Blazeinferno
12-04-2008, 01:47 AM
Note: Sorry about the length of the post, I just kept finding things I wanted to add.
Talents
It becomes evident with the major changes to the talent trees is that there is no longer a clear-cut healing spec for endgame pve.
While the holy tree got buffed nicely, the discipline tree got revamped significantly in the latter tiers in order to make it a viable pve spec.
I have made 4 specs that I believe will be the most viable for our raiding needs at level 80.
The key to determining which spec to go is your personal style of healing and role you want to play in the raid.
Discipline has been primarily labeled a main tank healer spec, with the Grace talent and shields for damage padding.
Holy is more of a flexible spec as far as group healing potential, but isn’t as good for MT heals, but is still capable of doing so.
Deep Holy
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbzhZcxtcc0qiuVIsp
This is my deep holy build and is likely the build I intend to use personally.
With this build, you have Guardian Spirit for worst-case scenarios and other talents that can provide very powerful direct healing.
(btw, if you think my talent points can be used in better places let me know, assuming you have reasoning to back it up)
This build and the next build also give a lot of opportunity for manipulating yourself out of the 5sec rule, which I will elaborate on further.
Holy + DS
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVsbzhxzZcxtcc0qihVIob
This spec offers almost all of the benefits of the previous spec, but with more utility in the benefit of the Divine Spirit buff for the raid.
I would recommend at least one of these per 25man if you don’t have a Disc priest already.
Edit: Although I previously recommended putting 2 points in Improved Divine Spirit, I have since learned that it doesn't stack with Shaman spellpower totems.
While these specs may seem familiar to the BC raiding healers, the next two are all new. I’ve not actually spec'd disc yet for pve healing
so some of my talents might be incorrect, kind of winged it. With that being said, please let me know if you have a different pve build for this, and feel
free to post a pvp one on a different thread for those interested in that.
Deep Disc
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhxtMxoifRt0xtc
With this build, you acquire significant mana return with Rapture and, assuming you keep up Grace by at least casting Penance whenever you can,
it can be the best for singletarget healing out of all classes/specs.
Efficient Disc
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhxtMLoifRdzxtcc
This is a variation of the previous build in which Improved Healing in the holy tree is taken over some talents at the bottom of the disc tree.
This is a tough call to make since the latter disc talents are all very beneficial, but, nevertheless,
I would highly recommend this variation over deep disc for anyone who doesn’t have the mana pool/mp5 to sustain it yet.
So, that’s my spiel on talents.
Stats
Some big changes to how we prioritize our stats involve the changes made to how stats effect our regeneration.
Simply put, with the expansion, the effectiveness of spirit to increase while-not-casting regeneration (and subsequently while-casting,
with meditation) has been nerfed. The coefficient that was supplied to spirit has been reduced by almost 3/8ths, which is substantial.
This means that although spirit is still an important stat, it is not the key priest one anymore.
Rather than having one stat be better than all others for priests, it is more spread out among multiple attributes and also varies based on your spec.
Intellect received some major benefits towards mana consistency/regeneration for a couple reasons.
1) The Replenishment buff that shadow priests and retribution paladins provide raidwide is based on a percentage of your total mana pool which increases,
obviously, with intellect. On a similar note, your Shadowfiend is now based on your pool. Also, if you are disc, Rapture's returns are based on mana pool.
2) Critical strike chance is increased by 1% every 166 Intellect. I will go into the benefits of crit chance for mana in a minute.
With these changes to intellect, I recommend looking at it along the same lines as you used to spirit.
With spirit still providing spellpower increases for Holy, I recommend setting their value about equal if you know how to work the 5 sec rule to your favor.
I plan on having a 7:6 ratio on my spirit:intellect.
With Disc, spirit is far less useful as you are almost never going to be outside of the 5 sec rule.
This is because you’re going to be having to keep Grace up at least every 8 seconds.
Also, with disc talents, you can multiply your intellect by 1.15. Thus, as disc, it’s smarter to look for attributes less like you used to and
more like a paladin would, striving for int and mp5, over spirit, which will only help you so much through meditation.
One of the biggest new aspects, while still not a good thing to rely upon when healing, is the new benefits both specs receive from critical heals.
For holy, the usefulness is quite evident with half your crits proc’ing a free, instant FH, and on top of that, 45% of them proc’ing a free heal and
granting 2 spells with 30% more haste. Needless to say, these are extremely useful while healing and, along with good old Inspiration,
are why I intend to emphasize crit rating the most. Also, crits activate Serendipity more often, refunding 25% of the spell's cost.
For disc, more crit means more Divine Aegis, which returns free mana back to you due to Rapture.
Also, as a main tank healer, keeping Inspiration up as much as possible will make your job much easier.
Adding on to what Atomicbomb mentioned earlier, I agree that a good rule of thumb for Haste is at least 10%, then you can go from there on what you
think you could use most effectively.
The only spell haste buffs I can think of to expect in raids is 5% Totem of Wrath from caster shamans, any bloodlust/LW drums used,
and haste potions if you bring them. Otherwise, your haste won't fluctuate beyond what procs your talents provide.
With this info, I have ranked a holy priest’s primary attributes in the following order, from greatest to least: Crit and spirit; intellect; haste and spellpower.
A disc priest’s primary attributes in my opinion is: Crit and intellect; mp5; spellpower and haste; spirit.
These lists are both focusing on maintaining mana first b/c one big Wrath change is that we are found to be fighting our mana bars a lot more than we used to.
After the mana issue settles, you can put more emphasis on haste, and always maintain a decent/good level of spellpower.
If I later obtain information that would indicate another prioritization, I will readily fix this, but that’s what I have observed thus far.
One important thing I want to note is, though spellpower used to be the way your skill/ability was determined as a healer and many healers only focused on
this stat to make themselves more marketable, I would hope that as members of JETT, we can rise above this and realize that what is really important is how
well we do our job and fulfill our role, and I believe this prioritization of itemization/attributes accomplishes this goal for the first set of raiding content.
The Five Second Rule
The last thing I wanted to mention for those who have time to think about maximizing efficiency during the chaotic situations Blizzard will be throwing us into
is manipulating the 5-second rule. This applies primarily to Holy priests.
To make sure everyone is on the same page, the 5-second rule involves the idea that your ‘while-casting’ regeneration is active when you have completed a cast for a spell
that costs mana (or channeled a spell) within the past 5 seconds. After 5 seconds of not doing this, your regeneration returns to the larger number, 'while-not-casting’.
As mentioned above this is a state uncommon to remain in for very long if you are a disc priest because
you will need to cast to keep Grace and Weakened Soul up at least every 8 seconds.
With holy, one ‘fine print’ term allows us to abuse the window for our 5-second rule. The spell must cost mana, meaning if you crit and proc (for example) both
SoL and HC, your next 2 casts won’t bring you back into the ‘while-casting’. To maximize this, every 3 minutes, after at least 5 seconds of not casting, if you
have to cast, use Inner Focus to extend the optimal regeneration window even further (this part disc can also do, but not as thoroughly). The ability to properly
manipulate this rule becomes more important the more spirit you have.
With a decent amount of spirit behind you, this will be able to regenerate a significant quantity over a few seconds without limiting your healing.
Just keep in mind when your last mana-costing cast was and try to space that timeframe out as much as possible while still keeping people alive.
Well, I think this post has run on long enough and I’ve used up enough of whoever made it through this entire post’s time. I do appreciate you bothering to read
my theories and, if you can spare anymore time, I’d like some feedback. Although I did a decent amount of research before posting, I’m far from flawless and if
you guys see an idea that can be improved/fixed, just let me know.
On a similar note, if you guys want any other information (such as some number-crunching or opinions on spell rotations) on anything priest-healing oriented,
feel free to send me a tell in forums or ingame and I’d be happy to look into it and maybe post another, hopefully shorter, thread in reference to it. I do this
because I want to do my best to make sure all our JETT priests are well informed and ready to roll for when we hit the raids. Thanks!
Holytroly
Talents
It becomes evident with the major changes to the talent trees is that there is no longer a clear-cut healing spec for endgame pve.
While the holy tree got buffed nicely, the discipline tree got revamped significantly in the latter tiers in order to make it a viable pve spec.
I have made 4 specs that I believe will be the most viable for our raiding needs at level 80.
The key to determining which spec to go is your personal style of healing and role you want to play in the raid.
Discipline has been primarily labeled a main tank healer spec, with the Grace talent and shields for damage padding.
Holy is more of a flexible spec as far as group healing potential, but isn’t as good for MT heals, but is still capable of doing so.
Deep Holy
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbzhZcxtcc0qiuVIsp
This is my deep holy build and is likely the build I intend to use personally.
With this build, you have Guardian Spirit for worst-case scenarios and other talents that can provide very powerful direct healing.
(btw, if you think my talent points can be used in better places let me know, assuming you have reasoning to back it up)
This build and the next build also give a lot of opportunity for manipulating yourself out of the 5sec rule, which I will elaborate on further.
Holy + DS
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVsbzhxzZcxtcc0qihVIob
This spec offers almost all of the benefits of the previous spec, but with more utility in the benefit of the Divine Spirit buff for the raid.
I would recommend at least one of these per 25man if you don’t have a Disc priest already.
Edit: Although I previously recommended putting 2 points in Improved Divine Spirit, I have since learned that it doesn't stack with Shaman spellpower totems.
While these specs may seem familiar to the BC raiding healers, the next two are all new. I’ve not actually spec'd disc yet for pve healing
so some of my talents might be incorrect, kind of winged it. With that being said, please let me know if you have a different pve build for this, and feel
free to post a pvp one on a different thread for those interested in that.
Deep Disc
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhxtMxoifRt0xtc
With this build, you acquire significant mana return with Rapture and, assuming you keep up Grace by at least casting Penance whenever you can,
it can be the best for singletarget healing out of all classes/specs.
Efficient Disc
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhxtMLoifRdzxtcc
This is a variation of the previous build in which Improved Healing in the holy tree is taken over some talents at the bottom of the disc tree.
This is a tough call to make since the latter disc talents are all very beneficial, but, nevertheless,
I would highly recommend this variation over deep disc for anyone who doesn’t have the mana pool/mp5 to sustain it yet.
So, that’s my spiel on talents.
Stats
Some big changes to how we prioritize our stats involve the changes made to how stats effect our regeneration.
Simply put, with the expansion, the effectiveness of spirit to increase while-not-casting regeneration (and subsequently while-casting,
with meditation) has been nerfed. The coefficient that was supplied to spirit has been reduced by almost 3/8ths, which is substantial.
This means that although spirit is still an important stat, it is not the key priest one anymore.
Rather than having one stat be better than all others for priests, it is more spread out among multiple attributes and also varies based on your spec.
Intellect received some major benefits towards mana consistency/regeneration for a couple reasons.
1) The Replenishment buff that shadow priests and retribution paladins provide raidwide is based on a percentage of your total mana pool which increases,
obviously, with intellect. On a similar note, your Shadowfiend is now based on your pool. Also, if you are disc, Rapture's returns are based on mana pool.
2) Critical strike chance is increased by 1% every 166 Intellect. I will go into the benefits of crit chance for mana in a minute.
With these changes to intellect, I recommend looking at it along the same lines as you used to spirit.
With spirit still providing spellpower increases for Holy, I recommend setting their value about equal if you know how to work the 5 sec rule to your favor.
I plan on having a 7:6 ratio on my spirit:intellect.
With Disc, spirit is far less useful as you are almost never going to be outside of the 5 sec rule.
This is because you’re going to be having to keep Grace up at least every 8 seconds.
Also, with disc talents, you can multiply your intellect by 1.15. Thus, as disc, it’s smarter to look for attributes less like you used to and
more like a paladin would, striving for int and mp5, over spirit, which will only help you so much through meditation.
One of the biggest new aspects, while still not a good thing to rely upon when healing, is the new benefits both specs receive from critical heals.
For holy, the usefulness is quite evident with half your crits proc’ing a free, instant FH, and on top of that, 45% of them proc’ing a free heal and
granting 2 spells with 30% more haste. Needless to say, these are extremely useful while healing and, along with good old Inspiration,
are why I intend to emphasize crit rating the most. Also, crits activate Serendipity more often, refunding 25% of the spell's cost.
For disc, more crit means more Divine Aegis, which returns free mana back to you due to Rapture.
Also, as a main tank healer, keeping Inspiration up as much as possible will make your job much easier.
Adding on to what Atomicbomb mentioned earlier, I agree that a good rule of thumb for Haste is at least 10%, then you can go from there on what you
think you could use most effectively.
The only spell haste buffs I can think of to expect in raids is 5% Totem of Wrath from caster shamans, any bloodlust/LW drums used,
and haste potions if you bring them. Otherwise, your haste won't fluctuate beyond what procs your talents provide.
With this info, I have ranked a holy priest’s primary attributes in the following order, from greatest to least: Crit and spirit; intellect; haste and spellpower.
A disc priest’s primary attributes in my opinion is: Crit and intellect; mp5; spellpower and haste; spirit.
These lists are both focusing on maintaining mana first b/c one big Wrath change is that we are found to be fighting our mana bars a lot more than we used to.
After the mana issue settles, you can put more emphasis on haste, and always maintain a decent/good level of spellpower.
If I later obtain information that would indicate another prioritization, I will readily fix this, but that’s what I have observed thus far.
One important thing I want to note is, though spellpower used to be the way your skill/ability was determined as a healer and many healers only focused on
this stat to make themselves more marketable, I would hope that as members of JETT, we can rise above this and realize that what is really important is how
well we do our job and fulfill our role, and I believe this prioritization of itemization/attributes accomplishes this goal for the first set of raiding content.
The Five Second Rule
The last thing I wanted to mention for those who have time to think about maximizing efficiency during the chaotic situations Blizzard will be throwing us into
is manipulating the 5-second rule. This applies primarily to Holy priests.
To make sure everyone is on the same page, the 5-second rule involves the idea that your ‘while-casting’ regeneration is active when you have completed a cast for a spell
that costs mana (or channeled a spell) within the past 5 seconds. After 5 seconds of not doing this, your regeneration returns to the larger number, 'while-not-casting’.
As mentioned above this is a state uncommon to remain in for very long if you are a disc priest because
you will need to cast to keep Grace and Weakened Soul up at least every 8 seconds.
With holy, one ‘fine print’ term allows us to abuse the window for our 5-second rule. The spell must cost mana, meaning if you crit and proc (for example) both
SoL and HC, your next 2 casts won’t bring you back into the ‘while-casting’. To maximize this, every 3 minutes, after at least 5 seconds of not casting, if you
have to cast, use Inner Focus to extend the optimal regeneration window even further (this part disc can also do, but not as thoroughly). The ability to properly
manipulate this rule becomes more important the more spirit you have.
With a decent amount of spirit behind you, this will be able to regenerate a significant quantity over a few seconds without limiting your healing.
Just keep in mind when your last mana-costing cast was and try to space that timeframe out as much as possible while still keeping people alive.
Well, I think this post has run on long enough and I’ve used up enough of whoever made it through this entire post’s time. I do appreciate you bothering to read
my theories and, if you can spare anymore time, I’d like some feedback. Although I did a decent amount of research before posting, I’m far from flawless and if
you guys see an idea that can be improved/fixed, just let me know.
On a similar note, if you guys want any other information (such as some number-crunching or opinions on spell rotations) on anything priest-healing oriented,
feel free to send me a tell in forums or ingame and I’d be happy to look into it and maybe post another, hopefully shorter, thread in reference to it. I do this
because I want to do my best to make sure all our JETT priests are well informed and ready to roll for when we hit the raids. Thanks!
Holytroly