Basically, you're right. Holy has a place as a raid healer (basically using Flash or GHeal to build up Serendipity stacks, then casting hasted PoHs), with heavy burst healing and then downtime. However, the tree was absolutely gutted with respect to tank healing with the removal of IHC and the old Serendipity, and it's not even worth doing unless your only role is Inspiration, with 75%+ of your healing actually going to the raid.
Meanwhile, Disc was tweaked just enough to make it a very strong complement to holy paladins for tank healing. From the fights I've seen in Ulduar, we're going to be running 1-2 paladins + 1 Disc priest on the MT for pretty much every encounter, with 2 resto shamans, 1 resto druid, and 1 holy priest on the raid. If we go up to 8, it will be adding another druid or shaman, not a priest.
If they finalize (read: fix) our hymns, and revisit Serendipity / IHC at a later date, I think Holy can return to its "Jack of All Trades" status, able to heal the raid or a tank equally well. As it stands, it's definitely an AE healing build, not a single target. That seems to me to be a real shame, as IHC-based holy tank healing was loads of fun, required some skill, and wasn't overpowered (still less throughput than paladins, and comparable to a geared resto druid, with Inspiration to make up the differential).
I thought the "jack of all trades" was loathed and the "raid healing niche" was where Holy was wanting to return to after the CoH change? perhaps it is just some desire to have the opposite of what is available which causes the endless conflicts and unhappiness. I'm pretty sure I've seen the comment almost always used in disdain rather than joy due to not being able to do said trades as good as other classes which steal your role.. or something.
"I'm pretty sure "jack of all trades, master of none" is something the community came up with, not us. All I have ever said is you can't be "jack of all trades, master of all." You can't be "the best healer in the game." We have no problem if Disc priests can equal Holy paladins or if Holy priests can AE heal as well as Resto shamans."
My primary concerns from what I've read in this thread remains the throughput value of Serendipity with the current values on it compared to the IHC we have now. Hasted POH is nice and all, but it feels a bit too situational to me and the hurt on our other mainstay heals seems too big. A single 36% hasted GH just doesn't seem potent enough compared to the way it is now with IHC - more predictable perhaps, but a big nerf to Patchwork style fights in terms of throughput.
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Sadly I haven't gotten around to heal a raid on the PTR - so I can't say for sure if these things are of a big concern as a holy priest in Ulduar compared to the other classes and specs.
I know you're just throwing out your opinion, so not trying to come across as too argumentative, but I couldn't disagree more with your comments here. Holy priest raid healing is absolutely off the charts in Ulduar; I feel more powerful on PTR than I have at any point in my WoW career including 3.0 Smart CoH spam. I'm absolutely stunned that they nerfed holy because of our strength in raid healing then turned around in 3.1 and buffed it so much.
Hasted, targeted, glyphed PoHs are absolutely phenomenal on the fights we've been able to test so far on PTR. During periods of RSTS FH/PoM/CoH are even more powerful than on live thanks to a less RNG ToF and the buffs to CoH. Then as you approach the burst phase, you sit on a 3-stack of Serendipity and drop huge PoHs on multiple groups. Our burst HPS is so far ahead of any other healing class it's pretty unbalanced.
As for tank healing, I'm not going to argue that Disc or a paladin wouldn't be better suited, but I much prefer the PTR version of holy priest tank healing to live. The combination of ToF, glyphed GS and Serendipity give me much more on demand burst than I have currently.
I thought the "jack of all trades" was loathed and the "raid healing niche" was where Holy was wanted to return to after the CoH change? perhaps it is just some desire to have the opposite of what is available which causes the endless conflicts and unhappiness. I'm pretty sure I've seen the comment always always used in disdain rather than joy due to not being able to do said trades as good as other classes which steal your role.. or something.
I think some people here enjoyed our "jack of all trades" era more than our CoH spam days. I, for one, don't miss CoH spam.
I find Constantius' outlook somewhat grim, though I've not spent any time on the PTR. Maybe our tank healing is nerfed vs. Disc and Holydins, but in Heroic Ulduar, we weren't going to be on the tank. In the meantime, the PoH change seems like buff enough to our raid healing to definitively justify our existence in H Ulduar. The real question is whether we can JoAT effectively in Ulduar 10. If our tank healing is nerfed to the point I can't heal a tank by myself in Ulduar 10, then I will probably be a sad panda.
Part of the fun and much of the vexation of being a Holy Priest is that more healers in the raid make us more boring. I am sort of looking forward more to Ulduar 10 than 25 for that reason. In fact, I secretly hope that the difficulty rebalance of Heroic vs. non means that Ulduar 10 is possible with two healers. In two healer raids, we can JoAT all over the place.
The new patch puts us very close to making priest a very skill dependent class. We have the greatest variety of healing toys than any other class to fill any role and to do it well. The serendipity change makes Gheal and PoH primary tools again. The mana nerf will force players to respect to that little blue bar and play smart to see that it doesn't empty (in theory). With the new talent Body and Soul, holy priest have a new unique ability all to themselves. Targeted sprint is pretty huge on every other fight in this game, also pvp.
During the CoH spam days the only thing for us to do was point and click, it made for very poor players. The 6sec CD was the greatest thing to happen to holy priest as far as making this game fun and interesting. At least to me having the biggest numbers isn't important. Juggling and acting on a great deal of information rattling around in my head and on the screen is what makes this game worth playing after so long. I enjoy being a jack of all trades and priest will always have a place.
I honestly never understood Gurg's refusal to bring holy priests to M'uru. We ran 1-2 every single week from kill until Wrath release, and never had an issue. We ran 2 paladins, 1 priest, 1 druid, and then some combination of 2 shamans or 1 shaman+1 priest. CoH was amazing with properly setup groups; I typically rocked P2 healing, and tank healed in P1.
@ Mavv: you're mostly right about raid healing. Serendipity allows for some interesting tweaks with PoH, although it returns us to "let's make sure to stack the raid in groups so PoH hits properly" to some extent. But if you think that Serendipity even comes CLOSE to matching the current IHC+Serendipity+ToF possibilities in tank healing, you're really stretching.
You *lose* HpS on single-target by using Flash to stack Serendipity. IHC was an incredibly well-designed talent in that respect, in that you got procs off your highest HpS spell that increased your HpS. In addition, the free GHeals could be chained, and using IF we had the chance to have *fun* healing a single target by weaving OO5SR ticks. Then, if you actually let a heal land and it overhealed at all, we got a refund on the mana. That's the biggest hit to tank healing in 3.1: our GHeals now cost 27.2% base (minus set-bonus, if you wear it) instead of 20.4%. That's ~ 280 mana / cast we lost with no real gain.
It's just not sustainable. You might be able to come close to the throughput by messing with Flash weaving, but you can't sustain the mana. Not even close. Instead of 1 in 7 casts being free and -280 mana / cast, we get the new Holy Concentration. Add the removal of Mana Spring / BoW doubling up, the loss of our burst OO5SR regen, and you get the current situation with Holy priest single-target healing.
Thankfully, it's not *really* doom & gloom, it just means pretty much every priest needs a Disc secondary spec so we can tank heal when needed. And Disc is in great shape: I've been highly impressed with the synergy between Disc and HPaladin on the PTR. PW:S+PoM for big hits (like Steelbreaker on Iron Council), and Borrowed Time-hasted heals + Penance makes priests awesome at mitigating big hits, leaving the paladin to sustain the regular, constant heals.
Last edited by constantius : 04/09/09 at 10:31 PM.
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
it just means pretty much every priest needs a Disc secondary spec so we can tank heal when needed. And Disc is in great shape
I have to agree with this statement. It describes well my experience on EU PTR.
In 3.1, I will use disc for tank healing and holy for everything else. From what I have seen in PTR, and read on forums, Ulduar has a great variety of fights. Every fight is different, so there will be plenty of fights for both holy and disc. Raid damage is potentially very high. I dare say Ulduar raid damage is potentially equal to what we have seen in Sunwell. I say potentially, because a huge chunk of raid damage can be avoided by being awake and reacting fast.
My point is, Ulduar has 12-14 fights, and ones I´ve seen are completely unique. And the fights are hard enough, that I suspect a disc priest can't (safely) raid heal some of the damage thrown around, and a holy priest can't (safely) MT heal some of the damage tanks take. For best possible healing utility, you will want to have both disc and holy specs. I will be running with holy as my primary and disc as my secondary spec, and I wouldn´t be surprised if that (PvE disc + PvE holy as specs) became somewhat common among more serious raiders.
Unrelated to the current discussion, I just made some checks for the spell coefficients on PTR (I try to always have a current list for it). Nothing unusual there except one thing:
Spiritual Healing now increases the shield amount of PW:S additive with Twin Discipline/Focused Power, basicly this means that holy now has a +15% modifier to shield value instead of +5% on live (due to Twin Discipline alone). Improved PW:S is still multiplicative. The PW:S of a holy priest will therefore increase by 9.5% compared to 3.0, with my current gear (~2400 sp self-buffed) this means the shield is ~400 stronger.
It won't change the spell completely for us (looking at 4pc set bonus e.g.), but it's worth mentioning.
This is more of a general question about 3.1 rather than a specific Priest question, but it does pertain to healing.
Reading through this thread, taking in all the information about regen, throughput and healing class capabilities in 3.1, I'm worried for my guild in Ulduar because we currently have zero raiding Holy Paladins. I don't want to beat a dead horse with regards to the IHC/Serendipity nerf(s), but is this a legitimate concern?
I suppose if I'm forced to spec disc for tank healing it wouldn't be the end of the world, but I feel as though (from what is being said) that there just isn't enough sustained throughput in Druid, Shaman, and (Holy) Priest healing to keep up with main tank damage for a lot of the new fights. For those who have raided on the PTR, do you imagine you could make do without Paladins?
I'm not trying to turn this into another "bring the player, not the class" complaint-fest, but it does seem like a viable concern, and I don't think the Divine Plea nerf is exactly doing much to bring Paladins "in line with Shamans," as GC says all healers' regen will be reduced to. If I'm not mistaken, Paladin healing seems as strong as ever on the PTR.
Holy Paladins and Disc Priest are the strongest choices for tank healing at the moment. It doesn't mean that other class/spec can't do it, it just won't be as easy. I won't speak for how Druids/Shaman are on the PTR for tank healing, though the problem I saw spec'd Holy is mana sustainability. Which for priests at the moment if you are normally Holy and you will need to regularly tank heal, having a dual spec to Disc is probably your best option.
I know disc can absorb / mitigate alot of the damage, but are we going to need a holy pally to help on a tank or will chain flash/Pw.S/Penance be enough?
Is there enough output like Holy has now with Gheal spamming with IHC if tank healing predominately?
I've always seen disc as a poor brother but am looking forward to playing it again if it can do the job.
If Inner Focus DOES get fixed and increases SW:P's crit chance by 25%, I'm thinking it might be worthwhile to go 2/3 meditation and 1/1 in Inner Focus for our 13 obligatory 13 points in Discipline. I believe this would be superior to 3/3 Meditation most builds suggest.
It's very possible I might remove a point from Imp Shadowform/Veiled Shadows ( most likely imp. Shadowform) and pick up Psychic Horror for general utility; thoughts on this?
If Inner Focus DOES get fixed and increases SW:P's crit chance by 25%, I'm thinking it might be worthwhile to go 2/3 meditation and 1/1 in Inner Focus for our 13 obligatory 13 points in Discipline. I believe this would be superior to 3/3 Meditation most builds suggest.
It's very possible I might remove a point from Imp Shadowform/Veiled Shadows ( most likely imp. Shadowform) and pick up Psychic Horror for general utility; thoughts on this?
Veiled Shadows is a DPS increase + mana so I'd leave that at 2/2. I'm pretty sure dropping 1 point in Focused Mind is better than 2/3 Meditation. If mana is a big problem then drop a point in Imp SF.
Since I'm the only healy priest in the guild(we used to have 4 in sunwell..lolreroll) not sure what should I spec. we have 3 holy paladins, 3 resto druids and 3 resto shamans so I'm sort of stuck in between. I do want to spec pvp disc as 2nd spec though since this season I started doing arenas pretty late(been lazy) but then we have so many shamans/druids.I'll prob get stuck healing MTs and being holy on MT is.Blah.
It's very possible I might remove a point from Imp Shadowform/Veiled Shadows ( most likely imp. Shadowform) and pick up Psychic Horror for general utility; thoughts on this?
Since i'm the only healy priest in the guild(we used to have 4 in sunwell..lolreroll) not sure what should i spec. we have 3 holy paladins, 3 resto druids and 3 resto shamans so i'm sort of stuck in between. I do want to spec pvp disc as 2nd spec though since this season i started doing arenas pretty late(been lazy) but then we have so many shamans/druids...i'll prob get stuck healing MTs and being holy on MT is..blah.
You could use 2 disc specs 1 for pvp and one for pve I'm nor 100% sure its possible since I didn't play on the PTR but from what I hear it can be done.
As an alternative, should be able to get away with 2/3 Pain and Suffering.
I raid holy, so perhaps this is off base, but aren't there cases when you want to keep SW:P up on multiple mobs at once? In that case you need to be able to rely on MF to keep it up.
I raid holy, so perhaps this is off base, but aren't there cases when you want to keep SW:P up on multiple mobs at once? In that case you need to be able to rely on MF to keep it up.
If its more than 2-3 mobs it will be more efficient to Mind Sear. If it's only 2-3 mobs you get more dps from just dotting all and then single target dps by following the main assist.
On the discussion, I think that Imp VE will be really usefull in Ulduar since the raiddamage is fairly high and being able to selfheal is worth a lot. Most small spikes are easily healed up with just 1 MB which will give a lot more survivability and easier on the healers. So far it looks that there is no true dps races where inner focus will be a huge boost.
If its more than 2-3 mobs it will be more efficient to Mind Sear. If it's only 2-3 mobs you get more dps from just dotting all and then single target dps by following the main assist.
On the discussion, I think that Imp VE will be really usefull in Ulduar since the raiddamage is fairly high and being able to selfheal is worth a lot. Most small spikes are easily healed up with just 1 MB which will give a lot more survivability and easier on the healers. So far it looks that there is no true dps races where inner focus will be a huge boost.
If Inner Focus affects SW:P, however, and it suffers from the same problems it did before 3.1 (doesn't update crit% or any % based damage modifiers), then IF is a 25% increase to SW:P crit (if used at the right time) for the rest of the fight, as long as you keep pain refreshed.
Also, Scions on Maly is a case where it can be large boost to keep up multiple pains, namely if you apply them in power sparks and can keep them up with the +50% (+100%) bonus damage.
Constantius: what spec are you running right now? I looked over some of the older ones you posted in the thread but wondered what you are currently running.
Thanks!
04/09/09, 1:01 PM
