• tsigo

As far as the 10-man version, Paladin/Disc MT healing, Holy Priest raid healing is ideal. We've done it easily with Paladin/Shaman MT and Holy Priest raid, as well as swapping the Shaman to Disc and the Holy Priest to a Druid, but it wasn't as easy. Holy Priest is very, very good for another aspect of the fight I'm sure we can't talk much more about yet.

 

Elimbras

I don't know about Algalon, but with Divine Fury, GH is significantly more hps than FH, and there are some situation where I find it beneficial.

 

Mearis

Sure, but:

- 2 FH have a higher chance to proc inspiration
- Given the same HPs, faster spells are always better

I like greater heal as a spell only if you are cast-cancelling when critically low on mana.

<manly> then my sister calls and proposes the one thing that has never before occured in my entire life

 

• constantius

Significantly is a stretch. The only way this is true is if you assume every GHeal is using Borrowed Time. Unless the math has changed significantly in the last couple of months (and remember, you have to assume tank heals, so FH has a higher crit rate), 2 FHs without Borrowed Time ended up being about 90% of the throughput of a non-BT GHeal with 5/5 Divine Fury. Feel free to re-do the math and post it, though. 3000 spellpower and 40% crit are reasonable numbers to base it around (40% base; add the WS +crit to that).

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

 

Elimbras

It's easy to estimate the gain :
Base heal of greater heal is about twice (a little more) than base heal of fh. Coefficient is basically twice. Therefore, gh is equivalent as healing done as 2 fh. However, with DF, it's cast in 2.5s, instead of 3s for 2 fh (haste effect is multiplicative for both, so we don't care).
Therefore, the hps of gh with 5/5 Divine Fury will be around 20% more than hps of fh.

I don't take into account the increased crit chance of fh, which will be less than 10% more healing for fh (back of enveloppe math is an increase of 1.54/1.44 ~ 7% more healing). Part of it will be compensate the fact that base heal of gh is higher than twice the base heal of fh. Part of it will lower the 20% number.

Now, it depends what you consider as significant. I consider the 15 - 20% range as significant.
I also know that you fh is faster, and in some cases, it's better to use faster heals (tank HP is more stabilized, more crit chance for inspiration, etc.). I'm not saying : Go all to gh, I was just pointing that for some fights, this 15-20% more hps is significant and useful (Razzavious would be an obvious and extreme one), and Divine Fury is a useful talent. For other, I would still prefer flash heal spam.



Detailed computation:

Ok, I did the computation
Flash heal is 1.5s base cast, has an average base heal of 2040, and a coefficient of 0.8.
Great heal is 2.5 base cast (with DF), has an average base heal of 4270, and a coefficient of 1.6.

I consider that the final hate is x%.

Talents to consider:
Improved flash heal is +10% crit with fh is the target is below 50% HP.
Other talents (grace and Focused power) have a multiplicative increase for both heals, and therefore can be ignored. I'll write them as C.

Flash heal:

Without IFH in action:
(2040+0.8*4000)*(1+0.95*0.44) * C = 5240*1,418 *C = 7430 * C.
Time needed to cast it is 1.5/(1+x), leading to a hps 4953 * C * (1+x).

With IFH
(2040+0.8*4000)*(1+0.95*0.54) * C = 5240*1,513 *C = 7928 * C.
Hps : 5285 * C * (1+x)

Greater heal
(4270+1.6*4000)*(1+0.95*0.44) * C = 10670* 1.418 * C= 15141 * C
Hps : 6056 * C * (1+x)


The gain is 14.6% over Flash heal when the improved effect triggers, 22% over "non-improved" flash heal.

 

Liths

One Gheal is about 16% more expensive than 2 flash heals as well, with glyph and imp flash heal. There's certanly situations where Gheal is better than flash heal, especially when hasted with borrowed time, but giving up gheal as your bread and butter heal when pennance is on a cooldown seems like a bad idea to me. I haven't gotten much time in on Alagalon yet, but I'm more worried about inspiration falling off than a bit of extra hps, it really makes a huge differance for that encounter. If we were using a shaman for mt healing instead of paladin I certanly see how a gheal might be better though, it's a very specific situation and I wouldn't want to do it w o getting the talents for mana reduction on gheals.

 

Kashir

Spark of Hope also heavily favours Flash Heal spam over Greater Heal (about double the effective regen), though of course that's a moot point if you're not using it.

 

moowalk

Another thing to consider when comparing FH to GH is the loss of spell warding. My standard spec doesn't even take divine fury, so to do so I would have to lose the -10% spell damage taken. Am I correct in assuming that people who use GH don't take spell warding?

Most (all?) of raid damage during hard modes is magical. I wouldn't like to try freya +3 without it.

 

Elimbras

To be once again clear, I'm not advocating to "Always great heal" route.
I know it's more expensive (and has less hpm), that it's worst for inspiration (but penance might be sufficient, with POM and 2 more cast per 6s), that the long cast time can be deadly some times.
And I've not been on Algalon.

I just pointed that it has "significant" more hps, and that it might be useful for some fights, especially those with large unfrequent hits.

 

Bjork

Main reason for using FH over GH on Algalon is his swing timer! It's very beneficial having many heals landing on a DW boss. Efficiency in terms of HPS or HPM is irrelevant, you want to keep your tank's HP as high as possible as often as possible. If you have three healers casting their most efficent spells you can lose a tank on Algalon to RNG (I've seen tankgibs in 1,7 seconds).

Our basic assignment is this: Pala using HL, Shaman using LHW, Dpriest using FH (obviously Penance and PW:S on cd), then have a druid float between tank and raid, and two priests fulltime on the raid.

PS! Skipping GH also frees up talent points for 5/5 Spell Warding which also is very nice.

 

TheDoctor

Whether or not using GH is worthwhile on Algalon depends on a few things...

Is there "big heals" landing from the other MT healer?
If you have a Paladin and a priest on the tank. Then the source of the big heal should be HL and the priest should be applying the fastest heals possible to land heals between swings. If you don't have a paladin then it becomes a little more valuable to mix in GH so that you are getting more large heals. The most important thing would be that both healers aren't using longer casts, especially at the same time.

How fast can your GH get?
I personally only try to use GH if it is BT'd. Due to the fact that I can get a 1.5sec GH I don't run a lot of risk that heals will be too far apart. Waiting 2 seconds or more for a heal to land on a fast & hard hitting boss is simply unacceptable. The risk of dropping Inspiration is also increased the longer you spend on GH.

Can your mana hold out?
Even if it is more healing it won't matter if you are running dry in later stages of the fight. I don't think many priests could hold out long enough if they replaced all or a large majority of FH with GH.

Note: Haven't down'd him yet so obviously don't have all the answers.

 

Falim

We haven't finished algalon on 10m yet but from 2 hrs of attempts, i'd say mixing in GH is going to hurt your mana considerably. I have around a 28k mana pool on him and even using spark of hope i'm hurting. Will take some better attempts but finding a time to use even part of a hymn of hope is hard. My guess is when he casts big bang after you go through the portal you might be able to get a tick or 2 off, and follow it with shadowfiend when you get out. With a pally assisting you I'd say stick with flash heal. His swing timer is just too fast sometimes.

 

Nuke

I cant see how in your calculations GH do more HPS then FH or FH-Pen rotation.

 

MavSteele

I used a 53/18 GH-based disc spec for our Alg25 first kill. Sham/Pala/DPriest were our tank healers. We'd used a similar healing setup on our first attempts, except I was using a more standard 57/14 spec. In analyzing our combat logs, we saw that there just wasn't enough HPS on the tanks to survive any significant non-avoidance streaks. Clearly there are a lot of benefits to FH-spam; there's a reason it's the standard. On Algalon, however, my particular role was HPS and a GH-based spec with the supporting gear has more HPS than an FH-based spec.

As others have stated before, I still prefer a basic FH spec for any other fight, and with a different healing team (say two paladins and a DPriest, for example) I would have used a different spec. I'm also not naive enough to imply my change in spec was the reason we were able to kill a boss we didn't kill a week earlier. An extra week of gear, better execution, more focus are all more important than the slight changes I made in my play style. All I can say definitively is that the night of our kill we had no premature tank deaths, when that had been an issue that had plagued us a week earlier. Since the tanks were exactly the same and the other two healers were exactly the same and our strategy was basically the same, I believe that making that change had a positive impact.

 

Elimbras

Basically, GH heal twice more than fh, but takes 0.5s less to cast than two FH.
Penance should be included anyway ;-)

 

Forgivén

Hey guys my question is what is the best healer setup for XT hard mode. We tried wednesday with my guild and we were 3 holy priest 1 paladin 1 druid and healing was a problem. what do u suggets

 

Sinndir

I wouldn't say there is a best setup at all, but you need to split up groups during a tantrum.

We usually have a pally + shaman on the main tank, Pally beacons the MT then raid heals. For raid healing we have 2 priests (holy), 1 druid and 1 shaman. Priests take 2 groups each for PoH's during tantrums while the shaman and druid take care of whoever is low. Also, each priest is assigned a debuff (gravity bomb or light bomb) to speed shield (body and soul).

 

• tsigo

We use 6 healers on XT. Usually Holy Paladin/Disc Priest on MT, any three of Holy Priest/Resto Shaman on Raid, and a Druid doing their "heal everything" thing.

 

Venomex

If you are using three Holy Priest (Which in XT Hard is a boon), Have each glyph into Holy Nova. Holy Nova absolutely wrecks Xt Hard in terms of HPS when compared to prayer of healing, and is by far more mana efficient. Being able to Nova your groups at ranged (Most raids only consist of three ranged groups which also include the healers), frees up your Rest Druid to focus on the melee clump with assistance from CoH and PRoM.

Of course with your healing setup, your paladin should be pretty bored.

 

Sinndir

Can you please show where you are getting these numbers? Please show some math of the glyphed Holy Nova vs. the glyphed PoH.

 

Thelen

Not sure if I go out of line here but if I do I'm sorry.

We usually have hpala on mt, shaman on sparktank. Then we have 2 hpriests and 2 druids on raid. (1 druid pre-nerf).

During tantrum we assign the priests to 2 groups each to cover with PoH and 1 druid who top of the person with bomb. The last druid heals the group with the tanks in it. (druids already have an insane amount of rejus spread out on the raid so it helps a lot on the healing during tantrum).

Hope this answers your question. Although PoH is very nice for burst healing during tantrum, druids can also easily keep up two groups themselves.

 

Imua

We 6-healed XT hard last week.
2 priest
1 druid
2 pally
1 shaman

I was actually disc and healed the OT and people that had to run out (gravity bombs)

 

Sgat8516

According to Rawr, and my current gear setup (and it is using unbuffed I think for stat values):
PoH x5 targets 10891HPS +20% from Glyph 2178 = 13069HPS From 5 fully effective healed targets
Holy Nova x5 8379 +40% from Glyph 3351 = 11730HPS from 5 Fully Effective targets

These numbers also don't factor in Serendipity, which would probably only be used for the first of 2-3 PoH's.

From my expierence, and after reviewing some WMO logs, (for me) PoH (normal +glyph) has quite a bit higher of an overheal % than Glyph'd Nova (for Mimiron).
Would stand to reason that both approaches are equally sufficient, seeing as the damage coming in is only 10-12k HPS per party. I would have to say, it probably depended more on your healer setup, as if your party was more likely to be crosshealed by another healer, then PoH would probably be much less effective, than Nova spam.

Mana concerns though (not logged in atm, using numbers off Rawr):
PoH: 1483 = 568 Mana per second
Nova: 772 = 593 Mana per second
So either way, fairly close to the same ratios (additional haste would of course increase the mana usage at a higher rate with PoH over Nova, due to higher % cast time reduction, but ehh)

 

Docawsome

but you also have to remember that holy nova only hits people in your direct party. So if you are standing next to people who arent in your party, they wont get healed, so unless all 4 members of your party are next to you, the amount of healing done compared to mana used is far worse than using POH.

Also on a note about the Divine Fury/Spell Warding talents....

spell warding is a terrible talent for pve, there is never any case where you should use it over Divine Fury, 10% spell damage reduction is too minimal to be of any use...for example, even if you take 1000 raid damage every second for 10 seconds thats 10,000 damage total, with 10% damage reduction it would be 9,000 damage, a 1,000 damage difference, who really cares, thats 1 tick of a renew. NOT WORTH IT!

It is much more valuable to have divine fury for those few cases where you would need to use Gheal

Guys just think more about situation than numbers, its like how CoH is a terrible spell unless you use it in a proper situation. Yah 10% sounds like a good number, but in the situation during a fight its nothing, yah holy nova heals a lot on paper, but it never really does in a real fight unless used in a proper way.

 

onceler21

Indeed, holy nova does require suitable positioning. However, given that positioning, it is very useful. As previous posts detail, it provides similar hps/hpm to prayer of healing (without poh glyph), but it has the advantages of landing most of the healing sooner, and being completely immune to pushback. Those are the reasons that many guilds (including mine) use it for some fights (note that some of those fights have since been changed, eg Mirmiron no longer has pushback in p2/p4).

If you get by fine using prayers of healing (along with coh/pom), good for you. You've saved a glyph spot for something else. If you find people dying because your aoe heals aren't landing fast enough or you were moving, and it's a fight where you could fiddle with groups/positioning to allow holy nova to be used, try it. It's not the best strategy for every fight, but it is very useful for some.

I'd be very careful about stating your opinions as if they were fact, expecially when they contradict opinions held by people who have progressed further than you. If you don't need spell warding to survive bursts of damage, it is indeed a weak talent, but in harder fights (e.g. Freya+3), it allows me to only swap in 1 or 2 stamina/resist pieces to survive the bursts, when without spell warding I would have to switch a lot more gear and thereby lose a lot more. Even for the fights where I do not require that level of survivability, I haven't used a gheal while holy specced for months now, so I'm not giving up anything at all by keeping those points in spell warding.