Fixed, just to prevent any confusion for priests new to this thread and/or priesting in general.

Ooops, it was late at night hehe.

I'll be editing that!

Thanks for spotting it.

Also to add with what spec's they should be here are what I have the priests in our guild do:

(Note: Some flavour talents depending on what you prefer)

Imp. DS spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

20/41 CoH Spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

14/47 CoH Spec:
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I find the only difference between the 20/41 spec and the 14/47 spec is Mental Agility (10% instant cast redux. vs. 10% spell warding) and in the terms of raid healing I find that Mental Agility wins out all the time.

Again, personal preference.

Why don't you have improved Renew in your CoH spec Sinndir? Even when I'm cross-healing I usually manage to keep renew up on whoever's tanking.

Also, I don't really understand why so many CoH priests pick up Inspiration. Given that our primary utility is cross-healing, the armor doesn't seem like it will actually benefit the casters and melee that I am generally healing, although I guess if you make sure to hit up your tank group every now and then to keep the buff up, it could be worth it. Am I missing something?

I also usually skip Holy Concentration in a CoH build.

I guess that's due to many CoH priests fulfilling more than one role in more than one raid. Running ZA for bears for example can be enough reason to take Inspiration.

As for Holy Concentration, I too have noticed that I can't really use the free cast all that often when crosshealing. Since currently I am only running ZA, I looked through a few combat logs and found I waste almost half the free casts in ZA during a bear run, which made me invest the points elsewhere.

There's plenty of encounters where we will find ourselves MT healing, where inspiration is of tremendous benefit. Specifically, I'm thinking of Brutallus.

Well I'll try to answer as best I can.

Over four years of raiding, I have found that renew is much more of a 5-man heroic (I'm the only healer) type spell. In raids, sure I always have it on the tank, even on some warlocks for tapping, etc. However, in the scheme of things if someone is missing 2k health and I renew them, chances are a chain heal bounce (which I cannot control) will top them up effectively making my renew cast useless.

As for inspiration, as a CoH priest I am consistently on raid healing and FFA healing, when the tank needs a heal I'll flash, or say on Mother Sharaz I CoH the three tanks (MT/2 Lash soakers) and inspiration procs there. The 25% armor is great for mitigation.

Lastly I keep clearcasting because if I do get a clear casting proc, I always follow it by an inner focus and usually can get 1 if not two full ticks of full regen (meaning about 1500 mana if not more). Also as soon as a clear cast procs I pop my bangle for the extra spirit for even more regen.

I also find I use binding heal quit a lot, may as well heal two people for the speed of one! And now that it procs off of binding heal that is just win.

I would say this is an understatement. Skipping MA with a CoH build is pretty much a guarantee you will go OOM trying to keep up. Unless, of course, your guild is nice enough to give you a full time mana battery. More and more fights we do, our guild seems to favor giving the shadow priests to the DPS.

Sinndir - Thank you for the well written post. I really appreciate the layout you presented and numbers/equations were easy to follow and understand. I think your explanation as to how much haste you would need to obtain a certain GCD makes the most sense for me and was the best way for me to put this into perspective. I do question a few of your gem choices, which I will point out below. Other than wanting to discuss a bit further the gem slot bonuses and choices in red slots, I think this was a very helpful post. Thank you.

Seeing as you hit 423 with your setup, I would think that you would look to balance out a few more items to bring you down around 392. Particularly, certain items you chose not to take advantage of the bonus. If you have time, please tell me why you chose [Quick Lionseye] over a gem that would give you the bonus.

In the previously Holy Priest Theorycrafting thread, someone once broke out a great explanation of socket bonus per gem and how to value a socket bonus. For example the bracers below require one gem to get 2 spirit, but the weapon below requires 3 gems to get 4 spirit. Therefore, you'd probably want to maintain a socket bonus (if you value it...which I value spirit pretty highly), that requires less gems to meet it.

Cloak: [Shroud of the Highborne]
I'd pick up the [Shroud of the Highborne] but I'm not sure I value it over [Shroud of Forgiveness].

Bracer: [Cuffs of Absolution]
The socket bonus is 2 spirit, so 22 healing and 2 spirit at the cost of 10 haste.

Weapon: Golden Staff of the Sin'dorei - http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/ptr...oldenstaff.jpg
You add 1 haste gem in the red socket. Since you've already broken the socket bonus, why not make these all haste at that point? This will give you room to make socket bonuses in other slots.

Wand: [Wand of Cleansing Light]
The socket bonus is 2 spirit, so 22 healing and 2 spirit at the cost of 10 haste.

Trinket: [Battlemaster's Alacrity]
I don't really like this trinket at all, and would probably opt to put 3 [Quick Lionseye] in the staff in order to allow myself to wear the [Memento of Tyrande] or the [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone].

Boots: [Boots of Absolution]
I need to regem. I wasn't even thinking when I did this.

Hands: [Handguards of the Dawn] - 37 Haste w/ gem [423 total]
Like with the staff, why break the gem bonus and not go all the way? I'd put two [Quick Lionseye] here.

So my totals run as follows:
Helm: [Cowl of Light's Purity] = 40 Haste w/ haste gem
Neck: [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] = 33 Haste [73 total]
Cloak: [Shroud of Forgiveness] = 0 Haste [73 total]
Chest: [Robes of Faltered Light] = 42 Haste w/ haste gem [115 total]
Bracer: [Cuffs of Absolution] = 16 Haste w/ healing gem [131 total]
Weapon: Golden Staff of the Sin'dorei - http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/ptr...oldenstaff.jpg - 62 Haste w/ haste gems [193]
Wand: [Wand of Cleansing Light] - 8 Haste w/ healing gem [201 total]
Rings: 2x [Blessed Band of Karabor] - 60 Haste [261 total]
Boots: [Boots of Absolution] - 29 Haste w/ gem [290 total]
Legs: [Pantaloons of Calming Strife] - 10 Haste w/ gem [300 total]
Waist: [Belt of Absolution] - 14 Haste [314 total]
Hands: [Handguards of the Dawn] - 47 Haste w/ gem [361 total]

Now that I get to the end, I realize that I'm exactly 32 short of that goal for 1.2GCD. I guess [Shroud of the Highborne] needs to be on my next BT loot acquisition.

Either way, with this gem setup I think that you take advantage of a few more socket bonuses and you can use a much better trinket, but still reach your goal. Please let me know if I missed something. I just hate to break a bonus by only one gem. Anyway, I'd be happy to hear thoughts/critiques on my gem choices (here). Ignore my Armory...I'm stupid. As soon as our gem vendor is out I'll be replacing that gem.

You called me out for posting and now look at you!!!

:p <3

Anyway, I think the benefits of MA outweigh the benefits of Spell Warding. 10% off CoH, PoM, PW:S and renew is huge. It might not seem like a lot of mana saved, but it does over the long run.

In fights where there is a constant amount of spell dmg (like Felmyst or Kalecgos for example), a 10% reduction in dmg isn't a whole lot. It helps, but instead of taking the 1000 tick of aura, you take 900. Or instead of taking 3500 arcane dmg from Encapsulate, you take 3150. I would rather have a mana reduction with my spells rather than taking less dmg especially if the fight is long. Also, spell warding is useless for fights where all dmg is physical.

That is odd, I heal tanks about as often as I heal the raid, not to mention that I often CoH the tank group. A large number of my healing still comes from gheal and to a smaller extent binding heal, so holy concentration is worth a lot of mana to me. Wasting half the holy concentration procs is pretty much a given for this talent, it still makes it a very strong talent for mana regen. Removing inspiration and holy concentration from your CoH priest pretty much turns him into a one trick horse and not a very good one. A major reason for having priests in your raid is their ability to take up other functions. I consider imp renew, inspiration and holy concentration key talents for a holy priest even if you spend 70% of your time healing with CoH.

Personally, my favorite spec is 19/42
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I'm not really convinced that Spell Warding is worth losing healing-applicable talents, as I've never found incoming magical damage to be that troublesome. Also, I much rather prefer to get Healing Prayers to Mental Agility simply due to using PoM (and even PoH) as often as I do.

Each point in Healing Prayers is worth 19.5 Mp5 from casting PoM every CD by itself, and with the T6 2-set bonus and 2/2 Healing Prayers, PoH is roughly the same HPM and higher HPS and range than CoH for self-group healing on many fights. (Bloodboil, for instance--especially since it gains a bit more from Inner Focus.)

Even if you're spamming CoH and using PoM every CD 4/5 + 2/2 vs. 5/5 + 1/2 comes out about the same in terms of practical mana usage, but as very few fights actually spam CoH every GCD (thus making the PoM portion a bit more weighted) and considering the added utility to PoH from Healing Prayers, I feel that it's a better option.

Jayde what about removing one of your Silent Resolve points and put into Absolution?

To make up for the loss of -2% threat redux, just enchant your cloak with it!

I think a large Priest population is overlooking the benefit of Absolution, I'd go 3/3 if I could but I can't

I used to have that spec and mostly just didn't find that I dispelled enough for it to make much of a difference to respec over. I have been meaning to enchant my cloak anyhow, although it is 4% per point of Silent Resolve, not 2%.

I don't disagree with the suggestion though, as I've had 1 point in Absolution on a number of occasions. If Absolution was on Tier 1 or 2 instead of, say, Imp. PWS I would probably take 3/3 as well.

Well I'll try to answer some of the things you said as best I can. Also I don't know how I would gem those items as I've only thought about it but unfortunatly haven't had the ability to obtain any of those items due to summer attrition hitting us hard

392 Spell Hast is specifically what I will be gunning for, and if possible without [Battlemaster's Alacrity] as the [Memento of Tyrande] and [Redeemer's Alchemist Stone] are just too good of a combo to pass up. (Also am loving [Bangle of Endless Blessings] considering it scales with the higher amount of spirit regen we get it is truely a fantastic trinket.)

I have never read the number of required gems vs. socket bonus discussion before but just thinking about it for a bit makes a lot of sense, and makes me re-think ways of hitting bonus'.

As for our cloak situation, I plan on keeping my [Shroud of Forgiveness] and then only using a [Shroud of the Highborne] on fights that would call for it, however I would also take a bigger look into the sacrificing as I equate most of my items in terms of gem value hence:

22 healing = 10 spirit = 10 spell haste = 10 intel

Essentially, for myself, the difference between the two cloaks really boils down to is losing 20 spirit worth the gain of 32 spell haste, and in most situations I believe so (for me personally). Also there is a loss of 3 stamina, which I could care less about as raid buffed I'm high enough. There is a gain of 4 intellect which augments our current spirit regen (not much but meh) and then the loss of 11 healing. So broken down:

11 healing, 20 spirit vs. 32 haste and 4 intell
or 1/2 a red gem and 2 blue gems vs. 3 yellow gems and another half a yellow gem
(I know this sounds silly but I've found the gem stat values a great rubric to use for comparing items.)

Next on the bracers, come to think of it I would definitely socket for the 2 spirit bonus, however I think I would do a 11 healing 5 intellect. ***Note: I am never a fan of pure 22 healing as it doesn't get any bonus from raid buffs where other stats get a bit for kings. The intel brings a minimal amount of spell crit, not important but useful, and a bit more top end mana but most imporantly scales up the value of our current spirit. You are right though, that slot should not be a [Quick Lionseye]

Again with the staff, great observation. If breaking the set may as well just throw in 3x [Quick Lionseye] and then do away with the trinket!

For the wand again I would do a 11 healing 5 int.

Boots heh for sure I would do a [Quick Lionseye]!

And you are right again with the gloves, double [Quick Lionseye] and ignore the bonus.

So here we go again!

Ideal gear setup:


Helm: [Cowl of Light's Purity] = 40 Haste w/ haste gem
Neck: [Brooch of Nature's Mercy] = 33 Haste [73 total]
Cloak: [Shroud of the Highborne] = 32 Haste [105 total]
Chest: [Robes of Faltered Light] = 42 Haste w/ haste gem [147 total]
Bracer: [Cuffs of Absolution] = 16 Haste [163 total]
Weapon: Golden Staff of the Sin'dorei - http://www.worldofraids.com/2008/ptr...oldenstaff.jpg - 62 Haste w/ gem [225 total]
Wand: [Wand of Cleansing Light] - 8 Haste [233 total]
Trinket: [Battlemaster's Alacrity] - 40 Haste ***DROPPING THIS***
Rings: 2x [Blessed Band of Karabor] - 60 Haste [293 total]
Boots: [Boots of Absolution] - 29 Haste w/ gem [322 total]
Legs: [Pantaloons of Calming Strife] - 10 Haste w/ gem [332 total]
Waist: [Belt of Absolution] - 14 Haste [346 total]
Hands: [Handguards of the Dawn] - 47 Haste w/ gem [393 total]

Again not including the shoulder slot but here are the choices:

Shoulder: [Shawl of Wonderment] = 53 Haste w/ gems for a [446 total] only to be used on fights like Gurtogg/RoS where CoH is the obvious best choice more than 75% of the time.

Aside from that I plan to keep my current shoudlers for the four piece absolution bonus with 2x 10 Spirit Gems for boosted regen!

Also Kass, on set bonus' of 1 mp5 or 2 mp5 I don't even look at them as to me they are useless now with the spirit change, hence the non-matching of the helm or the gloves.

Lastly I did a quick CTprofiles thing but they do not have the golden staff so I have to do that math on my own.

Current gear: CTProfiles.net: World of Warcraft Profiles » Sindaga » Armory
Wish gear: CTProfiles.net: World of Warcraft Profiles » Sindaga » Wish List

Here are the upgrades (unbuffed) from my current gear to the wish gear (some of the raw stats are rounded because of the staff not being in there)

HP: 8141 -> about 7900
MP: 10305 -> about 11040
Int: 531 -> about 580
Spi: 532 -> about 610
Heal: 1962 -> about 2250

All the while gaining about 280 haste. I would say that is fantastic. The scale at raid buffs would but it around like 1300 mp5 while not casting, 600 or close to it while casting, 2500-2600 healing and 400 haste rating...

I can't wait personally!

Penguinsa, I like your method, but I think some of your numbers are off. For example, when evaluating the amount of magic damage taken, you said that you reduced the survivability gain from Spell Warding from 2.4 to 2.2%

That would imply to me that you assume that only 8% of damage that priests take is physical. My WWS numbers from the past few raids show it to be much higher.

In SSC, physical damage is about 15% of my overall damage taken. The biggest contributors are Morogrim's Earthquake, and his Murlocs' physical attacks (if i pull aggro in phase 3).

In TK, physical damage is as high as 50%, as my main source of damage is the Crystalcore Mechanics' nasty physical Saw-Blade attack, closely followed by the Phoenixes in Al'ar's room do that physical damage Wing Buffet attack. There are also a lot of mobs in that first hallway that do a cleave attack.

I don't have a clean WWS parse for Hyjal myself, but Spell Warding looks like it would be more proportionally effective in there.

I've never been to BT but scanning back the last few pages, I found Fionna and Psykal's BT WWS stats, and they had between 30 and 45% of their total damage being physical (Naj'entus' spikes and Bloodboil's Boil were the major sources of physical damage).

I still have Spell Warding, but I do think that your numbers may be overrepresenting the percentage of magical damage taken by healers in raids.

Really depends, I suppose. Hyjal, for instance, is rather splash-damage low. My total magical damage taken for a full clear was 205,727 this week, meaning that over a 3 hour raid 5/5 Spell Warding would have saved me around 20k damage--which, really, is only about 3-4 GH casts. Hardly seems very useful for 5 talent points.

It would perhaps be a bit more useful in BT, but given that Priests do have Binding Heal I just don't really see it as a very efficient use of talent points.

You have to remember spell warding does nothing for you if you are not taking damage whereas you are ALWAYS healing!

Regarding the best-in-slot summary on page one, I tend to agree in every case. One thing I worry about though is the drop in sta going from the BT/Hyjal best-in-slot items to the new Sunwell items. Using all the best-in-slot items pre-Sunwell (except for regemming all my royal shadowsongs) , I sit at around 10000 hp fully buffed, which seems to be the "safe" zone for many of the Sunwell fights.

These are the upgrades that most priests can expect to get relatively quickly in Sunwell:
[Naaru-Blessed Life Rod] -> [Wand of Cleansing Light] = loss of 12 sta
[Boots of the Divine Light] -> [Boots of Absolution] = loss of 20 sta
[Belt of Divine Guidance] -> [Belt of Absolution]= loss of 14 sta
[Bracers of Martyrdom] -> [Cuffs of Absolution]= gain of 4 sta
[Gloves of Absolution] -> [Hands of Eternal Light]= loss of 6 sta
[Leggings of Eternity] -> [Pantaloons of Calming Strife] = loss of 16 sta

This is a net loss in 64 sta, or about 700 hp with BoK.

To me, this barely pushes us into the danger zone, where we would be safe for most fights, but are treading lightly on fights where a bad-luck burst can occur.

On Kalecgos, a large arcane tick just before porting, following immediately by a shadow bolt in the demon world, especially late in the fight where there is likely to be a curse ticking, would kill someone with under 9500 hp while someone with 10000 would be safe.

On Brutallus, the last couple burn ticks can be very dangerous to someone with under 9500 hp, especially if there are three people with burn.

On Felmyst, an encapsulate followed by a resist on gas nova dispel is almost a guaranteed death for someone under 10k, especially while healers are learning the fight.

For the Eredar Twins, I don't have enough experience to make an educated guess, but it seems to me that anything under 10k hp may be very dangerous as well.

These deaths are rare, but then again the Sunwell fights demand almost absolute perfection making the odd death that much more damaging to the raid. Once these encounters are on farm, 9300 might be acceptable, but while learning and even for a few kills following, mistakes will be made. If the last encounters in Sunwell follow a similar pattern, I am worried that the new best-in-slot items may not provide enough HP.

Since I would have a REALLY hard time convincing myself to gem for sta, the only solution I can think of is to drop 2 points in inspiration (our tanks sit at around 69-69.5% dmg reduction fully buffed, so the 8% increase in armor would push them to right around the cap anyways) and 2 from holy specialization to get 8% magic damage reduction from Spell Warding. Since the raid dmg in Sunwell is pretty much all magic as far as we know, this would push me almost back up to an "effective" 10k health. People in previous posts have calculated the value of Spell Warding based on dmg reduced, but I believe its real value is to help possibly save you in those rare bursts that would have normally killed you.

Does anyone have any other suggestions that may help this situation, or do other priests think that raiding with 9300 hp buffed is plausible even with the large amounts of raid damage flying around in Sunwell?

For later upgrades, if the robes are picked up before the cowl, this pushes hp down even further:
[Vestments of Absolution] -> [Robes of Faltered Light] = loss of 9 sta
[Cowl of Absolution] -> [Cowl of Light's Purity] = gain of 14 sta

You also must remember that there are different elixirs/foods that can be used to supplement for HP.

As well you can always swap in a gladiator piece or some older higher stam gear.

Elixir of mastery instead of healing power gives an additional 15 stam.
Spicy crawdad gives an additional 30 stam.

Two pieces and bam, 450 hp, which is 495 with kings.

re: Spell Warding and Stam.

There will always be the classical split camps of those having a little more stam and those running around with Primal Mooncloth and getting shattered by Gruul or more appropriately getting killed on MH/BT Trash. (Can you guess which camp I'm in? )


But as you looking at the fights objectively, you need to factor your personal gear as to how much Spell Warding will matter.
Its not the amount of anti-healing it will allow, its about the very nature of survival when you need it.
I have options like swapping between Soul Strider with Vitality, and Boots of Divine Light with Boar's Speed, or like using a S3 Healing ring if I want.

For most of Hyjal: you will take various environmental effects of spell nature, but nothing is serious. I.e you are either dead or a flesh wound. Like on Rage Winterchill, you can usually take one tick of Ice Tomb, but then you either trinket or get a heal or are dead.

But you probably want Spell Warding while learning Archimonde, since you WILL run through doomfire once in a while, and its all about a fight for surviving.

Now in BT, there a lot more fights with magical damage coming with various thresholds for your gear and Spell Warding to meet.

On Najentus, the bar is low at 8500. (So 10% off of frost damage lets you drop a little stam for more healing etc)
Supremus is more hit or miss as generally he will either smush you, or you will take two volcanoes back-to-back.
Akama - nvm
Teron: nothing worse than taking a few shadowbolts right when you get marked for death and haven't had a chance to move, but all in all not too bad.
RoS: Spite hits for ~7500 Nature.
Bloodboil: Internal Physical damage
Mother : How good is your shadow gear?
Council : General rule for this fight is everyone is above 10K: Why? 1 tick of FlameStrike/Blizzard will do about 4.5-5k. You decide how close you want to shave it. Also Poison will do 9k.
Illidan: so much damage everywhere, (and haven't beat it yet, so I'll let others comment.


All in all, since I generally run stam heavy compared to others, I usually can forgo Spell Warding (at least while PVE'ing). For others, it may vary.