What about bouncing it off yourself? You should certainly be able to center a "circle" of "healing" (if you will) on yourself, since you're always a valid target for your own heals (Penance the exception).
I'll probably be doing Malygos tomorrow, so I'll test it then. Should be fun with the new mechanics. =/
Still the same error. I guess I worded my above response poorly, as that's what I was trying to say that I also tested. I tried it repeatedly, as my guild was kind enough to wipe several times to ensure it wasn't merely a fluke.
Not sure how to go about this, but I'd like to see some place where you guys can share WWS's of your current 25-man raids (and if you have) as well as your older raids. I'm very interested to see how everyone is stacking up; not just priests but other healing classes with their buffs/nerfs as well.
Not sure if it would call for a new thread but I have a bunch of spare time at work and enjoy looking at WWS parses. So if you feel free to share please do!
Honestly the CoH nerf wasn't as big a deal as I thought it was going to be. I was still able to raid heal just fine; it was even a little bit less boring in Naxx today having to watch two (omg, a whole two) CDs instead of just PoM. Good stuff.
Here's tonight's (Ignore the fail, so many dcs.. don't want to talk about it): Wow Web Stats
Last week's hps: 4203, Circle of Healing = 17,385,997
This week's hps: 3414, Circle of Healing = 6,398,347
Still trying to get used to it. I found myself trying to use CoH multiple times until realizing that it wasn't casting more than once tonight.
Also, the amount of flash healing I was doing tonight really, really made me want some more haste. Definitely going to be gemming for it more now that I'm not worried about regen from spamming CoH the entire raid.
I'm liking the CD, even if it's not the best fix, I suppose.
My very casual guild runs Naxx.10 with entry-level equipment (about half blue/half epic on average). DPS is usually a weak spot in our group.
As I don't always have three healers I want to be able to do everything with 2 healers. Regarding the 4 horsemen, the obvious solution (as outlined by most guides) is to put an elemental shaman or moonkin in the back as one of the DPS tanks.
Unfortunately, I don't have these. What I do have is either 2 holy priests or a holy priest and a restoration shaman.
The following setup worked, but was a real pain to execute with casual players:
- Two warlocks in the back, using life drain and +20% heal armor to ease healing burden on them.
- 2 holy priests (or alternative priest/shaman if available). One on each side, moved as far back as possible in order to reach both their group and the current warlock in the back.
Execution problems:
- Warlock positioning on the Blaumeux side (may outrange the healer)
- Tanks and warlocks do not have LOS to their healer during switches, requiring the healers to keep them topped up at all times, which is easier said than done when healing Khortazz with 3 meteor targets.
Now, as I said, it worked after a lot of tries. I would however, like to reduce the execution complexity a bit to make it a safe kill in the future. Any ideas regarding the healing here? (Assume 2 holy priests for the moment).
Our last couple 10 man four horsemans were done with jsut two people in the back, me (disc), and anyone else (I think it was a hunter 1st time, and DK the next time). Just make sure the other person stays in heal range, they don't even have to DPS, just iritate the boss so they have aggro. Binding heal, and whatever else you need, damage is very predictable and easy. Put a competent healer with decent mana regen, and you should be fine.
As for casual gear and skill, the last attempt we had three melee die (don't ask), so that pretty much emulates low dps! After using fiend, hymn and trinkets, I call out in raid that I am low on mana, and ask what is going on. The answer that we had no melee left made me chuckle, and as I was about to quaff a runic mana potion, I got an innervate. 11 min 46sec 4 horseman kill for a new (long distance!) record.
What about bouncing it off yourself? You should certainly be able to center a "circle" of "healing" (if you will) on yourself, since you're always a valid target for your own heals (Penance the exception).
I'll probably be doing Malygos tomorrow, so I'll test it then. Should be fun with the new mechanics. =/
Nope. For a while I thought it might be some weird new mechanic where the Vortex was forcing units to behave like vehicles, so targeting the player wasn't actually someone valid to heal, and tried casting it without a target, but nope. I could only randomly get CoH off on random people during Vortex.
Honestly the CoH nerf wasn't as big a deal as I thought it was going to be. I was still able to raid heal just fine; it was even a little bit less boring in Naxx today having to watch two (omg, a whole two) CDs instead of just PoM. Good stuff.
Here's tonight's (Ignore the fail, so many dcs.. don't want to talk about it): Wow Web Stats
Last week's hps: 4203, Circle of Healing = 17,385,997
This week's hps: 3414, Circle of Healing = 6,398,347
Still trying to get used to it. I found myself trying to use CoH multiple times until realizing that it wasn't casting more than once tonight.
Also, the amount of flash healing I was doing tonight really, really made me want some more haste. Definitely going to be gemming for it more now that I'm not worried about regen from spamming CoH the entire raid.
I'm liking the CD, even if it's not the best fix, I suppose.
I agree, I was thinking it was going to kill my healing. Just made me use other tools a bit more, Holy Nova, PoH ect.
The only time I missed spamming it was on trash, when the tank got greedy and pulled a few packs. Aside from that, I agree with more haste. I'm well below the suggested amount of haste at the moment, but I'll be re-gemming this evening.
Yup same here, the CoH nerf isn't that bad. Still I would prefer a 4 sek cooldown but 6 seconds is fine.
We had three holys tonight and put each of them in a different group so we could start using grp heal again. The result overall was that I healed roughly 37% with CoH, 2nd was flash heal and third is pom. I am also re-socketing for more haste and exchange the crit items where I have equal items with haste. Furthermore I put my engineering enchant (340 haste thingy) on my gloves because I really lack haste. My goal will be 300 haste rating with 21% holy crit unbuffed. maybe even 400 haste and 20 crit. The next step would be to stack crit high enough (while keeping haste) to have a guaranteed free flash heal after using coh
Guardian Spirit is currently not functioning properly (reported here, also tested myself last evening). While this isn't meant to spur up comment after comment about recent "bugs" concerning the 3.0.8 patch within this thread, do keep this in mind this evening during your raids.
The CoH cooldown isn't horrible so far, I just wish they would've softened it a little. Allow Divine Providence to take a second or two off of it, or let PoH be cast on a target's party, or make PoH smart, or something.
Guardian Spirit is currently not functioning properly (reported here, also tested myself last evening). While this isn't meant to spur up comment after comment about recent "bugs" concerning the 3.0.8 patch within this thread, do keep this in mind this evening during your raids.
Interesting, I used it a couple of times last night as a precaution, but it was never needed... thankfully too. As I usally use to buy myself some time to heal someone else up whilst the tank is beaten down and then pops back up to 50% health. Could of ended up in a spot of bother if I went to do that last night!
Offical patch notes: Moved disc bugs to holy tree. Ah, what can you do? If anything it makes you a better priest whilst adjusting to the bugs. Not going to bother spec'n into GS for now.
Last edited by neld : 01/21/09 at 8:12 PM.
Reason: Spelling
I had no problem raid healing last night. The percentages of my heals changed--essentially I Flash Healed more and CoH'd less. Here's a brief breakdown from our quick Naxx25 run last night:
Flash Heal 10,995,305 -- 56%
Circle of Healing 4,668,673 -- 24%
Prayer of Mending -- 2,431,667 -- 12%
Rest is Renew, Binding Heal, Prayer of Healing, etc.
For the mass of forum posts/threads on other sites where priests have been complaining endlessly, I'm really at a loss to figure out why they feel they will be unable to adapt to the change. One spell was changed, and I adjusted. I still love healing on my priest and will continue to do so. It's interesting what Bakane posted above because I ran into that same issue last night. It seemed when I *felt* I was ready to use CoH, I still had 2 seconds to wait. I guess in my preparation for the patch, I was really preparing for a 4 sec vs. the 6 sec cd. If anything, it did make me think more intelligently on who I need to hit with it, how many targets need to be healed with it, and hitting the person with the CoH that maximized the amount of people that need healing (melee vs. ranged, 2-3 targets vs. 4-6 targets in need of healing). In other words, I ensured that I made that CoH that I did cast as meaningful and efficient as possible. I found that I was better served in a lot of instances by just spamming a few Flash Heals to heal a few targets than "waste" a CoH on them.
As the above posters, I'm seriously considering re-looking at my gear and maybe choosing more haste over crit where I have that option (gems, gear, enchants, etc.)
Here's the isuse: spamming Flash Heal is boring. Paladins did it for 3 years, and complained every second about how they were FoL-spam-bots. Now we're basically Flash Heal spam-bots. We had a good raid healing tool, and they nerfed it. Now we're back to the idea of single-target-fast-low-value heals. It's not interesting, and it's not a good mechanic.
I did a full Naxx.10 clear tonight, and my total usage of CoH was down to 19%. Flash was over 30%. Thankfully, Binding Heal and Prayer of Mending did significant amounts of my healing, which at least are interesting spells that we can use.
If they allowed for a targeted Prayer of Healing (and lower the cast time 0.5 seconds), it would alleviate a lot of the issues I found tonight. Way too many times I wanted to top up a bunch of people and couldn't because they weren't in my group, and CoH was on cooldown. I felt very inadequate. Damage was coming in, and I just couldn't keep up.
(Note: Sapphiron was fine, because, as always, 75% of my healing on that fight is either PoM or Binding Heal. Not much changed.)
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
Constantius, you've summed up my impression post-nerf. We've become FH spam bots.
Looking at my healing breakdown of yesterday's nax 25, FH hovered around 50% in some of the fights (those were binding or PoM are less useful). The problem is FH mechanics aren't fun and paladins do it better.
Watching for the cd to pop was very annoying and I found myself using CoH whenever it was off cooldown in situations where I wouldn't have previously. Maybe before I wouldn't use it if only three people would benefit. Now I have to (unless I'm 100% sure I'll need it in the following 6 seconds), or else I'm losing throughput.
On the bright side, overall I managed to do a fair raid and remained very competitive in meters. We only wiped once to trash that would have never killed us pre-nerf.
The consecuences of this in my stat preference are basically that I'm gonna stop gemming for int. Why should I when my regen is already fairly good, I have quite a good chunk of int that comes like it or not with gear, and besides I have two other regen stats (crit and spirit) that provide regen AND throughput? I'll probably gem my yellow slots with haste or haste + spellpower.
The biggest thing that bothered me about Naxx (10-man) last night with the nerf was having to be a lot more careful with trash pulls. No more pulling multiple groups in Faerlina's room, no more chain pulling gargoyles before the debuff wears off, things like that. It also made me very sad on Loatheb for obvious reasons. Overall, life still goes on, it's just a lot less fun than before. As everyone else has said, whack-a-mole healing just isn't fun.
I have to echo most of the sentiments here. Healing Nax25 definitely wasn't a problem, though I did have to remind the tanks a few times about the nerfs. They have a tendency to pull the gargoyles quite quickly after each other, which was fine pre-3.08, but obviously a bit more problematic now. I also experienced a wipe on trash where I normally could have saved things.
One thing I noticed so far is that healing at this level of difficulty by being a flash heal turret is not a problem yet. The thing which bothers me though is what will happen once stuff actually gets harder. I strongly felt like I was lacking tools yesterday, and I can't claim to have found our new Flash Heal spam style to be enjoyable at all. Basically last night was a low point of a steady decline in fun I've had playing as a priest the last six months or so. I doubt I was at top effectiveness last night (40% CoH suggests I might need to do more with the time in between, though on the other hand with the other healers around being typically more effective at raid healing, there was little effective healing to clear up with Flash), but I just felt my much heralded priest toolbox was lacking, and didn't find it enjoyable.
Is anyone else having issues casting Circle of Healing during the vortex phase on Malygos? I cannot cast it while in the air, but can cast it immediately as I start to fall to the ground. Our Druid reports that he's having the same issues with Wild Growth. It's not a range issue, either, as I can cast Prayer of Mending/Renew/etc on myself.
Yep this was a problem last night on Malygos. I could not cast CoH on myself while in the air, but was able to cast it while falling after the end of the vortex and after landing.
Also Malygos change:
It seems the bomb is centered on where the tank lands after vortex. The entire raid including the melee ran away to almost where the lip of the circle landed. This created issues for healers for range on the tank. Basically only had time for an instant or a flash heal before you HAD to run out. Basically we used a combo cd's on the tank, pallies bubbling to stay in range, etc., to make sure the tank lived.
If they allowed for a targeted Prayer of Healing (and lower the cast time 0.5 seconds), it would alleviate a lot of the issues I found tonight. Way too many times I wanted to top up a bunch of people and couldn't because they weren't in my group, and CoH was on cooldown. I felt very inadequate. Damage was coming in, and I just couldn't keep up.
The impression I get from your statement is that you felt handicapped (or even handcuffed) from keeping up with healing if it was outside your group and CoH was on CD. If they weren't in your group, and CoH is on CD, you still have Flash or Binding Heal, or as a last resort hit them with a Renew or PoM. If this is still not enough, you still have to rely on your other healer(s) to pick up the slack. I agree, it seems Blizzard has shifted the necessary healing for us into "pally-like healing" to a certain degree but only in the sense that the majority of our heals are quick burst heals. We still have many other tools at our disposal that holy paladins don't have. However, I will reserve judgment until we see what challenges Ulduar brings us. Maybe we will need to GH more or Binding Heal more, or even use PoH more often. Naxx has been repeatedly posted as an entry level raid and at this time is very easy for a lot of us because most Naxx geared groups are easily over 20K hp and the incoming damage really isn't bad at all. Flash Healing/Binding Healing (when we ourselves need a heal) someone is simple, easy, and more than sufficient to heal the target. I'll be happy to wait and see what experiences and challenges Ulduar brings healers and more specifically our class.
A raid healer should not have to depend on someone else to cover the raid because they're out of cooldowns to effectively heal a group besides their own. Naxx.10 is run with 2 healers. Formerly, I could not only solo heal the raid, but also offheal the tanks at the same time. Now I cannot. And a shaman can't keep up with the raid damage either in some situations because of the nature of CHeal being cast and limited targets.
Basically, think back to Sunwell. CoH wasn't really a raid healing tool; it was a raid HP stabilization tool. You used it to slow down the incoming damage so the CHeal could top the person to full (think Twins, M'uru, or KJ). Now we don't have that tool.
It just means the encounters in the future will be less interesting as a result. If they aren't, they promote shaman stacking. /shrug
We're still able to heal, no argument there. If they fix Renew to scale properly, and fix our Hymns, we'll be in ok shape going into Ulduar. At the moment, however, I would never ask our guild to carry both holy priests in a challenging encounter. We'd be far better off bringing another shaman in that spot (an extra Mana Spring, + spammable raid heals) or a druid who can roll HoTs on a tremendous number of targets.
[e] Comparing Flash to CoH is a bit of an interesting statement, btw. CoH was ~ 10k HpS. Flash is ~ 4.3k, and single target only. I'd much rather hit 6 people who just took damage with a stabilization of 2k HP than Flash one of them and watch the other 4 dip even lower. It's the first time since ... start of TBC, really ... that I've felt like raid damage was out of my control. Even the original version of CoH could be group-targeted and stabilize whoever you wanted it to. Smart healing isn't necessary; having a tool to do the healing 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
Well one thing that is certainly bothering me about the COH change and people's reactions to it are the content relative to the 'didn't bother them factor'. In other words, the COH nerf and its effect on a 25 man Naxx run really can't be compared to the COH nerf on a three-drake Sarth run. I'm not trying to be a snob but you can't use a heroic Naxxramas as a baseline for 'not a problem' when people were running it with as little as 4-5 healers pre-nerf.
I know I've certainly missed COH over the past two days. In fact, the COH nerf, coupled with the GS bug prevented our guild from getting our second drake. Now do we as a guild have to re-learn how to play without COH? Certainly, but you can't say it wasn't a big deal. Like others have mentioned, make POH raid-based or make your one COH pulse for more. Just a six second CD is ridiculous.
Playing a priest like it's 1.0 on Tuesday was so bad I went Disc last night... I wonder what % of Holy priests did that last night?
How is it boring now, when most holy priests used CoH as a crutch? The majority of WWS I've seen have CoH at 65% of a priests heals. At least now you need to think before spamming CoH endlessly?
Well one thing that is certainly bothering me about the COH change and people's reactions to it are the content relative to the 'didn't bother them factor'. In other words, the COH nerf and its effect on a 25 man Naxx run really can't be compared to the COH nerf on a three-drake Sarth run. I'm not trying to be a snob but you can't use a heroic Naxxramas as a baseline for 'not a problem' when people were running it with as little as 4-5 healers pre-nerf.
I know I've certainly missed COH over the past two days. In fact, the COH nerf, coupled with the GS bug prevented our guild from getting our second drake. Now do we as a guild have to re-learn how to play without COH? Certainly, but you can't say it wasn't a big deal. Like others have mentioned, make POH raid-based or make your one COH pulse for more. Just a six second CD is ridiculous.
Playing a priest like it's 1.0 on Tuesday was so bad I went Disc last night... I wonder what % of Holy priests did that last night?
I think the only time i used CoH in Sarth3D be it 10 or 25 man was to proc SoL
I think the only time i used CoH in Sarth3D be it 10 or 25 man was to proc SoL
Whilst MT healing on 3D.25 this week I still switched target pretty much every 6 seconds to use CoH to assist healing the DPS through Twilight Torment.
Well one thing that is certainly bothering me about the COH change and people's reactions to it are the content relative to the 'didn't bother them factor'. In other words, the COH nerf and its effect on a 25 man Naxx run really can't be compared to the COH nerf on a three-drake Sarth run. I'm not trying to be a snob but you can't use a heroic Naxxramas as a baseline for 'not a problem' when people were running it with as little as 4-5 healers pre-nerf.
We cleared Sarth 3D with 2 CoH priests, 2 resto druids and 2 paladins (no shaman online) on Tuesday. It took us two attempts and the first wipe was because our MT DC'd during server instability. My only point is that the CoH nerf shouldn't prevent people from being able to clear the currently available content. I can't speak for everyone but when I say the CoH nerf "didn't bother me", I simply mean we were able to clear the same content we could before and I felt like I contributed some valuable amount of healing.
How is it boring now, when most holy priests used CoH as a crutch? The majority of WWS I've seen have CoH at 65% of a priests heals. At least now you need to think before spamming CoH endlessly?
What?! Are you looking at Malygos-only parses? 65% would only be if A)the priest isn't very good, or B)they're not really paying any attention, or C)it's Malygos. As a nerf the CoH cd is not outlandish. But it is irritating, cumbersome, restrictive and dramatically less fun. Feeling helpless in the face of raid damage is quite lame, I wish I could go to Sears and pick up a better toolbox.
"I have nothing personally invested in my own opinions. I'm just, like, inviting you to join me on the bandwagon of my own uncertainty." -Taylor Mali
01/21/09, 12:18 AM
Similar Threads
