Holy Questions

[gaymer77]

I've been looking over at icy-veins at their holy priest guide and have noticed a few things that don't make any sense to me so I thought I'd ask here.

1. Why is Symbol of Hope (lvl 60 talent) recommended to NOT be picked up? I don't have mana issues when I'm on my priest but I find that having an innervate type of spell for the other healers to be something helpful.
2. Why Divinity over say Halo for a lvl 90 talent? Halo just seems to me to be the superior talent as it has no limit to how many it heals and even helps deal damage (even while in SOR) on every mob.
3. On the lvl 100 talents, Benediction is the recommended choice with Apothesis being a good alternative. Why is Circle of Healing so bad and recommended to NOT take it? That just seems like it would be the choice to take as its an instant cast heal with a relatively short CD.

[Deleted]

because the alternatives do better numbers

[Ynna]

1. Because it means missing out on Light of the Naaru, which probably saves more mana in the long run. Our Holy Words are our most efficient spells, so being able to cast them more is very valuable. Your other healers shouldn't have significant mana issues either and if they do, something went wrong somewhere.

2. Divinity increases throughput more, leading to more healing, especially at crucial moments. The damage from Halo is mostly inconsequential. It's not that Halo is a particularly bad spell, it just that it performs worse than Divinity, numbers wise. It might have been worth it if it made up for some weakness we have, but Holy Priests can already do a respectable amount of raid healing without the talent.

3. I sorta feel bad for Circle of Healing, since it used to be one of our key spells, but the alternatives are simply better. I personally dislike Benediction as a top-level talent, since it neither feels nor plays very fun, but both it and Apotheosis will end up increasing your healing more. I especially like Apotheosis, since it gives you an extra "oh shit" button.

I think you can make a case for picking up Halo and Circle of Healing if you, for whatever reason, need more group healing tools, but I don't hink you can ever justify using Symbol of Hope outside of some very niche raid healing strategies.

[Deleted]

more mana is more healing whether you have mana issues or not

[Nurasu]

more mana is more healing whether you have mana issues or not

Some of the shit I read on here is nothing short of hilarious.

[Ynna]

more mana is more healing whether you have mana issues or not

While this is theoretically true, the current state of the game allows to go for throughput rather than mana conservation or regen. A healer's problem right now is much more likely going to be throughput rather than going out of mana and going out of mana before the end of an encounter generally signals another problem (bad communication among healers, being undergeared for your content, inefficient use of spells, etc.) that can be more easily solved.

In the past, mana management was a much more important aspect of healing and talents like Symbol of Hope might have been worth it.

[Nurasu]

While this is theoretically true

It's not even true in theory, and it's why Symbol of Hope is ranked below Light of the Naaru in almost all situations. There's a cap on how much healing you can do, and 99% of the time, it's not based on how much mana you have, it's how much raid damage has been taken. More damage = more healing, more mana =/= more healing if you have enough. Disc is the only healer atm where more mana can actually mean more healing because you can be more preemptive, but Wisdom is going to do way more than Symbol of Hope and doesn't completely gut your Holy Priest's HPS.

[Memento1]

It's true enough more mana equals more healing, but more HEALING also equals more healing. So in the case of Symbol of Hope, you have to do the math on whether your other healers doing more healing for 12 seconds while you do nothing is more healing than you can do by having more Holy Words over the course of the encounter. Also whether you need the increased healing for a specific 12-second window in the fight or whether increased healing every 20 seconds or so is better. In pretty much all cases, the second scenario is better.

For instance if you're in a small raid with 2-3 healers, you contribute more in a crisis by actually doing your own healing than by increasing your other healer's healing a little while you do nothing. If you're in a large raid with 4-5 healers, I know of no mechanic that can't be handled by at most 2 raid CDs at once. Which can be done easily without Symbol of Hope and still have healers, CDs, and mana to spare.

[Deleted]

if you dont turn more mana into more healing you might want to consider investing in a keyboard

symbol is bad because the alternative is better not because mana is bad

[Ynna]

It's not even true in theory, and it's why Symbol of Hope is ranked below Light of the Naaru in almost all situations. There's a cap on how much healing you can do, and 99% of the time, it's not based on how much mana you have, it's how much raid damage has been taken. More damage = more healing, more mana =/= more healing if you have enough. Disc is the only healer atm where more mana can actually mean more healing because you can be more preemptive, but Wisdom is going to do way more than Symbol of Hope and doesn't completely gut your Holy Priest's HPS.

I'm nitpicking, but I hold that it is true in theory, but it's just irrelevant in the current content. If our mana was as scarce as it was in, say, the beginning of Cataclysm, more mana would definitely mean more healing.

[Deleted]

1. Light of the Naaru currently is the best. It increases your throughput by allowing more frequent use of your Holy Words. This works well with your Divinity up-time and Holy Words by themselves are rly strong.

2. Divinity is very strong, especially when you stagger your Holy Words in such a way as to chain the Divinity buff. This works eaven better with 2 and 4 set in ToS and The Light of the Naaru talent. You can have 50% up-time on the buff and like 100% up-time when u rly need some big healing.

3. Circle of healing is not picked because Benediction adds just to much healing and healing from Circle of Healing is almost the same as Player of Healing and Circle of Healing wont interact with Holy Words reductions (Serendipity) as Player of Healing will. This again helps with Divinity up-time.

And lets not forget about our big golden trait Cosmic Ripple that again interact with Holy Words.

You probably see the pattern here by now. Some talents works well with the new sets and interact with Holy priest core abilities very good. So the whole point is more holy word reductions = more healing from those Holy Words spells = better Divinity up-time = more HPS.

[Nurasu]

I'm nitpicking, but I hold that it is true in theory, but it's just irrelevant in the current content. If our mana was as scarce as it was in, say, the beginning of Cataclysm, more mana would definitely mean more healing.

He specifically said if you have mana issues or not. I guess the goal is to end at 100% mana, so I'll go pick up Symbol, 2 mana trinkets, and prepot with a mana pot and watch my HPS explode. I guess I imagined the days of reforging out of spirit. If you want to talk theory, in theory you want to reach your maximum HPS with the bare minimum of mana left over. Any extra is a complete waste. You cannot heal more damage than there is by having more mana.

[Danner]

I've been looking over at icy-veins at their holy priest guide and have noticed a few things that don't make any sense to me so I thought I'd ask here.

1. On the lvl 100 talents, Benediction is the recommended choice with Apothesis being a good alternative. Why is Circle of Healing so bad and recommended to NOT take it? That just seems like it would be the choice to take as its an instant cast heal with a relatively short CD.

The other two questions were perfectly covered in this thread - but I wanted to add on this.

Circle of Healing used to be amazing back in the Cataclysm era. It healed for a ton on its own, and you could chain it with Prayer of Healing for an orgasmic 11 target healing combo explosion of green numbers that, combined with the mastery, led to literal rainfall of green numbers on your screen. It made holy priests really really awesome at AoE as we could with some precasting literally undo any big raidwide hit on a 10 second cooldown. And even on its own you could clutch-save a whole group of people.

I adore what you can do with Circle of Healing. I adore the spell. But it is not what we have today.

• Circle of Healing just ain't healing for a lot anymore.
  
  This is a number balance thing. Every expansion has a leaning on new toys being awesome.... but due to the bottom line being on a budget (all healers have to be balanced), something has to give. And that is obviously the old heals. Legion introduced the new 1 minute spells, and they are the most awesome thing ever - but the cost is that other AoE heals are rather meh. You need special procs before Prayer of Healing feels like it does anything. Yes, I am exaggerating here, but search your feelings - you know it to be true. A long time has passed since WoTLK where one CoH could heal half a player HP pool.
  
  I fear/assume the next expansion will take away the power of the chakra heals in favour of [[insert new toy here]]. Enjoy Serenity topping off a tank on an instant cooldown while you can.
  
• Dumber smart healing
  
  The spell used to be awesome because it was guaranteed triage. No matter what, as long as somebody needed the healing, it would heal them up, prioritized on the lowest members first. Now it is just healing injured allies. Doesn't matter if they need the healing or not. It significantly diminishes the value of the spell.
  
  At least they didn't give it the full PoH treatment where it just heals the closest players. I believe that is a matter of time, and the only reason it isn't doing that already is because nobody is actually using this spell right now.
  
• No Serendipity interaction
  
  The main objection I have to Circle of Healing is that it doesn't do much for Serendipity. There is no serendipity spell reduction by casting CoH. And psychologically it feels like a wasted cast when you do something that doesn't interact with Serendipity. I loathe Renew for the same reason, and I can (and have) made a pretty strong argument that if you ever feel like casting Renew you should just cast Flash Heal instead.
  
  It would be super easy to fix this. But nobody did. And that leads me to the big conclusion:
  
• Devs want us to stop using it
  
  IMO, this is the main reason. CoH used to be smart, automatic fire-and-forget triage healing. It made life too easy for us healers, and the devs have hit all such heals very hard with the nerfbat. But, it was the big saving grace of the holypriest spec, which was otherwise riddled with ridiculous class design issues (chakra, lightwell clicking, mana starvation, etc). CoH was the spell that everyone loved. And for good reason. To take away this toy... that would be controversial and doom the spec.
  
  Back when Legion was launched, that was exactly what happened. CoH was culled as a part of the smartheal purge. Holypriests were (rightfully) up in arms about it. The most fun you had as a holypriest healer was to throw PoH+CoH combos around, and legion was taking that away. Fsck that! Not many playes had tried out the new legion spells and discovered how awesome they were. Not everyone would. To quell those players, myself included, CoH was added back in as a talent. Competing with fricking holyform and a major throughput talent. This stopped the hard feelings. And also any chance of the spell ever being used.
  
  I do like the spell being around though. Because, the next expansion is coming. And it will nerf the legion spells in favour of new toys. And at that point, maybe the Serendipity interaction ain't so important anymore. Of course, the chance is still that the alternative is that it gets the PoH treatment.

Time will tell