Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion. - Page 77

Tainter · 10/04/08, 1:35 PM

Originally Posted by Kortar

3. Renew. Glyph of Renew adds 25% healing at the expense of 20% of the duration - for a net increase of 0% healing. It's tough to see a situation where Glyph of Renew doesn't downgrade the effectivenes sof Renew. Which, as previously noted, is already pretty much in the tank in WotLK.

The old version was just too good to be true. It increased effectiveness, efficiency and scaling all in one.
But the new one doesn't really downgrade the effectiveness. For fear of mincing words here the amount healed per time spent casting stays the same and the amount healed per duration increases. So the effectiveness is going up, isn't it?

Nice for PvP and it can probably be useful for 5/10-man tank healing with somewhat sub par gear.

onceler21 · 10/04/08, 5:26 PM

There was an interesting change to the tooltip for Martyrdom in this patch (or maybe last patch, I wasn't paying complete attention). Instead of saying that focused casting prevents spell pushback, it now "reduces" pushback. Testing on the PTR, the functionality isn't changed (at least with 2 points in it) - I had no pushback on any spells while focussed casting was up.

Pity there's now only 2 points in tier 2 discipline for a level 70 PvE healer. Even at 80, improved inner fire is a pretty weak talent, at 18 spellpower per point.

cpkfolief · 10/04/08, 5:30 PM

Originally Posted by Vihermaali

Luckily, the priest stat game is a game of balance

-Need to sustain mana in both short and long fights
-Need to have enough healing power and speed to keep up with both pace and amount of damage
-Need to have enough stamina to survive whims of Random Number Generator

These 3 categories are seperate and completely independent of each other. By this I mean, you don't regulate the amount of haste if your regen sucks. And you do not compare math between the categories (spirit and +healing for example). Unless via talents that make the connection. You don't simply decide +healing is better than intellect for example.

If the gear you have selected has way too little regen then you gem for spirit/intellect. It's a game of balance with priests, only thing you can say is priorities, there are no "stat x is bad" absolutes.

Having enough regen and lacking healing power is in no way a guaranteed scenario.

I used to be a huge fan of gemming with lots of +spirit until I realized I had to spam Holy Nova to get anywhere close to running OOM. In all the content I ever healed as a holy priest I found it hard to not finish a fight at full mana at even mediocre levels of gearing.

Maybe Wrath will be different, but I definitely won't be going into it with the same fetish I had in BC about being able to heal forever (infinite healing til OOM doesn't keep tanks alive through burst).

Mearis · 10/04/08, 5:51 PM

I am slightly concerned about the way disc is right now. Penance is utterly incredible, but having a spec that relies entirely on an overpowered 51 point talent is risky. If penance were in holy, it would get nerfed, but the only reason it is so powerful is because it is at the top of a tree that is otherwise completely shit.

If they tweak penance they give no reason to spec into disc at all.

cpkfolief · 10/04/08, 6:18 PM

Originally Posted by Mearis

I am slightly concerned about the way disc is right now. Penance is utterly incredible, but having a spec that relies entirely on an overpowered 51 point talent is risky. If penance were in holy, it would get nerfed, but the only reason it is so powerful is because it is at the top of a tree that is otherwise completely shit.

If they tweak penance they give no reason to spec into disc at all.

I see Grace, PI, and PS as the talents that make the Disc tree. Penance is just icing on the cake for me.

Awina · 10/04/08, 8:13 PM

Balanced stats make great sense for anyone focusing as a MT/OT healer.

For raid healers, they can probably reach a little deeper into the regen bucket, especially with CoH more expensive now.

A raid healer is primarily limited on how fast and how effectively they can find and hit targets. HPS is more for sustained healing on the same target, and many times if you can just get them a heal you can stave off death until they can get to full health over the next 5-8 seconds with cross healing. There are a few fights where sustained healing on the same raid targets is needed, but that is what PoH setups are for (and backup gear).

A really fast twitch and fast targetting raid healer can go OOM even with heavy regen. They'll have to be more selective in targeting in Wotlk it would seem.

cpkfolief · 10/04/08, 10:06 PM

Originally Posted by Awina

Balanced stats make great sense for anyone focusing as a MT/OT healer.

For raid healers, they can probably reach a little deeper into the regen bucket, especially with CoH more expensive now.

A raid healer is primarily limited on how fast and how effectively they can find and hit targets. HPS is more for sustained healing on the same target, and many times if you can just get them a heal you can stave off death until they can get to full health over the next 5-8 seconds with cross healing. There are a few fights where sustained healing on the same raid targets is needed, but that is what PoH setups are for (and backup gear).

A really fast twitch and fast targetting raid healer can go OOM even with heavy regen. They'll have to be more selective in targeting in Wotlk it would seem.

I'm not completely sure I follow your statement about CoH being more expensive "now." If you mean at level 70 and the cost changes to 21% base mana then yes, it is going to go up a little bit in the next content patch, but at 80 the HPM on CoH isn't changing from what it is now.

Not taking into account Mental Agility or any talents which affect +heals:

Level 70 Base Mana: 2620
Level 80 Base Mana: 3863 

Rank 5 CoH: 430hp @450mana = .95HPM (Current constant cost)
Rank 7 CoH: 720hp @811mana = .88HPM (21% of base mana)

However, with 5/5 Divine Providence taken into consideration in a level 80 build, the HPM on Rank 7 CoH becomes .97 (.02HPM better than Rank 5 at 70). Taking into account Test of Faith it will average out to well above 1HPM before any other talents taken into account. Counting the CoH glyph only makes this number better.

I'm not arguing that regen is a bad thing, but CoH is built to scale with pure +healing. For starters, the more +healing you have the less spells you actually have to cast to top people off. It will be amazingly hard to overheal with the improved CoH because of how little it heals for in comparison to single target heals.

I'd like to see some numbers from 25-man beta testers to see what the mana issue looks like. Between PoM and the inherent efficiency of CoH I just don't see raid healing as a problem. With Imp. Holy Concentration I don't even see how it would be possible to go OOM, but again, I'd like to see some raw numbers from high damage 25-man content.

Awina · 10/04/08, 11:31 PM

Good point on CoH efficiencies. Relative to how much mana we may have in aggregate over a 10 minute fight, each cast of CoH is likely to be more as a percentage if regen stays at current levels in BETA, but I agree that in isolation the HPM should be similar with Divine Providence.

We also get Twin Disciplines with the patch also, which is an improvement. How we get a Tier 1 talent that basically buffs the same primary heals that Divine Providence does (PoM, CoH) at Tier 10, as well as 5% damage on instants is beyond me. They need to buff DP.

Havoc12 · 10/04/08, 11:35 PM

Originally Posted by Promethia

Effects of Spell Crit
This is where things were most interesting. As is well-known, discipline benefits from crit through divine aegis. Specifically, a 10% increase in crit increases theoretical HPS throughput by 9.5%. This effect is linear.

However, the effect of crit on holy builds with Improved Holy Concentration is not linear -- it's hyperbolic. So as you add more crit, your average heal gets bigger due to the crit procs and your average cast time also decreases because of IHC procs at the same time. The effect on HPS per 10% crit rating ranged from ~8.25% (@ 10% crit) to 8.8% (@ 30% crit), which is fairly close to the flat 9.5% gain seen by discipline from divine aegis. At very high crit rates (above ~52.6% crit), holy benefits more from crit than discipline and the gap in benefit isn't very large even at more modest crit ratings. So the notion that crit is much more valuable to discipline that holy seems a bit overblown at best, assuming you have IHC. That doesn't even count Surge of Light.

You are calculating maximum HPS without taking overhealing into account. The value of overheal drops very quickly with overheal. At 30% overheal on crits the value of crit is nearly zero. I suspect you used a 0.5% healing for 1% crit value, which is completely wrong. Do the calculations with 0.3% for holy and 0.75% for discipline and you will see why crit is not a great stat for healing. Also you need to take into account the effect of rapture. Crits also return more mana for discipline.

Another important question is is the extra HPS actually useful. By all accounts spamming is now completely impossible. So proc haste is not really the best way to boost your healing. WHen you get a clearcast you ideally want to get some ooFSR time, not spam away to take advantage of the extra throughput. On the other hand a shield on crit means more mana from rapture in addition to the bigger heal returning more. It also means more time until you need to heal again, letting the rapture cooldown tick.

All in all the problem with crit has always been that you can't count on your 10kgheal being 5k bigger, so you plan your heals to land when the tank has a 9k deficit. Discipline solves that problem with shields. Holy gets an instant flash that lowers HPS or a mana regeneration method that requires slowing your casting down as much as possible + proc haste.

While crit synergises 100% with the discipline play style. Crit for holy returns a several things, but you can only use 1 of them meaning the others go to waste, in addition to being a relatively poor stat for healing.

Jaz · 10/04/08, 11:44 PM

How could gemming for int possibly be bad if it ends up as our main regen stat?

Vihermaali · 10/05/08, 12:59 AM

Originally Posted by cpkfolief

I used to be a huge fan of gemming with lots of +spirit until I realized I had to spam Holy Nova to get anywhere close to running OOM. In all the content I ever healed as a holy priest I found it hard to not finish a fight at full mana at even mediocre levels of gearing.

Maybe Wrath will be different, but I definitely won't be going into it with the same fetish I had in BC about being able to heal forever (infinite healing til OOM doesn't keep tanks alive through burst).

I have ~2,5k +healing and over 260 spellhaste unbuffed. That is more than enough to heal anything currently in game. What I do lack however is sustainability. Instead of gemming for +healing and +haste I chose to gem +spirit into blue slots. In WotLK my blue slot will most likely be filled with "spirit + int" -gems. I'm not saying you should gem for something else than +heal and +haste. I'm saying, don't try to make a general rule from something that applies to your circumstances only.

You haven't even seen WotLK raid instance, so how can you know what your gear lacks there?

However, with 5/5 Divine Providence taken into consideration in a level 80 build, the HPM on Rank 7 CoH becomes .97 (.02HPM better than Rank 5 at 70). Taking into account Test of Faith it will average out to well above 1HPM before any other talents taken into account. Counting the CoH glyph only makes this number better.

Pre-3.x lvl 70 builds have -10% instant manacost, which at least I won't have at lvl 80. 1,0617hp/m for lvl 70 CoH at your numbers. You can't just ignore that and add numbers to lvl 80 for your own convenience. That's colled Ad Hoc theorycrafting. Suure, glyph adds to lvl 80 number but you still have to take the glyph to make it have better hp/m.

But I wouldn't look at hp/m numbers too much. They vary from priest to priest a lot.

KalistraMerged · 10/05/08, 6:22 AM

Originally Posted by cpkfolief

I'd say I've been playing WoW for a fair amount of time and I haven't come across the law that states a certain class or spec has to work off a certain stat. If the devs are making Intellect a useful stat for Discipline priests, why are you complaining? Spirit is still useful for Holy through Spiritual Guidance->Serendipity, Surge of Light, and Holy Concentration.

With all of the ways priests have to gain mana back, be it through talents, mana potions, Replenishment, FSR, etc., you're only going to be gemming for Healing for Healing 'til OOM and HPS, or Haste for pure HPS anyway, so embrace what we are given to work with.

I think your missing a main point here.

Dicipline has the talents Divine Spirit (Gives + spirit) and Meditation (Regen based off spirit) however actually gains less from Spirit that other cloth casters, seems a bit wierd to me!

DS actually helps holy way more than disc, but it disc that provides it.

Promethia · 10/05/08, 7:24 AM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

You are calculating maximum HPS without taking overhealing into account. The value of overheal drops very quickly with overheal. At 30% overheal on crits the value of crit is nearly zero. I suspect you used a 0.5% healing for 1% crit value, which is completely wrong. Do the calculations with 0.3% for holy and 0.75% for discipline and you will see why crit is not a great stat for healing. Also you need to take into account the effect of rapture. Crits also return more mana for discipline.

"Wrong" is the wrong word, and I think you misunderstand what I was doing. Maximal HPS throughput ignores overhealing by definition. It's a metric that has a specific meaning. Including overhealing in a metric that specifcally ignores overhealing would be "wrong". It assumes a target with infinite health and a healer with infinite mana, and is purely a theoretical construct.

Much of what you're mentioning is perfectly relevant to building a model to predict effective healing, but that simply wasn't my goal. I wasn't interested in mana efficiency either -- that's another topic. All I really wanted to know was how much your maximal HPS throughput changes in response to changes in spell power, crit, and other factors that contribute to it.

That's just sensitivity analysis, which is described briefly here. It's important because if you just charge forward and try to build a complex model to predict effective healing without looking carefully at which input factors most strongly affect your conclusions, then you're likely to make conclusions that frequently don't apply.

As an example, you're suggesting I redo my calculations assuming holy gets a crit bonus multiplier of 0.3 (instead of 0.5) and assuming discipline gets a multiplier of 0.75 (instead of 0.95) -- at least that's what I think you're suggesting. That's easy enough to do, but if I did that should you suddenly believe the results now predict reality?

You shouldn't. Those numbers (0.3 and 0.75) are just reasonable guesses and the actual values seen in reality will vary depending on the player, their spell power, crit rating, encounter, number of other healers, etc. -- i.e. a lot of factors affect it. I also know from measuring overhealing that it's subject to rather large variance, especially in large raids. So I'd take any point estimates relating to overhealing as "fuzzy" at best.

So how much do assumptions about overhealing on crits affect theoretical HPS? -- that's a good sensitivity analysis question. To answer it, I tried out bonus crit multipliers of 0 and 0.3 for holy and 0.45 and 0.75 for discipline. I then compared those values to those with no overhealing. To get a realistic prediction, I tried each value across a range of values of spell power from 1000 - 3000, and across a range of buffed but untalented crit rates of 10% to 25%. Here's the bottom line:

Assuming 0.3 for holy: about a 4-5% drop in HPS compared to no overhealing on crits
Assuming 0.75 for discipline: about a 4-5% drop in HPS compared to no overhealing on crits
Assuming 0.0 for holy (the minimum possible): about a 9-13.% drop in HPS compared to no overhealing on crits
Assuming 0.45 for discipline (the minimum possible): about a 10-13% drop in HPS compared to no overhealing on crits

In other words, it made nearly no difference at all in comparing holy versus discipline. Both suffer surprisingly similar losses of potential HPS if they overheal by similar proportions. Maybe that doesn't make intuitive sense at first, but what's happening is that while holy suffers a bigger loss in heal size from overhealing on crits, this is made up for by haste gains (through IHC) which discipline priests won't get. So it's a wash.

Overall, what I think this all means is:

1. Spell power has the biggest impact on greater heal HPS of any factor that I looked at. That's true for both discipline and holy builds. Every 1000 spell power increased greater heal maximum HPS throughput by 1029 and 958 for holy and discipline builds respectively. That's very little difference between builds.

2. Every 10% crit rating at most increases HPS by 9.5% and ~8.5% for discipline and holy, respectively. This also doesn't impress me as a big difference. Assuming overhealing on crits reduces those gains for sure but there is less than a 1% difference in the effect on holy vs discipline across a wide range of spell power and crit ratings.

3. Although spell power is relatively better for holy than discipline priests and crit is more valuable to discipline priest than to holy, the difference is just not that impressive -- at least in its effects on greater heal HPS.

4. For discipline priests, crit can be thought of as a way to increase heal size through divine aegis. For holy priest (with IHC), crit can be thought of as a way to gain haste. In both cases, the benefit may not come when most needed.

5. I am still not extremely fond of crit for either discipline or holy priests. It's a much better stat for DPS casters. At least initially, spell power and int look more attractive to me.

Solifer · 10/05/08, 9:09 AM

I m still missing a comment bout Guardian Spirit (20 51) versus Devine Spirit (21 50). As I m not playing the Beta, I don t know if Guardian Spirit is worth the point or if I should spec Devine Spirit instead.

cpkfolief · 10/05/08, 9:54 AM

Originally Posted by Vihermaali

Nice math there. Unfortunately once again you looked at your little corner only and forgot the whole picutre. Pre-3.x lvl 70 builds have -10% instant manacost, which at least I won't have at lvl 80. 1,0617hp/m for lvl 70 CoH at your numbers. You can't just ignore that and add numbers to lvl 80 for your own convenience. That's colled Ad Hoc theorycrafting. Suure, glyph adds to lvl 80 number but you still have to take the glyph to make it have better hp/m..

Not taking into account Mental Agility or any talents which affect +heals:

I counted the only thing that was going to be different in a level 80 build, which is Divine Providence. I didn't just "throw in" MA for the level 80 version to make it look better.

Alustria · 10/05/08, 10:29 AM

I was just wondering in wotlk as a priest. Would we want to roll on a Staff like the Staff of Restraint (stam/int/spi w/ crit and spell power) VS Spire of sunset(stam/int/haste w/ spell power and mana 5)

Since dps will also want Spell power staves. Would us priest prefer Staff of Restraint? Im sure many spirit lovers will roll on the spi staff. However those who prefer haste would try for the spire. I would just want some inputs on the stats we should be focusing on for the first few raid tiers.

Since spell power is widely available.. Spirit > Haste > Int > Spellpower would be the ranking for stats , would most of you guys agree with this? Would love to have some response from people like lambi or constatine who have played extensively on Beta.

Awina · 10/05/08, 10:33 AM

While not every CoH Priest will take MA, I think it's fair to say the majority will.

If one can't speak in generalizations at times in these discussions, then we may as well delete half this thread.

His point was directed at me, simply saying that apples to apples with most CoH specs, and adding in DP, CoH is roughly the same as before. I think that's a valid point.

I'm a big fan of Monte Carlo / Data Table sensitivity analysis, so I understand your points there. Point analysis always requires an educated opinion at some point and won't satisfy everyone. But eventually to dial in the model some point values will have to be made. I agree it's good to understand the base sensitivities first, however.

Kortar · 10/05/08, 10:47 AM

5. I am still not extremely fond of crit for either discipline or holy priests. It's a much better stat for DPS casters. At least initially, spell power and int look more attractive to me.

In terms of throughput, you're absolutely correct. Especially given that the Discipline Priest benefits evaporate the moment you're not healing a single target who is taking repeated, predictable damage.

However, the main purpose of spell critical isn't throughput - it's mana efficiency, just like for Holy Paladins. Both Discipline and Holy Priests gain substantial mana efficiency from spell critical.

For Discipline, it's the rather obscure interaction between Rapture and Divine Aegis. When you cast a Greater Heal, you're probably going to receive 2.5% of your maximum mana from Rapture. The additional critical healing won't increase this number. However, the DA shield is also likely to return about 2% of your maximum mana. Presuming your total mana is five times your base mana, this means that a non-critical Greater Heal would 'cost' 14.7% base mana and a critical Greater Heal would 'cost' 4.7% mana. Obviously these are very rough numbers, but they should help understand the value of spell critical for Discipline in terms of mana conservation.

For Holy, SoL/HC/IHC obviously make Flash/Binding/Greater Heal cheaper with critical. However, the chance of Serendipity tends to explode with spell critical, making it valuable as well. Additionally, even on spells other than the direct heals, the chance of proc'ing SoL and converting it into either a free Flash Heal or mana via JoW makes critical valuable even for other spells.

Also, in terms of pure throughput, spell haste will generally increase your throughput more than spellpower at the levels of spellpower/specific spells we're discussing.

I m still missing a comment bout Guardian Spirit (20 51) versus Devine Spirit (21 50). As I m not playing the Beta, I don t know if Guardian Spirit is worth the point or if I should spec Devine Spirit instead.

I suspect most people are wondering what you've sacrificed from Holy to go beyond 14 deep in Discipline.

The Not So Evil · 10/05/08, 11:22 AM

If you are going all out AoE healing, for maximum throughput and efficiency, you will end up with a 20/51 Spec.

But if you start looking over what you are LOSING in that spec compared to a more balanced 13/58, you have to ask yourself if its worth it.

cpkfolief · 10/05/08, 11:57 AM

Originally Posted by The Not So Evil

If you are going all out AoE healing, for maximum throughput and efficiency, you will end up with a 20/51 Spec.

But if you start looking over what you are LOSING in that spec compared to a more balanced 13/58, you have to ask yourself if its worth it.

What's interesting about the Holy tree is we have a situation where there are two different PvE specs that benefit different play styles.

One is the heavy Holy spec you mentioned, which would be 14/57, because Inner Focus is invaluable for regen. On the other hand, you can drop some of the single target healing talents and go for MA in Discipline, which makes you a great raid healer. What you have to decide is whether you want to be an amazing raid healer or single target nuker.

Havoc12 · 10/05/08, 12:01 PM

Originally Posted by Promethia

"Wrong" is the wrong word, and I think you misunderstand what I was doing. Maximal HPS throughput ignores overhealing by definition. It's a metric that has a specific meaning. Including overhealing in a metric that specifcally ignores overhealing would be "wrong". It assumes a target with infinite health and a healer with infinite mana, and is purely a theoretical construct......

And as such you cannot make any conclusions as to the relative value of crit between holy and disc.

As an example, you're suggesting I redo my calculations....

Sorry but I cant see how you came up with these numbers.

Holy concentration:

(1-(1-crit*0.45)^2)*0.3 overall haste +0.3% healing per point

DA = 0.75% crit per point.

[/code]
crit holy holy/10%crit
0.1 0563925 0.0563925
0.2 0.11157 0.0551775
0.3 0.1655325 0.0539625
0.4 0.21828 0.0527475
[/quote]

Holy benefits from about 0.5% more throughput per crit point.
Discipline benefits by 0.75% per crit point.

Discipline however benefits in a more substancial way from aegis than holy does from proc haste.

Disc crits means greater rapture to other heal ratios, more throughput and more mana return from rapture as well as decent throughput. All relatively resistant to overheal.

Crits from holy is haste OR a chance to gain mana through oofsr time and in terms of raw throuput its very poor.

MAX HPS calculations without overheal for calculating the value of throughput stats are pointless because the effect of overheal is different

Haste: Not affected by overheal but affected most by ooFSR time.
Spellpower: Affected more or less linearly by overheal, but not affected by ooFSR time.
Crit: Affected faster than linearly by overheal, but not affected by ooFSR time.

Holy gets different benefits from crit.

Holy concentration allows you to get more ooFSR time, with a smaller sacrifice of casting time, but it reduces the value of improved holy concentration

Holy gets either one or the other from crit, but disc gets both.

The value of crit in real terms is going to be much higher for disc than for holy

Kortar · 10/05/08, 1:33 PM

Disc crits means greater rapture to other heal ratios, more throughput and more mana return from rapture as well as decent throughput. All relatively resistant to overheal.

Crits from holy is haste OR a chance to gain mana through oofsr time and in terms of raw throuput its very poor.

No, crits from Holy is haste AND a reduction of the spell's cost to zero. AND it is a higher chance to activate Serendipity. AND it is a higher chance to get a SoL proc which can be converted into free heals or mana. Indeed, the value of improved FSR is the least important aspect of the mana regeneration scheme, which makes me curious why you're mentioning it and ignoring all the rest.

Calcualting "who is critical better for" is actually quite hard. It involves all sorts of assumptions about talents that we don't have a very good model for. Until we can agree on such models, it's probably better to stick to what we do know. Namely that Intellect is better for Discipline, Spellpower/Spirit better for Holy, and Intellect is better than Spirit for any spec.

If you are going all out AoE healing, for maximum throughput and efficiency, you will end up with a 20/51 Spec.

But if you start looking over what you are LOSING in that spec compared to a more balanced 13/58, you have to ask yourself if its worth it.

Go look at your Resto Shaman WWS parses. You'll notice that they're about 85/15 CH/LHW. What this means is that, in real terms, Resto Shaman cast about as many Lesser Healing Waves as they do Chain Heals. The reason for this is that raid healing involves a fair bit of spot healing. Now consider that Chain Heal has a greater degree of versatility due to range/limited targets and Lesser Healing Wave is an inferior spell to Flash Heal. As a result, an 'all-out AE spec' doesn't really make any sense as we understand raiding right now. The benefits you've received from MA are thrown away and then some by not spec'ing your Flash Heal.

In reality, I'd expect people to go with a 14/57/0 spec. Let's review some differences:

Silent Resolve - There is no good reason to take this talent unless you're concerned with PvP. You simply can't generate enough threat, even after the ProM changes, to rip mobs off your tank. And, of course, dispelled buffs is so rarely a PvE concern that we might as well ignore it as a factor. Improved Inner Fire isn't a great talent but at least its not a complete waste of points.

Inner Focus - As a cost-reducer, this really isn't all that inspiring. However, the previously ignored bonus to critical chance is actually quite significant now that all those abilities key off spell critical. For a single point, you're getting about 30 mp5 without even considering FSR and proc chances, so it makes little sense to prioritize the lesser Holy tree abilities over it.

Healing Focus/Desperate Prayer - You need 2 more points to escape the third tier, so these could really go anywhere.

Improved Renew - Why buff a spell you shouldn't be casting in a raid anyway?

Healing Prayers vs. Spiritual Guidance - This is a bit more problematic. One point in Healing Prayers provides 58 mana per cast of ProM. One point in Spiritual Guidance with 1000 Spirit provides +50 spellpower. If you're casting ProM every cooldown, that means Healing Prayers provides the equivalent of 29 mp5/point - which is far more expensive to replace via gear than that 50 spellpower. While you'll cast Prayer of Mending slightly less often, you'll also probably have less than 1k Spirit (due to the aforementioned Int > Spirit). So generally, Healing Prayers is likely to be a better point-for-point investment than Spiritual Guidance.

Surge of Light - Not taking Surge of Light is simply silly. Every time you proc, you've got 10 seconds to reap 2% of your total mana or to throw a completely free Flash Heal. Point-for-point, this is one of the most powerful talents in the entire Holy tree.

Spiritual Guidance vs. Empowered Healing - If you have 2000 spellpower and 1000 Spirit, EH provides the equivalent of +100 spellpower/point to the three spells it affects while Spiritual Guidance provides +50 spellpower/point to all spells. So this is really a choice dependent on the mix of spells you'll be casting - I went with SG > EH on the premise that half the time I'd be casting heals other than Flash/Binding/Greater Heal.

That being said, there are some question marks:
Lightwell/Guardian Spirit - I'm not convinced either of these spells is worthwhile. Guardian Spirit is too much like the PvE-worthless Pain Suppression for my tastes, and Lightwell, even buffed, still runs afoul of a severe conceptual weakness.

Test of Faith - I've yet to see (or come up with) a good model for how often this will occur. While it's benefit is larger than its rate of occurance (since you always need the talent when it occurs, while you don't need it when it doesn't), if it only occurs very seldomly then it's probably not worth the points.

Awina · 10/05/08, 1:34 PM

Originally Posted by The Not So Evil

If you are going all out AoE healing, for maximum throughput and efficiency, you will end up with a 20/51 Spec.

But if you start looking over what you are LOSING in that spec compared to a more balanced 13/58, you have to ask yourself if its worth it.

Thus my questions in an earlier post regarding the tradeoffs in talents above MA (or meditation/IF) versus talents above CoH.

A raid healing Holy Priest, by definition, is going to be at least 41 in Holy and 14 in Disc probably. The question is how to optimize the remaining 16 points:

> Mental Agility (5) = Efficiency for Raid healers bread and butter spells: PoM and CoH (and Renew if used) but not FH
> Mental Strength (5) = 15% higher Mana cap for Max Mana based regen buffs
> IHC (3) = Free FH and Haste on FH crits (raid healer likely not using GH a lot in their rotation)
> Test of Faith (3) = Extra crit and healing on targets below 50% health - any spell - arguably as good for raid healing as MT healing
> Enlightenment (5) = 5% more spirit and haste
> Focused Power (2) = 4% more healing on all spells (basicaly 2 more points of Spiritual Healing)
> Divine Providence (5) = 10% more healing on bread and butter raid healing spells: PoM and CoH (and BH, PoH)
> Guardian Spirit (1) = 50% more healing on target and death save - better for MT/OT healer perhaps, and 3 min CD

A couple of interesting comparisons here:

- Focused Power (2) > Divine Providence (2/5) because it affects all spells
- IHC probably isn't as good for raid healers as theory would suggest due to not necessarily being able to fit in a free FH or GH depending on raid damage being taken
- Enlightenment gives 5% more Spirit and Haste guaranteed - not reliant on procs or crit (also gives stam fwiw)
- Mental Strength gives 15% more INT which scales as you stack INT, which may (or may not) be a viable gear/gem/enchant strategy

Many times as a raid healer I'll go through 10-20 second bursts where I"m not trying to top people off - just save them. Then I'll get a window to top them off. Thus, HPS for CoH and PoM isn't the biggest factor - the biggest factor tends to be the ability to consistently hit many targets in a row with the right heal at the right time as fast as possible. That's more regen intensive and I'd be tempted to try a 30/41 or 27/44 (Test of Faith) type build perhaps.

Divine Providence is a joke at that level (same as Twin Disciplines but Tier 10? WTF?) but still worth looking at.

Question: Would using CoH with Test of Faith on a target with 40% health affect the other 4 targets in terms of crit chance or healing? Probably not, but worth checking.

constantius · 10/05/08, 2:20 PM

There will be almost no way to make a 14/57/0 spec work at the start of WotLK. No way. The only way you can possibly expect to pull off a spec like this in real raiding is if:
1) You bring extra healers to cover for your lack of mana.
2) You have gear to compensate.

The only way you can theoretically expect to have #2 is if you've already beaten the entire T7 content (10/25). Once you have full Naxx gear, you can probably afford to drop points out of MA and MS, and lose DS. But honestly, you guys are using pie-in-the-sky models and haven't actually done Beta to try it.

It's insane how much mana regen we lose, and how quickly you spend the mana you do have. When your primary heal is over 1000 mana, and may/may not proc Serendipity, you can burn 50% of your mana bar in a few seconds. And unlike Live, you don't regen it quickly unless you start burning cooldowns.

I've 2-healer'd Naxx(10) several times now. There's no way on earth I'd do it without taking at least 3/5 MS. I was running on fumes for Patchwerk, Thaddius, Sapphiron, Gothik.

So stop arguing over whether the extra few points in Holy are worth it. That's an argument to have 4 months after Wrath is released. For now, if you want to run with a reasonably normal raiding comp, you're taking 2 healers to Naxx, and you get Replenishment and maybe BoW. That's it. If you can 2-healer all of Naxx.10 with your 14/57/0 spec, you go right ahead ... and let the rest of us know how you did it. Because unless your tanks outgear the content, you're not going to have the mana to sustain healing on most of the fights in there.

[Aside: if you setup your raid to basically cater to you, then maybe you can pull it off. By this, I mean:
- resto shaman in your group for Spring and Tide
- BoW
- BoK
- innervates from a feral tank
- AI
- affliction warlock feeding you spirit from a felpuppy
- full consumables
- amazing dps so the fights don't take too long
- amazing tanks who have amazing gear so they don't take as much damage

Realistically, it isn't going to happen. That would require bringing a prot paladin *and* a ret paladin, a resto shaman as your second healer, a feral druid as your second tank, and an affliction warlock. That's a very special raid comp. ]

Os! · 10/05/08, 2:22 PM

Originally Posted by Awina

Divine Providence is a joke at that level (same as Twin Disciplines but Tier 10? WTF?) but still worth looking at.

Not so sure about that, stacking %adds to spell power generates very high returns. Its the same as how Binding Heal benefits from both Empowered Healing and Divine Providence: that spell is going be be extremely powerful.