I am confused by your post and I agree that changing IF down to tier 2 is not helpful to "full" disc priests.

(This build gets me to Improved Healing but at a cost of crit and throughput from the disc tree, Only worth it if you have mana problems obviously.)

WorldofWarcraft.com -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Talent Calculator

This build loses two points from things I want with the change. I am forced to get 5 points now into tier 2. Those 5 are 2 in IPW:F and 3 in IPW:S.

Since I only need 1 more point to get through tier 3, I burn it in IIF. I will have 7 points I want on teir 3 with the change, whereas now there are only 4 I want.


If PW:S and PW:F were merged to a single 2-3 point talent and IIF moved down to tier 2, then I would like this change, because I could grab IIF in addition to the PW talents.

There are lots of fights where someone random can get popped for a crap ton of damage. In that case you throw your shield for the instant buffer, and then lay in with a supped up big heal. Single target just means single target - it doesn't necessarily mean MT. Plus the buff itself lasts 5s, so even if you are just covering a single tank (not the best scenario for Disc but pretty likely) it's up 1/3rd of the time unless your chaining in which case the speed up should be good anyway.

Plus, saving a weakened soul here isn't necessarily a bad call if you have a known burst coming up. If you know maneuver X causes burst, you save the shield until it hits, and then follow it up with a high powered gheal or penance. I think the thing I really like about this (over the IHC mechanism) is that because you trigger the effect, it feels more flexible and controlled. Holy is shaping up quite a bit but still feels really driven by the RNG.

Yea, this is exactly the kind of build I was talking about that will get bit by this Imp IF change.

As a side note, I would recommend looking at only 1/2 in Grace and 1/2 in Renewed Hope unless you're finding grace is falling off. I was doing 2/2 in Grace but have had my mind changed on the subject since.

Guardian Spirit is being buffed to a 50% heal if the target would die.

Source.

A much more useful oshi- button now in my opinion.

And Desperate Prayer stays at a very high mana cost making it a mostly useless oh-shit button.

Have any of you done any considerable amount of arena on the PTR or Beta? After playing well over 200 arena games on beta so far, with various partners and in various brackets, I feel much less sustainable and survivable than I do on live. Our lack of mana efficiency on live is compensated by the strong threat we have with psychic scream->mana burn, and dispel - unforunately mana burn scaling is outrageously poor, dispel is very expensive (not even taking into consideration how prevalent rng resist talents are among classes), and it's still impossible to land a fear on any druid who is remotely aware of his surroundings due to our lack of mobility. It would seem that up to this point, not much response is being giving to the functionality of priests in pvp environments. It was disheartening to see the first post in ~2 weeks consisting of nothing more than a promised swap between inner fire and imp pw:s. I think one simple fix that might help would be completely changing divine hymn to something else; chastise, a targeted sleep, or even something along the lines of a new heal or activated mana regen pell to make it viable in pvp and pve? A six minute cooldown CC that has a 1.5 second cast time and shares DR with psychic scream just seems to greatly lack finesse.
I found Koraa's response to this to be very odd, as it is greatly due to their announcement that Desperate Prayer would be implemented with only a 30 second cooldown that people are so disappointed by what it actual ended up being.

I'd rather have Chastise even if it were in the exact same state that it's in now. Although don't get me wrong, I'd much rather barter Hymn of Hope for Chastise, which seems reasonable with them both having been priest-racials :p

I wonder if this is an itemization thing or just a flavor benefit. If you pay any attention to the spriest thread, you're aware that one of the big problems with spriests in TBC is that they basically came to depend on just one stat - +dmg. The classes that scaled up with other abilities (crit being the big one, but haste as well) just have a flat out scaling advantage in the end game because you get more points if you split the stats up into more categories.

I would think the same thing is in play in the healing world. If a class scales due to spell power, int, spirit, haste, and crit and if it gets gear that matches that scaling, it will simply surpass a class that scales with fewer stats. That said, I'm don't get the feeling that crit or haste scaling matches our +healing scaling or stacking into mana regen, especially with the handful of tools (ProM, Renew, PW:S) that can't crit.

The current Chastise is pretty meh, it's basically just an aid for getting off a scream or mana burn on that moving target.

If we're bartering spells demand the pre-nerf Chastise, as that was a thing of beauty and a joy forever. So many games won because I interrupted that one Holy Light or that other Cyclone.

I think Blizzard clearly tried to go for spells that work in both PvE and PvP though, and SoH would be a fine racial for everyone to have if they didn't keep changing it. The current implmentation is fine except for the channelling, so I'm optimistic that they can get it right in the near future.

The problem with this line of thought is that currently all Wrath epics have at most 5 stats (+ optional sockets), and usually only 4 stats if purchased from a reputation vendor or crafted by a profession. Currently all cloth drops have stamina, intellect and spellpower so you have a choice of any two of (spirit, mp5, haste, crit, hit) for the other two stat "slots".

Given that holy priests already scale well with spirit and haste there isn't any itemisation-derived benefit from scaling (atm, rather poorly) with crit or other additional stats.

Of course, this may change if later tier epics get six or more different stats per item, but even then the fact that crit rating is currently really rather weaksauce means that we'd probably be better off by reverting to the previous HC/IHC and forgoing a few itempoints by sticking with just 5 stats.

Overall while providing some decent buffs, Koraa's post somewhat disappoints me:

-IHC might end up decent if they properly balance its break even point, as is being hinted at. That said, my mind also still remembers '25', so wait and see in that aspect.

-Yes, reducing cooldown to 2 minutes increased Desperate Prayer's power. Koraa seems to forget it went from a racial priest spell to a talent as well. Not to mention that there is no indication of what happened to the original 30 second cooldown which was advertised.

-Response on Divine Providence is just horrible. The fact that some of the heals are multi-target is a non-argument, considering that we are talking about percentage increases here. Then not understanding the request for an interesting mechanic, but talking about this being given in form of a drawback to an already way underpowered talent...

-Response to Test of Faith is equally bad. Comparing it to Holy Specialization, which is an underpowered talent in itself (compared to for instance Fingers of Frost/Shatter, of Cruelty/Malice granting universal crit, etc.) in an attempt to justify the power of Test of Faith is just baffling.

-Change to Guardian Spirit seems ok, at least makes it more useful to tank saving now.

One thing I found the most disappointing is the feeling that most of the talents are fine, though the IHC/GS changes might be ok. However what I read from this post is that we basically can't expect to get any major changes, but will at most get some tweaks, while some talents which nearly the entire priest community is unhappy about are considered 'fine'. If anybody could, in the same way as Shan requested, forward my recent post on how I feel about Holy (which seems to be similar to a lot of people) to the US forums, I would be most grateful. Wryxian seems totally overworked on the EU forums, as he seems to have to hold everything together on his own:

WotLK Beta (EU-English) Forums -> Long feedback on (mostly) Holy Priests

Sorry man but the build you posted makes zero sense to me. You drop test of faith and DP for mental agi and divine spirit? That is just insane. DP and test of faith together result in higher HPM from CoH and PoM than mental agility. Also Test of faith on GH/FH/BHs has 2.7% of procing holy concentration. Its the equivalent of 1-2 extra crit points for BG/FH and BH, in addition to the HPM increase. No offense but I would not touch your IHC build with a bargepole. The non IHC build with mental strength actually makes sense if you skip divine spirit and stick the point to max mental strength, but I still think its inferior to 51 holy.

Just to give you an example

Take 6 ppl with 14k HP who have a 10k deficit. Lets say your CoH heals without DP and test of faith for 1200. You will need 8 casts to top them to the point where CoH is no longer necessary when you include crits. If you have test of faith and DP however you CoH heals for 1400 before crit with test of faith and 1320 before crit normally. So your DPS at 6k, will benefit from test of faith on the first two heals, even if CoH crits. So that is 2800 on the first two heals, leaving a 7.2k deficit with 1320 per cast. In total you will need only 7 casts to heal them to the point where CoH is not usable anymore. With mental agility you need 8 casts, with DP/test of faith you need 7 casts. Mental agility just made you a loss in mana while using CoH (!!). That is how useless mental agility is now.

I think you misunderstood misunderstood my post though. The intention was to show that getting crit is not worth spending points in IHC

You have two gear options corresponding builds. One is Build 1 with a gearset that gives 20% crit, while the other is Build 2 with a gearset that gives 16% crit (5% less crit from gear), h% more haste and m more mp5 (converted from spirit+int) instead.

Lets see which is better

First lest compare clearcasts. Build 1 has a 9% clearcasting chance, while build 2 has a 4.8% clearcasting chance, but build 2 has m more mp5 from extra spirit and int, in addition build 1 has 1 point in divine range, increasing the potential HPM/HPS of CoH and 1 point in healing prayers which is in the absolute worst case senario (1 pom every 20 seconds + no PoH) is worth 16mp5. Thus combining the regen you are looking at 4.2% clearcasting versus m+16 mp5.

4.2% clearcasting is worth approximate 2 procs per 3 minutes. At 1200 mana per proc. That is about 66mp5, thus you need 50mp5 from spirit + int together to break even. If you take into account the loss of HPM on CoH from divine reach, I would say you need only 45mp5.

IHC also increases throughput by giving you haste. At 20% crit this is 3.2% haste and the 4% more crit overal gives you an additional 1.2% to throughput. This is about 100 spell power.

In otherwords to match the benefit of taking build1 and 5% crit you need 45mp5 from spirit+int, 100 spell power and 3.2% haste. If you rase the values to 22% crit for build 1 and 18% for build2, the values are slightly higher, but not by much. This is accurate for up to 22% crit for build 1.

For those who think that dropping healing prayers for divine spec in build 1, 1% crit is worth 0.45% more clearcasting chance, which is 15mp5. This is less than the worst case senario for healing prayers.

So really the question is whether 100 spell power, 3.2% haste and 45mp5 from spirit/int is actually worth 5% more crit. If this is the case, then replacing 5% crit with 100 spellpower, 3.2% haste and 45mp5 in your gear and dropping IHC makes sense. By just looking at the stats and assuming you have the option of trading that crit, then IHC results in either a loss or an extremely small gain.

[e] I missed that post by kortar, but I will reply to it later, though this post answers almost everything.

[e2]

I am really confused, as to why test of faith does not save you mana. Test of faith channels healing power when this power is least likely to be lost to overheal. Thus test of faith results in a significant boost in effective HPS. Any boost in effective HPS equals a boost in HPM. Both spiritual guidance and test of faith gain you mana.

Also yes that should be dividing not subtracting.

1.06*(1+0.5*(C+0.06))/(1+0.5*C). That makes it a 9% boost over any reasonable +crit range and a 13.5% boost for 9%/9%. So test of faith would still reach the perfect balance point at 9%/9%.

I already addressed most of the problems with your theory previously, but I'll deal with another issue here: Surge of Light vs. Healing Prayers.

Consider that Healing Prayers saves you 20% of 15% base mana every time you cast Prayer of Mending (3% base mana). If you've got 20% spell critical, you'll get a Surge of Light 10% of the time you cast Prayer of Mending (and it doesn't bounce). That Surge of Light saves you 18% base mana. So if your Prayer of Mendings bounce more than an average of 1.6 times, you're getting better mana return from Surge of Light than Healing Prayers - without even considering the fact that you're probably casting other spells that can crit as well.

And if you think that "1.6" figure matches up against some casting pattern of yours, consider that if your Prayer of Mending averages 1.6 bounces you shouldn't be casting it in the first place since you're wasting mana and throughput that could better be spent on Flash Heal.

@havoc
Since you put it in both builds, can you give an estimation about the usefullness of Healing Focus?

As somebody else posted, I'm also not sure if it is worth the 2 points, which could be put into Holy Reach, Healing Prayers, Desperate Prayer (nobody knows if they would change it back to something usefull) or (for build 2 imaybe 1/3 IHC to open the talent without investing into it).

I know that cast-pushbacks were bad in vanilla and BC, but since they changed it, I dont know how much the 2 points will "haste" us in an aoe-situation compared to a build without it.

@kortar
In BC it made sense to use PoM even if it would not bounce often to give the tank the additional thread (or to use it as an opening-nonthread-heal). This will not be the case anymore in WotLK. Which I find very sad, since it gave the spell some more depth.

Your main issue is that you're thinking like TBC healing. There won't be situations where we will use CoH 6-8x in a row to top up a group of people who are all down 10k HP. I haven't seen anything so far where that would be remotely viable.

Not only is it not even CLOSE to sustainable in mana efficiency now (you did notice that CoH is 21% of base mana now, right?), but you'd use Prayer of Healing or Renew instead.

And any build which does not contain Mental Agility is just asking for trouble. Our problem at the moment is not throughput: it's sustainability. You're more than welcome to spec 56 points in Holy, drop MA, and run out of mana in 35 seconds.

WotLK healing so far is absolutely nothing like TBC. It's more like old-school MC healing than anything else. Reactive heals, wait for the damage, then heal it up. Very non-spiky damage, lots of time to Renew and GHeal, occasionally CoH.

And I repeat: 10% off the mana cost of Renew and PoM, which I cast a lot, is more than sufficient to make up for the loss of Divine Providence. At least, for now. If we eventually get to a point where we have enough mana to last any boss fight, then I'll consider a respec. Until then, I'm taking DS and 5/5 MA, and probably putting a couple of points into MS as well.

Also, as much as your model may show that Test of Faith is the bee's knees, it's way too deep in Holy for me to consider taking at this point. Just don't have enough points, especially when you consider that the only situation it's remotely useful is tank healing on a spiky high-damage boss, where the tank might actually be below 50% for reasonable periods of time. In that situation, and that situation alone, it is worth 45% of 6% (or 2.7%) chance to proc IHC. And so far, everything I've seen says that paladins remain the preeminent tank healers. They have the highest regen of any class while continuing to have the highest (or close to it) throughput possible. So if I'm not healing tanks primarily, Test of Faith is fairly weak.

[e] I'm seriously debating dropping Healing Focus entirely. It will, in a full-fledged pushback situation, save you 70% of 1.5 seconds on a GHeal. That's 1.05 seconds saved ... but you have to eat the pushback first to make it worthwhile. I'm just not sure if that's going to happen often enough to care about. Sapphiron is the only fight in Naxx-10 where I think it might happen, and the aura doesn't cause pushback, so it's only Blizzards; if you're standing in a Blizzard and casting, you're a moron anyway.

[e2] I'm really not sure your idea about dropping spellpower/haste/etc to gain crit, or vice-versa, will actually be viable. The gear drops are odd in Naxx-10, and we may not have the option to pick and choose what kind of stats we want. Basically, if you don't take a spirit item, you're getting crit/haste + Mp5 + spellpower. If you do take a spirit item, you're getting crit or haste. Your call. And basically, I'm going light (very light) on haste for a while to try to fix my plummeting regen. It's sad when I have more Mp5 unbuffed on Live than I do raid-buffed on the WotLK Beta. :-(

5% spell critical requires 230 spell critical rating.

3.2% spell haste requires 105 spell haste rating. Since spell haste and spell critical have the same itemization cost, we can say that 230 - 105 = 125 spell critical rating should be compared against 100 spellpower and 45 mp5.
Spellpower is 20/23rds the itemization cost of spell critical rating. So 125 - 100 * 20 / 23 = 38 spell critical rating.

I submit to you that no matter how you calculate it, 38 spell critical rating is a hell of a lot cheaper to acquire via gear than 45 mp5.

So if that 5% spell critical actually creates 3.2% haste, +100 spellpower and 45 mp5, it's far more efficient to gear for spell critical than it is to gear for haste/spellpower/mp5.

A position which is precisely the opposite of what you claim is correct.

SoL will not always be overheal. It could easily be (almost) fully effective healing and still proc Serendipity, saving quite a significant amount of mana and generating 25% of the mana cost back.

SoL is not really worth arguing over in my opinion - the talent is an amazingly subjective thing that is worth it in some situations with some playstyles, while not with others. Should a talent always be worth it in every situation?
You also assume that ProM will be ticking in the background, while quite often it either bounces to someone where it will not bounce on from due to luck/positioning, or there will be no raid damage to proc it after the first bounce anyway.
Both SoL and Healing Prayers are fight dependent and playstyle dependent.

Let's have 2500 spellpower and 20% spell critical after buffing. Our basic hppm for Flash Heal disregarding Serendipity/Test of Faith is 415.34. Our basic hppm for Renew (taking all possible talents into account) is 467.90. So if you manage to hit Serendipity or Test of Faith about half the time with your Flash Heals, you've just beat Renew's mana efficiency. With Flash Heal.

And let's not get into a discussion over the value of those lost crits by casting the non-crittable Renew over the crittable Flash Heal.

So of your top 3 spells, you shouldn't be casting one of them at all.

You're obviously losing a lot of efficiency on Greater Heal by spec'ing 5/5 MA over the top end of Holy.

And if you scroll back, you'll see my post on CoH/Flash Heal interleaving that showcases why the top end of Holy makes CoH more efficient than 5/5 MA does.

In essence, your argument is that if you spec poorly, gear poorly and cast the wrong spells, you'll have bad mana efficiency.

You somehow have to figure out a way of converting 38 spell critical rating into at least 45 mp5 to make your side of the argument work. Add in all the Spiritual Guidance you want, you're not shoving that through the itemization budget.

Obviously Prayer of Healing benefits greatly from Healing Prayers. But you simply don't cast the spell enough to justify taking a cost reduction when it entails losing other useful talents.

And I don't understand your Prayer of Mending comment at all. If you're casting ProM once every 10s, you'll need to somehow find time for one Flash Heal every minute to make SoL better than Healing Prayers.

I really have not seen the encounters or the available gear, so I cannot really answer some of this. What I can say is that if I run oom in 35 seconds because I dont have MA, you will run oom in 38 seconds. It does not matter if you spam CoH or cast it occasionally. Casting 9 CoH produces only 1% less effective healing compared to 10 CoH with mental agility. Same with PoM. It does not matter at all what the encounter is like. I can do exactly what you do with CoH/PoM by taking DP instead of mental agility. Name any senario you like.

Test of faith is usefull everytime you heal someone at <50% health, be he DPS or tank. Its should work on every heal including PoM and renew. No matter what the circumstances any encounter that stresses your healing power, should see a significant decrease in the number of casts you have to make by specing test of faith. Its a question of adapting your healing tactics to using more powerfull spells instead of cheaper ones (which is why SoL is such a stupid talent)

Do you have any values for your mana drain from renew?

Also have you actually tried using a DP/test of faith build instead of an MA build? Do you have any info on the comparison?

I am surpised to hear that paladins have higher mana regen than anyone else. I would have thought that their mana regen should be pretty much what it was in TBC. The only benefit I can see for paladins is the tons of DR they can bring to the tank on demand (which is a very strong benefit ofc)

"A lot" is being exceptionally generous. The only thing you lose from GHeal in taking 5/5 MA is the possibility of hitting someone who is 50% or lower, and gaining 6%. And you can still take 3/3 Test of Faith and get 5/5 MA with a 21/50/0 build, so it's a moot point.

Also, your assumption that Flash Heal is better is predicated on a lot of variables, most of which won't line up. Max-rank Renew is 17% of base mana, minus 10% from MA. Max-rank FH is 18% of base mana, with possibility of a 25% reduction if you overheal at all (let's be generous, and say that if you're using exclusively FH to top up the raid, it will overheal 50% of the time, for a net savings of 12.5%). Additionally, assume you Glyph for FH.

In that case, Renew is B*0.17*0.9 = B*0.153, and FH is B*0.18*0.875*.9 = B*.142. Also, Renew heals for 6500+, and Flash doesn't even crit for that much. So in the case where Flash crits, it heals for as much as Renew, and has a chance to proc IHC. But at a generous 20% crit rate, 80% of the time, Renew > Flash for raid top-up.

Also, using 3 Renews and then regen for 12-15 seconds > using 3 Flash Heals, getting no crits, and then having to cast another one 8 seconds later. It smooths the damage. FH has its place, but to argue FH>Renew is a weak stance to take.

[e] Your comment
has some numbers which don't line up.

@ Havoc: no, I haven't played with DP. Like I said, there's no situation where it's worth it in the content I'm doing at the moment (heroics, Naxx-10). There isn't enough casts of CoH to possibly justify taking DP, and I'm going OOM incredibly fast. Adding extra healing to spells I don't use that often isn't going to help me avoid going OOM.

Experience in general: Sapphiron, for example, is a long, intensive fight. It has a 1k aura that ticks constantly (like Felmyst), a Blizzard that ticks for 3.5k, and a tank taking reasonable, steady damage. It all has to be healed. When I tried healing it with CoH, I went OOM so incredibly fast it wasn't even funny. Less than 2 minutes, with trinket, Shadowfiend, Hymn of Hope, Inner Focus, and a Runic Mana pot, with a 15k mana pool starting off. We changed the strat, focused the healing assignments, and I used almost exclusively Renew for raid healing. It worked much much better, and we beat the fight on the next attempt. I used 4 Renews every ~ 15 seconds, did some regen, and occasionally used a PoM, FH, or GH to top up someone who took a Blizzard tick. Despite being "like" Felmyst, there was no way to sustain CoH spam.

Paladins have a two new abilities: Sacred Shield (basically +crit for a tank, along with an absorption shield) and Divine Plea (25% of total mana every minute). In proper gear, they're going to be overtuned, and regen so much mana it will be like the Shadow Priest fiasco of TBC. At the moment, with crit hammered by the leveling coefficient nerf (i.e. 70->80, lose 10%+ crit), paladins are still almost untouchable for mana regen. They can just spam on a tank all day long, happily burning Divine Plea every minute to regen 4k mana.