I will have to post a retraction here on the paladin versus priest on the tank issue. It seems I have indeed missed two things. Paladins have a libram that decreases HL cost by 113 and glyphed SoW, reduces cost by 5% on top of that, with 50% crit this would put a HL cast at slightly over 600 mana on average.
That means the difference in sustained single target HPS between a paladin and a priest is actually very large, which certainly makes paladins much better single target healers.
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On the CoH subject since I was scolded for whining and since I don't think people quite realise what this nerf means I will make a more constructive post with an example to illustrate my point.
First off all lets have a look at the benchmark for AoE healing, which is a shaman. Chain heal at 2000 odd spell power heals for about 5000 on the first bounce and glyphed bounces 4 times, healing a total of 9375 and cast time is 2.38 seconds, which means max HPS is 3939. Riptide heals for about 3600 with 1k ticks. Both riptide and chain heal proc tidal waves which like IHC does not do what the tooltip says and decrease HW cast time to 1.75 seconds (1.67 sec base for shaman) and LHW cast time to 1.05 sec (1sec base for shaman).
The senario is this: 5 targets with 17.7k HP take 10k damage 3 times with 5 second intervals in between. This damage is not predictable, you know it happens when you see the first damage tick. So I factored in a 0.2 second reaction time. I specifically chose the 5 second interval because it helps the single target whack-a-amole even though it reduces the value of PoM.
[edit] Amended the values to use the correct numbers for healing wave, lesser healing wave and CoH.
Here is a shaman just spamming chain heal
time 17700 17700 17700 17700 17700
0 dmg 7700 7700 7700 7700 7700
2.58 CH 12700 10200 8950 8325
4.96 CH 10825 10200 10825 12700
5 dmg 2700 825 200 825 2700
7.34 CH 7700 2075 2700 1450
9.72 CH 2700 5200 2700 7700
9.72 riptide 11300
10 dmg 1300 -7300 -4800 -7300 -2300
The shaman manages to save target 1 and maybe target 5 if he gets a critical.
Total healing: 41100
HPS: 4228
Straight chain heal spam yields 3858 HPS
However the shaman can (at least in my inexpert oppinion) do it better this way:
time 17700 17700 17700 17700 17700
0 dmg 7700 7700 7700 7700 7700
2.58 CH 12700 10300 8950 8325
4.96 CH 10825 10200 10825 12700
5 dmg 2700 825 200 825 2700
6.63 HW 8325
8.3 HW 10200
9.728571429 LHW 6600
9.728571429 riptide 10200
10 dmg 200 -1675 -9500 -9175 200
HEaling: 41550
HPS: 4271
That is a more decent performace as 2 ppl are alive thanks to tidal waves and 1.66 second healing waves. If earthliving weapon, totems and crits are factored in the shaman is highly like to save target 3 as well.
Lets look at the current CoH.
time 17700 17700 17700 17700 17700
0 dmg 7700 7700 7700 7700 7700
0.2 CoH 9638 9638 9638 9638 9638
1.7 CoH 11576 11576 11576 11576 11576
3.2 CoH 13514 13514 13514 13514 13514
4.7 CoH 15452 15452 15452 15452 15452
5 dmg 5452 5452 5452 5452 5452
6.2 CoH 7390 7390 7390 7390 7390
7.7 CoH 9328 9328 9328 9328 9328
9.2 CoH 11266 11266 11266 11266 11266
10 dmg 1266 1266 1266 1266 1266
Healing: 67830
HPS: 7373
No one can dispute that this is disgustingly OP if its compared to the benchmark, and the reality is even worse because this does not include the possible 6th target or test of faith which procs on about half the cast and adds 100 healing per target and 6% more crit chance. Incidentally these targets are taking 3k DPS,
each and no other spell could keep them all alive, showing just how insanely powerful CoH is as an
emergency spell, for saving people's lives.
After the nerf this is what happens.
time 17700 17700 17700 17700 17700
0 dmg 7700 7700 7700 7700 7700
0.2 CoH 9750 9750 9750 9750 9750
3.2 FH 14150
4.7 FH 14150
PWS
5 dmg 4150 4150 2750 -250 -250
6.2 CoH 6200 6200 4800 1800 1800
9.2 FH 10864
PWS
10 dmg 864 -800 -5200 -8200 -8200
[/code]
Healing/absorption: 39964
HPS: 4343
The priest might save 2 targets, if his PWS is glyphed or if one of FH's crits or if he has the PWS glyph. This of course assumes that the priest has test of faith. Without test of faith only a single target can be saved by using a flash/PWS at the end.
---> Incidentally and this is very important, SoL here makes almost no difference. An SoL from CoH is undesirable because you really need the chance to crit, as it can save a target and proc an SoL to potentially replace the PWS for extra healing. The fact that the next flash might be instant, does not allow you to squeeze anymore spells in the rotation. In fact because you are not guaranteed a crit on the FHs, you have to spam the PWS button to keep that additional target alive, so getting an SoL, means you are guaranteed to not get a crit on the FH after the 2nd CoH, which drastically reduces your chances of saving the additional target.
A chain heal spamming shaman, heals for slightly more overall yet also saves only 1 target. A shaman taking advantage of tidal waves and riptide, has a good chance of saving 3 out of the 5 even though the HPS is the same.
Notice how awkward having no control over the timing of your instants is. Twice you are forced to wait for 3 seconds between a CoH cast and the next fheal landing. The result is that where the shaman convincingly saves his targets at the 5 second mark, the CoH priest is already in serious danger of losing 2 people. What the priest would have liked ideally, is to cast CoH twice at the begining flash heal everyone and then add add a CoH at the end. This would have produced a similar result to the shaman, convincingly saving the group to the 5 second mark, but at serious risk of losing people at the 10 second mark.
Here is what a paladin healer can do.
time 18000 18000 18000 18000 18000
0 dmg 8000 8000 8000 8000 8000
1.9 HL 18000
3.6 HL 18000
4.85 FoL 11000
HoS 8000
5 dmg 8000 8000 1000 1000 -2000
7.35 FoL 11000
8.6 FoL 11000
9.85 FoL 4000
HS 7600
10 dmg 1000 4000 -9000 600 -12000
Healing/absorption 44600
HPS: 4527
Yep this is not a joke. The paladin does better than the priest and equals the shaman, by burning one of this 2min CDs. The use of the CD might be unfair, but a paladin has enough of them to spare, next time round he can use his DP+HS combo instead. An important thing to also remeber here is that the paladin also has a high crit rate, meaning his output maybe higher as some of the FoLs and possibly the HS will crit. The paladin can probably maintain the highest HPS of the lot by virtue of his very strong single target HPS, even though the opportunity for saving targets is only 5 seconds, but still he does not do any better than a shaman, who is able to save everyone at the 5 second mark without burning any CDs.
The druids will also be able to get everyone to the 5 second mark, with just a single cast of WG and will have all the time to add lifeblooms and rejuve, which will buff nourish and allow him to use a swiftmend for more burst.
In this particular senario the priest does not come 3rd. He comes 4th. The 6 second CD is restrictive because it adversely affects the value of haste and IHC for chasing aoe damage with FH.
Although this senario is slightly rigged, I think its serves its purpose well to show the reality of things.
Although given a constant supply of targets and frequent PoM bouncing or good renew targets a holy priest can certainly produce competitive HPS, his ability to keep people alive in a multitarget senario has taken what I can describe as a mortal blow.
I am not going to discuss this further. Everyone can make their own conclusions.
I personally have a sinking feeling that the OPness of CoH has been masking a lot of inadequacies in our holy tree. I think no matter what GC says, priests were wanted mostly due to CoH being so OP. Blizzard has succeeded in putting priests squarely behind the specialists in this expansion instead of being able to effectively match any of them in TBC. I am curious to see where this effective removal of everything that was powerful about CoH will leave priests in this environment.