WotLK Healing Compendium v3.0 [theorycraft, specs, etc] - Page 147

Svena · 04/16/09, 7:22 PM

Renew seems to be 50% effective pre 3.1. I spent time looking at Web Stats logs from various guilds. Even on Patchwerk tanks the rate is only marginally higher.
3.1 will improve this, however I don't feel we will ever go back to the days of Vanilla WOW renew effectiveness on bandaging rogues. In those days healing was scraping enough mana together to keep people alive-not necessarily healthy. These days its getting a heal out fast enough before something else kills them.

• Sjonkel · 04/16/09, 7:46 PM

Ravanor, PoH is king on XT. With Holy Reach it has a 36 yard range, which should be more than enough to heal up a group. Just make sure every group is close. Divine Hymn works wonders as well.

You can always be unlucky with Gravity Well og Light Bombs, but generally 2 PoH will be enough to heal the entire group. If you have Serendipity at 3 stacks, which you should, then 2 PoM will take around 5 seconds, and since it takes 10 seconds to kill a topped up person, that gives you time to save anyone from wells or bombs.

We had quite a few wipes because people would generally panic, some would go outside healer range to kill adds and so on.

I'm a bit curious on people reporting +10% total heal from renew. I just can't see how renew can be so much used. I've done Ulduar up until Kologarn, and almost all fights require everyone to be topped up as fast as possible. Razorscale, you can't risk people getting 2-shot with fireballs. Ignis, have to heal them all up fast, and people in the slag pot obviously. XT-002, if people aren't topped up before tantrum, you have a problem. Kologarn, again, people can be gripped, need everyone at 100% hp immediatly. Same with Iron Council.

I personally liked the renew in TBC, which was useful, but even with 6 talents to improve renew, I still hardly use it for anything but tank healing. I'd very much like to hear how you use it so efficiently when raiding.

Falim · 04/17/09, 1:04 AM

Yea, I'm thinking of dropping the renew centric talents from my holy spec. I can just never see much of a use for the spell expect on tanks.

Suhné · 04/17/09, 4:53 AM

After trying out the new talent trees in Ulduar, this are my current thoughts on healing talents:

- Regarding discipline, I find there is a much more definite cookie cutter spec than that of holy: the typical 57/14. The only point that still gets me doubting is whether to pick up divine fury or other holy talents to reach inspiration (spell warding, or maybe healing focus and improved renew). Probably once the penance glyph becomes widely available I will be dropping divine fury for another option, as a cast time reduction in GH will be of little use, given Penance strength and disc haste via borrowed time and enlightenment.

- In holy I believe there are a wider range of choices to make: whether to pick a renew spec or not, B&S vs. pure healing throughput talents, the diminished priority of tank healing talents with dual specs and the nerf to mana regen talents... All in all, I'm leaning towards a build with just 1/3 Empowered renew, to let it proc holy concentration and loving the utility of B&S. The jury is still out about the usefulness of divine fury and inspiration now that I have a second spec that is much better suited for tank healing (besides, there's serendipity too), I'm keeping them for the moment, more because the alternatives are not very appealing than because I believe them to be essential, but I think this is something that could be discussed.

Tainter · 04/17/09, 6:24 AM

It would be nice if you elaborated on that, rather than to just throw a talent spec into the room.

Did you run out of mana despite using Potion, Hymn and Fiend?
If so, did you wipe because of that, or because people were taking too much damage?
Are you gemmed for Int? Do you have a lot of Haste?

There is a lot to discuss regarding how much mana and how much throughput is required. From what I've seen the damage is (entirely expected) quite a lot higher than before. Therefore a higher level of throughput is required than was required before.

I've been in situations (multiple badly damaged healing targets) where I lacked the output to save them all. However, there's a lot of avoidable raid damage, so I wouldn't instantly jump to the conclusion that I require more output to be able to recover other people's gross mistakes.

Similarly when I run out of mana I ask myself what happened. Did I not use my mana cooldowns optimally? Was my healing too wasteful? Was the dps too slow? Did people take too much avoidable damage? Did a healer die?

There are so many things that can, but ultimately shouldn't, drain your mana. After the first few nights of mana-intense fights I doubt respeccing will solve any of your problems personally.

Originally Posted by Sharajat

I'd pick up at least 2/3 Test of Faith over 2/3 Emp Renew. 8% more healing on the targets that need it the most is very nice. It'll never be overhealing, you'll always get value for that 8%.

I know people say "Test of Faith is worthless you shouldn't let your raids get that low" which was true in Noxromulus, but Ulduar has tons of nasty raid damage, and just saying "they never get that low" ignores the fact that they really do. CoH is smart, and shall always be hitting the lowest person, PoH is dumb, but should always hit at least 1-2 low people, PoM goes off on people who get low all the time.

I'm actually thinking of cutting 1/3 Emp Renew and just going all in on Test of Faith.

I'm a big advocate of taking Test of Faith over most of the Renew talents. When your guild is learning fights, they will make mistakes and drop low in health. That is inevitable. Test of Faith helps you to recover better from that. When people know what they're doing and your healers are ready for incoming damage then Test of Faith will lose value. Until you're farming at least the non-hard mode bosses though Test of Faith will probably help you.

Glasswizard · 04/17/09, 7:18 AM

Holy specced I wear about 450 haste and equip mostly for regen (so yes, int gemmed, two regen trinkets, etc.). You can see the spec if you click on my charname on the left (If the armory decides to work of course). Just in disc right now, so I exchange some crit for more haste when I switch over to holy. We were wiping yesterday alot due to healers going oom from too much raiddamage (e.g. ignis). I used my mana cooldowns. Don't have Inner Focus right now but that won't happen again.

Of course not everybody played perfectly, you can always improve more or less everything else and healing will become easier automatically but the questions for me are usually:

a) would more throughput really help to save more chars from dying? imo the situations where you actually fall behind while already casting on someone and that person dies are really seldom (as a raid healer). Normally it's about landing any heal at all and not if that heal is 10% more or less powerful. So that's why giving up Divine Providence seems possible for me. If Divine Providence were 10% haste, I wouldn't even think about it.
b) can I increase the overall hitpoints healed per fight if I give up some throughput for regen talents? I think Mental Agility + Mental Strength could do just that but I honestly haven't done the numbers.

I acually already have experience with this spec right at the start of naxxramas wearing Sunwell gear (so no infinite regen yet) and it worked well. In my opinion of course.

meddle · 04/17/09, 7:40 AM

Originally Posted by Glasswizard

a) would more throughput really help to save more chars from dying?

Well... in theory, yes. But I suppose it depends on the other healers in the raid, too. Especially now so early in the game and with the gear we're wearing... I find I'm doing very little overhealing and thus any throughput I can get through talents or otherwise is not going to go to waste. As Sharajat and Tainter already commented about, I'm considering taking Test of Faith now since this is really the first time in a while where I've been having those "oh shit" moments where the entire raid is at 10% health and I'm struggling to keep everyone alive. "Healing for more" seems quite potent in fights like XT where Tympanic Tantrum chains into bombs exploding on the raid and gravity wells and light bombs. Your armory link doesn't work at the moment so I don't know what spec you're running, but it seems that, for now at least, throughput is king. Ignis is definitely proving that for me. XT, as mentioned, too.

Mana hasn't really been an issue at all. It's certainly not infinite by any means, but definitely manageable using Shadowfiend on cooldown, Hymn of Hope, Mana Tides, Mana Potions, etc. "Your mileage may vary."

Tainter · 04/17/09, 8:34 AM

Originally Posted by Glasswizard

Holy specced I wear about 450 haste [...]

I can't imagine you have much crit with so much haste. Unbuffed you're what 20% crit at most? How's your Holy Concentration uptime? My guess would be that there's a lot of room for improvement.

Sometimes people say that more haste can save people, while more crit just leads to more overheal, but it's not hat simple. If many people are heavily damaged and are possibly taking periodic damage then crit can be every bit as good as haste. If you crit you can stop worrying about that person for a little while longer, so you saved some mana and some time. More crit also leads to more SoL, which is a pretty nifty efficiency talent. Crit also quite considerably boosts CoH output, which haste does nowhere near as much. A combination of many people on low health, Test of Faith, high crit and Circle of Healing can produce an amazing amount of healing.

I don't think running with all the ilevel 226 haste items from Malygos/wherever is wise. Having a few pieces with haste is nice because it makes you more reactive, but unless you can sustain it, it's probably not worth it.

ShrikeT · 04/17/09, 9:53 AM

Cleared through Kologarn last night with this 14/57 spec. Mana was definitely tight, but I made it by without healing prayers. I wouldn't trade Test of Faith for anything, that extra 12% healing is nuts when there are AOE boss abilities that drop the entire raid to 50% or below. Empowered renew was great for keeping people topped off and also helping with tank healing. The only "wasted talent" imo is Divine Fury, as I just don't cast GH that much when I'm on raid healing duty. I was honestly expecting mana problems to be much more prevalent but it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Shadowfiend being much more reliable helps a lot.

Also how much is Glyph of Prayer of Healing ticking for you guys with ~2300sp? Wondering if it's worth replacing the CoH or Renew Glyph with it since I'm casting it way more than either of those two spells.

seidinove · 04/17/09, 10:17 AM

Originally Posted by ShrikeT

Cleared through Kologarn last night with this 14/57 spec. Mana was definitely tight, but I made it by without healing prayers.

I'm torn between that exact build and my current alternative, in which I trade Test of Faith for 2/2 in both Holy Reach and Healing Prayers.

The combination of Holy Reach and the CoH glyph has been quite powerful, and it can only get better with the 3.1 boost in CoH healing. Also, in Ulduar I got comfortable very quickly with monitoring Serendipity stacks and casting hasted Prayers of Healing in AoE damage situations such as XT-002's Tympanic Tantrum.

Still, your build is on my short list. I see your point about Test of Faith getting many opportunities in Ulduar.

Seid

mlanewal · 04/17/09, 10:21 AM

I'd like to chime in on Renew usage. After looking at pre-3.1 parses and playing around with my specs, I settled on Holy 14/57. I picked up none of the Renew talents, 2/2 B&S (which I found useful on XT, Council, and Kologarn), and 2/3 ToF. Our other holy priest for that night has picked up the Renew talents. Comparing the two of us, Renew was about 2% of my total healing and about 8% of his total healing. For some reason also, I did a lot more CoH healing, he did a lot more PoH healing (I think I'm blaming that on our XT strat).

Now, I haven't raided yet with the new Renew talents, but I sure didn't miss it last night. The B&S sprint was nice for getting people out of trouble, and the combination of Healing Prayers and Holy Reach was great for throughput and mana conservation (I only used one mana potion last night).

@ShrikeT: My Glyph of PoH ended up being about 1% of my total healing over the night, and 2% of the other holy priest's healing over the night. Our WWS is buggy and didn't split up by attempts last night, but here is the link: WWS

ShrikeT · 04/17/09, 10:35 AM

Hmmm, that's a little disappointing, granted you didn't cast PoH nearly as much as I did. Here's our guild's parse.

WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish

Even dieing twice on Iron Council and once on Kologarn I did alright. Holy priests are in very good shape in this patch IMO.

• Sjonkel · 04/17/09, 10:45 AM

Empowered Renew seems very lackluster to me. Since I only use renew on people that are already topped up, it's almost always just pure overheal. 1/3 might be useful for HC procs, but I think even that is debatable. Basically, it seems to me that everyone needs to be topped up all the time because of all the raid damage, and that really makes renew fall behind. Since I'd rather flash or CoH if someone is at 90%, Empowered Renew doesn't work out for me. I'm doing what a lot of people are doing it seems, dropping all renew talents in favor of B&S and Test of Faith. Liking it much better so far.

Vada · 04/17/09, 11:27 AM

I am sorry if this is answered already somewhere in this thread, but it is alot to read (perhaps a new 3.1 post is in order if anyone has time).

Now that meditation is 50%, what does 1 spirit equal of mp5?

1 spirit = 0.388 Mp5 (Meditation, 1000 intellect assumed, 80% I5SR)

seidinove · 04/17/09, 11:30 AM

For the sake of discussion, let's say that I'm sold on the argument that six talent points into one spell (Renew) is too much to spend. I do need to put 2/3 into Renew to unlock the deeper levels of the talent chain, and I want to put 1/3 into Empowered Renew for the procs.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm sold on Holy Reach and its synergy with the CoH glyph and the 40% healing boost that 3.1 provides. I would settle for 1/2 in Holy Reach, but I need to spend one more talent point at that level anyway to get to the required 20 (I'm not a big fan of Desperate Prayer).

Let's assume further that the fights in Ulduar and the 3.1 changes to holy talents have also sold me on Healing Prayers, Test of Faith and Body and Soul (sorry, ShrikeT, I didn't notice when I first looked at your spec that you had 0/2 in B&S).

This leaves me short a couple of talent points in a 14/57 build. I personally get a lot of mileage out of Inner Focus, so I'm not going to steal any points from the 14 that I have in Disc.

I have always maxed out Spiritual Guidance in my holy builds, but if I stole two points from that I would have enough for this hypothetical "Ulduar holy" build. Is a reduction of +spellpower from 25% of Spirit to 15% of Spirit too much to give up? With the amount of Spirit that we have my gut reaction is yes, it is too much to give up.

Perhaps I steal one point each from B&S and Test and Faith to get Healing Prayers and leave the untouchable Spiritual Guidance untouched.

Thinking out loud

EDIT: The two points that I want to "steal" are for Healing Prayers. Sorry for not making that clear.

Seid