Althor

Mind Sear is 28.57% per tick or 142.86% per cast.
Vampiric Touch is 40% per tick or 200% per cast.

 

Elimbras

If you want a near-estimation of shields, I guess it is not a very difficult task.
Basically, all you need is an estimation of the max-mana of the player. As this should be a constant (or close to a constant), a few heals - rapture matching should be enough to get a fair estimation (let's say within 10% error). One could even consider to ask the player to give this piece of information.

Then all what one has to do is to compute the mana returned by rapture, and the effective heal of direct healing that proc rapture (penance, greater heal and flash heal). The first one is very easy to compute, the second is already computed in most meters. A quick computation based on max-mana and direct heal gives you the rapture-return from direct heal, you substract it to get the rapture-return from shields, and you can get shoud shield absorbed amount.

Now, let's consider you have 10% error in your max-mana (let's say you over-estimate it).
This means that the rapture-return from direct heals will be over-estimated by a margin of 10%.
Considering that 30% of your total heal is shields, 50% rapture-concerned direct heals, and 20% other spells (binding, POM, POH, renew, glyphs), this means that 62.5% of your rapture-return is from direct heals (and 37,% from shields).

Rapture return from direct heals is 10% over-estimated. Therefore, you estimate only 31% of your rapture-return from shields, instead of 37%. This is a relative -18% value (you under-estimate your shield based rapture-return with 18% error). Now, over-estimating max-mana by 10% means again that for the same rapture-return, you underestimate the shielding by 10%. Basically, final estimation of effective shielding is 73% real effective shielding.
Back to 30% of healing done by shields, it's 5% error estimation in the total healing.
This seems to me an acceptable error compared to what we have (especially since we should be able to get less than 10% error on max-mana).

NB : Of course, this assume a perfect rapture in live. But I don't have any realistic value to estimate or correct the partial absorb bug.

 

Anastotte

Is there a website, similar to http://maxdps.com or http://be.imba.hu, for healing priests? THese are good for DPS structuring but i am looking to having my priest heal as opposed to DPS.

 

Ellyh

Anastotte;

Short answer, the start of this thread is probably as good a place as you are ever going to find.

Long Answer. Healing is not like dps, you do not have "rotations" and don't theorycraft for Max throughput like you do with dps. Healing is much more of an art than a science like dps or tanking. Being reactive and dependent on the Random number generator deciding how much damage the tank (or raid) takes you need to focus on a different set of skills such as predictive healing and situational awareness. E.g. on Sartherion that shaman is not going to get out of the lava in time, I'll start healing him now so that it lands while he is lava surfing. This sort of advanced awareness is far more important that perfecting you spec or gem choices. Also the optimum spec/gear will depend on what you are usually healing (5 mans, tanks or raid) and also on the general performance of your team mates. If your teams dps is massive but they play somewhat sloppy you may want HPS over regen but if they have low dps but don't take to much extra damage you may want regen focus. Also do you design around the presence of absence of replensihment.

 

Sinndir

Samangel, a couple things. First off you need to update your profile so that your claims of not needing mana can be believable. Also please take a look at my post on the actual chances to get a SoL proc on your Circle of Healing (also note that CoH cannot proc Holy Concentration or IHC). To guarantee a SoL proc on a CoH you would need unattainable crit levels, 40% spell crit (which is very unlikely) only yields a 74% chance to get a SoL proc. 30% crit, which is much more reasonable, only has a 62% chance to get SoL proc.

I'd really like to see what your character gear setup is like (since you don't have it in your profile), and possibly a WWS parse. Because for the 25-man Sarth & Malygos that my guild runs, if I'm at 70% mana I'm doing something wrong.

[edit]
I'm mainly curious as to how you are gemming because if you have a bunch of extra mana perhaps you don't have enough haste or spellpower. You should replace any regen type gems with haste or spellpower.

[edit 2]
I'm assuming this is you url=http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Dreadmaul&n=SamangelThe World of Warcraft Armory[/url].

Try grabbing more haste gear and you should see an increase in your healing output as well as being able to use the mana you claim you cannot. If you have a WWS parse or a WoW Meter Online parse of your healing done during your Malygos or Sartharion perhaps you are not healing as much as you could be and that is leaving you with all this excess mana.

 

Samangel

With regards to updating my profile, everything that I am able to put into my profile, I have, so Im not sure what else you want me to update - sorry. With regard to the SOL and IHC procs, I didnt imply they were guaranteed at all, but generalising the increased chances on crit to proc SOL and IHC from COH, for the purpose of the OP reconsidering spec and healing execution for mana as deliberatly overhealing to obtain mana should never be pursued or recommended. Both SOL and IHC procs when I crit on COH, at least thats what Ive seen happen over and over again. Ive been watching them for absorption of FH and GH due to the question in a previous post about IHC being absorbed when SOL is absorbed. I do not at this time have WWS as since this guild that Im currently in does not use it, I disabled it. I will however download the client again and obtain that information for this purpose.

Which was the purpose of my respec into Meditation, Mental Strength, Mental Agility and Focussed Power, all of which increases my mana regen while casting (30%), intel (15%) , healing by another 4% (on top of what holy already provides) and decreases mana cost of instant casts by 10% (POM, COH, Renew). Along with that, regearing into higher int and crit. Perhaps you are running with a lesser number of healers than we do and you have much higher haste than I do? My haste is only 54, and we run with 7 healers. Also, what is your overhealing? My overhealing is usually 9% - 10% maximum. You have quoted my armory URL below which is correct, so you should be able to see my gear setup there. Is there another place in my profile that Im supposed to put that in because I cant see it on my Edit Profile page.

I have been gemming spell power, intel and crit and am now giving greater priority to haste. My raid buffed SP is 2722, *Edit in Naxx without spirit trinkets* my raid buffed SPI is 1302, and my raid buffed crit is approx 19.62% (24.62 Holy crit) from memory. My haste is very low yes, my first objective was to get my int and crit to acceptable levels as I was sitting on 6% crit 2 weeks ago and Im now sitting on 16.46% (21.46% Holy). I have not yet experienced haste as being a problem due to the high frequency of SOL and IHC crits Im getting throughout the fights, mainly from COH, although I am working on increasing it. I might just add into this aswell that Im not flasking or food buffing spirit, but instead SP, nor did i have to use inner focus, regen trinket or mana pots.

I will definitely be grabbing more haste gear, thankyou for that and I will definitely get the WWS parse for you to see this week after reset and refer back to this post to demonstrate. I can only add that I am in the top half of healing meters. I also do have the 4 set bonus for GH, and that since the patch, we took H OS with two drakes, I was alternating between MT healing with 2 other healers (GH only) and taking the portal to heal raid intermittently, so constantly healing. In Malygos, Im raid healing keeping HOT's on the tank, POM up, COH, renews before vortex, POM in the vortex, COH on landing followed by flash heals, and POH when necessary and using many SOL and IHC procs from COH on the raid as needed, as I said in my previous post, I use COH every time its off cd. Thus the reasons for sacrificing spirit in favour of intel, crit and now haste.

I also do have the [Majestic Dragon Figurine] and the [Spirit-World Glass] and have not needed to equip those either *Edit - have not needed them in Naxx - apologies - I do equip them in H OS and H MALY*. It may seem unbelievable, Im anxious now to obtain WWS for you so that it may be believed. If I'm wrong regarding both SOL and HC/IHC proccing from COH crits, then I must be blinking while unknowingly casting another direct FH or GH prior to casting COH to obtain the procs and I'll stand corrected. (Aware that the HC/IHC talent omits COH)

Ill get back to you on it with a WWS parse later this week.

 

Sinndir

Samangel, just as a warning if you split quotes you will likely receive and infraction. If you want to quote something. Just quote the entire thing, or in a single quote talk about the things you want to. As well to update your profile, if you look at my profile it goes like this:

Sinndir (account name)
Guarding your Spirit (title)

Sindaga (character name)
Night Elf Priest

<Trismegistus> (Guild and website link)
Medivh (server)

Your profile does not have the armory link enabled. Go to User CP in the top bar. Once there click Edit Profile on the left side bar. If you fully fill in the name (be sure there are no spelling mistakes), race, class, server and realm location (EU or US etc.) it should correctly grab that data from the Armory and we can view it.

For clarification, Circle of Healing will only proc Surge of Light. There is no possible way it can proc Holy Concentration or Improved Holy Concentration. You may be not noticing a prevous Holy Concentration proc from a flash heal you just cast, then casting a CoH and getting a SoL and thinking the CoH just got both (I don't know). But, unfortunately, CoH can only proc SoL.

Now any priest who is anyone is getting meditation. So you are trading Guardian Spirit, 1 point in IHC, 5/5 Providence and 3/3 Serendipity for Mental Strength & Agility, and Focused Power. In all honesty you should not make that trade. You said you don't have any problem with mana so maybe try specing out of them and back into holy for increased output. If you have mana problems then, well perhaps there is a happy medium you can find.

My personal overhealing numbers are very high because I usually am raid healing and I try to heal anyone who takes damage. If my fellow healers beat me to it, great! It just increases the chances of our raid member living. I'm eagerly awaiting your WWS parses of you having competitive throughput with ~10% overheal, I usually run about 30-50% overheal and have no problem with it. Our guild runs Naxx with 5-6 healers, Sartharion 3-Drake with 6-7 healers and Malygos with 5-7 healers. I consider all of my healing members top notch or I wouldn't allow them to be in the guild.

I urge you to try running with about ~400 haste and see how it impacts your healing potential. Having 1.3 second flash heals versus 1.5 makes quite a bit of difference. And if you can grab enough haste to get your greater heal down to 2.0, it will feel 'very' fast.

Seems like you have hit the mana/regen cap I have talked about before in the way I gear. Now that you have hit that point, trust me, haste is the best way for you to go. In terms of your spec, I honestly don't like to say anyones spec is poor but having Guardian Spirit (especially now that it is off the GCD) is a phenomenal raiding tool.

 

Starfire

I have 38% holy crit raid buffed. Actually that was before I got new boots. But eitherway. Close enough... I wouldn't say 40% is unreachable. And on second thought...

3/4 is pretty good on my eyes. At that point you will get the SoL proc more often than not. And in regards to the person about PoH > CoH > SoL FH on Loatheb... How can you reasonably argue of not getting SoL with 11+ (pets from PoH) hits and a +50% crit buff? I am sure every Priest has at least 25-30% crit raid buffed.

 

Sinndir

You honestly run 38% crit in raids? What are you other stats at? Seems like 5-10% of that crit is better suited in Spell Power or Haste., personal opinion I guess.

 

Liths

Are you serious? Loatheb is a great argument for NOT getting SoL. You're missing a very important thing here, instead of the PoH > CoH > SoL FH you can instead use PoH > normal FH > CoH and the flash heal will have ~80% chance to crit, instead of 0% with SoL. And more importantly, SoL will lower your smite dps by quite a bit if you aren't running out of mana and you will spend the majority of the time nuking, not healing. Pointless discussion considering the difficulty of the encounter, but how people could consider a talent that causes your spells to be unable to crit in an enviorment with 80% chance to crit good bogles my mind.

 

Starfire

You're right. Flash Heal would crit and has additional procs. Oh and you can cancelaura SoL proc if you wanted to.

In regards to spellpower... You can show all the math you want, but I know my Flash Heals and Greater Heals rarely leave people below full health. Crit Heals almost always top them. And I get faster Flash Heals (and Binding Heals) from half my crits (more or less). I do value haste. But in my eyes haste is pure throughput, crit is balanced between throughput and endurance. IHC crit chaining from Binding Heal does wonders for my mana too.

And I know fights are trivial now, but I suspect mana will be more important for Ulduar. Pre-Sunwell for all the raid Tiers I've done, I've always found at the introduction of new Tiers mana is always a bigger issue at first, not throughput.

(And for the record, I do gem my red sockets with +19 spellpower).

 

Mercurylight

I totally agree. I would love to see how you are able to pull off 10% over healing. My guild runs with 2 druids and atleast 2 pallidins every raid. It makes it very hard for me to get 30% over heals even on a boss fight like Patchwork.


On another note one of my guildies brought to my attention that there is a spell bonus cap? Is this true and if so is there one for Bonus healing?

 

Tainter

That's not actually true I believe.

My Smite hits for somewhere in the region of 2.2k (crit 3.3k) and has a cast time of somewhere around 1.8s.
So my Smite dps at 80% crit is: (2.2k + 0.8 * 0.5 * 2.2k) / 1.8s = 1711 dps
(At 30% crit it is: (2.2k + 0.3 * 0.5 * 2.2k) / 1.8s = 1516 dps)
My global cooldown is around 1.35s, so a non-crit instant Smite has: 2.2k / 1.35s = 1630 dps

So total Smite dps with SoL at 80% crit turns into: 0.2 * (2200 / 1.8) + 0.4 *(3300 / 1.8) + 0.4 * (5500 / 3.15) = 1676 dps. Having SoL reduces dps by around 35 dps (~2%) IF you're at 80% crit. It breaks even at around 67% crit. (2.2k + 0.67 * 0.5 * 2.2k) / 1.8s = 1630 dps)

Those 35 dps against the backdrop of 15 real dps classes with high crit hammering away are fairly little.
So you only ever lose dps by having SoL if you're sitting above 67% crit on average over the duration of the fight. We've got some trigger happy dps and so I don't get the 50% bonus all the time, therefore I doubt that's true for me.

In case it's not clear what's going on here and how Flash Heal hps goes down with SoL, but Smite dps only at certain crit levels: The casting time of Smite is longer than a global cooldown.

Edit:
And if you are above 67% crit you may consider to try cancelling your SoL buff manually if you can. Depending on how much lag there is it may be counter-productive though. However if you get a crit Smite SoL proc and proceed to cast Holy Fire/Mind Blast/Pain/Plague then you should have enough time to cancel it before your next Smite. Even though you may of course proc it again.

That's the first time I've ever read anything like that. Could you elaborate that a bit? Do you mean that after a certain spell power level gaining more spell power no longer increases spell output? If so, at which levels and which spells is this supposed to happen?

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

Lazare

There is no spell power cap. There is no hard cap, soft cap, or even a situation that might look like a cap. I have no idea where this idea starts, although I've run into it more than once.

 

Elimbras

It may come from the aoe-spell cap.
Each aoe-damage spell has (or at least had in TBC) a total damage cap. When this cap is reached, you don't gain damage by adding spellpower (but still can with haste and crit --- the cap is pre-crit transformation).
Of course, the amount of spellpower to reach the cap depends on the total number of targets in the aoe ;-)

 

Sinndir

But since we are healers and not capped, just as the previous poster said. There is no cap on our healing spell power, so please keep stacking it!

 

Elimbras

I know ! But I was not clear
Previous poster was just wandering where this idea of cap could come from.
I said that in fact, in some special case, there was a cap. We are not concerned by it, but I may be the origin of this false idea of cap on spellpower.

 

Teffy

So more healing things:

I just recently specced into PvE Disc for the first time when the CoH nerf hit (I pugged 10-man VoA and the other healer was Disc and had 80% mana at the end of the fight and I just kind of went 'wtf...OP') and tried it out in Naxx later that night.

The current spec I have is: 57/14/0 with Improved Divine Spirit because we don't bring an elemental shaman to our raids ATM. I'm looking for any sort of criticism / the likes on the spec and whatnot. Originally I didn't have Pain Suppression and had 2/2 Grace but we have been doing Sarth3D and so i respecced to get Pain Suppression (Grace I felt was the weakest talent I had).

The current gear I have is: Kyre's Armory. As you may be able to tell, a lot of the gear is dragged over from Holy (just recently put 50 SP on my staff, would put 63 but I'm leveling enchanting and using mats for that ATM, and I'm waiting for Mace/OH combo as I have no mana problems ATM, thus no need for the spirit. I'm looking to get [Leggings of Mortal Arrogance], [Mantle of Dissemination], [Valorous Gloves of Faith], [Leash of Heedless Magic], [Soul of the Dead], and [Forethought Talisman], but if anyone has other recommendations on how I should be gearing myself (focusing on crit / int / mp5 / haste > SP at the moment) or gemming (int > crit > SP > mp5) I would appreciate it.

As of right now I hardly have a problem with mana unless I am forced to spam Flash of Light (only been disc a short time, getting used to having Penance still) and even then I can go all of 10-man Malygos P1 with only one other healer and come out at about 20-30% mana without CD's. So yes, any general insight into the world of Disc (I love it) or helpful critiques would be appreciated

 

RootBreaker

Do you bring any shaman to your raids? Even an untalented flametongue totem is significantly better than the spellpower bonus from IDS.

If you're not concerned with running out of mana, it seems like you should focus more on spell power and haste rather than int or other mana regen stats. The main benefit of int is that it increases the amount of mana you have available during a fight (both by increasing your starting mana pool and your regeneration) - if you have so much mana that you're not even using cooldowns, stacking more int seems superfluous.

 

Xaphania

@Kyre: As you've noticed, disc has incredible mana regen just due to Rapture, so you really don't have to gear toward regen at all (the int that comes naturally on caster gear is plenty). One thing you could do pretty easily if you want to switch to disc longterm, is replace all your int gems with crit. IMO looking at your current setup, your crit is lacking compared to other stats. You have way too much spirit (for disc), and your haste is a bit high too, compared to your crit. I would put 16 crit gems in your yellow sockets, spell power/crit in red, and crit/spirit for the 2 required blue gems (though for some reason, I'm not seeing a meta in your helm on the armory...but I know that that helm has a meta, so I'm assuming that's a bug).

If you're trying to start picking up gear that's more disc-specific, you should weigh stats like this IMO: spell power/crit > haste > int > mp5/spirit.

Oh and as the poster above me said, unless you have zero shamans in the raid, you should have Flametongue totem, which nullifies IDS, so I'd take out those two points and put them in Grace and Inner Focus.

 

Ashnell

Gearing a disc priest is in my opinion more of a mix and match of items to reach certain numbers, than a rating of the items stats.

The numbers I would like to reach before new content is(fully raidbuffed):
Crit: ~38%
Haste: ~23%
Spellpower: ~2500

I perfer items with spirit over mp5, because it scales with int and it will become much more useful, when the class changes come.

 

Plitschplatsch

To bring up the spellpower soft cap one more time:
there was a point when haste started to scale better than spellpower for throughput in tbc. Maybe something like that is meant.

 

occido

As a deep Holy I used Spirit of Redemption (after fix useless), Renew and CoH glyph. Now I would take Flash and PoH in consideration.

But which glyphs shall I use as a 57/14/0 (respecced after Patch for Sarth).
Shield, Flash (mh no need of mana ^.-), Renew or even PoH?
What is your setup?

I also detected an incredible loss of HPS which I think is because I'm new with the Specc (obvious), my Gear is too much into haste / spi. My throughput and overall heal (fuck the meters) were on the same level with our Holy Palas (HS Sarth, H Maly), but I think I got some decent abilities (Pain Sup, Power Inf, Penance, powerful Shield, Grace).

So is Disc only King of 5-man with "lower" gear and in 25-man it is more the supporting role or can I even beat Holy Pals when I'm used to the Specc and I'm geared equally?

 

Tainter

I'd like assert that haste is a better than crit for Disc for a number of reasons.

Haste provides more healing output increase per point than crit. That's partly because Divine Aegis is not such a good on crit ability and partly because Haste does nothing but increasing output. It only provides a 195% modifier (i.e. even with DA the effect of a crit is still less than double a non-crit). DA shields overwrite each other, which is unfortunate. Unless you're strictly tank healing some shields will fall off before they are (completely) used.

The selling point of crit (over haste) would usually be that it provides efficiency. But crit heals often overheal, reducing the impact of efficiency (and also Rapture) dramatically. I've also read some people saying that DA/Rapture still doesn't work properly. Disc has a boatload of regen from Rapture and Replinishment already, so more mana is really not necessary.

And finally Haste makes heals more responsive. I'd rather have my hasted heal hit before someone else's slower crit heal, even though that may admittedly be selfish. The biggest problem with Haste is usally that if stacked very highly mana gets burned very quickly, but Disc has the mana to do it.

So if you're Disc I'd say: Stack that haste. A problem arises when you want to switch to Holy with your Disc gear. You may suddenly find yourself struggling for mana. Or if you have Spirit/Crit gear and want to switch to Disc you may suddenly find yourself low on output.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

The Not So Evil

I think you are going to have to be a bit more clear in your definition of "stacking haste". Does that mean prioritize haste gems and enchants over alternatives, or pick up any gear with haste disregarding everything else?

Also when stacing haste, you may find yourself having <1s GCD very fast with Borrowed Time up. Unlike a crit that puts up a Divine Aegis (which is technically not overhealing since shielding is technically not healing), any haste that puts you below a 1s GCD is wasted. Of course if you plan to use PW: Shield -> Penance -> GHeal you can argue that reaching the haste cap takes a bit longer. If you plan to use GHeal that much, it may be more beneficial to stack crit in order to put up a large DA from time to time. This would allow you to take some break to regen while waiting for Penance cd to return.

But lets not forget poor Spell Power who is in the corner feeling all left out. Where Haste and Crit does not work for PW: Shield, Spell Power does. So that returns me to my request at the start of the post. How are you suggesting people stack Haste?

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