Cataclysm Holy Priest Compendium - Page 3

Bohemienne · 12/15/10, 4:37 PM

Originally Posted by Carnathagia

Holy's niche is that we are the most efficient Multi-target healers. Prayer of Mending, Prayer of Healing, and Lightwell are arguably the best counters to the raid wide damage prevalent in many fights.

Here's a Halfus Wyrmbreaker 10-man normal from last night.

...

Thank you, that was quite helpful. I'd been mortified at the thought of dropping more than a single PoH in any lengthy span due to the high mana cost. Are you queuing it up with Flash/Bind/SoL procs, or just once Chakra: Sanctuary is active, PoH -> CoH -> regen...... PoH -> refresh PoM -> regen..... something to that effect?

Carnathagia · 12/15/10, 5:27 PM

Originally Posted by Bohemienne

Are you queuing it up with Flash/Bind/SoL procs, or just once Chakra: Sanctuary is active, PoH -> CoH -> regen...... PoH -> refresh PoM -> regen..... something to that effect?

In these two fights, the idea was to activate PoH Chakra (I'm pretty sure I'm not keeping perfect uptime on it in these attempts) with Prayer of Mending at the beginning of the fight while using it on cooldown, and use PoH when the 'big boom' hits. There really wasn't need to waste mana on a Flash Heal to cast it faster; there is usually plenty of time between damage waves so casting speed wasn't too important. Recovering that HP deficit efficiently is much more important. CoH was used when I felt like I had the mana to spare for it (it's still fairly efficient), or I needed to move and get people out of a low danger zone, or when an entire group wasn't missing HP. I used Guardian Spirit whenever the tank gave me a heart attack, and the occasional Greater Heal on 1 very low raid member. Lightwell was used prior to the pull, and on cooldown after that. I also tried to use Divine Hymn every fight, and not save it for a rainy day. The rest of the time I avoided damage and conserved mana.

Jeffonious · 12/15/10, 5:36 PM

Originally Posted by KamPa

It might be just me, but it appears that in-combat regen has gone up - perhaps some sort of Holy Concentration buff? It's barely lower than OOC regen for me. 3363/3623 makes it 90% spirit regen. If this is intended, it would make Spirit quite a bit better. Not sure about Disc.

Granted, blues did post about Priest mana issues, so maybe...

I noticed this late last night as well. I have been unable to find an official confirmation but my in-combat regen has gone up noticeably. Seems odd that they would stealth buff us for something that many priest have been vocally complaining about.

kcomfort001 · 12/15/10, 8:44 PM

As a holy priest I feel these two talent points could be spent better.

Surge of light technically happens once every 17 heals, or smite, I rarely smite in holy like I would in discipline.. last night I sat at the priest trainer and casted 60 consecutive heals on myself to see how much this actually procs at 60 heals and two procs I felt it wasn't worth the two points, its just such a low probability of going off I can't justify taking the two points.

Again i'm sure people could stand around and cast 60 heals and have it proc more, but by the time we're geared up for raids I think mana will be less of an issue and the insta mana free flash heal won't even be something you're thinking about.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Might be a better build, though twin disciplines is subject to debate as to whether its actually worth taking, or you could pick up desperate prayer, and two points into the fade, even though I am not sure that 30 second reduced cooldown on this is worth the two points either

This is just my opinion personally I specc'd more like this

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

7/31/3

but I haven't had enough time to compare the differences... personally I am an old disc healer, and while my bubble absorbs currently about 2000 points of dmg less spec'd disc glyphed with the heal it will trigger echo of light, while this doesn't heal for much it may just buy the time you need to recover.. which I find extremely useful while using heal / serenity chakra using bubble heal and renew as a holy priest occasionally filling in with the PoM or Circle of Healing

Just my two cents, otherwise very informative and gave me a great baseline for my spec.

Damän · 12/15/10, 9:12 PM

So well you stated that we should get as much Int as possible? (I am new to the Healer-business) Wouldnt we get more benefit from more Spirit? I mean in simple words we would get a longer/deeper breath or am I on the wrong track? Or is it just like get as much Int as possible by having a minimum amount of Spirit like xxx ?

Namika · 12/15/10, 10:05 PM

Originally Posted by Damän

So well you stated that we should get as much Int as possible? (I am new to the Healer-business) Wouldnt we get more benefit from more Spirit? I mean in simple words we would get a longer/deeper breath or am I on the wrong track? Or is it just like get as much Int as possible by having a minimum amount of Spirit like xxx ?

In a perfect world we would stack spirit to death.

Scratch that, in a perfect world we wouldn't have to because we would have regen.

The most important thing to remember is that if you have a small mana pool, you get less casts. Intellect increases your mana pool as well as your spell power, so your fewer casts will be less powerful overall.
(completely arbitrary numbers)

If you have 10k mana you can heal 2-4 times depending on the heal.
If you have 60k mana you can heal 6 times that AND they will be stronger.

If you have 10k mana, you cast 2-4 spells and then rely on your spirit to stack your mana back up.
If you have 60k mana, you have more to Start with, so you are not oom immediately and waiting on spirit. It can regen your mana in the background while you work with what you have initially. It extends the life of what you have so you can still cast while regen'ing.

Also the base regeneration for priests is a function of both spirit and intellect.

Sorry for the overly simplified answer, my boyfriend is toe-tapping (I'm making myself late for our date). hope this helps

Carnathagia · 12/15/10, 11:21 PM

Originally Posted by Damän

So well you stated that we should get as much Int as possible? (I am new to the Healer-business) Wouldnt we get more benefit from more Spirit? I mean in simple words we would get a longer/deeper breath or am I on the wrong track? Or is it just like get as much Int as possible by having a minimum amount of Spirit like xxx ?

Since Intellect is static on gear, and not reforgeable, the only time you have the choice between Intellect and Spirit is in your gemming. Gemming Purified (Intellect/Spirit) in blue gems is usually worth it for an Intellect or Spirit bonus, but Intellect is the superior stat since it gives Spellpower and slightly less regen than Spirit, assuming you have a Mana Tide Totem in your group.

Imua · 12/15/10, 11:31 PM

Just to confirm the holy priest mana regen buff:

Holy Concentration's mana regeneration component has been increased from 10/20% to 20/40%.

Cataclysm Hotfixes

Yeah, so that plus meditation should in combat at 90% of non-combat regen.

Oh, and just for completeness' sake:

Rapture's mana regeneration component has been increased from 1.5/2/2.5 to 2/4/6%.

Loqua · 12/16/10, 3:52 AM

I don't know how this slipped everyone's notice, but there is actually an [Formula: Enchant Gloves - Greater Mastery] which would probably be better for gloves than either 50 mastery or 50 haste. Yeah, the Maelstrom Crystal cost may be hefty this early into the expansion, but its definitely an option.

---

What are your opinions on Surge of Light? I picked it up for early heroics because of the mana issues I was having, but now, especially with the increased regen that we were so kindly given, I'm not sure how much it's really worth it.

Elerion · 12/16/10, 4:55 AM

According to my napkin math, Surge of Light is very valuable as long as we're still using Heal as our bread&butter filler spell.

At 6% proc chance, you expect a Surge every 17 Heal casts. If we assume one Heal cast per 5 second period on average, this will be once every 85 seconds. The mana value of a Surge proc is roughly:
a) one Flash Heal with no crit: 20590 * 0.28 / (1+0.18/2) = 5289 mana
plus
b) 10% mana reduction on a GHeal (assuming 2/2 Serendipity): 20590 * 0.27 * 0.10 = 556 mana
Sum mana value of a Surge proc is: 5825 mana

At one proc per 85 seconds, this is 344mp5, or 172mp5 per talent point. This is almost 3 times as strong as Veiled Shadows (62.5mp5 per talent point).

That said, at some point our mana regen (and HPS requirements) will be so high that Heal will be degraded to something you only cast to keep Chakra going. In some raid phases, this is already true. This will make the value of Surge of Light plummet. If my napkin math above is correct, Surge of Light will be less valuable than Veiled Shadows once you're casting less than 1 Heal per 15 second period.

wwraver · 12/16/10, 6:03 AM

Speaking from a strictly heroic point of view, I find Rapid Renewal to be a complete waste. Yes, it's only one talent point, but I never find myself Renew blanketing a group of five. If there's a lot of AoE, I resort to CoH and PoH, along with the Lightwell.

I have a question regarding Divine Touch though... does that talent have some kind of "hidden" perk to it? Like it would happen every time you reset Renew with Heal chakra? Otherwise I can't see why it's worth taking this talent for Heroic purposes.

Alv!ra · 12/16/10, 6:40 AM

Originally Posted by Elerion

At one proc per 85 seconds, this is 344mp5, or 172mp5 per talent point. This is almost 3 times as strong as Veiled Shadows (62.5mp5 per talent point).

If the free FH saves mana corresponding to that of a Flash Heal, you would have to assume that if SoL had not procced, you would still have casted a regular FH.

I tried SoL for a while in my disc build, but specced out of it again as I find it to many times proc where I didn't really need it - I would be fine just regularly healing by Heal or Gheal. The duration and procchance of SoL is now so low that you can't just let it sit there till someone needs an urgent heal; you have to spend it pretty fast. This clearly limits the use of it, and worse still, this constricting mechanic is built into the talent itself: If you're spamming Heal, you're most likely in a mana-conservation phase of an encounter, so what are the chances you would need to cast a FH then?

I realise there are some additional synergies for holy that probably warrant taking SoL, but in itself (as in, a rare mana-free, instant cast), it's not that awesome any more.

Elerion · 12/16/10, 7:13 AM

Fair point, I guess you could declare GHeal as the alternative cost rather than Flash Heal (Heal is not a fair alternative since the HPCT is so much lower), which would lower the value of the talent by 25%. That still puts it at 129mp5 per talent point if you cast Heal once per 5 seconds. It does move the break point versus Veiled Shadows to one Heal cast per 10 seconds. If you're casting Heal less frequently than that, Veiled Shadows is better.

As for not having a use for the proc, I'd argue that aside from some unique encounters: If everyone in your raid is topped off the majority of the time, you're not really having mana problems. That's from a Holy perspective, in the Holy thread.

It is different for Disc. Heal is no more efficient than GHeal for Disc, thus Heal should only be used in exactly those rare occasions: When everyone is topped off. That reduces the frequency of Heal a lot, and causes the issue you mention where the only times you're casting it is when you don't really need to heal that badly anyway.

Axhel · 12/16/10, 9:07 AM

Originally Posted by Elerion

According to my napkin math, Surge of Light is very valuable as long as we're still using Heal as our bread&butter filler spell.

At 6% proc chance, you expect a Surge every 17 Heal casts. If we assume one Heal cast per 5 second period on average, this will be once every 85 seconds. The mana value of a Surge proc is roughly:
a) one Flash Heal with no crit: 20590 * 0.28 / (1+0.18/2) = 5289 mana
plus
b) 10% mana reduction on a GHeal (assuming 2/2 Serendipity): 20590 * 0.27 * 0.10 = 556 mana
Sum mana value of a Surge proc is: 5825 mana

At one proc per 85 seconds, this is 344mp5, or 172mp5 per talent point. This is almost 3 times as strong as Veiled Shadows (62.5mp5 per talent point).

That said, at some point our mana regen (and HPS requirements) will be so high that Heal will be degraded to something you only cast to keep Chakra going. In some raid phases, this is already true. This will make the value of Surge of Light plummet. If my napkin math above is correct, Surge of Light will be less valuable than Veiled Shadows once you're casting less than 1 Heal per 15 second period.

You're banking on the fact that you'll get the opportunity to use your Surge of Light proc every time it occurs. Let's say it procs during a long phase change, during a period of time where players need no healing what-so-ever, or at the end of a trash pull. Then its benefit drops to 0 mp5. Always keep in mind that this talent is based on probability and situation. After running Heroic Deadmines last night, I can recall only using SoL twice when it was absolutely necessary (mostly because GHeal is dominating my casts) throughout the entire instance. Right now, for me 3% haste outweighs SoL by a mile.

Elerion · 12/16/10, 10:00 AM

Surge procs off heals. The only way it will proc during a period where "players need no healing whatsoever" is if it procs off the final heal you cast before/during that period. Statistically speaking, that will occur (less than) 6% of the time.

Like any ability that relies on you casting spells to provide a benefit (Like Mental Agility), its effect drops to zero when there's nothing to do. Such occasions are the exception, not the norm.

If GHeal is dominating your casts to the extent that you are not casting at least one Heal every 10 seconds on average, Surge is worse than Veiled Shadows. I already covered that above.

I have never suggested dropping 3% haste to get it. Those talents are neither comparable nor mutually exclusive.