Priest Healing Discussion: Cataclysm - Page 10

Arphastas · 06/26/11, 11:36 AM

Anyone else notice that there is a grand total of 3 pieces of cloth gear with spirit on them in firelands? 2 are crafted and the other is random enchantment off rag...

♦ arison · 06/26/11, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by Sissylala

Thanks for keeping this updated, it's a great spreadsheet. There is a few bugs in 1.7 in the Talents and Buffs tab

Cannot put 2 points in Divine Touch or Holy Concentration, you can also put two points into Lightwell.

Odd, wonder how that happened. At any rate, a rather serious bug. Here's 1.7.1, which should fix that.

Cataclysm Healing Priest Theorycrafting Spreadsheet v 1.7.1.xls

Ana · 06/26/11, 4:43 PM

Originally Posted by Arphastas

Anyone else notice that there is a grand total of 3 pieces of cloth gear with spirit on them in firelands? 2 are crafted and the other is random enchantment off rag...

I'm guessing this is their solution to providing cloth drops on a limited number of bosses to cover all priests/locks/mages. Those same pieces also do not have hit, so I guess it's "generic" cloth drops.

♦ arison · 06/26/11, 5:40 PM

There is really nothing magical or confusing about it; basically it is pretty much assumed priests will be 4/5 or 5/5 tier. There are basically no other choices:

Cloth Armor - Items - World of Warcraft (ptr)

There are spirit options in every cloth slot except waist (at 391, you lose spirit feet). The only thing missing compared to T11 are spirit off-set pieces. Fewer bosses mean fewer distinct items; this isn't a surprise.

You will be able to have as much or as little spirit as you wish. The Int jump is so huge, though, and some trinkets are so good, that regen will not be nearly be as big a concern as it was in T11.

Caltiom · 06/27/11, 1:28 PM

For people looking at an easy way to calculate personal hps, mana usage, scale factors and more, feel free to use simulationcraft - World of Warcraft DPS Simulator - Google Project Hosting . GUI works as well as the CLI.

All the 4.2 changes, including Tier12 set bonuses are included.

You might have to look at the documentation on how to tweak various things ( infinite mana, combat length, modifying lag, etc.).

If there are any questions or suggestions, feel free to send me a PM or open an issue over at simulationcraft. We are always looking for more developers too, paladin and shaman heal are not yet fully implemented.

Edit: As an inspiration on how to setup a profile: Simulationcraft Results

Answer to napsilan: Yes, finite profiles have finite mana ( default ), the others have infinite_mana=1 activated. But the resource graphs don't show the negative part yet, unfortunately.

napsilan · 06/28/11, 11:45 AM

What do the "Finite" profiles mean? The profiles looks the same except for the title. Infinite mana vs mana constrained?

napsilan · 06/30/11, 4:02 PM

Any thoughts on which spec is best for each fight so far?

Shannox: I think disc is better for rageface and tank healing. AOE isn't that bad.
Beth'tilac: Any aoe here is pulsing so PoH DA will be pretty much always used, and barrier is nice to have in p2. I think disc again.
Rhyolith: Again the raid damage here seems pretty constant so PoH DA wouldn't be wasted much. Shield can also save people hit by the lava streams. Holy may have more raw throughput though.
Alysrazor: I really don't know. Barrier is very nice for the re-ignite phase, but shields might be wasted. I did this as holy, and the phases line up with chakra pretty well.
Baleroc: Vital flame doesn't buff shields, so my gut reaction is holy. HW:Serenity wasn't triggering Vital Flame or Vital Spark, though, which was very annoying. Maybe disc's direct healing would still be better? Seems to be a pally fight though.
Fandrel: Haven't done this yet but I'm going to guess disc for barrier and faster snap healing. Concentration won't buff shields on heroic, but I'm not sure if healers are supposed to worry about it, anyway.
Ragnaros: Haven't done this yet either. Probably holy since the raid damage comes in bursts? Shield sprint may be useful for meteors.

artiq · 06/30/11, 6:29 PM

Originally Posted by napsilan

Any thoughts on which spec is best for each fight so far?

Shannox: I think disc is better for rageface and tank healing. AOE isn't that bad.
Beth'tilac: Any aoe here is pulsing so PoH DA will be pretty much always used, and barrier is nice to have in p2. I think disc again.
Rhyolith: Again the raid damage here seems pretty constant so PoH DA wouldn't be wasted much. Shield can also save people hit by the lava streams. Holy may have more raw throughput though.
Alysrazor: I really don't know. Barrier is very nice for the re-ignite phase, but shields might be wasted. I did this as holy, and the phases line up with chakra pretty well.
Baleroc: Vital flame doesn't buff shields, so my gut reaction is holy. HW:Serenity wasn't triggering Vital Flame or Vital Spark, though, which was very annoying. Maybe disc's direct healing would still be better? Seems to be a pally fight though.
Fandrel: Haven't done this yet but I'm going to guess disc for barrier and faster snap healing. Concentration won't buff shields on heroic, but I'm not sure if healers are supposed to worry about it, anyway.
Ragnaros: Haven't done this yet either. Probably holy since the raid damage comes in bursts? Shield sprint may be useful for meteors.

Alysrazor: Feels like holy could put out much more throughput in phase 2 due to no overheal and constant raid damage. In phase 1 it is just tanks taking damage really and occassional casts from the adds on random raid members. Chakra:Serenity seems to work nice here. I guess both specs handle phase 1 nicely. B&S might be good on the tornado things but maybe not, haven't tried it yet.

Baleroc: Penance doesn't give Vital Spark buff from what I've read so I guess disc is really bad on Baleroc.

Vintoran · 07/01/11, 3:37 AM

Quite the contrary, Penance gives you 3 stacks of Vital Spark: our kill yesterday (the marked players are the tanks and I didn't really exploit it, since I was busy try to organize the healers on TS)

Chardonnay · 07/01/11, 7:13 AM

Originally Posted by Vintoran

Quite the contrary, Penance gives you 3 stacks of Vital Spark

I confirm this, also WoL shows that shields DO get buffed by Vital. I got 51K shields with a 17 spark stack.
The only thing that is limiting for disc here is the DA ceiling (40% of caster's maxhp). Even that doesn't look like a big issue.

A question: did anyone try to remove Vital Flame by rightclicking it (or by cancelaura macro)? Will it revert to the spark stack? That would open a nice opportunity to gain sparks when there is no tank damage but someone has a high torment stack.

MainIdentity · 07/01/11, 10:33 AM

Originally Posted by napsilan

Any thoughts on which spec is best for each fight so far?

Shannox: I think disc is better for rageface and tank healing. AOE isn't that bad.
Beth'tilac: Any aoe here is pulsing so PoH DA will be pretty much always used, and barrier is nice to have in p2. I think disc again.
Rhyolith: Again the raid damage here seems pretty constant so PoH DA wouldn't be wasted much. Shield can also save people hit by the lava streams. Holy may have more raw throughput though.
Alysrazor: I really don't know. Barrier is very nice for the re-ignite phase, but shields might be wasted. I did this as holy, and the phases line up with chakra pretty well.
Baleroc: Vital flame doesn't buff shields, so my gut reaction is holy. HW:Serenity wasn't triggering Vital Flame or Vital Spark, though, which was very annoying. Maybe disc's direct healing would still be better? Seems to be a pally fight though.
Fandrel: Haven't done this yet but I'm going to guess disc for barrier and faster snap healing. Concentration won't buff shields on heroic, but I'm not sure if healers are supposed to worry about it, anyway.
Ragnaros: Haven't done this yet either. Probably holy since the raid damage comes in bursts? Shield sprint may be useful for meteors.

I dont think u can really choose one specc above the other. It's more a question about 10/25 man and about the classes
As far as i can say, there are a lot of soft enrage bosses which require incredible amounts of ae healing (especially when we think about hcs). I changed my main specc from diszi to holy because of this. For example our Fandral kill (World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis). I did the ae stuff, the pally the tanks which turned out to work properly. At least with our setup i think disc would have caused more problems. So imo Beth'tilac, Rhyolith and Fandral seem to favour Holy because of the soft enrages and the aoe healing - you can heal a little more and that will be necessary when u try these bosses on heroic (thats what i am thinking after doing those fights on normal).

UnholY_Prince · 07/02/11, 1:35 AM

Regarding Baleroc, you can actually use Serenity not proccing Vital Flame to your advantage to help keep Inspiration and tank heal whlie you're building up stacks. Renew won't trigger either, and you can roll a souped up Renew by refreshing it just before Vital Flame drops off to keep ticking while you're building up Spark stacks again.

I did every fight in 10m as Holy this week. I felt that Disc would have been very useful on Fandrel for Barrier during the initial Scorpion Phase where you're trying to drag it out. Otherwise I felt Holy was better in every other fight due to flexibility of tank and raid healing in 10m setting. Sprint Shields are also very useful on Rag P3.

SpiritOfRedemption · 07/03/11, 10:37 PM

Some points on Baleroc:

As far as I could see, Vital Flame does buff shields. Even as Holy Priest I tossed a shield on our Decimation Blade tank, and it worked wonders. Power Word: Shield has the added bonus that it does not trigger Vital Flame, so it is very useful when you are about to switch healing targets and want to toss that last bit of healing.
I'm not certain about Holy Word: Serenity, I was under the impression that it does trigger Vital Spark, but I could have been wrong. I'll have to test that next week. It does not trigger Vital Flame, however.

So far I have done 4/7 in Firelands, most of those on 25, all in Holy spec. Seems very doable, I never felt the need to grab my Discipline offspec even once. Especially when several bosses have a phase 2 "I'm going to burst you every few seconds" where Holy really shines.

Szeretlek · 07/04/11, 1:03 AM

I closed 7/7 and made some conclusions (all of them about normal mode ofc):

Shannox: Disc only - because PWS save ppl from that annoyning dog. AoE in this fight rather weak and holy advantage in througoutput fully neglected by PI+Archangel combo. (11.3k hps. No place in WoL. crap =( )

Bethilac: Disc again - maybe because I healed tank and couple of DPS on the web (there is rather strong pulsing aoe and tank damage is high, spamming PoH and PWS+Penance+FH on tank is a need) and 2nd phase of the fight extremly awesome for Disc. No overheal from DA. You just stay and spam PoH. (18.4k hps. 39 place in WoL)

Stone Giant: Holy - because its hardly predict with PWS who will take damage (except from tank ofc), PoH is not cool (random ppl get shots), but CoH and PoM and Serendipity GH makes 1st phase of this fight. Renew also is good because of heavy movement (16.8k hps, 39 place in WoL)

Alysrazor: Disc. Holy fire/Smite on that big bird hardly help my raid kill them before tornade phase (I deal 1.5kk damage to them each phase). And attonement gain good hps on tank. AoE phase is also awesome for Disc because of pulsing AoE (see Bethilac). (9.7k hps, 43 place in WoL)

Baleroc: I was resspeced in SP at this fight. (27.3k dps, 23 place in WoL)

Majordomo: Disc - because of DA at scorpion phase. You can stack it heavy and it is more mana efficient then spam PWS. (19.2k hps 5th place in WoL)

Ragnaros: Holy or Disc. Holy give more hps, but Disc give more options. PWS save ppl in Phase 2 aoe (flaming seeds or someting) who get shot by 2 or more seeds and may die from their explosions. PS is good tank save when all healers run from seeds to new raid spot and tank dont get any Slow Big Heal. Holy just hit with CoH and PoM harder and get more hps. I finish that fight with crappy 6.8k hps but saved many lives with PWS and even more lives with bouncing balls in p3 with Smites =P

Aerina · 07/04/11, 9:02 PM

Just cleared it 7/7 being disc all the time. Especially on Majordomo I was facerolling at 30k hps in scorpion phase. Furthermore shields are very effective to save people and prevent damage overall (alot is predictable).

Also getting higher and higher rapture procs with the increase of intellect on the new gear.