Tank healing as Holy

[Azyoulike]

A comparable logic can be applied to other classes or situations. Raw HPS isn't a good qualifier. Likewise, GHeal may prove to have the higher HPS than FHeal but the control of burst healing with FHeal + Serendipity may prove superior than a GHeal spam. So, don't take such numbers too seriously when comparing different classes. How the spells work tends to be more important.

Well if you don't take the numbers seriously then you throw any theorycrafting out the window and are left with just 'it felt good for me' and 'the tank didn't die, lol' to measure success.

For single target healing raw HPS is definitely something to consider. You can attempt to consider sustained and burst HPS separately, and absorption versus direct heals versus hots - but you have to look at these things quantitatively first.

[Zusterke]

Well if you don't take the numbers seriously then you throw any theorycrafting out the window and are left with just 'it felt good for me' and 'the tank didn't die, lol' to measure success.

The world isn't black or white. I just meant that the numbers are one thing, but they require further interpretation. When I see GHeal come out on top as HPS spell for a holy priest won't make me spam just GHeal on my tank think that's the best method. The 2.5s bridge between 2 heals is potentially dangerous and the FHeal spam has an ace up its sleeve: a hasted GHeal. While sustained, this does not increase the hps it could be noted that this allows more control and could yield a safer route. Despite that, GHeal will deliver the best HPS.

Raw HPS is one thing ofc and it definitely matters... but if I take a log from anub 10m HM then I see our MT took 3623 Damage per second during the fight on average. Clearly even our Fheal spam is capable of producing that as hps. That's what I consider misleading about hps. This doesn't make HPS irrelevant though! I'm just trying to give it a perspective.

[Azyoulike]

The world isn't black or white. I just meant that the numbers are one thing, but they require further interpretation. When I see GHeal come out on top as HPS spell for a holy priest won't make me spam just GHeal on my tank think that's the best method. The 2.5s bridge between 2 heals is potentially dangerous and the FHeal spam has an ace up its sleeve: a hasted GHeal. While sustained, this does not increase the hps it could be noted that this allows more control and could yield a safer route. Despite that, GHeal will deliver the best HPS.

Sure, but you still have to consider the overall HPS numbers to see if for example holy can compete with disc even using gheal spam. It certainly can't using FH spam, especially if the holy priest has specced for SoL.

SoL is a huge part of the problem for holy tank healing. It is afaik the ONLY healing talent in the game that reduces your throughput. It should have been modified to allow for crits but with a ICD.

[Zusterke]

A good argument. SoL is indeed a difficult thing to place in terms of tank healing.

One could reason that the crit procing SoL, providing a bigger heal, (re)starting inspiration would top off the tank (or likely to do so) which is forgiving for the smaller heal that follows.
But on the other hand, the SoL heal is instant. While this has benefits, it also has a downside: the GCD starts after the heal. This creates a 3s timeframe between the SoL heal and the next heal (minus haste, ofc). Not only that... but the instant heal is given at a moment we need it the least: just after we topped the tank with a crit heal. We could use binding heal as workaround but that would kill the efficiency gain of SoL.

Personally, I always tend to throw a new PoM on the tank before using SoL, which seems grant a smoother transition to the normal FHeal spam but in reality it only delays the 3s break. In a difficult situation, where a 3s pauze in healing is not (or hardly) permitted, SoL would be a pain in more ways than just its inability to crit. This definitely adds up to the weaknesses for holy priests to heal in hard content. But I could note it hasn't caused me any real problems in the content I (tank)healed. I should discern that my tank healing experience is limited to normal mode content... I don't pug HM's and my guild has better classes/specs for that job

[Azyoulike]

But I could note it hasn't caused me any real problems in the content I (tank)healed. I should discern that my tank healing experience is limited to normal mode content... I don't pug HM's and my guild has better classes/specs for that job

Nobody is disputing that holy can function in normal modes as a tank healer if it has to. Just that it's sub-optimal. Which is really a shame because holy used to be the 'flexible' healer, and now druids own that niche.

[Zusterke]

I couldn't agree more.

[Nightseye]

I find it quite comical that everyone thinks disc is the bees knees, sure it's a very nice spec but it's most definitely a niche spec and as a result niche specs suffer from very tangible weaknesses. While disc provides amazing HPS and great survivability from damage prevention, what happens if a few raid healers die early? Disc struggles to keep up multiple targets taking spike damage... holy has the ability to plug any hole, a raid healer dies holy can up it's HPS by spamming a bit harder, lose a tank healer and holy can fill that roll adequetely as well.

I want some of this pot that you're smoking, it's obviously high quality stuff.

Any disc priest with half a brain knows how to watch boss mod timers and pre-shield entire raids with PWS before an incoming damage spike. They also know how to reactively shield low targets to buy other healers that extra second to land the life saving heal. Disc priest's role is not to move health bars up, but to prevent it from going down. And knowing how to do the latter effectively separates the good disc priests from the terrible ones.

On the other hand, if your holy paladin drops off the face of the earth on a 25 man h-anub'arak attempt and you try to fill his/her spot with a holy priest, your poor MT will get smashed into bits by the next Freezing Slash. Moving into Icecrown Citadel next week, single target throughput will be much more important as the bosses hit like trains loaded with trucks while tank avoidance got cut by 20%.

A holy priest should be the last class/spec that you stick onto a tank as quite literally every other class/spec is more optimal at tank healing than a priest is. Resto Shamans for instance has very high single target throughput and comes second only to a holy paladin. Resto druids are also far superior in tank healing as their HoTs alone can out HpS a holy priest, and this is not counting their buffed Nourish at 1.1 second cast which crits for 12k @ 3500 SP. So your argument of holy priest filling in a tank healing role in a raid when another tank healer dies is just plain foolish.