This isn't really all that true.

For example, in any situation that a single Flash Heal would suffice there is no realistic level of trading Spell Power -> Haste to make a Greater Heal required for the same situation. It takes ~3163 spell power for a FH to equal a GH with 0 spell power that is without considering talents that benefit GH more than FH. From that you can see that you would have to "trade stats" at the level of -3163 SP for some crazy value of haste to create this situation which is clearly unrealistic. The same is true for the only other case I can see of selecting a more expensive spell CoH -> PoH, which isn't nearly as cut and dry to calculate for raid groups.

Even the concept of casting "more of the same spell" is hard to quantify as realistic even in situations with no cross healing. Looking at FH per 1 SP dropped you reduce the heal by ~1.335. If the average FH >4500 per 1 SP dropped you need an additional .000296 FH's over time. At a loss of even 300 SP it takes 15 FH's at the lower SP value to "lose" one full heal against the higher SP value. Which over the course of the fight probably isn't a very concerning amount.

The only case I can see it mattering much is in a healing situation where you have X time to top the person back up before subsequent damage. In which case you take whatever stat is required to achieve the required HPS in the window of time. Considering you are then bounded by both time and heal size, it could be Haste or SP that you would want....

Personally, I rarely find myself choosing between sp and haste... it's usually crit vs. haste, or crit/haste vs. spirit/mp5.

Where does "increases your mana regen by x" fall into the whole spirit vs mp5 argument? I generally chose spirit over mp5 but this is a stat I'm not really sure how to deal with. Does it simply add x regen to your overall in and out of casting regen? Is a stat like this worth losing the spell power bonus from spirit? Also, in Nidaba's compendium it says 11 spirit = 4 mp5. Maybe consider adding an = x mana regen for easier comparison.

"Increases your mana regen by x" is the exact same thing as "x mp5." It's just an inconsistent tooltip.

Ignis is one of the few fights where I feel like I almost have a set rotation. I generally do a CoH while in the air (when flame jets has just gone off) and then PoH 2 groups - by that time CoH is off cooldown again to use if needed. Other than that particular boss you should generally not have a rotation as a holy priest.

I have a question regarding Power Word: Shield.

I know that since WotLK was released, Power Word: Shield was "fixed" to allow warrior and druid tanks to generate rage through the shield. However, one of the druid tanks I often run with noticed that while she could generate rage she was unable to generate threat (no matter what ability she used her threat level in Omen did not rise). Has anyone else, grouped or raided with a rage tank, and noticed this?

A few simple, quick questions that I haven't really found an answer to:

1. Hit rating is not a linear curve right? I mean, the closer you get to hitcap, (17%?) the less useful +hit becomes... The difference between 16% and 17% have to be minimal, so much so that doesn't the delta value between SP and +hit start to go the other direction, before you hit the cap? Doesn't SP become more valuable at like 15 or 16%?

2. Raid buffs/auras, target debuffs and Misery. What stacks with it (if anything) that affects +hit? From what I have been reading, ImpFF and the DK debuff do not stack with it, does anything that affects +hit still stack with Misery? Is there a normal priority for these things? I also read ImpFF overrides Misery? Now it seems to be a war between the Boomkin and I over who gets their debuff on the target since both are individually beneficial...

3. Spriest Spell Rotation, there isn't one in the spriest basics thread, and its been a while since I have raided on an spriest. I have been reading all the threads and looking at WWS's and noticed people aren't using SWD anymore, I can only assume because it interrupts the rotation and results in a lower average DPS. The last time I raided on an spriest was around lvl70, so I have a few things to spin up on, but I would assume the standard rotation of getting VT/VE up initially, then a SWP/DP -> MB -> MF rotation would suffice.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

I took the talent tree from the basic thread and did some modifications. I never really liked mana talents, I always preferred to err on the side of more DPS, which usually translates into reducing threat to targets so I can go in full earlier and with more vigor and adapt my rotation slightly during the fight if I need to conserve mana. The ImpVE is because everyone is saying this is useful as hell in Ulduar..

Any help would be appreciated and I thank you for taking the time to read this wall o' text.

Coming from a Holy priest with some Shadow knowlegde:

1. The final % hit will still be a 1+% increase in DPS. (1/0.99 = 1.0101 -> 1.01% increase) Typically as a result this does mean that capping hit is an excellent thing to do, especially since aside from the DPS increase, there's things such as DP going on cooldown even if you miss - something which can severely hurt DPS if not capped. Additionally in general you will rarely really choose between Hit and Spellpower, but rather Hit vs Haste vs Crit vs Spirit. One thing which Shadowpriest.com theorycrafters did find however is that for T7 content Spellpower gems provide a better gain than Hit rating gems according to theorycrafting (excluding issues like the DP thing mentioned before), and that using badly itemized hit items will not be very good for your DPS.

2. Misery will indeed not stack with IFF, together with which it forms a category. I don't really know much about prioritizing, but essentially it's fairly irrelevant, as at any time only one will be actively used for calculations; whose that is is a little moot. In general though Misery is assumed to be taking care of the job as Priests will get it as a standard part of their spec without any meaningful sacrifices, whereas Balance Druids are a lot more hurting for points in their tree and as a result often skip it.

3. SW: D is a DPS loss from what I remember, and as a result no longer part of the 'rotation'. Additionally Shadowpriests mostly work off a priority system, rather than a set rotation, as timers often rather mismatch. When starting off a fight I usually apply VT >SW: P> DP > MB > MF, after which you settle into playing with a priority system in roughly the same order but usually having SW: P kept up by MF. Experienced SPriests might correct me on the exact priority though, as Shadow is more something I mess around with in my spare time and don't really raid with.

I'm no total expert on Shadow, but some definite changes in that spec are in my view:
-Moving points from Unbreakable Will to Improved Inner Fire.
-Consider speccing into (improved) Spirit Tap and Inner Focus.
-I am not convinced you need the aggro reduction.
-I am not sure you really want to use 2 points on Improved VE, considering it was toned down immensely in terms of how much it heals people other than yourself.

More experienced Shadowpriests might be better at answering those questions though.

Hi guys, first post here so be kind haha. I've been reading up on this topic and the ulduar healing topic and it made me realise that (allthough im often top healer in the list) im doing things wrong. I know healing meters dont say much but its more to say, I didnt see myself doing things wrong.

Im currently raiding Ulduar, 10m to Mimiron and 25 a bit stuck on Thorim. Im currently gemmed with only 16spir gems for regen ofcourse but after reading here I realised I didnt have any/much problems keeping my mana up and since we have 2 resto druids and some shamans it shouldnt be much trouble either way.

So now I'm thinking about respeccing and regemming and I want to use PoH far more then I am doing now, so I was thinking about putting some crit/int and haste/int gems but maybe you guys can give me a different advice.

And I also had a question about spirit trinkets, since I use 2 trinkets that both give +300 spir for 20 sec on an use. I find this very helpfull in most fights. The best situation is when I pop HoC and a Surge of Light pop my trinkets, regens 600 spir for about 10 seconds, cast an flash heal (if needed, I time it often after a massive AoE) and then Inner focus + greater heal/PoH. What do you guys think about this tactic?

Btw here is my new spec, Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft prolly gonna input it tonight for the next Ulduar 25m run. Oh and is there a certain amount of haste we priests should have? I couldnt find anything about it...

I think this used to be a great tactic, having used both trinkets extensively in the past. However the succesive nerfs to Spirit based regeneration and the removal of (Improved) Holy Concentration's clearcast has considerably lowered the effectiveness of this approach, as both the amount of OO5SR time you can get and the regen you gain from trinkets during this has been cut back considerably. You might still get some decent mana out of it, but I personally suspect you might be better off with things like Je'Tze's Bell and Soul of the Dead now. (especially the latter, if you want mana regeneration) Or obviously Spark of Hope, but I'm guessing you also have not been lucky enough to see one yet.

That soul of the dead, never seen it drop in Naxx too bad. Looks realy good! About that "Spark of Hope", why would I want to replace 300spir proc with "minus 42 mana from every spell" ? I mean 42 mana on each spell. Thats not realy that much now is it? Or am I looking at it all wrong?

That soul of the dead might even be a good reason to organize a fast 25m naxx run!

I'm not disputing that it's a bad trinket, but isn't 100 mp5 a little high of an estimate? This works out to one cast every 2 seconds. I find that I'm just not chain casting that often. A more typical situation is lots of burst heal followed by a bit of downtime or intermittent casting, then repeated. Note that you don't gain 42 mana every time you cast a free Flash Heal from Surge of Light either. I'd suggest that 20 non-free spells per minute is a more reasonable estimate. That's still 70 m/5 though. Combined with the 108 Spirit, it's still best in slot, but not by some kind of enormous margin.

I'm not entirely sure to be honest, as I did not see the maths behind it. It was a ballpark figure used by constantius though, so I figured he'd know what he was talking about. Might be he was referring to the combination of static spirit and proc maybe. On the other hand, is 100 mp5 that high? Considering that assuming Soul of the Dead will proc once a minute is not all that unreasonable, which already translates to 75MP5...

I have it and average around a 30-35% uptime on most fights. If I am remembering correctly, the proc is still 250 spell power, so combining the uptime with the bonus it appears you'd get about a ~75sp bonus on average. The proc may or may not always happen at a good time, but seems competitive with the other class profession bonuses.

As a shadow priest, my parses on bosses puts the Lightweave proc uptime at ~30% on average, which demonstrates a very high proc rate since the duration is 15 seconds and the assumed ICD is 45 seconds.

If you chain-cast FoL with a reasonable amount of haste, you get 2100 mana/minute, or 175 Mp5. That's basically the top-end on the trinket. Low-end would be ~ 20 casts / minute, or 70 Mp5. It's rare to only cast 20 casts per minute without going OO5SR at least a couple of times, which is where the spirit on [Spark of Hope] will have increasing benefits. I'd budget this trinket as a 110 Mp5, 29 spellpower trinket for a holy priest (remember: 100 spirit is 36 Mp5 raid-buffed @ 1400 intellect; I5SR).

Overall regen range is between 100 and 205 Mp5.

1100 unbuffed intellect + AI + GotW (imp) + Flask of Distilled Wisdom + BoK = 1407 Intellect. This is even more true if you're Discipline with +15%. You can argue that priests don't quite have 1100 unbuffed intellect; my counter is that we will, easily. Every single item in Ulduar scales our intellect higher, by 5 here, 8 there. It adds up pretty quick. If you wear even one intellect trinket ([Pandora's Plea], [Darkmoon Card: Greatness]) you easily break 1400 raid-buffed.

You're right that some fights go as low as 15 casts / minute (esp. when using PoH). However, those fights can also easily have breaks which contribute OO5SR. If you're not chain-casting, then you have down time. It's almost a truism. For example, on Hodir, I spam to top people up, then run in circles waiting for the next damage source. That running is making full use of the spirit.

On a fight like Mimiron P2, I'd be getting near-full benefit from the trinket. It really is chain-casting, and PoH is almost always triple-hasted, so it's only a 1.9 second cast. In a situation like that, I easily get 40 casts off in a minute.

I'm not saying you can't put a throughput trinket into this slot, but losing a chunk, even as low at 75Mp5 (potentially low-end, if you assume 15 casts and no OO5SR time) is still a huge percentage of our ~ 550 Mp5 I5SR. You're not going to gain that much throughput (percentage-wise) as you lose in regen, so it only makes sense if you don't *need* the regen. In that case, obviously go with something like [Eye of the Broodmother].

But no one is using Flask of Distilled Wisdom except you. Everyone else is using Frost Wyrm. As best I can tell, you are the only holy priest who advocates stacking Intellect. The argument that upgrades scale our Intellect doesn't apply here because upgrades will scale all stats. Yes, we'll have more mana regeneration. But we'll also have more spell power, crit, and haste, and all of these stats have positive feedback loops, not just int and spirit. Gear upgrades won't make the increased intellect benefit significantly greater than the increased benefits other stats get.

Just to clarify, 15 casts a minute was the high side of my audit. The greatest number I saw on any fight was 15.6, and that was on Auriaya where I was spamming Holy Nova to kill cats and proc surge of light. The lowest I saw was 10 casts per minute. On a fight like Hodir, I have so many instant casts that I don't treat run time as an opportunity for spirit regen. You can credibly cast Circle of Healing, Instant Flash Heal, Mending, Renew, another Circle, and another Flash heal in a 9 second window while on the run. I find that my spirit regeneration time has a lot more to do with the raid being healed up than whether or not I'm moving.

It's also worth noting that just because you're casting 15 spells per minute does not mean you are getting a serious amount of spirit regeneration from it. If you cast a spell once every 4 seconds, you're getting no OOC mana regeneration. In practice you'll probably get maybe 5 seconds per minute if you aren't trying to maximize OOC time. That's not that much.

For Mimiron, I feel like phase 2 is far more about throughput than efficiency. I'm most likely to swap in something like Illustration of the Dragon Soul. I'm not running out of mana in phase 2, so the only pertinent question is whether I can keep up with the damage. Saving 42 mana per spell cast doesn't change the answer like 200 extra spell power does. Since the healing in phase 3 is such a joke, I can spend almost the entire phase regenerating back up to a full mana bar using spirit alone, preparing me for the final phase.

Honestly, Vezax is the one fight where this trinket is clearly amazing. Flash heal is the most commonly cast spell there and it provides a genuine increase in the amount of healing you can do that fight. Other than that, it seems like it's "just another good trinket".

This seems kinda harsh... I use distilled wisdom too, because the fact is that it is the best flask for regen, and I feel that regen is first priority in the beginning of new content.

Distilled Wisdom should only be considered if you actually need the regen. If you geared properly in Naxx odds are you do not need the regen.

But you're discipline specced, and I specifically referred to "holy priest". I know some Discipline priests are stacking int, and given their scaling talents, I understand the motivation. I haven't played the spec enough to say if it's a good idea or not, so I'm not commenting on it.

Regardless, it's not fair to say that "only regen matters at the beginning of new content". You wouldn't give up 100 spell power for 1 intellect, and you probably wouldn't even give up 10 spell power. There's clearly a break even point at which someone says, "I will give up no more than X spell power for 1 intellect". As best I can tell, no Holy priests (other than Constantius) are claiming that giving up 2 spell power for 1 intellect is a good idea. That's the Frost Wyrm to Distilled Wisdom stat trade.

I also think it's an oversimplification to say that regen is always better than throughput at the beginning of new content. Sometimes it is and sometimes it isn't. For example, at the start of WotLK raiding, throughput was the only thing that mattered because the fights were tuned such that running out of mana wasn't an issue. If someone claimed that spirit and intellect were valuable stats when 3.0 launched, they would be laughed at. Similarly, for guilds just starting Black Temple and Hyjal content in the TBC expansion, mana regen was far inferior compared to throughput. It wasn't useless but you never wanted to stack it.

The more precise statement is that "regen matters until you're no longer running out of mana". Many priests weren't having mana issues in Ulduar even on day one and were topping healing meters, even priests who favor throughput stats. Other priests were. It's not clear if the issue is raid composition, fight strategy, or player skill. But regen is not the first priority for many priests at the beginning of this new content.

The use of absolute statements rarely work in terms of healing. There are too many variables that need to be factored into the overall equation. How many healers you bring, what (class/spec) healers you bring, the dynamics of the fight, the composition of your raid group, and the skill/dps level/situation awareness of the raid as a whole all affect the big picture.

You can take two priests of equal gear and similiar spec that both fulfill the same role for a given fight but they may be on opposite ends of the throughput/regen debate. If your raid performs flawlessly every night then you will have a very different view of things than someone who spends alot of their time and mana covering the mistakes of those around them.

While many priests might not be gearing for regen at the beginning of Ulduar, many others are. How many of each is unknown. I think it's a better service to the community to present both/all sides than to attempt to crown one as "king".

Personally I use Guru's Elixir and Elixir of Mighty Thoughts most of the time, and Flask of the Frost Worm otherwise. That is more to do with the people around me and the fight ahead than my gear or skill as a priest.