I got to thinking, and I was wondering something about rapture. I remember someone talking about how you almost never get the full 2.5% of your mana back from rapture. So, do additional points in rapture actually increase the coefficient of mana that you gain based on damage, or do they just increase the maximum mana that you can gain? Has anyone tested this?

Edit: Nevermind. This was already addressed.

True, its a nice haste buff every 15seconds. Tho having 3/3 innerfire gives a global boost in spell power (also increasing PWS absorbed amount) while imp. shields its purely for your shield every 15seconds.

On the other hand, having stronger shields gives more time to OOC regen while the next heal is 25% faster. Could get some nice down time channeling the haste buff with an innerfocus-heal so as to keep your grace buff up.

Regarding Healing PvP:
I think we really need to be able to dispel Poisons. Not necessarily from others, but maybe from ourselves only. Maybe it can be rolled into Fade to make it generally more appealing for PvP. In the smaller brackets Priests usually perform rather badly against Hunters and Rogues and certainly against a combination thereof. When their poison effects get stronger in Wrath then it will be even more of a problem. Fighting against a Rogue while having a full stack of Wound, Mind Numbing and Crippling up doesn't even bear thinking about.
Could someone kindly suggest that Blizzard takes a look at Priest poison self dispel? It doesn't even have to something as good as Abolish Poison or Poison Totem. Or maybe just a talent that gives Poison resistance or reduces their duration.

Yeh was thinking about that myself.

I think they should add a stun / movement deduction in the "Unbreakable Will" talent.
Chance to resist doesnt help, perhaps just chance to remove or become immune. Much like the new mage fire pvp one. I forget the name, Determination?

The last PTR's formula (at 70, of course) seemed to be this:

%mana_returned = points_in_rapture*0.5% * (effective_healing / 6410)

That is to say, you only got 2.5% mana back if you healed (or absorbed damage) for over 6410--a very large number for a Flash Heal or Power Word: Shield at level 70. In my ~900 spellpower PvP (s3/s4) gear, I get no where close to 2.5% mana back unless I crit a Gheal. Flash Heal gives like 0.7% mana back.


I will say though, on my (now deleted) thread on the PTR forum, someone *claimed* that the scaling of mana back with 'points in rapture' was something odd like (r)^2 instead of just (r). The coefficient (about 6410 healing at 70) did not seem to change. It might have just been a buggy push, though.

Edit: Shit, I didn't see your edit until after I posted this. Sorry.



Edit2: The vulnerability of priests to Hunter's Viper Sting and Rogues (in general) is absolutely rediculous at this point, and needs to be addressed. I 2v2 as Mage/Priest--*ANY* Hunter/Healer, no matter how retarded they are, can win JUST BECAUSE WE CAN"T COUNTER VIPER STING. It's flat out terrible design, at this point.

Just noticed on the beta that Inner Fire does not give a spell power bonus anymore (tooltip as well).
Also Hymn of Hope does not get any effect from haste.

Inner Fire looks fine to me (Level 77).

Agreed with Kortar that potentional use of Gheal and Flash with high crit rating can lead to interesting effects. You can learn to time your heals in such a way that you proc Serendipity and Test of Faith very very often. Combine this with Holy Conc and SoL and I suspect this might be imbalanced at higher crit ratings, for a playstyle using purely flash and gheal. That means your utility is greatly reduced, especially when dealing with AoE.

Suggestion: stop arguing about Surge of Light for now. There have been posts on the Beta forums that the devs have acknowledged that informed them of the conflict between SoL and IHC. They're working on it.

If they fix the dual (or triple) buff 'eating' effect, then it doesn't matter that they proc the same effect -- they'll still be useful. Imagine if you could chain an IHC *crit* into a SoL, and then Inner Focus the next heal (which would be hasted from IHC)? That could be a lot of fun.

Talk about something else for a while. Let SoL/IHC rest until we find out what they're planning on doing to fix it.

@ Shaara: I used Lightwell on the pull for the melee. They burned all the charges, so it was semi-useful.

I could not possibly agree more; any priest who is not dwarf is at a strong disadvantage in pvp - stoneform is as strong for priests as perception is for rogues. Why they considering acceptable that a hunter is able to drain 12000 of my mana in 60 seconds is far beyond me, and the concerns with rogues that you mentioned are very true as well.

Already done these calculations in a more accurate way, and its quite clear that there are cases where FoL can result in great losses. However they said they will they fix it so it wont matter anymore.


Serendipity is not a factor in SoL or any free spell mechanic.

You making an even more incorrect assumption that you will use up all SoL procs, which is by no means a given, due to the low duration and low HPS. Also by taking SoL u have to drop 2 points. 1 point is healing prayers. That is 16-50 mp5 off the bat (depending on circumestances) which don't come with an HPS decrease. The 2nd point is either inner focus or a 25+ talent point in holy. Which one will u drop? SoL needs to give a significant benefit because you have to drop other talents for it

I dont want a free instant spell from SoL. Give my next spell a flat chance of procing clearcasting instead.

Constantius, what spell rotations and build were you using please?

Not odd to me. That is exactly the build I was thinking of trying.

I'm not certain, but it seems to me you might not really need to cast GHeal often, and so improved healing may not be worth it (penance is already fairly mana efficient so you'd mostly take improved healing to improve GHeal). Aspiration is more appealing to me and fewer points. All four spells that aspiration affects can be used to spare mana and heal more efficiently if you're reasonably clever about it.

I've not played in beta nor the PTR, so that's all just a guess and could be totally wrong. If so, I rebuild -- no big deal. But it seems to me that the only way it makes sense to build up to improved healing is if you really had to absolutely max your HPS frequently and for extended periods. But even if that were true, it seems like it would be a very narrow set of cases where you could do a fight (as deep disc) with improved healing but not without it... But I guess we'll see.

A bigger question I have about discipline is whether all the points put into using PW:S shield are really worth it. It doesn't make a ton of sense to invest in renewed hope unless you plan to use PW:S a lot, so those two points are also tied to shield improving talents, but then you're potentially talking about investing a LOT of talent points for a spell you'd cast maybe every 15 sec or so.

Also, I had a question about interactions between divine aegis and PW:shield. I know DA procs add to an extant PW:S, but what about the reverse: what happens if you cast PW:S on someone with a DA shield up?

If I was disc specced between patch and WotLK release, would it be a good idea to grab some crit, even at the expense of mana regen/spirit? Tormented Demonsoul is tempting, and the Epic Gem market on my server is bargain basement.

Further expansion:
Spec was this; rationale given below.

1) Needed IDS because there was no Shaman in the raid for FtT (unusual situation, I know).
2) Didn't take 3/3 IHC because when I started the raid, I had approximately 13% crit raid-buffed (no moonkin), and taking the extra points in Mental Strength gave me a lot more regen than 3/3 IHC.
3) Didn't take Healing Focus because ... honestly, it's bad. Pushback is so rarely an issue anymore. Only fight I might respec for is Sapphiron.
4) Took bare minimum in Holy in order to free up more points for 'efficiency' in Discipline.

Spells use:
1) Greater Heal (primarily on tanks and deathknights/ret paladins who had 23k+ HP).
2) Flash Heal (used a lot on everyone else, and as a random top-up for the aforementioned).
3) CoH (used a lot on trash, random occasions where people took 3k or less damage, and were mostly concentrated in an area; example: Grobbulus).
4) Renew (all the time, random times, tank healing, raid healing, trash healing, whatever).
5) Prayer of Healing (primarily used on Loatheb, which, if you know the mechanic now, makes perfect sense).
6) Prayer of Mending (bounced off tanks all the time, used heavily any time there was raid-wide AE damage and I knew it would bounce -- it's fixed, btw, and hitting for 3k on everyone, which makes it a possibly 15k healing for a GCD. Awesome).

I did use Hymn of Hope a lot more, not for myself as much as for everyone else. Any time I knew the tanks were covered by the resto druid, and I had a second, I'd pop it to slow down the mana consumption of my 2 mages and warlock. It doesn't do that much, but we all had 17k+ mana, so it was worth 1360 each for no real loss on my part.

Hope this helps. We did Abom, Plague, and Spider, for reference, so 9 bosses in just under 2 hours, not really pushing at all.

@ anyone theorycrafting: getting 20% raid-buffed crit is going to be a joke. By the end of Naxx this evening past, where I picked up a neck (with 50 crit rating), I was running 16.05% raid-buffed crit without using anything specific. I had Draenic Elixir, Elixir of Healing Power, Brilliant Mana Oil and Golden Fish Sticks on. Net stats were:
- 950 intellect (new Naxx pieces are so sexy for pushing intellect up + Mental Strength)
- 1195 spirit
- 430/1100 Mp5 (roughly; I remember the 430 for sure)
- 1877 spellpower
- 170 haste (ick, I know ... only 5.3% ... need some new pieces).

I'm definitely positive I'll be running over 1300 spirit raid-buffed by the end of Naxx. It's lousy on the pieces I'm interested in. Additionally, with a moonkin around, I'll be pushing 25% crit, again, by the end once I have mostly Naxx pieces. That will make 3/3 IHC much more interesting to me. It also will start changing the way I heal, in that I will be using (training myself to use) Renew a lot less, and Flash Heal a lot more, as detailed in the discussion 2 pages back. Re-do the calculations for FH @ 25% crit, and you find that it comes out at over 9 HpM, whereas Renew is static at sub-9, under perfect (all 5 ticks) situations. At that point, I pull the points out of Imp Renew, and go with this spec.

[e] I can definitely see how Discipline would be 'useful' for the raid I was on. The only caveat I'd have is that I'd probably want a resto shaman along in the raid as the second healer if I was Disc. Since none of our shamans from guild are anywhere near 80, my options are going to be resto druid (2 choices) or holy paladin (3 choices), so I'm almost always going to be at least 41 in holy for these posts. If you have the chance to run Naxx as Disc (i.e. with a strong AE class supporting you), I'm very interested in hearing your feedback / thoughts.

My biggest note, that I can't emphasize enough ... Tree of Life Aura is godly. It's so huge. +6% raid-wide is a massive, massive buff. CoH for 1800+, GHeal for 10k+, Renew ticks for almost 1500 without the Glyph, etc, etc..

[e2] Inner Focus Prayer of Healing is lawls. I got 5x crit @ 6k. 30k healing for 3 seconds is fun fun fun.

[e3] In terms of regen, today was the first time that my raid-buffed regen (no totems, no shadow priest) reached TBC levels. I run 440/1200 in raids in Sunwell, and that was basically where I was today, +/- 10 Mp5. When you add in Replenishment (ret paladin today) @ 212 Mp5, you can see that I was actually running almost 200 Mp5 higher than I'm used to in Sunwell. That helps a lot, especially when you consider that I actually have 5000 more mana than on Live. I'm hoping to push that up another 100 Mp5 or so once I start getting some better pieces. For example, I'm still wearing the Coral Band of the Revived! Two new rings and a replacement weapon, and I should be pushing 460 Mp5, and spellpower well over 2000. I haven't gotten lucky on a weapon drop yet, and they're easily an additional +100 spellpower. I'm also using primarily common-quality gems, which is a large chunk of missing stats. I have TBC helm/shoulder enchants still (so more spellpower and Mp5), and a TBC metagem. It's going to scale nicely so that by the end of Naxx, I should be exceeding my TBC theoretical top regen, while having 9k+ more mana, and easily 1500 more healing.

Unless my math is wrong, fheal with the glyph is actually slightly more HPM than gheal with improved healing. Renew is only more HPM if no more than ~1/5 of the spell is overheal, and it cannot proc divine aegis or apply grace. As much as I never expected to say this, I'm primarily rotating between pennance and flash heal.

I guess my reasoning behind taking renewed hope is similar to the reason that I would take test of faith; it can provide additional help when you might really need it. I also have not found or been told that my regular usage of pw:s on tanks has been causing any threat problems (not using it at stupid times like pre-pull, of course :p).

It works both ways

Actually, SoL is a backdoor buff on CoH. Of the various ways people would realistically 'raid heal', CoH is ridiculously high throughput - over twice CH or BoL/FoL. It also has a very large number of chances to crit, so it will regularly proc Surge of Light to give you a free Flash Heal.

What this means is that you can throw away the 1.5s GCD to use that Surge of Light proc (reducing your effective CoH throughput) and toss a free Flash Heal on a target that you're guaranteed to overheal (unless every fight is Najentus, this shouldn't be too hard) and get a return of 4.5% base mana (18% base mana * 25% from Serendipity). And, of course, you can theoretically do some actual healing with that Flash Heal.

Also, keep in mind that Test of Faith is peculiarly potent with Circle of Healing, since CoH auto-seeks the lowest health targets. So if anyone within the range is below 50%, you'll get some Test of Faith action.

I keep reading this, but have been unable to test whether it's true or not cause I don't have access to beta or the PTR, but does serendipity return mana with overhealing done with free heals (mana cost 0), such as SoL FH??

Nope, you get 0 mana back.

nm, was already asked and answered.

Responses:

1) Patchwerk didn't hit that hard on my tank, who was in 5/5 T7. Of course, he hit quite a bit harder the first time around, when we were in Sunwell gear. For your first couple of clears, use a feral druid as MT; the AC helps quite a bit. Honestly, until I screwed up my timing on Shadowfiend, I was rocking mana on Patchwerk. I stayed above 80% for the first half of the fight, and would have been above 3000 mana at the end except our rogue got stupid and killed himself 10 seconds in. Missing his dps extended the fight by 45 seconds.

2) I can see a possibility of using GS, but if you're only running 2 healers, each has to basically focus on their own tank. In fact, I was having a much easier time of healing my tank than our druid -- he went oom about 40% in, Innervated himself, and was on fumes again. And he has more Naxx drops than I do! Honestly, I can't see my way to taking GS for now. I may be able to squeeze it in a 25-man where I can steal 1+ innervates, have BoW, BoK, Mana Spring, and Mana Tide ... but that is asking for a lot in a spec. I hate people who spec into some huge throughput healer build that requires lots of babying (read: resto shamans in 450 haste with no regen who absolutely HAVE to have a shadow priest). Healers are responsible for healing at a minimal cost to the raid. Requiring group buffs to keep your mana high is silly, when we have so many options for stacking our own regen. Shadow priests should be an unusual request, not a common one.

3) Sub-50%, not all that much, to be honest. Tanks rarely dipped below 60% the entire night, even on 'harder' bosses like Patchwerk or Maexxna. I can actually only think of 3 clear-cut situations where I went "omg tank might die spammmmmmm"; they were mostly above 60%. In that case, Test of Faith was kinda worthless. Also, it was rare for raid damage to drop someone that low without also killing them.

For your calculations, remember that almost everyone in the raid had 17,000 HP. Tanks and melee types had 21+ (tanks 31+, actually). So if people are below 50%,and you want to top them up, you're going to use GHeal. Just keep that in mind for calculations.

Heroic feedback: ran heroic AK last night after Naxx. I ended up using CoH and PoH a *lot*. That was a situation where sub-50% happened occasionally on trash, and ToF might have ended up being good. But honestly, I still wasn't so happy with my regen that I would have dropped points out of Disc.

I'm basically running under the assumption that I need to go heavy Disc until I have almost all Naxx(25) drops. Once I get personal regen back up over 500 Mp5 with just GotW, DS, and BoW, then I'll start pulling points out of Mental Strength and experimenting with ToF/etc at the bottom of holy.

I heard rumors that the spirit formula got a little buff in the latest build.

Can anyone confirm this?