No that is not sufficient logic, I want to see your actual numbers broken down to a mp5 setting, please don't just claim things.

Here's an example of a fight (attempt on Thorim.25: hard) where I've cut it before the wipe (since the last few seconds of any wipe won't tell you much).

Wow Web Stats

5:00 long; I had 67 hits of PoH. Total number of casts was actually 14; positioning screwed up some of them so they only hit 2-3 people. Healing Prayers saved me 20% of 48% of my base mana every time, or a total of 1.344xBase. That's approximately 5,100 mana over 5 minutes, or 86 Mp5.

Comparatively, I could have used Inner Focus twice; assume once for Divine Hymn, and once for Prayer of Healing. That's a total of 63%+48% (assuming no HP, so max cost) saved, or 1.11xBase.

So your point is a valid one comparing only the two spells. The point in Inner Focus can save up to 0.438xBase more mana (for this particular example) than the point in Healing Prayers. However, what about Prayer of Mending? I cast it ~ 5x in those 5 minutes (could have cast it more, too): that's an additional savings of 20% of 15% every time, or .15xBase. That puts a point in HP up to 0.747, vs the 1.11 in Inner Focus.

If we extend the granularity to 6 minutes, it makes them almost equal, since Inner Focus gains nothing from the extra minute (except cooldown time), while HP continues to gain.

My rough conclusion: a point in Inner Focus is comparable in value to a point in Healing Prayers, so long as we don't cast more than 3 Prayer of Healing per minute. On a fight like Mimiron, HP will destroy Inner Focus. I can't find a decent log of Mimiron: if anyone has one, link it and we can tear it apart. But basically, in Phase 2, I cast FH x2/3 -> PoH -> CoH continually for the entire phase. I easily cast 10-15 PoH over a short time period, and the mana savings in HP actually allows me to finish the phase without going OOM.

Having said this, my stance has always been that 2/2 HP *and* Inner Focus are almost mandatory talents for regen purposes. No reason to not take them both, unless you really want an extra point to throw at Empowered Renew for some reason.

Here's a sample Mimiron parse, although we ran rather healer heavy for our first kill. My spec at the time was a bit different, having the renew talents (which I have since dropped) and no Test of Faith.

Mimiron

Thanks for saving me the typing. The flip side of the argument is that Inner Focus is much more helpful on fights where you aren't casting Prayer of Healing much. I'm sure that Healing Prayers beats Inner Focus on Mimiron, for example, but on Vezax, Inner Focus is better by far.

I think you're also right that it's best to spend all 3 points and steal a point from a talent that increases throughput on a less commonly used spell (like Empowered Renew, or even Empowered Healing for people who still have points in that). There's also the question of what fights are people having the most mana troubles on, and whether you can shift talent points to maximize those. In other words, if you have big mana problems on Vezax but no problems on Mimiron, arguably it's worthwhile to keep Inner Focus and shift points from Healing Prayers towards Empowered Renew or Empowered Healing.

So I guess the same caveat still applies. "We provide the analysis but you still need to apply the data to your situation."

Here's another Mimiron parse if you need, 5 healers, 3 of them (holy) priests. Used my current spec.

Mimiron

I have seen a lot of neglect in the value of Empowered renew on these forums. That being said the four main heals any priest should be casting in ulduar as a Circle of healing raid healer are: Prayer of mending, Prayer of healing, Circle of healing, flash heal (not to be cast in any particular order of course). All talent points should be structured around the importance of these four heals. However, empowered renew is an instant cast instant heal, This means any points that you can place into the 3/3 empowered renew without taking away from your raid healing spells is extremely valuable in Ulduar.

ie. After a couple of nights of Heroic Mimiron, I can tell you that healing up a raid member with napalm shell is not particularly hard, but must be done fairly fast. We see this kind of spiking to raid members in other fights all the time from a grip in Kologarn to Ignis's pot, etc.

- The question simply is: if you can use some points that do not take from the bulk points used for your raid heals, then why not put them in an instant heal with no cast time. If you do not use empowered renew on spike targetted raid members and your Surge of light is not on an instant flash, then you will most likely end up blowing a CoH heal for one person. For what it's worth Look at the priests in Ensidia and Method, the last time i brought up their armory profiles they had at least one point each in empowered renew. Or your can look at my decided spec for raid healing Ulduar:

The World of Warcraft Armory

I just recently removed one point out of 3/3 empowered renew into healing prayers after seeing the extent of my mana on our heroic Freya kill among others where i found myself mending and Prayer of healing a lot during the fight. This ended up being a good choice as I fought mimiron on heroic shortly after, enduring far into phase four with no mana problems. Most will argue to have 2/2 Healing prayers, I'm simply not experiencing any mana problems with 1/2 Healing prayers yet (And yes I'm at the top of the meters while dotting and wanding in phase 3).

I should probably separate this into another post but i would like to add the unimportance of Devine Fury in the start of the holy tree as a talent. With Serendipity among a rotation of hasted utilization of self procs among raid procs; a window to greater heal as a Circle of healing priest is there to be used but is it worth it over the regular spell arsenal. I've seen the odd end game priest spec into it among another holy priest in my guild. But while we cringe at having to waste some of our early tree talents to reach the 20 point minimum, I would argue that most holy priests do not use greater heals throughout the raid night to warrant Devine Fury talent points. The alternative is Spell warding to buffer any spell damage on boss fights. I recently read up on the use of greater healing as a CoH priest. Another priest recorded 50 greater heals or so in a raid night and most of those heals were made out of combat to top off people between wipes. Honestly maybe I'm a baddie but i mend, flash heal/empowered renew for focus healing and it seems to work very quickly and very effectively. If you don't think that Spell Warding is for you then check your healing parses and see how often you cast greater heal and if it is not jeopardizing people to dying for the full value of the heal. If that's not enough to convince you I might add that most of the top guild's priests are using 4/5 or 5/5 Spell warding over any Devine Fury points. Look them up and consider.

I don't really see what you're trying to prove here because I don't think anyone has ever recommended or advocated taking 0/3 in Empowered Renew. The consensus (as it has been throughout this thread) is that you take at least one point for procs and the next two are preference-based.

As we have come to realize (and as Snowy put very well), a lot of talent points are less about math and more about "feel."

If something needs to be healed fast, renew, empowered or otherwise, is not the spell to do it. Empowered renew and single-target circle of healing are not good napalm healing spells.

They may seem fast because they're instant cast, but it takes just as much of your time to cast a non-surge of light flash heal as any instant heal. It's perfectly viable to heal napalm shell damage simply by spamming flash heal. The only reason to use an instant heal rather than flash for napalm shell healing it is if:
A) they will die from the next tick
B) the next tick will happen before your flash heal will land
If this is the case, you're better off using power word: shield than empowered renew or single-target coh, and you'll still need another heal on that target from another healer, or the shield will get eaten by the next tick of napalm and you'll be back where you started. If you try to heal the damage with empowered renew or single-target coh, you'll actually end up farther behind than you were when you cast the spell.

Regarding the Napalm Shell on Mimiron, I tend to hit the initial target with a renew, followed by spamming flash heal until the effect drops. I know renew isn't amazing hp/sec, but it WILL tick two times for the full amount almost every time you cast it on someone who was hit with the shell. That's not terrible considering the GCD it costs to cast it.

I'm currently running with 3/3 empowered as well as glyphed renew. A quick glance at a few WWS logs, and my avg heal for empowered renew is ~1500, and the ticks are for ~2500. So with one instant cast, I'm healing for 6500 assuming 2 ticks and no crit on the empowered renew portion which is a fair assumption considering Napalm Shell dishing out 6k dmg/tick for 8 seconds. The advantage of casting the renew for people hit by that spell comes after the napalm shell wears off, which will often end up in an extra tick (though it will rarely heal on it's fourth tick).

I know the downside of renew is it's delayed healing effect when everyone wants to top people off RIGHT NOW. However, if you are specced for it and glyphed for it (which I do recommend if you use renew a lot), there are good uses for it. The big advantage I see with using renew is the mobility you gain from using an instant cast spell.

I still use flash heal, but I have taken empowered healing out of my holy spec, and I do miss the extra healing that talent used to afford me on my flashes at times, but that mostly happens in 10-mans when I'm trying to do more than just keep up with raid damage.

Another decent use of renew is when hodir first casts frozen blows. Obviously, PoH spam while in a starlight beam will outshine renew, but if you cast it early enough, you're most likely going to be getting 10k healing from an instant-cast spell, which will offset more than HALF the frozen blows damage over the course of the renew (assuming you have a frost totem/aura up and renew is glyphed/talented). If you've got to move at all during frozen blows, this spell is a good spell to fill in the gaps when you've got PoM and CoH on cooldown.

Edit: Also, on Ignis, tossing a renew on the slag potted person will also yield high returns on a single renew cast. Again, it's not incredible hp/sec, but it is a heal in the neighborhood of 10k for one global cooldown when used in the proper place and if you're specced for it.

Mimiron:
You're not in any danger of significantly diminishing your mana bar in phase 1. Napalm shells need to be healed quickly, not efficiently. Let's say a target with 22.5k health gets hit with a napalm shell. In one situation, a priest with empowered renew renews him and starts spamming flash heal. In the other, a priest just starts spamming flash immediately. Let's say they have enough haste for a 1.2 second global cooldown/flash heal time, and a 5.8k flash heal (my average non-crit flash heal for my first Mimiron kill). Napalm shell does 10k up front and 6k a second. The priest has a 0.5 second reaction time.

Renew priest:
0.0 12.5kk -10k Napalm Shell
0.5 14k +1.5k Empowered Renew
1.0 8k -6k Napalm Shell DoT
1.7 Priest beings to cast flash heal
2.0 2k -6k Napalm Shell DoT
2.9 7.8k +5.8 Flash Heal
3.0 1.8k -6k Napalm Shell DoT
3.5 4.3k +2.5k Renew
4.0 The target needs to have been healed by someone else by now, or they're dead.

Flash heal priest:
0.0 12.5kk -10k Napalm Shell
0.5 Priest beings to cast flash heal
1.0 6.5k -6k Napalm Shell DoT
1.7 12.3k +5.8k flash heal
2.0 6.3k -6k Napalm Shell DoT
2.9 12.3k +5.8k flash heal
3.0 6.3k -6k Napalm Shell DoT
4.0 0.3k -6k Napalm Shell DoT
4.1 6.1k +5.8k flash heal
5.0 0.1k -6k Napalm Shell DoT
5.3 5.9k +5.8k flash heal
6.0 The target needs to have been healed by someone else by now, or they're dead.

Obviously its not going to take other healers 4-6 seconds to react to a napalm shell, and the damage will be somewhat mitigated by fire resist aura, and the person hit could pop a healthstone if really necessary, but I think it's clear that renew is not a good spell for healing spike damage. Flash heal alone gives much more room for error if you or other healers are slow to react.

Also, note that if any of the 4 flash heals the second priest crit, they would have been able to heal solo fine. If only the renew crit, the first priest's target still dies on the 4th second, and they only have one chance for their flash heal to crit.

Hodir:

Frozen blows is 4k every 2 seconds for 20 seconds, or 40k damage. A 10k renew is significantly less than half, even with a frost resist aura. Even without starlight, prayer of healing significantly outshines it. So do other group healing spells. Renew may be 10k for one global cooldown, but during frozen blows PoM is over 20k for 1 global, CoH is almost 20k for 1 global, and PoH is 30k for 2 globals (less than 2 globals if serendipity is up), and more if it's glyphed. And all of those numbers are before crits.

I was not speaking about empowered renew as being an entirely strong heal nor it being the only heal to which a person with napalm shell will need, as this is obvious to anyone that has had to heal a raid member with napalm shell. I am simply speaking in regards to a fast instant cast instant heal selection. With human delay and your ability to heal that person fast with these assortment of instant heals I would like to emphasize without empowered renew a person is more likely to hit the ye ole CoH key to heal one person as a compremise to not having an instant initial heal with the renew cast ajacent with prayer of mending. Personally a person gets a napalm shell and I react with a prayer of mending -> (empowered) renew -> flash heal as a CoH priest.

I've been disappointed somewhat with the fact that empowered renew is such a relatively small heal. However, it is good for topping people off a small amount when circle of healing is on cooldown (or if it would be wasted overheal). It's more of a personal preference since it costs nearly the same as a flash heal and the initial tick isn't for all that much. One thing I have noticed about the glyph is that it doesn't seem to affect the amount of that initial heal at all, though it does make the other ticks of the spell heal for more.

I didn't intend to make it sound like all you should do during frozen blows is hit renew, but re-reading what I posted I could see how that got misinterpreted. I do agree that casting PoH is a better use of your time than renews in almost every case.

I agree fully that PoM and CoH are much better choices to hit during frozen blows, but if they are on cooldown, and you have to move, renew is a good choice. I don't use it much outside of that on hodir, but I am finding it useful in this somewhat limited situation.

I won't argue extensively the Mimiron case, but 1 GCD spent on the empowered renew + 2 ticks will heal for slightly more on average than a single flash heal after 6 seconds expire. The key is the person living to see those 6 seconds like you say. If you re-do your scenarios with worst case resists on someone with 130 resist, both cases will ensure the person hit by the shell survives, and the person casting renew will on average end up with their target at a higher HP. I will agree that you're more likely to save your target spamming flash heals. However, if my targets are always living to see the second tick like has been the case, the slightly higher healing amount and possibility of a third tick to help top them off seems worth it to me. I also don't strictly spam flash after my renew, as I tend to keep a serendipity stack up, so tossing a gheal at the start of a napalm shell with serendipity x3 helps a lot.

PoM is OBVIOUSLY a poor choice because it's less healing than a flash heal in the same amount of time. It's not even an instant heal. Even if someone is low enough to be killed in one more hit, PoM doesn't heal NOW, it heals when the person takes damage, and if that person is killed, it doesn't save them from dying.

When we do Mimiron, we do make damn sure to have FR up, because it does average out to be -20% fire damage taken from the 130 resist alone. You can count on a minimum of 10% resisted, and while I don't like to assume anything better than the worst case, the chances of a worst case scenario happening is only 3 in 1,000,000 given a 24.3% chance to get a 10% resist.

I didn't want to try to tell everyone when they should be using renew, I've just been using it glyphed and talented fully and wanted to share my experiences with using it.

I like Renew, however (and this is personal experience), Renew's efficacy depends greatly on the other healers in your raid. In my experience, on fights I cast Renew more than 15-20 times, I ended up seeing 1-1.5 ticks per Renew cast (say 30 casts and 30-45 ticks that actually healed).

Because of the inefficiency in that (and the lack of building/maintaining Serendipity stacks), I have shifted from using Renew much at all towards using spells which are more efficient given the healing environment I am in (dps has been slightly lax in logging on for us, so we've ended up carrying 1-2 healers more than we would like for most fights).

Renew is still in my mind a valid, useful spell, but its best uses are situational at best, and those uses are more rare if you raid with aggressive healers. I would suggest each priest evaluate Renew on their own to determine whether they would see enough benefit from those talents as opposed to other, also legitimate options.

1H Mace ilvl 239

Constellus
93-298 Damage Speed 1.80
(108.8 Damage Per Second)
54 Stamina
55 Intellect
Blue Socket
+5 Spell Power Socket Bonus
587 Spell Power
29 Critical Strike Rating
19 MP5



Our guild got that off of Hodir Hard Mode, what's better? The staff off Hodir, or that mace + OH?

Fully raid buffed, with the [Je'Tze's Bell], [Eye of the Broodmother], and a frost wyrm flask (sometimes too lazy for elixirs, and not many mats on the AH for distilled wisdom)...I break 3100 SP. That's with 0 +19SP gems, too.

To the poster above...do the math! Do you have the best OH? Personally, I'm getting the legendary (yay!), so I'll stick with the MH + OH...but does [Staff of Endless Winter] = Constellus + [Ironmender]?

IMO, the staff is better. Plus, I love staffs

To all 'renew-nay' sayers: (apologies for spelling and wording in advance)


I'll get a little sentimental here. Back in the dark ages of WoW priests had very limited buttons to push, I don't even know why I could've play such game. Back in these days the only distinguishable traits on healers were, who can spam better mix of lower ranks GH, some FH and ONE who can do renew!!! Yes being able to get that additional utility, for being the highest +sp priest in the day felt really good and people loved it, hence my love for renew.

Now these days we have many tools, arguably more then any other healing class. We crunch numbers and argue about speed and topping off people as fast as possible, but I believe we are forgetting the fundamentals and how to properly use renew to maximize your contribution to the raid.

I've never been a fan of stacking sp and just sitting to regen (wotlk), sure was nice chain-casting free spells to cheat the 5sec rule but these days are mostly gone. To me the best use of renew is to smooth out the raid and controll bursts. I'm not arguing that you should be use it over CoH, PoH or Mending, all I'm saying that instead of 'slow healing, gaining mana back mood' (during these periods you do not cast CoH, PoH since no one needs that much topping off), we should be casting renews in anticipation of dmg.

On renew glyph, I don't use that glyph because it contradicts my understanding and the purposed for which I use renew. For me additional ticks are more valuable then more potent, but shorter duration.



Here are some logs from last night, on the fights that I did as holy, I wanted to post this earlier but without the logs it just felt a bit too much opinionated:

(Ignis) WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
CoH - 31.3%
Renew - 22.7%
PoH - 19.5%
(Kologarn) WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish (I think I failed a bit on Prom here)
CoH - 30.3%
PoH - 23%
Renew - 20%
(Auriaya) WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
CoH - 35.5%
Renew - 18%
PoH - 16.7%
(Hodir) WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
CoH - 30%
PoH - 19.3%
Renew - 18.2%



[edit] spelling

Ignis: 1.93 ticks of renew per cast (2076/tick)
Kologarn: 1.85 ticks of renew per cast (2012/tick)
Auriaya: 1.59 ticks per cast (2042/tick)
Hodir: 1.65 ticks of renew per cast (2145/tick)

I am assuming ~1917 for the heal on your Empowered Renew (to allow for crits).

At 656 mana (assuming no [Spark of Hope]), you were getting the following healing done for 656 mana:
Ignis: 5923 (9.02 HPM)
Kologarn: 5639 (8.59 HPM)
Auriaya: 5163 (7.87 HPM)
Hodir: 5456 (8.31 HPM)

So, it is still fairly efficient for you. However, let me post some parses of my own to illustrate what I was attempting to say above; that it depends greatly upon the rest of your healers' tendencies.

Our first Mimiron kill: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
42 casts of Renew for 42 ticks, healing for ~3780 per cast and an HPM of 5.76

Our first Freya kill: WoW Meter Online - Combatlog Replay in Engrish
I had 34 casts of Renew for 36 ticks, healing for ~3730 per cast and an HPM of 5.68

Perhaps I could do better at precasting Renews, but I do stand by what I said earlier; the efficiency of Renew depends greatly on your other healers and their healing styles in addition to your own. Renew can be very good for some priests/guilds, and closer to an inefficient spell for others. It should be evaluated on an individual basis.

[e] I will note that Flash Heal is not more efficient in my parses. There is an incredible amount of overheal in the parses I linked that comes from carrying one or two healers too many. The reason I favor Flash Heal in this circumstance is the ability to build Serendipity stacks (and sometimes I do purposefully cast needless Flash Heals to build/maintain a Serendipity stack when I expect raid damage to be imminent).

That seems to be my main problem with renew (or with other hots on the times I've healed on my druid), is that often times it turns into overheal if you have other healers that are constantly sniping it. With the new talents it seems to work alot like a druid's rejuv which makes it great for fights where you have to heal on the run or where there's a small amount of raid damage and the raid is spread out, but not as flash heal for fights where you're standing still alot of the time.

I guess this is another example of Blizzard making priests the "switch hitter" healing class.

I'm having a hard time chewing on the argument 'depends on your other healers'. I'm keen to argue that there is much bigger similarity from one raid to another then a difference. In any raid, any guild, any situation if people are loosing health there will be healers healing them.

I don't think that the fact that some guild have better healers or lets use faster 'able to heal up faster' then other guild matters much. The difference is no more then couple .2 - .5 (of a second) to make an effect on your healing and playstyle. These 'fractions' of second certainly matter in life / death situation, hard-modes etc, but for overall renew discussion, I don't see how they make any difference.

Different players, difference class balance and number of healers, and different strategies can make huge differences in the most effective healing methods. I'm not sure why this would be in question.

It's not really a question of reaction times; it's more a question of healing assignments and crosshealing. If your healers are accustomed to heavy crosshealing (as is the case in my guild), HoTs are far more likely to be overriden as we strive to top people to 100% ASAP. If you enforce stricter responsibilities (running with 5 healers instead of 7, for example), HoTs will typically heal more because people won't be topped to 100% as quickly.

For an example (not really Renew related): We normally run with 2 Resto Druids, 1 Resto Shaman and 2 Holy Priests raid healing, and on Ignis I don't even bother using PoH anymore. Yes, we two Priests could take two groups each and solo heal those groups through Flame Jets, but we have so many smart heals and HoTs flying around that it's easier, faster and more efficient to rely on PoM and CoH.

Personally I don't use Renew as a staple spell at all. Our Druids are excellent, and their HoTs are far better than mine. I'd rather spam FH and have a fast PoH ready to launch when the big AOE bursts come. If that means that the Druids look better than me on the healing metres, I can live with that

After another night of attempts on heroic Mimiron, I stand by my reaction of Prayer of mending -> Empowered renew -> Flash heal for napalm shell ...occasionally if i feel that I'm hesitating at all I may trade off empowered renew for a Cicle of healing instead (not ideal of course but safer). The second impulse is just based on instinct.

I would like to just simply say in response to this quote that no one died from napalm shell in tonight's raid and yes there were casters 10+yards back from me getting napalm shell quite frequently (meaning they were not in range of the majority of healers). If you're casting Flash heal in this situation where you are the nearby healer I sure hope you're coming off of a critical for a surge of light instant heal. It is OBVIOUS that Prayer of mending is not a poor choice at all unless you're slow at healing after seeing the first initial tick and/or the debuff (which is what you are suppose to be able to do). Have Prayer of mending on the raid member for the second tick and you're fine if not CoH out of desperation.