No, I think they're saying you can't do it with just a resto shaman and a holy paladin. Obviously a resto druid is good enough to survive vortex, and it seems likely that a discipline priest could do it between mending, renews and PW:S, and help from holy shock (and maybe instant fol from IoL) or riptide.

Discipline Priest / Resto Shaman can definitely do it. It's actually relatively easy, you can pre-cast your massive shields on the squishier of people. Shaman has at least one riptide and NS chain heal for an emergency. (Personal experience, by the way). You can also pre-cast your Prayer of Mending so you have it up with 6-5 charges before the Vortex and then have another ready to cast mid-Vortex.

I think the issue is you NEED at least 1 priest OR 1 druid for Malygos 10 man. I honestly don't see how a combination of 2 Shamans, 2 Paladins or Shaman + Paladin can handle that Vortex in a 10 man.

I hate to play this card, but Naxxramas is intended as an entry level raid, and is intended to be fairly accessible to a fairly wide range of players, including melee-heavy groups, and including mouthbreathing death knights who complain that they can't see Shadow Fissures through Desecration. Saying that your melee must be able to form a 10 yard triangle for the last boss of an entry level raid strikes me as a fairly high bar. I realize that in a group capable of clearing Sunwell pre-3.0 this seems like a very silly thing to say because OF COURSE your melee can form 2 groups 10 yards apart and 10 yards from the tank, but that describes a small percentage of the people Blizzard hopes will get through Naxxramas.

I cry foul, you are forgetting quite a bit and it's supporting your argument. There are fights in most TBC instances/raids that involve "DONT STAND IN THE FREAKING VOID", or "DONT BUNCH UP!".I've again consumed too many cocktails on the lunch hour, but I think you could probably find both those examples in Kara alone. (Edit: I sobered up a little --> Blue dragon guy, and big robot guy)

But I'm sure you're not actually referring to those though.. I'm sure you're talking about IceBlasts(or whatever the ability is that does 104% dmg in 4 seconds). There are lots of ways for an entry level healer to deal with that situation WITHOUT using CoH (which is agreed the easiest way).

Sure it will keep a non sunwell healer group a few more attempts, but it's not the brick wall you're making it out to be.

Get over 20k hp and it's fine. But yeah can be random when you land.

I did it as Discipline with 4 melee (not counting tanks). Solution? use Prayer of Healing, it's certainly fast enough. We wiped twice on it because we had a failboat Shaman that couldn't chain heal fast enough (without PoH I managed to save 2 just with PWS/Flash Heal, all he had to do was one damn Chain heal, but that's another topic/rant). This was 10 man, mind you, but the same principle applies to 25 man.

Hell, I am pretty sure Paladin's Holy Light glyph would be enough to stop them from dying as well in both 10 and 25 man. On a side note, anyone know if they can use Lightwell? Can it be used while ice-trapped?

from the first post in this thread, the section about mana regen (weighting spirit vs. int):

I am sorry, but where does this come from, constantinus? the other regen stuff makes sense to me, but this point ... please enlighten me.

1 intellect = 15 mana

6 minute fight = 72 * 5 seconds

15 / 72 = 0.208 so the 15 mana you get from 1 int is equivalent to 0.208 mana per 5 seconds over the course of the fight.

So if I am understanding this correctly every 4.8 int = 1mp5 = 72 mana ?

Well, yes, of course 4.8 int is 72 mana. And if you are assuming a 6 minute fight, that is 1 mp5. Longer or shorter fights will make the 72 mana less or more significant.

Blue confirmed today that they do plan to put a cooldown on CoH (and wild growth)
Anyone else see an issue with just an outright CD being put on the spell? be it 2, 3, 5, or 6 seconds, this change will destroy what little niche priests currently have. Paladins are absolute power-houses and shaman are close behind, there are few fights in the game in which a priest has a significant advangtage that doesn't involve profuse abuse of COH.

Whats the reaction from the EJ priest community as a whole? can we be competitive, useful healers if the spell is left as is with a cooldown? Will upping the coefficient or base heal balance the ablitiy? What about a hasted cooldown via DP?

Well in my opinion blizzard are the ones who f***ed up and now we will feel the consequences of their failure, making a already powerful spell well...OP introducing: the smart targeting+glyph+divine providence+twin disciplines, its like they did it with intention so they can nerf it later. And in the end they settled on the worse solution to nerf it...the CD...
As for the point of not having party bound spells I say that's bull***t make PoH and Holy Nova raidwide (with the necessary tweaks of course) and then I will believe it. I really fail to see why would you bring a HOLY priest to the raid...
The one nice the holy priest had over disc priest was the AE heal from CoH now I don't see why you would bring a holy priest to the raid, over a disc priest. CoH every 6 secs is not enough in my eyes...

Sorry I'm new to these forums and this may have been answered already but i don't remember seeing it any of the pages so far, anyway I've been reading a lot in here and have learned a lot about my class and how Crit is a very valuable stat now has a holy priest and so i was wondering what the thoughts were when it came to...

[Arcanum of Blissful Mending] vs [Arcanum of Burning Mysteries] for helm enchant

and

[Greater Inscription of the Crag] vs [Greater Inscription of the Storm] for shoulders


This is the current build that i use and i was wondering if there was a clear choice on which Arcanum(s) i should be using

How the CoH-nerf will hit us completly depends on encounters. Prayer of Healing might get its renaissance, Prayer of Mending will be more important. Shamans certainly will move up the ladder and once again be king of raidhealers together with druids.

Priests will be "support healers" on both raid and tanks and typically the first healer you boot if you need more DPS for an enrage timer or just want to run more light on healers. Or: You stack priests for PoH and more CoH+GS. It depends on the encounters ... Prayer of Healing is still extremly strong if you can use it, let's not forget that.

I don't think any raiding priest like the idea of getting another of our major spells on a CD. We now have both Prayer of Mending and CoH CDs to keep track of, and suddenly not using CoH on CD will be a major nerf to HPS instead of choosing freely when to use the spell. I can easily imagine tightly planned rotations if the fight demands it, which is bad gameplay if you ask me.

This nerf is crap imo. As mentioned above AOE healing was our only niche area. Pallies have single target heals, and while we are good single target tank healers pallies are slightly better. This moves us from being the most important raid healer to being the least important.

We can still heal fine, we just wont be great healers in any one area anymore. It really is a shame that it has come to this. If Bliz developers just took the time to properly tune COH with less healing output this wouldnt be an issue. Instead they are going the easy way out.

They stated "If shamans are being invited to raids over priests similar to what happened in Sunwell, we will nerf them as well"

This answer to me is no good. If we get the shaman issue like we did in sunwell, which could likely happen here, it will take months for them to realize its happening, and more months for them to nerf it. Its going to be a rough ride the next while for holy priests I think.

@Shaarra:

The whole mp/5 portion of your argument, is in my eyes pretty much worthless, seeing as how its next to impossible to go oom as a paladin if you use your cooldowns properly, even when spamming holy light. Beacon and mending also can't be compared at all because a) beacon is only one global a minute b) beacon provides way more actual hps on two targets taking a heavy amount of damage and c) beacon can't randomly jump to a shitty target.

Also,

Good luck getting people to use lightwell. As good as it may be, it isn't practical to expect someone tanking to worry about clicking on the thing. Especially someone who's AoE tanking and probably can't even find the thing behind all the mobs.

I'm with Rukli on pretty much everything regarding that discussion. As far as priests in the future go, I still think an optimal 6 healer raid is 2 holy plds 2 holy priests 1 resto druid 1 resto shaman for progression. Guardian spirits so good, I think it still earns priest that raid slot. I guess it depends on just how much AoE dmg is out there. I don't think shaman will become the king of AoE healing again. We've gone from 1 class having a good AoE heal, to 3 having them cooldown or not. Add-in glyph of holy light and its still nowhere near as insane.

If their intention was to allow for more flexibility with groups, putting a cooldown on CoH was a very dumb move. As you say, PoH is a very strong spell. Belive it or not, I found myself using it over CoH in many situations just because I knew who'd it be hitting, and having casting time on a spell isn't always a drawback. Some sort of change to CoH was needed. I was a bit sceptical at first, but I misjudged how much mana I would have in a 25 man raid setting. Healing did turn in to completly mindless CoH spam the majority of time. I'm not very satisfied with that cooldown though, adding casting time to the heal instead would have been preferable. Oh well, it's not the end of the world as some seem to think, just means that I won't snipe 90% of the shamans chain heals.

A little interlude.
I'm actually our guild MT, Feral 0/60/11 specced. I've the "usual" feral tank spec (you can armory me) except 3/3 furor 2/2 mark because actually we have only 1 resto druid in our guild.

Our actual focus is naxx10 and we will start naxx25 soon, I've only blu and badge/heroic purple atm and I have both hit and expertise capped.

I usually run hero and 10 men with a disc priest healing me.

The post is about disc-priest - tank interaction

First of all rage is not a problem. If your tank (at least about feral druid) can't generate rage it's HIS problem. Hit and expertise can easly be capped without gemming for them, Furor grants 10 rage, enough for 1 mangle - > snap aggro or 1 swipe, after you start damaging you really can't lose aggro/rage, on boss fight I'm always at full rage bar and on trash/5 men sometimes I lose rage but obviosly not at the expense of aggro.

Basically, if a tank wine because he got shielded just put him on ignore because he need to learn to play, capping hit and expertise is something you really want and having a Disc-priest healing you is the best option (at least for me).

Regarding Pain Suppression, our disc priest put it in her rotation without problem or use it in "enraged" situation, it's a god bless. Aggro it's not a problem, usually a good tank it's way over 5% threat regarding other raid member.

Have raided Holy and Disc so far in Wrath and so far, have found Divine Hymn to be pretty useful in a few circumstances. Most useful thing is that it doesn't use an inner focus charge, but I expect that will be fixed soon enough. It's nice when the entire raid is huddled behind the same iceblock. It's nice when landing from a vortex. But the range is far too small atm, and the cooldown is about 2 mins too long.

Doesn't make the graduation to a good hotkey though. Shame.

Hymn of Hope has been occasionally useful, but I suspect that I don't regen mana @ full rate if I start casting it whilst inside the FSR - but not tested yet - maybe I missed the conclusion on this elsewhere.

Guardian Spirit, I've found it to be nearly useless. What's going to get gibbed the next hit after, gets gibbed the next hit after. And even with an annoying "you now have Guardian Spirit" whisper macro, it still causes the tanks to take action themself. Last Stand, Shield Wall - or equiv. In all the raiding I've done, I think it has only procced three times. Kind of tempted to respec it and take an ice bomb on purpose to see what would happen.

First time it procced was at Grobbulus 10 man, the other healer was dead for some reason and I got a disease - so I put it on the MT and ran away. Normally I'd ask an offspec healer to cover MT, but I wanted that first proc. Had to ask the MT very nicely not to use his cooldowns. Another time was at Thaddius. Other healer was dead again. 10 seconds of mana break and 15s of asking the MT to save his cooldowns. Third time, apparently soul shatter was already on cooldown.

Lightwell... well. Still not about the spell, it's peoples inability to use it.

Desperate Prayer. Well, I like this for learning encounters. Going for a portal during a Lava Tsuami and being tail swiped back by the MT swinging around? Desperate Prayer. Tho PW:S is practically as effective.

Prayer of Healing. Used a lot for 5 mans. Mana cost feels very high at the moment, esp. as very few people will spec Healing Prayers as there's just very few free talent points.

Also, annoys me a bit that people aren't speccing Healing Focus. I think it needs a secondary effect, just as mages/locks get

THIS. I have seen a lot of complaining in this thread, most of it is justified complaining, if content becomes unbeatable due to it. With some danger of repeating myself; Blizzard is aware of the situation. The reason why there is so much AoE damage is because of the "Overpoweredness" of Circle of Healing. Anything less, and CoH would trivialize it. So instead of going entirely nutters over a much needed change (from the point of view of a Discipline Priest and Resto Shaman), try to believe that Blizzard knows what they are doing with this change, in order to bring Holy Priests down from AoE Gods to an excellent supplement to Chain Heal.

In order to try to bring the thread back on track, I want to say what I believe this change will do for Holy:
- Surge of Light: The Cooldown on CoH will leave you more time to do other things like Flash Heal.
- Holy Concentration/Improved Holy Concentration: More free spells and faster spells between CoH.
- Divine Providence vs Mental Agility: This change will moot this discussion, +10% heal is now better than -10% cost. The reduction of ProM to 7s is also excellent.
- Test of Faith: Required for CoH now?
- Improved Renew: An (better?) alternative to CoH spam on steady damage? (Pre-Vortex Maly/Sapphiron)

While I'm not a big CoH fan, I don't think adding a cooldown it's the best option. Of course some encounters would have to be changed (Malygos, mostly) if a cd would be added, I take that for granted.

What I don't like is the consequences it has to the holy tree:

- SoL procs would diminish a lot, reducing the value of a talent whose bigger synergy is with CoH.
- ToF would also be affected, an in turn this would again affect SoL effectiveness.
- DP would loose a big part of its value.
- Holy Reach would be affected too. Of course you can argue it would be more important if CoH had a cd, but the fact is that it would provide much less throughput post cooldown than now.

All in all, the holy tree would loose it's focus in raid healing (in fact, for predictable raid damage disc and it's shields would be better) and many of the holy talents would be affected (13 talent points would give less now than what they provided pre CoH cooldown).

If a cd has to added to CoH, the holy tree must be revamped.

Keep in mind that even with a 6-second cooldown, CoH + SoL is still greater throughput than Chain Heal.
A number of heals - Greater Heal and Chain Heal amongst them - basically ended up getting the shaft in WotLK. While they receive additional talents, these talents really just serve to offset the loss of overall efficiency from downranking. So when you compare these heals against similar heals that did receive substantial boosts (CoH, Holy Light, etc.), there's a far more dramatic difference in power than existed during BC.

So in terms of Blizzard's stated goal of making sure that Holy Priests don't just spam one button, I think the 6s cooldown is going to be largely a failure. There still won't be much reason to cast Greater Heal or Renew in a multi-healer environment, Binding Heal/Prayer of Healing/Holy Nova will still be very situational, and Flash Heal will still be tied to Surge of Light for its effectiveness. For the most part the spam-CoH methodology wasn't a response to CoH being dramatically better than otherwise viable options so much as it was a response to the other options being rather situational or mediocre. The situational spells were a lot better of an option than CoH when their specific situation applied, this doesn't change. And the general use spells are still a lot worse than the options other healers have - likewise not changed.

Overall, I think Holy Priests will still be preferred as raid healers. Even with a 6 second cooldown, CoH is still better by the numbers than Chain Heal, and it's instant number/large number of 'bounces' make it even better than the numbers would indicate. So really what I'm seeing is that dps may have to change their attitudes about healing. The use of Chain Heal in BC bred an entire generaton of dps who viewed healing as fundamentally the "healer's responsibility" - they didn't really have to pay much attention to their positioning because of the enormous reach of Chain Heal. I can remember numerous BC-era raids where my group would stand in a larger radius than Holy Reach-augmented Prayer of Healing could reach for no good reason other than arbitrary choice. Such folks are going to have to adapt to a world where they're frequently 'tethered' to their Holy Priest.