crit as holy?

[frozenshade]

so how much crit should i be looking at having as holy? i ask this because im usually disc and i picked up some good holy stuff along the way in uldar and ive been asked to go holy. when i switch my gear my stats are

20% crit / 317 haste / 2230 SP (holy)

what should i take some hast away from crit? or keep building my haste or what?

[frozenshade]

well even as holy crit = free healing. on just about every COH or POH i get a free heal right after. so i dont wanna drop my crit to nothing

[hythos]

For a while, I had my priest above 28% Hoooly spell-crit, but spell-power was low (around 1500?).
Heals were still decent, and the tank practically always had Inspiration which further reduced physical damage taken by a fair amount. I couldn't say if the damage reduction was enough to off-set the extra +healpower, but Inspiration is definitely something to consider.

[Worshaka]

haste = reliable HPS increase at the cost of mana being burned faster
crit = unreliable HPS increase at no cost

This is pretty misleading and not exactly correct...

Haste does increase your HPS a lot more effectively than crit and when you think logically about casting faster, ie more spells, ie more mana. However, if you are healing a segment of the raid they take a finite amount of damage... that damage doesnt change because you have X haste. You still need to heal that incomming damage, whether you have 0 haste or 1000 haste that amount of damage will require the same amout of healign spells.

The only way haste burns your mana is if you decided to chain spam heals with little regard for overhealing or if you decide to sneak in extra heals that are supposed to be handled by someone else in the raid.

Also, haste has better returns with spells that have a longer cast time. Sure it's the same % applied to any spell but the gross effect on a spell that is 3 seconds long is far greater than a spell that is 1.5sec long. Considering holy has moved to PoM, Renew, Flash Heal & CoH as the primary spells and serendipity gives a massive haste buff for Gheal and PoH which are cast a lot mroe situationally... you may argue that haste now has less of an HPS effect that it did at the start of LK.

Crit on the other hand can increase your HPS but it's extremely conditional, so conditional and so liable to overhealing that you are just better off to forget it has a HPS effect. Instead crit will increase the amount of SoL procs you get and increase HC uptime. So crit will extend your mana pool and possibly provide you with some form of HPS increase that is probably too hard to work out accurately.

[frozenshade]

i see what your saying, does anyone have a decent balance between crit sp and haste? i was thinking around 2200 SP / 19-22% crit and 300 haste is decent.

what does anyone else think?

[Worshaka]

www.elitistjerks.com has some really good posts about numbers... I suggest you go study those posts and come up with your own opinion.

At the end of the day you want to get as much of everything as you can... and when it comes to balance there is more than crit and haste to balance... you need to balance, SP, Crit, Haste, Int, Stam, Spirit... The idea is to find a gear set that provides the best balance of everything... and that is probably a discussion that would be impossible to conduct in numbers alone.

[Qualia]

@OP:

Rules of Thumb for Holy
Stack haste up to 12-14%. Think hard about whether you need more than that, given raid buffs and talents.
Pick up as much intellect as you can. It's always valuable.
Spellpower is always good.
11 spirit = 4 Mp5, ignoring spellpower gains entirely. Given spellpower gains, a 2:1 ratio is acceptable.

Crit is always valuable, although less so once you break 30% raid-buffed (diminishing returns on ilvl points spent).

Rough goals for the start of Ulduar.25 are to have 2800 spellpower, 26-28% crit, and 12% haste, along with ~ 500 Mp5 I5SR fully raid-buffed.

Here you go =)

[Zka]

haste = reliable HPS increase at the cost of mana being burned faster
crit = unreliable HPS increase at no cost

Since you're not a paladin, I don't see why you would want crit at all.

Since you're apparently not understanding holy priests, why you would want to post here at all?

[Kalkulon]

The information you'll find on elitist jerks is dated. As of 3.1, crit for holy priests is far less important than it used to be, if anything due to the changes to holy concentration. It was briefly useful for the purpose of mana regen when clearcasting/holy concentration was changed the first time from 2% flat chance to chance on crit (because it would keep you out of the FSR longer) but now it's more or less a junk stat for holy. That isn't to say that it's not useful, but you should not gem for it, enchant for it or seek out crit gear over something with haste.

A majority of your healing should come from your group heals, i.e. circle of healing and prayer of healing. Whereas a disc priest will stack crit since he is typically hitting fewer targets (barring the occasional prayer of healing), a holy priest's crit is effectively higher simply due to the fact that he is hitting more targets at once. And really the extra healing from a crit isn't that big of a deal. Just like disc priests, the main reason you want to crit is for what it procs, not the bigger heal, especially since holy priests overheal for so much as it is anyway. If you're depending on crits to do extra healing for you, you will either be overhealing a lot or need more SP.

As of right now the best holy healing guide is available from Ensidia's main holy priest: http://www.ensidia.com/home/priest-holy-part-1-general/

Here is the condensed version:

Intellect > Haste > Spell Power > MP5 > Spirit > Crit

Spell power isn't that important once you hit 2k unbuffed, since a lot of your healing will still be overhealing. There also shouldn't be any issues with regen, since if you stack enough int, replenishment will fill in most gaps. Replenishment is actually much more powerful of a regen tool than holy concentration in its current state (further devaluing crit), and since OOFSR tricks don't work anymore due to the spirit nerf, a bigger mana pool is better than a higher crit rating.

[G l o w y r m]

...ive been asked to go holy...

This brings a tear to my eye, along with some anger!!

[AetherMcLoud]

well even as holy crit = free healing. on just about every COH or POH i get a free heal right after. so i dont wanna drop my crit to nothing

On top of that, critting flashheal means regeneration 50% more mana for 8 seconds.

[sonnymfp]

"The following stats are of value to healing priests: stamina (almost meaningless), intellect (major), spirit (major for holy, medium for disc), haste (medium-to-major), crit (major), spellpower (major) and Mp5 (low). You can consider items with mp5 on them, but be aware that they tend to be less valuable than items with spirit on them."

Although everyone has their own play style and preferences. Some prefer haste over crit, some prefer crit over haste, and some balance their stats. Don't listen to anyone trying to tell you crit isn't useful or that its the last priority.

[TwistedPower]

around 30-5 ish % crit is good, after that its realy better to get another stat, either haste or intelect. Haste drops your univeral cooldown to up to 1 second down from 1.5, though it does take a decent amount of haste to drop it that low, you may end up getting it. This is realy usfull for aoe damage when you just pres COH 4 times in a row. thats 2 seconds less that you had to spend healing and get back on a tank or w/e.

Also if you do allot of instant casts in order other then circle, like renew and shield, you get them out quicker.

Haste is realy important i think for single target tank healing, especially on fights where the tank takes a big magic damage burst. The reason is odds are with more haste it is easyer to keep the tank top off before it hits, and you get him back up faster after the hit especially if you want to use a Gheal becuase haste pluss sarendipity = awsome.

I would say 300-400 haste is agood range to have it. You shouldnt realy aim for 1 second UVC. With the shamen haste totem you should be fine.

If you have no mana problem and your in the ranges of crit and hast i just sated then, Honestly it realy doesnt matter what stat you get more of at that point. If your doing awsome now, a little tweek is realy not going to give you an "OMG that is AWSOME why wasnt i doing THAT?!" kind of thing.

[sonnymfp]

Haste drops your univeral cooldown to up to 1 second down from 1.5, though it does take a decent amount of haste to drop it that low, you may end up getting it. This is realy usfull for aoe damage when you just pres COH 4 times in a row.

COH has a 6 second cooldown.

[Doctavice]

crit also helps out a regen statistic, I believe the EJ forums has 1% crit equating to about ~12mp5 in terms of higher uptime on holy concentration, as well as proving surge of light procs & more insipiration uptime.

[Izenhart]

@OP:

Rough goals for the start of Ulduar.25 are to have 2800 spellpower, 26-28% crit, and 12% haste, along with ~ 500 Mp5 I5SR fully raid-buffed.

Here you go =)

2800 spellpower 28% crit and 12% haste raidbuffed before entering Ulduar?

No...just...no.

Prioritize Crit untill you get around 25% selfbuffed holy crit, then wisely stack up more haste than crit.

[EzriEU]

Haste drops your univeral cooldown to up to 1 second down from 1.5, though it does take a decent amount of haste to drop it that low, you may end up getting it. This is realy usfull for aoe damage when you just pres COH 4 times in a row. thats 2 seconds less that you had to spend healing and get back on a tank or w/e.

You really shouldn't be posting!

That's totally outdated and wrong.

[Zka]

Guys I have tried a lot of things, mp5+haste stacking, crit stacking, currently I'm spellpower heavy. All of these work well unless you're lame at healing.
A healthy balance of stats will be more than perfect in most situations. Even Poptisse (in the Ensidia guide) says this. She's stacking int+haste which I would not do, but I guess this works for her
Of course in some fights int+crit are better than other stats (hello Vezax), on other fights when you need mobility, crit and haste are nice, etcetc. Swap out a couple of pieces and you're fine.

[Tumdumdumdum]

2800 spellpower 28% crit and 12% haste raidbuffed before entering Ulduar?

No...just...no.

Prioritize Crit untill you get around 25% selfbuffed holy crit, then wisely stack up more haste than crit.

First priority is 10% haste, then maybe crit to 25%. However holy I suggest stacking crit and haste equaly when your GCD is 1 sec.

As holy I run raid buffed 3000 SP, 15% haste, 25% crit, I'd wish I had more haste for holy, I feel I don't really need the crit (I got it since Disc is my mainspec, and not regemming when I switch specs :P).

But it's what ppl said, heal the way you prefer, it will probably work out both ways, important is the 10% haste.

[AetherMcLoud]

First priority is 10% haste, then maybe crit to 25%. However holy I suggest stacking crit and haste equaly when your GCD is 1 sec.

Getting your GCD down to 1 second requires A WHOLE FUCKING LOT(tm) of haste.