The PoM bonus is not worth the stat loss. I'll upload a BiS set later this afternoon (to the OP); I've been mulling over the options since MMOCHampion datamined all of the gear.
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
I politely disagree with your assertion regarding disc priests being primarily the tank healer. Also, most disc priests are not taking 2/2 grace, instead only taking 1/2 and are not taking Power Infusion at all. There really is very little point to power infusion compared to going further down the holy tree.
My experience so far as a disc priest in 10 and 25man Ulduar has been that I am more a support healer. When there is a resto shaman or holy pally, they are much better suited as primary tank healers. Shaman are especially beneficial in this role when the melee will also be taking aoe damage. Then I usually maintain PoM, PW:S and penance on the tank while shielding/flash healing(only rarely) the raid in between Penance CDs. Our healing team may be a little different from most where we generally have 2 resto shaman, 2 holy paladins, 2 priests (disc and holy) and 1 resto druid who is dual specc boomkin and will go boomkin on the fights where we need more dps and fewer healers.
With the massive amounts of raid damage experienced on almost every boss in Ulduar, my shield support on the raid between Penance CDs really puts me in a more unique position as a dmg mitigator than as a "tank" or "raid" healer. That doesn't mean I'm not capable of being a primary tank healer, but it isn't the best use of a disc priests' talents imho.
I agree to some extent Bloodsiren. I think a discipline priest is the greatest asset to his team by saving close calls in conjunction with applying constant inspiration on the tank(s) and mitigating predictable damage. It's very hard to play it to the max, it's very hard to prove your worth with numbers, but you'll have a warm feeling in the gut when you're saving people.
Fights like hard mode Freya where big sporadic raid damage is complemented with huge earthquake bursts, the damage prevention shields give coupled with sniping people from 40% -> 100% with penance and on top of that having a hasted PoH is something no one else can do. You might be very low on the healing meters, but you know you'd have 1-2 deaths every earthquake without you.
Also constant, 100% reliable inspiration on the correct targets is very valuable.
The PoM bonus is not worth the stat loss. I'll upload a BiS set later this afternoon (to the OP); I've been mulling over the options since MMOCHampion datamined all of the gear.
Your gear comes with big SP anyway. The only decisions to boost it are with gems and food+elexier/flask (and maybe a trinket or two). Since the SP allready present on the gear is something between 2.5k and 3.5k the difference you can make is very small. That will be little more than the random-margin for the spell-sizes anyway. So maybe you would not feel them at all. (Sorry as I'm not a nativ speaker I don't know the correct word for the range between the smalles possible outcome of a spell and the highest non-crit outcome of a spell.) Anyway your SP will be boosted by your Spirit in a comparable size anyway.
Haste is the only stat that can make you faster and that sometimes will safe lifes simply because someone got the heal before the next hit. Some changes in haste may make a difference (but chances are low). Anyway since not every piece we get will have haste and you maybe will need some spirit-parts anyway to uphold the faster casts evry decision for a haste-piece makes a difference. Most times you CAN feel it when you got another haste-piece (or eat food or something).
This is another version of "stat A has a small effect so it's meaningless while stat B has a small effect, but it's meaningful". This isn't math; it's opinion. I think the problem we're having is that the marginal stat upgrades on each piece of loot is so small that it's hard to tell if things are even improving, much less if that loot is the "best" improvement.
We need to stop considering stat variations on the order of 1 or 10 stat points and start analyzing numbers in the +100 to +300 range. For each of Spirit, Crit, and Haste, it's possible to build a set that totally ignores or focuses on those particular stats, with a total stat swing in the 300+ range.
The fact is that you won't notice a change even if you gain 50 points of a given stat. And yet clearly all spirit, crit, haste, int, and spell power are useful. The real question is whether you want 300 spirit, crit, haste, and so on. I don't buy the argument that "you should just balance all of them" either. It's clear that there are feedback loops, but it's unlikely that your particular stat balance happens to be at that exact optimum. Remember that if you plot your the five stats holy priests care about, your current gear setup is represented by a point in a five-dimensional space. The set of points where all stats are perfectly balanced form a one dimensional line embedded in this space. The odds are very, very low that your current gear set lies on that line.
So when we look at gear sets, we should look at three possible sets: the low spirit set, the low haste set, and the low crit set. Then we can run some mathematical models to see how these sets actually perform relative to each other when they have 300 more or less of a stat. We need to stop basing arguments on the logic "the value is minuscule, therefore it is zero".
I'm seeing alot of people taking points out of Empowered Healing, and using these points to max out Test of Faith.
How is this working out for people? Seems quite viable...
Everyone has an opinion on it. Mine is that it's wasted on flash heal as in my experience it was just providing more overheal except during burst recovery where it added an extra 750 healing (assuming ToF). If I were MT healing as holy it'd be nice to have the extra 1.2k+ healed on gheal, but outside of that it really makes little sense. 3/3 ToF gives me the same benefit as 5/5 EH, but only when I need it.
That opened up the possibility to make the switch to Emp Renew and not that healing meters are the end all definitive proof, but I'm topping the meters even when working with multiple resto shaman and mana hasn't been an issue for me.
I've gone to ProM > CoH > SoL Flash Heal > Emp Renew as my priority (I make sure to keep serendipity up, but I tend to get a SoL proc every 10-12 seconds so it's not something I have to actually think about). The freedom of movement is also very enjoyable.
Major Burst recovery PoH (x2) + CoH + Flash (x2) + PoH (usually only 1) OR just PoH (x2) then back to normal priority.
And because I lead with Emp Renew I have 40% uptime on Holy Conc.
I just got my 2pc bonus on PoH on sunday, so I can't wait to test it out this weekend.
Q: What about removing certain GHeal talents?
Losing Empowered Healing is a tougher call, simply because it removes one of the best gear-stat-scaling talents we have. However, comparing an extra 20% of your spellpower applied to FH to a possible 12% extra *healing* balances out fairly quickly. There will be some math on this topic inserted at the end of the post; feel free to check it out, and convince yourself.
If you were to drop both of these talents, a typical spec would look like:
I've been trying to work out a spec for this concept for awhile but I'm not yet convinced on dropping Emp. Healing. I would like some clarification on your thought process leading to the 12% extra healing comment. ToF potentially increases healing by 12% but obviously not every heal is going to somebody <50%, and you picked up 2 pts Blessed Resil., so that's another 2%.
Looking at my Flash+Binding heal numbers for Ulduar25 so far it ranges from 195k(Hodir)-1m(Razorscale) with 5 fights near or over 500k total healing from the 2 spells. I know you can't simply take off 20% from those numbers because many of those heals would be only partially effective healing but there's still potential for a very large amount of effective healing to be lost by losing 20% from Emp. Healing.
I also wonder what people would think about dropping from 3/3 Emp renew to 1/3 and putting those 2 points elsewhere, like finishing Blessed Resil. and/or putting 1-2 pts on Emp. Healing instead(from your proposed spec)?
It is upsetting that blizzard still seems to itemize the shadow tier set better. For patch 3.0 the shadow set was great for disc and now for 3.1 it looks like the shadow set is better for holy/disc than the healing set.
The 4-piece bonus destroys any benefit you would get from using Shadow pieces. Don't be silly.
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
The 4-piece bonus destroys any benefit you would get from using Shadow pieces. Don't be silly.
I think that's true on a lot of fights. Some fights though, you cast shield expressly when you AREN'T going to be healing any time soon, meaning 6 seconds of extra spell power is irrelevant. Most situations where you are sprint shielding fall under this category, and that's the primary motivation for holy to cast shield these days.
At any rate, the t8 set bonus is a genuine bonus even if it requires shifting play style a bit, unlike the 4 piece t7 bonus, so you should favor your set pieces all other things being equal. The 239 ilvl gear still blows the set out of the water though. But if you have multiple pieces of that, you probably don't need the information in this thread anyway.
I agree with that: I'm likely to end up using 2 pieces of T8 gear and 3 pieces of ilvl 239 gear when all is said and done, except for a fight where I can be assured the bonus on a regular basis (something like Mimiron comes to mind; I cast a *lot* of PW:S on that fight). As Disc, I don't think I'd ever take off the 4-piece.
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
I'd like to pick back up the idea about loosing some GH talents. My guild is 11/14 and we worked a bit on General last night:
Week 1: I had renew spec, by sacrificing points in B&S and healing focus, however after seeing the fights (no PRT experience) these 2 talents are now mandatory in my holy spec.
Week 2: I dropped the renew talents and picked up B&S and Healing Focus, however by trying to limit my renew usage, I found that I feel a bit short-handed with holy spec. Between CoH and ProM cooldowns I tend to renew a whole bunch of people, however felt that I didn't had spell to cast without renew talents, except a situational FH.
Going over parses of our Ulduar GH seems to be my worst performing spell. It might be my personal play-style, however GH acounts for less then 10% of my healing and has 65%+ overhealing.
This is the spec that I plan on using tonight, I prefer to keep all points in Divine Fury, because I don't plan on completely not using GH in my rotations, but rather hoping to lower my % ovearhealing from GH.
Here is a spec my GM recommended to me for *my* style of healing. Please no complaining if this isn't for you. Basically the whole point is to sacrifice four points in holy to get Mental Agility. Mental Agility applies to PoM, CoH, Renew, PW:S, Desperate Prayer, etc. I chose to sacrifice three points in Inspiration (with permission from my tanks) and one point in Divine Fury (*if* I need to cast gheal I can speed it up with Serendipity). You can also sacrifice points in Improved Healing if you really want to keep Inspiration. Other changes I recently made to my spec was picking up Healing Focus by sacrificing two points in Emp Healing. This spec is for people who raid heal via PoM, CoH, and Renew painting. It's pretty horrible for tank healing which is why disc is my dual spec.
My guild is mostly focusing on 10 man Ulduar. I consider myself a Raid Healer, and have been tempted to drop Emp. Healing lots of times, especially since my FH's usually overheal.
The thing is that in 10mans you will more than occasionally be needed to drop a few heals on the MT/OT, especially if there are 2 healers instead of 3.
My conclusion is that in 10 mans you need to maintain the versatility that we have.
You can also sacrifice points in Improved Healing if you really want to keep Inspiration.
Yeah, I have to admit I'm not sure why you would give up Inspiration when Improved Healing is more obviously at odds with your healing style. Inspiration will always be good.
My guild is mostly focusing on 10 man Ulduar. I consider myself a Raid Healer, and have been tempted to drop Emp. Healing lots of times, especially since my FH's usually overheal.
The thing is that in 10mans you will more than occasionally be needed to drop a few heals on the MT/OT, especially if there are 2 healers instead of 3.
My conclusion is that in 10 mans you need to maintain the versatility that we have.
I've had exactly the opposite conclusion, actually. I've found the value of Renew to be inversely proportional to the total number of healers in the raid. When you only raid with 2 people, you can pretty much guarantee when a Renew will and won't be overheal. And if the Renew ticks for full duration without overheal, then it's definitely more efficient than either flash or greater heal, even with Empowered Healing.
Don't get me wrong; I still hate the improved renew talents. I just hate them less than the improved greater heal talents. In any situation where you can guarantee you are the only healer on a certain target though, renew becomes amazing. I'm specifically thinking of both healing the brain room for Yogg Saron and minor bits of raid healing on Vezax.
Originally Posted by liore
Yeah, I have to admit I'm not sure why you would give up Inspiration when Improved Healing is more obviously at odds with your healing style. Inspiration will always be good.
Also, why does that spec have 3/5 Empowered Healing and 0/3 Test of Faith? Remember, Test of Faith is almost as good as Spiritual Healing and superior to pretty much everything else in the tree.
* The effectiveness of the Priest spell Divine Hymn has been reduced.
* The Priest ability Soul Warding now only reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Shield by 15% instead of 30%. The tooltip for this spell will be updated at a later date.
* Glyph of Mass dispel will now reduce the cost of the spell by only 35%.
My divine hymn is now ticking for about 4.5k unbuffed. It was around 9k pre nerf. The changes are understandable. Divine hymn is still very nice for sticky situations, but I'm not sure it will be the raid saver it once was.
As far as the t8 4-piece set bonus goes for a holy priest, on fights with a lot of bubbling it is immensely powerful but I think for the majority of fights it will be awkward to keep up.
Last edited by Feebis : 04/29/09 at 1:17 AM.
Reason: grammar
As Disc, I don't think I'd ever take off the 4-piece.
Is this assuming that as Disc you are mainly tank healing? I rarely ever raid heal as we are decked out on shamans, druids and holy priests so I was wondering how much the set bonus is worth as I don't wanna risk losing the tank for some haste and spell power bonus. With the Soul Warding nerf I haven't yet seen how it is mana wise to spend 600+ mana for such bonus. You only really have 4 seconds of it due to GCD anyway(correct me if I am wrong)and the upkeep cost is way too high even in perfect situations.
With shadow circlet being better than the holy counterpart and with haste/crit cloth pieces(or even 239iLvL loot) being better without nerfing your regen too much I see the T8 set a much harder choice if you are not shield spamming or raid healing.
This is another version of "stat A has a small effect so it's meaningless while stat B has a small effect, but it's meaningful". This isn't math; it's opinion...
I don't buy the argument that "you should just balance all of them" either. It's clear that there are feedback loops, but it's unlikely that your particular stat balance happens to be at that exact optimum. Remember that if you plot your the five stats holy priests care about, your current gear setup is represented by a point in a five-dimensional space. The set of points where all stats are perfectly balanced form a one dimensional line embedded in this space. The odds are very, very low that your current gear set lies on that line.
Ideally, you'd like to minimize your distance from the optimum balance, even if you cannot attain that balance. Minimizing each stat in turn as you suggest might tell you which stats are worst to be short on, but I'm not sure what one could then do with that information.
However, it is possible to figure out the effects of an various stats on a particular metric, such as throughput. For instance, the throughput of a particular (crit-able and haste-able) heal is a function of spell power, crit, and haste:
which is a continuous, differentiable function of spell power, crit, and haste (assuming all three >=0). At this point it pays to know a little vector calculus, since the value of adding each stat to your raw HPS is determined by the partial derivatives of the above function with respect to spell power, crit rating, and haste rating:
For instance, with flash heal, the spell power coefficient is ~0.8057, so if we assume a crit multiplier of 0.5 and suppose we have 2500 spell power, 25% crit, and 15% haste, then we'd have:
Note that the weights are relative (i.e. not normalized), and this is only a measure of how much each stat affects your throughput for flash heal. Still, one could compare the throughput-only value of an item by multiplying each stat on the item by these kind of weights.
That is not quite the same as figuring out an optimum throughput balance for each stat, but the weights should always point you in the right direction.
Incidentally, several months ago I posted some formulas (near the end of this post) for the optimum int and spirit balance to maximize your mp5 with a given combined int and spirit. Those formulas would need to be adjusted slightly for 3.1 rules, but otherwise they should still be valid.
This is the best in slot list I came up with. It only uses gear available before killing Algalon. Assumes you always want 4pc.
<snip>
My main objections to the items you chose (which are certainly viable options) is that your overall set is a little low on haste, instead emphasizing crit (I always try to balance them), and you've picked the dps wand. Yes, it's BiS for us, but honestly, you're competing with up to 9-10 other people for that wand. Meanwhile, [Scepter of Creation] is basically "free" for healing priests; it's a definite second-grade option for dps, and if they are using [Gemmed Wand of the Nerubians], arguably not an upgrade at all.
I'd also tend to stick to a spirit+crit cloak until we're able to get the spirit+haste quest reward from the Algalon chain.
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
Using Rawr, this puts me at (raid-buffed using frost wyrm flask and a fish feast):
3530 Spellpower
540 mp5 in casting
29.81% Healing crit
21.23% Haste
I chose every piece to have spirit on it with the exception of Val'anyr and the Cloak (which has mp5 instead). This puts me quite a bit higher in terms of regen than I'm currently at in my holy spec/gear.
I know stacking spellpower isn't the most popular thing to do, but I am thinking the increase in regen from the base gear alone will be enough to alleviate many of the mana problems I may face. If that isn't the case, I can always gem my holy gear differently or use regen consumables. I could use a little bit more haste probably, and maybe a little bit more crit, but in the end, if I want to change these things, I would re-gem accordingly.
I am having a hard time settling on this configuration though. Gearing for holy is a bit more complex than Disc, which is what I've done this entire expansion. As Disc, I pick the crit/haste pieces and end up with like 40% crit, >25% haste, and 3k spellpower. Since Disc can heal forever on a single mana bar, I don't need to balance spirit.
Talking about glyphs, I decided to give a shot at making the best out of Glyph of Prayer of Healing.
During the raid I intentionally tried to avoid casting PoH on same group 2 times in row. I succeeded doing this on every fight (in log) except Mimiron, where assigment prevented me from doing that. So, over the whole raid, Glyph of PoH healed total of 455,007hp. Prayer of Healing had efficient healing of 3,289,585. That makes Glyph of PoH 13,8% of what PoH healed. Of total healing done (18,849,944), Glyph of PoH did 2,4%.
In my books, this makes Glyph of PoH a serious choise for anyone looking for increase in AoE healing.
About BiS Ulduar item discussion: I believe you should add a 2nd list, where there is no hardmode gear included. I think some of those hardmodes will be up for quite some time, and in meantime people should know what "lesser gear" they should get while gearing up for hardmode encounters.
My divine hymn is now ticking for about 4.5k unbuffed. It was around 9k pre nerf. The changes are understandable. Divine hymn is still very nice for sticky situations, but I'm not sure it will be the raid saver it once was.
Well, we can look back and dream about our one brief, shining moment in the sun.
04/28/09, 12:28 PM
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