If holy is not an effective tank healer, what am I supposed to do if my dual spec isn't discipline(it's shadow)? Isn't it a little ridiculous to need both a holy and a discipline spec to heal through ulduar?

Holy and Disc are separate roles. It is not required to have one priest be both specs to successfully heal in Ulduar. As long as you have a balanced raid composition set up to cover both raid healing and single target healing, you should be able to fill a single healing role. I'm primarily discipline with a secondary shadow spec while most of our other priests are either primarily holy or shadow. We've been short on paladins and other tank healers so there is always a niche for me to fill. If you want to keep your second spec as shadow, you'll have to decide which healing role you want or what role your guild needs you to fill. The three priest talent trees have finally been separated into three distinct roles, so with dual spec you'll have to eliminate one for regular raiding.

The next best spec for Priests?

The World of Warcraft Armory

I'm more or less curious as to what others think, or feel about this, as this person has told me many times that this spec was taken from here on EJ and talked about many times over on these forums.

I'm hoping some more intelligent Priests would give their thought on the terrible spec and use of gearing for max Spirit.

A holy priest without a Guardian Spirit is a gimp holy priest. Glyphed Guardian Spirit is a very wonderful spell, a spell that no holy priest should go without. It's a spell that actually saves lives, and with glyph you are able to spam it at whim.

Other points are more a matter of taste, but I would love to hear the justification for not taking inner focus, spellwarding, surge of light or body & soul. I rate these talents very highly and find it strange someone would put 2/3 points (instead of 1/3 or 3/3) in empowered renew and 0 points in SoL.

There are different opinions going around on what talents to take, but Guardian Spirit is almost a must. You can't call yourself holy and not take GS. Not taking GS is...well, if I finished that sentence I would most likely get banned

I don't take Empowered Healing at all, because I benefit more from taking Blessed Resilence.

Yesterday on Freya 3-elder kill I did 14,46% of my total healing with Flash Heal (I didn't cast greater heal at all). 387 452 healing done by flash of my total of 2,679,284. Binding heal did 100 609, so combined with Flash it totals up to 488 061, which is 18,2% of my total healing done.

I'm using WWS numbers so those don't include overheals, but the overheal% was roughly the same on all so I'll ignore overhealing. I use Freya as an example, because for me it's hardest fight in Ulduar, healing-power wise (only fight I haven't done or seen is Algalon).

If I switched the 3 points from blessed resilence to empowered healing, I would lose 3% of my total healing and I would gain +12% to Flash/Binding Coefficiencies. -3% total healing would lead to 2 679 284*0,97 = 2 598 905 points total.

Formula for flash healing done would be -->
(2040 + (0,12+1.5/3.5)*2800*1,88)*1.1 = (2040 + 2888)*1,1 = 5420 instead of
(2040 + (1.5/3.5)*2800*1,88)*1.1 = (2040 + 2256)*1,1 = 4725
5420/4725 = 1,14708 = 14,7% increase in healing done by Flash Heal.

Formula for Binding heal is same as flash, but with an additional *1,1 & *2 in the end
(2230 + (0,12+1.5/3.5)*2800*1,88)*1.1*1,1*2 = (2230 + 2888)*1,1*1,1*2 = 12 384 instead of
(2230 + (1.5/3.5)*2800*1,88)*1.1*1,1*2 = (2230 + 2256)*1,1*1,1*2 = 10 852
12 384/10 852 = 1,1411 = 14,1% increase in healing done by Binding Heal

So if Binding Heal is 3,755% of total healing done it would do 2 598 905*0,3755 = 97591 healing done. 97591*1,1411 = 111 360 --> 13 769 increase in healing done by this spell

Flash was 14,46% of total healing done, so 2 598 905*0,1446 = 373 202. 373 202*1,147 = 428 063 --> 54 861 increase in healing done.

2 598 905 + 13 769 + 54 861 = 2 667 505 healing done after losing 3% overall healing and gaining 12% coefficiency to Flash & Binding Heals. That is LESS than my original healing done (hopefully my math didn't go wrong anywhere). So in other words, I'm better off with taking blessed resilence, than empowered healing.

The non-math version: the less you use Flash/Binding/Gheal, the less you benefit from empowered healing. I almost never use greater heal, if I must tank heal I'll use my disc spec. Flash and binding heal are both spells that are not meant to be spammed: spamming them is a bad sign, especially when you are raid healing. There are better tools for healing masses of people. 3% from blessed resilence improves ALL of your healing spells, and since I use other spells than flash/binding a lot when raid healing, it's better to have ALL of your spells improved than only 1-2 spells that you almost never use anyway. Around 70% of my flash heals cast that fight was Surge of Light procs.

My Ulduar25 raid composition makes it easy for me to stay holy. My Ulduar10 raid is a different story. With a shaman and druid as the other healers, I wind up being strictly the MT healer is some fights, and more frequently in recent times as we do more hard modes. Certain fights (Ignis if we don't skip him, Kologarn) are still tailor-made for holy, but I'm much more useful as disc in certain fights. Not to mention benefits such as a faster Mass Dispel in Hodir hard mode.

Why can't your shaman MT heal? They're pretty good at it if said shaman has a high crit set.

She does MT heal quite a bit, and is very good at it. But we like to mix things up, and I'll go Disc in situations such as healing the Fusion Punch tank in heroic Iron Council, where my dispel comes in handy, too.

"Empowered Healing isn't a bad talent. It's a very good talent, BUT it depends on the fight. It really depends on your situation. If you are a Priest that does Ulduar-10 often and you're forced to tank-heal or help-tank heal periodically, take Empowered Healing. (For example, when 2-healing Steelbreaker-last or Thorim-hard, I would expect the Holy Priest to throw a proportionaly large amount of tank heals since there isn't much raid damage going on)."

Why wouldn't you just dual spec to disc for those fights where you will be primarily or heavily tank healing? Empowered healing isn't a bad talent, but it gets very watered down for most holy priests. It is a marginal increase on spells that see a low level of usage. The other talents that are commonly picked up in place of empowered healing (like blessed resilience) are also marginal increases, but on spells that see heavy usage.
So on fights where empowered healing would be worth it, I find it much more advantageous to hit the dual spec button and go disc.

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

I'm going out of my way to state the obvious, but Empowered Renew is worth getting if you use Renew with any frequency at all. I use it a lot, so I gain a huge bonus from it, more so than any other talent (including Blessed Resilience). I've had this holy spec now since two weeks into the Ulduar patch and I've stuck with it for 25-mans. On some fights, Renew + Empowered Renew can be upwards of 40% of my effective healing, for the same reason Druid rejuv spam is effective and high HPS on many fights.

I posted a while back my successes with Renew with a Recount picture to prove it, but no one ever really said anything at the time. Renew is still a great spell if there was any question, but it's most definitely a question of style more than it is effectiveness (though the coverage is what I'm more interested in). Also, CoH + PoM + Renew/ER is good for 5000+ HPS in the first phase and partly into the second of Iron Council hard mode, until you need to start using PoH as the damage ramps up.

I'm still exclusively Discipline in 10-mans.

But anyway, I'd be thrilled to talk to anyone who is having questions/doubts about using HoT-centric healing solutions (I don't use them on every fight).

I've read through this whole thread now and I'm trying to figure out what seems to be a discrepancy. I have seen it mentioned multiple times (though I can't find most of them now) that MP5 is a pretty useless item stat for holy priests. However, whenever someone posts stat weightings it seems like MP5 is always at the top. What am I missing? I know there must be a reason for this, can someone please explain it to me? Thanks a bunch.


From BobTurkey's page that he linked: