You really need to stretch to somehow justify this. I'm thinking most of us are in the camp that tanks who survive for a couple seconds are much more likely to have rage to tank with. Dead tanks don't tank much.
I shield and PoM before we pull everything in TK and SSC. There's absolutely no reason not to. Let's go down the list:
Hydross: first two hits are unhealed because healers are still running into position. PoM and PW:S eat most of that damage, giving us a time buffer.
Lurker: doesn't matter as much, but Lurker's first hit is about 5500 dmg. Mitigating that a bit still gives the tank 40+ rage, and the second hit fills his rage bar.
Leo: tanks engage with 100 rage, who cares?
FLK: initial burst on the pull can be nasty for the Shaman add; the priest add and FLK usually get kited a bit, and anything to help that happen without too much damage is a plus.
Morogrim: first hit is almost always a 7k crushing. I'll mitigate some of that, thanks.
Vashj: she'll shoot the tank with her bow twice as he engages. I'll mitigate some of that, thanks.
Al'ar: not really necessary, but threat is a moot point on Al'ar anyway, so who cares how fast the tank gains rage?
Solarian: first target for AM is always the tank. I'll reduce that by 1700; it's still going to be 8k dmg (assuming no AR).
VR: aggro radius is weird, so might as well mitigate some incoming damage while the healers move into position, chasing the tanks in.
Kael: opening with a 9500 fireball hurts. Let's mitigate some of that.
Very good points, I had never looked at it that way because I've been told by many Tanks not to shield them, but lately we have in Vashj/KT (atm). I guess speccing Imp PW:S would be a waste in that case because you're softening (sp?) the iniatial blow on the MT, and not really trying to eliminate it all together. Also in terms of heroics, PW:S in some cases from my experience isn't always a good thing, depending how hard the mobs hit 1st swing I usually get a bit of agro. Some of the tanks I work with aren't the best, but that's what I get for being The Pug Tamer.
What do people think about stacking certain gems/stats. I've talked to many people lately who are either stacking +Healing (with a 1/2 Cast Meta) or +10 Spirit. While I don't have access to T6 gems, it's something that we're close too and would be intrested in talking about. Mostly what I've seen on apps and other posts Pre-T5, people stacked Purely [Royal Nightseye], but now I'm seeing more [Item not found!] being stacked to add to the effecieny output of 2-Piece T5. That of course means ever heal you land you're trying to proc effecieny and you're also lacking active mana regen (well alot less).
It would be nice to have healing coefficients for all priest healing spells on the list. Perhaps even a table of HPM and HPS for each spell or just a link to Nightshroud's spreadsheet.
The best trinket is a no brainer: Memento of Tyrande is better than anything else in the game. The second trinket is very hard to compute, it can be any one of these three: Alchemist's Stone, Bangle of Endless Blessings or Earring of Soulful Meditation.
Wouldn't it be safe to say that the new healer trinket from ZA will fit in alongside those three?
18mp5 + almost 400 healing on demand is pretty hot, imo.
Can't decide if Stone or Earring is better? well just consider do I have time OFSR to regen? Am I going to chain pot for this encounter? Honestly if you're not chain potting and are able to take breaks earing is the choice. If you're not able to take breaks but also not chain potting, then a trinket like Diabolic Remedy or Essence of the Martyr would be best for you.
In short each of the top half dozen or so trinkets are all "best" ( or at least second best since you can have two) at some aspect which is important to the healing priest,
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.
Yes, heroics (some situations with hard-hitting packs) are one of the places where a PW:S is great for the pull. I used to cast an early PoM, followed by a second PoM. From a risk point of view, however, I judge a PW:S with a well timed PoM to be better, since the alternative (second PoM) triggers GcD, leaving a few seconds until the first big GH can finally land. So PW:S wins.
For situations after the pull, many priests have mostly discarded PW:S because of "too little HpS" due to GcD. However, as I gain more BC raid experience (starting SSC), I find more situations where I need to move while healing and PoM is already on cooldown. In that case, I much prefer PW:S to healing nothing.
It's great to see a raiding summary that discusses proper uses of PW:S. One suggestion though: you discuss PW:S in the section Threat/Prayer of Mending.
How about giving PW:S its own subsection for more visual clarity:
- Thread Mechanics and You
-- Fade
----Fade stuff
-- Prayer of Mending
---- PoM stuff
-- Power word: Shield
---- PW:S stuff
Last night my guild did some more work on Hydross. I'm considering respecced into CoH so I can actually help heal the raid (on this fight and others) w/o tossing renews that won't get me owned during agro wipes. The problem is that I'm the guild's only IDS priest. I'm the most conservative healer in my guild, and while it means I don't show well on the healing meters, I last through long fights with easy while other healers go oom. (I won't bore you with my rant about how people gave me shit for maintaining ~45% OOFSR most of the time.) We're a pretty priest heavy guild, generally bringing 3-4 Holy Priests per raid, with 1-2 Shadow priests as well.
Pretty much, how can I convince someone else to be the guild's IDSbot so I can go CoH? :x
There was talk in the guild last night that since the last patch, POM no longer generates threat to the person its on. Can anyone confirm this to be true or not?
PW:S Threat Mechanics: In combat the priest gets the threat, out of combat no one gets the threat. Is this Correct?
Now there might be a simpler way to write it, but the above macro casts my spell on my mouse'd-over target, and if there's no mouseover it casts the spell on my target. I have mouseover macros for all of my healing spells, PWS, Dispel, Abolish Disease, etc. It really saves time- I can see the little red aggro dot on grid, bubble the stupid hypothetical aggro-hungry mage, and spam flash on them until they get a BoP or the tank regains aggro.
45% OOFSR? What exactly are you healing? I mean, it depends completely on what you are assigned to do, but as long as you are not cheap with mana potions, you have absolutely no need to keep your OOFSR time that high, just make sure to abuse clearcasting + IF + bangle to max out the time you have regenning.
On Hydross:
Make sure to move across on the same side Hydross is being pulled towards, get an aggro monitor, after a transition, fade. If you are assigned to heal an add tank, make sure the add tank is full HP with shield/pom before the transition so he doesn't require a big heal when he first picks up the add.
Also, tell the tanks to stop being cheap and wear at least a mix of resist greens/blues if tanking the adds, I hate the attitude that a lot of tanks have that they'll just wear whatever and the healer can sort them out, expecially back when we were learning Hydross and healing was relatively tight.
Pretty much, how can I convince someone else to be the guild's IDSbot so I can go CoH? :x
Stop showing up at raids. Either they will learn to live without the buff or someone else will spec it. Either way, they won't need you to spec it.
For the record though, this strikes me as horribly selfish and a detriment to the raid as a whole. You will see more raid content when you have divine spirit than you will with circle of healing. The spell doesn't start to shine until you work on Gurtogg in Black Temple, and you're just working on Hydross. Being the only person with divine spirit is a great way to always get invited to raids, especially with 6 priests on the roster. And that is why you're in a raiding guild, right? To raid? If you work hard to make yourself less useful to the raid, don't be surprised if you get benched more.
There was talk in the guild last night that since the last patch, POM no longer generates threat to the person its on. Can anyone confirm this to be true or not?
On Saturday's Slavepens Heroic there were no noticable effects during the Coilfang Defenders pulls. I'm pretty sure I would have noticed reversed aggro-mechanics for PoM there.
I guess speccing Imp PW:S would be a waste in that case because you're softening (sp?) the iniatial blow on the MT, and not really trying to eliminate it all together.
Spec'ing imp pw: shield is always a waste; like I mentioned above, it doesn't scale for beans, and those points are better spent anywhere else in the tier.
As for shielding on the pull, we'll have to agree to disagree. Granted, I've never tanked anything beyond Karazhan myself, raid boss-wise, but I've never wanted to be shielded, even as prot.
And that's the other aspect of it. As Constantius noted above,
Originally Posted by 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.
Well . . . yeah. In an ideal world, every warrior is prot and their shield slams hit for 1k. Unfortunately, a lot of us go into raids without such an advantage. I'm returning to the Mags channeler issue again because it's the most relevant situation with which I'm personally familiar. I can't imagine any guild brings five prot warriors to Magtheridon, so you're probably going to have a less than optimally spec'd tank on at least one add. (Blah blah feral blah blah protadin etc.) I've tanked as fury/prot and prot alike, and the threat generation of a non-prot warrior is frankly laughable. Shielding a fury- or arms-prot warrior on the pull here can and probably will wipe the raid.
Im wondering why healing priests still used to have Improved Power Word: Fortitude in raiding spec? I let shadow priests buff fortitude... Maybe its needed if you do a lot 10 or 5 men, but in 25 you always have shadow priest or 2. It release 2 points to use for Imp shield, which can be nice sometimes.
Shielding a fury- or arms-prot warrior on the pull here can and probably will wipe the raid.
Again ... the adds on Magtheridon hit for 3k+ on plate. Shielding just gives you that initial 1-2 hits so you don't land a big heal before all 5 tanks pick up their adds. If you've never lost a tank in the first 5 seconds due to spike damage, maybe you don't know what we're talking about ... but for those of us who've seen a double-parry-hasted double-crushing blow on Naj'entus because some moron arms warrior wandered too close to the front of the mob ... better safe than sorry.
Thats easy. healing priests generally have larger mana pools and greater regen than a shadow priest, thus if your guild is not inclined to stop after a person or two dies on a trash pull, the healing priests are the people most likely able to rebuff them. as IDS I do not cast Prayer of Fortitude on more than my own group in most situations, but I often and regularly redo single fortitudes.
Beyond that its both a courtesy and convenience thing as opposed to a highly situational and underpowered talent. Not to say I never use PW:S but I'd wager in a given raid night I cast PW:F more than PW:S.
My PW:S use is primarily for Archimonde both prepull and in fight, Najentus's bubbles, and kael Pyroblasts.
45% OOFSR? What exactly are you healing? I mean, it depends completely on what you are assigned to do, but as long as you are not cheap with mana potions, you have absolutely no need to keep your OOFSR time that high, just make sure to abuse clearcasting + IF + bangle to max out the time you have regenning.
Generally I'm on tank healing, cast-cancelling top-rank GHeals if they're gonna be roughly 60% or more overheal. The reason my number is so high is that there's generally two Paladins and a Holy Priest who non-stop spam the tank the whole fight. I'm pretty sure the Priest is flash healing, and he's desperately oom no matter what we're doing. Admittedly, I have some iffy latency/fps and I cancel more heals than I should. I do make quite a bit of use out of Clearcasting -> Earring of Soulful Meditation -> Inner Focus to get mana back, and I pot/fiend when necessary.
On Hydross:
Make sure to move across on the same side Hydross is being pulled towards, get an aggro monitor, after a transition, fade. If you are assigned to heal an add tank, make sure the add tank is full HP with shield/pom before the transition so he doesn't require a big heal when he first picks up the add.
Also, tell the tanks to stop being cheap and wear at least a mix of resist greens/blues if tanking the adds, I hate the attitude that a lot of tanks have that they'll just wear whatever and the healer can sort them out, expecially back when we were learning Hydross and healing was relatively tight.
We've been doing this so far, and it's been working quite well. If we don't get him tonight, we should tomorrow or Thursday. Our resist tanks have been very good in picking up and using resist gear, so that's not really a problem for us. I'll definitely make sure to throw up POM/PW:S the offtanks when they're moving Hydross on transitions, however, as that sounds like it'll be a lot of help for our OT healers.
Generally I'm on tank healing, cast-cancelling top-rank GHeals if they're gonna be roughly 60% or more overheal. The reason my number is so high is that there's generally two Paladins and a Holy Priest who non-stop spam the tank the whole fight. I'm pretty sure the Priest is flash healing, and he's desperately oom no matter what we're doing. Admittedly, I have some iffy latency/fps and I cancel more heals than I should. I do make quite a bit of use out of Clearcasting -> Earring of Soulful Meditation -> Inner Focus to get mana back, and I pot/fiend when necessary.
I'm assigned to OTs during transitions, but I still leading Healing in most cases. You have to find your niche in healing and then "step up your game." If you're chain casting and canceling G.Heal Rank 6-7, and have > 50% mana at the end of the fight because you're out of the 5SR and others are dying in your raid, you need to spot heal more. Heck even when I'm not spot healing I still spot heal, because a few people I've played with take their assignment and stick to it and are afraid to heal people they're not assigned to or have overall mana issues.
I taught myself to heal, I don't have mana issues so far, and I do pick up tips here and there. I love to spot heal, and with mana to spare if you can help out the other "slower clickers" I'd recommend it, you'll get recognition and respect in your guild.
Currently while in 25 man raids, I know that I'll be healing, but also 5-6 other people will be. While you do know assignments (or should get some sort of one, or give some) You don't always know who's healing whom. There's mods for this a Druid (Melador) that used to be on my server showed me Heal Sync which each healer in the raid must have and shows their cast bars and whom they're healing. (I didn't really push it in my guild). I use oRA2, and use the MT feature as well as the Player Targets, each raid I set up the 6-7 Player targets to healers. Then I can watch who's helaing whom. Because most of the time Overhealing = Wasting Mana (Read: multiple overheals on one target, usually not the MT)
So if 5 of our healers for some silly reason all jump and heal Warlock X with 15% HP, I won't heal them, because I know they have it coming. I'll keep on my target and the MT. Sometimes we get too many people that jump around and someone else dies. I try to make sure that doesn't happen. Every guild is different of course.
Healing:
I use: **G. Heal 2, G. Heal 6, F. Heal 5 (I rarely use), Renew Rank 8 and PoM, Binding Heal.
The reason I don't use a Higher rank of renew is because I mainly HoT the MT and anyone that takes predictable minimal damage, say a Lock Life Taping or like on A'Lar during a flame buffet where everyone takes ~1400 damage. HoTs are instant and more mana effecient in that scenario then having everyone jump around and try to top everyone off with 2-3 second casts. Other then that I usually Chain heal G. Heal Rank 2, Pop Earing and Bangle during clearcasts or inner focuses or fight/heal/movement changes (A'Lar Dive Bomb, Vashj in-between adds up on my side, FLK while the tanks run over the priest before FLK her/himself) for more mana regen. I use G.Heal Rank 6 if I notice a certain healer is low on mana and I have more and can help them out. And know their assignment. (Particularly on Vashj Phase 3, end of KT Phase 2 where LOS can be an issue and I know and see that a few people are getting little to no heals. Helping with A'lar phase one when I'm on OTs have usually have full mana and am looking for Inspiration to be put on a platform tank.)
But like I said, I really enjoy spot healing. Get a good set of raid frames and practice trying to heal 30 people in AV, use keybinds, notice when all the predictable damage is. It's not the big leagues or T6 content by any means, but you'd be surprised how much the practive helps you get into a rhythm that's really how I got tons of practice.
** The only reason I use G.Heal Rank 2 and not 1 is because I'm usually healing and wanting Effeciency to proc (the 2 Piece T5 bonus), G.Heal 1 wasn't cutting it later in TK/SSC, and I've been told 3/4 are better in some cases in MH/BT.
:Edit: Oh yeah Healing Rule to live by #3: Flash on Trash.
I don't see why you wouldn't have both imp PW:S and imp PW:F. Silent resolve and martydon don't seem nearly as good unless you're healing a 5-man with either a nub tank or with extremely hard hitting mobs. In a multiple-healer scenario (anything beyond 5-man) I don't see a priest running into threat problems.
The problem is more-or-less that the tank gets bursted down whenever I spot heal. >_<
Yes, in the worst case, spot-healing someone while casting/aborting GHeals delays the next GHeal 1,5s (if using /stopcasting to spotheal, otherwise perhaps 1,6s-1,7s). This can be a real risk, tempting though it may be.
Let's try a different perspective on the spotheal:
You chaincast/abort top-rank GHeals. Let's assume 5000 hp healed. If you abort this due to danger of say 60% overheal, this just means that you leave about 2000 hp unhealed on your target for the next 2.5s. Like spothealing, this is a risk in the case that the tank immediately gets hit for a large amount. If you abort a Gheal on a topped-of target, flashheal someone else, then do an emergency flashheal on your main target, that's 1.5s+1.5s=3s for 2500hp healed at max hp on the tank. In comparison, 2000 hp left due to cancel, followed by maxrank GH for 5000hp means that at the end of 2,5s, you have effectively given the tank 3000hp. 500hp more, and the remaining 2500 got there 0,5s faster compared to FH+FH. Doesn't seem all that much.
Of course, if you continue with a maxrank GH, you can give the tank another 5000hp 0,5s earlier. Or, you could follow the 1.5s spotheal directly with a maxrank GH. Compared to the other two scenarios, that can be safer or more dangerous.
Any way you put it, the risk imposed by careful spothealing is not as clear as it may seem.
In my experience, the safest route is something else:
>50% mana left sounds very high. If you have that much mana to spend, why not downrank your GHeal spam one or two ranks and let it through a bit more frequently, even if that means wasting more than half of the heal? Regularly topping the tank off at the cost of increased overheal is a good safety measure if your mana pool/regeneration allows for it.
Trying to stay out of 5SR can be an obsession to the point where it becomes counterproductive.
Edit: letting downranked GHeals through instead of aborting maxranks also causes more Inspiration procs, which is nice by itself on an MT.
>50% mana left sounds very high. If you have that much mana to spend, why not downrank your GHeal spam one or two ranks and let it through a bit more frequently, even if that means wasting more than half of the heal? Regularly topping the tank off at the cost of increased overheal is a good safety measure if your mana pool/regeneration allows for it.
Not sure if you got >50% mana from my post that was just a made up number. I don't recall where he said he finished fights with mana. But if I ever finish fights with that much mana now, I usually adjust in the next attempt/kill because I know I'm not near healing up to my full potential.
:Edit: Does anyone know if PW:S cause initial agro on the Priest and not the tank (obviously the warrior doesn't get agro)? I think I'm going to test it some, I'm pretty sure if I use PW:S in Heroics agro is directed at me like I'd crit a heal on the tank right before the mob got to them if they pulled.
Im wondering why healing priests still used to have Improved Power Word: Fortitude in raiding spec? I let shadow priests buff fortitude... Maybe its needed if you do a lot 10 or 5 men, but in 25 you always have shadow priest or 2. It release 2 points to use for Imp shield, which can be nice sometimes.
Rebuffing any people rezzed during a fight. The Shadow Priests are constantly casting and are usually running OOM before me. Of all the Priests likely to have a spare second and available mana, it's the Holy Priest (particularly one not healing the MT).
Also, we don't stop between pulls on trash. It's more important for a SP to have mana to kill than it is for me to just sit there and occasionally toss a heal out. Then again, I am also specced 1/5 in Silent Resolve, and maxed out Imp Fort and Imp PW:S, because I don't need Silent Resolve. At that point, there is very little else that I need/want in terms of talent points on that Tier.
Not sure if you got >50% mana from my post that was just a made up number.
Oops, you're right, that was from your post and I didn't realize it wasn't a citation. Still, 45% OO5SR should amount to lots of mana left, meaning there's a better use for it.
10/22/07, 10:38 AM
But if I ever finish fights with that much mana now, I usually adjust in the next attempt/kill because I know I'm not near healing up to my full potential.
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