Distomos

Physique: Have you tried Discipline with Improved Healing and without it? I'm curious to know if you noticed any difference. Obviously, Improved Healing isn't necessary, but I still am wondering if anyone has experienced both and has any reactions. Good to see another Discipline!

 

Starfire

I have not, but I've also had zero mana problems in 25 mans and/or 10 man. In fact, as of right now the only thing I am having mana problems with is Anub'arak on heroic. I am specced 58/13/0. As far as I am concerned, as long as I am not running out of mana Improved Healing is not an issue.

My only issue is how Penance doesn't consume the [Eye of Gruul] / [Soul Preserver] proc/buff thing. That would allow me to cheat FSR.

To clarify, the only times I have mana issues is when I am forced to aoe heal or raid heal heavily without consistent damage (for example, I actually keep my mana up fairly well on Thaddius by PWSing the raid, since the shields are usually absorbed within 30 seconds).

 

Arrox

Have there been giving any word from the dear blues concerning Rupture that when PW:S a player who doesnt use mana, ie. warriors, rogues the likes, you dont get mana back?

Is it intended or a bug? And does anyone have an idea of an ETA of the next patch?

E Pluribus Unmn!

You can cut my wings away, but i will never forget how it was to fly!

 

Tainter

I didn't say anything like that. Of course you need 50 points in Disc to get Penance. But you don't need 5/5 Enlightenment, which was my point. I would much prefer going 2/2 Focused Power and 3/5 Enlightenment as I believe Focused Power to be the better talent point for point. And because most of the bottom Disc talents are quite good I just don't have the 2 spare points to max out Enlightenment. Grace, Aegis and Rapture aren't optional for me. Perhaps Aspiration or Renewed Hope could be dropped instead.

But Renewed Hope is somewhere between 1.5% and 2% output per point (less than 2% because PW:S doesn't crit, but has to be used to get the Renewed Hope effect) plus extra mana regeneration from Aegis/Rapture. That means it's better than a "mere" 1% haste/1% spirit combo. Particularly because Spirit for Disc Priests is mainly the Meditation value and hardly anything else.

That leaves Aspiration. But the cooldown reduction for Penance is great. As it currently stands the more Penance the better in terms of throughput, efficiency and safety.

Bottom Line:
I can't find the points for Enlightenment because to me all the other deep Disc talents look better.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

Tainter

Starfire,

Have you ever tried to AoE heal your group with glyphed Holy Nova? Disc talents seem to play into that quite nicely. Extra healing from instants, lower mana cost, Aegis from crits, mana from Aegis/Rapture. You also wouldn't overheal as much as with Prayer of Healing I guess. As a bonus, there won't be any threat issues.

Of course it can't be used to cross heal, but for fights like Anub'arak heroic it might be quite good for example.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

Kaltezar

Yes, all bottom Disc talents are very good and need a lot of points. But you have the "Power Infusion tier" of the tree before them where you will, in a PvE template, just invest 1 point.

So, where will you invest the 4 remaining points needed in the top of the tree to reach the bottom ? I think Enlightenment is a very good option then, don't you ?

Remember also that 5% haste from Enlightenment is 5% that you will be able to drop for better stat on your stuff, I think you underevaluate it a bit too.

 

Tainter

You make a good point. PvE has some spare points available. In that case Enlightenement is a decent choice. And indeed it would require a lot of haste rating to get 5%.

In the end it may be a question of output against efficiency. If there are no mana issues then Enlightenement has no downside. If there are mana issues, then other mana-reduction abilities can be picked instead I guess.

When you're going full Disc, you need to invest 8 points into the following talents to get to Rapture, which ones do you favour?
Options are:
- Imp DS
- Imp PW:S
- Absolution
- Enlightenment
- Focused Power

I just assumed Mental Agility, Inner Focus, Meditation, 1/3 Imp PW:S and Divine Spirit would be standard choices. However, I'm not entirely sold on Mental Agility.

Focused Power is a great output talent. It beats all the other options in my opinion.
Imp DS is more or less unnecessary for 25-man raids, but can be nice in smaller groups.
The value of Absolution heavily depends on how much dispelling is required. With Absolution Mass Dispel is a pretty awesome spell for dispelling AoE magic debuffs.
Imp PW:S is not a very strong talent in itself, but seeing how a Disc would ideally use Shield whenever possible it would contribute throughout all fights.

I'm leaning towards maxing Imp PW:S out, skipping Imp DS and Absolution and going with 4/5 Enlightenment, full Focused Power and Mental Agility.

That would look like this then:
Priest Talent Calculator

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

Isin

Just some quick info. I've been running with the [Eye of Gruul] and [Soul Preserver] for a while for Circle of Healing spam, and there is some oddness with these two trinkets.

For one thing, both procs are called Healing Trance Healing Trance, and from what I can tell, they can't proc at the same time. For another thing, the proc will be consumed even when you cast a free spell from Inner Focus, Surge of Light, or Clearcasting, so you want to be a little careful on that if you want to get the most bang for your buck.

The old Eye of Gruul was theorycrafted to be equivalent to 138 mp5 for literal CoH spam situations. Now that CoH hits 6 targets, and the Soul Preserver adds 800 mana, this is now going to be:

"The chance to get once proc on a 6 hit CoH would be
(1- ((1-.02)^6))= .114 = 11.4%

Multiply mana saved by chance to proc
730*.114 = 83.22 mana in 1.5s

SO take the number of casts in 5 secs to find mp5 equiv
(5s/1.5s)*83.22 = 277.4 mp5 (only from mana saved while spamming CoH, not counting possible O5SR regen from chain procs or synergy with SoL and Inner Focus)

Spell Haste would only improve this number. It seems that this blue trinket will still be in our bags for any CoH spam situation.

 

Shadowed

There's no reason to not max out Enlightenment and Imp PW:S, assuming you put the least amount of points into Holy you still easily have enough points to put an additional one in Enlightenment, and 3/3 Imp PW:S. If 191 (at 3/3 Absolution) off Mass Dispel and around 100 off Dispel Magic is making that much of a difference to you, you're still going to be better off getting Improved Healing which would be 15% off your healing spells which you will use far more than dispels.

[edit] Actually found the numbers.

 

The Not So Evil

For reference:

Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion.

Rawr - Coder of HolyPriest (Healer) and ShadowPriest (DPS) Modules.
Get Your Rawr 2.2.20!

 

Shadowed

It's entirely possible that I'm just doing this wrong but using The World of Warcraft Armory (Or 3/3 Imp PW:S, 2/2 FP, 5/5 BT) at 1,792 spell power, testing it in-game shows that PW:S is absorbing 5,662. Using what you provided it's saying it should absorb 6,725 damage, tried testing it with different parts of it removed and as far I can tell what I have is correct.

Specifically using: (2230 * (1 + 3 * 0.05) + 1792 * (1.5 / 3.5 + 5 * 0.08) * 1.88) * (1 + 3 * 0.05) * (1 + 2 * 0.02) * (1 + 5 * 0.01)

 

The Not So Evil

Tested myself on Live right now, with 5/5 Twin Disciplines, 2/2 Focused Power, 3/3 Imp. PW: Shield, 5/5 Borrowed Time.

Formula has either changed or I did a mistake somewhere. This formula seems fairly accurate:
PW: Shield = (2230 * (1 + 3 * 0.05) + 1792 * 1.5 / 3.5 * 1.88 + 1792 * 5 * 0.08) * (1 + 3 * 0.05) * (1 + 2 * 0.02) * (1 + 5 * 0.01)

1722 SPP - 5819 Absorb - Expected 5828
1642 SPP - 5689 Absorb - Expected 5706
1468 SPP - 5435 Absorb - Expected 5442

Seems like a small adjustment to the formula is needed, but right now I dont feel like spending 300g figuring out how each talent works.

Rawr - Coder of HolyPriest (Healer) and ShadowPriest (DPS) Modules.
Get Your Rawr 2.2.20!

 

Mearis

I made a specific thread for this - I didn't want to derail this with a discussion that is quite clearly about bugs.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

Tashia

HC and IHC

I noticed something that I am not quite sure if its a latency issue or a general issue, I don't know if it was ever brought up in the TBC forum didn't manage to find anything but it wasn't so important then as it is now.

Lets take this example: the tank is around 40-50% health I cast a FH and then a GH with stopcasting macro. The FH crits and the GH is around 20-30-40% from its casting time (I think it depends from latency) when the clearcasting buff actually appears and the current spell (GH) is not affected by the haste rating, yet it consumes one charge of your IHC and HC buff. The HC charge is not an issue since we don't use downranking any more and the free spell is max rank any way. But we lose one charge from IHC without geting the benefit of it.
Maybe I am wrong but I noticed this many times, maybe its happening when I have latency issues I am not quite sure of it but I thought I would bring it up so you guys could help me figure this out.

 

Viv

I'd agree with that.
The new ranks of our healing spells seem to be on a slightly "grander scale" than the current gear/content, if you catch my drift
I haven't yet come across a situation where I felt my heals weren't providing enough throughput, but I've often found myself wishing the spells were a little cheaper or my regen was a little better.

Continuing this line of thought, a 30/41/0 spec could be an interesting choice: keeping CoH but pulling the maximum possible 9 points from the holy tree into Mental Strength and Enlightenment. Yes, you'd be sacrificing the throughput boosts of deep holy talents. Will having more regen and haste be enough of a compensation? Wouldn't be surprised.

 

Isin

Just a quick note, I believe that "stopcasting" macros are no longer necessary, since 2.3.

I have experienced weird behavior with the IHC buff too, but for me it seems that I cast the first GH or FH (and I hadn't noticed if the spell was actually hasted or not now that you mention it), and if that proc'd a Surge of Light, it would consume the second IHC charge. However, if the surge proc happened at the same time as the Clearcasting proc, the Surged Flash of Light would consume neither the Clearcasting buff or the IHC charge. I have to do more testing to figure out the exact behavior but something was definitely weird.

 

Nomad_Wanderer

I think enlightenment's value is slightly diminished if you are not going deeper into the disc tree. Haste is on many items nowadays, and it's not difficult to easily get 5-6% without really trying. 5% more spirit is nice, but not that nice (if you have 800 spirit before enlightenment, than enlightenment gives you 40 more spirit... ~10 more spellpower, and not really that much more regen.. negligible imo)

Keeping the idea on regen, How are people using numbers to value mp5?.. The OP talks about a mod called "regenFu" which can show the 5SR and the % of time spent within the 5SR for the last fight. I find these numbers to be very useful in valuing spirit regen (which I know has been dramatically reduced). However, the regenFU mod doesn't seem to be working anymore, at least not for me.

Has anyone been able to find some rough 5SR%'s for WOTLK's regeneration model? Are there any other mods that can track 5SR%, and help priests evaluate MP5/Spirit regen? I think spirit is going to win most of the time.. but I'd like some data to back this up. I.e. How well am I actually doing in cheating the 5SR...

 

Naomicampel

There used to be a bug with SoL and IHC before the release. I used bothof these talents and when they did proc together i was loosing 1 hasted buff from IHC. The bug tho seems to be ok now after the release. SoL now doesn't consume 1 of the IHC hasted buffs and ofc not the Clearcasting buff. Although there is a problem with the haste you both mentioned. I'm not actually sure if it's a latency problem, only because i can't play with 0 latency :P ThankGod addon helped me a lot to not to loose a single proc.

The only think i'm sure of, is that the vendor trinket with the haste (which i don't see procing through ThankGod), and since it procs even with Renews, which means it can proc even the moment u have passed the 1st second of the GH casting time (.....1...proc.....2sec), doesn't give u a hasted GH, only the next spell u cast is hasted. At least from my observation, and this was the reason i bought it, to test it out.

 

Triton

I thought someone else might get some use out of the Wowhead filter I've created to try and identify potential upgrades for my newly minted 80 Priest:

ilevel 200+ Priest gear

The default "Holy Priest" stat weighting on Wowhead doesn't seem to be updated for WotLK so I came up with some ballpark values based on the information in the OP. The weights I picked are for Holy, so Disc priests would likely want to tweak those.

To see the list for a specific gear slot, you select it in the 'Slot' list and then click the 'Apply Filter' button. Items are then ranked in descending order from best to worst. It might need a little more tweaking but I feel like this is a good starting point.

 

• constantius

This is incorrect. Getting 5% haste 'free' from talents is huge. It's an incredible amount of ilvl points that can be spent on something else. As a holy priest who doesn't get Enlightenment, I'm strugging to try to get my haste back up to 15% in order to get the 'pretty' 20% number (with WoA). If I could grab an extra 5% from my talents, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Nomad_Wanderer

This is what I was trying to say. Your not going that deep into disc for enlightenment alone. You would have to give up something in holy.... Enlightenment is good, But I see it as one of those disc skills that is too deep to get without giving up something else deep... I.e. it's a good skill, but it's best if you've already committed to being a disc priest.

In other words, if you try to split down the middle, I think you end up less than if you just committed to one or the either.

 

Wickler

I've been really be trying to understand the new idea on how to heal now in Wrath since our 25 man raids are going to be starting up fairly soon. The old specs from before show that people wanted to get the mana efficient talents to help out our AoE and instant type healing. Trying to figure out what I am going to spec.people are now skipping Mental Agility and Healing Prayers, (or people never really picked up healing prayers as I am seeing potentially.) I always enjoyed getting those two talents so it would to drop the mana cost on spamming Prayer of Mending whenever it was up.

My main question is more towards the whole idea on how priests are going to be healing in Wrath in terms of using instants vs all the new critical powered talents. Is healing with Renew and using Prayer of Mending not as effective anymore since Druids are able to HoT much quicker/better then a priest can? I honestly don't think Renew is going to be as valuable as I made it to be in TBC, but the main issue is the Divine Providence and the lower Prayer of Mending cooldown combined with not having the 30% Mana decrease on Instant Cast Spells would mean a much higher mana use on Prayer of Mending.

Is this really an issue with Prayer of Mending being considered a mana drain, or is the new healing style for Priests in Wrath (Powered by the new Crit Based Talents) offer more viability?

Again, I have only done a little bit of Wrath Raiding, which is why I wanted to rethink how I am going to spec for Wrath in terms of a healer.

 

Emre

Will there be a section coming up on how spell haste plays into heal priests abilities in raids?

 

Lanthon

CoH will still figure prominently in raid healing. There are lots of fights so far where standing in one place and healing with CoH is preferable to moving around, then using Surge of Light procs to heal the lowest raid member and maybe cheat the 5 sec rule. Prayer of Mending is still my favorite spell. My main issue so far has been maximizing healing done per global cooldown. Prayer of Mending can potentially heal 6 times (with 2pc t7) per global cooldown, and at 15% of base mana (compared to 17% for renew, 18% for flash heal) with 2 bounces it's the most mana efficient heal we have. And this doesn't even factor in crits or the fact that it causes no threat.

As for Renew, I don't use it much anymore (once I got past that giddy feeling of seeing it tick for so much). Glyphed Flash Heal is a better use of the global, IMO. Renew has become somewhat situational, which is sad when you think about it. It used to be insanely mana efficient.

 

Sinndir

Yeah someone will try to do it. I would have already done a model had I not been so busy trying to finish up a research project for a class. However, with the severe nerf to our regen the haste stat must go hand in hand with your regen capabilities.

Currently, I'm attempting to do a crit model.