Imua

Well heck - if Conc Aura and Healing Focus don't stack, then forget it. The only thing you really wanted was for a "No pushback" scenario. If that's simply not possible, then it'd be a poor use of talent points, imo.

Has anyone confirmed that PoM generates ZERO threat now? That would be a very useful fact to find out.

As far as healing as disc goes, please keep in mind that I haven't done any beta yet, so this is just the experience at 70 with the 3.0.2 patch things in.
Intelligent shielding is your friend. It costs virtually zero mana (once you get it back from Rapture) and provides you with the Borrowed Time haste buff. Pumping in a < 1.0 FH into a target or a hasted Penance are good things. Do not underestimate the value of Penance even when raid healing.
A "trick" for raid healing is also to use the Inner Focus -> PoH (It *IS* fairly obvious, but whatever) you not only get the free PoH, but you are virtually assured of proc'ing at least one DA which you'll get some mana from through Rapture.
Rapture provides ridiculous amounts of regen. Roughly speaking, it looks like I'm getting about 1.5 times as much mana from Rapture as I am from Replenishment when I'm looking through some of my WWS parses. Regemming and such for int would probably boost that as well.

Since Rapture seems to be such a large part of the Disc mana regen model, it should be very interesting to number crunch it. I hear there's a cap on the amount that you can regen from it, hence a cap on the amount that you should heal for to maximize benefit. (At some point in time, it will be better to stack +int than raw spellpower.) That "sweet spot" should be useful to determine.

There is also quite a bit of complexity involved with Rapture because it is on your effective healing (and shielding). It would seem to be that your quicker smaller heal which will not overheal provides a larger benefit than your slower big heal which will overheal. (Since your overheal doesn't do anything - you will still proc the same amount of regen from Rapture) This almost would seem to indicate that spamming quicker smaller heals that you know will get in and be effective is better than the larger heal that will top people off and then some. Again, it seems like there should be a "cap" on your +spellpower that you want as Disc. This cap would also be tied to your max mana pool, although increasing it still has benefits from Replenishment.

 

Starfire

You realize the cap on Rapture is explicitly stated on the talent? And over on the other thread a lot of the number crunching has already been done o.O

 

Celillenna

Was it done for shielding? Everything I saw just assumed the formula was the same.

 

Hegen

Yes. Either it generates zero threat or exactly the same amount of threat on the person healed and the healer. Tested this with a hunter who body-pulled a mob and after that did nothing. I healed him exclusively with PoM, the mob never looked at me.

However, Constantius deems this to be a bug, so it's probably advisable to retest this with the next few patches or until blue confirmation shows up.

"Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls." - Nidaba

 

lenvik

It's 0. Omen reports 0 which reports the Blizzard threat, and it's backed up testing it during any fight with low threat (do it when mobs havent taken any damage).

 

Havoc12

Dont think its the same argument at all. Instant flashes some times are not a great tool, unless you are AoEing down mobs by yourself, it does not add a powerful new mechanic at all. The main benefit of using SoL is the mana saving, which comes at a cost of HPS. SoL offers you a potential to trade off some HPS for HPM.

However, healing prayers and lightwell save you about as much mana as SoL. Lets take for example the information provided by the above poster

24 procs on a KJ fight. He says he used them all but that is absoludely impossible. Addons record all procs, but some of them are double or even tripple procs that overwrite each other. It is physically impossible for anyone to have used more than 20 of these procs, I dont for 1 second believe more than 17 was used, but lets take 20. 20 free flashes in say a 200 second fight? That is 1 free flash per 10 seconds. or about 160mp5. Its much more regen than healing prayers obviously, which is about 35-70 mp5 (depending on how much you use PoH), but lightwell which can be used twice in a 200 sec fight, offers 90k max healing for 800 mana. 20 flashes heal for about 50000.

Healing prayers + lightwell offer more healing and consquently more regen than 2/2 SoL do. Lightwell does offer a real new healing mechanic and healing prayers 1/2 makes PoH a great deal more usable. So the only benefit you get from SoL is an extra instant heal on high mobility fights (which you also get from lightwell) and lots of shiny procs to disturb your healing pattern with.

Obviously SoL will fit some people's playstyle more, but in my mind this talent is a pure red herring. It looks impressive because you get lots of procs. This fools people into thinking its actually giving them a huge return, but it does not. Its giving them about the same return as 1/2 healing prayers+ lightwell.

If of course you dont want to take lightwell, then getting at least 1 point in SoL, is clearly worth it and 2/2 can be argued.

One thing that needs to be made absoludely crystal clear to everyone is that healing prayers + lightwell is more return than SoL.

Lightwell also offers you a new healing mechanic which is in my view more powerful than SoL..

 

Lambi

How about you actually try the fight before criticising what he says? SoL is amazing at KJ because there can be people only you and maybe 1 other healer can reach. Also it's the kind of fight where everyone is taking damage, you might be on the run, and while everyone is taking damage some are taking extra damage making an instant flash amazing.

Ok if you've never been in content where you see SoL being useful and you want to enlighten the community about this, but when several priests in highend guilds who has seen what the proc can do says something else, maybe you should just accept that it's all about the fight and healing style?

 

Shylena

I have not seen that fight, and since changing out of engineering in favor of law years ago, my math is challenged to keep up with the mathematicians on this forum. But perhaps I can contribute a couple of points.

I have speced 14/47/00 for the present. In doing this I went with more the spec Havoc12 favors, except I did not take lightwell. I am definitely going to tweak the spec after WoTLK goes live. I have points in healing focus, which I have seen are better spent elsewhere. I have points in silent resolve, which I do feel have kept me alive say once per raid, when I might have died. Since there is no real way to test that, however, I could have wasted those points. Regardless, as I level up I intend to no longer include them as I feel the aggro risk will lessen as I and the tanks level and they improve yet more on aggro generation and retention.

The thing with CoH, SoL and procs for me is wondering how effective I can be with getting a proc, taking note of it, reacting to find a target who can use it, and then use it, all the while missing at least one beat on CoH. I am concerned that such a micromanagement necessity will prove in practice more difficult than it seems in theory.

Additionally, CoH will hit 5 to 6 targets, depending on the glyph, which means more chances to proc SoL, but also more healing than a single FH. As we level up in the higher WoTLK content, the word seems to be that we will not be able to spam CoH due to mana, and I wonder if the encounters will be so structured as to, unlike MH, BT and SW, be less beneficial to a CoH spammer. I just note that as this proves to be true, I am then using CoH less, and there will be less procs as a result.

An aside to this last is that with fewer CoHs to cast, and assuming sufficient damage to heal, taking the GCD to use a proc could mean for argument sake that I get a mana free 4k of healing instead of a standard mana cost 12k of healing, when the 12k of healing is more important to raid success than my meager savings of mana.

I am leaning towards taking the formerly awful lightwell as more sure and certain, but I admit the issue of whether to take SoL seems to me perhaps the most difficult to definitively resolve in my own mind.

 

Woozle

I'm going to come to the defense of SoL here. As a shadow priest who respecced holy for KJ pre-3.0, I think the people defending SoL are right on the grounds of its usefulness on an encounter like pre-nerf KJ. While lightwell and other options might provide you with more regen tools, or more theoretical maximized HPM, SoL's usefulness lies in its ability for a targeted, direct heal on a person who needs it most at a time they likely need it most. True, it isn't always going to be up when you need it, but with a mod like power auras it is very easy to catch in time and use. Further, in a fight where you're balancing aoe boss abilities than are stacking on top of single target abilities in complex ways, an urgent quick heal can get you over the hump on healing someone until the chain heal/ holy light / etc lands.

Not to mention, lightwell has to get used, it requires independent action by a raid member, it requires proximity to the lightwell, which isn't always guaranteed. While most people are capable of hitting a healthstone, something like using a lightwell at an opportune time is a harder to manage and probably not ingrained in most dps's heads, when they're worrying about staying out of fire and managing a rotation. A dedicated healer is going to be better at healing DPS than DPS is going to be at self healing.

 

Venelar

Try not to think the only way you ever get SoL to proc is CoH. PoMending gives you a good amount of SoL procs too so that covers the "if we aren't spamming CoH is it worth it?" Also, as far as the micromanagement of the proc, get either "EventAlert" or "Thank God". I use both addons and it keeps you from having to look up at your buffs to check for the proc.

People that are on the fence about the SoL talent...you've still got a couple weeks before WotLK, just try it out. Even if the math does not 100% say its the greatest thing since sliced bread it really does have to be seen/used to be appreciated.

 

Abraham

In fact, you need 25% haste to lower the cast time of a GHeal to 2.0 seconds (with 5/5 Divine Fury, not without talents): 2.5/1.25=2.0. On the other side you get 3% additional haste from a Moonkin/Retri, so you need 2% more haste from gear than you stated.

Anyway, thank you for the good work on this one. It would perhaps be interesting to add Crit Rating to the comparison at XI b. (Value of Intellect and Spirit) in order to see how it can compete with Intellect and Spirit iLvL wise, although it should be quite hard to get an average value because of the variation of the fights and thus the variation of IHC and SoL proc rate.

 

Hegen

Regarding lightwell, this still remains situational. I do not think trying to model its usefulness makes sense as long as most players here do not have far more experience with WotLK raiding. All that can be done now is compute its potential maximum usefulness which gains us nothing. Positioning, incoming damage profile, plus overheal issues (as with all HoTs) make lightwell highly unpredictable right now.

"Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls." - Nidaba

 

Shylena

Thanks to Woozle and Venelar for the mods tips.

I think the discussion well identifies the issues relative to SoL, and with reference to an alternative such as Lightwell. I have never been a fan of Lightwell, and in addition to the drawbacks already mentioned, unless it has been changed, for players to use it they must retarget to continue with DPS, which would lead to it being used less. Playing with the more experienced and skilled raid groups as I do now, seems to be a factor in favor of Lightwell.

I did the Illadari Council fight last night without SoL, spammed CoH quite a bit, and with good gear and the fight much nerfed, had no mana problems. However, I would say there were a number of times when, as I was casting CoH, I would observe a player in particular need of more than a quick CoH heal, such as when they were poisoned or played in fire or blizzard. A free FH would have been very useful in those situations, and with the mods, I expect I would be aware and make use of its availability a good percentage of the time. Put another way, I agree with the frequent need for a FH, and the benefit of such a tool making it instant and mana free. The for me unknown element here is the raid encounters at level 80 and their tuning/mechanics.

I think calculating theoretical potentials has value, but needs to be weighed in making final decisions as to specing against how it plays out in actual game situations, with your particular playstyle, and in view of the encounters. This makes me want to return to the BETA this weekend to test these things out under such practical situations. I think as was said earlier, that the dynamics of the actual encounters at level 80 will most likely ultimately decide it all. I am unable to myself presently test that, so my appreciation to those who share their experience at that level (level 80 BETA raid encounters)

 

kalbear

I think that any argument that focuses on Lightwell as a comparison is going to be fundamentally flawed. I don't disagree that Lightwell provides more overall healing (in HPM and HPS terms) than SoL procs but it also requires a large amount of social engineering that is not practical for all raids. Furthermore, it is not always useful even when the raid is properly trained to click on it; the aforementioned KJ fight is a good example where lightwell is not nearly as useful as a targeted FH that's free.

An addon called Thank God which helps quite a bit with this.

Another note is that SoL is a very fun mechanic that makes healing a bit more dynamic and reactionary. I'm for that kind of mechanic over a fire-and-forget type like lightwell.

 

• constantius

You'll get 5% from Wrath of Air, so your point about moonkin is moot. There will be no situation I can think of where you won't have WoA, so the ret/moonkin buff will be completely ignored. Now, they *may* stack, but afaik, they don't, so 5% is your max.

And I'll update the original to 2.08 instead of 2.0. Getting the last 5% as holy costs a lot of ilvl points that could be better spent elsewhere. At least, imo. Others may disagree.

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

 

l337n00b

I added up some Naxx gear and got a better estimate of the amount you might heal over the course of a six minute raid encounter.

If you cast penance every eight seconds, pws every 15, prayer of mending every 10 seconds (this would obviously not actually work out, but and in reality you won't just be chain casting) and spend the rest of the mana you have available in the fight, doing 40% overhealing with targetted heals and assuming no shields are wasted (because they probably aren't), then you should be able to do around 750k effective healing/shielding with spells that trigger rapture. Since I didn't factor in G. Heal I really don't need to worry about the Rapture cap, because you aren't going to hit it with any other spell. With 750k effective heal you would get 38.13 additional Rapture mana from one Int on your gear, giving about .530 Mp5 per point of itemized int, in addition to all other uses of it. Each point of Int will easily be worth more than one Mp5 for this kind of encounter.

 

• constantius

Your theory is ok except for one thing ... what fight in Naxx are you seriously going to do 750k effective healing on? Have you looked at any actual parses?

Example: Raid History

The only fights in the entire list where *anyone* breaks 750k effective are Thaddius and Sapphiron. Now, if you want to say "for a theoretically max-push high-healing fight then <x>", then that's viable. But I have to remind you that it's extremely hard to sustain healing at full capacity for that length of time. And if you'll note, the only person to break 750k effective (on Sapp) who was a tank-type (single-target) healer was Lokh, who cheated by getting 500k effective healing from Judgement of Light ... Vyk came close, but only by spamming Wild Growth.

Make sure to check your theoretical Mana Use / Second, and see if it's even sustainable before you assume that you're going to get back all that mana. On Sapp, I don't doubt that every shield would get used (because of the Aura), and your overheal could be as low as 30-40%. But you're certainly not going to get 750k effective healing on Sapp as a tank healer. Lokh was basically solo healing the tank, and got 250k.

[e] One further thing to note: on the entire clear pre-Sapp, we ran with 5 effective healers. There were 6 on a couple of early fights, until someone respec'd. You're obviously going to get higher effective healing from 5 healers than from 6, or 7. And I think most guilds are going to start running Naxx with 7 healers, and eventually drop to 6 ... not start with 6, and immediately drop to 5.

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

 

Killmore

not true.

I dida test with another friend, aggroing 2 mobs with body pull and asking my friend to do the same thing with 2 mobs. Then I cast PoM on me and PoM was bouncing between me and my friend. No mobs changed target. PoM generate 0 threat when proccing even for the priest, even for the player who receive the healing of the proc. Then I just hit 1 of the 2 mobs on my friend and I pulled the aggro. (we both have omen3 for the test)

Your quote was true on the beta/ptr but not live

 

• constantius

Thanks for reading the thread before posting. People have been noting that PoM has been giving 0 threat for the last 3 pages. It doesn't mean it's *intended* to give 0 threat, just that it is. The blue posts concerning PoM on the Beta forums indicated it was intended to be attributed to the priest who cast it, and cause threat. Until they confirm that it's intended to cause 0 threat, I'm leaving the post as-is.

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

 

Lambi

However I've also read the blue reply about understanding the RNG factor of PoM pulling aggro on newly spawned mobs in those fights and at pulls with adds. Atm I can't find the source, but it doesn't have to be a bug with 0 threat.

 

Roywyn

They actually do stack and are also intended stack (tested on beta).
Wrath of Air is Windfury for casters, and the Ret/Moonkin Aura are a different category.

The Blue Bar and you - the complete Fire Mage 2.4 mana compendium: http://elitistjerks.com/658230-post3191.html

DPS spec and class comparison in Naxxramas gear: http://code.google.com/p/simulationc...i/SampleOutput

And [Timbal's Focusing Crystal] doesn't proc on AM.
Neither does [The Egg of Mortal Essence] since 3.1.

 

Kyai

Thanks for the great guide Constantius, I have a few questions though:

Q: Is test of faith worth it?

While this is an interesting and fun talent, in a larger raid environment it would seem that most of the time individuals under 50% HP will be topped off by another healer, and the benefit of this talent seems debatable. I haven't played beta, so I don't know how bad the AoE raid or group damage is. As it stands it seems that this talent might shine best in 5-mans, where you can have inviduals consistently under 50% HP. In the raid role it seems aimed more at tank-healing, however a deep-holy priest is probably not wholly oriented towards this role. The three points spent on Test of Faith aren't critical to getting deeper talents, and so could be shifted to mental agility or healing prayers perhaps?

Q: Is there a theoretical level of crit where you can drop SoL to only a single point?

Assuming CoH spam, it seems like at high levels of crit you could keep SoL up near-permanently, even with only a 25% chance to proc. Am I right or is this just wishful thinking?

Q: What are the best uses of PI and PS in PvE?

I had a brief dabble with a 56/5/0 spec straight after the patch, and found Disc fun; however I was largely unsure on the best way to use these two abilities. PS on tanks is straight out, although I did find it useful to throw on some guildmates prone to exploding in melee (Enhancement Shamen and Rogues typically). It also has some use in places where non-tanks take targeted damage (e.g. Claw Rage on Zul'jin). These situations don't require PS though, and the use seems situational and non-systematic. Are there better ways of using this ability, or is this its fate in PvE? For Power Infusion, I ended up mainly forgetting about this spell. I considered macoing it in with GHeal or Flash heal, but I wasn't sure if this was the best use for it, or whether I should be using it on another player in the raid on cooldown. Any suggestions?

Q: Glyph of Flash Heal

I was told that this glyph improves the HpM of Flash Heal such that it actually surpasses GHeal for efficiency. Is this correct? It would seem that GHeal will still win for throughput, although this Glyph would make me less wary of using Flash Heal as a stock heal.


Thanks in advance for any responses.

 

• constantius

I'm honestly not sure. Basically, if you can get through a fight with mana left, gaining MA or HP doesn't get you much. If you need them, then losing Test of Faith is the obvious first choice. At least for the early T7 content (i.e. pre-Ulduar), I had very few sub-50% occurrences. Definitely few enough that I felt ToF wasn't strong. Other people may have had different experiences ...

You can easily drop a point if you're assuming you don't want to cast a FH more than once every 'few' CoH, where 'few' is a ballpark variable. I have 1/2 right now on Live due to lack of total points to spend, and I'm still finding I get plenty of procs (and that's at only 17% raid-buffed crit). Worst case, try it out, see how it 'feels'. It's not a huge efficiency talent anyway; it's more of a fun play-style modifier.

The HpM of Flash can match GHeal in some circumstances, and requires the Glyph to do so. However, GHeal is more efficient on average. It's a good question; I'll write up an accurate math comparison in Section XI when I get a chance. If anyone wants to contribute, just post here and I'll ninja your thoughts.

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

 

Sinndir

I guess it would depend on what you would prefer. There are situations where Test of Faith is worth it, I'd prefer it to have more Crit and less healing but as it is, it helps raid members the most who need it the most. The other three could only be used to get 4% off instant casts. I like your other thinking, 2/2 healing prayers and you could even dump a point into lightwell if you wanted since it is actually good now.

Just wishful, you will always want two points up because even if you had 100% crit chance. You would still only proc it on half of your crits.

All depends on the situation. Power Infusion can be consistently used on your highest DPS caster if needed, or you can use it on yourself or other healers for healing intensive fights/portions. Remember to use it often though. As for Pain Suppression, it can be used to drop a person's threat level or for the damage portion.

Not sure about the efficiency but it is an excellent glyph. Flash heal is great and this glyph just makes it even better.

 

Shatter Combo w/ Fries

With no points in holy, glyphed flash heal has about 94% of the HPM of gheal, at 1000 spell power.

Obviously improved healing and empowered healing widen the gap, but flash heal is better for procs and time priorities.

It is indeed a very good glyph.