Zerack

On the note of optimal itemization - In the cloak slot, you note [Shroud of Forgiveness] and [Shroud of the Highborne], but I don't see a mention of [Sunshower Light Cloak] from Kael'thas. I believe that this cloak is competitive with the other two, and it offers numerically superior regeneration to Shroud of Forgiveness as well. I hadn't seen anyone bring this up in this thread or the previous Holy Raiding Compendium, although I may have missed it. Apologies if this is a repeat.

Comparison:

[Shroud of Forgiveness]
27 Stam
19 Int
20 Spirit
79 Healing

[Sunshower Light Cloak]
18 Stam
24 Int
20 Spirit
77 Healing

Difference From Shroud --> Sunshower:
-9 Stam
+5 Int
-2 Healing

My question then becomes, is the additional 5 intellect (and associated mana regeneration) worth the loss of 9 stamina and 2 healing? I believe that it is worth it for almost all fights not designed specifically around a given pool of player HP and for fights where death from raid damage is not an issue. In fact, I would prefer [Sunshower Light Cloak] OVER [Shroud of Forgiveness] in almost all situations in 2.4, since at T6 gearing level I haven't noticed a problem with my HP pool in the first three Sunwell encounters.

To me, 2 healing is almost irrelevant and the loss of stamina is highly situational. What do you guys think? Time to whip out the Kael'thas loot again?

 

Jayde

Sunshower Light Cloak is better from a healing perspective, just depends on the HP really. I've never found HP to be an issue (did a full BT clear up to Illidan with no deaths other than being one of the last to die in a wipe on BB) so prefer it to the others--especially as none of them have dropped very often so I can't really justify taking a Shroud of Forgiveness from another healer just for a Stam set. I'd probably pick it up for a Stamina set if it was going to be DE'd, but otherwise pretty happy with the Kael cloak.

 

Faustryn

In regards to gear, and if you happen to be an engineer, the [Powerheal 9000 Lens] could be seen as another viable option. What's exceptionally nice about this particular item is that the schematic isn't BoP, thus you could be at any level of progression and craft them. If you happen to know some folks raiding the Sunwell Plateau (where it exclusively drops), you could possibly buy/barter for the schematic if they don't happen to need it.

 

• Kaacee

What is the actual raid benefit of IDS?

 

Touf

...more dps? I doubt the difference of IDS vs COH will let you drop a healer.

 

Vihermaali

50 spirit to every caster, and +10% of their spirit converted into +dmg&healing. Even mages and warlocks in my guild have ~150 spirit (unbuffed!) already, that makes basically +20dmg&healing to every mage & warlock. Not even mentioning the extra regen and +healing priests and druids are going to get from it. +50 spirit is pretty huge after 2.4.

 

Incoherence

Higher than the raid benefit of a CoH priest who's just healing tanks. (I feel pretty confident in saying that the benefit of IDS is higher than that of 2 points in Empowered Healing.) Again, your mileage may vary depending on how many shamans you have available.

Different tangent: I notice [Mystical Skyfire Diamond] is still in the list of gems in the OP. Does anyone still use it for reasons other than "I haven't had the gold to buy an IED/BED yet", after it got nerfed again in 2.4? It seems like its days of being useful for tank healing are done.

 

Burnzone

I'm sorry but what? I'm not a fan of either trinket but you just contradicted yourself. You say Vial of the Sunwell is bad and nobody should use it, but say Shard of the Scale is a viable option. 15 mp5 vs 16mp5? Are you telling me that 16 is the line between "good" and "bad" for mp5 trinkets? Vial is essentially the exact same trinket except with a use effect effect that builds up on its own and you simply click for the free 2k heal.

 

fealer

I think you have seriously underestimated the [Vial of the Sunwell]. With the 2-minute cooldown, the Use Effect is basically guaranteed to be at 2000. Chained together with a Holy Concentration proc and Inner Focus, you have added another tick of OO5SR regen (roughly 20mp5 @ 700mp5 OO5SR if used on CD) as well as 2000 healing. Obviously you aren't guaranteed to get a Holy Concentration proc every 2 minutes exactly, still I think the estimate is conservative given most of us in t6-content gear run considerably more than 700mp5 OO5SR when raid buffed. As the OP mentioned, he runs ~1150mp5 OO5SR as a good example.

 

Hegen

For holy priests, it's actually 2200 instead of 2000. This is probably due to Spiritual Healing.

 

heel

There have been 75 confirmed kills of Felmyst, so I assume it's alright to talk about it now.

This is how I spec for Felmyst: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I can't imagine having CoH for that fight. All of our priests started out with it, and weren't too impressed with its effectiveness as compared with PoH. Spreading out is a very important part of the fight, which makes CoH less likely to hit everyone and generally less attractive. The big problem with CoH, though, is that you can get caught on global cooldown when Gas Nova starts casting. That extra 1.5 second delay on your Mass Dispel can hurt a lot.

Discipline, on the other hand, has a pile of talents that are really awesome on this fight. I honestly think you would be nuts to deny yourself Focused Power and Pain Suppression. Does no one else spec discipline for Felmyst?

 

jusion

I do also. PSing the encapsulates makes them even more trivial than they usually are. Plus, the .5s MD is amazing too. It lets you get off 2 MDs before the 2nd tick of gas nova which can be invaluable in case of a resist.

 

Hiba

We killed Felmyst first time on our second raid, and I spend a lot of time the after the first raid thinking the benefits of disc spec. We could have had easily our IDS priest to spec for full disc for the second raid, but I simply saw no reason for it. I admit that Pain Supression for encapsulation target would help a lot, but we got the same result with NS heals from our shamans and druids. Also, I think it would need 2 full disc priest to reliably base the Encapsulation healing tactic to be handled by Pain Supression.

I think the usefulness of CoH on aura healing is again dependable how you position your groups. Here's how we do it, numbers are group numbers.

5...tank.....1
.....melee
3..............2

We have our 2 CoH priests positioned in groups 2 and 3, this way only 1 group is out of range from each CoH priest. If any of the groups are dropping too low for any reason, the CoH priests will heal that group to full as fast as possible. The people in the groups are most of the time in range of CoH casted to one of the member of the group, we only spread more when Gas Nova was casted and Encapsulation cooldown is ready.

As for CoH causing a global cooldown that slows mass dispell, I think it's in the end quite easy to handle. This is how I will myself do it: when Gas Nova Cooldown is ready, I will target the center person of my dispell group member and move my mouse cursor over the spot I want to cast Mass Dispell. Then I will cast CoH to my target group from a keybinding every time the aura hits, waiting for Gas Nova or Encapsulation. I will of course cast Mass Dispell from a keybinding to my current mouse position if Gas Nova happens. However, if Gas Nova is casted right after my CoH, and the group gets one tick of damage from it because of global cd preventing fast enough mass dispell, it does not matter since the group was full hp after my latest CoH. Now, to compensate my delay with the Mass Dispell, I will always cast new CoH immidiately after my mass Dispell cast is done. This way the group has lost maximum of 3k hp because of CoH right before and after the Gas Nova, and I can easily top them in 3 seconds. I'm too drunk atm to explain this better, but I hope you can understand my point.

There's also a difference between Encapsualtion casted after Gas Nova and Gas Nova casted after Encpasulation. After Gas Nova, there's always minimum of ~5+ seconds or so before Encapsulation is casted, giving you time easily to top the raid with CoH cross healing the group that might have gotten the mass Dispell a bit late. However, after Encapsualtion the Gas Nova can be casted very fast, like 2 seconds after last Encapsulation tick. This means that the group has to be topped really fast always after Encapsulation, and I don't see any better way of doing this than CoH spam. We keep the raid always at full HP, and I think to use PoH effectively will mean that the group takes 2-3 ticks before every PoH, and it's too low HP in my opinion if the encapsulation hits that group right before PoH cast.

I don't remember we have ever lost anyone to the first tick of Cast Nova, so I don't think faster Mass Dispell helps at all if the priest is not sleeping. Of course on the situations where the priests is distracted to some other event in the raid, fast mass Dispell cast can help to compensate the skill, but at least every priest in my raid assigned to mass dispell learned to cast the dispell 75% of the time before first tick after few attemps. If there was 2 ticks of Gas Nova, the priest failed completely. If you need the 0.5 second mass Dispell time to keep your group alive, I think there's something wrong i nthe tactic (or that could be done better).

I actually like Felmyst quite much as a Mass Dispell CoH priest, I can help a lot of other groups if they take damage while still doing my important job of Mass Dispelling in time.

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

 

constantius

Basically, the point is to not make your holy priests Mass Dispel. In that situation, CoH is abso-friggin-amazing, especially with how we setup the raid.

There are only two people out of 25 who are not standing with their group in one of three clumps. CoH hits 1 of those people (the MT) simply because he's close enough to the center of his group. We have one holy priest (usually the IDS priest) and 2 shadow priests do the mass dispel. It's trivial for a competent shadow priest to get it off within 1.5 seconds of the spell landing (usually faster) since they can just Mind Flay until the Gas Nova starts casting.

As for myself, I'm backing up the tank healers as IDS in our current strat, so when Corrosion goes off, I cast one last GH and then cast-cancel MD until it actually starts casting.

You don't have to cleanse MD immediately. The first tick comes a full 2.0 seconds AFTER IT LANDS, so you have a full 3.5 seconds to react and cast and land the dispel on your group.

I did the cleansing as CoH-spec our first week, and again, np. If I was on the GCD as it started casting, and I accidentally screwed up and didn't start the cast in time to get it off before the first tick, I would cast back-to-back CoHs immediately following, and the group would be pretty much topped up. We have 3 restoration shamans and a *second* CoH priest on the raid, so one extra tick once in a while wasn't the end of the world.

Dropping it to 0.5 seconds really does zip, unless you have crap reaction times. With the 2.0 time frame before the second tick, you'd have to be completely not paying attention AND land a spell *exactly* part-way through the Gas Nova cast bar to actually put yourself on such a GCD that you fail to dispel in time.

Maybe when you're learning the fight 0.5-cast MDs makes sense. But once it's on farm, it's a waste of a respec. Of course, this is all imo.

Besides, if you have to Pain Suppress the Encapsulate target, find new healers. It's 3500 / second ... and you have 5-ish available healers who can hit that target with *something*. The target can also hit a Healthstone while encapsulated to buy you a second to heal.

Anyway, conclusion: Heel's post shows that there are a number of ways to do the fight. Ours relies heavily on our CoH priests to heal, and lets 2 shadow priests and 1 IDS priest do the cleansing. In that situation, CoH really is amazing.

[e] The spec linked is interesting. Basically, you're trading 10% overall healing done by all spells, a minimum of 125 +Healing, 6% chance to have a free Greater Heal, 20% scaling on your Greater Heal, and Circle of Healing ... for 0.5 second Mass Dispel, Power Infusion (really worth anything for Felmyst? O.o), Mental Strength, 5% intellect and Pain Suppression.

You'll have a little more stats, but a lot less efficiency, and a ton less +heal. If you're actually using PoH as this spec, the mana cost of PoH will more than overpower the mana you save from Mass Dispel, btw. 20% of a 1255 spell that you cast several (let's say 3) times per rotation vs. 15% of a 33%-of-base-mana spell that you cast a maximum of 2 times per rotation.

If you really want Mass Dispel to be low, why not do an old-school hybrid build of 0/27/34? You'd only lose Holy Concentration and 3/5 Empowered Healing vs the reduced cast time on Mass Dispel as compared to a typical IDS spec, and that would make perfect sense for this fight.

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. - R.A. Heinlein

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

 

Hybred

Soo... 30 int or 20 spirit on [Rod of the Blazing Light]? And is there some site/spreadsheet I can enter numbers into to figure out the conversion on INT/SPI?

 

deathwatcher

Hey I use the [Rod of the Blazing Light] gemed out with spirit gems and the spirit enchant as a mana regen item on long fights. I keep my main healing weapons on till I have a quick 20 second break in transitions or something and I gain over 70 spirit with it and regen a ton of mana. Anyone else do something like this?

 

constantius

Yes, I do something like this as well. It is the highest spirit item in the game when gemmed with 3 [Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire]. The math on whether to use +20 spirit or +30 intellect is pretty simple:

Assuming 500/500 base --

[Enchant Weapon - Major Intellect] -
5 * 0.0093271 * (500+(32+30)*1.1)^0.5 * (500+71*1.05*1.1) = 647 Mp5

[Formula: Enchant Weapon - Mighty Spirit] -
5 * 0.0093271 * (500+32*1.1)^0.5 * (500+91*1.05*1.1) = 653 Mp5

Spirit is still better. This makes sense since regen scales with the square root of intellect, but linearly with spirit.

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. - R.A. Heinlein

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

 

deathwatcher

That is what I was guessing. To bad the enchant is so expensive. Thanks ^_^

 

Elerion

Yes, but this is still irrelevant with regards to healing the tank/soakers on Brutallus. Casting CoH on tanks on Brutallus would hit 2.5 players on average best case, less with some strategies. Shaman healers on the other hand get amazing returns from bouncing CH off tanks in that encounter.

If you don't know the fight, don't talk about it. That's how these forums work. And it's quite obvious that you don't know the fight.

Priests should not be casting CoH on Brutallus unless you are very short on resto shamans. Period.

For Kalecgos its usefulness vis a vis Chain Heal depends on your topside positioning (safezone means CH can cover most of it, groupzones gives CoH more value.) On Felmyst it once again depends on positioning strategy and raid makeup, more on that after embargo lifts.

 

Sharrash

Where should I spend my first badges as a new holy priest ? (raiding Karazhan / Gruul)
The trinket seems fairly interesting but the new items coming in 2.4 are all very powerful.

I have Primal Mooncloth set and I am able to buy Whitemend set. I'm thinking to buy badges shoes / wrists after my trinket. Am I right ?

 

Ermogrin

I'm in a similar situation. My basic question is how good is [Essence of the Martyr]?

 

Moeru

As a priest about to start going into Hyjal, I'm still using [Essence of the Martyr]. SP withstanding, the only other trinket I know of offhand that you'd upgrade to is [Memento of Tyrande]. Someone else may prove me wrong though.


Make sure to get [Earring of Soulful Meditation] as that is a real nice regen trinket once you get into SSC\TK

 

crimsonsentinel