• constantius

To the above poster (2 or 3 posts up):

- PW:S gives absolutely no threat to the priest, so long as you're not stupid enough to cast it after the tank has pulled. If you do this, you're just asking for trouble.

The absorption from PW:S is threatless, just as the reflected damage from the Disc talent is. This is why it is so good. Put it on the tank BEFORE he enters combat, esp. if you can hit it 10-15 seconds before the pull, and not only does it absorb some damage (threatless), it also has no down side (debuff is gone before the damage is taken).

Win-win.

If you are getting aggro from casting PW:S, it's because you are casting it after the tank has engaged the mobs, but before he has more than body aggro on them.

 

ANSeranov

Okay, that's some advice I'll take to heart. I used to be a big Rank 1 GHeal spammer, but I think I may have stepped into that "obsessively outside the rule" zone. I use Rank 3 GHeal alot nowadays, and maybe I should try making that my primary heal while only using Rank 7 for more throughput.

I still miss CoH tho. :x It was really fun spell when I had it.

[Yuuzu] [80 Draenei Shaman][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Draenei Death Knight][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Human Warrior][Durotan]
[Karina] [77 Draenei Paladin][Durotan]
[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi][Durotan]

 

galzohar

Another thing about the shield is that it's free because by the time he pulls you get out of the FSR and regen the mana back, or even drink if you're in a hurry and have non-lazy mages

 

Viv

Bear in mind that any argument like "spirit or mp5?" tends to have a very simple answer due to the way item budgeting works.
The answer is "spirit and mp5, if you can help it".

An item "of the tiger" has more stats in total than the same item "of strength".
If the two (or more) stats in question are roughly equally attractive to you, you'd be wise to simply try and get all of them in equal measure, on every single slot.

This doesn't apply to gems as you don't pay any penalty for stacking your stat of choice through gemming

 

Jayde

In the OP

"[Insightful Earthstorm Diamond]: the most useful, and easiest to equip, metagem. The proc goes off quite often, and typically restores 4000+ mana over a 10 minute fight. Very useful, and the intellect also helps."

This has not been my experience at all. Perhaps if you are using Circle of Healing, it is more valuable, but barring that it really is very lackluster.

I finally got my T5 head the other night, and put the meta in...I was really hoping for a lot more than it ended up being. We were working on Kael'thas last night, and over 4 hours of raiding (with me assigned to Warlock tank in P3, so pretty spammy/consistant healing on my part for the majority of the evening) I only recieved 7,500 mana back.

That is after 67 minutes of HPS time, according to WWS.

I checked the WWS on our longest attempt, which was a mid-P4 wipe...which means 10 minutes. I have 76% HPS time on that fight, cast 105 heals, and the diamond proc'd a grand total of one time. Of course, casting 105 heals with a 2% proc is not likely to proc many times, but I think it shows the severe weakness of this gem for Priests unless you are using CoH. I suppose you can view it like the Eye of Gruul, which is pretty uber for CoH but very lackluster for normal direct healing. I had one attempt where I healed over 130 times and did not recieve a single proc the entire fight.

The highest I got was 3 procs in a single fight, but most fights were a single proc in 7+ minutes of healing time. I also only got 1 proc in an entire 10 minute Vashj kill (despite using Binding Heal a lot, which should have a double chance of proccing it) a few nights ago.

So, perhaps the info on this gem should be re-qualified. It is really very lackluster for direct healing, and I'm honestly not sure it is at all worthwhile considering you need to have at least 2 poor yellow gems to activate it. For CoH, I could see it being quite powerful--however, for normal GH/Renew/PoM style healing it just isn't very good.

Edit: Many Paladins love this gem, but I will point out that you can't compare Paladin vs. Priest in this regard. Apparently the gem can proc off Illumination (and possibly Spirital Attunement too) which gives them many "free" attempts to proc the gem. I compared the results of me vs. a Paladin in the raid, and we actually had roughly the same spellcast count--however, while I only had 25 procs, he had 66.

 

ANSeranov

I've had that meta double proc in fights before, one heal after another. It doesn't seem like much, but it does add up.

Additionally, the sacrifices you would need to make to use the other healing meta far outweigh its usefulness, at least in my (and a decent number of other priests') opinion. 26 healing is nice, but not really a huge deal, and the threat reduction is pretty much nil due to the way threat reduction stacks. Extra regen (and a little spell crit, which isn't a bad thing) never hurts, unless you have no way to spend all your mana.

That said, I know people who love their Bracing Earthstorm Diamonds. That's their call. D:

[Yuuzu] [80 Draenei Shaman][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Draenei Death Knight][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Human Warrior][Durotan]
[Karina] [77 Draenei Paladin][Durotan]
[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi][Durotan]

 

Jayde

Well, presuming one is not using CoH (I think the IED is a clear winner for that) I would think the half cast meta or possibly just the stamina meta are both potential alternatives.

It's unfortuante that the +healing meta is virtually impossible to use for Priests.

I will probably keep the IED around as I've been assigned to spec into CoH for BT/Hyjal in a couple weeks after we get Kael down, however if that was not the case I'm rather certain I would look at possibly replacing it. The sacrifice of having to use an additional yellow gem in another piece of equipment (already using 1 for the T5 helm, as the 2mp5 bonus outwieghs the suckiness of a yellow gem somewhat) in addition to being lackluster itself seems to be a low payoff.

It is nice to have regen, for sure.. but given that it is so inconsistant and low-value for a non-CoH Priest, it seems a bit non-optimal.

(Honestly, I'm not impressed with any of the Priest meta gem alternatives. Perhaps if the +healing one had more resonable requirements, it would be a lot different... but right now, although the T5 helm is uber enough to be worth it, I really feel gimped by having to use a meta socket instead of, for instance, just two additional 9 heal/2mp5 gems.)

 

Hiba

Exactly like this: there should be no reason at all to spec for Silent Resolve or Martyrdom in 25 man raiding, so this means you can get both imp PW:S and imp PW:F. Only issues with aggro you might have in raids are encounters with aggro resets or spawning adds, and on both cases you are very likely to get the aggro regardless of the talents if you do not know how the encounter works and when limit your healing for few seconds. I remember one situation when I have gotten aggro and died in tbc raiding, and it was on Illidan when a paladin managed to use Blessing of Protection on MT after a demon phase (MT was tanking it already).

And for the comments about PW:S not scaling, I think the 2.3 values are quite balanced. We are far from days when PW:S absorbed 1700, a number that has been mentioned here also. For me the PW:S will absorb unbuffed ~2280 in next patch with 3/3 imp PW:S, the increase because of talent points is ~300 more absorbed. For me it looks like the absorbion starts to be in the level suitable for the spell, if you consider it's role as an emergency instant heal with 15 second cooldown. It's not of course very mana efficient, and it should not even be. But it's still very useful to counter recovery after silence/fear or precast before a known damage that might be hard to heal (initial pull, Kael pyro etc).

-------
I have been considering swapping the metagem from 300 mana return one to the +26 healing 2% aggro reduction one, but our guild is simply out of Spinels and the situation is only getting worse atm. Both gems are nothing special, the good part of the +26 healing one is that you only need 1 yellow gem instead of 2. And I have yet to see a log from myself when the Insightful Earthstorm Diamond has returned over 2k mana for me in 1 fight.
-------

This is not a priest only matter and certainly nothing new, but it still should be mentioned here since it affects us a lot: Amplify magic.

We use amplify magic on tanks on pretty much every boss other than Hydross and Illidan P2add tanks. We don't have the improved version most likely in guild, but even the normal Amplify Magic provides a very nice boost on healing done. The best part of it is that it is not affected by downranking (at least as far as I know it was not before 2.3, let's hope it stays like that). It's quite a big difference when properly specced/geared your GH rank 1 starts to heal ~3500 per cast on AM buffed tank compared to the ~2700 many people say it heals for them (which most likely is not buffed with AM).

I think it's healer's responsibility to check do the tanks have the Amplify magic before pull, and remind the mages to buff it. It took considerably long time before our mages learned to buff it by default, but nowdays we don't have to remind them very often about it.

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

 

Juli

It may be worth mentioning in the original post that [Ethereum Life-Staff] from High Astromancer Solarian in The Eye, with [Formula: Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spirit], is the top-of-the-line spirit weapon swap item. Weapon swapping was mentioned in passing, but it could stand to get a bit more attention (maybe include a caveat that you shouldn't focus on swapping nonstop if it affects your performance).

Good spirit sticks include:
[Ethereum Life-Staff] 62 spi, High Astromancer Solarian in The Eye
[Nightstaff of the Everliving] 55 spi, Nightbane in Karazhan
[Staff of Divine Infusion] 50 spi, BOE world drop
[Serpentcrest Life-Staff] 46 spi, Mekgineer Steamrigger in The Steamvault (normal or heroic)

You can even take it as far as swapping to a spirit weapon every time you top off the tank while you cancel-cast, then weapon swap back to your healing weapons after you've started the cast on a heal you intend to land (without inner focus/clearcasting). You aren't affected by the weapon-swap GCD at all if the cast is already in progress and there is 1.5s or more remaining on the cast time. Just make sure you don't start making healing or positioning mistakes from monkeying around with weapon swaps too much. Landing a gheal you didn't need because you were too focused on weapon swaps more than negates any mana you would've gained by doing it successfully, not to mention a death caused by swaps.

Edit: You can also abuse spellsurge with weapon swaps last I checked, due to its hidden 45sec internal cooldown. If you can manage to get two copies of your best healing weapon (like 2 [Crystal Spire of Karabor], for example), enchant 1 with spellsurge and the other with +81 healing. Use the spellsurge one until it procs, then swap to the 81 healing one for 45 seconds since spellsurge is doing nothing until the internal cooldown is up, then swap back. Doing this, combined with spirit staff swapping, can return a pretty good amount of mana and basically give you 81 free healing a good portion of the time. The spellsurge thing is probably a bit over the top and not worth mentioning in the compendium, espeically since it's fairly unlikely you'd get 2 copies of your best healing weapon and want to blow the enchanting mats on this.

 

Nayt

WoWInterface Downloads : CasterWeaponSwapper

If you raid, and you're a Holy Priest, and you do not use this mod or use spellsurge, you're selfish...and, well I'll leave it at that.

Ah, and look here for the settings to use:
Spellsurge

Don't leave home without it.

"When Nate's in town a feast is down."
Pizza, Gold, Contests and Myself
Twits about School, Dating, Partying and Jackassery
Hunter / Priest / Shaman / Warrior

 

Bendyr

I certainly echo the recommendation for /cws.

Are there any good 1H spirit maces or daggers by any chance?

 

Natt

I am curious why Binding Heal is not covered in the cross-healing section. Is it too expensive? I always try to use that if I am healing a tank and take some off damage, just so that I do not die before other healers can top me off.
I am really early in 25-man content though so if it is too weak for later content I can see it as a waste of mana.

 

ANSeranov

Binding Heal is one of the best abilities we have, and I feel it makes us more survivable than other healers in a lot of situations, in my opinion. Though CoH Priests and Shamans are generally group healing, being able to top yourself off never hurts, especially since you're not shirking your duties to do so.

[Yuuzu] [80 Draenei Shaman][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Draenei Death Knight][Kilrogg]
[Soulu] [80 Human Warrior][Durotan]
[Karina] [77 Draenei Paladin][Durotan]
[Ikarii] [70 Dwarven Rabbi][Durotan]

 

Liryn

Hey, how come Boar's Speed didn't make it onto that enchant list? Don't people find the run speed to be useful? I do...

I'm surprised Clique (or mouseover macros) aren't mentioned in the addons section. It's not the only way to do it but I'm sure a lot of people use it.

Edit: I'm also a big fan of Binding Heal. It's nice and fast!

 

Kass

As someone who has played a Holy Priest since Day 1, I can honestly say I wish I could train myself to use Binding Heal more. The other two spells that became available to Priests late in the game COH and POM, both have entirely different purposes and effects on healing. However, I personally can't seem to break the habit of heal my target, renew/flash heal myself, heal my target. I've found that many of the rerolls (BE Priests) are much better about using Binding Heal than the more seasoned players.

I honestly think, many people, myself included...just forget about Binding Heal as it just looks and feels so much like Flash Heal (aside from its sheer efficiency and effective power). It's a fantastic spell and probably one of the things that sets a Priest apart from any other class when it comes to healing. Indispensable for an MT healer, it's also incredibly useful as a raid healer. It just comes down to training yourself to use it.

One thing I noticed while reading:
I agree with all of this, though in my opinion there is one thing missing. I feel like we constantly stress the importance of efficiency, but one thing we're neglecting to mention in this section is the sheer effectiveness of Flash Heal in an emergency. No other healer can heal for 2700+ in 1.5 seconds (outside of Nature's Swiftness). One of the issues I ran across in MT healing was that many healers tend to queue up their biggest heal after some heavy damage, ignoring the fact that what might be most important is stabilizing the tank, as he's going at least 2.5-3.0 seconds without heals and could take another nasty string. I'm not a champion of Flash Heal, but I do feel like Priest MT healing does need to consider that we're also the best suited to spam Flash Heal to try to maintain the HP level of the tank for 5-8 seconds while the other healers get things get back under control. After things are under control again, Priests are best suited to resuming our cast/cancel rotation and regenning mana through natural time OO5SR.

Short of it all: Flash Heal (or Binding Heal if self-healing is necessary), is the best emergency heal in a Priest's arsenal and has more impact in the 1.5 second time than any other class. Despite all the talk of efficient healing, Priests shouldn't be afraid to spend a little mana to make sure things are stable.

 

Kaacee

Addressing Clique would be great.

Addressing target=mouseover and associated macros would be very helpful.

I have all my heals set to mouseover+stopcast, but I would love to be able to alt-selfcast and have spells cast on my current target if there is no mouseover, but could not find a way to setup those macros.

 

cruumash

Question: Do you usually have Salvation on? Its worth keeping in mind that not everyone gets to run with 2+ paladins in their 25 mans.

I find Silent Resolve fairly handy in Heroic instances where you often have 1 or more hard hitting mob coupled with 1 or more add. The bog lords in UB and the un-CCable guards in SP come to mind as the best examples where you're often chaining max rank gheals and hoping your tank doesn't miss one of his threat generators.

But if you always have 2+ paladins and only do raid instances, I can see dumping the Silent Resolve points for something else.

 

Irise

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.

 

nydora

I don't know firsthand about the reflection damage, so i won't comment about it. But damage absorbed by PW:S is generated as threat for the priest that put up the shield.

I'll test and be back with that, I'm almost positive that PW:S is agro for the priest that gave the buff.

 

• constantius

Some amazing suggestions for the post; I'll start implementing them asap.

As far as PW:S absorption giving aggro: it's trivial to test and prove this yes/no. I'm almost (99%) positive that it does not, because I would have noticed this for sure.

Find a pack of random mobs, anywhere. Have someone wearing plate-ish gear get a PW:S from you, and then run madly in a circle around the mobs, and then let them beat-down the shield, but DO NOTHING else.

Will they peel off and come for the priest? My experience says "no". Body aggro > absorption aggro (if such a thing exists, at all).

 

• constantius

The only option for a spirit mace is a Karazhan drop: [Light's Justice], which, combined with something like [Scepter of Purification] gives a total of:

Stamina: 40
Intellect: 38
Spirit: 45
Healing: 459 + enchant

vs

[Ethereum Life-Staff] which has:

Stamina: 52
Intellect: 44
Spirit: 62
Healing: 415 + enchant

Given that this requires a drop from Archimonde, my feeling is that [Ethereum Life-Staff] is the superior item for a weapon slot. Of course, neither compares to [Staff of Immaculate Recovery] which is truly drool-worthy.

 

• constantius

As far as IED goes, checking some random WWS parses:

FLK: 4 hits in 7:36
Hydross: 2 hits in 5:45
Vashj: 3 hits in 9:52
Morogrim: 3 hits in 8:52
Solarian: 2 hits in 4:32
VR: 5 hits in 8:43

It's basically a direct correlation between total number of casts and number of procs. Figure worst-case, IED is worth 600+12*15*1.1 = 798 mana over a 10 minute fight. I'll take 800 mana over 26 healing any day of the week.

 

Aliniz

Constantius was correct that PWS does NOT give agro if placed OOC. In combat, it does give agro to the caster. Also -- It gives the full absorption as agro all at once, not as damage is absorbed.

Reflective dmg causes no agro -- it says so right on the talent.

 

• constantius

Let's make sure the aggro from PW:S is actually proportional to absorption, and not merely as a spell cast.

Example:
- tank and priest run into some mobs
- tank goes ahhhh, runs in a circle, uses no threat moves
- priest casts PW:F on the tank, and instantly gets ... aggro?

Reason: any spell cast gives a base 1 (or around 1?) threat value, and is sufficient to pull off someone who only has body aggro.

So the question is ... how much threat does the cast of a base no-gear naked PW:S give? Is it indeed (absorb)/2, as all heals are? Or is is that base "I cast a spell on you" threat, like casting PW:F.

If no-one tests this in the next two hours, I'll login and do it. Just stuck somewhere atm, bored, with 'net access ...

 

Ana

One thing you might want to add to the section on trinkets is that the ribbon on-use gets applied to the entire group when using CoH. I've found this useful on a few fights when I'm primarily healing the melee dps group (EoS phase 3 for example).

Also, as far as getting salvation in raids: prior to 10 min individual pally buffs we often had salvation because it was easier for the pallys as we generally have 2 spriests in the raid. Now that the pallys have the 10 min individual buffs they will give both holy priests kings over salvation for any boss fight. Even with CoH I've never even come close to pulling aggro.