[6.2.3] Holy Priest PvE Guide and discussion

[Thirteen]

Hey guys,
is there any reason to prefer Edict of Argus as a holy instead of Voidcore Greatstaff?
You loose 20 int, 200 haste,117 spell power and 194 mastery to get 367 multistrike.

Simply put, because of the weight of intellect and spellpower, weapons with a higher iLvl are generally always better. Red values multistrike at .79, haste and .71, spellpower at .91, and mastery at .53 for every 1 point of intelligence. You can put together your own stat weights if you'd like, but expect to reach similar values, at least for the int:spellpower:multistrike ratio. Ultimately - you do you. The Xhul'horac staff isn't significantly worse than the Archimonde staff, and is definitely more accessible. If you want to be more specific: Edict of Argus (Archimonde) > Gavel of the Eredar (Archimonde) + Gibbering Madness (Gorefiend) > Voidcore Greatstaff (Xhul'horac); this most clearly shows that when it comes to weapons, iLvl is generally king.

Hey guys,
is there any reason to prefer Edict of Argus as a holy instead of Voidcore Greatstaff?
You loose 20 int, 200 haste,117 spell power and 194 mastery to get 367 multistrike.

And I have a question about T18:
The 2 set bonus can give us 6% for 15sec. PoM got a CD of 10sec. So when I'm casting PoM on the active tank i should always have the 6% buff (and also when it bounces on other raid members).

When I'm understanding it correctly the 4 set bonus does the following things:
there is a 10% chance that a close target is healed aswell because the PoM heal effect splits. So it doesnt bounce on the target and doesn't duplicate PoM with the actual stacks. It just heals the close target and the target PoM bounced on. So I don't have a HPS increase because there is the same amount of healing - it just splits up on two targets to minimize the overhealing.
Is that correct? In that case I don't see the need of this bonus.

Yes, it's pretty much a constant 6% haste. Regarding the 4piece, hard to say, unfortunately, as no one's had a chance to try it and the wording is awkward. My guess is it just has a 10% to take the healing value of a PoM proc, and heal someone else for the same (ie effective 10% buff to PoM).

[ceddya]

Interesting that Jhazrun seems to have gone Disc for Mythic Tyrant. Apart from Jhazrun, there is also a glaring lack of Holy Priests in the top 10 guilds. While Holy Priests do seem viable, it's a little concerning that our top-end throughput ceiling is much lower than the other specs, especially since all we bring to the raid is output.

[Thirteen]

Interesting that Jhazrun seems to have gone Disc for Mythic Tyrant.

Not surprising at all. Everyone who's doing serious-serious progression should know there's a much higher value in double-disc than disc/holy.

[Spotnick]

Quick question about holy.. I'm not used to the spec at all, and I've been wondering of you should use POM on cooldown even if all stacks are not consumed.

Seems like they never are consumed according to POM Tracker addon, so I just started to do it on cooldown to try.

[Thirteen]

Quick question about holy.. I'm not used to the spec at all, and I've been wondering of you should use POM on cooldown even if all stacks are not consumed.

Seems like they never are consumed according to POM Tracker addon, so I just started to do it on cooldown to try.

Yes, you should. Two (and more) PoMs can exist independently of each other.

[antelope591]

Playing as a holy priest is starting to get very depressing....was in a pug with a monk earlier who's 4 set was doing 20-30% of his healing each fight. Pretty much every other healer has bonuses like this from their sets and class trinkets while holy has basically nothing from HFC -_-. I feel that a few months from now when everyone is pretty much geared holy will be obsolete outside of novelty purposes.

[KaPe]

I'd say few months is optimistic, it probably won't take more than few weeks. But at least we can brag that thanks to our class trinket, we have the longest casting heal in the game - if not the longest casting spell outside of hearthstone/portals. No one will take that away from us.

[Smartblonde]

Stack that mastery! Finally HFC is loaded with awesome multi items that you can pick up.

[timisxen]

Has anyone ever actually used Clarity of Purpose to notice that it refreshes Renew? I sorta found out accidentally messing around with things and it was something that I had never read anywhere before.

I know I am looking forward to messing around with it more now.

*In Serenity chakra obviously.

[PosPosPos]

Has anyone ever actually used Clarity of Purpose to notice that it refreshes Renew? I sorta found out accidentally messing around with things and it was something that I had never read anywhere before.

I know I am looking forward to messing around with it more now.

*In Serenity chakra obviously.

It only refreshes Renew on the main target and is only useful on stacked encounters. Probably good for fights like Gorefiend with a stacked + high sustained damage phase.

[Thirteen]

It only refreshes Renew on the main target and is only useful on stacked encounters. Probably good for fights like Gorefiend with a stacked + high sustained damage phase.

That's actually very interesting. I might actually give it a shot, possibly on Velhari too. That said, what's the HP breakpoint where Clarity's HPCast is larger than PoHs?

[Myllior]

That's actually very interesting. I might actually give it a shot, possibly on Velhari too. That said, what's the HP breakpoint where Clarity's HPCast is larger than PoHs?

Approximately 46% target health.

[KaPe]

Is that one by one comparison or does it include extra target for Clarity?

[Myllior]

It includes the extra target. Ignoring secondaries, as they affect CoP and PoH in the same manner, the spellpower coefficients, adjusted for the number of targets, are PoH = 5*2.21664 and CoP = 6*1.2*(2-a), where 'a' is the target's current health percentage. Set them equal and rearrange to get,

a = 2 - (5*2.21664)/(6*1.2) = 0.460666...

If it's being used for the purpose of refreshing Renews on people, then note that the above ignores that.

[Smartblonde]

Thoughts on our class trinket? So far I feel that it is meh but I submit this question to the number muncher type people for answers.

[maizensh]

Thoughts on our class trinket? So far I feel that it is meh but I submit this question to the number muncher type people for answers.

It's possibly the most positive description of the trinket i read so far
Most people would use other (more explicit) words than "meh"...

[Thirteen]

Thoughts on our class trinket? So far I feel that it is meh but I submit this question to the number muncher type people for answers.

I posted some math on the EU forums a while ago, I'll dig them up later. But essentially it's better to run with an empty slot, or at least that was the case when it was datamined as a +X cast time, +X mana cost, +X healing, now it's +Xct, +Xmc and +2X healing.

[Myllior]

The maths has been done already, but I haven't seen it shared, so just thought I'd give out the maths on the Tier 18 4 piece bonus, as Malivis was kind enough to test it and share how it works. The description given is roughly: If a target with a PoM of N stacks takes damage, the PoM will heal that person and bounce to another, leaving a PoM of N-1 stacks (i.e. normal PoM behaviour). Then, if the 4 piece procs, another target will receive a heal equal to what PoM heals for, and will also receive a PoM of N-2 stacks.

The maths leading to the number of heals received for a N-stack PoM for N = 0, 1, ..., 10 may be read here. The important result is that a 5-stack PoM will do 6.04 heals on average (if all bounces are consumed). This is a 20.8% increase, which is far below the 80% of the Tier 17 2 piece bonus; to match the extra PoM bounces of the T17 2pc, the proc chance of the T18 4pc would need to be increased to ~35%. It's worth noting that, since the extra heal component of the T18 4pc is on someone random, rather than someone who just took damage, it would almost definitely overheal more than the regular PoM bounces.

[Thirteen]

Thanks for the post. So the question is, is a mythic T18 4p better than mythic T18 2p + mythic T18 2p?

[VelvetRealm]

Very annoying to hang onto gear. So in simple terms: Im using T18 Helm/Legs and getting Chest. Should I keep T17 shoulders/gloves then? :/