Depends on the encounters. We're 5/6 Sunwell, working on KJ, and here's my impression of the fights from the perspective of my guild (with total resto shaman #s indicated):

Kalec - whatever spec I need to be, IDS is fine because of group setups (3 resto shamans)
Brutallus - CoH if burn healing, IDS if tank healing (3 resto shamans)
Felmyst - CoH if raid healing, IDS if responsible for a MD (2-3 resto shaman)
Twins - CoH, no question; having 2 CoH + 3 resto shaman = ez mode Sacrolash first
M'uru - I have to be CoH here, since I heal the sentinal tank and then raid heal for 15 seconds for all 6 min of P1, then spam CoH on the melee group(s) for all of P2 (2 resto shamans)
KJ - IDS is slightly preferred, since CoH doesn't get used on this encounter (much, if at all) (3 resto shamans)

What do you do to heal the sentinel tank? By myself, I have trouble keeping him up. The problem occurs when he takes two hits back to back, that plus the 3k shadow pulses is ~ 25-27k damage in about 4sec, which is pretty difficult for me to deal with.

Do you have a resto druid rolling lifeblooms? Earthshields? or just sheer gheal spam?

The belt is gemmed with an Amethyst to activate the meta (notice that my only non-yellow gems are the blue in the helm and red in the wand).

I've healed, without an SP, Kalecgos and Felmyst so far. I've been finishing both fights with plenty of mana to spare; I haven't even had to pot, actually. Of course, the Kalecgos "fix" makes that fight a lot easier now than it used to be. I recently went leatherworking to pick up [Drums of Restoration] (since I'm usually in a healer group) to offset my loss in regen from regemming. So far, I haven't really had to use it much.

I've done Twins and healed the sentinel tank on M'uru in a SP/shaman group (we prioritize the SPs to healers for Twins since the DPS doesn't really neeed it; and I wouldn't feel comfortable tank healing M'uru without a SP regardless of how I was geared). I sat out on Brut last week, but I'll be healing it tonight so we'll see. I suspect it won't be a huge difference though since I plan to heal Brut with 2pc T5 to allow me to uprank a bit more. (and no SP or shaman on Brut typically either)

The haste itself has been a fairly interesting change so far. My GHs are 2.2s and I have a 1.28s GCD. The difference in the GH cast time is only noticeable during moments where the GHs basically land right before a tank is about to die. Whether they would have lived for another 0.3 seconds is really something I can't be sure about. However, the difference in GCD is really significant and very much noticeable. Chain casting CoH and dispels feels so much faster than before. Whether this makes a significant difference for the survivability of the raid or not is still debatable though. But in terms of pure numbers, I am putting out more HPS than before on most fights (most notably on Twins, since that's the only fight so far where there seems to be an unlimited amount of damage to heal).

I think I posted more details over in my WoWforum thread here:
WoW Forums -> "end-game" gemming thoughts

I'm still tempted to try a spirit whoring build at some point, but I need to accumulate more badges first...

You've mis-understood what I actually said.

No idea what my HPS would be if every heal landed with zero overheal. - Was in response to the healing throughput question, I don't know what mine is *IF* every heal landed with zero overheal, nothing was said about not having any overheal nor why it would nerf the HPS, it was said in a purely "If every heal landed, with no overheal, I don't know what my throughput would be".

I dont see why an IDS priest has no advantage over a CoH priest when tank healing. - Not sure where you got that from in my post, I actually lean towards the IDS priest having an advantage in the post and also in my personal view.

Also I dont see why an IDS priest cannot raid heal. PoM/PoH, renew and gheal (with a few Flash heals when needed) can achieve similar HPS to chain heal, albeit at the cost of a much higher mana drain. - I didn't say that an IDS priest cannot raid heal, I said it would be a better choice to use a CoH to raid heal. I think everybody would agree.

Overall its not a question of whether you want a tank healer or a raid healer, both priests are both, except the CoH priest has significantly improved raid healing, while the IDS priest brings a raid buff. - Which is exactly what I said...??

Yeah, I'm not seeing this work out either, because it's not just the healing vs. damage that makes healer items different from caster items. Unless they're planning on making spell hit and to an extent spell crit useful for healers, and they're planning on making regen of all forms useful for caster DPS (they're apparently trying with spirit, but you'd expect DPS to have >90% in FSR which severely damages its usefulness, and I suspect that unless they nerf Life Tap back to pre-scaling levels warlocks will just ignore spirit), you'll still have a healer item with damage/spirit and a caster item with damage/hit/crit.

This may be a further attempt to improve healers' farming ability, but I don't really have a problem with farming ability even now (actually, I prefer my healing gear for farming because it reduces downtime).

But yeah, alpha.

The difference is 2 points in Empowered Healing; that said, IDS priests tend to get tank healing assignments simply because the difference between the two in tank healing is much less than the difference between the two in raid healing.

I think const posted awhile back his thought that Void tank healing isn't functionally soloable. It's best to have a druid help out by rolling HoTs and watching for big damage spikes.

We've been getting some attempts on M'uru and have had a Holy Priest on the Void tank as well. So far we haven't had any major issues, but we do get druid HoTs on him.

It isn't so much the healing gear that pisses people off as the 4th boomkin or elemental belt drop that causes problems. Most people understand the desirability of non healers grabbing a passable healing set for emergencies, Twins and 5 man content.

I remain unconvinced that this will go live due to the differing stat desires of casters vs healers.

Priest healer wants spirit and mana/5 and haste (maybe a taouch of crit if deep disc). Shadow priest wants Haste, Hit and Crit

Druid healer wants Spirit mana/5 and haste, boomkin wants Hit, haste and crit. Crit sucks ass for trees

Shammy healer wants haste and regen, elemental wants Crit, Hit and haste.

Pally healer wants Crit and Haste, non healing pally, (Shockadin/) wants ummm, I dunno what but it won't be viable tank gear without defence.

This will still require making specialist gear or there will be massive whining from one side of the fence or the other. Also from a social perspective don't run any pugs under the new system or expect to be deafened by ignorant casters whining that you are "stealing their gear, and should only go for +healing" and expect you to pass damage gear to them.

As to the changes to the spell coefficients they had to do this to retain the relative value of heals to damage or retune every fight in the game to date. Also it would have totally unbalanced PvP balance.

I had already assumed that the downranking penalty would be tightened as with more and more power coming from gear not base spell it becomes more and more trivial to keep going without running out of mana as the higher ranks just don't give enough extra oomph for the mana spent. Heck on my 2200 healing gear my gh1 lands for more than my ungeared Gh7 already and there is almost no situation where going above gh 4 or 5 makes a difference

We have priest healing Sentinel tank with support from a stack of LB. We have two holy priests on the encounter and both end p1 with close to 100% mana without spriest (one healing Sentinel tank, other healing an add side together with a pala). It's basically only before the first "Blast" (can't remember name) healing is intense. When your tank reflect that, swing timer is soooo slow on the Sentinel that you can basucally see on the mob when next hit will land (and you can time/cancel heals to land right after). Don't think we've lost a Sentinel tank since we learned the encounter.

E: The problem healing the tank without the hots, is when you have to move and PW:S/PoM on the run isn't enough to keep it up. Even with the best positioning in the world and tons of experience on the encounter, you sometimes have to move to not get the blast etc, then the LB is gold. It also saves a lot of mana. You can just cancel your "last" heal on each Sentinel and let LB heal it up, getting spirit ticks all the time (+earring + inner focus two times during p1 and you should have plenty of mana withtout a spriest).

Taking a second druid over a holy priest on M'uru sounds really strange. P2 is the hard part and priests are just superior (even to Shamans ...!!!) when it comes to heal the end of p2. PoH keeps one group completly safe, PoM jumps like crazy and CoH can cover other groups. I know druids also can perform well there, but not close to 2-3k effective HPS.

Also not being CoH on Kil'jaeden sounds really strange. Not discussing tactics, but there's a lot of AoE damage going on you can heal easily with CoH

Solo healing a Sentinal tank is a Very Bad Idea. It can be done, and I believe SK Gaming said they did it on their first kill using a paladin, but it's really not something you want to risk on the RNG.

The hits that are coming in are anywhere (debuffed mob, warrior tank) between 5500 and 9500. Assume you get two of those, no TClap, a shadow pulse, all in the sequence. That's max of 22.5k damage in 2 seconds, which, given that I assume you have a druid healing is basically a tick of Rejuv (1k), 3 ticks of LB (2k), and your Greater Heal, which should be, non-crit, about 6k at this point. In other words your tank just dropped from 23k life (which he should have, min) to 9.5k health. Your druid hits Swiftmend, and it's all good.

This is worst-case scenario for two hits.

The only situation where I occasionally lose Bazz on sentinals is a sequence of events like - Lifebloom falls off due to movement, 4 straight hits @ 6k + 2 shadow pulses + a couple of shadowbolts, and none of my heals crit. I've landed 3 straight 6.1k GHs along with my druid buddy burning Swiftmend and watched the tank fall over due to no dodges.

It's a really low percentage case, but it can happen, once in a while. 4 or 5 straight non-dodge/parry/miss melee swings for 6k+ are really hard to heal without getting a crit.

Realistically, if you bring 2 resto druids to the fight, you're thinking about an entirely different setup for heals; they're likely rolling LBs on Sentinal+Void Spawn+Side+Side tanks, 4 rolls each, and you're bringing 2 shamans for side AE heals spammed through the side tank. I prefer the 2 shaman+1 druid+1 priest+2 paladins method; there's no risk of blooms falling off and a side tank getting gibbed.

As far as KJ goes, to Bjork, our raid setup right now is pretty much spread out to the point that CoH might hit 3 people in the group for 75% of the fight. I mostly just heal Fire Bloom using direct healing spells, and use CoH on dragon-breath-clumps. It's possible to tweak the strat to use CoH more, but we've decided against it, so for now, I might as well be IDS for more raid dps and more personal regen.

Also, if you're healing on M'uru and get not only a shaman but a shadow priest ... I'm envious. I get neither. It's a very significant challenge to maintain healing throughput on the warrior sentinal tank without going oom over a 5:45 Phase 1. I get an innervate going into Phase 2, so that phase is meaningless for mana: pure zerg, have fun. You may find that giving the shadow priests to the caster dps will be required as you get deeper into the fight: it's a very real dps race, and if your casters are oom, you aren't going to meet the requirements. Healers can suck it up and regen more: mages and warlocks really can't; not and maintain the dps needed to get into Phase 2 at the right spot.

[note: I don't get much downtime in between Sentinals: part of my responsibility is using CoH on the warlock group and the side group nearest to me. If I could pure regen in between Sentinals, I'd easily end P1 with 100%. Even now if I time things right I can end at ~ 75%; since I know the innervate is coming, I tend to just start playing more heal-aggressive for the final minute of Phase 1, and burn most of a mana bar doing so.]

My guild is currently in Sunwell, And we have 4 priests that are holy, we usually only take 2, 3 if necessary. I've poured over the forum trying to find a good balance of spell haste to stack. Maybe I'm missing it somewhere, its possible, but I notice some of the other priests talking about stacking heavy haste, and I'm wondering if anyone knows a good balance. I'm CoH spec... IDS for Brutallus attempts, because I agree that since I'm healing tanks CoH is pretty useless for me for that particular fight. BuT I would love some imput from everyone on what /how much haste to go for... I currently turned the yellow gem slots in my gear into 10 spell haste, but I'm reluctant to go overboard with it, Whats a happy medium???

Sorry to bother you, thanks! Helped alot...think I'm going to stick with the haste I have I can get up to 117...I just wanted a number to shoot for, taking into consideration my criterion.

They have three hunters, so no running around because of MD all the time. As far as I remember, they also had three spriests on the first kill --- a paladin with spriest and lots of env. damage should have no problem at all keeping a tank up solo as long as it's no moving around. That's infinite HoL r9, I think. For us (0-1 hunters in raid), it's a bad idea, because of the movement involved, as earlier explained.

As for KJ, if you heal Fire Bloom with direct heals, you're having a completly different approach so I trust you when you say IDS is performing just as good

Personally I would stay IDS for most encounters if I was "the first" holy in raids. You can always relog for IDS if it's really important to have all priests as CoH when pushing for a firstkill.

Grats on the upgrades. A question though, why are you wearing [Band of the Eternal Restorer]? I always felt that it's pretty useless for a priest. You get the regen as mp5 and a lot of the item value is in a proc I personally can't play with (unable to overwrite my own renew etc ... annoying). Personally I would wear the Kara-ring over Hyjal rep-ring. Just interesting to hear your thoughts.

Regarding when to start geming for haste, I'd say 400/1000 is a decent benchmark for regen. I've never droped below 1100 mp5 raidbuffed during progress in Sunwell and I've just squeezed in as much haste as possible while keeping that regen. I'm now at 315 haste (19%) and still 420/1100ish regen raidbuffed - which is increcibly comfortable to heal with. 2,1 sec Greater Heals and 1,25 sec GCD is worth a lot in throughput and I know for sure that a 0,4 sec shorter casttime on Greater Heal has saved a few tank deaths.

For someone without much haste, I recommend [Battlemaster's Alacrity] to start with. Use effect is very handy on _all_ bosses in Sunwell and 40 haste is worth 100ish +healing in throughput.

That was a typo, I meant I dont see why an IDS has any advantage of a CoH priest. As a matter of fact they are pretty much equal.

The 2 points in empowered healing don't make much of a difference with tank healing, their most valuable power is improving the value of downranking and FH for raid healing, giving the CoH priest a second advantage when it comes to raid healing.

Both priests are capable of both tank healing and raid healing, but the CoH has a pretty big advantage when it comes to raid healing, putting them on a nearly equal footing with resto shamans, while the IDS priest, while being an accomplished raid healer cannot do the job with the same efficiency as a resto shaman can. Taking IDS means sacrificing some healing power in a exchange for a moderately powerful raid buff, it does not change the job a priest does.

I came up with a formula that determines how much +healing you need to maintain a particular HPS (HPStg) given your current regen

H>= m*HPStg*Ft/( k*(mana pool + (mana regen)*Ft)(1-O) ) - A/k

H is +healing
m is mana cost of the spell
Ft is fight time
k is % of +healing converted to actual healing for this particular spell
O is overheal
A is base heal for this spell.

Now watch this. If say I want to use 30% of mana pool to maintain 1000 HPS over the whole fight with gheal rank 7

t=480
mana pool = 3300
mana regen = 180 i.e. 900mp5
A = 2869
k = (3/3.5+0.2)*1.1*1.06 = 1.233 with 12% crit
m = 672.96
O = 0.3
HPStg = 1000

H >= 1846

With 190 mana regen H >= 1634

With 200 mana regen H >= 1443

With 160 mana regen H >= 2346

So mana regen has a profound impact below a certain limit, but its impact drops drastically after a certain limit, this limit depends on the target HPS and type of spell.

Notice that haste does not come into the equation at all.

This equation tells you how much you +heal and regen you can drop and still reach a particular target, i.e. how much you can drop for haste.

The main conclusions from this formula is that the extent of your mana pool has the least impact. The greatest impact on the equation is your mana regen, the target HPS and your spell usage. With this you can determine what is the sweet spot is for mana regen and how much healing you need, then leave the rest for haste.

We usually have a paladin (without an spriest) healing him with the help from me. I'm healing the sentinel tank, helping on the void spawn tank, helping on the entrance side add tank and keeping my side of the raid up. Haste is godly here, so is quick reflexes.

Monster stats Rukla! What consumables do you use and how much healing do you have besides that haste and regen?

Apologies if this has allready been covered.

Been Imp. DS specced my entire career as a priest, but respecced a few days ago for CoH.

My question is simple ..

Would you consider dumping Imp. Renew and one point of MA or EH for both Holy Reach and Healing Prayers?
(like this)


It seems the straightforward choice would be to skimp on Holy Spec., but I like it's synergy with CoH.

The synergy of +crit with any healing spell including CoH is nothing special. Given the higher overheal rate its like 0.2-0.3% more HPS per point. Dropping a point in empowered healing instead of divine spec is shooting your self in the foot. You are better off dropping healing prayers or mental agility if you want 5/5 div spec. If you are keeping 5/5 divine spec for CoH, I can tell you right now that unless you do nothing except spam CoH, its not worth your talent points.

And the problem with healing is that unlike DPS its not easy to feel how something goes. You might feel comfortable and good with a particular set up, but be way off the mark when it comes to maximum efficiency.

[Violet Signet of the Grand Restorer] (assuming BoK, SoR; IDS indicated, 650 base int without the ring)
Sta: 24
Int: 25.3
Spi: 19.6
HSE: 60 (62 with IDS)
Mp5: 12 / 38.6 (gain includes int gain from ring, so artificially high)

[Band of the Eternal Restorer]
Sta: 28
Int: 27.5
Spi: 0
HSE: 64 + proc
Mp5: 14.8 / 26.2 (gain includes int, so only for comparison with above ring)

Basically, I lose ~ 12 OO5SR regen to gain 3 Mp5 I5SR and a reasonable amount of healing with the proc. It does go off a fair bit, and when it does, I can really feel the difference.

(As an aside, it's the same sort of reason I'm still using the RoS offhand: I've never gotten the offhand from Archimonde, and until KJ dies, no old content ... and Twins consistently drops leather shoulders. Like 6 kills, 13 pairs of varied leather shoulders. GG.)
Having said that, it gets replaced by the next [Ring of Harmonic Beauty], but ... let me rant slightly. 4 weeks of of Sunwell; 5 days a week. 20 days spent in the zone. One week was spent working on M'uru, so we cleared the trash to M'uru 2x per day for 4 days, and obviously cleared the earlier trash on Tuesday. Three weeks were spent killing M'uru, and then working on KJ, so we cleared every trash mob in the zone at least once; for M'uru trash, twice on two of the weeks. That's a lot of trash mobs, right?

TWO TRASH DROPS IN FOUR FREAKIN' WEEKS. TWO. WTB SOME DROPS w36t2jlklsdjglk2j46lk2jlgkj!!lqkgjlk!

(I'm a little pissed, in case you missed it ... along with my entire guild ... we've seen *one* Sunfire Robes pattern, 2 rings, 1 OH ... the only thing we actually have gotten enough of is wands)

I would never drop Improved Renew. And 2/2 Holy Reach is mandatory as CoH-speced.