I have to strongly disagree with this statement. As a single buff, DS/IDS is extremely powerful, especially when compared to some other buffs that are still expected to be buffed in raids--e.g. Arcane Intellect.

The question of "when does 30 dmg/healing become insigificant" seems a bit strange to me, because with current numbers the answer seems to be, "it doesn't." It is still going to be a 2% increase in +dmg even for fully raid buffed + potted Mages, while also giving them some additional passive regen in the case they have Mage Armor up and larger Evocations. (The article that implies Mages don't use Evocation is inaccurate.) I have over 1300 +Fire damage fully potted out and raid buffed on my Mage, and still happily welcome another +30.

For Priests, DS itself is quite powerful considering the implications on both OO5SR and FSR regen as well as a decent chunk of additional +healing. After all, most Holy Priests seem to get Spiritual Guidance, which is the same efficiency of Imp. DS per point--only Imp. DS applies to the entire raid until just yourself.

From a practical sense, the tradeoff is mostly 2 points in Empowered Healing vs. Imp. DS and CoH vs. DS. For me, the question on if a Priest should take ~150 +healing on GH vs. ~50 +healing for themself, and ~30-40 dmg/healing most other healers/dps in the raid seems a bit easy...Imp. DS seems to sum up to be all-around more benificial. The CoH debate is a bit more complex, of course.

I'm personally pretty happy with a 23/38 build on my Priest, as is our Priest class leader... we don't require the other Priests to spec into Imp. DS, as one of us are on pretty much every raid. But, really, I don't think I would want to have a raid without DS/Imp. DS at this point.

I do think Fondren is right about the fact that, as itemization scales to infinity, iDS loses value and EmpH/CoH gains it. I'm pretty sure that they don't cross at my guild's level of gear, and I have my doubts as to whether they would on a fully geared T6 raid.

Even if they do swap place in utility, though, I believe the effect would not be to make the iDS spec totally obsolete, but to make it the second priority after the CoH spec.

That is, at my guild's current gear levels, (in my opinion-- Fondren might disagree), in totally ideal circumstances, the first holy priest you bring should be iDS, and if you bring a second, they should be CoH.

If gear progressed to such a level that CoH became the best spec for your first priest, I think iDS would become the best choice for your second priest, because CoH is situational enough that the value of the second CoH in your raid has to be significantly less than the value of the first.

So, if the switch occurs, you're still bringing 2 priests, one iDS and one CoH; your priorities have just shifted slightly.

Indeed, use of iDS may become a function of both gear level and the demands of the raid as a whole.

In any case, I consider it a sign of the sorry state of the healing priest that we're even talking about this. It's demoralizing to see how many interesting abilities in the Holy and Disc trees are dismissed because they are either grossly underpowered or do not scale well at endgame.

To be fair, (Imp.) DS scales better than a lot of buffs in the game--possibly every buff other than the percentage-based Blessings. Although Spirit is something that comes and goes, over time it generally will increase--meaning the bonus from Imp. DS will continue to rise at least a bit. (Especially for Priests and Druids, who have the most practical use of continuing to stack Spirit on gear.)

MotW, AI, PWF, BoW, etc. all fail to scale with gear at all, so at least we can be thankful that Imp. DS has -some- scaling component built in.

Jayde and I have very similar trains of thought on this matter, and many other things it seems. The upper tiers of the holy tree are lackluster, besides the 6% clearcasting really.

And when you are forced to choose between a semi scaling buff vs a situational group heal, well, I know which one is better, for me anyway.

I wish blizzard would design our holy tree so I could go 61 holy like paladins, and be happy and just as good at pvp and pve. Empowered healing should be way lower in the holy tree, perhaps removing the crit talent filler in my 23/38 build. It is not worthy of a 35+ point talent.

It's not worthy?

At common 1800+ heal as a tailor with primal mooncloth set, whitemend set and some karazhan loot, it's close to +80 heal per talentpoint at maximum rank and close to +40 heal for your flash heal.

For your greater heal, that's a ~ 9% increase (average ~ 4550, adding +400), and for your flash heal it's a 9% increase (average ~ 2150, adding +200), to.

With more +heal, it becomes even better. At a higher gear level and with +2200 heal, you get close to +120 heal per talent point, that's an allmost 10% increase for 5 talent points. Flash heal bonus is very stable at this level, reaching more than 9% will take a lot more of +heal.

Of course, why you should pick a talent only providing allmost 10% increase, when you can get a solid 10% increase from spiritual healing at any gear level. Well, just don't compare each other, using both to increase your heal power output further more.
That might only be true for not downranking, but it's not the developer's part to assign your way of healing, there is allmost no reason for a haevy spirit priest not to precast maximum rank heals.

You pretty much made my argument for me, for 25+5 points, I can get a base 10% increase, for 35+5 I can get almost 10% increase. Explain to me how that makes it worthy of a 35 point talent spot?

Its hard not to compare two talents in the same tree that do the same thing, except one guaranteed 10% and one maybe 10% when you get better gear.

I still think it needs to be in the early part of the tree, or maybe in addition to its ~10% increase make the cost of those two spells reduced by ~5-10%.

Ok, so this is a complete non sequitur, but I think it belongs in this thread anyway.

I have been toying around with a few different spreadsheets for healing models, just to compare specs and gear and ratios of pertinent stats for my priest, and I have run into a bit of a dilemma: Blizzard's tooltips are the least verbose definitions ever. I am trying to get an accurate representation of how the size of a heal is calculated (something people have successfully done before, DrDamage seems to accurately give ranges for each rank) but each equation I try leaves me just a little bit off.

Here is what I am working with:
>1776 healing from gear
>446 Spirit
These combine and give me the 1932 healing (1776 + 446/4 Spiritual Guidance) displayed on my character pane (woot).

So, now the hard part begins:

I take that number, from my character pane (1932) and attempt to apply it to a specific spell (GHeal 7). The range given in Blizzards tooltip is 2414-2803, which is different than WowHead's 2396-2784, I thought that maybe this was due to talenting (my 3 points in Empowered Healing) but not only is this not a 12% increase, it doesn't jibe with what the tooltip for Emp. Healing says it does, so I ended up going with the data DrDamage uses because that mod seems to get it right somehow, 2396-2784 it is.

So, the low end heal for Gheal7 should be something like this:
The base (2396) plus my healing (1932) times the cast time coefficient (3/3.5, 0.857) time the dowrank penalty (none) plus 12% for Emp Healing (bonus from effects, right?) = 4537.93, plus 10% from spiritual healing = 4991. DrDamage is saying that my low end should be 4732, and that seems pretty accurate (lots of my heals are below 4991) so where is my logic going astray? There should be no other modifiers that I can think of which would bring this number down 5.2%, hopefully someone here can set me straight.

The reason it's worthy is that it is in addition to the flat 10% of the other talent. All sorts of healing classes get a +10% healing talent, or something similar. It's a staple, and it occurs lower in the tree. EH goes beyond this. If somebody takes EH instead of the flat 10%, then your argument might be valid.

The base for Gheal7 is 2414, though that isn't making the big difference.

(2414+(1932*.977))*1.1= 4731.7

The base (2414) + the plus healing (1932*.977) is 4301.56 not your 4537.93. Not sure where you got that number but it's what was causing the error.

Where is your .977 coming from? As I understand the cast time penalty is cast time (3) over 3.5 or .857, and .857 +12% is .96 (combining base and gear a step early seems to have caused the majority of the problem).

Well that is entirely counterintuitive and amazingly helpful, thanks Polemidas!

Is the downranking penalty also additive, or is that one multiplicative as it should be?

Basically the coefficient is what it is... the formulas are to get the coefficient. Once you have it you don't play with it.

Ie: for us...

Coefficient = ((X/3.5) + (.04 * Y)) * ((Z + 5)/70))

where:

X = spell's cast time
Y = talent points spent in emp healing
Z = the char level you learn the next rank of this spell

or

((Cast time/3.5) + (.04 * talent points spent in emp healing))*((the char level you learn the next rank of this spell + 5)/70)

So multiplicative

WoWHead's numbers are for the spell at level 68. To make power progression smoother while leveling (i.e. to help with the situation where a level 35 mage can barely kill an equal-con mob, while a level 36 mage can kill a +3 due to getting a new rank of thier nuke), spells increase in power slightly with each level you gain (until you get the next rank). This means that WoWHead's numbers will always be slightly off for any spells you gained before level 70.

Im quite new here (have been lurking for a while) so I hope this is the correct thread for my question / dillemma.

At the moment my gear is this:
armory

As you can see I value spirit quite high. This is for several reasons but one of them is that it makes healing more interesting then mp5. Having high spirit means I have to think more about when and what to cast then mp5. But I am derailing a bit.

The dillema I have is concerning trinkets. I have high hopes that the lurker will soon drop the priest trinket:
Earring of Soulfull Meditation
+66 healing
use: increases spirit by 300 for 20 seconds

And I am doubting whether to replace the darkmoon card or the bangle with it.
If the fight would go perfect I would be able to stay outside of the 5second rule while regenning with the spirit, but most of the time I can't.

Then the choice comes down to:
1 trinket that has a 2% proc on 100% regen, which means I will get the full ammount of regen out of the 300 spirit.
2 I keep the bangle having a 15% proc chance on 15% regen (coming down to 2,25% over the 2% of the darkmoon card) and a 120 spirit increase every 2 minutes, but not being able to use the 300 spirit increase to its fullest.

Without the "spirit-use option" the bangle looks a lot beter on paper (slightly more regen and a 120 spirit I can use when I want). However the 2% chance on 100% regen when casting gives very interesting opportunities.

I'm not entirely sure there's a "correct" answer here. One option gives you more consistent regen over time (using the bangle) while the other gives you larger bursts of regen, less frequently (2% chance for 100%). What you might consider using to make your decision is their "Equip" abilities. These affect you all the time, obviously, and will have a greater impact on your healing over time. If you have a shadow priest, mana regen isn't really an issue, and if you don't then you should probably be chugging mana potions every 2 minutes anyway. I can't even remember a time a fight came down to "Sorry, I'm out of mana, now the tank will die." 200 mp5 over a 5 minute fight = 12000 mana. 150 mp5 over a 5 minute fight = 9000 mana. You will also drink at least 2, if not 3, mana potions during this time, which is good for 9k+ mana...

Anyway. Tweaking carefully to slightly increase your periodic mana regen isn't as significant as a substantial "Equip" bonus of +healing or other effect. Consistency has great value.

It was mentioned earlier in the thread but with some uncertainty: are the bonuses to spirit from human racial, spirit of redemption, and BoK additive or multiplicative? In other words, is it 25% or 27.05%? For that matter, what about Spirtual Guidance and Imp DS, 35% or 37.5% +heal from spirit?

I'm personally curious at this point to see specifically how the changes to Lightwell play out for the holy tree... I never took the talent because it seemed like a too little / too gimmicky spell to merit gimping something else in my spec for.

The notes I saw didn't say specifically how it's going to scale with +heal now, but if someone has been able to come up with some numbers / analysis of the change I'd love to get some outside opinions on it.

It's a 100% coefficient. So...it scales well, but the fundamental problems with Lightwell still exist:

• The number of charges is very low.
• The cooldown is much shorter than the duration.
• The buff breaks on damage.

3 minute duration, 6 minute cooldown, and 5 charges total makes Lightwell weak regardless of the coefficient, because it limits its utility in raids. I really don't think a 6 minute duration and, say, 25 charges is out of line. Breaking on damage is also a questionable design decision, and probably not needed in the current raiding environment. In my view, Lightwell should read:

"Friendly targets can click the Lightwell to restore 2361 health over 6 sec, but will receive a debuff 'Touched by Light' which will prevent using any Lightwell for 24 sec. Lightwell lasts for 6 min or 25 charges."

Not going to happen though...

The "breaks on damage" thing is just intended to prevent its use for healing the main tank. Obviously this makes it totally ineffective for raid healing too, however.

But the biggest problem with Lightwell is that it requires other people in your raid to think about using it. Most non-healers don't think about healing in a fight, except when they badly need a heal. And at that point they turn to potions and bandages. They aren't used to hunting down the bandage machine that a priest may or may not have cast in the past minute and a half. The spell simply requires too many people to pay attention for it to be useful.

An easy and largely painless way to make Lightwell effective well not allowing it to work on tanks is to remove it whenever the target receives a direct heal; in other words, it would stack with other HoTs but would be removed by direct heals. This would limit it's use in groups with shadow priests and possibly feral druids, so perhaps something could be worked out to account that.

I often read in this Thread about iDS and emp. Healing bonuses but i cannot understand where the 10% bonus from iDS is same or nearly the same benefit as emp. Healing. I see a 10% dmg and Heal buff from the buffed Persons spirit my priest is only my twink but i see that my buffed spirit will never reach near 10% of my +healgear, so i decided to not specc iDS. so please explain once more (if i havent seen it yet im sry) what are my benefits if i talk about 1778+heal and ~370 spirit raidbuffed (i know its terribly low ..).
thx