Noob Holy Question

[jworley]

Ok. First of all, I will admit to still being a bit of a noob when playing priest (long time warrior tank who decided to play healer for a while.. ), but as I heal in naxx I'm noticing alot of gear with both +hit and large amounts of spirit. Now in my mind, I would say that +hit is a strictly dps talent, but now I find myself questioning that a little. Is +hit of any use to a holy raid/instance healing priest?

[coblade14]

Ok. First of all, I will admit to still being a bit of a noob when playing priest (long time warrior tank who decided to play healer for a while.. ), but as I heal in naxx I'm noticing alot of gear with both +hit and large amounts of spirit. Now in my mind, I would say that +hit is a strictly dps talent, but now I find myself questioning that a little. Is +hit of any use to a holy raid/instance healing priest?

not at all..hit is completely useles... your heals will not miss...or it would be very bad news..

[Neichus]

Well, small exception there: Razuvious in Naxx25 requires priests to MC so it's nice to have some hit gear around if you're called on to do that. But that's the sole exception I'm aware of.

[Danner]

Hit is only useful for offensive spells. Mindcontrol and Shackle are the only two offensive spells you cast that you reasonably want to never miss with, but as far as possible you should leave those to the shadowpriests.

All cloth gets intellect and stamina. Most gear also get some form of spellpower on it, though DPS gear usually get more of it.
It's the fourth and fifth stat that matters, but it matters a lot.

Healing gear is itemized with mana regen.
This means healing gear has a lot of spirit and/or MP5 as your final stats, and to a lesser degree, possibly also crit and haste.

DPS gear is itemized with hit.
Spellhit is always present on such gear, and is a very good stat for DPSers, but useless for healers. The hit is meant to repulse healers from rolling on it.
Hit gear also has spirit on it at times, which may be a semi-useful stat for DPSers. But not really much so for spriests. Hit gear may have MP5 on it as well, but that's usually utterly useless. For a really good piece of gear, you want the fifth stat to be crit or haste.

Sometimes, hitgear is an upgrade for a healer anyway. I would recommend not rolling on it anyway. Because while it may be a major upgrade for you now, it just means that your old gear is really crappy. Leave the hitgear to the DPSers, and wait for a real piece of gear to drop. Hit gear has very little regen on it, and as a healer you want lots of it.

Sometimes non-hitgear is an upgrade for a DPSer. They roll on it, and sometimes they win. Live with it, DPSers do this sometimes when they are very very close to or over the hit cap, and they should be allowed to do so. As a priest healer you are at the very bottom of the gear barrel in such regard. If a piece of non-hit gear is appealing to a DPSer, it's usually because it has very low manaregen anyway.

Some healing gear has spirit, some has not. Gear without spirit usually has a lot more intellect than normal. As such, non-spirit gear is usually very nice for a disc priest, so it's usually good etiquette to pass such gear to them if it's a good upgrade for them. As a holypriest, you get a lot more out of spirit than any other class. While it's still not really better than intellect, it's not really much worse either. For a disc priest, intellect is vastly superior to spirit.

Ulduar non-hit gear is usually filled with very low regen stats. This is on purpose, blizzard is trying to tone down the regen of healers even further. Don't expect much upgrade in terms of manaregen in ulduar, all ilvl219 items from Uld10 are unconditionally worse in regen than ilvl213 items from Naxx25. Very few ilvl226 from Uld25 are better than the Naxx/25 versions. As far as regen goes at least!

[dsmet]

I agree with what the poster above me said. I usually go for Intellect as well. You get some spirit anyway, and having a bigger mana-pool helps a lot with Replenishment (even though i feel they will nerf it next, as they keep saying mana regen is still not low enough)

[derevka]

Well, small exception there: Razuvious in Naxx25 requires priests to MC so it's nice to have some hit gear around if you're called on to do that. But that's the sole exception I'm aware of.

No you don't need +hit anymore for MC on these mobs.

[G l o w y r m]

No you don't need +hit anymore for MC on these mobs.

I've heard the same thing. I even tried it out one night and it was fine. If you ever find yourself having trouble with MC on Raz, check your distance to your target, make sure you're staying pretty damn close, that matters big time.

On topic, spirit has been turned into a secondary type DPS stat for DPS people. Mages and locks for example have talents or buffs or whatever that get them benefits from spirit. Heck, they need to regen mana too you know.

But yeah, as said above, hit is useless for healing, heals ALWAYS land. If you see hit on it, it's for DPS. Doesn't hurt to grab some in case you ever want to try out shadow, or 2 expansions from now there might be a fight where you have to MC and shackle mobs for 5 minutes straight while warriors bandage themselves, you never know with Blizzard!

[Izenhart]

But yeah, as said above, hit is useless for healing, heals ALWAYS land

But I bet it'd be hella nice..
"Now, all the healing spells will require an hit cap of 250 to be effective"
Later that evening, in a 5v5 arena,
"Omfg who healed for 26k the Arms Warrior?!"