Comfortable spirit level for holy?

[Brondo]

Just switched to holy from disc for a change of pace. Just wondering what a comfortable level of spirit might be for just flex and normal modes. 10 man on normal, obviously flex can vary.

Right now I've only played around in LFR and only had real mana issues on malkorok (group wasn't that great at avoiding slams). Should also mention I'm currently only at around 525 ilvl, no LMG, no legendary cloak (alt) and I have around 12-13k spirit.

Just want to know where I should be before I jump into something more difficult. Thanks in advance.

[Deleted]

Only you can tell really. Try some LFR and do a bit of extra overhealing to find your limits.

15k seem to be a fairly common number but that's with much higher ilvl.

[wrynil]

Im a crappy holy priest and cant play it without 15-17k spirit Cause i suck at keeping track of the mana coming from disc/shaman/drood healing :P

[Tehterokkar]

Only you can tell really. Try some LFR and do a bit of extra overhealing to find your limits.

15k seem to be a fairly common number but that's with much higher ilvl.

LFR is bad really, not enough damage anyway so you can't get a feel. Flex is bare minimum

Your spirit needs depend entirely on your group setup in an organized(not pugs) group. In 25m you can have 1-3 other priests in the raid also and it is very important to note their Hymn of Hope CDs, combining their HoH with your Mind Bender grants you a fuck ton of Mana back.

It's the reason Disc pretty much can go as low as 7k Spirit for Heroic 25. The Mana returns are so unbalanced across healers.

[Danner]

It depends on many many factors.

- Your content (LFR hardly requires much spirit compared to harder raid modes)
- Your playstyle (someone hitting CoH often will use far more mana than someone hitting Heal often)
- Your fellow healers (Holy can tank heal nicely in the right stance, but spamming Flash/Greater Heal drains mana like crazy. If the other healers are on it, you don't have to)
- Your trinkets (someone using two regen trinkets will need less spirit than someone using two throughput trinkets)
- Whether you are a tailor (that back enchant is actually quite a bit of mana.)
- Whether you use potions, flasks and regen food buffs, or whether you use throughput equivalents.
- Whether you use Hymn of Hope with Mindbender/Shadowfiend or not
- Your comfort levels

The latter is important. The ideal situation is to end the fight at exactly 0 mana, running just enough on fumes that noone (important) dies but drops really low due to you only running on fumes for the last 20 seconds. This way you get your maximum throughput. That means you had exactly enough spirit, and could maximize the strength of your heals when they mattered.

Such a setup leaves absolutely no margin for errors however. I don't consider that setup comfortable, because someone will invariably fsck up. And then I can't heal it. So I at least need more spirit than I absolutely require in order to heal a fight. For me, I found my comfort levels at around 14-15k spirit. At this point I can feel a little wasteful, I can throw out a smite or two, and I can still have enough mana to go into overdrive mode should the crap hit the fan.

Of course, that's far too much mana for LFR. In LFR runs, this means my manabar rarely drops below 80%, and it tends to stay at 96% most of the time. Obviously too much.

[Luamara]

- Your trinkets (someone using two regen trinkets will need less spirit than someone using two throughput trinkets)

fixed that

[Danner]

Doh!

Fixed that too!

[Mazi]

During progression I ran between 12-15k

[Brondo]

Thanks for the responses, folks! I realized now I was a little off about my spirit (only had 11k. Beauty of typing out on my phone) but I have also upgraded my bracers since then and enchanted a couple things I forgot about which did put me close to 12k. And I have a burden to use on a ring, just have to pray for the right stats and not something like 1050 crit with nothing else.

My guild is running a flex run to gear people up tonight so with a little luck I can get some upgrades there, as well as try out where I'm at. Biggest difficulty will be keeping up with the other 560+ ilvl healers so I can actually tell if I'm doing ok or not!