Angelicai

I am gemmed for haste in all yellow sockets (sp+haste). No, we don't run with 1 healer normally, unless you mean one tank healer, then yes. We have about 5 different healers that rotate in depending on who is available that night. I of course bounce PoM off the tank(s) and keep them renewed but I focus more on the raid healing normally.

I do personally run 25-mans (with a different guild) and I strictly raid heal with them.

 

Thuro

When I'm holy I spam tanks when there's nothing to do in the raid and I do it with flash heals only and to be quite honest, if i put gheals into that rotation, I would go oom. It's not the inability TO heal cuz ill out hps a disc priest on single target heals not even a problem it's the fact that priests are very much dependent on large amounts of aoe heals to keep holy concentration up, the fact that disc has a number of mana reduction talents and better regeneration mechanics than we do as holy just makes them BETTER for going *THAT GUY, HIM, HE WILL NOT DIE*

So yes, and the emo *i hate druids and paladins* in me that make priests looks like utter jokes say even a holy priest might be better relegated to the tank spam versus raid healing, but on paper, that is not where we belong.

And in practice, only situation in a 10 man scene that would allow for a holy priest tank spammer is that there is a fight with large magical damage burst on the tank then the rest of the raid takes consistent damage. And even then your counter part would be a holydin or a resto druid.

Only time I've tried it as holy and it made good sense to do so is on a algalon two healer burn with a resto druid. That's it =(.

 

Gnizz

Although I do think that Holy tank healing isn't even comparable to the stability of a Disc tank healer, I´d say that Resto Druids have it even worse. Playing one as a twink, I seem to only be able to support on the tank(s) due to the nature of most fights (high burst damage). As a Holy Priest, I'd at least be able to actually keep a tank topped for a limited period of time.

 

AbotnamedEhh

Gnizz is right Holy tank healing is really not even close that of Disc.

BUT it is do able if you have the right gear, with my priest before i faction transfered about 3 weeks after 3.2 came out i ended up 1 healing XT hard mode since the resto shammy i was healing with some how managed to get him self killed.

I had actually healed for my old guild Defaint as a holy tank healer, now before you go calling me stupid just listen.

Holy tank healing works under a few certain things 1. time your heals right... so a minimum of 5% over heals if you can time your heals rigth and not waste mana at all holly is very viable. 2. stack a ton of int and i mean a ton just 20 int gems across the board once i got the talisman of resurgenance from triumph badges i was almost at 30k mana with kings and with arcane int i was pushing 31k. 3. regen though im not sure how my regen was so high at the time but in combat i was sitting around 500 mp5 while casting and about 900 something out of combat.

With good timing and a high regen and deep mana pool holy healing tanks is actually very easy i'd set a renew on the tank and throw flash heals when needed, now granted if it was a harder end fight i would be popping shadow fiend a mana pot and hyme of hope, same for the longer fights. Also i had 2 points into (surge of light) while i know this seems like a waste the way i was able to keep every one up was by CoH the tank (we had about 3 melee) and it would proc if not every time i CoH'd th en 90% of the time these free flash heals were what i would throw to the tank so here is my rotation pre pull i'd PoM the tank and throw a renew on him. in fight its CoH tank (surge of light proc) put renew on as it wears off PoM the tank every time its off of CD and put the proc'd flash heals on tank.

Now i've found holy tank healing is just about nil in ToC at least for the gear i have at the moment but every time i go back to Uld i bring out the old holy spec.

And plus its so much fun when some one asks you what you do when they look at your spec and you get to respond "tank healer =]"

 

SecretJ

To be honest with all the things i have read here and the constant squabble and nonstop banter of this vs this, I have to make the argument that there is no problem that an extremely high amount of intellect cannot solve. My easiest and most rational conversion of all arguments makes this very easy for me to understand.

Need heals -> Need Mana

I really don't understand the point of anything else, with a priest you have so many buttons that if you can POH spam for eight minutes you're bound to make it through sooner or later.

 

siegfried

When you gem only intellect, you lose a lot of throughput. Yeah you can spam all you want and not worry about mana, or you could use your mana cooldowns more wisely and time your heals to have the maximum effect. On the other hand having a high amount of haste is a beautiful thing; it allows me to get my gheals under 2 seconds, it allows me to use more abilities in a set amount of time, and I don't run oom. Why would I use regen stats when I have so many outs in terms of mana? Shadowfiend, Hymn of Hope and mana pots give you more than enough mana depending on the skill level of your guild.

 

Tainter

It may be more of a philosophical point, but ideally a healer is about to run out of mana at the end of a given fight. If healers have a lot of mana left after fights then that's waste. The ultimate goal should be to have as much mana as necessary, but not more, taking regen cooldowns and breaks in encounters into consideration. All other free stat budget can then be spent on output. Having more output available at a given critical phase directly reduces the chance of deaths and therefore failing.

Unfortunately in reality most healers can't cut their mana pools very close to the minimum it needs to be because there are many eventualities it has to cover. For example I could die and get combat ressed, another healer could die, the raid could take more damage than normally due to a mistake or some dps could die and increase the encounter length to name just a few possibilities. How likely those incidents are is directly related to how good the raid is. Those are not likely to be big issues in a top raiding guild. But for a mediocre raid these factors will have a substantial impact. Thus healers of such raids are required to have larger safety margins on their mana pools at the cost of throughput.

At the end of a progress raid I ask myself if I had too little or too much mana and depending on my assessement I make some small changes. I'd recommend against changing regen stats one way or another based on farm content performance or based on an opinion about how much mana should be required.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

SecretJ

tl;dr couldn't care less about any argument posted after my original post for the following reason.

You end a fight with mana, you're doing it wrong, blah blah blah.

You don't get it, More int, means more spells, which means more POH for all encounters, or greater heals on tanks to get through them as well. Doesn't matter, int always takes the cake. Period.

"We end fights with mana therefore it is wasted." cast more. true story bro. EJ the only source where any and every nerd will fight a moot point to the absolute bitter end.

Protip, paladins had this same fight about a year ago, guess what every paladin decided to start gemming.

Intellect.

 

Sjonkel

You can't compare paladins to priests. A reason for paladins gemming int, is to minimize the use of Divine Plea. Divine Plea reduces healing done by 50%, so the less you have to use it, the more throughput you get. Priests have no such ability.

As for gemming int, my mainspec is disc, so I use spellpower gems exclusively. I'm only holy for Twins, and for that fight, I spam constantly. I never have a second I'm not casting. I pour out renews, CoH, PoM and PoH/instant flash heal when needed. Even with a disc gear, no intellect gems and a 25.6k mana pool, I still don't go oom if I use fiend and have a resto shaman in my group. Without the shaman it's a bit closer, and I might have to pot. Obviously if the Twins encounter was 8 rather than 5 minutes, things would have been different. However, for a priest, there are no fights in which you have to spam all the time except Twins in ToC. So what's the point of all that mana? You should gear for the current tier. If Icecrown has longer fights where you need to spam a lot, I'll be the first to regen intellect. But right now, I really don't see the point with those huge mana pools.

 

Dravorak

The major difference here is that Paladins get spell power from Intellect.
We don't.
That is a major difference in terms of output.

 

Hegen

Well, "Period" is not a convincing argument at all.

What you say is based on two assumptions, both of which I consider false:

#1: More overall healing is always important.

It's not. Making sure nobody dies is. The discipline priest's primary role is damage prevention. The holy priest's primary role is to go fully ballistic when AoE damage hits. Everything else a priest can do (which is a lot) is just the icing on the cake.

Excelling at your primary role is what makes or breaks a difficult fight - not squeezing out more effective healing during a lull phase. Example: Mimiron P2. You are not limited by mana there - you are only limited by global cooldowns, so what wins is not int, but throughput. This means spellpower, haste, and crit so that you can provide more healing in the same time.

Nobody is interested in more effective healing on the priests side by spamming PoH in lull phases, where a shaman's chain heal or a few flashs would nicely do the job.

#2: You can actually cast more if you have more mana.

Not always, no. As an example, on our Freya+3 firstkill (2-healing 10 man with pure 10 man group), my WoL record showed 100% activity on my side, over the duration of roughly 9 minutes.

If you still believe in your thesis, let's have a few examples of Ulduar Hard or ToC heroic fights where you can illustrate how exactly you win the fight by stacking int instead of throughput.

"Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls." - Nidaba

 

pocketmage

For someone so pro Int, why do you gem for pure SP? And use a Spi trinket over the the Int one off the badge vendor?

 

Seraphone

At TOC gear levels you simply do not need more intellect than what you should get from your base gear stats. Especially in TOC where fights are short there is no need at all to be still gemming intellect. So long as you're timing your fiend/hymn well you should be finishing fights with plenty mana to spare.

 

Gnizz

When I first stepped into ToC25 HM, I gemmed Intellect or Int/Sp exclusively, for the exact same reasons SecretJ stated.
But I started realizing that I finish all the fights with more than half a mana bar left. And at that time, we were still equipped with Ulduar Gear.
So heres my two cents.
Of course, from a raw total healing amount, including overheal, Intellect can compete. You are able to spam the biggest heals all the time.
But it isn't your job to top the meters. It's saving people. So why should you gear for something that isn't necessary.
As an extreme example, picture Twin Valkyrs HM. There is a group, completely covered with Druid HoTs, 90-95% HP.
Would you waste a PoH on them?
No.
If you spam PoH exclusively, gemming Int is viable for that fight. But, you save people faster healing intelligently with PoH, CoH, ProM and Renew/Flashes.
A PoH on a group may not save the one person eating the ball, but a quick, huge Flash Heal might.
And to be honest, with the Gear that is out there right now, you don't even need to gem Intellect for pure PoH spam, the Solace of the Fallen covers it all.
And more Int won't allow you to cast more Spells just because you could cast them. You are limited by cast times/GCDs.
Your goal is to get the most out of this game mechanics and their limitations.

I always ask myself the following:
1. Do I have enough mana to use every GCD, taking everything into consideration? (Hymn, Mana Pot, Fiend...)
If not, go for Intellect/Manareg
2. Are my heals big enough for the damage a Boss puts out?
If not, get more Spellpower
3. Do I have enough "supporting" stats for my spec? (Haste for Holy and Crit for Discipline)
If not, gem for it.

We don't even need to talk about Disc, where Mana isn't a problem at all. I finish every fight in ToC25 HM with more than 50% Mana, regardless of what I am doing. As said before, the base intellect easily puts you above 30k mana. So gemming pure throughput, especially pure Spellpower, is always viable. The massive amount of Absorb a Disc provides benefits from Spellpower, regardless of overheal.

 

Tainter

You have two Disc specs and you have four intellect gems. That's inconsistent with your statement that Disc doesn't need any extra mana. Furthermore a full set of ilevel 245 gear is not sufficient to hit 30k mana raid buffed without gemming Int.

It is impossible to "spam PoH exclusively" no matter how many intellect gems you use. You'll be burning mana at a rate of somewhere around 5000 MP/5.

Edit: Meant to say 30k mana, rather than spell power.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

• constantius

1. 30k spellpower is obviously a typo, I assume you meant 3k.
2. You can *trivially* hit 3k spellpower in ilvl 245 gear without gemming for it at all. I run over 3,400 spellpower in my disc spec raid-buffed. The total gem spellpower is 268. I'm not even in full 245 gear, and I've managed to do it, so anyone can. Just get two spellpower-based trinkets, use a MH+OH, and have ilvl 245 gear across the board, and you will easily break 3k spellpower raid buffed.

(in case you look at Armory: 2684 + 125 + 174 + ~ 400 (Demonic Pact) = 3383. If you use ToW only, 3263, which is ~ 3000 minus the gems. With DP, it's >> 3000.)

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

 

Kashir

Err, I would have assumed that the typo was meant to be "30k mana" instead of "30k spell power".

In which case he's right; you're not going to hit that without heavily gemming Int or using Int trinkets.

 

Tainter

Yeah, I meant mana, rather than spell power, in response to Gnizz saying: "As said before, the base intellect easily puts you above 30k mana."

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

tedv

Sure you're not breaking 30k mana, but who cares? My discipline set doesn't socket for int at all. I have only six pieces of 258 gear (helm, chest, bracers, belt, pants, and an offhand with spell hit) and have around 28k mana raid buffed. Most importantly though:

- I'm using [Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond] over [Insightful Earthsiege Diamond]
- I don't have [Glyph of Flash Heal]
- I never even get close to running out of mana

The worst that happens sometimes is that I end up with around a third of a mana bar. So I shield someone and cast a Divine Hymn over 5 seconds. Occasionally I'll have to use Shadow Fiend right away rather than saving it for a burn phase. This is with an almost complete focus on spell power. (If you check my armory, you'll see a few sub-optimal gemming choices because my discipline set shares a lot of pieces with my holy set.)

 

Tainter

I was merely pointing out that no Priest hits 30k mana without gemming Int, contrary to someone's claim. What amount is needed, again, depends on the raid one is in. 28k+ should be enough for most intents and purposes for Disc though.

How do you find your [Revitalizing Skyflare Diamond]? Do you have any logs in which you use it? I'd be curious to have a look through and see how much healing you get from it over the course of a fight. I assume that this gem causes Aegis to be larger. Can anyone confirm that?

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

Gnizz

30k mana raidbuffed, obviously.

 

StormyParis

Looking at your gear, I notice
1- you're all much better geared than me :-p
2- a lot of you seem to use red (+23 spell) and yellow (+20 int) gems. Orange gems give you +12 spell and 10 Int, which is a (very slight) gain, and above all less of a pain to rebalance every time you get new gear.
3- Your discussion does not seem to take into account which trinkets you're using. I find those have a disproportionate impact on how things work out. Some of you use the Spark of Hope

Regarding the Mana vs Spell Power debate, I think there is no definite answer:
- Int is clearly only a Regen stat for us: the extra crit is not a big factor, and Int doesn't bring any Spell Power, unlike Pallys. Spirit and MP5 are so marginalized that it doesn't make sense to gem/gear for them anyway, except for very specific fights (Champions, when on Mass Dispel duty). So Int is in fact THE only regen stat.
- As far as Throughput is concerned, I'm a bit hamstrung by being really dual-specced Disc and Holy, so I've got to try and get stats that are useful for both specs. That rules out Haste, which rapidly becomes useless for Disc and is useful in Holy mostly for healing tanks, which I don't do as Holy since I can switch to Disc. Spirit is also out as it does nothing for Disc. That leaves Crit and Spell Power. I find Crit reaches 30-35% without my doing anything about it, and that is enough... So my Throughput stat is Spell Power.

The balance between Throughput stats and Regen stats depends on a lot of things, and evolves as you go from progression mode to farm:
1- on progression, as Disc, I'll probably be spamming heals on the Tanks, which requires Throughput. As the encounter becomes easier, I'll probably start Shielding the raid, which eats up mana, so requires Regen.
2- if my fellow healers are having a hard time, I'll help, either on the tanks as Disc or on the raid as Holy. If things are a bit smoother, I'll go Disc and Shield, to try and prevent glitches. The former requires Throughput, the latter, Regen.

That said, I find Mana is not a problem except when chain-Dispelling on Champions.

 

Dravorak

Honestly, the spell power vs regen really comes down to person preference and play style.
Personally, I like to get socket bonuses, I regard them as free stats. Which is why I gem like I do.
The only times I have mana Issues right now are in 10 mans hard modes without a replenishment.
Even then, all you have to do is plan out when to utilize your shadowfiend and hymn.
I really hope that ICC makes this argument relevant again, because it is certainly an interesting point/counter point.
But until then, I believe it is all about personal preference and play style.

 

Loqua

I fail to recall holy concentration every proc'ing off of an actual aoe heal. Last I checked, it was (Emp) Renew, Flash, Binding, or Gheal crits.

The difference in mana efficiency comes from the nature of tank healing versus the nature of raid healing as a holy priest and from the mana cost of gheal compared to most other spells we have. Tank healing is all about high output constantly, Raid healing as a holy priest is all about lulls and bursts. There'll be times (read: door strat H.25 Valks opposite color vortex) where you'll be outputting insane amounts followed by periods of maitenance healing.

On the argument about int vs. sp:

There's no answer, really. Its about what you feel is most important for you. That's the beauty of the priest, so many different ways to play.

However, in my opinion, it is best to gear for regen until you will not oom assuming something goes wrong in a hard mode encounter. I would rather be prepared for the worst and have extra mana at the end when everything goes perfect, than be expecting best performance and having oom happen and cause a wipe.

Once you have enough regen to cover such a scenario, best to start gearing for more throughput.

 

rokareot

I want to chime in and say, that I agree more so that there is less need for as much gemming intel as before ToC it seems etc.., I do like the mana regen and I won't lie, I have now become spoiled with it.

Being raid buffed over 40k mana is somewhat strong.

But yes, my gear is decent enough to change out some gems as much as I hate to do it.

(Nothing wrong with being a mana whore to a extent)