• constantius

Switching it up a bit, adding Memento and going from Immaculate Recovery to Argus gives 2225, 227/498 self-buffed (that's including Imp DS).

I'm just not sure that 200 +heal at that level is worth 50 Mp5 OO5SR and 7-8 in. One of the biggest weaknesses of my current setup is that I use [Teeth of Gruul] because I like the spirit on it, and the only real replacement is Verdant Sphere, which is only accessible once in a while on keying runs. If I replace that with either of the options: [Lord Sanguinar's Claim] or [Brooch of Nature's Mercy], the results would probably be closer.

What's your feeling on the differences of 2200 vs 2400 +heal? With 5/5 Emp Heal, it certainly would make a difference to GH, and Renew would obviously benefit. At what level does it make sense to stop stacking +heal?

My personal feeling has always been that if I can end a fight OOM, there's some slack in my gear setup for more regen. If I literally cannot (in a sane casting rotation) spend my mana, then stack +heal. Since I can still go out of mana on a typical boss fight if I'm not in a SP group, I'm still stacking regen.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Vurrin

I'm certainly not going to fault you for wanting more regen... I would just advise against getting that regen from spirit. Again its very hard to name specifics without seeing what pieces you're shooting for, but I think if you were to review early posts in this thread and others you'd see cases made against 10 spirit gems several times. If you don't want 11/2 I would say go with 4 mp/5. I am quite sure that your spirit regen is not returning dividends for you over more ordinary mp/5 in most circumstances. Sure it has the side effect of more healing but... if its not keeping you from going oom or not supported by your low oofsr time its not doing you any good. Now I could be wrong and you're somehow managing a 70% oofsr time or getting an innervate every fight... but honestly if I was getting those things I don't think I'd ever fear for mana.

Of course with 4 pc t6 and 2500= healing raid buffed I rarely use anything other gheal 1-2, renew 10, and PoM. I would say when I had 2100-2200 healing and was in t5 I still used gheal 3 for a large portion of my MT healing needs. this is with 3/5 emp healing btw.

Additionally if you're considering any spirit heavy alternatives to t6 like Akama shoulders these items suffer from too much budget in one stat ( spirit) and are lower ilvl than t6 generally. All in all the transition from t5 to t6 is accompanied by a spirit loss, but your incombat regen ( the regen that matter imo) goes up significantly.

It is imo completely viable and even prudent for example to use 11/2 gems in all blue sockets, red gems in any items with yellow sockets not needed to use IED, and otherwise simply avoid favoring one aspect of gear heavily since none of them are without their drawbacks and flaws. For example even if I were to hit 2800 healing I can't effectively downrank below gheal 1 and most healing would be overheal at that point. On the other hand if you have to rank up too far for the throughput needed for raid healing Council for example you're hurting your longevity there too, and while its nice to have to use fewer pots on fights like supremus or even Illidan with long transitions with nothing to do not every encounter has lulls like that which you can count on, and even if they did you need to have the regen to last until they arrive.

Honestly I had a similiar problem around page 10 of this thread when I was using 15 sta gems in rage's bracers and 10 spi in Archimonde's pants, you might want to re-read that part of the thread for a little perspective, since I was in a similar boat to yours wanting to keep my spirit high, but also not properly valuing mp5.

 

Liths

I don't know how high you value int, personally I value it very low. Either way, I'd recomend going with following the set bonus on leggings of eternity and putting crimson spinels in your boots/belt instead. The tradeoff is 10 int for 2 mana/5s and 6 healing.

edit: unless of course you're using the two yellows to activate a meta gem. When I think of it, that's actually quite likely.

 

• constantius

I see 10 spirit not so much as "spirit" as:

2.1 Mp5 (Inside)
7.2 Mp5 (Outside)
4 +heal S&E

so each 10 spirit gem I use I consider a grade-off of 7 healing S&E for 5.1 Mp5 OO5SR. At present, my GH:1 is hitting for almost 3k raid-buffed (I haven't looked closely at the amounts lately), and is definitely my spammy spell for every fight except Illidan P2, when I go to Rk2 and intersperse it with Rk7. I can't think of a fight where I use anything bigger than Rk1 for solid spamming, actually ... there's just not much point, with a raid-healing team that has multiple people on a tank.

Rk1 is more than sufficient to keep my OT topped up on Shahraz, and to contribute my part to healing tanks on BB. It's a reasonable spam spell to use on RoS interspersed with constant PoM toss-offs and a PoH every 8-odd seconds (for P3).

I worry that if I decide to stack +heal up to 2500, Rk1 will just become that much more inefficient (in terms of overheal), especially with 4-piece T6 scaling it an additional 5%. If it's just barely not overheal now, how much worse will it be in that case?

I'll revisit the issue once I have 4-piece and post my results. For now, stacking sparklings is working out fairly well, and my regen is staying high even while I wear some pieces I normally wouldn't (like [Essence of the Martyr]).

In terms of valuing int ... I don't. At all. I haven't intentionally cared about my intellect in a very long time, yet somehow have 11.9k raid-buffed. It's a little ludicrous. The only caveat is that I like seeing my pool be above 11k, because an innervate is worth just a hair under 12k atm, and I don't like wasting it. We have a very nice feral OT who is amazing about hitting me when I need it, and that takes care of my extreme mana issues on any fight I can think of.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Bendyr

I used to be an MT healer, and spirit was an amazing stat for me. Using clearcasting/inner focus tricks, bangle of endless blessings and the darkmoon card, I was spending large amounts of time out of the 5sr. Also, I had the PMC set. Using RegenFu, I calculated that I only needed 2.7 spirit to = 1 mp5 which made my itemization choices very easy.

Now that my guild is progressing to SSC/TK content, I've respec'd CoH (as two other healers already have IDS), and while I love the spec, I find myself spending much less time in the 5sr, and I no longer have the Clearcasting proc to allow me to sit in the 5sr. Given my new style of healing, and the fact that I will probably be breaking the Primal Mooncloth set for ZA or T5 gear, I think I will be getting much less average mp5 from my spirit (I think my RegenFu calculations on my last VR fight was something like 3.5).

My question is did other CoH priests find that they had to move from Spirit to Mp5 gear, or should I modify my style of healing? I also understand that the [Eye of Gruul] would provide a proc very similar to Clearcasting for CoH, so maybe if I got that I could retain my spirit gear and itemization.

 

Nobs

You lose mana regen with a CoH spec simply because you are healing more. So yes I would, and have, put a higher priority on MP5.

 

uphir

Couple of items here.

Concerning 'geared-out' holy priests (ie, Illidan on Tuesdays, and you have the best items in the game for our spec right now): As my guild is just starting its foray into MH /BT, should the other holy priests and I only go for the 4 pieces of tier 6? Or are some off the off-set items worthwhile to pick up and keep until the tier 6 is available?

You would most likely have to evaluate if priests in most or partial tier 5 loot- meaning some pieces at the tier 4 level- are constrained by their gear in terms of survivability and healing throughput and longevity. I've only recently grasped this issue upon realizing how late in MH/BT many of my potential upgrades come, and upon learning that my guild is actually done with SSC until further keying needs and will only kill Kael for 3-4 more resets.


Secondly, I'd like to request that the consumables section of Cont's OP be expanded a bit. Elixir of Healing Power, Elixir of Major Mageblood, and Elixir of Draenic Wisdom are, well elixirs, not potions. Super Mana Potions are only one option for pots- Crystal Mana Potions (Wowhead) are an excellent alternative. In the respective tier 5 zones, I use Wowhead (SSC) and Wowhead (TK) potions over the Super Mana or Crystal Mana variety. As for flasks, it might be worth it to add the Shattrath Flask option. For the 'well-fed' buff, Buzzard Bites (Wowhead) or any other food giving 20 stam / 20 spirit are much better (read: cheaper) on farmed content.

 

Hiba

I would definetely take +200 more healing over 50 mp5 when you get to tier6 level gear. Of course it might be a different matter if you feel you that you need more manaregen, but considering the current ways of getting more mana, I think you might to ask from yourself why the extra regen is still needed, the same way you question when +healing is enough. +Healing simply scales so well and it affects everything you do, manaregen has effect only when you are running out of mana and it forces you to choose spellranks based on it, rather than choosing the ranks based on the situation you are in.

2xtier5 and 4xtier6 set bonuses offer an excellent way for controlling your manaregen and throughput. If I get a shadow priest in my group, I will pick the tier6 pretty much always. If I would feel I would need more manaregen based on the group setup, I might go for 2xtier5, however lately it has been 4xtier6 regardless. The 5% extra for greater heal, 5/5 empowered healing and high +healing add up really nicely. I feel I have have had enough manaregen for a long time, so +healing has been my choise as well as +22 healing gems.

IThe overhealing argument because of high +healing sounds to me a bit like same than it was at level 60 and using max rank greater heal, and I don't agree with it. We can't control how much tank gets hit but for me the best option is to be able to heal as much as possible from the incoming damage by yourself, in order to minimize the chance for tank death. Ideal situation would be chaincasting without interruptions max rank greater heal for the duration of the fight. This is of course not possible normally, but it does not remove the idea of maximizing HPS.

When single target healing, the best way is to be able to land a heal every 2.5 seconds, whether it's cast/cancel big ranks or just letting lower ranks to land, depending of course from the situation and how many healers on your target. If you do not heal as much as possible you can when knowing your manaregen is enough, you are not doing your full performance. Not letting the heals go though when you are sitting in full mana or using lower ranks than possible because most of it would be overhealing sounds stupid to me since overhealing means nothing unless you really run out of mana. My point is that on chaincasting situation why would you even try to downrank below GH rank 1, when you should be downranking only as little as possible while still maintaining the ability to chaincast?

Illidan P1,3,4 are examples where I will use chaincasting. I actually still buff fully for Illidan for fun (elixirs, +healing food, +healing/damage weapon oil, this could be on the consumables list on the first post), and since there's a restoshaman in my group on our setup, I reach 2800 +healing buffed. Add amplify magic on MT, 5% from set bonus and 5/5 empowered healing, even rank 1 greater heal overheals a lot if chaincasting. If there's a spriest in my group, I can chaincast gh rank 4 when not even using cooldown. It heals ~5500 per cast I think, and huge part of it is overhealing and definetely this would not be needed. However, in my opinion this HPS and the possible overhealing are not wasted, it gives a big buffer for the biggest possible burst Illidan can do. It's also pretty easy to be full mana and cooldowns ready for the last phase, so chaincasting max rank gh on MT for the rest of the fight (normal phases) is the safest way to go. It's quite fun to see that 10000 crit to have no overhealing at all during the enrage.

If I would have to make make the best possible tank healer in this game in an optimal group for him, it would a CoH specced holy priest with 2500 +healing unbuffed and put him in a group with spriest and a resto shaman. Maybe Sunwell will have hard healing encounters where this would be very useful, for current content this is a bit overdoing the optimization.

----

About [Insightful Earthstorm Diamond]: I had a problem also with activating this when getting my final piece of gear, I had calculated wrong and would have wasted a Grimsol Spinel to get the optimal solution. I actually even though swapping the IED to the +healing metagem, but according to WWS parses the IED is a much better solution. In the end I put one 5 int/2mp5 gem to get both blue and yellow from one gemslot, and I got only 3 gems in total that are not "correct" color (red).

Also, are you really sure IED has an 45 second internal cd? I have always thought that it has no cd, and the proc rate was actually buffed to 5%. And everytime I check parses, I can find several evidence that it has no internal cd, maybe you can corrent me if I'm missing something?

Here's one parse from 2.3.2 patch:
Wow Web Stats

The paladin who got 14 procs in 9 minute fight was spamming Holy Light. Here's some timelabels:

23:54'51.160 Raylah gains 300 Mana from Mana Restore
23:55'31.631 Raylah gains 300 Mana from Mana Restore
23:55'46.905 Raylah gains 300 Mana from Mana Restore
23:56'11.419 Raylah gains 300 Mana from Mana Restore
23:56'36.033 Raylah gains 300 Mana from Mana Restore
23:56'58.011 Raylah gains 300 Mana from Mana Restore

Lightwell object increased in size to make it easier to click.

 

Vurrin

I would agree with you Hiba in that when MT healing overhealing whether it be 10% or 75% is largely a non-issue so long as you are accomplishing 3 things: The tank not dying, you not going oom, and potentially preventing the worst case burst dmg on the tank.

My comment on not being able to downrank below rank 1 was more aimed towards raid healing. I am not CoH spec so if I want to top off the raid gheal rank 1 is pretty much my go to spell, although a flash rank 6 or PoM/renew help. Since it heals for 3k unbuffed thats in many circumstances more dmg than the players are taking. I suppose thinking back its mainly trash where this is a problem and I find myself going back to flash heal more, especially as we're starting to get some reliable shamans again. For bosses like illidan p2, Council, or even RoS p2-3 I don't overheal significantly at all.

All in all I would simply say stacking + healing much beyond 2300-2400 unbuffed in lieu of regen is not necessarily fully productive due to the fact even your lowest healing per spell is significant over heal, and mana regen does give you the option to increase your HPS in both the short term and long terms through up ranking when necessary. That said I made the point earlier in the thread that mana regen is by far the easiest stat to raise with outside buffs and as such is one I value less on my gear as a result. Simply put my 200 unbuffed regen is good for ssc/tk, my 300 raid consumables and BoW regen is good for most of BT hyjal, throw in a mana spring/tide totem and I'm good for absolutely everything with ample wiggle room, and if something came along where I absolutely needed more hps I still have the option of getting a SP for those encounters, and my maximum HPS would be higher than those who stack up 225-250 personal Mp5 by a considerable margin, where as they would still need a SP to stay competitive.

All in all while I think increasing your +healing should be a goal, you can't ignore obvious good tradeoffs just because they give regen and such. For example t6 helm or even rage winterchill bracers. Nothing at all with some 11/2 gems in those sockets the tradeoff for a bit of a regen is very favorable for the priest. Same thign with using an IED. All in all you can be extremely effective with a wide variety of priorities and I'm losing touch a bit with everything on farm, it'll really take until Sunwell on PtR I think before I can get a feel for what I'll want to gear towards in the future.

 

Starfire

My personal experience was no CD on the IED, I had it proc back to back. BUT this was also when I was CoH and we were still doing TK. That was months ago, I just kind of assumed it got nerfed per the others.

 

• Psykal

Don't forget [Fel Mana Potion]s! [Dark Rune]s and [Demonic Rune]s should probably get a mention too.

Also note that [Kreeg's Stout Beatdown] stacks with all food and spirit buffs. Yes, I realised they nerfed Rumsey Rum but this one still works. The same vendor sells a Rumsey Rum equivalent that was nerfed at the same time as Rumsey Rum so I assume this one has been intentionally kept like this and it isn't just an oversight.

 

Rollins

The 2-piece T5 bonus is obviously great to hold onto, so I would build your set around that until you can pick up the 4-piece T6. Even if that means banking a piece of T6 until you can complete it.

As far as the off-set items go, you've got your choice of [Cowl of Benevolence], [Amice of Brilliant Light], [Garments of Temperance], [Gloves of Unfailing Faith], and [Leggings of Eternity] (the "optimal" off-set item). Whether or not you need any of those probably depends on whether or not you have T5 in those slots or not. I never had the T5 shoulders or helm, so I picked up the Cowl and the Amice when we were learning the zones. I would've picked up the gloves probably, except they never dropped for us.

 

Chandra

[Imperial Tanzanite] Linky: Thottbot World of Warcraft: Imperial Tanzanite

I know its a Unique-Equipped one but I have this now in my new belt.

 

kosmic

Im having a hard time over this Garments of Temperance - Items - World of Warcraft vs Robes of Heavenly Purpose - Items - World of Warcraft it comes down 30 healing vs 30 stam/8mp5 any one have tips?

 

Vurrin

Hmmm they are pretty close. Personally assuming BT gems I'd wear the ZA robes over BB in the following situations:

A) anything short
b) Anything long where I'm getting an innervate
c) anywhere where I want to show off my boobies.

Still I'd favor BB robes in general for most of the more difficult fights because more regen when oofsr time is low and no innervates, and 30 stamina is not insignificant when considering some boss abilities.

Still on the whole they are pretty equivalent so neither choice is wrong, and both would be replaced with t6

 

Belteshazzar

[Fel Mana Potion] is beautiful. The biggest red flag is that the debuff stacks, and while losing 50 to your +heal isn't exactly earth-shattering, letting that stack 2 or 3 times probably isn't that great of an idea. The biggest advantage is that since the return is mana over time, you can use the pot earlier and get the cooldown ticking sooner.

[Dark Rune]s I think are a little easier to get, as you can collect those running alts or friends through the EPL instances, while I've had poorer luck with [Demonic Rune] drops.

Another worthy mention are the [Auchenai Mana Potion]s. Do a few Auchendoun heroic dailies on a few different toons, and you can really collect them.

Edit: Ok, I fail at linking items, but if anyone doesn't know, the Auchenai pots are identical to super manas, except they cost 2 spirit shards. They're also BoE, which helps you make use of the spirit shards you build up on alts.

 

Psilux

Any ideas as to what the new formulas are for Circle of Healing (COH) and for Power Word: Shield? As of 2.3, the formula for PW: S was changed from (base amount + (amount of healing * 0.3) ) * (1 + amount from talent), but I haven't seen anything in the boards that describes what the new formula is.

Also, COH has been changed and is supposed to receive more benefits from higher +healing levels. Has anyone completed any experiments or extrapolated the data for these spells? They may be more surprising with the proper data.

 

• Psykal

Does anyone know why this gem has 9 healing instead of 11? It's kind of annoying and I can't think of an explanation.

 

Finkum

The gems from heroics are of a lower item level than the ones from BT/Hyjal and consequently only one of the 2 stats is boosted (in this case, 4 spi -> 5 spi). This trend holds true for all heroic gems AFAIK. The issue is somewhat complicated by the "rounding-up" bonus applied to mp5 on hybrid blue/heroic gems (should be 1.5mp5 but is rounded up to 2) so that the equivalent BT heal/mp5 gem is in fact the same as the heroic version.

 

KyraMorgan

I've been pushing for some of the casters in my guild to get spellsurge on their second-best weapons and use casterweaponswapper. The enchant finally dropped for someone in the guild, so now people are thinking about it.

Is there any "conventional wisdom" for how many casters in a group need spellsurge to make it worth it? And how common is it for people to actually use the enchant?

 

• Psykal

If they are using CWS then I'd say it's worth it if there are more than 0 people who use mana potions. You spend hardly any time with your sub-optimal weapon using that addon, or at least it seems that way. I don't know if there are certain things that Spellsurge won't proc from though.

 

galzohar

Most heroic gems are, although the 6 dmg 5 hit gem from heroic mech seems special, as well as the 6 crit 5 dodge. gem. Why is beyond me, though.

The 9 healing 5 spirit gem, as stated, is nothing unique. It does suck, though

 

• constantius

It doesn't really matter what group you're in, Spellsurge on a 2nd weapon with CWS is the optimal solution. No matter how non-OOM you are, it doesn't cost you anything, and it gains you 100 mana / minute. Why *not* do it?

And if you happen to be in a mana-user group (i.e. mages/warlocks/hunters/healers of any sort), it scales in power. It really is entirely worth using. Encourage everyone to try it. If you don't have a backup weapon at this point ...

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Hegen

No formula, just some data:

CoH with around 2080 +heal gives about 960 HP per target (noncrit).
CoH with around 1680 +heal gives about 860 HP per target (noncrit).

So in an ideal situation, with 5 targets, 400 additional +heal would give 500 additional HP heal.

 

uphir

Does CWS harm you in any way? Say, when you go to cast a heal, it's delayed due to swapping weapons at the time?