• Kaacee

I currently farm in DPS gear, +1088 damage. I use PW:S, Holy Fire, Smite, Smite, Smite, SW: D finisher. I find SW: P pretty useless unless I'm fighting 2+ mobs. I need to drink a lot, but I have a mage friend who provides me with water. I have been tempted to buy the SSO mana/health food for when he is not available, but I am cheap. I use Inner Focus as soon as it is up, and have Icon of the Silver Crescent bound to my DPS spell. When I am LOM, I pop the shadowfiend on something, SW: P, wand until the pet dies, then a SW: D usually finishes it.

I'm not sure if Mind Blast is useful, but I've debated adding it to my macro.

 

Mags

While I wouldn't recommend it for hours of farming, I get more than enough damage from my healing gear to complete the daily quests relatively painlessly. Resists are more frequent that a full DPS set, but mana regen is much better (I rarely have to drink at all).

The changes to daily quests in 2.4 means that you can pretty much earn all the money you need for raiding costs *and* have a bit left over just by doing them. Your main decision will probably be: "Do I do every single daily quest I have time for, or do I pick and choose the quests for that are fastest to complete?" For instance on Quel'Danas, if I'm short on time, I'll usually skip collecting Mana Remnants or killing the Dawnstar reinforcements. The Ogri'la quests/mana cells/Sunfury attack plan quests sometimes get skipped because of the travel time.

 

Ellyh

For everyone complaining about using CoH constantly there is one thing you need to think about carefully. Different raids take damage in different patterns and have their members arranged differently in physical space. For example Constantis says that he finds CoH godly on council while raid healing. I'm also CoH spec and it is about the worst spell for me in this fight as our raid does not have groups closely bunched up. For me in this fight the best tool is flash heal 8, with a touch of binding tossed in for when I'm hurt as well.

Does this mean that I'm raid healing wrong and Constantius is right (or vice versa)? No it simply means that we are healing different raids who use different tactics. Last nights Council kill raid healing was me and another CoH priest and we kept the raid up fine with flash heal spam (resto shaman count was 0). Normally I would avoid this tactic like the plague for GH or CoH but given how we do this fight it is by far the most efficient and effective way of raid healing.

 

constantius

To confirm what Ellyh said, the reason I was able to use CoH so much on Council healing was our two melee groups that day. It's the *ideal* spell for topping up melee from incidental flamestrike / blizzard / consecrate damage, since they all tend to take the same ticks. It's also uber if you run warrior tank + 4 melee group like many guilds do, since you can GHeal the MT, and instantly following with 2 CoHs without deselecting your warrior and while still healing him for *something*. It's great in that situation.

If it's random dmg, as everyone spreads out, CoH is almost useless. In that situation, resto shamans own the healing, and the job (if possible) should be given to them.

For farming, in response to the posts above, I wear my healing gear. I have 950 dmg/heal in my healing gear, along with 250-odd Mp5. It'd be stupid to switch to some dmg/heal gear with 150 more dmg but -200 Mp5. Regen is key when farming, not overall damage.

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

 

Jayde

Yeah, pretty much. I have about 900-950 +dmg in my healing gear if I get another Priest to throw Imp DS. on me and like 350 Mp5... using Earring of Soulful Meditation between pulls for mana regen, never have to drink ever doing all of the Isle dailies.

Smite -> SWP -> MB -> Smite -> Smite -> SWD pretty much kills everything on the Isle--sometimes faster if you get crits. Can't say I've ever had any problems in healing gear, since Renew outheals pretty much all damage that any single mobs can throw at you.

 

pindle

Doing the same, don't even bother to swap anymore since I prefer regen above a little more dmg/hit. I do not have to drink AT ALL using that gear, sometimes I shield myself up if I pull 1 mob at 2-2,5k hp, SW:P, hit trinket and start wanding. If that's not enough, you have your fiend every 5 minutes (don't even use it much now that I think of it - could swap to little more dmg gear). Holy priest grinding isn't as bad really as it used to be

 

ionlylooklazy

The only damage gear I put on when farming is my trusty ol' Timbals focusing crystals.

Holy Fire -> Smite -> Smite -> MB -> SW: D/Wand/ or the mob is already dead.

 

Sinndir

From a clear last week, (One of our smoothest) here are my CoH% numbers and the highest % heal aside from CoH.

Naj'entus - CoH (77%), Binding Heal (14%)
Supremus - Flash (71%), CoH(5%)
Shade - Smite (29%), SWP (28%) - heals haha
Teron - CoH (76%), Flash (16%)
RoS - CoH (91%), Flash (3%)
Gurtogg - CoH (80%), Gheal (6%)
Mother - CoH (47%), Flash (35%)
Council - Gheal (65%), CoH (0%)
Illidan - CoH (46%), Flash (28%)

When it boils down to it. Healing is different from damage. The meters do not tell the story, the numbers don't tell the story. Generally a healer is successful if their assignment is not failing, if they are managing their own mana without demanding innervates, they themselves not dying (council for example).

Depending on your healing style and assignments over the course of raids will show different numbers (I am almost always on FFA/Raid healing with our two resto shammys and we generally keep people alive).

 

gasilia

Hi

I got a question concerning +heal and + regen

According to your guide one should aime for 2000 heal and 400 MP5 when entering BT/MH -
I am far off that (2000 healing yes, 500 Int, 500 spirit but only 200 MP5) -
Unless spending months in SSC and TK farming full T5 I dont see how I can reach those 400 MP5 ?
Or does your MP5 indicate mana regen OO5SR?

A second question concerns the importance of mana regen vs +heal.

Looking at the effectiveness of my healing, I would say I gain roughly 5% on healing done with 100 bonus +heal.
If I aim to replace +heal with + spirit to increase mana regen, I would need to gain 5% of the mana cost of the spell to have similar effectiveness or am I wrong?
This would translate to around 40MP5 ? But 50 spirit would earn me only 16 MP5.

Am I doing some mistake in my calculation, or is there a detail I missed?

 

• Kaacee

It seems you have two questions:

Is my gear good enough for T6? Yes, I have similar gear and it is has been fine through Bloodboil. I frequently put myself in the tank group, so no Shadowpriest, and I never had mana problems before the regen improvements in 2.4. Just make intelligent use of fiend/cc/inner focus, and mana potions.

Should you restack for more regen? No, your regen appears fine. Your experience might be slightly different than mine, since I am an IDS MT healer, and you are COH, but I think it is manageable. The alchemist stone gives you a nice advantage.

 

bigdave

What would you guys say is a enough +healing that you can stop gemming for it and focus more on spirit?

 

Starfire

Personally, I think you're asking the wrong question and should be asking: What is enough spirit and when can I start to focus more on +heal.

Then, we'd also need to know how frequently you get a shadow-priest and how reliable are your innervates.

 

Plea

I wouldn't argue about a point at which you would dump throughput and focus on regen istead. Spirit is powerful in every state I can think of, except when you don't need any more regen, which comes after you reach a certain state of regen and get familiar with the combats. When you are gearing up you are possibly learning new content and pretty much every combat is mana intensive for you, so you may start stacking spirit from the start.

 

bigdave

fair enough, just didn't know if i should put +10 spirit gems in the new badge pants and robes from ZA?

 

Abbazabba

In the original post [Cowl of Light's Purity] is compared to [Cowl of Absolution], but I'm wondering if [Cowl of Benevolence] is a better option for those who will not see Kil'jaeden for quite some time. The stats appear very comparable, with the benevolence hat edging out the absolution hat on stam, spirit, and +healing. Would it not be more prudent to allow the initial T6 helms go out to the holy paladins (considering the value of [Lightbringer Greathelm] as a possible best-in-slot piece, and the 2/4 set bonuses)?

This may prove to be mere speculation (my apologies for not being as versed on warlock set items), but I also ponder the sensibility of allowing warlocks to pick up [Hood of the Malefic] first as well, as the 4 piece set bonus is rather beastly.

 

Blasfemme

I picked this up and have been playing with it because I have had terrible luck getting other trinkets to drop (I can't count how many times I have killed Lurker - still no earring!), so I had nothing to lose. I have to say, I like it.

I play on a lag-infested Oceanic realm and found the instant heal separate to the GCD quite useful. Rage Winterchill comes to mind, where our healers have a rough time trying to get off a 1.5 second cast (extended to 2 seconds with latency) on our frostbolted squishies. The number of times I have "almost" landed a heal on these targets was enough to tear out my hair and swear at my Quartz castbar which was one-third red. At least now the other healer assigned to frostbolts has a better chance of landing a heal.

 

Sulwyn

Hi Constantius,

I briefly went over all 9 pages of the entire thread and just had a question on your raiding stat benchmarks. For example, on the Karazhan (beginning) one, you put down 1400+ Healing as a benchmark, I was wondering if all the stats that you wrote down were raid buffed or not. This is my first post, so thanks for getting my lazy ass to register for an account.

 

JonnyBPriest

Buffed.

 

Axaron

If you have [Cowl of the Avatar] the upgrades anywhere are slight. Personally, the only way I'm going to take T6 is if/when they become rot or if I'm desperate for the set bonus. However, if you're wearing Whitemend or something similar go for any of the above. It all really depends on set bonuses and your current gear makeup. In your position, I'd definitely take the Benevolence cowl should the opportunity arise -- doubly so if you're bound to have stiff competition on T6. Considering that 3 tokens drop from bosses now you shouldn't have a problem getting the t6 helm as well when that stuff goes on farm.

 

Drothan

First of all, thank you very much for compiling this guide. It has been invaluable over the past few months as I begin raiding for the first time and start making serious gear and talent choices.

I was wondering if it was worth it to get a high +dmg weapon to equip while using my Shadowfiend, in a similar manner to switching out for a high +spirit weapon for Innervates or O5SR time. I know +dmg affects Shadowfiend damage, and thus mana return, but I'm not sure by how much, so I'm curious if anyone knows if a +dmg weapon would make a significant difference.

 

Calyonis

I seem to be having trouble hitting these benchmarks for my current content level (3/4 & 5/6). Fully raid buffed I am just over 2100 +healing but only about 325 IFSR regen. I think at least part of this has to do with my guilds mentality of hitting 2k+ heal before worrying about any other stat (I'm working on changing that, trust me) but I'm wondering if I made some poor gemming choices. Would it be in my best interest to replace my [Purified Shadow Pearl] with [Sparkling Star of Elune] until [Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire] becomes available to me? The more I think about it the more it seems like a good idea, but I'm looking for some validation from some priests with more experience than the ones I usually talk to.

 

Xindan

First off, great thread. I enjoy reading this one whenever I can for the latest insights to my spec.

Anyway, I'm the sole IDS priest in a T6 guild, and I've been trying to find a good valuation system for spell haste. Most of the haste discussion here seems to concern CoH, which obviously isn't of much use to me (we have 2 CoH priests who handle that part of the raid.) I've seen that 1 haste = 1 heal, but with no real confirmation. My *unbuffed* stats are as follows:

2061 +heal
98 haste rating
565 mp5 OFSR
219 mp5 IFSR

Right now I'm considering Swiftheal Mantle replacing T5 for more haste, since post-2.4 regen doesn't seem to be a problem and that's the only thing Swiftheal is missing. However, I'd also like to know about spell haste in general. With the new regen model it seems that it's worth more to stack +heal and haste these days. Thanks in advance for any replies.

 

Incoherence

You're an IDS priest with 2061 healing, and presumably 5/5 SH and 3/5 EH, so your average GH7 will be
(2608.5 + (2061 * 0.977)) * 1.1 = 5084.
1% haste increases your throughput by 1%. It would take (50.84 / 0.977 / 1.1) = ~47.3 healing to get the same effect. So we can say that 1 haste rating is equivalent to (47.3 / 15.7) = about 3 healing. This number would be lower if you were using a lower rank, like GH3-4, but if you're doing that why not just uprank rather than bother with haste? (Additional caveat: Haste is nonlinear: going from a 2.475s cast to a 2.45s cast is a larger gain than going from a 2.5s cast to a 2.475s cast.)

But that doesn't really tell the whole story: 1 haste rating is equivalent to 3 healing in HPS but not in HPM, since 3 healing would also increase your HPM by a small amount. So, again, we're back to HPM vs. HPS. The general opinion I've seen here is twofold:
1. When valuing items with haste, don't actually value 1 haste rating = 3 healing, again because it has no effect on HPS. I haven't seen anyone try to do this in a systematic way rather than just fudging it to 1.5 or 2, but I may be wrong on that.
2. Don't bother with haste until you're regen capped or close to it. Until that point, the sheer magnitude of the 2.4 spirit buff means that you can just stack more spirit, cast more than you would otherwise, and have the same effect on HPS. At that point spell haste not only becomes more effective in raising HPS than +healing, but it also increases said regen cap.

 

Bendyr

Incoherence, you fail miserably at living up to your name. That was a great explanation.

However, can you clarify what you mean exactly by "regen capped"?