets assume your raid deals 14k DPS. That's a 0.6% increase in raid DPS, from 15 * X to 15.09 * X as described in the previous calculations. That's equivalent to giving one raid member a 9% increase in damage, or 3% per talent point. So Divine Spirit is STILL better than any other DPS increasing talent in the game by 50% per point, and that's ignoring the obvious mana benefits from 55 spirit. That seem unequivocally better than a chain heal that requires the targets to be in the same group.
08/23/07, 1:47 PM
Granted I do carry around a lvl70 of stam wand and have chosen Veteran's bracers with Solid Star and Fort on them... but other than that the only other piece I'm hoping for is Mag's staff (which hasn't dropped in all our kills). I should also include that I do carry some green stam gear for when its absolutely needed though I rarely find myself using it (we haven't really done doomwalker yet of course). In all you just have to be aware... moving out of fire and using binding heal are the two best things you can do for your HP. As long as I'm not getting 1 Shot or dropped in less than 2 seconds... I'm golden.
) if its needed.
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