PoM is amazing and efficient, and great in many circumstances. But if your primary duty is healing a tank, I feel that PoM's primary use is adding to tank threat early in the pull. Later on, I just am not sure you get enough healing on the main tank from your PoM to warrant the global cooldown use, unless you're lucky and it bounces back to the MT once or twice.
POM is a very situational heal. You need to keep an eye open for situations where you could use it.
As a main tank healer, I use POM to supplement raid healing during emergencies. The last thing you want to do is divert attention from your tank. However, if some poor DPSer is getting slapped around I will sometimes POM my tank. POM bounces right to the hapless DPSer.
It helps out our general raid healers, and the extra little bit of healing sometimes makes all the difference. This is especially effective against Aran's Arcane Missiles and other situations where DPS takes several medium-sized hits in a row.
Well after reading this post and many others and after altering my healing style I am generally pleased with my results. I am still a bit under-geared compared to most of our healers. But this is usual end result.
Well after reading this post and many others and after altering my healing style I am generally pleased with my results. I am still a bit under-geared compared to most of our healers. But this is usual end result.
Void Reaver is the Ultimate COH fight. Only thing I noticed that could use some improvement is your reliance on Flash Heal. Overall it looked like you were in charge of healing the Melee. If you give COH the opportunity, it's actually better HPM than Flash Heal.
Using your Averages from WWS - Void Reaver Kill
Flash Heal - Heals 2106 - Mana Cost 470 - HPM=4.481
COH - Heals Total 3935 - Mana Cost 450 - HPM=8.744
When I calculated your COH total, I basically assumed 5 targets. On Void Reaver, if assigned to the melee (eating pounding), you're pretty much guaranteed 5 hits. I couldn't pull up your spec on Armory, so I just assumed untalented mana redux (which is silly, but still worst case scenario).
Now, you're getting almost double the healing for your mana as well as an instant boost in HP to 5 targets. Granted it will take you 3 casts of COH to equal 1 FH on a single target, but with that thinking, you've got 5 targets up the same amount you would have had 3 targets up using FH in equivalent time.
I played a guildies priest on Kael because of attunement purposes, and he did not have CoH while I have had it since 2.0. And my main feeling was all the time that I was simply cripled, and I could not contribute as much I should have. Often there's damage on several people at the same time that could have been healed with few CoH, but now I was forced to just let other people heal them way slower than they should have on those situations (my healing role allowed helping, but not long casts other than my main targets).
Gurtogg is also one of the fights where CoH can be extremely useful. Alone it does not perform well enough, but combined with PoM and PoH you can heal almost 2 bloodboil groups at the same time. And when you know your group needs to be at full hp on certain moment, cast PoH and immidiately CoH for almost 3k heal for 5 targets at the same time.
Lightwell object increased in size to make it easier to click.
Kass we have very similar spec. Exact same Discipline tree talents and only difference in Holy tree is I've taken 5/5 crit and Holy nova while you have opted for 2/2 interrupt, 1 Lightwell and 3/3 Clearcasting.
I was assisting on melee group heals, we had one shaman assigned but when he had to run I would step in renew and CoH them, which was often enough.
Last night was pessimistic skydive in a foolish narcotic shell
Kass we have very similar spec. Exact same Discipline tree talents and only difference in Holy tree is I've taken 5/5 crit and Holy nova while you have opted for 2/2 interrupt, 1 Lightwell and 3/3 Clearcasting.
I was assisting on melee group heals, we had one shaman assigned but when he had to run I would step in renew and CoH them, which was often enough.
Holy nova hasnt really been worth much for a raid since vael.
Clearcasting is a must, and since you can get a free binding heal out of it, even more useful than before.
If you use SWstats, take a look at your mana efficiency page after every boss. Its interesting to compare "theory" to actual practice.
In theory, renew will be your most efficent heal, but in practice you'll find that you rarely get the full potential from a renew because peoeple are always being topped off regardless of a HotT being on them.
Keep renew up on MT only (generally) and go to rank 6 flash heal for quick top offs, and down rank to at least 3 if not 1 or 2 Gheal for the real spammage.
Keeping a close eye on your HP while healing really helps you to know when to use binding heal (as long as you dont overheal yourself or your target much this is a very effective spell)
Binding heal is a very unconventional spell for priests because:
1. you tend to watch the raids health more than your own
2. and its very awkward to say "i need to heal myself" and react by casting on someone else
Once you can adapt to these, you will find that a 1.5 second cast that easily totals in over 4k healing is a very nice spell.....even if you only use it once in a whole night of raiding.
Binding heal is a very unconventional spell for priests because:
1. you tend to watch the raids health more than your own
2. and its very awkward to say "i need to heal myself" and react by casting on someone else
Once you can adapt to these, you will find that a 1.5 second cast that easily totals in over 4k healing is a very nice spell.....even if you only use it once in a whole night of raiding.
I like it for kind of a different reason. I take damage and am more worried about my own survival than that of the tank, which is bad. Since I'm already targeting the tank most likely, I just replace my natural reaction to Flash Heal/Greater Heal myself with Binding Heal.
I could not justify Clearcasting 6% proc rate that just "felt" so low, and I am still finding that perfect spec of mine. So instead of Lightwell I dumped a point into Holy Nova. I am thinking that 5% crit is not all the necessary because I have not picked up Armor proc talentm, I'll most likely change that.
Binding heal is my main heal I have ready whenever Mag starts casting blast nova. I use it for good chunk of that encounter. Whenever healing tank on Channelers, occasional infernal and shadow bolt damage go away quickly with binding heal. And I have started to use it on other fights where raid wide damage is imminent, for example Morogrim.
Hmm, I do run SW_Stats and I will have to setup MEF page to keep an eye on that info. Right now I track, DPS, RDPS(per mob) and Effective Healing. Recount is used to track everything else along with SW_Stats.
Last edited by boomix : 06/27/07 at 9:35 AM.
Reason: removed double stupid sentence.
Last night was pessimistic skydive in a foolish narcotic shell
I could not justify Clearcasting 6% proc rate that just "felt" so low, and I am still finding that perfect spec of mine. So instead of Lightwell I dumped a point into Holy Nova. I am thinking that 5% crit is not all the necessary because I have not picked up Armor proc talent. I am thinking that 5% crit is not all the necessary because I have not picked up Armor proc talent, I'll most likely change that.
While I haven't specced Clearcasting since I was level 60, I was unimpressed with a 6% proc rate as well. However, the free mana cost will take you out of the FSR, since the lower rate of mana regeneration only applies when you cast a spell that costs mana. (This is why the Draenei priest racial costs 15 mana, I suspect.) So if you follow up a clearcasting proc with inner focus, you can generate a solid 6 to 10 seconds at the full mana regeneration rate. It's not immediately clear if this is worth spending 3 extra talent points, but the talent isn't as bad as it first appears.
On the subject of inspiration, I recently did an analysis of successful Morogrim attempts versus failed ones (by guilds that had killed him before), and one factor that stood out was the higher percent of inspiration and ancestral fortitude uptime on the tank on successes. I'd assume this is true for any fight where the tank requires a lot of heals. Inspiration procs really help during the reverbrations on Gruul, for example, and I've seen a lot of priests that are working on Gruul skip the talent.
Inspiration won't increase your heal meters, but it does stop the tank from randomly dieing when he shouldn't. I view it as a threatless heal over time that heals more if the boss hits for more. And it doesn't require any extra thought to make the talent "work"-- your heals are just magically more effective. That's pretty good as far as talents go, even if it doesn't have a huge impact on every fight.
Void Reaver is the Ultimate COH fight. Only thing I noticed that could use some improvement is your reliance on Flash Heal. Overall it looked like you were in charge of healing the Melee. If you give COH the opportunity, it's actually better HPM than Flash Heal.
Using your Averages from WWS - Void Reaver Kill
Flash Heal - Heals 2106 - Mana Cost 470 - HPM=4.481
COH - Heals Total 3935 - Mana Cost 450 - HPM=8.744
When I calculated your COH total, I basically assumed 5 targets. On Void Reaver, if assigned to the melee (eating pounding), you're pretty much guaranteed 5 hits. I couldn't pull up your spec on Armory, so I just assumed untalented mana redux (which is silly, but still worst case scenario).
Now, you're getting almost double the healing for your mana as well as an instant boost in HP to 5 targets. Granted it will take you 3 casts of COH to equal 1 FH on a single target, but with that thinking, you've got 5 targets up the same amount you would have had 3 targets up using FH in equivalent time.
I'll second that COH is insanely good on Void Reaver. We got our first kill last night, in part due to two priests speccing into COH to heal the melee. As you can see in the WWS parse here, they absolutely dominated healing with COH on the melee and the only other close person was the enhancement turned resto shaman spamming Chain Heal on the melee. As Kass mentioned, if you're mostly guaranteed to hit more than 3 targets with the COH it's better to spam that until they're full on health than flash heal. It's both faster and more mana efficient.
Clearcasting is beneficial due to clearcast heals not placing you into the FSR. Clearcast + IF + Bangle + Earing (or various combinations of those) can be quite nice. Not only do you save the mana cost of the heal you would have used anyway, but you can uprank your heal (assuming you were downranking), and you can spend a sometimes significant amount of time outside the FSR. Overall, it's nice, although I'm still working out how to model it.
Inspiration is hugely beneficial on any physical damage fight, but you need to think carefully about your raid mix.
Inspiration Effect: If you assume your MT has 18k AC, Inspiration will bump him up to 22.5k AC. That reduces incoming physical damage by 13% (or to put it another way, you'll go from seeing incoming hits of 8k to incoming hits of 7k). So the Inspiration effect is very valuable; it should be obvious that knocking off 13% of the incoming damage on a late-growth Gruul is pretty nice.
How to get it? Assume priests have 10% crit chance and hit the MT with a heal every 4 seconds. As you add priests, you get the following marginal effects:
0 priests - 0% (base)
1 priest - adds 33% uptime
2 priests - adds 22% uptime
3 priests - adds 15% uptime
4 priests - adds 10% uptime
In other words, the first couple of priests add the most. Now, assume 3 priests. As average crit chance increases:
10% crit - 69% (base)
11% crit - adds 3.6% uptime
12% crit - adds 3.2% uptime
13% crit - adds 2.9% uptime
14% crit - adds 2.6% uptime
15% crit - adds 2.3% uptime
In other words, having most of the MT healers have inspiration helps a lot. Having your MT healers spec/gear for crit doesn't really help, but the first couple of points are nice. Looking at the holy tree, it's pretty easy to fit 2/5 Holy Spec and 3/3 Inspiration in; you really don't have to give up anything important (IMHO).
In other words, having most of the MT healers have inspiration helps a lot. Having your MT healers spec/gear for crit doesn't really help, but the first couple of points are nice. Looking at the holy tree, it's pretty easy to fit 2/5 Holy Spec and 3/3 Inspiration in; you really don't have to give up anything important (IMHO).
I think this is what I was trying to get at. Even if you have no additional crit on your gear, 3/3 inspiration is exceptionally good. It's not a talent that should be skipped if you raid. And given how most guilds are taking 1-2 holy priests, it's much more likely that your inspiration matters than it did in older 40 man content where you brought 5 to 7 holy priests.
Even if you have no additional crit on your gear, 3/3 inspiration is exceptionally good. It's not a talent that should be skipped if you raid. And given how most guilds are taking 1-2 holy priests, it's much more likely that your inspiration matters than it did in older 40 man content where you brought 5 to 7 holy priests.
Not entirely accurate. It really depends on what you're doing if you want Inspiration. I'm pretty much a raid healer only now, so Inspiration is not going to be of any use for me. All our Resto Shaman, however, have Ancestral Fortitude. So, I'm not ragging the AC buff, but I am saying it depends completely on how your guild runs MT healing if it's a "must-have" for Priests.
been whining some for being forced to spec spirit buff instead empowering my healing abit futher and the nowadays underestimated spell CoH.
before i go ranting on about stuff i just like to mention that im talking raiding as a holy priest in ssc,tk,hyjal and bt.
we only bring 1 or 2 holy priests to raids and thats all we have because everyone so damn active (nolifers), so both are forced to spec spirit buff because thats what benefits the raid most. this leads to limited experience at best with the new improved CoH. for melee group this is absolutly superb healing and overall raid healing on alot of boss encounters including but not limited to: astromancer, morogrim, phatomlord, vashj, mother sharaz, essence of souls, gurtogg bloodboil. they are the once where CoH is really useful and thats more then half of the boss encounters i believe.
i tried to compare it with the imp spiritbuff for the whole raid but i suppose it isnt noway near, i havent done the math that well. spirit probably give 1k +healing and damage raidwide.
now i dont know if had any point in my post i dont even know if im theory crafting properly(im new at this), i just thought i share some of the stuff in my rambling.
If you bring one holy priest to the raid, they absolutely must spec 23/38/0. No question. No argument. Losing Imp DS is unacceptable.
If you bring two holy priests to a raid, there will be the flexibility to have one of them go anywhere from 20/41/0 to 14/47/0 if they so choose. I personally still can't live without DS, and even Imp DS, but if all you do is raid on your toon, and you're the second priest, lose the Imp DS and even the DS, and take CoH. And yes, it's a situationally valuable tool.
Unfortunately, gone are the days where DS sucked so badly that you'd have one person who was the DS-Bitch, and they'd be brought to the raid only to buff that (I'm thinking back in the day when it was the 31st Disc talent). Oh well. Can't afford something that terrible in today's min-max 25-man content.
I don't completely agree that Improved Divine Spirit is a must, or even Divine Spirit. We have 4 active holy priests, 1 is specced for improved DS, 1 for normal DS, and 2 CoH specced. We brought a long time only 1 holy to raids, but at BT/Hyjal 2 seems to be the minimum we have had. So less than 50% of the time in our BC raiding history there has been DS in the raid, and even seldom improved DS. And I'm pretty certain that we would be exactly on the same position in our raiding progress than we are now if all would have been improved DS specced or CoH specced. Yes, improved DS is a big raidwide damage/healing buff, but so is a person who stayed alive because of CoH spam.
Lightwell object increased in size to make it easier to click.
You may also have made it to where you are without anyone picking up improved PW:F, as well ... but you didn't.
It comes down to +30 dmg/heal to every caster in the raid (at a minimum), along with +50 spirit and +30 healing to every healer ... or not having that. And if you chose to run a raid without that, while having priests (non-shadow) in the raid, that's just silly. It'd be on the level of chosing to not have Kings, just because none of your 2-4 paladins could be bothered to spec into Protection the few points to pick it up.
Spirit gets very little respect outside of priest communities, and you find almost no casters that bother to stack it in order to benefit imp DS (nor should they).
By the time casters hit a decent spirit number (300 or so) the plus thirty damage doesn't look like much compared to the rest of their plus damage gear. The bonus simply does not scale with plus damage gear.
I realize that every little bit counts, but is it worth the cost? Why gimp one of your priests in order to deliver a mediocre buff? Our raids need every little bit of healpower we can get.
First, how good is DS? It's true that no one other than priests and maybe druids have spirit that increases as their gear improves, but when does 30 damage become insignificant to a mage or warlock? (Don't forget that spirit also increases a mage's mana pool significantly-- basically equivalent to Int on any fight that contains an evocation.) There are very few buffs that provide a straight-up caster DPS increase, and it seems a little short-sighted to shrug one off just because it doesn't scale well. No class buff except Kings scales, really-- DS is actually ahead of the curve in that regard.
Second, how much does it "gimp" your priest to spec for it? It rules out CoH and a couple of points in Empowered Healing. No healing priest is going to go without Meditation and Inner Focus, so it's a swing of a handful of points in Holy between your iDS priest and your CoH priest. What's the opportunity cost there? What points would you relocate from Disc into Holy if you didn't care about iDS?
Unless you're in a fight where you'd get tons of benefit out of multiple Circles of Healing, the difference is a few percentage points worth of +heal gear applied to one priest's direct heals. I'm willing to bet the comparison between that small increase to one priest and the raid's benefit from iDS comes down solidly on the side of iDS.
30 spell damage is same damage upgrade as upgrading all my gem slots from Runed Living Rubies (+9) to Runed Crimson Spinel (+12). And all casters in the raid get that buff from just one priest speccing Divine Spirit. Yeah, it's talent tree placement sucks. But it's still worth getting even when it doesn't scale very well.
As well, don't forget that for healers, it's at least 30 +heal (for priests and druids, more like 50-60). That's not insignificant. It's not *huge*, but it's definitely a help when it comes to buffs.
If you have one holy priest in the raid, they should be 23/38/0. At absolute minimum, they could go 21/40/0, but at that point, you're trading 10% of your spirit into +heal (and the entire *raid* getting the same) for 8% bonus from your +heal effects to your two primary spells (which works out to ~ 130-150 +heal).
If you have one holy priest, and that priest goes 41+ in Holy, there's a serious problem. Divine Spirit (not necessarily Imp DS) is a required raid buff. That would be like no paladin taking Kings, just because they don't want to. Or no warlock picking up Imp BP for the tanks. Or no warrior picking up Imp TC or Imp DS or Imp CS. The list goes on.
Single priest? Take DS. Probably take 2/2 Imp DS.
Two priests? One takes DS, 2/2; the other takes 41 holy for CoH.
Three priests? One DS; two CoH or variants.
Spirit gets very little respect outside of priest communities, and you find almost no casters that bother to stack it in order to benefit imp DS (nor should they).
I would guess that a mage that emphasized spirit and internal mana regeneration would be suboptimal in this age of shadow priests and chain chugging, but I do like to tease our mages about their mana regen options.
Can you imagine if holy priests had the same 45% regen while casting available? (Arcane Medition for 15%/Mage Armor for 30%) It makes me positively green with envy...
Well, there are two questions there.
Second, how much does it "gimp" your priest to spec for it? It rules out CoH and a couple of points in Empowered Healing. No healing priest is going to go without Meditation and Inner Focus, so it's a swing of a handful of points in Holy between your iDS priest and your CoH priest. What's the opportunity cost there? What points would you relocate from Disc into Holy if you didn't care about iDS?
My point is that as guilds progress through the new endgame the cost of IDS grows (Loss of EmpH) while the relative benefit shrinks. IDS should not be an automatic decision anymore. You should weigh the benefits against the costs for your guild and situation.
Meditation and IF require only 14 points Discipline. Improved DS brings that up to 21.
The price for IDS is basically COH and all of Empowered Healing. Considering the amount of healpower in current gear, I believe that you sacrifice quite a bit by forgoing Empowered Healing. And COH is a huge benefit in certain fights.
WOW Insider has an article today about mages who take so little spirit their evocates don't even return enough mana to justify the pause.
If your raid is DPS constrained then OF COURSE you should spec into IDS. But as raids run with fewer and fewer healers it's important to maximize the healpower of each slot..
So the cost of COH grows as healpower itemization grows, while the benefit declines relative to the spellpower of caster gear.
WOW Insider has an article today about mages who take so little spirit their evocates don't even return enough mana to justify the pause.
See, any mage who does that isn't thinking at all -- it takes a MINIMAL amount of effort to pick up a Staff of Divine Infusion (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31289), slap a +20 Spirit enchant on it, and buy a green "of Spirit" wand (+2x spirit) off the AH.
Then make a macro that swaps that staff and wand in, and then hits evocate. Mana regeneration by 1500%, lasts for 8 seconds.
Figure 400 spirit raid-buffed, with the weapon swap (95 * 1.1 from Kings, +base), gives 6400 mana returned from Evocate. My numbers might be a bit off, but if a mage can't hit 400 spirit raid-buffed with an extra 105 spirit from the weapon swap, there's something wrong.
See, any mage who does that isn't thinking at all -- it takes a MINIMAL amount of effort to pick up a Staff of Divine Infusion (http://www.wowhead.com/?item=31289), slap a +20 Spirit enchant on it, and buy a green "of Spirit" wand (+2x spirit) off the AH.
Then make a macro that swaps that staff and wand in, and then hits evocate. Mana regeneration by 1500%, lasts for 8 seconds.
Figure 400 spirit raid-buffed, with the weapon swap (95 * 1.1 from Kings, +base), gives 6400 mana returned from Evocate. My numbers might be a bit off, but if a mage can't hit 400 spirit raid-buffed with an extra 105 spirit from the weapon swap, there's something wrong.
My point exactly. Why sacrifice healpower to bring a spirit based DPS buff to the raid when nobody packs spirit anymore? IDS is quickly becoming obsolete.
06/15/07, 2:32 PM
I use it for good chunk of that encounter. Whenever healing tank on Channelers, occasional infernal and shadow bolt damage go away quickly with binding heal. And I have started to use it on other fights where raid wide damage is imminent, for example Morogrim. 
), so both are forced to spec spirit buff because thats what benefits the raid most. this leads to limited experience at best with the new improved CoH. for melee group this is absolutly superb healing and overall raid healing on alot of boss encounters including but not limited to: astromancer, morogrim, phatomlord, vashj, mother sharaz, essence of souls, gurtogg bloodboil. they are the once where CoH is really useful and thats more then half of the boss encounters i believe.
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