You only made one mistake: you forgot to factor in the Glyph. When you do that, you get 91 spells that cost mana, and each has a base mana cost of 18%, so 16.2% when improved. At 3863 base mana, that means Flash actually costs 625 mana, making the HpM equal 10.0.

I'll admit that with IHC, your model is a better one. I was ignoring it for the purposes of pure throughput comparisons. Still, Flash >> Binding for HpM, assuming you're healing a single target. No-one really denies that. Ramiro's point is that it's as much *HpS* as Greater Heal, because of the odd double-dipping crit ability proc'ing IHC for increased haste. It's a very clever way of looking at things, and something we can all apply to our job as healers.

So, basically:
1) Mid-range HP loss, highest HpM is to use Flash, then Binding.
2) High-range HP loss, highest HpM is to use Greater, then Flash, then Binding. As you'd expect.

When you have also taken damage, the calculations change completely.

Divine Fury
There should really be no build that doesn't take it. You have no other heal that can hit hard enough to use as bread&butter for tank top-ups. Penance is cool, but it doesn't heal for enough to replace GHeal. And the ability to increase your HpS without affecting your HpM at all should be taken, every time. Haste is always good.

And if you're used to a Greater Heal at around 2.4, that's much much slower than many of us. I'm running a 2.10 GHeal in raids at the moment, and when I drop all my haste on Beta, it feels 'slow'. I can definitely notice the 0.4 seconds difference. If I have the ability to drop my base to 2.5, and then take an additional 8% on top of that (note: are we confirmed that WoA and Moonkin aura actually stack?), I'm absolutely going to do it. I can get 10% on my gear without too much hassle, which will let me drop to 2.1 again. I like fast GHeals. It's much more responsive healing.

This really isn't the case, which you'd have to raid at 80 to see. Even with 5/5 DP, CoH hits for around 1700 @ 2000 spellpower. Almost everyone in the raid has 19k+ HP raid-buffed. If the raid takes damage (for example, a 3600 pre-resist tick on Sapphiron), CoH is actually horrible at keeping them topped up.

CoH is mainly good on Live when dealing with one of the following two situations:
1) Bloodboil / Felmyst-style aura damage. Ticks for under 1000, every 2-ish seconds. One CoH tops you up to full from one tick (actually overheals); 2 CoHs cover 3 ticks. At this point, it's quite efficient.
2) Targeted raid damage, like Kil'Jaeden or Twin Eredars. Large ticks (2500+) on selected targets who happen to be in the same area to be hit by CoH. In this case, CoH is absolutely not a raid healing spell. It is a raid stabilization spell. The only purpose of it is to slow down the damage until the 'real' heals (mainly Chain Heal) can come along and really top someone up. You can't keep up with the damage by using CoH alone.

Unfortunately, everything so far in WotLK indicates that Role #1 is much less viable. It was always a gimmick anyway, and now it really doesn't seem to be prevalent. Role #2 is better filled by Flash Heal now, since it has increased dramatically in HpM, and allows us to target our healing better.

This isn't to say that we aren't using CoH anymore, but its usage has dropped off considerably. And, going back to your post, to have some fictional situation where using a 10% stronger CoH somehow is going to allow me to take a "regen break" is laughable. It just doesn't happen. I'd be better off casting 5 Renews and then taking a break -- at least then, I might keep up to the damage flow.

10% is not a magic solution to everything. CoH still heals for less than 1800 (non-crit). It's not enough to heal a person with 20k+ HP taking 3k+ ticks from an aura. And in this situation, MA > DP. If I'm going to cast CoH as a stabilization tool, I want it to be efficient in terms of my mana pool, not efficient in terms of how much healing I get out of it. I'm not casting it as a heal.

Hope this is clear. DP isn't a bad talent (Ramiro's posts absolutely show how powerful it can be for Binding Heal), but it's not as useful regen-wise as Mental Agility.

It's still our only heal that heals for 50% or more of a dps' life. When rogues and fury warriors have 23k HP raid-buffed, and they take a cleave for 12k, what are you going to use to top them up? A Flash Heal for 5200, or a Greater Heal for 11k?

Remember: the current raid balance is looking at taking 5 to 6 healers to Naxx.25. In that situation, you are much less likely to have people randomly overwriting your heals, or 'heal sniping'. Healers are going to calm down, and realize that the extra HP pools mean we're less likely to die to environmental damage, since it doesn't scale quite as harshly. In that situation, it's better to calmly assess the situation, begin the GHeal, and cancel it if someone else happens to have better reflexes than you with *their* big nuke heal.

I used GHeal quite a bit on Sapphiron last weekend -- often the melee would be ticking down from the aura, and get caught in a Blizzard (3500/tick). They got out, and were safe, and rather than just hit them for 20% of their life, I'd hit them with a nice 10k heal, bringing them out of the danger zone and into safety.

It takes some work, and really should only be used if you can hit 25%-ish haste raid-buffed (dropping your Gheal to 2.0), but it's definitely worth using. It's the only spell that even comes close to comparing to the total HP pool of *any* target in the raid. Even a crit GHeal won't take someone from 1% to 100%, no matter what class they are. That's an odd situation to be in.

(note that right now a crit on a warlock for me will take them from 'just rez'd' to 'overhealed by 3k')

Please correct me if I am wrong, but according to the talent description Improved Healing is not supposed to reduce the mana cost of FH (nor BH).

That'll teach me to post while tired. I was thinking "that's too much mana", forgetting it was just the glyph, not IH. Fixing my post, thanks for the correction.

I was referring to a Borrowed Time hasted GH, which should drop a non-DF but 20% haste GH at 2.5 down to less than the 2.25 seconds (so slightly slower than your 2.10) second GH's that I'm used to on live. If I cast a PW:S, then hasted GH, then Penance, my PW:S CD is up again, and I can then follow with another hasted GH.

I'm not advocating a level 80 progression raid build that doesn't include DF. What I do think, however, is that for the month between 3.0 and Wrath, in the nerfed version of T6/SWP we'll be doing, I can effectively raid without DF and not put my tank at risk. I'm basing this off my beta experience, and my impression of what the nerfs to SWP will do. I'm finding that there just isn't THAT much time between Penance CD's where I'll be casting non-Borrowed Hope hasted GH's.

If you're only talking Sunwell in 3.0, then ya, you can probably pull it off. We're going to be double or triple-dipping from the best of all the worlds. We get Replenishment (woo), we get all the new totems and buffs and stuff, but we're still at 70, in heavily nerfed content. Given that it's one raid a week, and that all the bosses will be short, losing DF should be fine.

This blue post says they do and so does mmo champion's raidcomp

Talent description is faulty then.

Throughput is a useless parameter when choosing what spell to use at a specific, real situation. I only want to know how much it will heal for and how quickly the heal will land. You should not take HC into the equation. Even if BH has a higher chance to proc HC, in a tight situation (tank down 20k), priests are not the type of healers to rely on crit.


Crit is suddenly 36%. This number is used by others only for BH's chance to proc HC, because you essentially cast two heals. This is derived by 1 - 0.8 * 0.8, IE one minus the chance to not crit for 2 spells. Don't use it as a base crit % for BH.

Nono. Especially when you don't overheal, a +10% healing done on your CoH WILL MOST DEFINITELY result in almost 10% more mana efficiency. You won't see it directly, but you and other healers will heal a tiny bit later, maybe 1 other healer uses a slightly different spell. In the end, even if YOU cast the exact same amount of circles, the amount healed is 10% more, meaning no one will have to heal that 10% anymore.

This is basically the equivalent of saying you only care about distance and time, but velocity is meaningless to you.

Fine. Let's leave it out.

Binding Heal = (2238 + 1.0057 * 2500) * 1.1 * 1.1 / 1.5 = 3834 hps
Greater Heal = (4301 + 2.0114 * 2500) * 1.1 / 2.5 = 4105 hps
Flash Heal = (2050 + 1.0057 * 2500) * 1.1 / 1.5 = 3347 hps

So choosing Binding Heal means that you're delivering 56% of the healing in 60% of the time. Flash Heal would deliver 49% of the healing in 60% of the time.

Yet, oddly enough, in such a tight situation you're willing to rely on the tank living another second. You don't see the contradiction there?

It's 155 healing. You're on crack if you think that level of granularity is going to somehow save a heal.

Who exactly is topping that person up who goes "ooh, the priest healed for an extra 150, so I can use my LOWER RANK HEAL to heal for slightly less and be efficient". No-one has spells that do that anymore. As far as I can tell, the minimum value direct heal available to us in WotLK is going to be something like Flash of Light, hitting for 4-5k. HoTs tick for less, but the only HoT that heals for less than 5k+ total HP is Riptide, which is a very special case.

DP is a decent talent. But arguing that taking it increases your efficiency is the wrong way to go about it, because it requires that you cast enough (or that your healers cast enough) to see the difference in the healing amounts, at minuscule amounts of healing per cast. An extra 165 healing to someone down 5k is going to get eaten as overheal by the next person to come along.

[e] With respect to Ramiro's post: if you take 5/5 DP, you should use Binding Heal. It's one of the primary reasons to spec into it. And it does have a 36*0.45 % chance to proc IHC, which is almost twice the chance of Flash Heal (at 20*0.45 %). And IHC is awesome for throughput gains, which makes Binding even better than Flash for that purpose. If you're concerned about efficiency, use Flash. If you want maximum throughput, Binding provides not only similar throughput to GHeal, but also provides the first heal earlier, which in a clutch situation can save a tank's life. Macro-ing GS+Binding Heal is probably the best thing you could do, because you want that first heal to heal for as much as possible in a GS situation, and Binding > Flash for throughput. No argument there.

It seems like the real issue here is whether CoH will be cast enough to warrant that increase, not whether the increase itself is significant (since it is exactly as significant as the indisputably significant Spiritual Healing for the heals that it affects).

I would assert that in BT/SWP-style raiding, yes, it would be cast a lot, and DP would be warranted. It sounds like it will be less useful in early WotLK raiding, so perhaps not. But this has already been discussed in more depth by others.

More importantly, either way, dismissing "that level of granularity" as insignificant seems counterproductive. Ultimately, almost every talent is unlikely to make a difference BY ITSELF, but that doesn't mean that most talents are insignificant.

Slow? 2.5 seconds is not slow at all. I have not seen a single raid encounter where gheal is not an excellent raid healing single target solution, from karazhan to illidan. Gheal, CoH and PoM are the 3 major heals for holy priests the rest are accessories. With the downranking you could potentially argue that gheal is too big, but then there is serendipity. If the flash heal glyph fixes the efficiency difference the flash heal can be more viable, but with 14k HP on the dps a 10k heal should still be fairly useful.

The numbers you posted are wrong. Flash heal benefits from empowered healing, which you did not factor into your equation.


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I am afraid 155 points does save you an extra heal, no matter how you look at it.

Bust damage = your raid takes a big hit every so often. You fire 4 CoH to heal *SOME* of the damage. With DP you fire 3. The extra 155 is a 3rd of the other CoH. You don't cast that 4th one. You stop short and let the shaman fill it up. Next time round you fire 4 CoHs. Its just a matter of controlling your healing. More importantly a 2xCoH combo+PoM heals for nearly ~40% of a CoH per target with DP. You will get improved HPM from DP, you will also do more healing when you PoM and binding heal, which greatly increases your efficiency, since more of the damage is healed by your more efficient spells. Then again there are other factors to consider. Totems, tree aura and so on, all of which stack multiplicatively with DP, but only additively with MA.

Empowered healing means that binding heal has nearly identical single target HPS to flash heal and much lower than gheal. Binding heal only makes sense when you need to heal yourself too. When that happens its a no brainer.

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I dont agree with you. This is your own personal view of CoH. CoH on live has better HPS on 5 targets than chain heal and its instant ==> front loading.

CoH + PoM is equal to chain heal in every way xpt HPM in every way when dealing with active damage on 3 ppl. So CoH is as much a raid healing tool as chain heal. In any 5 man senario its better. CoH + PoM on 5 grouped targets blows chain heal out of the water. I have had the opportunity to raid the same encounter with either multiple CoH priests or multiple shamans and I do not see any difference in raid healing xpt, when 3x CoH priests ==> shaman at the bottom of the healing table, because 6x CoH's land on any raid damage before the shaman can fire a single chain heal.

1) Burst raid damage (e.g flame strikes on council, spell volley type spells, shield explosion on najentus, spirit bolts on hexlord etc). ===> CoH is the bees knees. 3x CoH only takes 3 seconds. Chain heal simply can't compete, unless the targets are in different groups.

2) Sustained raid damage (RoS p2)

3) AoE damage over time.

4) Any time 3x suitable targets take active damage. Must be used in conjuction with PoM.

The effectiveness of CoH depends greatly on a) The way you use it, b) What spells you use with it. It does not seem so on live but CoH can be used in many different ways.

Although you might think that you can't top ppl with CoH alone, chain heal alone with top em either. Having two people CoHing will do the same job as a shaman and priest. Only the front loading really helps on burst damage.

Obviously there are currently several issues with CoH at lvl 80. On live CoH heals on a single target for about 50% of a chain heal, while at 80 it heals for 25% of an fh. Worst of all CoH does not have such a large advantage over flash heal that you can use it on 3 people senarios.

Binding Heal is about +400 HPS with my gear over Flash Heal on Beta. And about -200 HPS from GHeal. Empowered Healing affects both Binding and Flash Heal. Divine Providence only affects Binding Heal.

Good stuff all.

As a raid healer, my general focus is to deliver the highest sustainable EFFECTIVE HPS to the raid as a whole.

When one specific target needs a DIRECT HEAL, I will do so using whichever heal makes sense. If I anticipate them taking damage soon, it might be FH, PWS, or BH. If not, but they need attention, it might be GH.

Outside of that, I'll go back to highest effective HPS - which in many cases could be CoH if enough people are below max health.

CoH isn't great for saving INDIVIDUALS, but if it is the highest effective HPS and most everyone is in a safe range, I'll probably use it more than what others are indicating here within reason (EHPM).

EHPS and EHPM are things a raid healer is calculating on the fly based on incoming raid damage, because you really can't use a rotation. CoH should have much better EHPS and EHPM than before considering the smart targeting (much less overhealing), it being raid wide (much more likely to hit 4-5 people even with tight range - especially if you target the right person on cast), and with the extra Glyph target, despite the hit it took on HPM with the 19% increase in cost.

I played around with the holy nova glyph a lot today.
I kind of like it Oh boy, I can see some of you rolling your eyes already. But I've got to say: From a pvp perspective, or perhaps just a penance spec perspective, it has uses.

Holy Nova glyph quick math:
Almost all of the following was calculated while 51/10/0 at 70 in standard disc pvp gear:
The base spellpower coefficient is 30% or 32% as far as I can tell.
With 1000 spell power, it was healing for right at about 1015.
5/5 Twin Disc, and 2/2 Focused power, it heals for about 1080-1100 as expected.

Mana Costs:
Base: 655
1/5 MA: 641
2/5 MA: 628
3/5 MA: 615
4/5 MA: 602
5/5 MA: 589

HPM/HPS:
1 person healed: 1.85 @ 720
2 people healed: 3.7 @ 1440
3 people healed: 5.55 @ 2160
4 people healed: 7.4 @ 2880
5 people healed: 9.25 @ 3600

Math aside, it's good to use when you can hit at least 3 people with it. It actually beats out PoH in HPM & HPS at my gear/spec level, but a glyphed or talented (healing prayers) PoH would have better HPS and HPM, respectively.

I like it in arenas. Spamming it on yourself is an extra 700 hps while mobile, adding onto renew's base 250 hps (would love to play with the renew glyph but I can't get a hold of it), along with prayer and shield. Mana wise it is obviously very poopy but if you can hit your partners with it, it is pretty much fine. The trade off is mobility for mana, in hopes that you will be able to get away and not take damage (saving you mana anyway) or just drink. Not to mention there are times where you simply can't use casted heals.

Does it beat other glyphs? Hard to say.

We call those times "arena." Ha ha ha.

Glyphed Holy Nova would be much more appealing in raiding if not for the "party" restriction. I understand why they keep that in place for PoH -- a spammable smart heal in a 30-36 yard radius around you might be a little overpowered -- but it seems eminently fair to bring Holy Nova in line with the other AoE heals in this respect and allow it to cross party lines.

Edit: based on the wordings in MMO-champion, I've found the following things which still depend on "party" or "group" but not "raid":

Druid: Tranquility
Hunter: Ferocious Inspiration
Paladin: Devotion Aura, elemental protection auras
Priest: Prayer of Healing, Holy Nova, Vampiric Embrace
Rogue: Honor Among Thieves
Shaman: Elemental protection totems, and some other totems inc. Mana Tide (and Chain Heal has some funny wording I never really noticed before)

I wish they'd finish the job, one way or the other. It's always felt like such an artificial restriction -- you're standing in my area of effect, but you're not one of my four best friends? T-O-O-B-A-D!

Regarding your above points, I think you overstate the case for CoH a bit.

1) In most of these cases, a combination of PoH and CoH is more effective (also including PoM where possible, of course). Najentus is the perfect case for PoH, the only reason to use CoH is to help with another group or to top up the last bit. Constantius' characterization of a stabilization spell fits much better here. Council is a good example since you can heal the melee while moving out of the way, and the front-loading effect helps. On Malacrass, I strictly disagree. The only reason to use CoH there as a main heal is if you happen not to have a Concentration Aura with you. PoH is far superior there due to its extended range. How often does the raid not manage to get closely together due to a WLs rain of fire, for example? In practice, even helping out with the other group is rarely a case for CoH, again due to range.

2) This is a better case for CoH as main heal, though PoH is still better if the damage take is large enough. I have usually only finished RoS with more CoH than PoH due to helping out with other groups.

Overally, I think Constantius' characterization of CoH as a stabilization spell fits better. Sure, CoH can be a main heal, but only in places, and mostly on the melee group.

The critical thing about Binding Heal is that it is usually the biggest "fast" heal we have for a single target. There are times when that extra second or so of cast time for greater heal is just too long to risk it. When that happens, it makes sense to drop your HPS (!!) and switch to a faster heal such as flash heal or binding heal.

If mana is no object, then binding heal is the way to go. It's generally bigger than flash heal. If mana depletion is a significant threat as well, then consider flash heal. I know if I'm even remotely worried that my tank might die before a greater heal would land, then I don't cast it. It pisses me off when my target dies during the last second of my greater heal cast. I usually chalk it up to an error in judgement on my part: I should have chosen a faster heal.

To me this is a prime example of how focusing on HPS can cause one to lose sight of the real goal, which is keeping people up (or put another way: minimizing the probability of your target dying). Sometimes the absolute most critical statistic for healing is time.

Also, HPS is rarely the issue. So I don't think anyone should freak out at the notion of dropping HPS at a time when the target is low on health. The max HPS on even flash heal is plenty to keep up with almost anything. Mana efficiency is the main reason to use greater heal, assuming of course the target has taken enough damage to take a greater heal.

I wouldn't be so quick to say that. There are several examples in early BC of fights where the HPS difference between Flash Heal and Greater Heal is important; for example, Malchezaar circa March 2007. As an example in later BC content, look at Gurtogg's Fel Rage, particularly on a cloth wearer.

Guardian Spirit, returning to an earlier discussion, is actually perfect for that sort of "falling behind" situation. Cast GS, then start a Greater Heal. If the tank lives, you get a 40% stronger heal and a few more seconds beyond that to top him off. If the tank dies, the GS heal triggers and brings him back to 50%, where he should live long enough for your heal to finish and top him off (or close to it). (In a raid situation, this will probably be someone else's heal, but that's fine: the important part is that the tank doesn't die.) The buff to the triggered heal looked kind of ham-handed when I first saw it, but I'm realizing that it basically makes the perfect healer panic button.

I am afraid I have to agree with you here. My mistake.

On another topic - Could anyone on the PTR tell us, how does Guardian Spirit work on Teron? And on Azgalor? I was always looking forward to this skill being our limited version of Soulstone, which would make stacking multiple priests in raid slightly better now, that CoH is not supposed to be king anymore.

I don't think FH playes a role in a tank emergancy situation. At least if we concider "normal" tank not a mage or worlock tank or felrage. It does no good at the tank in BC. Why should it be better in WotLK since the gap between the tools is much bigger than in BC. If GH heals the tank for 1/3 of his life. And FH is 1/3 of GH (that are the values I've picked up in this thread). Why should something that heals the tank for 1/9 of his life (noncrit) help him, if he is near death? That is not much more as GS did before its buff when everybody thought it was silly.

As far as I know every tank has emergancy-buttons. Most healers have panic-puttions. Every (not only holy) paladins have lay on hands. So there should be someone who prevents the death of the tank. If we cannot do it since GS is on CD than someone else should press his emergancy-button. Our job in this situation is to top up the tank as good as we can.

In most cases that would be GH. IF no disci-priest is present AND you realy need something NOW that could be a shield since it is our onyl instant beside of GS that helps before the next hit. At least in a raid-situation with more than one healer present.

If you don't need something now but cannot wait another 2.5s (maybe you know that there is a special boss ability incoming) than it should be BH. It does slightly more than FH but the important thing is that it has a nearly dobble chance that you can follow it up with a fast big heal which is the heal you needed in the first place but was to slow. Its the following GH that does the job. BH or FH may only help to stabilize the tank until someone can land a big heal. If its only you and all you can do is FH or BH-spamming until IHC proccs than the tank will be probably safe in half the time with BH.

It's not about mana it's not about HPS. BH healing slightly more than FH may be nice. But it is irrelevant which of both heals slightly more or less in the first place. It's about getting the time(IHC) to land the only heals that can safe the tank. Neither BH nor FH can!

In such an emergancy-situation mana can never be the thing. If needed you would blow all the mana you have to prevent the death and wipe. If you cannot safe the tank you don't need any mana at all and there is replendishment and stuff if you safe him. Palas DO it when they use lay on hands!

In every other situation mana-management and HPM will probalby be our greatest concerns. But to prevent a wipe the only thing that counts is to give enough health as fast es possible. That is not HPS either. If the tank needs slightly more health to survive the next hit a heal that tops him up to full but lands after the hit may have a much higher HPS but does not safe the day.