I'm mostly trying to avoid this whole discussion, but just as a mathematical point, R(h,t) probably would not drop off immediately as the formula you have implies. A Gaussian-like function might work well, though. For example:



Squaring the exponent keeps the function flat for a bit before it takes a dive and drops off to zero, which should model "the probability that the heal will land soon enough to matter" reasonably well. The "C" would quantify how much time you have, i.e. it should be low if you have very little time and high when you have plenty of time.

Just some food for thought...

XI. e) Glyphs

<insert discussion of glyphs here>

When you do get to <insert> discussion, one thing worth mentioning is to treat glyphs as consumables, I.E. carry spares and expect to replace them.
Most of us probably started with one favoured set but the falling prices, and our nice range of glyphable fight specific spells they have become a nice tweak for holy priest efficiency.

My guild isnt up to Mimiron hard modes yet, Holy Nova glyph sounds good there. But unlike some have suggested i prefer it unglyphed in Thorim arena, the healing needs aren't too extreme and the aggro free unglyphed damage is excellent, you can play a full dpser's part in that phase just as a by product of the constant aggro free nova healing

Could anyone explain to me why [Leash of Heedless Magic] is a better choice over [Cord of the White Dawn]?

Probably not the best thread for this question, but hey.

Short answer - it's not necesarily better. While they both have the same iLvl and the Leash has less stamina (hinting towards a better budget allocated on "useful" stats), in reality, you have two sockets (and a 7sp bonus) to cover up for 14 rating and 22 sp. In practice, it comes down to how you separately value Crit and Haste.

About Thorim - the tooltip on Deafening Thunder reads

"Inflicts 4625 to 5375 Nature damage to enemies standing in close proximity to a Stormhammer strike, increasing spell casting times by 75% for 8 sec. 50000 yd range, Instant"

I'm a PW:S spammer myself, and I'm quite sure there's absolutely no increase in GCD time.

Brings up the point of whether or not it's worthwhile to put "hard mode" specs in the OP, or at least mention the talents you'd want to take for those attempts/kills. Spell Warding and Desperate Prayer just seem like no-brainers for hard modes (especially when Divine Fury just isn't all that appealing anymore). I can only assume Constantius has a hard mode spec.

Ironically I've been thinking about the three topics of debate for the past few weeks. These topics are Renew, Holy Nova, and Serendipity.

Renew:

Everyone is in agreement that Renew is a great heal if it doesn't overheal. The real question is how often will a renewed player get topped off, wasting the remainder of the renew. And the answer is "it depends". In my experience though, the more stressful the raid healing is, the less often renew gets sniped. That means the value of renew increases as you are doing more hard modes, and that's exactly what I've experienced in Ulduar. It's almost useless in easy fights like Razorscale and Freya, but its invaluable in a situation like hard mode Mimiron or Thorim. For example, in our hard mode Mimiron 10 kill, Renew was just under 30% of my effective healing. (Prayer of Mending was first with 36%.) There's the argument that perhaps I was just using the wrong heal, but it very much seemed like the right choice given the nature of damage pulses in the fight.

The fact that renew is an instant cast is also meaningful. Lots of Ulduar fights require movement, especially hard modes. You can't just stop healing. Once you've refreshed your mending and cast a circle of healing, it's nice to have other useful spells to cast. So I believe that the more you are working on hard modes, the more important and useful a talented Renew is. I don't see a compelling reason to spend the points in other places.

Holy Nova:

I've primarily been using this as a threatless AoE during trash sections of boss fights. It procs a surge of light 49% of the time, meaning its actually more mana efficient than just outright casting flash heal. But looking at the numbers, it provides a decent amount of healing as well. The 12 yard radius is a challenge if you want to heal the entire group, but you only need to heal three people with it before it beats single target heals on healing per second.

The question in my mind is whether its worth sacrificing a glyph for this spell, and how often positioning should be rearranged to make it work. On fights like Mimiron and Hodir hard modes it seems disgustingly good. Similar comments apply for the animus phase of Vezax. The glyph I'm most likely to cut is actually Prayer of Healing, as the Guardian Spirit glyph adds a kind of flexibility that a third AoE healing glyph cannot match. There's also the argument that as you cast more Holy Novas, you'll cast less Prayer of Healing. Holy Nova won't beat a Serendipity hasted Prayer of Healing, but it does beat an unhasted one, so it's likely you'll use the two in tandem, whereas before you'd cast two Prayers in a row.

Serendipity:

The argument to cut this talent makes sense, but I'm still uneasy about it. Hasting Greater Heals is almost completely worthless. Even when it's an option, its usually better to save the Serendipity stack in case you need a fast Prayer of Healing later. This logic makes me think Serendipity still holds its weight as a talent. It's not as simple as saying "most of the raid damage comes at well defined, predictable moments, so you should be able to precast your prayer of healing". During a hard mode Freya ground tremor, for example, you can't pre-cast the heal or you will get silenced. During Hodir, there's a big difference between standing still for 1.5 seconds and 2.5 seconds during Frozen Blows. Kologarm's Oblivion is not on a predictable timer, and so on.

There's also the argument that if you ever need to cast multiple prayers in a row, the raid healing requirements are so high that the extra haste is clearly useful. Ultimately though, the real question is what you gain by giving up Serendipity. Assuming you spend 6 points boosting renew, your options are some combination of Mental Agility, Holy Concentration, Empowered Healing, Blessed Resilience, and Healing Prayers. Basically some bad throughput talents and some average mana efficiency talents. I can see how you'd spec out of Serendipity for a number of fights, but for general purpose raiding, it seems like the flexibility it offers beats the meager offerings from the alternatives.

If you had even read the last page of the thread, you'd know that he's working on Mimiron hard mode, which requires a different kind of approach. This is the kind of post that should have been a PM to confirm before calling him out on a public forum.

My current spec is entirely built for Mimiron, ya, as Snowy said. I normally don't take 5/5 Spell Warding, and *do* take 5/5 Divine Fury. I also normally don't max out Renew talents, and *do* take B&S. If you check my spec on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Sunday, or Monday night, you'll see up to 5 different specs popping up depending on what I just completed. I have a Vezax spec, a Mimiron spec, a "normal" hard-mode Holy spec, a "normal" hard-mode Discipline spec, and a specialized Discipline spec for Freya. I don't always hit every one in a week, but I definitely tweak my Holy spec for Mimiron. I'd be stupid not to, given how much damage is flying around.

The cookie-cutter spec remains just that: cookie-cutter. You can always optimize, and that's the point of the *thread*, not the OP.

[e] For anyone curious, here's the parse from our kill on Monday, with all 3 of us using Glyph of HN. Tiaran is Discipline, and when you include his PWS absorbs, he ends up edging me out slightly in effective healing done.

Wow Web Stats

Can you please go deeper in this? I'm playing disc priest 99% of the time and would be very interested to see what specific changes you made for Freya.

Probably no divine fury, 5/5 Spell Warding.

The fight in hard mode is basically a PW:S spam while keeping PoM on cooldown and eventually an emergency Penance.

Reducing the magic damage helps a lot to survive for no cost at all in the talent tree.

If you're not casting renew, couldn't the improved renew points get shifted to Reflective shield? It won't be a ton of extra damage, but at least it would be marginally useful. I suppose at this point it's just nitpicking though.