3.1 PTR - Page 54

KamPa · 04/18/09, 5:58 AM

Tantrum + Bombs is supposedly nerfed now, so it shouldn't be a problem.
I wondered about Healing Prayers myself, since there's couple fights where PoH is really useful and spammed quite a bit. But then again, only on Hodir it really hurt my mana - and "hard mode" will be faster, so less straining regen-wise.

One major problem with Discipline is completely unrelated to spec itself - it's the Penance glyph availability and currently, it's pretty lacking. I found it superior to Holy in 10 man, not yet convinced about 25 - perhaps due to lack of experience. Shield spamming is quite good against various AOEs and burst single target healing is superior to Holy, as you pretty much have 3 stack Serenpidity GH on demand, with shield. CoH lost a lot of its power with targeted PoH, and while PS is inferior to GS, it's still a decent cooldown to use.

Malrazor · 04/19/09, 1:20 PM

This morning at 3:00 am, my guild successfully killed Yogg-Saron and we're placed 56 worldwide on wowprogress. Initially I started off with a spec containing Lightwell but after Ignis, Deconstructor, Razorscale and Auriaya, I soon noticed that there just isn't any situation where people could use it. And if there is a short downtime, it's most of the time before a spiky raid damage spell which would break the HoT effect anyways. I then respecced into holy mainspec and disc dualspec.

I'm currently using this 14/57/0 spec.

I decided to not go for any renew talents for a few reasons: holy priests are probably the best raid healers out there and they are great at one thing (among others), which is that they can put out an insane amount of HPS for a sufficient time. There are fights like Kologarn, Hodir, Mimiron or even Yogg-Saron phase 1 where we need to keep the raid alive at all cost. This is when the raid relies on us to put out enough healing for no one to go down. I usually prepare with 3 stacks serendipity, PoM and then go all out with CoH, hasted PoH and then either Flash Heal or casted PoH again.

A few talents that I find noteworthy:

- Desperate Prayers: it keeps you from dieing a lot, either when you land in Ignis Crotch Pot or when you get hit by some kind of random damage. Ulduar generally has a lot of single high damage incomes that take away 80-90% of your HP. You want to be back to 100% asap

- Holy Reach: a lot of fights require the raid to be spread out. I want my heals to land

- Test of Faith: A few encounters will make your healers sweat and blow every CD to keep the raid barely alive. DPS will constantly be floating below 50% HP, which is an ideal situation for this talent.

- Body and Soul: I'm not wasting my talent points to make up for other people mistakes. They should get their stuff together themselves

Overall, Ulduar is a very challenging instance for healers (finally) and I can use my dual-specs to the fullest. I use holy for a lot of fights but I know there are a lot of situations where I will single-target heal someone or concentrate on a few select people and where disc is superior. I'm looking forward to hard modes next week.

Xaphania · 04/19/09, 2:21 PM

Originally Posted by Malrazor

- Body and Soul: I'm not wasting my talent points to make up for other people mistakes. They should get their stuff together themselves

I agree with the rest of your post, but I'm not sure I understand this... why would Body and Soul be to make up for people's mistakes? "Making a mistake" to me implies not moving out of something they should be moving out of, in which case Body and Soul isn't going to help them. If they're a little late in moving, then fine, I guess that could be a "mistake", but it's something that's going to happen to everyone. A successful progression raid is all about dealing with mistakes, and turning wipes into first kills.

And besides, the talent is also useful for giving to anyone if they have to move to switch targets. And that has nothing to do with mistakes.

Sinndir · 04/19/09, 3:41 PM

I finally have the GS glyph and I kid you not, I use it 5 times a fight.

Phase one Mimiron I can get 2 of them off, every frozen blows on Hodir, countless times on trash. I really like how if it goes off, it was put to good use saving a death and if it doesn't go off then you simply can use it a minute later.

Such a great glyph.

Proxy · 04/19/09, 4:49 PM

The GS glyph is amazing indeed. It allows you to GS the tank so that you can throw out a few PoH/CoH's on the raid. Not that it couldn't be done without the glyph, but I do it often and casually now.

And yes, normally you'd run with dedicated tank healers, but I tend to pug often where the total healing is mostly done by just a few focused people.

Rezzy · 04/19/09, 7:32 PM

The glyph is tremendous - using it in conjunction with another Holy priest means its uptime is so good - Other healers actually noticing the 40% increase.

I take healing prayers as POM and PoH are basically both buttons i push alot. Even with 3 'group' members at say 60% HP PoH hasted is worth the cast -

I am now running the following glyphs - GS,flash,Coh.

All 3 are strong. I also got the 10man 100 spirit trinket. Not the best trinket but less mana cost on flash lets me get 3 stacks pretty easy and cheap (serendipity). To the guy who said he isn't going oom - if not so you should be wearing more through put gear and start potting.

On Kolo i got innervate from the moonkin and was using haste pots for the extra through put to top the raid off pre shockwave. Found this works nicely (1 an attempt o c).

Overall, i feel priests will get a nerf. Targetable PoH is unbelievably good and I am hoping hard modes test mana (we're cheesing easy modes to see all the fights).

Update on fragments - we had 2 more drop - so 4 from the first 7 bosses - i guess luck is upon my guild.

MavSteele · 04/20/09, 10:58 AM

I'm not terribly impressed so far with Holy Concentration, especially with the way it interacts with SoL. On our first two nights in Ulduar, I'm finding that I'm not casting enough non-SoL FH/GH/BH to keep the proc up with any regularity. I realize that it's more valuable in a holy tank healing situation, which is what HC/IHC originally helped us with, but for raid healing it's been pretty lackluster for me. I'll keep it in my spec for much the same reason I keep inspiration; even with dual-specs I like the flexibility to switch to tank healing as holy, either in an emergency or to cover another healer, and be effective at it.

On an unrelated note, I'm reconsidering the value of the T8 4pc bonus for holy after playing with BaS. With all of the fun uses for PW:S sprint, I'm finding that I'm using PW:S on average at least once every 30 seconds on boss encounters. This is ~42 passive SP, but a little more powerful because of the planned burst effect. I think it's clearly better for disc for obvious reasons, but until we see more ilvl 239 loot that trumps T8, I think the bonus makes at least 4 pieces of the set pretty interesting for holy.