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?
Well, I Decided on 4/5 t6 with pants being my non-set item. The Archimonde pants are the best in the game, at least in my opinion. So, i do reccomend only picking up 4 pieces. A previous poster also mentioned that keeping 2 pieces of t5 is a good idea. I take 2 pieces of t5 with me to every Mother Shahraz fight, due to the immense amount of healing that needs to be done along with losing a lot of the key stats (mp5/spirit/healing/int). So that 100 mana per cast really adds up in a fight like that where mana can REALLY become an issue. I'm a bit of a spammer in terms of MT healing. Personally I don't see how overhealing can be argued as a bad thing, assuming you're never running out of mana. Also, out of the pages i've read in this thread, i seem to be the only priest who uses a combo of ranks 2, 4, and 7 for my gheals. It should be clarified however that i only chain cast gheals (rank 4 during boss fights) when i have a shadow priest in my group. Otherwise it's a lot of interrupting.
I suppose i take a very laid back approach to endgame healing as a priest, but it hasn't presented a problem thus far. As I see it, as long as I keep my mana bar filled and the tank alive, the rest is semi-trivial. But that's not to say there isn't a ton of very valuable information in this thread, it's just all about what approach you take. Mine seems to be the least popular. Hope this helps somehow
That is an interesting point of view. I rarely use renews on MT because I find them it to be an incredibly mana inefficient spell since damage these days is spiky so usually the tank gets healed back to full health in 3 seconds which barely allows for two ticks of renew.
I don't understand why you say flash heal is a good spell to use for MT healing because during a normal cycle of chain casting high rank gheal with a stopcasting macro there isn't a good time to fit in a flash heal. If your heal is 2 seconds or less away from landing than you are better off waiting for it to land rather stopping that cast and casting a flash heal. So that leaves 0.5 seconds at the beginning of the cast where it makes sense to stop a gheal cast. Admittedly I usually find anywhere from 1 to 15 such times depending on the length of the fight, I more often use flash heal for trash healing and for spot healing/multi target healing.
Hi, I play in the Australasian Server and find that due to the flactuating pings, it can happen that while your GH cast is almost off, your screen looks as if the tank was still full hp (due to the ping) and then when you just cancel the GH because you think the tank was still full hp, suddenly the tank took a huge spike damage. So this is the time when I usually fix it by casting my Flash heal straight after as opposed to just continue by casting my GH7 hoping the tank will sitll be alive in the next 2.5sec. For me flash heals is very useful regardless healing MT or raid
i also want to mention that i love this thread! very informative and I enjoy reading it alot. probably what I want to see more is a detailed comparison between spirit vs mp5 (I actually think spirit will be superior once you have large amount of it, but I don't know what is the minimum for it to excel mp5 assuming you are OO5SR say around 15% of fight in a 10 min fight?, probably 500spirit? will be nice to see some analysis. (sorry i am bad at maths so i have no idea how to count this myself)) I love mana regen so I would love to see trinkets comparison on which are the best for mana regen.
Hope I make sense, this is my first time posting so hi to you all priest out there!
Hi, I play in the Australasian Server and find that due to the flactuating pings, it can happen that while your GH cast is almost off, your screen looks as if the tank was still full hp (due to the ping) and then when you just cancel the GH because you think the tank was still full hp, suddenly the tank took a huge spike damage. So this is the time when I usually fix it by casting my Flash heal straight after as opposed to just continue by casting my GH7 hoping the tank will sitll be alive in the next 2.5sec. For me flash heals is very useful regardless healing MT or raid
D
If you haven't tried it already then the attempted fix to reduce some latency found Here should help you alot, its brutal dealing with bad ms normally, but on a healer it will really screw you over.
Considering this however you might want to keep 2t5 and use GH1/PoM as your main heals to give you the most margin for error with the least cost, because trying the cast/cancel style of healing with above average delay is not the smartest way to utilize your ability.
Assuming your math is correct, going from 60% to 65% damage reduction reduces all damage taken by 5/40=12.5% compared to without inspiration. That's pretty big, as it's effectively +14.3% HP and +14.3% healing taken on the tank. It's nothing to neglect, however it has its flaws when it comes to "will my tank get pwned?" factor due to the fact it simply won't be up all the time.
I think that's faulty logic. If something only helps some of the time, that's still a help, not a flaw. Any way you look at it, it's a net improvement to survivability. If 5% of car accidents were fatal for people not wearing seat belts and 1% were fatal for people who did wear them, you wouldn't say "seat belts are flawed because they don't make it impossible to die in a car accident". It's a net improvement. You use it
Originally Posted by galzohar
It will reduce his chance to get pwned, tough, that's for sure. However there are other stats like +healing/haste that, in reasonable conditions, can actually get to a certain point will make it impossible for your tank to get pwned - all the time.
Then again many would claim that plain out "getting pwned" doesn't happen and therefore it's not that important, and then again many would say otherwise. I'd say the main disagreement lies within how geared their tank is and what content they're doing, as it has direct effects on the importance of those things.
I'd suggest that the people who claim "getting pwned" doesn't happen are precisely the people whose healers have inspiration and ancestral fortitude. I remember doing an analysis on half a dozen WWS reports on Morogrim half a year back, and the single biggest factor in whether the tank died was the number of people who had inspiration. I suppose Azgalor is the new Morogrim, but the same concept applies.
I also disagree with using the concept of "under reasonable conditions". Right NOW, a tank will never die under reasonable conditions. Tanks only die when something unreasonable happens, like he gets crushed and then there is a parry string of extra attacks, or whatever. The key to reducing tank deaths is taking talents that reduce the impact of UNREASONABLE conditions. Inspiration directly addresses this problem. Haste and +healing don't help as much under these unreasonable conditions (although they still help-- obviously they are still good thing).
I have tried to calculate contribution of Clear Cast talent in terms of Mp5 on my guild forums. Reposting it here. Please have a look and let me know if you find it correct:
If a priest would use only quick spells, until the Clear Cast is achieved and then he/she casts a biggest rank Greater Heal, then an average (statistical) effectivity is:
20 Flash heals Cast to achieve Clear Casting = 30 sec
Greater Heal Rank 7 = 701 mana
701/30*6 = 144 Mp5 obtained from Clear Casting.
Reality is worse then this optimal case, it is needed to cast bigger spells as well and the casts are not following each other immediatelly. The situation is worsened by casting Renew and Prayer of Mending, which do not proceed Clear Casting. Let us assume, that the casting sequence is PoM, Renew, FH, Renew, FH, GH, FH, FH, GH, PoM, Renew, FH, Renew... and let us assume that there is a 0.5 sec lost between each cast. Effective casting time for PoM and Renew will be 1.5 sec (1 sec global cooldown and 0.5 sec noncasting time) For FH and Binding Heal it will be 2 sec (1.5 sec casting nad 0.5 sec delay) and for Greater Heal it will be 3 sec (2.5 sec cast 0.5 sec delay)
20 Flash heals, Binding heals and Greater Heals cast to achieve Clear Casting = 56 sec (3 whole sequences of casting and a little bit)
Greater Heal Rank 7 = 701 mana
701/56*6 = 78 Mp5
If in used in conjunction with Inner Focus and trinket blowing it can give a priest also some time spent out of five second rule for extra mana regeneration. Conservative assessment of this regeneration is that it can be used once in every three minutes, which is once in every three Clear Cast states and it gives you 2.5 seconds out of 5 second rule (Casting two Greater Heals - one for Clearcasting and one for Inner Focus with as much time waiting between casts as you can safely afford). Typical mana regen for a priest with mix of SSC, TK and Karazhan items should be about 250 Mp5 casting and 500 Mp5 not casting. The 2.5 seconds should therefore be an equivalent of (500-250)/2.5=100 mana, which represenet 100*5/180 Mp5 (approx 3Mp5)
CONCLUSION:
If cast wisely, Clear Cast can represent as much as 16 Mp5, which is equivalent of Major Mageblood elixir.
But it will be very demanding on concentration to cast as many as possible Flash Heals and Binding Heals in a row and at the same time heal your targets properly. It is also important not to miss the Clear Casting state and combine it with Inner Focus in order to get extra mana regen from being out of 5 second rule.
If you go for it i recomend to assign Flash Heal Rank 1 to one of your keys and spam that spell as much as possible to maximize occurence of Clear Casting with minimal spending of your mana. As soon as the state occurs, immediately stop your casting, blow your mana regen trinket and start casting max rank Greater Heal on a priority target. If the target does not need healing, interrupt casting and start it again. After it is cast, activate your Inner Focus and continue casting Greater Heal of max rank. After that, start flash heals spam cycle again...
Edited forgotten multiplication by 5 to get mana regen in mp5 values.
I have made a notification of Clear casting really prominent on my screen, still I was not able to get more then on in 4 Clear casts stopped and proceed with max rank GH. Hence the actual values were in fact correct...
Due to a combination of latency and human reaction time, it is impossible to cast something based on clearcast being available without actually canceling your current spell and recasting the other one, losing a non-neglicible amount of time. For clearcasts it's better to just assume that 6% of the spells capable of clearcast procs will be free. Granted sometimes you will cast a PoM or renew right after clearcast procced to give you time to react and cast something based on the fact you clearcasted, but the rarity of this event combined with the fact that you would probably cast the same spell you would've without the clearcasts (as you choose spells based on what is needed to prevent deaths more than anything), I'd say the "6% mana cost reduction to the said spells" is extremely close to reality. With the possible addition to the OO5SR regen of inner focus if it's even worth it considering you will end up using it less than every 3 minutes if you use it like that.
As for inspiration and seatbelt comparison, of course you'd wear seatbelts, but driving slower/more carefully will at some point reduce your fatal car accidents to "the other guy was crazy". Diriving uncarefully with a seatbelt on is a lot less effective than driving carefully without a seatbelt. Of course it's better to just have both. Same with inspiration and +heal/haste, heal/haste is like driving more carefully and inspiration is wearing the seatbelt. Would you trade off some careful driving for a more effective seatbelt? Especially if uncareful driving would lead to consistant accidents, so while most will not be fatal because of the seatbelt, you'll eventually get in a fatal one regardless.
Bottom line is you should definitely spec into inspiration, although increasing inspiration uptime is not nearly the same kind of survivability you get by higher healing/haste. If the tank gets bursted down when inspiration just happened to be down he really doesn't care what your inspiration uptime is, he only cares why you couldn't heal him hard/fast enough. That's why I say inspiration increases are more of a mana saver than a tank saver.
For clearcasts it's better to just assume that 6% of the spells capable of clearcast procs will be free. Granted sometimes you will cast a PoM or renew right after clearcast procced to give you time to react and cast something based on the fact you clearcasted, but the rarity of this event combined with the fact that you would probably cast the same spell you would've without the clearcasts
That does not really change the outcome. The talent makes your next gheal a free spell. The real difference here is as far as I Can see, that you now have a free rank 7 to play with. So even if your next spell would have been a rank 1, you would use a rank 7 beause you have the clearcast. This is very significant. Casting another spell instead of a gheal just reduces the 05SR regen you get. Which brings us to another very important thing: if you wait just 2 seconds before you cast your clearcasted gheal. Then after your clearcasted gheal you will have had 4.5 seconds within 5SR. By the time your next gheal is cast you will have stayed out of the FSR for 2 secs (1 tick) even without inner focus. I have monitored this experimentally and can confirm it to be true. In some situations I have gotten the full 5 seconds of out of FSR regeneration from a clearcasting proc.
I dont think equating clearcasting to mp5 is such a good idea. Whether the calculation is correct or not, it does not really give you the value of clearcasting as a mana regeneration device and its also hard to compare your other talents to mp5. Also it does not take into account the fact that what you are getting is a free max rank gheal. When you got that proc spamming rank 1 gheal, then you can replace your next gheal with a with rank 7 for free, I consider that to be an increase in healing output. Hence I think the best way to look at what clearcasting does is investigate how it improves the mana efficiency of your spells. That way you can make a more accurate prediction of how it will benefit you and its actual value compared to your other talents.
The way I look at clearcasting is this.
6% chance of a free spell + a rank 7 gheal + a chance for 1 free OFSR regen tick (about 120 mana).
If I am casting rank 1 gheal, then mana cost is reduced by 6%. Healing output is increased by 5.1/2.7*0.06 ~0.11 or 11%. I also gain 120 mana for every clearcast.
The way I do this is when I am spamming rank 1 gheal, if I get a clearcast I immediately cancel my current spell (unless its an emergency) and start stop casting rank 7 gheal until I can land it with minimal overheal. If my earring is on CD I pop it, but I wont include that in the calculations. A fair estimate is that I manage this 50% of the time, given emergencies or never finding a good enough opportunity to land a big gheal and so on. So the overal benefit is 5.5% increased healing (for rank 1) and 60 mana for every clearcast.
What does this do for the efficiency of my gheal rank 1. Well the increased mana efficiency is 1.055/0.96 = 1.09895. Or 9.9% increased mana efficiency on gheal1. For gheal rank 7 its 1/0.96 ==> 6.38% increased mana efficiency (no increased healing. For gheal rank 3 the increased healing output is 0.0414 ==> 8.5% increased mana efficiency. For rank 6 its 7%.
My typical usage of spells is 60-70%% gheal, 60% of which is rank 1, 20% is rank 3, 10% is rank 6 and 10% is rank 7. My overal gheal mana efficiency is hence 0.6*9.9% + 0.2*8.5% + 0.1*7% and 0.1*6.38% ~ 9 % increase in gheal mana efficiency. Since gheal is 60-70% of my total healing, by having clearcasting my overal mana efficiency increases by 5.4 to 6.3%. For 3 talent points this is a 1.8% to 2.1% increase in overal mana efficiency per point.
Compare with a mainstay of holy talents say spiritual healing at 2% per point.
In addition you have the added benefit of 60 mana returned on average (per clearcast). If you are casting 4 gheals per 15 seconds, you would cast 16gheals a minute or 160gheals in 10 mins (this is a very reasonable number for number 10 min fights) or 9.6 crearcasting procs. 9.6*60 = 576 mana returned. Over a 10 minute fight this is about 5 mp5.
You can squeeze a lot out of clearcasting with the right tactics however. If you manage to delay a heal long enough to get a full mana regen tick, coupled with things like the earing out soufull meditation buff and followed by say an inner focus, you can get up to 700 mana back. 700 mana over say 5 minutes (to give you a reasonable chance to get a clearcasting while trinket and focus are on CD) That equals nearly 12 mp5.
In any case 6% increased mana efficiency is too big a piece of the puzzle to miss. I think that holy concentration is a talent no raiding holy priest should be missing.
Edit: Its also possible to just determine how many clearcasting procs you get and add them to your gheal rank 7 total, but I find this way to be more flexible.
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Another thing I thought I would point out is the real value of Divine Reach. Since circle is a circle its area is pi*r^2, where pi is the famous constant and r is the radius. 20% increased radius equates to pi*(1.2*r)^2 or 1.44*pi*r^2. This equals a 44% increase in area coverage.
A fact however that is often overlooked however is that CoH is actually a sphere and within the AoE area no line of sight checks are made (i.e it hits through walls corners, or separated by platforms). For example I can stand underneath the bridge in the BeM arena and heal people on it by targeting myself. Divine reach is a very necessary talent for CoH priests.
Anyone have a spreadsheet that lets you choose your gear and see results? I've been trying to model what my priest's gear would look like, but I'm having trouble. CT Profiles is giving me errors out the wazoo. There are spreadsheets for all of the other classes, is there one for priests?
-In our country, any CBC reporter can dream of becoming head of state.
Warcrafter will let you select gear, enchants, and gems and will give you *some* info about various spells and stats. You can also change your spec and it will change the calculations accordingly. However, for really detailed info, I'd read the whole thread- I know there's a spreadsheet in here somewhere.
Your "immidiately cancel" is in reality very, very far from immidiate, and might in some cases put the target you're healing in MORE risk than if you'd just "waste" the clearcast on your GH1. You seemed to leave out the "Due to a combination of latency and human reaction time, it is impossible to cast something based on clearcast being available without actually canceling your current spell and recasting the other one, losing a non-neglicible amount of time." In your quote. Try to actually measure the amount of time you lose - it's pretty big.
Granted canceling is great for your efficiency, but then again so is sitting down and letting spirit regen do its trick - doesn't mean it's a good way to heal, at least not always.
Warcrafter will let you select gear, enchants, and gems and will give you *some* info about various spells and stats. You can also change your spec and it will change the calculations accordingly. However, for really detailed info, I'd read the whole thread- I know there's a spreadsheet in here somewhere.
Thanks,
I also ran across CharDev.org which is annoying, and not entirely intuitive to work with, but does the job quite nicely.
-In our country, any CBC reporter can dream of becoming head of state.
Your "immidiately cancel" is in reality very, very far from immidiate, and might in some cases put the target you're healing in MORE risk than if you'd just "waste" the clearcast on your GH1. You seemed to leave out the "Due to a combination of latency and human reaction time, it is impossible to cast something based on clearcast being available without actually canceling your current spell and recasting the other one, losing a non-neglicible amount of time." In your quote. Try to actually measure the amount of time you lose - it's pretty big.
Granted canceling is great for your efficiency, but then again so is sitting down and letting spirit regen do its trick - doesn't mean it's a good way to heal, at least not always.
In most cases, however, it's quite safe to cancel a downranked clearcast into a GH7. Typically the increase in HPS gained from upranking would counteract any lost time due to canceling in worst case, and be a large increase best case. Of course, this takes some thought on the part of the caster as to if it is too risky or not given the situation.
I ended up running some raids without clearcasting last week due to having a semi-holy PvP spec and noticed a rather dramatic impact in my overall mana efficiency. The lack of meaty free Clearcast GH7 -> Inner Focus GH7 + Earring of Soulful Meditation/Essence of the Martyr + Shadowfiend regen periods was pretty notable. While I was able to get some regen out of Inner Focus, the lack of duration rather limited the general power of those kinds of regen tactics. (I tend to try to Shadowfiend at the same time, as the Earring trickles down to spell damage with all the Spirit talents, and thus helps the Shadowfiend out a bit. It's also nice to combined with the crit chance of Inner Focus and the fact that you can virtually pop two stackable +healing trinkets this way when you know you will get some good use from them.)
Despite the fact that mana efficiency is generally downplayed nowdays, I still find it to be a pretty important part of Priest gameplay, especially in those "grats, you get to spam GH7 non-stop when things are crazy" moments.
While I was able to get some regen out of Inner Focus, the lack of duration rather limited the general power of those kinds of regen tactics. (I tend to try to Shadowfiend at the same time, as the Earring trickles down to spell damage with all the Spirit talents, and thus helps the Shadowfiend out a bit. It's also nice to combined with the crit chance of Inner Focus and the fact that you can virtually pop two stackable +healing trinkets this way when you know you will get some good use from them.)
Here's a random thought (one which has been bothering me for a while): Shadowfiend counts as a spell which puts you inside the 5SR. So technically, chaining CC -> Earring/other_trinket+spirit weapon -> IF -> Shadowfiend is possibly *worse* regen than simply ignoring the SF until immediately following your re-entry into the 5 SR.
When I burn my [Essence of the Martyr] and my [Earring of Soulful Meditation] at the same time, my dmg/heal goes up to around 1050, which usually results in SF hits of ~ 615 on a 5/5 Sundered, Faerie Fire'd mob. This scales slightly higher on a CoReck boss. The average return from using SF is around 5500 mana over the 15 seconds -- anywhere from 7 to 9 hits, with 1-3 crits.
What tricks do other priests use to maximize the usage of an OO5SR regen burst? My gut says to leave SF until after I'm forced back into the 5SR by healing requirements, but I'm totally open to suggestions.
I am actually finding that if I can find 15 seconds, and gain 3 full ticks OO5SR, together with the ticks pre- and post-, I can get a solid 3-4k mana back while continuing to do my job. I've been doing this, and then 30-60 seconds later burning SF to get completely filled back up. That, plus stealing innervates from our feral druid [<3 ferals ] means I don't go dry on any fight in BT/HS, despite near-spamming for the entire duration.
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
Your "immidiately cancel" is in reality very, very far from immidiate, and might in some cases put the target you're healing in MORE risk than if you'd just "waste" the clearcast on your GH1. You seemed to leave out the "Due to a combination of latency and human reaction time, it is impossible to cast something based on clearcast being available without actually canceling your current spell and recasting the other one, losing a non-neglicible amount of time." In your quote. Try to actually measure the amount of time you lose - it's pretty big.
Granted canceling is great for your efficiency, but then again so is sitting down and letting spirit regen do its trick - doesn't mean it's a good way to heal, at least not always.
Lets say I lose 1 second of casting time with a 6% proc rate that means I have a 6% chance of increasing my casting time to 3.5 seconds or 40%. This means 0.06*0.4 = 0.024 or 2.4% increase in my casting time. However I also land a GH7 instead of a GH1. That means I have a 6% chance of increasing my healing from 2.8 avearge to 5.1 average or 82%. This is ~5% increase in healing output.
In actual fact I am going to wait MORE than a second. What I will do is cancel and start stopcasting. Why?
If I am channeling a rank 1 gheal, my tank is not in danger. He ain't going through a spike, he is taking relatively constant damage and all the healers are racing it. That means I will simply "bomb" i.e. wait until my big heal is needed.
There is nothing wrong with "bombing". In fact a lot priests use this tactic nearly exclusively when tank healing. Bombing is probably the best tactic to use when your tanks take low avearge DPS but very high spikes (e.g. the zul'aman boss that splits into two). Chain casting GH1 on one of the tanks in that boss is not as good a tactic as "bombing".
The real reason why its not so good to "bomb" is because when healing constant damage, low rank spam is better than waiting to land a big heal. Its just more mana efficient. However a clearcasting proc changes that. It makes "bombing" pay off, so as soon as you get a clearcast, its best to switch to bombing for the nest two gheals. That ends up giving a LOT of OFSR regen time without a noticeable drop in your average HP/sec.
All in all clearcasting can be used to regen mana WITHOUT inner focus. And the time delay is actually wanted.
I get a clearcasting proc. I cancel my current rank 1 and start channeling a big heal. If at 80% its not needed I cancel and restart channeling. This is all fairly standard practice. Every second I wait before casting the clearcasted proc is one second that will be spent outside FSR by the time my next gheal lands assuming I cast it immediately as soon as the proc is consumed. This is however not actually the case, because I will also do the same with my next gheal. Lets look at the times.
I get a clearcasting proc out of GH1. I cancel and restart. I have already lost say 1 second. If I wait an additional 1.5 seconds before landing by big heal. When my clearcasted heal lands 5.0 seconds will have elapsed. I am already out of the FSR. I start "bombing" another rank 7. Everysecond from now until that gheal lands is OFSR regeneration at (a typical for me) 430 mp5. At this point in time the drop to my effective HP/sec is negligible and if the tank goes through a damage spike, landing a GH7 "bomb" is far better than landing a gh1 rank 1, especially considering that I will have been pre-channeling that GH7, making it land faster.
For various reasons this does not always work. That is why I added a 50% success rate in my calculations.
I do this all the time every Friday and Sunday when I raid. I also use this tactic in heroics. It has never ever resulted in my tank dying. In fact it once in a while it fortuitely proves very usefull in stopping a damage spike in its tracks.
This does not change the fact that clearcasting when used properly is a very powerfull mana regeneration tool. Just the fact that you can expect a clearcast about once per minute, compared with the 2 mins of inner focus (and no one disputes the power of inner focus) is enough to show just how powerfull clearcasting can be.
Here's a random thought (one which has been bothering me for a while): Shadowfiend counts as a spell which puts you inside the 5SR.
I think that being able to use shadow fiend twice outweighs all use which renders it more effective by a certain fraction. So I generally try to use up fiend as early as possible. In fights wheren I can only use it once, to maximise its efficiency I tie it to clearcasting. I use a macro that does /stopcasting, uses my trinkets and pops fiend. When clearcasting procs I immediately mash the macro button. Once the fiend is out I continue my stop casting sequence. I lose 1 tick of O5SR regen but I think the extra damage from fiend ends up returning more mana.
I can see how casting "on clearcast" can help your efficiency, however if there is any danger to your tank consider the following situation:
*Taking 0.2s as minimum human reaction time. This is likely to be more but it's good enough to show my point. Ping=100ms which is quite low.
0.00s: GH1 landed, tank full HP, started casting next heal, clearcast procced.
0.01s: Tank got hit down to 70% HP.
0.1s: Clearcast proc and full HP tank are shown on your screen
0.11s: Tank hit appears on your screen
0.3s: You cancel GH1 in favor of GH7
0.31s: You realize the tank got hit, but already canceled your GH1 so it's too late to do anything.
0.4s: Your GH7 starts
Tank takes 70% more damage from some massive burst, with last killing blow being between 2.5s and 2.9s.
2.9: Your greater heals tries landing on a dead tank.
Of course this example is not something you'll see all the time, but there's nothing you can do about it if you cancel on clearcasts. Increase your latency and/or reaction time and the window where this can happen grows by a lot.
Also notice that in the scenarios where a GH7 is actually likely to not totally overheal your tank (you should seriously check how often your "bombing on clearcast" overheals compared to your normal spamming and consider that as well), will also be the situations where my little scenario here is more likely to happen, as GH7 not being total overheal requires the boss to deal decent damage that can cause this scenario to happen.
Yes canceling on clearcasts will probably increase your efficiency. No it's not very safe and I wouldn't do it when there is actually a chance of tank death. And often on fights where efficiency matters tank deaths are also more common to a degree. So while canceling on clearcasts isn't a compeltely bad thing, it's definitely not something you should always do.
Here's a random thought (one which has been bothering me for a while): Shadowfiend counts as a spell which puts you inside the 5SR. So technically, chaining CC -> Earring/other_trinket+spirit weapon -> IF -> Shadowfiend is possibly *worse* regen than simply ignoring the SF until immediately following your re-entry into the 5 SR.
When I burn my [Essence of the Martyr] and my [Earring of Soulful Meditation] at the same time, my dmg/heal goes up to around 1050, which usually results in SF hits of ~ 615 on a 5/5 Sundered, Faerie Fire'd mob. This scales slightly higher on a CoReck boss. The average return from using SF is around 5500 mana over the 15 seconds -- anywhere from 7 to 9 hits, with 1-3 crits.
What tricks do other priests use to maximize the usage of an OO5SR regen burst? My gut says to leave SF until after I'm forced back into the 5SR by healing requirements, but I'm totally open to suggestions.
I am actually finding that if I can find 15 seconds, and gain 3 full ticks OO5SR, together with the ticks pre- and post-, I can get a solid 3-4k mana back while continuing to do my job. I've been doing this, and then 30-60 seconds later burning SF to get completely filled back up. That, plus stealing innervates from our feral druid [<3 ferals ] means I don't go dry on any fight in BT/HS, despite near-spamming for the entire duration.
Not completely related, but I think this should go in the main post.
Some are kind of common sense, but sometimes people don't think about it.
Battleshout, Strength of Earth, Wrath of Air and Heroism are all very beneficial to Shadowfiends, in addition of course to Leader of the Pack, True Shot Aura and Grace of Air, but less so.
The mana return of a Heroism shadowfiend is enough to restore my entire mana bar for atleast 12k mana. In my personal testing, Battleshout increased the mana return of my shadowfiend on average by +100-150 per a hit (BUT! and this is important, this was not counting debuffs, such as CoS/SW/Misery/ISB, so in theory that 100-150 per a hit gets increased quite a bit more... even assuming 100 per, 11 hits, that's an extra 1100 mana before debuffs).
If you know your shaman is going to use heroism, make sure to cast your shadowfiend first. Granted, I know its unlikely healers get heroism, but for my guild we give heroism to healers on Illidan and Illidari Council.
Other tips and tricks I can offer; sometimes the mana cost of giving your Shadowfiend a Power Word: Shield + Renew is worth it because the mana returned is far better (think of fights like Void Reaver).
Don't forget to swap on a +damage weapon before you cast your shadowfiend, then swap back to your normal weapon. Of course, this is only applicable if you have a good +damage weapon (e.g. [Hammer of Judgement], enchanted with +40 damage).
And as to the original poster I quoted, I usually pop trinkets and when the buff is down to 3 seconds or so, I cast shadowfiend. The boosted +damage lasting for the full 11 hits of the Shadowfiend more than outweighs a single tick of FSR. (Besides, very rarily can I afford more than 20-30 seconds out of FSR anyhow). That said. I also think its a waste not to burn your Shadowfiend early and it is equally a waste not to pop trinkets often.
I can see how casting "on clearcast" can help your efficiency, however if there is any danger to your tank consider the following situation:
*Taking 0.2s as minimum human reaction time. This is likely to be more but it's good enough to show my point. Ping=100ms which is quite low.
0.00s: GH1 landed, tank full HP, started casting next heal, clearcast procced.
0.01s: Tank got hit down to 70% HP.
0.1s: Clearcast proc and full HP tank are shown on your screen
0.11s: Tank hit appears on your screen
0.3s: You cancel GH1 in favor of GH7
0.31s: You realize the tank got hit, but already canceled your GH1 so it's too late to do anything.
0.4s: Your GH7 starts
Tank takes 70% more damage from some massive burst, with last killing blow being between 2.5s and 2.9s.
2.9: Your greater heals tries landing on a dead tank.
Of course this example is not something you'll see all the time, but there's nothing you can do about it if you cancel on clearcasts. Increase your latency and/or reaction time and the window where this can happen grows by a lot.
Also notice that in the scenarios where a GH7 is actually likely to not totally overheal your tank (you should seriously check how often your "bombing on clearcast" overheals compared to your normal spamming and consider that as well), will also be the situations where my little scenario here is more likely to happen, as GH7 not being total overheal requires the boss to deal decent damage that can cause this scenario to happen.
Yes canceling on clearcasts will probably increase your efficiency. No it's not very safe and I wouldn't do it when there is actually a chance of tank death. And often on fights where efficiency matters tank deaths are also more common to a degree. So while canceling on clearcasts isn't a compeltely bad thing, it's definitely not something you should always do.
In a situation like that, I try to use a Prayer of Mending instead. e.g. I see "Clearcast" I cancel my Greater Heal 1, cast Prayer of Mending on the tank, then go back to casting Greater Heal 7. (then if it is up, Inner Focus, Greater Heal 7 again).
Yes canceling on clearcasts will probably increase your efficiency. No it's not very safe and I wouldn't do it when there is actually a chance of tank death. And often on fights where efficiency matters tank deaths are also more common to a degree. So while canceling on clearcasts isn't a compeltely bad thing, it's definitely not something you should always do.
Similar logic could be used to argue that using _any_ form of /stopcasting could lead to tank death. There's only a .2 second difference between cancelling due to clearcast and cancelling because the tank was at full health near the end of your cast.
I can't speak for those with the 2T5 bonus that lets you endlessly spam GH1 - at late kara/early SSC progression level, I'm forced to use GH4 and /stopcast heals to prevent going oom. Tanks can die in the 2.5s space between 2 heals, regardless of whether you're spamcasting or /stopcasting. For the most part, you're forced to rely on the staggered heals of your healing partner to ensure tanks don't eat it between casts.
So it's a question of opportunity. If it looks like you're going to be hurting for mana and the opportunity comes up, the .2 second risk is probably worth improving the very real possibility that you're not going to be able to heal _at all_ in the near future.
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Similar logic could be used to argue that using _any_ form of /stopcasting could lead to tank death. There's only a .2 second difference between cancelling due to clearcast and cancelling because the tank was at full health near the end of your cast.
I can't speak for those with the 2T5 bonus that lets you endlessly spam GH1 - at late kara/early SSC progression level, I'm forced to use GH4 and /stopcast heals to prevent going oom. Tanks can die in the 2.5s space between 2 heals, regardless of whether you're spamcasting or /stopcasting. For the most part, you're forced to rely on the staggered heals of your healing partner to ensure tanks don't eat it between casts.
So it's a question of opportunity. If it looks like you're going to be hurting for mana and the opportunity comes up, the .2 second risk is probably worth improving the very real possibility that you're not going to be able to heal _at all_ in the near future.
I agree. Canceling is always a risk, be it on clearcasts or just when target is full HP. Then again if you go oom you can't heal at all. So yes I agree it depends on what you need, just remember that cast-canceling is risky and then decide if it's actually more risky to let the heal go due to mana issues or not. But a lot of people seem to think they can perfectly cancel heals which is totally not true, due to latency and human reaction time which you can't do anything about. It's easy to test your minimum reaction time and I'll be shocked if you manage to pull off less than 0.2s on an event you know is coming very soon but don't know exactly when it's coming.
I can't speak for those with the 2T5 bonus that lets you endlessly spam GH1 - at late kara/early SSC progression level, I'm forced to use GH4 and /stopcast heals to prevent going oom.
So it's a question of opportunity. If it looks like you're going to be hurting for mana and the opportunity comes up, the .2 second risk is probably worth improving the very real possibility that you're not going to be able to heal _at all_ in the near future.
I know I may be a bit biased thanks to my gear, but I've found out that spamming low rank gheals on tank is far more safer than stopcasting with max rank.
What I do in general is, if I'm on MT healing, "use the highest possible gheal rank you can spam without going oom" and then just spam away. If I notice I'm (in danger of) running out of mana, I'll start stopcasting with max rank. Why like this? Becaus from my experience, if tank is going to die he does so because he takes 20k to 30k damage inside 2 or less seconds. When that happens, all that matters is that he gets heals in that timeframe.
Raid healing is much more flexible when talking about cheating 5-sec rule. Tank healing is usually much more volatile so I don't think you can risk it unless absolutely have to.
As for 5-sec cheating methods, boss transitions where you get a break from healing (Lurker dive, leotheras form change, vashj phase change, al'ar p1->p2 / meteor[dive bomb?], Kael'thas phase 4->5 are just a few examples) are perfect for using Inner Focus and any +spirit trinket you have. When something like this happens, be sure to use IF and delay getting into 5-sec rule as long as you safely can. It can earn you several OO5SR ticks. More common sense, yea, but I've found that most people continue casting spells during these breaks!
Don't forget to swap on a +damage weapon before you cast your shadowfiend, then swap back to your normal weapon. Of course, this is only applicable if you have a good +damage weapon (e.g. [Hammer of Judgement], enchanted with +40 damage).
And as to the original poster I quoted, I usually pop trinkets and when the buff is down to 3 seconds or so, I cast shadowfiend. The boosted +damage lasting for the full 11 hits of the Shadowfiend more than outweighs a single tick of FSR.
Are you certain that the shadow fiend mechanism is like this, that only the +damage on cast moment matters? I might be wrong, but I have thought that at least nowdays the shadow fiend damage modifiers are calculated more often. Also, I think it was 2.3 patch when shadow fiend mechanism was changed so that it will get the benefit from the Bloodlust even if you cast the shadow fiend after you have received the Bloodlust (at least there was several reports of this).
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01/22/08, 12:23 PM
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