Nothing spectacular judging by the screenshot. I didn't have Divine Spirit, and the Rod of Blazing Light was gemmed but not enchanted, so there's scope for higher totals.

You're also wearing your BT neck. Gratz on all that spirit. :p

I know I broke 10k pre-2.4 using similar hacks in Hyjal, so it's not all that unusual. Assuming you have ~ 800 raid-buffed spirit, use your Earring, get an innervate or two, and stand in Jaena's aura, it adds up pretty quickly.

800 spirit + 300*1.05*1.1 = 1146 spirit. Jaena's aura bumps that up to 2292 spirit. Assuming 700 raid-buffed intellect, and two innervates, that is:

( 2292 * 700^0.5 * 0.0093271 * 5 ) * 4 * 4 = 45,248 Mp5.

This happens pretty much all the time. It does not detract from the value of the on use trinket. It helps minimise the chance that something will go wrong in that phase, while the loss of the smaller static bonus is negligible for the rest of the fight. Also one needs to look at what trinkets are available. The essense adds 84+healing on top of the on use effect. If I swapped it for say a mana regen trinket with no +healing, I would suffer from both the absence of the +healing and the absence of the boost, when the HPS intensive phase hits.

Each trinket is best for particular fights. I have the alche stone but I rarely use it. I would use it on a'lar for example where I have to play heal like the energiser bunny and there aren't too many predictable short high HPS periods, or on the lurker for example, where I really don't need any big +healing boost, I just need lots of mana since instants (shield, pom, CoH, renew) are uber effective. On most fights however I would rather have the earring and essense instead, as experimenting with and without the proc I found that it makes a big difference.

When I get the redeemers stone, I will mostly use that with the earring, except for fights where the on click +heal is extra handy, where I can switch in the martyr's instead to boost HPS
Activating on use +heal trinkets using macros chained to your popular spells, really simplifies their use.

Based on the coefficient of GH7, it's worth about 39 +healing over the 2 minute duration. Making it roughly equivalent to a 15 Mp5/39 +healing trinket.

I still feel it could be pretty useful situationally, but for general use it would be rather poor.

I think the only time I would use this trinket is on fights where you need a heal during a time when you can't cast normally, e.g. Azgalor during a silence when none/too few of the healers resisted. Beyond that, I think it's more gimmick than anything else.

I don't know if anyone has mentioned before (I haven't noticed it), but what do you think about the 10 spellhaste gem? If i go for the right colors I'll get 22 heal in red sockets, 10 spi in blue sockets and 11 heal/5 int or 10 haste in yellow sockets

I've noticed lately quite a lot of priests who don't bother getting Healing Focus. I've always considered it one of the "core talents". Defense against spell pushback has uses in every aspect of the game, PVP/instances/raiding. I'm not sure if there's something I'm missing since every other priest in raids/apps these days seem to have skipped this talent entirely in favor of Holy Spec or dumping more points into Silent Resolve. Granted, for the most part getting hit my most mobs in 25 man raids means a dead priest, but I've always thought the amount of times with raid-wide damage has made healing spell pushback resistance worth it. Sure, we have instants we can use, but sometimes those just aren't enough HPS.

Well, first off, no T6-geared priest has 500 spirit / 500 intellect. Secondly, assuming raid buffs @ 700 intellect, 10 spirit is worth 14 Mp5 OO5SR (4.3 inside). If you assume 80% (which is about as high as it gets, even in Sunwell) inside 5SR, that's worth ~ 6.2 Mp5.

And we don't have that many blue sockets in our new gear. There's a lot of reds, and those are obviously spinel category.

I'm planning Spinels for every red, Sapphires for every blue, and Luminous Pyrestones for every yellow to activate my meta. At that level, once I can replace my weapon, I'll break 2700 +heal, while maintaining over 450 MP5 I5SR. That's my eventual goal. I'm running 2480 +Heal, 465 MP5 atm, so there's a reasonable amount to go, but a weapon change will be worth well over 100 +heal, when/if it happens.

I'm a big fan of stat stacking now; even more so than before. It's really nice to get BoK and watch my regen/healing scale up. That's primarily why I won't be using Shadowsong Amethysts: static +Mp5 isn't valuable anymore.

I haven't noticed this myself, but I can't help but think how silly it is to skip one of the core talents to healing. The first fight that comes to mind is Rage... if you're caught on the edge of the death and decay, you can definitely survive a couple ticks to finish a heal before you bubble and run out, but full pushback would just be murder.

So a few pages ago there was a discussion on a fheal priest topping meters every time. My own response to meter priests is let them be... if they want to top the meters, go ahead. (There are a couple priests in my guild who do nothing but CoH and fheal spam during trash, so they're always topping meters) I just assumed that they wanted to look cool and important. Then last night, one of our holy priests swapped toons with a holy pally, for fun, and the pally (on the priest) was like, "Holy crap, what do I do with all these buttons?" We had a good laugh, and I started talking about renew, prayer of mending, and gheal being her friends. One of our meter priests then started saying that renew is a terrible spell and gheal is too slow - she should fheal 90% of the time, and gheal only when she's positive she'll have time to get the heal off. I was trying to explain that fheal isn't mana efficient, and he can't cheat the 5-second rule with it, but he ignored any mana comments.

How do you respond to that? His biggest argument was that, when a tank needed Oh-Crap heals, a priest should flash heal and a pally should holy light, since it's a 2 second cast and heals for more (I thought HL was 2.5, but I don't know a ton about pallies). I mean, I know we've got a lot of regen post-2.4, but how do I explain to him that gheal is just the better spell to spam short of letting him go OOM on a progression fight? (We're moving into Hyjal right now)

The mod CasterWeaponSwapper (mentioned in the OP) was designed, in part, to help with this. It will swap to a spirit weapon when you are low on mana, or get a buff like Innervate. It can't tell when you want to take that 20-second break, so it won't swap for that, but it does help in other ways.

WoWInterface Downloads : Combat Mods : CasterWeaponSwapper

I currently have the Robes of Heavenly Purpose and I have been looking at the Gown of Spiritual Wonder trying to decide if it is worth the badges right when the vendor comes out or if I should wait and have that be my last thing to get. I'm a max level JC but I have no access to epic gems and epic gem recipes aside from the self only ones until after the badge vendor comes out because my server is underprogressed on the Horde side (before 2.4 horde active guilds were not past SSC/TK and very few guilds were even in ZA). The gear rating sites I have looked at seem to put them at about equal depending on your main stat focus and while I really like the spirit on the Gown I can do a lot with the gem sockets on the Robe.

On a competely separate note I am currently COH specced but my guild recently got a few more decent priests. I am the best geared priest by a good 400 bonus healing right now so I often find myself doing MT heals. Would it be better for me to go for IDS or since I have so much more healing should I stay COH since I get the most heal from it? We're just starting 25 man content but we're also on the last two bosses in ZA and just getting the hang of the fight.

Exactly... flash heal has its situation use, but unless you're the only one healing the tank (or there are only priests healing the tank), I would give the oh-crap moments to anyone else: pallies should be using FoL anyway, druids can swiftmend or NS-HT, shamans can NS-HW... more often than not, with big damage, I bubble the tank and get my big gheal going while the other (better) faster heals are on the way.

Well, what heal you should use is very dependant on what you are healing. Rules like "use spell X for 90% of time, use spell Y for other 10%" is for Paladins, not priests. Almost every encounter has its own startegy. But the important thing is: Flash heal is quick, but lacks power and mana efficiency. Greater heal is powerful and efficient, but it's sloooooow. Often when raid healing 2,5 seconds is way too long time to spend healing a single target. On other hand, Flash Heal lacks severely in power when tank is taking 10-20k dps.

If you want to keep it simple, "Gheal on tanks, renew when idle, CoH when in hurry, PoH when need to heal lots, ProM on people who take dmg, flash or pw:shield when oh shit, binding heal when OH SHIT". Longer explanation can be found in the 15-volume book series "Holy Priest Spells".

Why wouldn't you just use spinels, or even [Imperial Tanzanite] for blue sockets?

Belteshazzar, your raid suffers from "instance nerfing" symptome. I have tried to explain it a few times here, but the argument goes like that:

Raiders like us, at our progression level (SSC/TK), are a completely different beast from what is described in most of the forums and discussions. While the amazing buff to regen for priests and druids that has been 2.4. will lead many raids with a more professional outlook to drop a healer and sub another DPS, it's mostly different for us. We play with the players we have played with for a long time, raiding is not the most important part of this game, min/maxing doesn't really exist. Now, you have worked your way up to Kael I guess, probably with 7-8 healers. You needed the healers.

With the massive influx of new gear and the changed regen, suddenly it becomes a different game. Honestly, we have been in SSC only for 6 weeks, killed Leotheras last week for the first time, but I could, with 7 healers, easily do nothing else than fheal during the lurker fight, especially with mana potions and innervate. Gosh, does that feel good for many people who hate the feeling of a gheal landing a split second after another heal landed which topped the tank up.

If your priests get by with fheal, and you are nevertheless successful, it means that you very likely have to much healing, as the hps of fheal is just miserable. Combine that with the uncertainty of players at this progression level, who love to finally have a role that they understand and seem to be good at (fheal spam!), and it's obvious that they will do it.

Your way out of that moral trap is to challenge them more, I guess. Leave out a healer, deny them the manatide totem and the spriest, leave out a healer, you name. Give them the need to heal more efficiently!

Constantius,

Have you thought about using [Quick Lionseye] for your yellow slots?

Not much of a question actually

Assuming you gem them equally with gems of your choice (in my case 8 Spirit and 9 Heal/ 4 int), and assuming getting the socket bonus (the stats from gems are not important for comparison, as both items have the same sockets), the statistics to compare are:

Belt of the Long Road:
13 Stamina
18 Intellect
32 Spirit
+80 Healing

Primal Mooncloth Belt:
15 Intellect
11 Spirit
+81 Healing
8 Mp5

Now assuming you are being raid buffed, you should get an increase to your spirit of 1.05*1.1 = 1.155 or 15.5% to your spirit (Spirit of Redemption and Blessing of Kings). Additionally you can expect to have Spiritual Guidance and Improved Divine Spirit for 35% of your Spirit as Damage/Healing. Finally, a good estimate for OO5SR regeneration in a raid buffed situation would be 1.15 mp5 / Spirit.

Applying Kings and Divine Spirit on the items and adding the +Healing gained from Spiritual Guidance and Improved Divine Spirit:

Belt of the Long Road:
13 Stamina
18 Intellect
37 Spirit
+93 Healing

Primal Mooncloth Belt:
15 Intellect
12.7 Spirit
+85.4 Healing
8 Mp5

So in other words, [Belt of the Long Road] beats [Primal Mooncloth Belt] by about +8 healing. Looking at the regeneration side of things, the gap is even bigger, when translating Spirit into an estimate of effective Mp5:

Outside 5 second rule, the regeneration for either belt will be:
*Primal Mooncloth Belt: 12.7*1.15 + 8 = 22.6 Mp5
*Belt of the Long Road: 37 * 1.15 = 42.6 Mp5

Inside the 5 second rule:
*Primal Mooncloth Belt: 12.7*1.15*0.3 + 8 = 12.38 Mp5
*Belt of the Long Road: 37 * 1.15*0.3 = 12.77 Mp5

Now, making the assumption of 25% time outside the 5 second rule (this will obviously depend on the fight), this translates to an effective Mp5 of:
*Primal Mooncloth Belt: 12.38*0.75+22.6*0.25 = 14.94 Mp5
*Belt of the Long Road : 12.77*0.75+42.6*0.25 = 20.23 Mp5

Meaning effectively, the [Belt of the Long Road] gives a gain of 18 Stamina, 8 +healing and 5.3 Mp5 over the [Primal Mooncloth Belt].

But there is still belt above [Belt of the Long Road] before IC drop.

[Cord of Braided Troll Hair] gives you 16 int more, gemmed by Royal Nightseye x2 gives you actually almost same amount of healing / stamina, Cord giving 7mp5 Belt of Long.. gives 33 spirit. In my point of view i prefere 16 int and 7mp5 then 33 spirit

Going back I think I need to both agree and disagree with some thoughts on CoH in sunwell.

I do feel that, for once, its is an extremely useful spell in the new content. Having a group-targetable instant cast heal that heals for over 1k is a great tool. It makes Felmyst easier, it makes trash easier, it makes moving back to group spots on Kalecgos easier.


But that's just it... to me, all CoH does is make things easier.

I can heal 1-2 groups on Felmyst using renews, prayer of healing and some flash healing when timed correctly. Do I like to? Nope. But I can. I use renews to get my groups ready to pop back up top on Kalecgos and on Brutallus... well the imp DS makes me the only holy priest in the raid... and to be honest, I'd rather learn to live without CoH than to be respeccing into DS every week for it.

Not to mention the amount of aggro and death the CoH priests took on our first pulls of Felmyst.


I feel that both Kalecgos and Felmyst are timing fights for holy priests... if you time your group heals correctly, you'll never have to use CoH. During P2 you shouldn't be using any group healing spells unless you've got fade up anyway.

Comparing these two then:

*Gemming [Belt of the Long Road] with [Sparkling Star of Elune] and [Luminous Noble Topaz].
*Gemming [Cord of Braided Troll Hair] with [Sparkling Star of Elune] and [Teardrop Living Ruby]. Slightly different variations are possible as well with [Purified Shadow Pearl]; I know you propose to socket [item]Royal Nightseye[/itme], but since 2.4 those are no longer the best choice for red or blue sockets.

Stats end out being:

Belt of the Long Road
13 Stamina
22 Intellect
41 Spirit
89 +Healing

Cord of Braided Troll Hair
17 Stamina
34 Intellect
8 Spirit
91 +Healing
7 Mp5

As before, applying Kings and Improved Divine Spirit will result in updated stats, also converting Spirit to +Heal:

Belt of the Long Road
14.3 Stamina
24.2 Intellect
47.4Spirit
105.6 +Healing

Cord of Braided Troll Hair
18.7 Stamina
37.4 Intellect
9.24 Spirit
94.2 +Healing
7 Mp5

First of all in +healing terms, the [Belt of the Long Road] effectively gives an extra 11.4 +healing as compared to the [Cord of Braided Troll Hair]

On the regen side of things, the large gap in intellect makes things slightly complicated, so need to assume an intellect value which makes sense for being raid buffed and go from there. Going by your own gear, you have 544 Intellect unbuffed with Cord of Braided Troll Hair, so 532 Intellect with Belt of the Long Road. Adding Arcane Intellect and Gift of the Wild, along with Kings, results in 650 Intellect raid buffed with the Belt of the Long Road, and 663 with the Cord of Braided Troll Hair. This results in Spirit coefficients of 1.19 and 1.21 respectively. Similarly looking at your Sprit, you have an unbuffed value of 439 Spirit (note that mine is considerably higher, and as such would actually benefit more from the improved coefficient than is the case for your Spirit value), which would translate to (with the belts gemmed as I proposed) a raid buffed Spirit of 596 for Cord of Braided Troll Hair and 634 for the Belt of the Long Road. (I've excluded the use of consumables such as [Elixir of Draenic Wisdom] which would slant the equation in favor of the Belt of the Long Road)

This leads to out of 5 second rule regenerations from spirit based regeneration and the mp5 on the Cord:
Cord of Braided Troll Hair: 596*1.21 +7 = 728.2 Mp5
Belt of the Long Road: 634 * 1.19 = 754.5 Mp5

Inside 5 second rule:
Cord of Braided Troll Hair: 721.2* 0.3 + 7= 223.4 Mp5
Belt of the Long Road: 754.5*0.3 = 226.4 Mp5

Effective Mp5 with 25% outside 5 second rule:
Cord of Braided Troll Hair: 0.75*223.4+0.25*728.2 = 349.6
Belt of the Long Road: 0.75*226.4+0.25*754.5 = 358.4

Using the assumptions I made above, with the gem choices I suggested, with [Cord of Braided Troll Hair] you gain 44 HP and 198 Mana. This is however at the cost of 11.4 +Healing and 8.8 effective Mp5 when raid buffed. That's not a trade off I'd like to make...

OK folks, so my server is on the cusp of unlocking the badge vendor, and now I have some hard choices to make.

1) How much should I value the t5 4-piece set bonus?

I'm currently wearing the head, shoulders, legs, and gloves from the t5 set (even though I have the [Light-Blessed Bonds] and I think they're individually better than the t5 gloves). I love the 4 piece set bonus. However, the [Adorned Supernal Legwraps] blow the [Breeches of the Avatar] out of the water.

So here's my rough estimate, assuming to make it easy that I just grabbed [Sparkling Empyrean Sapphire], [Teardrop Crimson Spinel], and [Luminous Pyrestone] for all blue, red, and yellow sockets, respectively.

So first off, comparing the legs:
[Breeches of the Avatar] have:
37 Stamina
36 Intellect
27 Spirit
Blue Socket (10 spirit)
Socket Bonus: +4 Healing +2 Spell Damage
101 +healing
12 mp5

[Adorned Supernal Legwraps]
27 Stamina
40 Intellect
42 Spirit
Blue Socket (10 spirit)
Red Socket (22 +heal)
Socket Bonus: +4 Stamina
114 +heal

So I'd get:
-6 stam
+4 int
+15 spirit
+31 +heal
-12 mp5

Then comparing the gloves:
[Gloves of the Avatar]
26 Stamina
27 Intellect
29 Spirit
77 +heal
6 mp6

[Light-Blessed Bonds]
21 Stamina
22 Intellect
25 Spirit
Yellow Socket (11 healing/5int)
Blue Socket (10 spirit)
Socket Bonus: +7 Healing +3 Spell Damage
75 +heal

So I'd get:
-5 stam
+6 spirit
+16 +heal
and -6 mp6

So all in all, to get the extended renew duration I'm giving up:
-11 stam
+4 int
+21 spirit
+47 +heal
-18 mp5

I guess that's about right? It seems like a big sacrifice...

2) The Stam question

I was all set to trade in my [Boots of the Divine Light] for the shiny new [Slippers of Dutiful Mending] until someone pointed out the huge stam loss (which, admittedly, is one of my blind spots). Anyone else having to make this same decision?

[UPDATE: FORGOT TO ADD THE SPINEL]

I was looking at this and thinking I wouldn't really call this 'blowing them out of the water', given that 12 mp5 is arguably worth just as much as the 4 int, 15 spirit and 9 +heal. But on closer inspection, it doesn't appear in your final tally that you're including the Spinel, so the ASL are in fact 31 more +heal. So the ASL would indeed have an advantage. If you have access to the epic gems that easily (Our guild is still rationing them pretty heavily, and I don't have the surplus of badges you clearly do), then I think it's worth doing just for the legs alone. The gloves are just icing on the cake.

Regarding the boots, I use [Archbishop's Slippers] for my optimal healing set, and then Divine Light with a stam gem for my stamina set. They provide a healthy bump in stamina while not completely gimping your healing output/regen like the Soulguard items.