Switching from 10 to 25man HM

[Whicker]

Ive always been a 10man HM healer but recently I joined a 25 man. Right now I'm SoS spec and have around 20% haste, 20% crit and 17 mast. I really like it and its been working out great. Its very rare that another healer out-heals me. In the new 25 man, their priest is telling me to drop my haste for mastery, I know the stat weights are different for 25 man but is mastery stacking still the thing to do? Also anything else I should keep in mind with the switch?

[Vicarious]

He is just plain wrong no two ways about it end of story. Mastery is only good for shield spamming and for the two fights its useful on you can do it with 0 mastery and do fine. DA scales very poorly with mastery and no matter how much mastery you can get those stat points in crit will always be better because a crit heal will, just with base mastery, be much better than a slightly better than normal non crit shield no matter how much mastery you have. Raid buffed almost every PoH will have a minimum of one crit and usually more than that but even if you mastery stack lets say you get 22k in shielding from DA on a PoH but you have shitty crit, then you change that over to crit and a full non crit is more like 15-16k but you crit with one that total shield is going to look more like 26k rough guess numbers for gear below what I'm using but the proportions will just about stay that way no matter what.

The one thing I would mention though is for haste you can get up just over 3.3k even as a goblin with the 3/3 darkness(I have 3091) and still barely be haste capped on GCD or for PoH under BL so its up to you what you are comfortable with and what trinkets you have but haste gives you the one thing disc is less strong at and that is better burst capacity which is very nice because even if you still don't burst higher than the holy pallys you can sustain it as long and no other healer really can. Haste effects all but PW:S and PoM and with good timing to clip the end of PI while borrowed time is up can make for some nasty divine hymns, with seal of the seven signs proc up and all that I get over 1mil healing out of one making it(aside from the longer CD)as good as the improved hymn for holy. Mastery on the other hand effects PW:S crit heals and PoH but when you stack mastery you can sacrifice so much crit that you lose out on a lot of its potential as well as it just being poor on non crits.(ie: 40% of 3k is only 1200 bonus shielding on each hit of PoH) The only way mastery would be worthwhile, in my opinion, is if you could haste cap and sacrifice no crit to get it and it would only be to increase what you get DAs for when you do crit often.

It largely depends 10/25 what you do your raid setup and how you play but the way I feel most comfortable is getting as close to GCD cap/1 sec PoH casts as possible while keeping 2k spirit and converting any remaining spirit or mastery to crit.

[mookspal]

What is your roll in the 25 man raid? Are your numbers lower now in 25 man? It is likely the priest that is telling you what to do has found out something that works best for him, which does not mean it will work best for you. Personally, If i was raiding 25 man raid, I would go heavier on crit and lower my haste. But remember. Haste will ALWAYS be an increase in HPS and Mastery will be your best HPM. There are different styles, but personally I like your stat weights as they are. Can you post some logs? Armory?

[Vicarious]

What is your roll in the 25 man raid? Are your numbers lower now in 25 man? It is likely the priest that is telling you what to do has found out something that works best for him, which does not mean it will work best for you. Personally, If i was raiding 25 man raid, I would go heavier on crit and lower my haste. But remember. Haste will ALWAYS be an increase in HPS and Mastery will be your best HPM. There are different styles, but personally I like your stat weights as they are. Can you post some logs? Armory?

crit is actually better than mastery for HPM as well since the 200% crit change(for disc obviously not same as holy)

[Whicker]

I completely agree with you Vicarious. I just got invited to the 25 man today and haven't raided with them yet so I'm not sure what they will have me doing. The reason I was asking is because their priest looked at my stuff and told me to get more mast. I obviously dint want to argue with him since I just joined and wanted to make sure I was correct in my stat weights before hand.

here is my armory http://us.battle.net/wow/en/characte...whicker/simple (please don't laugh at my offhand )

and as for logs, I've been merely pugging normals while looking for a suitable guild so they aren't really relevant but here they are.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/e...m/healingDone/

[Vicarious]

I would say for reforging:

bracers mastery to crit
neck helm pants and chest change to crit from the mastery reforge
off hand mastery to haste (which will also get you more haste)
spirit to haste on gloves
mastery to haste belt
both rings mastery to crit

I notice you have very little spirit but go for the HotU and although it isn't a bad trinket as many people have made the point before although you gain secondary stats with it, it is at the cost of int which for the mp5 formula and even more so as disc all your % based mana returns is more and more important exponentially the more you get so the last bit is the most important bit. The other note I would make is you can get gear with haste as a main stat on every single piece and the thing about that is that you gain crit and mastery at the cost of int by trading spirit on gear for spirit that is on a stacking trinket, I don't think its worth it and I will trade that for having a haste burst CD albeit an rng one in seal of the seven signs.

In order to have all haste gear though you can't use 4 set which doesnt bother me personally since it is a 10% chance every 12 seconds to be and okay increase in healing that isn't trumped by loss of stats in my opinion anyway especially when the mana return is not needed and wont happen if it procs when rapture is on CD. Its not like you always only use it every 12 second or ever spam it the whole fight so it will have differing results fight per fight but overall its a lackluster set bonus. Heroic morchok shoulders and chest as well as the higher ilvl spine gloves of liquid smoke as long as you're comparing normal to normal and heroic to heroic work better for me.

You may find that you don't have as much use for the penance glyph in 25 man which could be swapped out for barrier and also If you like myself have many shaman and pallys you might want to forgo inspiration for the 3rd point in darkness and desperate prayer which is the only thing in my spec that is different from yours.

edit: Haste to gloves is an option I would go for and also you might want to try lightweave to cloak as it can come close to the regen of darkglow as long as you get a rapture once within each proc of it and it is a noticeable healing bonus.

Another thing to note for the same reason as the lower intellect trinket not being my preference I didn't make the switch to the critical effect meta because it would be slightly more than a 4k mana loss for me in raids and about 500 more healing on a crit PoH hit. It's not THAT big a deal but I think in the end the regen loss ends up equating to more than enough crit/mastery to be more than the added effective healing making me want to stick to the 2% mana one.

[mookspal]

crit is actually better than mastery for HPM as well since the 200% crit change(for disc obviously not same as holy)

Do you know where you got that information from? I thought I remember reading an article that said Mastery was better at HPM because you can not rely on crit to proc consistently. (The article had sims and data to back it up) It is possible I read this before the buff to crit. If I did, I apologize for the incorrect information.

[Vicarious]

Do you know where you got that information from? I thought I remember reading an article that said Mastery was better at HPM because you can not rely on crit to proc consistently. (The article had sims and data to back it up) It is possible I read this before the buff to crit. If I did, I apologize for the incorrect information.

I believe I read it on EJ but I'm not sure if it was, I'm admittedly not the type to do sims but to clarify it was because in 25 man where you use more PoH having 5 chances to crit with the 200% crit modifier it moved the numbers. I believe in 10 man, and before the crit change 25 man as well, mastery is more hpm.

[Whicker]

Thanks for the tips Vicarious!

[Yvaelle]

Do you know where you got that information from? I thought I remember reading an article that said Mastery was better at HPM because you can not rely on crit to proc consistently. (The article had sims and data to back it up) It is possible I read this before the buff to crit. If I did, I apologize for the incorrect information.

Crits proccing consistently shouldn't matter because a) for a large enough sample set the proc rate will average out to precisely your crit chance, and b) disc crits turn into shields (Divine Aegis) so overhealing is even less a risk than for other classes.

If it was before the crit buff that might make sense, but yea crit is a good stat for disc healing.

[zakaluka]

Do you know where you got that information from? I thought I remember reading an article that said Mastery was better at HPM because you can not rely on crit to proc consistently.

You absolutely can trust crit to proc constantly, esp when you're getting 5 hits with every cast. If you keep tabs on your logs, crit rate is extremely reliable. This supposed "rng problem" with crit, well it is a problem, but not in the way that you're thinking. The problem it causes - it makes your PoH less even, and your raid healing strategy starts to rely more heavily on spot healing / smart heals. If your heal comp carries sufficient rdruid, rshaman, hpriest, disc priest (all have passable smart heals or spot heals) crit's destabilizing effect on PoH is no problem at all. If you stack holy paladins, you might have trouble with unstable throughput.

On HPM for crit, simcraft can answer your question:

The priest modeled here is ilvl 400 and stacks haste>spi (everything else on the floor). This is a simple max aoe scenario: PoM on CD, PW:S every 12 seconds for rapture, PoH spam. Notable numbers: Spike HPS 45000, overall HPM 16.3. Scale factors: Crit 2.59 Mst 1.61. Thing is, since crit and mst are both mana-positive stats those scale factors have an identical effect on HPM, like this:

to add 10% HPM how much crit or mst would I have to add?
10% HPM is.... .1*16.3 = 1.63. Total target HPM: 17.9
To get there I need to add 10% HPS and see how much Crit or Mst that took.
1.1*45000 HPS = 49500 (target HPS), we added 4500 HPS.
How much crit? 4500/2.59 = 1737 crit or 9.7% crit
How much mst? 4500/1.61 = 2795 mst or 15.6% mst

So, for each percent crit you get about 1% HPM as well, while for each percent mst you only get about 0.65% HPM. Funny how Spiritus' napkin math last year matches simcraft exactly this year. And after I spent all that time arguing with him on this issue ><.

There's a pitfall: crit throughput is subject to overheal, mst throughput isn't. Thing is, after doing some looking into it, I'm convinced PoH crits don't suffer any more from overheal than regular PoH hits (even though common sense says they would). Because of the 200% heal / 400% DA mechanic on a crit PoH, the overheal factor makes much less of an impact than I originally thought it would.

[Vicarious]

basically I was hoping zakaluka would post so I didn't have to go find what I read before because he tends to explain things pretty well

[zakaluka]

There's one more thing to be said. Suppose you start healing in this 25 man group. If their disc priest stacks MST for DA, there is a possibility that he will DESTROY you on meters. This doesn't necessarily make him better or right, but it would mean that you should indulge him in his advices until he believes you're a good raider. At that point you can start doing what you want.

If your healing team massively outgears an encounter, the max-DA disc priest build looks extremely OP. What's really going on, though, is his heals are the only ones that can't overheal. Think about it. Doesn't make him right topping meters on easy content - the real test is when you're stacked in for hagara's ice phase, and you look at the HPS plot to see who carries the spike requirement better.

[Vicarious]

think Wotlk PW:S spam except in this case it isn't even the best or most efficient way to heal either

[Whicker]

Thanks Zakaluka, your scenario is what I was afraid of. Lets just hope I can out heal her on the spikes to make up for it if shes stacking DA. If she does unfortunately win out I might have to indulge her till she trusts me. It could be worse I guess :P.

[[-Spiritus-]]

So, for each percent crit you get about 1% HPM as well, while for each percent mst you only get about 0.65% HPM. Funny how Spiritus' napkin math last year matches simcraft exactly this year. And after I spent all that time arguing with him on this issue ><.

Don't feel bad Zak. A broken clock is right at least twice a day! Good to see that the 'ole stat question continues to pop. What would the priest forums do without it? =)

[Yvaelle]

Don't feel bad Zak. A broken clock is right at least twice a day! Good to see that the 'ole stat question continues to pop. What would the priest forums do without it? =)

Ride unicorns, bake cupcakes, and mind control rets into the wanton maw of The Void, I can only assume. ^^

[zakaluka]

why won't it die ><

About 2 months into FL I started working on a guide that would have eventually laid out exactly WHEN mst stacking is good, and why, also when hst stacking is strong and why. When I got about halfway into the muck of it, I found out that it's just a really hard thing to understand. Blizzard did a good job balancing disc, for once (accidental???), and the two playstyles are very close (for SoS, anyway - AA/A is clear cut in favor of hst unless you're trying to do something odd). Each has definite pros and cons. After wasting quite a few hours generating visuals for said guide, I was thrown into a new role: full - time holy once again. My interest in this topic pretty much died at that point.

Now I'm switch holy/disc again and guess what I'm doing. Poking around on excel making visuals. Derevka's and Affiniti's exchange on ToaP helped me understand most of the things I couldn't put words to 4 months ago. Maybe once it's done I can stop caring ><

[[-Spiritus-]]

It's really hard to put together an all encompassing, no stone unturned disc guide. One could write a small book going over all the scenarios and the "optimal" builds for every situation. You can try to do a "best guess" omni-all-purpose build that will satisfy most players & play styles, but you'll get flak from those looking for details, or someone saying "No, 'cause X."

It's like when I put together the XPS build and explicitly stated it was purely a thought exercise and should never be seriously considered. I even defined it as being the highest possible DPS + HPS combination a Disc priest could achieve, which is entirely different than the most HPS one can achieve only using damaging spells. Even after showing the Max potential, which was statistically impressive but in practice irrelevant, folks still reference it as some proof of "smite" viability, even tough it had nothing to do with spamming hf/smite, nor claiming any viability for a dedicated dose/GPS hybrid in WoW.

So, the short answer is write guides for practical use rather than statistical proof. It's likely to be misread if you get too much into the weeds.

[RumpleFugly]

It's really hard to put together an all encompassing, no stone unturned disc guide. One could write a small book going over all the scenarios and the "optimal" builds for every situation. You can try to do a "best guess" omni-all-purpose build that will satisfy most players & play styles, but you'll get flak from those looking for details, or someone saying "No, 'cause X."

It's like when I put together the XPS build and explicitly stated it was purely a thought exercise and should never be seriously considered. I even defined it as being the highest possible DPS + HPS combination a Disc priest could achieve, which is entirely different than the most HPS one can achieve only using damaging spells. Even after showing the Max potential, which was statistically impressive but in practice irrelevant, folks still reference it as some proof of "smite" viability, even tough it had nothing to do with spamming hf/smite, nor claiming any viability for a dedicated dose/GPS hybrid in WoW.

So, the short answer is write guides for practical use rather than statistical proof. It's likely to be misread if you get too much into the weeds.

i'm interested in your XPS build. I have been working on something similiar and wanted to know if I could see your thoughts. You said that it was "statistically impressive but in practice irrelevant". What do you mean by that? I guess for me this is one of those things that seems cool but I'll never actually do. I just like thinking outside the box a bit. Could you PM me some of that information? (I would have PM'd you but I can't yet. New here)