tedv

No, he should go one step further and state that you should max out inspiration before taking any points in spell warding. Now the obvious corollary is that priests who don't do this are being selfish, and the guide really should be about min/maxing. All it needs to say is that inspiration is better than spell warding.

Of course that begs the question of whether that's really true. While Warding is great on a lot of fights, no other class in the game has access to -10% spell damage and yet everyone else seems to survive, even other cloth classes with lower stamina. Raid-wide AoE damage can almost always be mitigated by using the same mechanisms as all other classes. For example, by drinking a fortification flask instead of restoration on Naj'entus, or staying away from doomfire on Archimonde when a fear is coming. Don't waste talent points on a problem that can be handled through skill.

In contrast, there is no amount of player skill can stop your tank from getting one shotted because they got some unlucky spike damage when inspiration wasn't up. Inspiration won't deal with all of those situation, but it removes a lot of them. A healer dieing might wipe the raid, but a tank death definitely wipes it. Inspiration does a better job of preventing wipes than spell warding. Even when only 25% of your heals in a fight go on the tank, that provides more wipe protection than spell warding.

Just a quick note. You don't need very much spell crit for inspiration to be good. And even if you aren't a dedicated tank healer, spells like binding heal and circle of healing can still get procs on the tank. Inner Focus also helps proc inspiration. It's still worth it.

 

• CheshireCat

It's probably not helpful to assign moral judgments to talent choices. "Selfish" or "unselfish" is beside the point. "Effective" and "ineffective" are the more relevant judgments.

It is absolutely right to say that you should tailor your talent choices to the demands of your raid. That said:

If you are ever assigned to heal a tank who is in danger of spike-damage death involving physical damage, then Inspiration is a raid-saver in a way that very few talents ever are. (And this is true regardless of your crit chance.) I think this is pretty well covered in the Theorycrafting thread. I would only be comfortable with a build that didn't involve Inspiration if I were never, ever put on that healing assignment.

I do think that the choice being argued-- between Spell Warding and Inspiration-- is a false choice. In fact, in my builds, Inspiration is a given, but it is still usually a choice between Holy Spec and Spell Warding. That's much more of a toss-up, and I usually either split the difference (see the theorycrafting thread on crit chance's diminishing returns on Inspiration uptime) or go with Spell Warding.

It's true that you can survive without Spell Warding. But it does increase your margin for error, and really, that's all that most of our talents do.

 

Lambi

Imho spellwarding is only good for learning fights where you have a chance to die, but that might come from the fact that I'm a human and have desperate prayer and a healthstone if it really hits the fan.

With the appropriate gear you'll have over 10k hp buffed and that's always enough for a priest, so I'm not sure why you'll want to spend precious talent points on spell warding for PvE when your job is to save others. I understand I can't save others if I'm dead, but survivability for a priest has never been that much of a concern contrary to many whine posts on the WoW-forums.

 

• CheshireCat

Well, obviously Spell Warding is the type of decision that comes down to your personal needs. I, personally, do find that survivability is frequently an issue I need to deal with, particularly on progress fights, which is what I build my gear and spec around.

And, if you are in less danger of dying because of your talents, you can theoretically arrange your gear in such a way to translate your increased survivability directly into healing power. (For example, the person who cited using a Fort flask over Mighty Resto for Najentus to get around the lack of Spell Warding-- in that case, wouldn't the value of those talent points be 25 MP5? That's kind of a lot.)

Anyway, while I do feel that the Inspiration point is worth quibbling over, I'm not sure Spell Warding is. People have been saying that they don't want to expend "precious talent points" on Spell Warding, but for, at that point in the build, you're looking at a choice between points in Spell Warding, Blessed Recovery, and Holy Spec, none of which are game-changers. Later on in the build, you might have a few points to divide between those three choices as well as Holy Reach and Healing Prayers. Again, mostly matters of taste and situational decisions here. (Except Blessed Recovery, which isn't really a raiding talent.) Nothing I'd describe as "precious."

 

Starfire

Respecs are 50g, tailor your spec to what you need the most.

I, personally, am normally specced inspiration, but I dropped it for when we were learning Najentus in favour of Spell Warding.

That said, the my guild works, I also know I wasn't going to be main tank healing for that fight. I was raid healing with paladins while druids were main tank healing. So, didn't matter too much there.

We're learning Azalgor now and spell warding is near useless for that fight, but Inspiration is money.

Also, an OOM priest can't keep inspiration up either. So. I am not so sure I'd ever take a Flask of Fortification over a Flask of Restoration.

 

ANSeranov

I respecced to pick up Inspiration yesterday before my guild raided. Though we were attempting Hydross, where those points are pretty much worthless, I am so glad to have Inspiration back. Making my tanks less squishy makes my job, and the other healers' as well, that much easier.

Spell Warding was nice, but I doubt I'll miss it overmuch, save for in arenas. But we're talking PvE here, so that's pretty much a moot point.

[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi]
[Yuuzu] [70 Draenei Shaman]
[Karydin] [70 Draenei Paladin]

 

uh...ok

You'll like it again for fights like FLK, Vashj, Najentus, Supremus, and Gorefiend.

But I wouldn't recommend dropping points from Inspiration to pick it up. IMO the only place to get points for Spell Warding should be from Holy Specialization, and maybe Spirit of Redemption or Spiritual Guidance.

 

Ellyh

feel free to add/change/ignore the following as you see fit.

Healing with higher latencies.

If you are like many of us who aren't blessed with sub 100ms ping but instead play from Australasia or on a slow connection you can still be a top notch healer. However you will find that you may have to adopt a different healing style to healers with lower latency. These notes are mainly aimed at those with latency in the 400-800 ping range. This is high enough to be really noticeable but not so high as to render the game unplayable.

Effects of higher latency include:

1. Increased overheal
2. Increased environmental damage (charred earth, void zones etc)
3. Slower reaction times
4. Less time for time critical tasks such as killing your inner demon

Overheal: this is increased because while the target looks like they are down in HP when your heal goes off on your client they have in reality been healed by someone else in the half second it takes for that information to reach your computer.

Increased environmental damage: You will inevitably take at least one tick of damage from environmental effects that are randomly targeted on you. This is because of...

Slower reaction times: Most environmental abilities give you about 1.5 seconds before you take damage for standing in them but latency will totally eat up this slack time. Typically you will be notified 1/2 a second after the server places you into the effect. Recognition and reaction to the effect takes at least 1/2 a second and then the return trip to the server will take up another 1/2 a second before your character actually starts moving. You may find that extra stamina and defensive talents such as spell warding an asset for these events. Aditionally if moving your character is often not where you think it is and if you die you experience a jumpback effect as the client repositions your corpse where the server thinks you are.

A /stopcast strategy is much harder to use effectively with higher latency as even using a mod such as quartz you often have to stop your heal over a second before it is due to complete. This is because of how casting latency can build up during intense fights. Also you can't put as much trust in the reported life totals of the target.

While such a strategy can still be employed you may have more luck with a spamming greaterheal 1 or 2 strategy where you just let it land regardless. You will find with a strategy like this that the tank has in fact taken damage in the lag gap between you and the server and you have actually landed a useful heal.

The changes in 2.3 should help with this low rank spamming strategy and it couples well with the inspiration talent as you are landing a lot of smaller heals that could proc the ability.

To be an effective healer with higher latency you really have to be constantly acting/planning ahead of the action as much as possible. E.g. moving earlier than others for predictable effects and making sure you have your next heal planned and the recipient selected before your current heal finishes. obviously all healers should be doing this but your margin for error is much lower with higher latency so it becomes more important to you.

Try to ask for healing assignments that play to what you can do well such as healing the tank or predictable damage and try to avoid tasks that require fast reactions such as dispelling or fast spot healing, players with lower latency will always carry out these tasks better than you can.

 

galzohar

I think the only way you can get more out of a high latency healer regarding healing assignments is to assign him to a target where overhealing is not an issue - aka pre-healing isn't needed or damage taken is extremely steady and predictable (which isn't generally the case with MT healing). Then again you can't let him heal someone who will die if he doesn't get a heal ASAP. And at the end no matter what you assign him to, unless he's the only healer for his target he will overheal very often.

 

uh...ok

Just wanted to say that this section was really well done. It's something I have puzzled over many times in the past myself, and I've definitely had to try a few different builds to hit the sweet spot for my healing style and content. Couldn't have explained this better myself.

 

◊ NateDawg1021

Currently my Respec for my Priest is 25g, I do Arenas (finally) and Raid 3-4 Days a week. I usually don't re-spec too much, because I never have problems healing or going OOM.

Before I got into Arenas (Mid-S2) and I didn't have Lightwell, this was my spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

After realizing I was going to Arena, and finally get into daily quests to start saving for my Epic mount (bad with money FTW). I decided that I wasn't going to Re-spec every week, this was my spec (Again 6/6 SSC, 3/4 TK I didn't have mana issues, or healing issues, I was never grouped with a Shadow Priest and used Spellsurge primarily):
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

When I get my epic flying mount (next year? lawl) And when we move into MH/BT, should be a week from it now, I'll prolly respec every week (Into this, baring any crazy Lightwell buffs):
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm not knocking my other healers, because we're usually all 1-2% close to each other (and of course depending on the fight) We sync fairly well. We do not raid with a Resto shaman (QQ).

So IMO this is what Holy Specialization vs. Inspiration vs. Spell Warding comes down to.
A) HS and Insp. have good synergy. And can be coupled well together, but if you're relying on crits (like some priests I know do in habit) You won't get the T5 Bonus proc, and you most likely won't get many inspiration procs.

so
B) I choose Spellwarding, over any Holy Specialization because of that reason. If your tank dies because you don't have inspiration up on him/her, your healers aren't doing their jobs. Why rely on a heal crit to heal people? Inspiration on other classes/raid spots is pretty worthless IMO.

Please note: I'm not in any T6 content yet, but I was advised by many "well known" priests to get Spellwarding "plus it helps in PvP." Also note that I'm primarily a spot healer, and love it. But I can heal either way. Which in my case inspiration (or in this case speccing +Crit) is not something that I need to put on people not tanking.

 

uh...ok

I'm curious to see how you find yourself faring in Arenas. No Imp Mana Burn or 3/3 Absolution hurts a lot against a large number of team makeups, and not having Focused Power makes Pallies that much harder to kill.

Since your build is pretty heavily biased towards PvE and is about as mana efficient as most PvE builds go, I don't imagine that you would be struggling much for mana. That said, your HPS potential definitely takes a substantial hit by not having at least 3/5 Emp Healing. Assuming you have the standard +2000 raid buffed healing, you're losing about 240 healing on your gheals and 120 on your flash and binding heals.

This is the most common argument that people use against Inspiration, and it's possibly the most confused argument because it misses the point entirely.

Some tank deaths cannot be avoided. Inspiration minimizes the chances of those happening.

Some tank deaths *can* be avoided but require near-perfect healing. Inspiration widens the margin for error for these situations.

Finally, one last thing you have to realize is Inspiration saves all your healers mana.

What this means is that as long as you can afford to do so, every point of Holy Spec benefits your raid that much more when you're specced Inspiration. The only interesting question here is "At what point do diminishing returns make the talent points not worth having in Holy Spec?" And the answer to this has already been theorycrafted in another post.

Spell Warding is great for learning content, but I think as soon as you get comfortable with all the encounters of this game and can survive fights without it (and should, because it's been done by others), your raid is better off if you placed those points in Holy Spec instead.

 

◊ NateDawg1021

I never really looked at it that way, but very good point. I use Inspiration in all my builds, I guess my argument came accross that I was against it. My argument is that I don't need Spell Crit to help myself heal. That is why I take Spell Warding Holy Specialization.

Well, my Arena build is mainly so I'm not gimped in PvE. But at the same time I'm semi competitive in Arenas, alas my teams are usually 1700-1800 (Which is not great by any means). I am the least geared player on my team(s), and we usually do fairly well in all of our games 3v3 / 5v5. I rarely if ever mana burn, but when I do, or get the chance to I don't have many problems. Unless I'm being spammed with Mana drains I still have mana after each game. (We do play a lot of dumb strat teams IMO).

 

uh...ok

But it takes you 1.5 the amount of time to mana burn someone than if you had the talent. That means if you were standing there spamming mana burn on a pally, you'd only get 2 burns off for every time you should have been getting *3*.

Not to mention that those numbers get way skewed once you factor in the enlarged window for spell pushback, interrupts, and LoS.

In any case, hybrid PvE/PvP specs are just not recommended if you want to do well in either or both of those. I'd really hate to ever be the cause of a wipe because I wasn't properly specced for an encounter - though with healers it's rarely obvious when this does happen.

 

Vihermaali

During last Mother Sharaz kill main tank (Warrior!) got 13 inspiration buffs and 13 ancestral fortitude buffs. ASSUMING none of them overwrote each other it totals to 390secs of +25% armor, 6,5 minutes of the 6 minutes long fight. Since they ARE going to overwite each other at some point the real number of "+25% armor up" is way lower I guess.

My point is, individually inspiration may not seem to be that important but when there are several shamans and/or priests healing tank(s) it does stack up.

And VERY nice compendium, Constantius!

 

Euridice

No no no no no no please no. This is one of the most common misconceptions I encounter among new priests. In general, tanks should *never* be shielded on or prior to the pull. (There are exceptions, of course, as to any rule, but we're speaking in generalities anyway.)

Shielding hampers warrior and druid aggro generation; a pw:s effectively negates any effect a pre-cast PoM would have. Warriors and druids both rely on taking damage to generate rage. Since these tank types always begin a fight rage-starved, anything that interferes with rage generation directly interferes with aggro generation.

Shielding doesn't affect initial protadin threat, but it's always better to heal rather than shield them. Once a prot pally runs out of mana, his aggro generation is severely hampered; since healing done returns mana to said pally, it is preferable to heal.

As I said, there are exceptions, but pw: shield should always be used as a last resort. As it's so mana-inefficient and scales so poorly, it's no big loss imo.

 

uh...ok

Shielding really doesn't do that much to limit a tank's rage on a raid boss.

It is also necessary on bosses where your healers and DPS need a nontrivial amount of time to get into their correct positions for the fight.

 

Euridice

Re: point two: Like I said, there are exceptions.

But why use a sucky spell to mitigate a negligible amount of damage AND interfere (however slightly) with rage generation? And I can think of a few bosses where every little bit does count--say, tanking the first channeler on Mags.

It's one of those rules you can break when you understand why the rule's there in the first place, y'know?

And since I didn't mention it before--awesome guide.

 

Liths

Unless there are very specific aggro problems for said boss or the damage output of it are a complete non issue, this isn't really true. The amount a pw:s will absorb is pretty much identical to what a boss mob lacking demo shout will have its hits increased by, a tank getting some major spike damage and droping dead in two rounds at the start can be quite high on certain encounters.

The only time I've seen them really struggle is if they avoid every single hit at the start, happens quite a bit. As long as they take at least one hit, pw:s or not, they are fine. Buying the healers a bit of margin of error on the pull to position themselves properly outweights any of the very minor reduction in aggro generation it would mean. Of course, there are exceptions, but they are very few and far between.

 

world

To be honest, chucking a Power word Shield on a tank before a pull is not such a bad idea for later bosses in BT / Hyjal. They simply hit so friggin hard that you're risking a tank death by having 2k less health to play around with. And a single blocked attack, through the shield, will generally still give the tank half a bar of rage anyway. Now obviously theres some bosses that warrant a shield and some that don't, but I'd say that both Azgalor and Archimonde, as well as Gorefiend, Mother, and Illidan are all definitely ones you would use it for. On Illidan this week, one of the wipes was caused by the tank taking 24k damage in 1.7 seconds on the transition through 30%, and I can draw a parallel between this and an initial pull with regards to a PW:S.

 

constantius

The only situation you might see where a tank being shielded pre-pull will result in significant lack of rage is ... a situation where you have a crappy tank.

I shield in heroics before the pull, because if I don't, there's a very real chance the tank will spike for over 60% of his HP before I even start the first heal. I can't afford to land a big heal right away, or half that pack of mobs is coming to eat my face.

PW:S absor