Cataclysm Holy Priest Compendium - Page 9

steveneaster · 12/27/10, 5:02 PM

Originally Posted by Glorah

I am an officer of an Alliance raiding guild guild on Kargath. First, I should start my thanking all the folks who post here. I have learned a lot from these forums.

My specific question concerns holy healing in Cataclysm. We've been gearing up to restart 25 man raiding, but we have done a few ten-mans to see what the fights are like. And what we're seeing is that our holy priest, who is an experienced raider through previous expansions, can't keep up with the other healers. And the differences are not small: the holy priest is doing on the order of 60% what our shaman and druid do.

Looking at World of Logs (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis) I see that priests are doing quite well thus far in Cataclysm. However, every priest in the top ranks seems to be Discipline.

What has been the experience of others so far? Can holy keep up?

In your link the top 2 were disc priests, but the next 5 were holy, so I don't see any dramatic evidence there that holy is inferior.

I am our guild's Holy Priest. We only run 10 mans, but I'm usually the top healer meterwise (though that matters very little). Part of it depends on assignment. I generally dole out bulk aoe healing to myself, since thats what we seem to excel at. For Tank healing disc seems much stronger, but their aoe weaker in trade off. My only complaint is that I do alot of heals, but find myself choking on mana on heavy damage fights unless we have every mana making buff up and running.

Assign him raid healing, let him stay in PoH chakra and win imo.

Diablo771 · 12/27/10, 5:46 PM

Haste Rating 750 Haste % 14.48

Hey, I was just wondering how 750 haste converts into 14.48% haste using the formula

85 128.057

I'm guessing that 128.057=1% haste in this formula, so 750 haste rating according to this would be 5.8567% haste using the formula haste rating/128.057=haste %. Maybe my math is wrong or there is a talent or something that is making it 14.48% haste, but I'm trying to figure out a good spirit to haste ratio to work out my gearing problems right now.

Thanks !

Glorah · 12/27/10, 7:23 PM

Originally Posted by steveneaster

In your link the top 2 were disc priests, but the next 5 were holy, so I don't see any dramatic evidence there that holy is inferior.

I am our guild's Holy Priest. We only run 10 mans, but I'm usually the top healer meterwise (though that matters very little). Part of it depends on assignment. I generally dole out bulk aoe healing to myself, since thats what we seem to excel at. For Tank healing disc seems much stronger, but their aoe weaker in trade off. My only complaint is that I do alot of heals, but find myself choking on mana on heavy damage fights unless we have every mana making buff up and running.

Assign him raid healing, let him stay in PoH chakra and win imo.

Clearly I am missing something obvious here.

You say priests 3 through 7 (Luthien, Ggpromize, Sultanah, Stolichnaya and Qelix) are all holy but when I look at the spells they're using I see Divine Aegis and Penance. What makes you think they're holy?

Elerion · 12/27/10, 7:27 PM

In the link you posted, priests 3 through 7 are Envy, Healcannon, Kandyce, Vernia, Mioyuna. All are holy.

You must have filtered by disc priests or something on your screen, since you're not seeing the holys.

Hrath · 12/27/10, 8:47 PM

Hey all, Happy Holidays!!

I was just wondering if the meta choice has been re-evaluated for Holy since the buff to Holy Concentration?

Sokaris84 · 12/28/10, 7:16 AM

Originally Posted by Glorah

I am an officer of an Alliance raiding guild guild on Kargath. First, I should start my thanking all the folks who post here. I have learned a lot from these forums.

My specific question concerns holy healing in Cataclysm. We've been gearing up to restart 25 man raiding, but we have done a few ten-mans to see what the fights are like. And what we're seeing is that our holy priest, who is an experienced raider through previous expansions, can't keep up with the other healers. And the differences are not small: the holy priest is doing on the order of 60% what our shaman and druid do.

Looking at World of Logs (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis) I see that priests are doing quite well thus far in Cataclysm. However, every priest in the top ranks seems to be Discipline.

What has been the experience of others so far? Can holy keep up?

We only do 10mans in my guild, usually with a holy paladin, resto druid and me as a holy priest. Alot of it depends on the fight, but for examples sake on Omnitron our Holy Paladin usually tops with the druid and I 5-10% back. On fights where there is more raid wide damage I will usually top with the paladin and druid about 5-10% back.

Holy priest are definately competitive, largely thanks to Lightwell and Prayer of Healing. At any rate it's very hard for us to speculate on what your Holy Priest is doing wrong if you don't have logs for us to look at. But let me say that my first few performances as a holy priest were quite poor until I learned a bit more about cataclysm healing, and I have been playing a priest since Vanilla! I guess what I'm trying to say is just because he is experienced doesn't mean that he's not possibly doing something wrong

steveneaster · 12/28/10, 1:03 PM

Originally Posted by Carnathagia

I updated my copy of the spreadsheet for Holy Concentration and ran the numbers for the PoH rotation. I made sure to normalize the divisors, so the 2 columns should be comparable now.

Stat Weightings	Burst	Sustained
Intellect	1.36	5.76
Spirit		7.27
Spell Power	1.18	1.18
Critical	0.45	0.45
Haste	0.97
Mastery	1.05	1.06

Carnathagia: How are you normalizing these? I've been computing values with 10 of each stat and outputing them to a table I added for comparison, but my values are quite a bit different than yours. For instance, my int is showing as my highest sustained stat (even with HC change), not spirit. I'm fairly spreadsheet saavy, but not as good with statistics. Can you shed some light here?

Carnathagia · 12/28/10, 6:19 PM

Originally Posted by steveneaster

Carnathagia: How are you normalizing these?

The Stat Weightings outputs in C25:D30 divide the additional throughput by the values in R3 and S3. To get the sustained and burst stat weightings to be equivalent, the S3 value needs to be R3 * Time_To_Heal.
Also, Int will be the highest sustained throughput with less than 2 Mana Tides, or for shorter fights. The value of Spirit:Intellect increases with fight length. I'm sorry I've been lazy with updating the spreadsheet since Cataclysm hit live (I have several characters to level and gear!), I'll get on it as soon as possible.

teiglin · 12/28/10, 6:58 PM

Originally Posted by Diablo771

Hey, I was just wondering how 750 haste converts into 14.48% haste using the formula

I'm guessing that 128.057=1% haste in this formula, so 750 haste rating according to this would be 5.8567% haste using the formula haste rating/128.057=haste %. Maybe my math is wrong or there is a talent or something that is making it 14.48% haste, but I'm trying to figure out a good spirit to haste ratio to work out my gearing problems right now.

Thanks !

Not sure exactly where you're looking, but you did convert 750 haste rating correctly to 5.86% character sheet haste. The step you're missing is haste from additional buffs, presumably 3% from Darkness and the raid 5% haste buff from shadow priest/moonkin/shaman. Adding those in gives you 14.48% total haste at 750 haste rating.

Hybred · 12/29/10, 2:58 AM

Originally Posted by Glorah

I am an officer of an Alliance raiding guild guild on Kargath. First, I should start my thanking all the folks who post here. I have learned a lot from these forums.

My specific question concerns holy healing in Cataclysm. We've been gearing up to restart 25 man raiding, but we have done a few ten-mans to see what the fights are like. And what we're seeing is that our holy priest, who is an experienced raider through previous expansions, can't keep up with the other healers. And the differences are not small: the holy priest is doing on the order of 60% what our shaman and druid do.

Looking at World of Logs (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis) I see that priests are doing quite well thus far in Cataclysm. However, every priest in the top ranks seems to be Discipline.

What has been the experience of others so far? Can holy keep up?

I have been destroying our healing meters as Holy. Just tonight I nearly hit #1 World for healing on Halfus 25. If I hadn't of passed gear off to our healers who needed it a bit more I would have easily hit #1. AoE fights like Halfus, Cho'gall and Maloriak are where we dominate. Our single target healing is probably the most consistent as well thanks to Serenity and the refreshing Renews. I know the flavor is to gear for 12.5% haste but I've been putting in a balance and trying to avoid crit at all possible as it does nothing for us other than keep Inspiration up. However even with my relatively low crit rate (15%~) I'm seeing Serenity crit constantly. Not to mention the fact that it increases critical chance itself. So "maintaining" inspiration is a non-issue.

So if your Holy Priest is doing poorly more than likely he needs to spend a bit of time learning the fights like the back of his hand. As a Priest he should know when the damage is coming, and around how much and prepare for it properly. Also, abuse the hell out of Lightwell.

Link to our WoL: World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Dok · 12/29/10, 5:22 AM

I would like your opinion on the talents Divine Touch (10% insta renew heal) and Rapid Renewal (1sec gcd on Renew) for a raiding environement.

I basically like the entire holy tree and do run out of talent points. Looking over my last few raids, the instant heal from Divine Touch is an average of 0.4% of my total effective healing. I never spam renews on the raid so see no reason to put points in Rapid Renewal. I do however get a fair amount of effective healing by keeping renew up on the tanks so improved Renew and even the glyph get a good amount of usage and i wouldnt take those out.

Im pretty sure you can agrue taking those talents over things like SoL or DP but i just enjoy those talents, theyre fun imo and pretty usefull aswell as stated above. Im aware that renew is a very effective heal and those talents make it even better but i hardly see any usage of it except on the tank (refreshes) and every now and then on a random raid member. Raid healing with PoH/PoM is just a lot more effective.

It leaves me with this talent build for the holy tree, only SoR is something i can live without but youre forced to put a point in it to get higher in the tree.
Holy build

Your opinion is greatly appreciated.

Elerion · 12/29/10, 6:41 AM

You are correct. Many of us have removed Divine Touch and Rapid Renewal from our specs after seeing how Cata dungeons and raids work in practice. With PoH being as strong as it is, there are very few reasons for a Holy priest to spread Renews around. The majority of Renew heals will be from Chakra refreshes.

Hegen · 12/29/10, 8:34 AM

Originally Posted by Elerion

With PoH being as strong as it is, there are very few reasons for a Holy priest to spread Renews around.

Yes, and the realization that Renew is basically a tank healing feature for holy now has further implications. Things like the 12.5% haste gearing suggestion are no longer valid.

Feralminded · 12/29/10, 10:02 AM

Originally Posted by Elerion

You are correct. Many of us have removed Divine Touch and Rapid Renewal from our specs after seeing how Cata dungeons and raids work in practice. With PoH being as strong as it is, there are very few reasons for a Holy priest to spread Renews around. The majority of Renew heals will be from Chakra refreshes.

I for one still use renew a fair amount even in Sanctuary in 25s. Effectively what happens is I splash a couple groups with PoH and then hit low stragglers with a quick renew (Sanctuary buffs a 5 tick renew to fairly epic HPM levels). This also cuts down on overhealing that typically comes from double tapping a group with PoH (so much healing comes from the double HoTs following PoH its VERY easy to overheal with it) or that comes from other healer's AoE heals cutting off my HoTs. I still don't renew a ton but I'd say in situations like Halfus or Magmaw for every 2 PoHs I dish out there's a renew in there somewhere. It's also hands down your most efficient single target heal when you are in sanctuary (which is during many of these raid encounters) so don't be afraid to use it in those situations, you're wasting mana casting a heal or greater heal. Of course you aren't healing alone and you have to learn how your other healers will react to similar situations ... the danger of Hots is always that someone else will patch up the person and waste your mana.

I will agree though that rapid renewal is crap. I haven't had that one for a while.

Elerion · 12/29/10, 3:43 PM

I'd be interested in seeing those logs and seeing if Renew actually ends up being good HPM. Like you say, the danger of HoTs in raids is always that other people often end up patching the person. I don't doubt that it can be effective if you have every healer in your raid perfectly trained to watch for renews and act accordingly, but I have trouble seeing it in practice.