WotLK Healing Compendium v3.2: Same Old Thing - Page 68

The Not So Evil · 11/19/09, 2:57 PM

Originally Posted by pocketmage

My biggest beef with Disc is that ToC relies on multi target healing a lot more than Ulduar and Naxx did, even for tank healing, and losing your Grace stack hurts too much.

This is my biggest beef too. I have ended up using Binding Heal a lot of the times where I cannot afford to lose Grace but must have a heal out on a raid member.

moowalk · 11/19/09, 3:22 PM

Originally Posted by pocketmage

PW:S spamming does well on that fight. It also does well on Twins.

PW:S isn't bad for faction champs, but it has one big drawback. The NPCs aggro based on hp, so when you shield a low health target they will still have aggro. If you'd healed them for 8k instead of shielding for 8k, the NPCs would probably switch and run off to someone else.

Tainter · 11/20/09, 5:57 AM

Originally Posted by moowalk

PW:S isn't bad for faction champs, but it has one big drawback. The NPCs aggro based on hp, so when you shield a low health target they will still have aggro. If you'd healed them for 8k instead of shielding for 8k, the NPCs would probably switch and run off to someone else.

The beauty of the shield is that it often allows your other healers to finish their casts before the low health target dies. As Holy it has happened to me a number of times that players have died because our Pala's Holy Shock was on cooldown and nobody else had any instants ready. Of course Disc has Penance too, which is great for upping people's health quickly.

Vanthere · 11/23/09, 4:06 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

Gemming Int is by far the best choice for a holy priest, and as far as your throughput loss....Its really quite insignficant tbh. As far as use of hymn of hope. While this may be convenient on fights like northrend beast with down time where you have the chance to use it, Twin valks heroic 25 doesent really allow you 6 seconds to cast the spell unless you like watching people die while you miss 5 globals that could be spent healing the raid.

Not only does gemming int give you regen but it imrpoves throughput by giving you more crit.

While in a situation where content is on farm status gemming for more burst healing might be better, I would rather error on the side of knowing I'm not going to go OOM

Furthermore using a spreadsheet model or even rawr will let you know when your sustained healing is equal to your burst healing given the approximate encounter length(they also calculate hymn of hope, shadowfiend, and mana pot usage into the equation)

Therefore until your sustained healing and burst healing numbers are equal for a given encounter length(provided that you are never outside 5 second rule) you will always be better off gemming for int in yellow sockets, sp int in red sockets and int/spirit in blue sockets.

RootBreaker · 11/23/09, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by Vanthere

Gemming Int is by far the best choice for a holy priest, and as far as your throughput loss....Its really quite insignficant tbh. As far as use of hymn of hope. While this may be convenient on fights like northrend beast with down time where you have the chance to use it, Twin valks heroic 25 doesent really allow you 6 seconds to cast the spell unless you like watching people die while you miss 5 globals that could be spent healing the raid.

Not only does gemming int give you regen but it imrpoves throughput by giving you more crit.

While in a situation where content is on farm status gemming for more burst healing might be better, I would rather error on the side of knowing I'm not going to go OOM

Furthermore using a spreadsheet model or even rawr will let you know when your sustained healing is equal to your burst healing given the approximate encounter length(they also calculate hymn of hope, shadowfiend, and mana pot usage into the equation)

Therefore until your sustained healing and burst healing numbers are equal for a given encounter length(provided that you are never outside 5 second rule) you will always be better off gemming for int in yellow sockets, sp int in red sockets and int/spirit in blue sockets.

If I swapped my gemming from spellpower focused to int focused, I'd lose almost 200 spell power. That's about a 3% loss to CoH, FH and GH, and a 4% loss to Renew. If I gemmed int, I'd gain about 1% crit, which is less than half a percent gain in throughput for CoH, FH, and GH, and almost no gain for renew. None of my gems have any intellect on them, but I've never really had any kind of mana trouble in ToC that shadowfiend couldn't solve.

You simply don't need to sustain your "burst healing" pattern the whole fight for ANY fight. Even fights like Heroic Twin Val'kyr have sections where damage is going to be more predictably spiky than others, such as when a new set of orbs spawn (non-door strat) or the off-color vortex goes off (door strat). You want your throughput to be as high as it can be for those dangerous times, even that means you don't have enough mana to spam prayer of healing the whole fight.

Vanthere · 11/23/09, 2:02 PM

Yeah i dont see losing 200 sp for me as being a big deal. I find being able to sustain my maximum potential healing more important than the 200 sp.

As i said i suppose it could be preference, however each guild is going to have varying levels of healer skill, and style for that matter. So this could readily change your outlook.

I find it interesting that you cast greater heal as a holy priest. I would think since you are concerned about throughput that you would be completely ignoring any and all talents related to greater heal in favor of talents that will boost all of your healing spells.

As holy i find greater heal is basically a waste of a global. You get virtually the same amount of healing out of 2 flash heals, double the odds of procing SOL, double the chances at proccing inspiration, and double the chances of proccing holy conc. On top of this if you are specced in a way that doesent augment greater heal (no empowered healing, no divine fury, no improved healing) Then you most certainly will get more out of 2 flash heals. And greater heal would only be useful for healing tanks anyways. As stated earlier why would you ever be tank healing as holy when you can just offspec Disc and be a much more efficient single target healer.

RootBreaker · 11/23/09, 3:35 PM

Originally Posted by Vanthere

Yeah i dont see losing 200 sp for me as being a big deal. I find being able to sustain my maximum potential healing more important than the 200 sp.

As i said i suppose it could be preference, however each guild is going to have varying levels of healer skill, and style for that matter. So this could readily change your outlook.

I find it interesting that you cast greater heal as a holy priest. I would think since you are concerned about throughput that you would be completely ignoring any and all talents related to greater heal in favor of talents that will boost all of your healing spells.

As holy i find greater heal is basically a waste of a global. You get virtually the same amount of healing out of 2 flash heals, double the odds of procing SOL, double the chances at proccing inspiration, and double the chances of proccing holy conc. On top of this if you are specced in a way that doesent augment greater heal (no empowered healing, no divine fury, no improved healing) Then you most certainly will get more out of 2 flash heals. And greater heal would only be useful for healing tanks anyways. As stated earlier why would you ever be tank healing as holy when you can just offspec Disc and be a much more efficient single target healer.

I didn't see you say it was a preference. "Gemming Int is by far the best choice for a holy priest," and "Therefore until your sustained healing and burst healing numbers are equal for a given encounter length(provided that you are never outside 5 second rule) you will always be better off gemming for int in yellow sockets, sp int in red sockets and int/spirit in blue sockets," seem to say the opposite.

I don't cast greater heal much. I was just using it as an example of what 200 spellpower does for you.

I do plan to cast it a lot on Valithria Dreamwalker though. A fully talented, serendpity-stacked greater heal does more than double the healing of flash heal in only 22% more time. On a fight like Valithria, Inspiration and Holy Concentration are largely irrelevant, and Surge of Light is a throughput loss while standing still, though it could be nice to allow you to heal while moving towards a portal.

Celsius · 11/24/09, 5:23 AM

Originally Posted by Vanthere

And greater heal would only be useful for healing tanks anyways. As stated earlier why would you ever be tank healing as holy when you can just offspec Disc and be a much more efficient single target healer.

Personally, I cast the occasional GH on tanks when I'm holy if I notice the tank healers are slipping and one of the tanks is getting into the dangerzone. If I've got serendipity stacked, anyway.

Tainter · 11/24/09, 5:44 AM

Originally Posted by Vanthere

As holy i find greater heal is basically a waste of a global. You get virtually the same amount of healing out of 2 flash heals, double the odds of procing SOL, double the chances at proccing inspiration, and double the chances of proccing holy conc. On top of this if you are specced in a way that doesent augment greater heal (no empowered healing, no divine fury, no improved healing) Then you most certainly will get more out of 2 flash heals. And greater heal would only be useful for healing tanks anyways. As stated earlier why would you ever be tank healing as holy when you can just offspec Disc and be a much more efficient single target healer.

Greater Heal is a great spell. There's no real reason not to take Divine Fury. Even if you need Healing Focus and Desperate Prayer you can still get 4/5 because Improved Healing is rather pitiful. I know that some people prefer Spell Warding. And while it does probably occasionally save my own life, I feel that a faster Greater Heal saves more lives.

Serendipity is a great talent not only because it allows burst AoE healing but also burst single target healing. Hasted Greater Heals are great for healing spiky, inhomogenous raid damage, like it occurs a lot on Faction Champions and Jaraxxus. It's also good for healing Incinerate Flesh on Jaraxxus. The output of a three stack Serendipity Divine Fury Greater Heal is somewhere in the region of 7k to 10k single target healing per second. And if I heal someone to full quickly, after they got Pain Spiked for example, then the other healers can focus on their tasks.

As always with Holy it's about having a big tool box and picking the right tool for the job. Having fast Greater Heals available is one such tool. Greater Heal has more throughput and is more efficient than Flash Heal, even untalented. It's not amazing on every fight, but it definitely has its uses.

Fairmont · 11/24/09, 10:59 AM

The "problem" with Greater Heal is that you need to spend some specific talent points to make it worthwile and even then it's usefulness is debatable. The HPM and HPS of Greater Heal are both higher than Flash Heal assuming all healing done is effective healing, but we all know that overhealing happens alot especially when singletarget healing during our role as raidhealer. Due to the slower cast speed overhealing is simply inevitable and this hurts HPS and HPM alot.

Next to that it also matters how fast your heal lands. Most of the times Flash Heal is used to cover single target spike damage. In that scenario you want to heal the target as fast as possible to prevent any more possible incoming damage to kill the target. Flash Heal simply lands faster than Greater Heal and this can mean the difference between an alive and dead raid member, thus it's more safe to use than Greater Heal.

Furthermore Flash Heal gives Serendipity stacks contrary to Greater Heal even though that's not a big deal. However, the amount of total casts is also important. Flash Heal has a shorter cast time, so you will most likely also use it more often than Greater Heal. This means more Holy Concentration, Surge of Light and Inspiration procs obviously.

Of course there are some situations, like the mentioned Incinerate Flesh, where it is very useful because the "HPS" can't "overheal" there. Some people don't mind taking Divine Fury over Spell Warding, but each to their own. Personally I'm not missing Divine Fury (and Empowered Healing) at least.

I can see why people spec for Greater Heal supporting talents when they don't have a Disc offspec for tankhealing however, because it proves to be very useful in combination with Serendipity on huge singletarget spike dmg on tanks.

saturned · 11/24/09, 11:30 AM

edit.

Senres · 11/24/09, 12:04 PM

A 3-stack of Serendipity will make the cast time of Greater Heal equal to that of Flash Heal if you've taken 5/5 Divine Fury. If I've got a full stack of Serendipity and someone is at a 10k health deficit I see no reason to cast Flash Heal on them over Greater Heal. Every once in a while I'll toss a 3xSerendipity GH on a tank if the tank healers seem to be a bit behind.

Serendipity + GH make for some excellent single-target burst healing when needed. I don't cast a lot of PoH in ToC so I don't mind using my Serendipity stacks for a GH. I can't think of a fight in ToC25 or ToGC10 where we wiped because I died to spell damage. I'm often one of the last people alive when we wipe.. therefore I see no point to taking Spell Warding over Divine Fury. Perhaps things are different in ToGC25.

Tainter · 11/24/09, 12:08 PM

Greater Heal does not need any unattainable talents to be effective. The main talents talents affecting Greater Heal are:
- Serendipity, most Holy Priests have that
- Divine Fury, competes with Healing Focus (almost useless) and Spell Warding (same)
- Improved Healing, Greater Heal is already fairly efficient, not used often enough to justify three points
- Empowered Healing, would be taken for the Flash Heal benefit normally, not for Greater Heal

I don't have Empowered Healing, but Serendipity and Divine Fury are enough to make Greater Heal very powerful. Discounting the use of GH because it has the potential to overheal a lot is silly. Prayer of Healing has huge overhealing potential, yet it is thought an important part of Priest healing.

Yes, it often matters how quickly a heal lands. But fully hasted with Serendipity and Divine Fury GH lands in about 1.5s (0.3s - 0.4s slower than Flash Heal). If your target is at risk of dying in that 0.3s then you should probably cast PW:S.

The general problem is that many people are dead set on comparing GH and FH, even though they are for different situations. I neither propose (nor do) to fully talent GH and use it instead of FH. In most situations FH is the better spell to use because GH is too big. But in some situations GH is the better choice because it heals for more.

The spell isn't easy to use. A Priest has to consider the overhealing potential, the slight delay in heal landing, the extra mana expenditure and whether to keep or use a Serendipity stack. If you want to be as good as you can be then consider if not sometimes GH may be the spell of choice, rather than to automatically press that FH button.

Fairmont · 11/24/09, 3:05 PM

Originally Posted by Senres

A 3-stack of Serendipity will make the cast time of Greater Heal equal to that of Flash Heal if you've taken 5/5 Divine Fury.

It certainly doesn't.

I can't think of a fight in ToC25 or ToGC10 where we wiped because I died to spell damage. I'm often one of the last people alive when we wipe.. therefore I see no point to taking Spell Warding over Divine Fury. Perhaps things are different in ToGC25.

Originally Posted by Tainter

- Divine Fury, competes with Healing Focus (almost useless) and Spell Warding (same)

Spell Warding is severely underrated by alot of priests. There are numerous situations where it is useful. Anub'arak phase 3 is certainly one of them for example.

Originally Posted by Tainter

I don't have Empowered Healing, but Serendipity and Divine Fury are enough to make Greater Heal very powerful. Discounting the use of GH because it has the potential to overheal a lot is silly. Prayer of Healing has huge overhealing potential, yet it is thought an important part of Priest healing.

I am not looking at the potential of possible overhealing. I am simply looking at what the HPM and HPS of Greater Heal does in most situations compared to what Flash Heal does in the same situation.

Both are simply used to cover single target spike burst damage so to me it is obvious that people are comparing the two. In 10-mans it is less likely that your Greater Heal will overheal, but in 25-mans there is alot of crosshealing so it is very likely.

Next to that you simply can not always rely on having Serendipity up (or 3 stacks for that matter). If you do have 3 stacks and see the reason to use GH instead of FH that's awesome. But how big is the benefit and did it make such a difference that you are willing to spend points into Divine Fury for such situational use of GH? That's the question.

Yes, it often matters how quickly a heal lands. But fully hasted with Serendipity and Divine Fury GH lands in about 1.5s (0.3s - 0.4s slower than Flash Heal). If your target is at risk of dying in that 0.3s then you should probably cast PW:S.

Using PW:S when there is a Disc priest in the raid is generally not a great idea. If there is none, then okay that's fine. But we are looking at FH compared to GH so let's leave other spells out as they are not relevant.

The general problem is that many people are dead set on comparing GH and FH, even though they are for different situations. I neither propose (nor do) to fully talent GH and use it instead of FH. In most situations FH is the better spell to use because GH is too big. But in some situations GH is the better choice because it heals for more.

The spell isn't easy to use. A Priest has to consider the overhealing potential, the slight delay in heal landing, the extra mana expenditure and whether to keep or use a Serendipity stack. If you want to be as good as you can be then consider if not sometimes GH may be the spell of choice, rather than to automatically press that FH button.

To be honest it's obvious that the two spells are being compared. They are both used for single target burst healing. I agree that it is not easy to know when to use it if people specced into Divine Fury, but the main question in my opinion is if those points in Divine Fury are justified in the first place.

Imua · 11/24/09, 5:33 PM

If you're a healer and you're one of the last people alive when you wipe, you're doing it wrong.

One of the important things to keep in mind when you're discussing GHeal are holy paladins. Their nuke heal is faster and hits harder and will more likely crit than yours will. Does GHeal have a place in a priest's arsenal? Of course, it's just a really really small one.

Another bump for Spell Warding btw. You would be hard pressed to find a log where you didn't take 10% of a single spell and lived, but considering the vast amounts of spell AOE damage and the dubious advantage for DFury (because you don't use GHeal that much), Spell Warding is the better choice imo.

I don't know how you sense that the "tank healers are a little behind." In general, if your tank healers are behind, your tanks are dead. It's not like you have the time to feel a tank getting low and come off of your raid healing assignment to spend 1.5 sec or so, hit the tank for 12k and save the day.

On the fights where the tanks are getting hit hard, they get hit hard and fast and I don't see how a GHeal instead of a FH saves the day.