Liths

As a side note, [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] is horribly overbudgeted. It's close to the intented ilvl WITHOUT the spell haste (128.98 vs 128). With the spell hate rating it's ilvl 166.99. That people are even comparing it to the slightly the slightly underbudgeted [Lord Sanguinar's Claim] (ilvl 136.54 vs 138) shows what a poor stat it is. Really, you won't be able to get that kind of trades in the future. The comparison is even more unfair than that of [Leggings of Eternity] vs [Achromic Trousers of the Naaru].

Better comparisons of the trades you're looking at are:
[Swiftheal Wraps] vs [Wristbands of Divine Influence]
[Shoulderpads of Renewed Life] vs [Amice of Brilliant Light]

In the end, we are really at the mercy of what blizzard throws at us. I doubt we're going to get multiple sets in the future dungeons to pick and chose from as we did with BT/Hyjal. But spell haste is an inneficient way to spend item budget points on compared to the more commonly used stats, with the exception of perhaps int.

 

• Playered

Its a typical 1PPM~ proc (15sec duration, 45sec internal cooldown), resulting in around a +43~ bonus healing - bringing it up to 107~ healing in total I believe.

 

• sordee

If only the spirit on [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] was converted into mp5. Just imagine how OP most healers would perceive it.

 

Chantelle

We didn't run TK enough for me to get a [Verdant Sphere]. I decided to take [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] over [Nadina's Pendant of Purity] because of the spirit value.

As far as haste, I would only be carrying a haste set on me for fights where CoH is crazy good and mana regeneration really is not an issue (IE: Illidan, RoS).

Edit: The other practical use for Haste I'm gathering is that being able to top up groups quicker from CoH spam will give me more time to stay out of the 5 second rule if the situation permits.

 

hchuang

Question: I am working some sort of item comparison and would like some ballpark numbers for the % of time in and out of Five Second Rule. For the sake of simplicity, is it reasonable to assume 70% in Five Second Rule as pretty typical and 90% for "mana intensive" scenarios?

 

• constantius

Yes, 65-75% is entirely normal for II5SR. You can run RegenFu for an evening of <your favourite raiding instance>, and check it at the end.

And as far as "mana intensive situations" -- I don't think I go over 85% even on Bloodboil. There's *always* downtime in fights. I even get some downtime on Naj'entus, which is one of the more full-time-healing-for-all-healers fights in T6.

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

 

Viv

But do you think you're likely to care about mana in a situation where you are OO5SR for 30% of the fight?

 

hchuang

mabbe i do, mabbe I don't, what is it to you?

Mabbe i was going go justify myself by detailing different calculations and share some number with you, I won't. Because like, 30% of the fight is like 0% of the fight, all the same right?

 

Viv

I meant the opposite actually - 30% is incredibly much.
If you can afford to spend 30% of an encounter OO5SR, this to me means that either your tanks massively out-gear it or you bring too many healers, or both. So in such a scenario I wouldn't expect you to struggle for mana at all, making any regen optimisation irrelevant.

But if an encounter (or phase) is "healing-intensive", I'd expect you to be OO5SR for very close to 0% of the time during it.
5 seconds is a very long time on RoS phase 3 or Illidan phase 2, or any other fight you'd call demanding for a healer.

In my black-and-white world the encounters come in 2 flavours:
- required healing is low, as long as you're adequately geared you will not struggle for mana whether you favour mp5 or spirit
- required healing is high, your OO5SR is below 5%, 1mp5 ~= 4 spirit in such a scenario

Where the approximate 1/4 ratio above comes from:
When OO5SR, 5 mp5 is equivalent to 8 spirit for regen purposes. So, each point of spirit gives you 5/8 of mp5 while you're regenning fully.
You will keep 30% of this due to talents even when at 0% actual OO5SR.
That 1 point of spirit will become 1.155 with BoK and SoR.
So at 0% OO5SR 1 point of base spirit will turn into the equivalent of ( 5 * 1.155 * 0.3 / 8 ) mp5, or ( 1.735 / 8 ) mp5.
Being generous to poor old spirit here, we'll round 1.735 up and call it 2, giving us the ratio of 4 spirit to 1 mp5 under conditions that make us care about regen in the first place.

So, gemming for spirit is in my opinion a rather misguided choice - at least speaking as a CoH priest whose job is normally raid healing
With IDS spec and assigned to a high avoidance tank you will probably end up OO5SR quite a bit just through cancelling, so your mileage may vary. But even in this scenario spirit gems sound rather dubious - I'd expect that straight +healing gems would be a better overall choice.



And Constantius - taking OO5SR stats from the whole duration of a raid as a reference sounds quite misleading to me.
Even if you only count in-combat time, at least the tail end of clearing any trash pack will require comparatively trivial amounts of healing.

 

Dath

I would like some clarification on this, after myself and my priest cl done some testing on this. To our understanding and our interpretation of this (and other sources) when you activate fade you receive a standardized reduction in threat immediately, then you generate no threat for ten seconds. In which case after the ten seconds that threat that was meant to be generated is immediately 'dumped' back on you. If that is true out testing shows otherwise.

After a simple mention of fade while doing morograin and how to use fade to max effect, we decided to test it after the raid with his 70 lock alt.

Test 1: He firstly taps his health down to a low value (3kish) before the pull. I body pull aggro, and while he is near by hit fade, giving myself negative threat. In turn he gets aggro, negative threat nothing new here.

Test 2: Same deal as 1, but as soon as i hit fade i spam flash heal on him. As i am effective healing him, i should be generating aggro, but of course im not because fade is up. However when the third max rank flash heal lands (i had 2012+ heal during testing), i gain aggro while fade is still activated. What this indicates is i am generating threat somehow while fade is up.

Test 3: Same as above, except only cast two flash heals and wait to fade runs out. As expected he maintains aggro (or me negative aggro more correctly) until ten seconds is up on fade, then i gain aggro. This suggest after the ten seconds some form of threat is dumped back on to me. Also should note at this stage the warlock is doing absolutely nothing, as well as unbuffed, no pet out to stop him generating threat in any way. This should mean he is on the threat table, but with a value of 0. Another interesting thing is on omen i do not even come up until my third flash heal lands, which i assume omen only picks up i am positive threat when i pull aggro and credits me with the full threat of one flash heal, suggesting it is dumb found by the mechanics of fade and negative aggro? Just reminding you, we tested many times, the third flash heal lands and i pull aggro while fade is up.

Test 4: I use fade before we pull, hence we are both not on the threat table. The warlock body pulls and has aggro. I cast one flash heal while fade is up, when the heal lands i gain aggro. This is suggesting that while fade is up we generate threat, not 0 like we understood.

Test 5: We were both in party during this, so wondering if there is any form of social aggro. He simply body aggros, i stand near by and mount up. Nothing new. However when you pop fade you enter combat as you enter the mobs threat table.

Then we done some other random stuff just reconfirming what is said above. Now if we have simply misunderstood the op's interpretation of fade say so lol. But my theory on fade is this: Fade when activated provides a standardized drop in threat to all mobs on which you are on their threat table. However while fade is activated you generate a less then normal amount of threat, and after the ten seconds of fade is over the remaining amount of threat is restored instantly. For example while fade is activated you gain 20% of normal threat (values arbitrary) and after the ten seconds you instantly gain the remaining 80% of threat that you have generated. This would explain how it is possible to pull threat while fade is up when you have negative threat over someone with zero threat. Remember zero threat is different to having no threat, because zero means you are on the threat table.

Situation that sparked the interest: When our pally tank gets water globed or w/e on morograin it is my duty to heal him up as he gets back to his position for murlocs. However on two occassions when he was water globed, i casted one heal, pulled aggro and hello murloc's. How should i use fade then? If my theory is correct, i should pop fade (negative threat on murlocs) drop two flash heals (non crits) and no more and hope by the time fade ends up he is in position with consecrate up?

No tldr version sorry. Thanks for the help, Effecient of Thaurissan.

 

• constantius

You misunderstood. RegenFu gives you only "in-combat" pieces, and you can limit it to the pieces from boss fights. So it'll give you an "over the course of all the bosses in the instance, here's your OO5SR %".

Also, you seem to misunderstand the nature of OO5SR if you state that it's rare to get it. The only fights in TBC where I don't go OO5SR for ~ 25-30% are Bloodboil and RoS; the former is perhaps 10%, and the latter is insignificant due to the mana return nature of the transition phases.

If you're a priest using GH, cast-cancel. That'll easily net you 20%. Clearcasting and IF can gain you another 5%, and the last 5% is due to the nature of a fight and whether or not you can actually take a slight break.

You used Illidan P2 as an example. Yes, I chain-cast for approximately 90 seconds there. Then I stand and do nothing for 1-2 minutes. That's slightly more than 50% OO5SR :p It's actually near-impossible to break 70% II5SR during Illidan as a whole, due to his constant /emo /role_play transitions where there's lots and lots of time to run around and wait. Even just factoring in his argument from 3->4 will net you a large amount of regen time (I usually trinket on transition, for a full mana bar for the final phase).

Also, in terms of computations based on spirit:

1 spirit = 1.155 spirit raid-buffed
Assume Meditation. Assume 15% (low-end for *any* fight) OO5SR.

Then the regen from that spirit is (1.155/4*2.5)*0.3*0.85 + (1.155/4*2.5)*0.15 = 0.292 Mp5 overall. So a 10 spirit gem is actually equivalent to (low-end) 2.92 Mp5.

When you assume 30% OO5SR you get 3.68 Mp5, and it continues scaling from there.

If you throw an assumed innervate into the mix, it breaks 4.0 Mp5. So 10 spirit > 4 Mp5 as a gem, since the +heal aspects of 10 spirit easily throw it over the line into the lead. The only question becomes whether or not 11 heal, 2 Mp5 > 4 heal, 4 Mp5 (rounded). That's a personal judgement call, and one I went with spirit in. It works for me.

 

• Playered

Unless you are spamming GH1/2 with 2T5 (no c/cast) on the MT then 30% OO5SR time isn't exactly earth-shattering, according to my WWS reports on Naj'entus our Priests get around 25%~ OO5SR regen (one being CoH spec).
There are times on many fights where you can take 5-20seconds off if needed, especially with CC and IF to pro-long your actual 'factored' duration of this.

If your on anti-spike duty on a MT, then no doubt the majority of the little damage will be covered by a Druid and Paladin which further yields to more length to time OO5SR, avoidance streaks will further add to even more time.


Ofcourse on a few short phases on bosses there will be very little OO5SR time, EoS P3 being very short and very efficient (PoH/CoH 90-100% effective), Illidan P2... well it depends on your job - raid healing and you have time off during Eye Beams, tank healing one add will die leading to 1-2 extra healers either being able to regen/relax or help alleviate the 2nd tank healers.
Either way if you cant sustain yourself for 2~mins with a potion ontop of your normal regeneration cooldowns then your seriously doing something wrong.

Regarding gemming, 10 Spi => 11.5 Spi = 3~ Healing ontop of regeneration purposes, provided IDS thats another +1 Healing aswell, so a total of 4 Healing and between 4-6 MP5 for one gem slot.

 

• constantius

Assuming 30% and IDS, the precise numbers are:
- 4.04 healing S&E
- 3.68 Mp5 (averaged, no innervate given)

I find it to be a nice balanced gem, roughly equivalent to the 11 heal, 2 MP5 gem, except with regen traded for healing. I'm coming close to 2400 healing raid buffed, so I really don't need more.

 

Lambi

When will you guys learn you can't theorycraft priests in general, you have to theorycraft individually. Yes ofcourse if you're guaranteed an innervate and a huge amount OO5SR you'll love spirit. This won't go for everybody.

Ofcourse if you like me average 89% inside the 5SR due to me being a real warlock lover and a manic CoH-spammer you'll love the new haste change and will stack +healing and mp5 when you can, probably favouring the 11h/2mp5 gems. This won't go for everyone either.

Then we have the Ghealing priests, imp DS specced, lower ranking every spell they have. These fellows will love stacking 22 healing gems (but it's hard if you want socket bonuses). This is a viable gemming tactic too, although abit less usual.

 

galzohar

Why would you ever favor 11heal/2mp5? I mean there are 2 options:

1. You prefer 11 healing over 2 mp5. Using very simple algebra: 11heal>2mp5 => 22 heal > 11 heal + 2 mp5 > 4 mp5

2. You prefer 2 mp5 over 11 healing. Using same algebra: 11heal<2mp5 => 22 heal < 11 heal + 2 mp5 < 4 mp5

As you can see no matter what you prefer, 11 heal 2 mp5 is never the best gem. Granted in your guild tanks may want the blue gems and dps will want the red ones leaving you with the purples, but this is never actually the prefered gem unless you want to meet socket bonus requirements on an item with a blue socket in case #1 or on an item with a red socket in case #2. Again you'll probably end up using the 11 heal 2 mp5 gems anyway, but becuase of availability, not becuase they're the best, as no matter what your gear preferences are, 11 heal 2 mp5 gems are never the best.

Of course there's the exception where with your gear 11 heal is exactly 2 mp5 and then increasing 22 healing will make it into 4 mp5 > 22 healing and increasing 4 mp5 will make it so 22 healing > 4 mp5, which might make 11 heal 2 mp5 the best. This situations however is extremely unrealistic!

 

Viv

Lambi - fair comment, horses for courses and all that.
(From a fellow GCD-constrained CoH maniac - don't neglect your suicidal SWD users and try to hang a PoM on your tanks whenever situation allows - then 95%+ is easily within reach!)

But if you're guaranteed huge amounts of OO5SR - why would you ever need an innervate?
Alternatively, if you're guaranteed an innervate (for instance I know I am once our bear's flame is down), you may as well just save the earring's cooldown (equivalent of 30x spirit gems btw) for that, and a full mana bar is all but assured.

Maifax - a couple of questions:
1) How do you derive the OO5SR% from a WWS report? I don't think that "HPS time" is it. Am I wrong on this?
2) Could you link the WWS report(s) in question please?

Galzohar - there isn't a single red socket on our whole T6 healing set.
Most of us favour +heal slightly over mp5. Oh and some oddballs favour spirit it seems

 

Lambi

Because we have so many blue sockets and most socketbonuses are fantastic you'll want purple gems. I favour +healing before mp5 because it let's me have fun with downranking and because CoH wants +healing but also needs some mp5. With more red sockets in the gear i'd use 22 healing gems.

Edit: If you don't have the luxuary of specialized sets as I do, you'll want 1 set that is very very balanced and then depending on playstyle, the 11h/2mp5 gem is the best if you spam and the 10 spirit gem is the best if you slack.

 

Starfire

[Gloves of Absolution] ~ 22 heal vs. 11 heal + 3mp5 = 11 heal vs. 3mp5
[Cowl of Absolution] ~ 22 heal vs. 20 heal + 2 mp5 = 2 heal vs. 2mp5
[Bracers of Martyrdom] ~ 22 heal vs. 15 heal + 2mp5 = 7 heal vs. 2mp5

 

• constantius

The examples Physique linked are the obvious cases where not using a blue or purple gem is *silly*. However, there are a number of cases where using reds is perfectly viable, usually in a situation where there is a 2-3 socket bonus that requires us to use a yellow gem. If you don't need yellows for your meta (i.e. you don't use IED), then those are perfect options for red gems. Examples include:

[Boots of the Divine Light]
[Vestments of Absolution]

 

galzohar

I never said to never use a purple gem. What I said is that it's never the "overall best gem" and should only be used if the socket color is the opposite of your prefered gem choice. Heck I even said it specifically:
Bottom line is that deciding you just socket 11 heal 2 mp5 in *everything* as a baseline is plain silly unless gem availability forces you to do so. This may sound redundant but I've seen countless people even at top progression levels say they want to "balance their stats" and thus use these gems regardless.

 

• constantius

In the end, look at what gems *are* available:

[Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire] (balanced blend of heal and regen, scales with raid buffs)
[Luminous Pyrestone] (only use these if you need yellow gems)
[Teardrop Crimson Spinel] (if you want to stack +heal, since we *never* have red sockets)
[Royal Shadowsong Amethyst] (blend of heal and Mp5)

Gems we should never use include:
[Lustrous Empyrean Sapphire] (Dazzling is worth the same Mp5 and has +heal)
[Dazzling Seaspray Emerald] (weak option compared to Pyrestone above)

So really, your options include 3 gems when you ignore the yellow sockets, which you only socket for if you need them for an IED.

One stacks spirit, one stacks +heal, and one is blended. So if you want to "balance your stats" ... exactly what else would you use?

 

Vurrin

I think his point is coming from the sort of DPS class perspective where you can calculate out whether 1 crit rating is more dmg than x spell hit than y spell dmg etc. In situations like that where you have exactly one goal, and can calculate exactly how much dps each stat is worth it simply does not make sense to ever use the second best gem just because it gives some of the ideal stat and a bit of some other stat.

Unfortunately even if the idea translated over well to healers ( it doesn't) figuring out which stat is best for you not only varies a lot person to person ( playstyle) but also by boss/situation. This is perhaps where players playing healers fail the most at effective theorycrafting because they ( generally speaking) would prefer a single set of gear capable of reacting to numerous situations to multiple sets of gear tuned for the situations most likely to present during a given encounter. of course, many healers where resist gear or stamina gear, but how many have a haste set, or a set with over 275 IIFSR regen or a set with over 2500 healing? And even if they do in which situations do they swap to them?

It is my humble opinion that given loot competition ( i.e. you want other people in the guild to get loot) there is no good reason not to use a balanced set of gear for progression purposes, but if you're not picking up haste pieces that are rotting, or that high spirit t6 analog for the occasional situation where it might excell, you're doing yourself a disservice when you might be faced with an encounter requiring ( or simply strongly favoring) a more optimized setup in sunwell.

Anyway I guess it comes down to versatility Vs focus and its hard to argue for one when there is so much wiggle room in current content. I think Arguing that 11/2 gems are "not the best" because they are balanced is not fully accurate, but relying on them excessively simply shows a lack of direction in knowing what you want from your character or even from a single piece of gear as part of a more focused set up.

 

Jayde

In regard to gems in high-end equipment... 11 healing/2 mp5 is a decent gem, but generally seems pretty lackluster -unless- you are matching certain socket bonuses as was mentioned. For an epic gem, it's a pretty small upgrade at 2 +healing over the Royal Nightseye.

All in all, I think the Teardrop Crimson Spinel becomes the strongest gem for high-end Priests for the majority of high-end items. However, in the event of blue sockets with a good bonus, it would be silly not to match it. T5 Legs, T6 Head (both on and off-set), T5/T6 Shoulders, Soul-Strider Boots, Leggings of Eternity, and Bracers of Martyrdom all have good sockets for Royal gems.

From what I can figure, even as a fan of spirit, the +10 Spirit gem is pretty mediocre. It's not quite as mediocre as +4 mp5, but it's still pretty questionable. Of course, if they had made an epic 11 healing/5 spirit gem or something like that, it would be a clear winner over 11 healing/2 mp5 for most Priests, but sadly that didn't happen. (Not really sure why, honestly.)

On the note of OO5SR, I find 70% to be a pretty average figure for the majority of fights. There are a couple of exceptions but, in general, that's a good figure to base Spirit value on IMO.

 

hchuang

Seems like we have good consensus on the 70% and 90%, and definitely not 0% or "closer to 0%", thanks guys.

 

metapseudo

Have been anybody of you guys doing experiments on functioning of Binding Heal. I have been searching net quite a lot to get the answer to it, but all notions of it are very vague.
There was a Blizzard post on priest threads prior to introduction of the spell into game, stating the fact, they are considering only the primary part of the heal to generate threat. But the only solid fact so far is the tooltip saying that it is low threat heal.
I would say there are two possibilities:
1. Only the your target healing(not overhealing) is counted as threat generating.
2. Both parts of healing are generating threat, but it is less threat per healing then the normal 0.5 threat per 1 healing. (divided by number of mobs having you on their threat list)

If 1. is valid, then as a result it is not usefull to use Binding Heal on your target to reduce the threat priest is generating if the priest does not need healing as well. At the same time it would be usefull to heal a healthy target if priest has aggro, as the healing of a player with full health would not generate any threat at all.

If 2. is valid, then Binding heal would be very good option for starting heals as it would generate less threat in situation where tank is not yet in full threat control, but has to be healed already. It would be very good heal on transitional phases of the fight where boss summons pack of mobs having clear threat list.

I would not like to discuss usefullness or effectivity of the spell, but just the mechanics of its operation.

I am planning a test on it involving full health hunter misdirecting to a priest and doing very light damage afterwards. (This should confirm/exclude validity of 1. as even small threat generated by light damage should be more then zero threat from healing a healthy target). But if you can share your knowledge and spare me experiments, I would appreciate it.