Kilborne

"Haven't posted in quite a bit, but since we're discussing Renew..."

Actually, we were discussing empowered healing, which is the flash heal/greater heal talent. Not empowered renew which is the renew talent.

I agree on renew, use it a lot and love it. I was able to afford the renew talents in my holy spec by dropping the greater heal/flash heal talents.

 

Caliste

I'm trying to find information about gemming and the weighting of spirit, intellect, and mp5 in patch 3.2. Unfortunately I'm not finding a lot of information. RAWR currently does not include 3.2 items or weight changes. I did come across BobTurkey's blog. His conclusion is that with the changes to replenishment (and increased fight lengths) spirit has once again pulled ahead of intellect. Here are his 3.2 stat weights (Holy):

Spellpower- 2.0
Intellect- 0.8403
Spirit- 1.0278
Mp5- 1.0
Crit- 0.8959
Haste- 1.1337

These conclusions would affect my gemming and gearing choices and since I am trying to prepare for 3.2 (which I am not close to ready for- still too much to accomplish in Uld25 hard modes and 22 shards towards getting [Val'anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings]) I would appreciate some discussion on this topic. I respect BobTurkey's findings but I have a hard time relying on the theorycrafting of only one source. Unfortunately my own math skills are lacking.

With sources such as mmo speculating the patch may hit next week I'm trying to figure out which gems and gem patterns to purchase first. I've also been looking at the gear datamined from the ptr to compile a new gear ranking list. I'm feeling uncomfortably prepared however, and appreciate any input into the topic. And I apologize to BobTurkey if I've misinterpreted his findings.

Edit: Just read "with each encounter being unlocked one week at a time" from Stratfu. So looks like we'll have another 5 weeks to hit Ulduar hard modes.

 

Ellyh

As has been mentioned many times before you can't stat weight healers the same way you do for tanks/DPS. Your requirements for power vs longevity vary greatly from encounter to encounter and from raid to raid. Just to give an example, I recently changed the 10 man ulduar team I heal and I have gone from being constantly mana stretched to "why are these potions cluttering up my bag" all because of how I am assigned to heal and how the raid takes damage. How good your dps is also makes a HUGE difference to how you weight stats as the better they are the quicker the fight goes and the less relative value you should place on regen.

While having a rough idea of what stats you want and how you value them is good the ratings that work for my raids and situation may be significantly suboptimal for your situation.

 

Starfire

Weights are tricky things, but the value of Spirit vs. Intellect (vs. Mp5) depends on your current stats as well. Taken from the first page of the Q/A thread:

Edit: So this was the formula I copy pasted from the Q/A thread, however when using it and actually looking at my in game stats, I noticed it didn't match up. "5 * 0.005575 * sqrt{Int} * Spirit = OO5SR regen"

However, the formula from wowwiki seems to be about dead on (off by 1-2 mp5 for OO5SR and I5SR, close enough that I would say rounding errors): Mana Regen = 5 * (0.001 + sqrt(Int) * Spirit * Base_Regen ) * 0.60 (rounded up), where Base_Regen = .005575

 

Caliste

I'm not looking for a "recipe" on how to gem my gear. That's not how I go about gearing. I'm aware that gemming is dependent upon the encounter and dps and how strong the other healers are. For example, I currently prefer Int gems in yellow sockets because I need the mana for hard modes. Currently if I require more regen I gem for int (based on the amount of spirit I have). However, that may change in the patch. With the replenishment nerf it sounds like spirit may edge out int. I specifically would appreciate some more input from others on which stats are strongest for regen.

Thanks for the input Starfire. Sounds like spirit may be the better (in a general sense of course) choice over an Int gem then (assuming I want to avoid cutting spellpower out of gemming altogether). I also identify with your "illogical" response to mp5. But knowing roughly how much mp5 I get per point of spirit and intellect may make a difference for me when choosing to pick up an item.

 

Ellyh

Well the whole point of stat-ratings like bobturkeys is that they are a recipie.

If your mana constrained then your options are Int/Spirit/Crit and the never popular MP5. Which one of these stats you decide to go for really depends on what the current value of the other stats are. For example crit as a regen stat starts to suffer significant dimishing returns after your crit goes over about 30% and for Vezzax Int is always going to be king. You must decide what stats suit your situation and once you understand the (not so) basic math for how spirit and int interact you need to consider what will be most effective in your situation. However this is still not going to be addressed by stat weightings like bobs numbers. Basically the weightings are a constantly sliding scale based on the current values of all the above stats.

 

Caliste

I specifically was wondering about spirit, int and mp5, given that all other stats remain the same. I prefer to gem for regen at the moment, but feel it unecessary to cut out spellpower althogether. I switch out some haste gear for crit gear if the situation calls for it. I have crit trinkets (Eye of the Broodmother and Soul of the Dead) I prefer for certain fights and I use Pandoras Plea and my Int Darkmoon Card for Vezax. Other fights I use Spark of Hope.

I agree that stats are situational and their value varies depending on the encounter. That's a given. But I was looking to confirm that given x amount of spirit and intellect, spirit will provide slightly more regen than intellect given the nerf of replenishment. Choosing a spirit gem over intellect may not make much difference but I'd prefer to optimize my gear as much as possible.

 

The Not So Evil

I don't believe Spirit is ever going to be the King for regen ever again after the Innervate and OFSR regen nerf. If you are going for regen, in 3.2 MP5 and Int will be the thing. For Holy however, Spirit offers some additional throughput from SpellPower.

Don't just read what Ellyh is saying, please try to understand him as well.

Rawr - Coder of HolyPriest (Healer) and ShadowPriest (DPS) Modules.
Get Your Rawr 2.2.20!

 

BobTurkey

For Holy priests yes Spirit is more useful than Intellect. The main reason for this is that i've significantly increased the value of spell power in the model and more spirit = more SP for holy priests. The thinking behind this is the sort of priests looking at raiding the end-game (T9+) in 3.2 usually have little or no mana issues, therefore gearing for more throughput (spell power) makes sense.

My advice would be to gear/gem mostly for spell power in 3.2.

Ellyh's points are quite valid. If your stats are significantly different to those I used in my model then your priority will be different slightly also. I'd suggest you start with my model (or others if you find any) and then use some common sense to balance your stats. If you have an unusally low/high stat then you might want to balance that a bit (its personal preference really). If you are still having mana issues you'd be better using stat weights more like my current 3.1 version.

 

oolon

My advice, as always, is to keep everything fairly balanced, especially as Holy.

If your spirit and intellect are within 100 points of each other raid buffed, that's a nice place to be (1500 int/1500 spirit). I've recently taken to gemming more Intellect to bridge that gap, though I recently acquired a Pandora's Plea which probably allows me to shift towards spell power again. I'm not going to make any significant changes to my gems until I get 245+ gear, though. I'm pretty happy with my regen/mana pool/throughput. Disc can obviously shift much more towards Int, though I still have quite a bit of spirit as Disc (1700/1300).

If your crit and haste ratings are within 100 points of each other, that's also a good place to be, though less important and many priests decide to shift one way or the other (as Holy, I stay around 520 crit/420 haste, and as Disc I shift to 550/350). I don't recommend gemming for either unless you are rather deficient in one or the other.

Hope this helps. I don't think things like this have to be as complicated as they are sometimes made out to be. Keep it simple.

 

tedv

As an addendum, I'd like to note that gearing for Discipline is very different from Holy. In holy, you can take pretty much any combination of the stats and it will be decent. This is not at all true for Discipline though. Several pages back there was some math showing that crit was downright horrid for Discipline even when factoring in Divine Aegis. This is generally because you're casting Power Word: Shield a lot, and this spell doesn't crit. Similarly, it's very easy to get GCD capped with too much haste because of Borrowed Time. So Discipline doesn't want Haste either. Spirit isn't a particularly great stat for Holy, but it's much worse for Discipline. There's no spirit -> spell power conversion, no Holy Concentration, and no reason to abuse the 5 second rule. As a discipline priest, the only stats you can even consider stacking are Intellect and Spell Power. Stack Intellect if you're running out of mana and Spell Power if you're not.

 

wowsaa

That has been changed, so crit may become a much stronger stat than before.

 

Falim

Huh, where was this mentioned.

 

• caladein

Well, they changed Glyph of Power Word: Shield criticals to proc Divine Aegis (bugged to only shields cast on self right now). I can't think of anything else he could be referring to.

That's not a huge change as GoPW:S hasn't gone north of 10% of my total healing even on Mimiron parses.

 

Headhuntress

[Runed Cardinal Ruby] is either underpowered or intentionally underpowered to promote hybrid gems(most likely the second). While for rare quality gems using pure gems is better, in example 19 SP & 16 Int> 2x 9 SP +8 Int the epic gems turn the tides since the hybrids are 12 SP each. So [Luminous Ametrine]x2 is 1 SP better than [Runed Cardinal Ruby] plus [Brilliant King's Amber] and also more flexible with socket bonuses. Of course the difference is so minor that the best you could get out of a gemming like this is around 4 or 6 SP max. It's also half the price with Emblems.

 

Promethia

The way I look at it is that casting PWS a lot reduces the value of crit and haste to you.

Especially on MT healing as disc, you may not cast that many PWS's. Crit is also important to keep inspiration up and divine aegis stacks provide a little blunting on the larger hits, which is important when a tank fails to avoid a few hits in a row. You can liberally overheal the main tank (given enough mana) if you have a reasonably high crit rate, knowing that crits will at least stack DA even if you completely overheal.

I still agree intellect and spell power are king, but at least for throughput crit is almost always going to be better for disc than for holy. Even with no overhealing, disc gets 90% more throughput benefit compared to holy (effectively a 0.95 crit bonus multiplier instead of 0.5).

But overhealing makes that differential benefit more extreme. Suppose you typically overheal 20% on your crit heals, which is rather modest rate. That would mean your heal size on crits is 1.2 times normal (80% of 1.5) as holy. For discipline, you would get that 1.2 times normal heal plus a 0.45 times normal DA shield. That means the added benefit from crit is 0.65 times normal -- 3.25 times the 0.2 benefit holy sees.

That doesn't mean crit is great for discipline priests, but you would need to be casting shield a lot before holy would see more benefit from crit.

 

• caladein

It's just the first.

You'll run into "anomalies" with gems due to rounding as: a) the numbers are very small (see pre-3.2 gems with MP5) and b) you're easily able to compare these gems with other items of the same budget.

Here's a few gems as an example, with the pre-3.2 values for MP5 in parenthesis:
[Lustrous Azure Moonstone] (2 MP5) / [Dazzling Deep Peridot] (1 MP5)
[Lustrous Star of Elune] (3 MP5) / [Dazzling Talasite] (same as current, 2 MP5)
[Lustrous Empyrean Sapphire] (4 MP5) [Dazzling Seaspray Emerald] (2 MP5)

Pre-3.2, everything looks okay, except that [Dazzling Talasite] looks a good deal "over-budget" and [Dazzling Seaspray Emerald] looks like a rip-off. With the Talasite keeping its MP5 stat the same after the patch, that also suggest its "over-budget-ness" was due to rounding.

Now, the "over-budget" gem above is the [Dazzling Deep Peridot]. We have a similar case with the new [Perfect Lustrous Chalcedony] and [Perfect Dazzling Dark Jade].

If you work out the inequalities for both pure and mixed Epic Wrath Spellpower gems (22.5 <= x < 23.5 and 11.5 <= x/2 < 12.5) the numbers all work out rather neatly.

 

FauxFaux

(im not picking on you specifically just have two things in it i want to talk about)

2nd bold:
I'm definatly not at the same point in raiding as some of you but I really think haste is being underrated. When I started to raid naxx25, my heroic gear had me at about 400 haste and 1800 sp 300 while casting mp5 18%ish crit with priest buffs, after I geared from naxx25 i had(have for the most part) 2300sp 200haste 500 mp5 while casting and 20%crit. The numbers weren't as high in pre naxx25 but I could fill bars counting on quick consistant numbers with minor mana issues and very little over healing. Now, my casting time is basically "stock", often finding my self being .2 seconds too slow to save someone; but my numbers are also much higher so it takes one Gheal to get someone at 35%hp to 80% instead of having to use a few heals. With that in mind, doesnt the high haste lower heal become more useful than the slow moving high heal? The ability to go "OH SHIT *heal* save.. whew" > "too bad that 20k heal came a split second too late but its a high number"? Me and a fellow preist on the server have been testing on all raid shapes and sizes haste's usefulness (im geared to start ulduar before 3.2 came out hes in full, ulduar 25gear mostly BiS's) We find that stacking stats in order of mp5,haste,sp, crit, int, spirit.. etc etc was more useful than the popular sp, crit, int, mp5, haste etc etc model. lasting longer and being able to get out heals quicker was what we fell in love with. I've seen people say it here "over healing 20%+" thats 20%+ wasted healing, seriously over healing is just wasting mana you dont need anymore numbers if your grumbling about over healing that much, go add some speed and longevity and learn to react faster. cutting back on sp for mp5/haste reduces over healing and gives people with quick reaction times to be able to quickly react for longer stints. I've been in many a pug that the other healer is fully stacked on getting high numbers but cant heal anybody fast enough to keep them alive. My friend in the better gear haste mp5,haste as his top two stacks and he can heal a "over extended"(slow dps) no problem with 10%ish over healed. Which brings me to the question i had about the 1st bold the GCD cap? seems like my friend has no issue with it, I didnt know there was one since he seems to get a penance, renew and gheal in 1.6seconds which would be ALL GCD?. and when i go as Disc i have no issue PW:S to the whole 10man or 16 of the 25man in no more than 2 seconds when i roll back some of my gear to higher haste peices. Dont have as much extensive testing in 3.2 but seems like mp5 is more important than ever, i had to stop and drink in a heroic and was confused lol.
I could definatly see where a balance of the two types of healers would actualy become very useful. lets jsut say its a 10 man and one healer is stacked mp5 haste other sp crit.(i know this doesnt really matter in a 10man this idea would make more sense ina 25man setting but for simplicity sake..) but the haste guy can easily keep the tank alive and make sure no body "oh shit monent /dies" then the other guy tops everyone off the entire raid with a CoH and some flash heals, he can heal more obviously but hed dump out his mana with out slightly pausing in between casts. Also to my understanding healing in ulduar and the new colisiuem stuff you dont have time to wait for a 1.3 second Gheal and PoH is basically obsolete now hardly ever crits and takes too long, its possible to get the same amout of healing for less mana and less casting time with a CoH

 

Starfire

I am sure others have reported you, I haven't. But for the love of god, learn to use paragraphs.

Heroism is the only known way to lower the GCD below 1 second. Some spells/abilities are off the GCD, granted none of those you listed.

You can cast your spells faster than the GCD, however you cannot chain them faster. For example, you could theorethically under some mythical effect/buff cast a Flash Heal in .1 seconds, but the game will not let you begin casting your second Flash Heal until after 1 second has passed.

If you're that worried about heal sniping, start using PWS more often and make sure you're using the PWS glyph. Now, once you start using PWS haste and crit become near useless, since they don't affect the spell. Disc priests excel at using PWS, it's our strength.

Sure we have Improved Flash Heal, but if you want to raid heal so badly with whack-a-mole Flash Heal, I'd suggest you go Holy, pick up all the talents in the world to give you the beefy Flash Heals, Serendipity and CoH. Sure Discipline's Flash Heal costs less mana, but Holy improves the throughput of the Flash Heal and has Improved Holy Concentration to increase mana regeneration. Not to mention you get Surge of Light for instant cast Flash Heals.

Prayer of Healing is NEVER obsolete. Even in the darkest days of 2.3 and 2.4, Prayer of Healing always had its uses compared to Circle of Healing.

Deconstructor XT for example, when Tantrum is casting, all 5 people are going to take damage. Casting Flash Heal would be inefficient since you would have to cast 5 Flash Heals taking at least 5 seconds (but realistically, lets say 8 seconds) or you could cast Prayer of Healing taking 1.6-2 seconds. Which do you cast? The latter of course, and it is cheaper mana-wise as well.

As another example you can use Prayer of Healing pre-emptively if you know damage is incoming -- and since it's such a joke fight I am sure I am not breaking rules here >.> -- the first boss in Crusader's Coliseum does a Stomp with a cast time. You can cast Prayer of Healing on the melee group while the boss is casting Stomp.

(Also, why the hell did you decide to talk about the second point first and then the first point second?)

 

htordeux

calcul regen mana patch 3.2

Le boudoir d'Erudith - Regenv2

shows that intell > spirit in raid 25 conditions

 

Jackalhealer

Why do discipline priests keep specing in Divine Fury? I understand it with an offensive PvP build, but Greater Heal is the only benefit from 5 talent points. Relocating these 5 points to 2/2 Healing focus and 3/5 Spell Warding would benefit the average active raider much more during raids where there is raid aoe damage in the sense of survivability and ability to complete casts with less knock back (potentially saving a raid). I noticed your tank healing rotation didn't even include Flash Heal, even though your suggested spec includes 3/3 in Improved Flash Heal. I don't know the math well enough to avoid a mathtastic smack down, but it's my personal belief that spamming Flash Heal when PW:S, Penance, and PoM are all on CD is by far the best option.

 

Elimbras

Flash heal is really useful for tank-healing, I think that nearly no-one is presently contesting it.
The use of great heal is more discussed : read the last few pages of this thread.
The main reason to use divine furry specced great heal is that it is more hps than flash heal (about 20% more).
The main reason not to use it is that it's less hpm than improved and glyphed flash heal, and takes a longer time to cast.
I personnally like to use it in several "not frequent" situation, precisely for its slow hitting high hpm nature.

This is especially true because the other options are not really useful for me currently : we have fade for adds aggro, there is not a lot of fights with aoe pushbacks, and I haven't really strated hard modes, so I don't really need Spell Warding.

Finally, one advantage of it is when I want to dps, either for daylies, or to help dps in special raid fights (XT heart mode, Razzorscale landing in P1, etc.), or in heroics when I have nothing else to do. It's not needed, but it is a little bit more fun for me.

 

tedv

That text is simply out of date. I'm pretty sure nearly all high end raiding priests now take 5/5 Spell Warding and 0/5 Divine Fury. If you take Divine Fury, there are a few situations where Greater Heal is slightly better than Flash Heal, but it's just not worth the points. These situations come up perhaps once every two or three fights. In contrast, -10% spell damage taken matters in every fight in the zone.

 

RootBreaker

While I agree that letting GoPW:S proc Divine Aegis is not a huge boost, the glyph itself was my number one heal on our last Freya 3 and Algalon 25 kills at 35% and 52% respectively. Shield spamming is nice on those fights because the consistent raid damage from ground tremor and black hole explosion ensures that each shield will get fully absorbed (and often gives you a multi-proc of rapture). It's especially good because it helps prevent lethal combinations like black hole explosion -> arcane barrage and ground tremor -> lightning lash.

 

Ellyh

It should also be mentioned that in bad latency situations GH gains appreciable HPS over flash heal because of how latency interacts with lots of short casts so if as has previously been calculated the numbers are close to start with then GH ends up being greater by a moderate amount once the latency has been factored in. Using quartz and with only moderate haste it's routine for 1/2 my quartz cast bar to be the red latency zone because I raid from NZ and have ~500 latency unavoidably. I could spam my cast key but this is bad for both the keyboard and my health. Divine fury also helps if you want to assist on dps at any point.