Priest stat weights and stuff [CONFUSED]

[Deleted]

Okey ive been leveling up my priest this weekend, I just hited 85. Also I have been talking to other priests on my server about stats and stuff like that that I have heard is.

A/A [Atonment preist] Is raid healers and want to go for Haste

Shield spec is going for mastery and they are tank heals.

I just looked on the rate the disc priest above thread and found out I saw alot of priests with A/A spec that adds looooots of mastery and some with crit and stuff and I got very confused so I decided to make a thread about it.

So the main question is: What spec and stats should I aim for to make good healing done / hps and still keep people alive.

(Also heard the '' shield spec is more viable for 25man guilds'' an '' A/A for 10mans ''


/A

[lizon]

The reason you are confused is cause the stat weights for Disc priests are very even. Their weight changes depending on your raid size, healer composition, playstyle, and even the individual fight at hand. That information will determine what stat weights are best for YOU.

[Deleted]

A/A [Atonment preist] Is raid healers and want to go for Haste

Shield spec is going for mastery and they are tank heals.

/A

that's not entirely true and a very black- and white view on the situation.

I use mastery aswell, even though I am in a 10 man guild, I keep my mastery at 20 and I have atonement spec.
I think a healthy balance is important. Around 10-12% haste is nice, because you can then spam your POH and smite/holy fire to your liking. However, mastery is needed to be able to effeciently raid heal aswell! Since mastery increases the effectiveness of your DA, this means your POH will skyrocket in healing done combined with DA if you have alot of mastery.

Therefor I think it's wrong to say that mastery is only for tank healing, because a large proportion of my healing done comes from DA (infact, sometimes it sits on spot 1 for most healing done).

Also, haste is not just only for raid healing aswell. Since I have atonement spec, I can use this as a "Heal" on tanks, since it's heal is even much better than using "Heal". When I use penance, then smite a couple of times, the penance cd is almost over again (because of train of thought talent). This makes smiting+penance+shield ofcourse a very viable tank healing style.

So again, you can't lable haste as the "raidhealing" stat.

As I said, you need a healthy balance of both, doesn't matter if you raid or tank heal. Furthermore, some guilds (like mine) don't use specific roles assigned to healers such as tank healer or raidhealer. We do both; I tank heal and raidheal at the same time, because I can. Tanks don't need full attention 24/7, nor does the raid. It works effecient to spread my heals rather than focus on group/tank when they're not taking damage it's a waste.

[babylon]

theres no only one viable way of healing as a discipline priest!

So the main question is: What spec and stats should I aim for to make good healing done / hps and still keep people alive.

there are 2 basic ways of speccing, one includes atonement second sos. there is also an option of having both atonement and sos in one spec.
best answer is to experiment and see what fits you best.

atonement spec with all the mana helping stuff (ma, veiled shadows) should be fine for just dinged priest healing 5 mans. also dont neglect spirit, at least until you get enough intellect in your gear to be able to rely more on raptures

[Mikayo]

What is this, like thread 3067 on priest stat weights/priorities?

Please look through our forums at the MANY other threads discussing this EXACT topic =(

[mookspal]

The reason you are confused is cause the stat weights for Disc priests are very even. Their weight changes depending on your raid size, healer composition, playstyle, and even the individual fight at hand. That information will determine what stat weights are best for YOU.

Correct.

[Deleted]

For a newly dinged 85 priest your best options are to try get your haste up, mastery and crit don't really matter till later on when you are better geared and as far as spirit goes keep it high in or around the 2500 mark or more as the 5 mans generally require more mana usage per minute vs raids.

As for the build A/A spec is pretty much the go to spec for gearing up via 5 mans it also does well in raids but the atonement healing part shouldn't be relied on to heavily in raid situations as the smart heal tends to heal any friendly target not just players.

I currently run with a hybrid SoS AA build, I have the ability to use archangle but I don't have the healing component of atonement, its a bit of a mana drain getting your 5 stacks for AA but the +healing gained is awesome when combined with the 2pc set T13 and power infusion for PoH spam plus the two spare talent points allows you to keep the majority of the SoS spec intact.


I want to just clarify what I meant by Mastery and Crit being lower priority in lower level gear, for Mastery it's generally decent enough to have mastery even to your next highest stat it give a boost to DA and PW:shields but you gain more from haste early on and crit to a point think of Mastery as the stat you build up after you have your other stats where you want them.

For Crit from my own testing you will only really start noticing crit having an effect on your healing after it's reached around 17% unbuffed ( + 5% raid buffed minimum ) as before that point crits are very unreliable, it is also not advisable to stack crit right from the start as its hard to reach that point in lower item level gear without gimping spirit, haste, and mastery.

So basically Crit on it's own is useless, Mastery on it's own is useless unless you shield spam, and haste well it can't be useless on it's own as it's the first stat you should work on.

In my opinion the majority of gearing up priests will tend to go with Spirit > Haste > Crit > mastery or even Spirit > haste > mastery and ignore crit altogether but as you gear up those stat weights go flying out the window and as others have said the prios change dependent on many factors the main one being simply how do you want to heal and what are your needs, at that point no one can help you decide your build unless your doing it utterly wrong but to be honest I haven't come across a Disc priest with a bad build who also can't pull decent numbers.

[zakaluka]

Unanswerable question. Lurk for a week and you will understand why.

Ever seen fiddler on the roof?

Scholar 1: You should know about events in the outside world!
Scholar 2: Why should I break my head about the outside world? Let the outside world break its own head.
Rabbi: Well put! He is right.
Scholar 1: As the Good Book says, "If you spit in the air, it lands in your face. " Nonsense, You can't close your eyes to what's happening in the world.
Rabbi: He is right! He's right and he's right? They can't both be right.

[Veiled]

http://talesofapriest.com/2012/01/05...condary-stats/

[Kelesti]

http://talesofapriest.com/2012/01/05...condary-stats/

And Veiled beats me to it.

[Affiniti]

My reforging:
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...nitii/advanced

For what it's worth, I disagree with the above link about Crit. I even bothered running the simcraft for priest where it says haste=crit>mastery and it's just plain wrong.



Now while crit does sound like the obvious answer, it really isn't. Yes crits do 200%, but if you cast even 1 shield every 3-4 PoH casts then mastery outweighs crit as it benefits both of these. The more shields you cast, the higher mastery is valued -- so on a standstill fight like Ultraxion where you spam nothing but POH crit will win out but by a very very minimal amount. For the rest of the fights, mastery will outweigh crit slightly (again depends on how many shields you cast, but the break-even point is about 1 shield every 4-5 casts or so).

The values of crit and mastery are very very similar in most cases, so a general "reforge based on how you heal" is fine, but in 99% of the situations mastery is going to outweigh crit by a decent margin. Don't fall into the mindset of "amg it double dips my DA so it must be the best stat evar" because it's wrong.


People using a simcraft model to back up their "crit>mastery" argument is a very moot point simply because the simcraft is using GHEAL as your primary heal with literally zero POH casts at all. Much less the simcraft is based around ONE fight, and the ONE fight it uses is significantly different than any of the other fights you will heal.


The biggest argument around haste AND reforging out of spirit is the more haste you have, the faster you use your mana. I am running with the spirit trinket so I can reforge out of ~880 spirit (plus a bit more) and gain mastery vs a bit of int -- the tradeoff nets a slight improvement in overall hps and stat gains are worth it. Remember that when reforging INTO haste and OUT OF spirit, use your own discretion and your own situation to determine what is best. 10 man vs 25 man, tank heal vs raid heal, support role, etc all factor into what is "best" for your reforging.


Edit ---------- **SPREADSHEET STUFF BELOW THIS LINE** ---------------
**I do not take credit for this spreadsheet. Spreadsheet was created by Maladii of US-Illidan (Blood Legion).**



The red outlined number "3" is the number of POH casts per shield. The "break even" point is roughly ~3.3 poh casts per shield in my current gear (all of my current values are placed in a separate portion of the spreadsheet).


Basically your "average" spreadsheet/simcraft will value crit over mastery because it is calculating you doing nothing but POH coating, but that isn't the case in almost every instant. This spreadsheet is calculating for Prayer of Healing, POH with BT, and Shields throwing in the base healing, the healing per hit, and other values dependent on your current stat values with your gear setup. Crit can be valued higher in extreme cases that involve having an absurd amount of haste (somewhere in the ballpark of like 35%), and requires a very very strict POH-coating only healing process which in 99% of the fights is sub-optimal and more or less healing incorrectly.

Disc priests, at least in a 25man setting, fit into more of a "support" type role where we PRIMARILY raid heal, but we tank heal as needed, and put shields on tanks/raid. Assuming you cast at LEAST 1 shield per 3 POH casts on average, mastery will outweigh crit by a small margin.

[zakaluka]

Crit beats Mst on every single healing behavior that's not bubblespam.

First, you're wrong about simcraft. Nobody imports a healer into simcraft and just hits run with a default actionlist. Modify your action list, make it do something realistic. If you're modeling Ultraxion you'll PoM/PW:S/PoH. If you're modeling madness there will be a small percentage of gheal in there. The sequencing doesn't matter as long as the healing breakdown is similar to what you're seeing on logs.

Things you have to do:
1) Set infinite mana, or a short timeline so the simulator can't OOM.
2) 25k runs or greater, your scale factors have horrible resolution.
3) Edit your action list.

Why infinite mana? If you're playing properly, what is the likelihood that you'll go OOM? Next to nothing, really. You chose your gearing so that you'd have enough mana, and simcraft can't make that kind of a value judgment. So, we let it ignore the effect that OOMing would have. Simcraft heals v.aggressively and WILL OOM if you give it the option to.

Here's the result for that. Behavior: PW:S for rapture, PoM on CD, Penance on CD, PoH spam.

Notice it can't assign a meaningful scale factor for spirit. That's because in this scenario a good chunk of your spirit is wasted.

If you DO happen to OOM at some point, all that haste gained you absolutely no extra healing. If you don't, however, all your spirit gained you absolutely nothing. So, we go like this: What changes if I let the sim OOM? Take away its infinite mana and you get this result:

Notice it can't assign a meaningful scale factor to haste. That's because in this scenario a good chunk of your haste is wasted.

Now go and change the action list even more. I guarantee you, no matter what the healing behavior is, crit results in more HPM and also more HPS than mastery. Doing more single target healing pushes crit's scalefactor up, and mastery's scalefactor down.

The only thing veiled's article is guilty of is oversimplification: there are certain situations where prioritizing crit will cause bigger problems than the amount of HPS you can put out. One such situation: 2-healing 10 man heroics. That's because crit causes your PoH to be unstable, not so much RNG in the amount of healing it does. When you're just barely keeping up with your HPS requirement and the raid is maintaining its health deficit under heavy damage, relying on crit will mean some people drift high and some people drift low. The answer to that is spot heals, and you only get one good spot heal during AoE (PW:S). Basically, PoH crit relies on other healers to be smart with their spot heals and even out the raid. If you have too much crit, this becomes cumbersome (or impossible).

[Affiniti]

The issue with Simcraft, outside of the obvious fact that I have no idea what I am doing with it, is it uses a very very unrealistic fight as an example. There is ONE fight where you do practically NOTHING but POH spam. Ultraxion is great fight for crit because you want to essentially POH spam and do practically nothing else. The vast majority of other fights this tier AND OTHERS has been a very mixed combination of POH and Shields. The argument I am taking is more in favor of a realistic example of common practices rather than a "simcraft says this on one fight out of many"


Edit:


To further your example with Simcraft to a reasonable outcome on multiple encounters (outside of Ultraxion I'm not debating ultrax and the value of crit) -- you will almost always cast 1 shield per 3-4 POH casts for various reasons. I'd be interested in seeing what you come up with that, as 3-4 POH casts per shield is a pretty realistic example. The math that I have supports this regardless of a fight, and favors mastery slightly ahead of crit as a result.

[zakaluka]

I understand what you're saying, but fight mechanics don't matter. Simcraft is calculating averages, and telling you what effects stats will have on those averages. Similar to how your friend's spreadsheet is doing the same thing. Simulation vs formula, though.

The mechanics of the actual 'fight simulation' don't have any negative impact on whether you can trust the results it gives you. As long as your healing breakdown in simcraft looks like your healing breakdown in WoL it will give you reliable scale factors.

I gave you the ammo you need to hold onto your mastery build, btw. Look at my last paragraph. I have firsthand experience with that. Besides, all those fancy queen's garnets you have on are easily making up the 800 or so HPS you lose with hst>mst vs hst>crit.

[Affiniti]

I understand what you're saying, but fight mechanics don't matter. Simcraft is calculating averages, and telling you what effects stats will have on those averages.

The mechanics of the actual 'fight simulation' don't have any negative impact on whether you can trust the results it gives you. As long as your healing breakdown in simcraft looks like your healing breakdown in WoL it will give you reliable scale factors.

I gave you the ammo you need to hold onto your mastery build, btw. Look at my last paragraph. I have firsthand experience with that.

So I figured out where I messed up with the simulation casts and such, but I cannot figure out how to set it to like a 3 POH cast per 1 shield and/or set to unlimited mana.

[zakaluka]

So I figured out where I messed up with the simulation casts and such, but I cannot figure out how to set it to like a 3 POH cast per 1 shield and/or set to unlimited mana.

This kind of thing is best done in a PM.

[derevka]

The post linked is one that I wrote, however there is great dialogue going on in this thread, so I won't derail that. However, Zakuluka is spot on with his edit suggestions regarding Aff's Simcraft runs.

I will make one statement of clarity in a point that Z pointed out.

"The only thing veiled's article is guilty of is oversimplification: there are certain situations where prioritizing crit will cause bigger problems than the amount of HPS you can put out. "

The simplification is intentional in that post. Most of the articles and posts I write are intentionally simplified in attempt to make the content more accessable to the average user/reader. (Alluded in the posts preface regarding not drowning the reader in formulas and charts). I will, however, agree that the 'volatility' that crit can provide, in interest of due care should probably be pointed out... I alluded to it, but not in enough clarity. I will add a comment to that point at some point this weekend, so thank you for that point of clarity. (Great example would be Black Phase on HM Zonozz if you are solo-healing a party... while that can be over RNG exaggerated should a single target get non-crit streaks and RNG Focused fired by the adds. )

One final note: This thread, is probably the best discussion on the topic across all the forum threads littered across the O-forums, EJ, PH, and here.

[zakaluka]

I wish to clarify what Affiniti is looking for. There's a nebulous breakpoint where absorbs are enough of your total healing that mastery becomes an attractive stat. This only happens when you're shielding a lot, and also using a lot of PoH. It's really hard to define, so I just look at Aegis + PW:S. Some people prefer that I look at only how much % of your healing came from PW:S, but PoH has a huge impact on it too. Affiniti is saying 'the number of PoH you cast per PW:S' - he and I are talking about the same thing here, but I also prefer to account for ALL aegis (not just aegis from PoH).

I've always kind of discounted this healing behavior, since PW:S->PoH isn't an HPS gain over PoH spam unless you already have really high mastery. You also lose something somewhere else because you have to carry way more spirit than you would otherwise. It's still an interesting question, though, and some people are really good at healing this way, so I guess it's worth looking into.

I've guessed in the past that if you're above 50% absorbs, mastery might become more attractive. It's hard to make simcraft do that, though. There's an option that got added recently that I could use to answer it, the option I'm referring to doesn't work for PW:S . I will have to bug the devs to patch in a change.

[Affiniti]

Here's a SS of what I came up with, I'm not entirely sure if it matches the log I am trying to compare to but it seems really really close. My playstyle is literally borderline on the "it doesn't matter" reforging wise. The difference is very very minimal and obviously will vary depending on how many shields you cast.

Log I am referencing:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-94...=10003&e=10437



I'm going to try and look into it more to determine if it is as close as I'd like it to and figure out which way will be better, so if anyone has anything to offer regarding the above as well that would help speed up the process a bit


Just glancing over it and it doesn't seem like all of the values are comparable, and with not being able to properly simulate how I shield spam the data is somewhat inconclusive. My math still favors mastery, and with the data being somewhat wonky I still feel inclined to rely on my math.

Obviously I am still fairly new to the entire simcraft deal so I'm sure something I did was wrong :P

[zakaluka]

I'm interested in seeing your action list. There's something funky with activity time going on there, or you have really crazy high haste.

If you're limiting PoH activity to get your healing breakdown to look like that, it'd cause haste to be under-valued. I'd guess that's what you're doing since penance is 17% of that run's total healing :b