Holy Priest stats help

[kyoharu]

So I know, haste is important, crit is important. The gear I am seeing though, Emblem or otherwise, tends to only have one or the other never both. So I'm wondering what's a good balance? How much haste should I have? I figure once I reach a good haste rating, I can focus some on crit as well. My haste is low atm, so I'm trying to build it up.

[Zeuq]

So I know, haste is important, crit is important. The gear I am seeing though, Emblem or otherwise, tends to only have one or the other never both. So I'm wondering what's a good balance? How much haste should I have? I figure once I reach a good haste rating, I can focus some on crit as well. My haste is low atm, so I'm trying to build it up.

Both Haste and Crit are useful. I think Crit is definitely most valuable until in the 25-30% range because of SoL and HC procs. After around that point, it's contribution to your longevity starts to drop off fairly sharply and then it's primarily just providing throughput stat mostly for your CD limited spells PoM and CoH. Haste, ofcourse, makes a solid throughput contribution mostly by lowering your GCD; thus, it is good for fitting in more filler spells, FH and Renew, as well as helping with burst healing situations. However, unlike Crit, Haste has a negative effect on your longevity which means you will need to compensate for Haste with regen itemization in some way.

So, IMO, get your Crit up to the 25-30% range first, because it is valuable for both throughput and regen. After that, focus on Haste until you get good balance. After that balance, I'd generally say try to maintain it. I'm currently running with roughly 30% Crit and 20% Haste raid buffed, and I feel like I have a good balance between the two and will likely be trying to maintain that sort of balance as I continue to gear up so that I'll probably be looking at something around 35% Crit and 25% Haste in ICC gear. Your balance may be different, and it depends upon your casting style and the other healers that you raid with, so you may find you favor one stat more or less than I do.

As for Haste and Crit gear, well, you just won't see it from Emblems because EVERYONE wants it and I don't think Blizzard typically likes to give perfectly itemized gear quite so easily available. Mages and Warlocks prefer those stats over Spirit after the Hit cap, and Disc Priests always prefer them since they'll get enough Spirit on the slots where they can't get them. Holy Priests can make good use of them too but Spirit is also a good stat and should not be ignored because it provides a good balance of regen and throughput. In fact, most of my gear is of the Crit/Spirit or Haste/Spirit variety with I think only a couple pieces being Haste/Crit, and this way I can gem primarily for throughput rather than for regen. But, again, YMMV based upon the content you're doing as well as style and the composition of your healing team.

[kyoharu]

Thanks much for the advice. I'll definatly try and follow it

[Doctavice]

Haste has a negative effect on your longevity which means you will need to compensate for Haste with regen itemization in some way.

I agree with this in general but it does assume that with your improved haste you maintain the same activity level. There is an argument that by getting those heals off faster you might allow yourself to have slightly more downtime & maintain the same regen level; granted this is encounter based in all likelihood won't be the case but I figured I'd play the devil's advocate

[Waterwings]

I highly dissagree with Zeuq,

As holy priest i have been mainly focussing on haste. This is cause you can put More healing in less time, and you can be way more efficient with more haste.

Crit, yeah its nice. but i never depend on a crit heal, yeah a crit heal brings more manaregen, but. I dont have any manaregen as it is.

Here is my armory link, so you can see what i've done.
http://armory.wow-europe.com/charact...l&n=Waterwings

greets
PS. In my past experience it has showen me that a priest can be good i with either crit or haste as "priority stat", its just what you prefer to play with.

[Kelesti]

Generally, I would advise priests seeking to find their balance to search for Crit first, and haste after. Crit helps stabilise your mana pool, gives you "free/instant" cast Surge of Lights, and generally affects burst healing nicely. After about 25-30% (Your mileage may vary) raidbuffed Crit, you don't really start having "more" Holy Concentration uptime, nor do you start gaining "more" procs of Surge of Light (You do, but realistically not enough to change playstyle or anything else at that point).

After that, then I would suggest moving towards Haste. And there is a fair chunk of gear that has both crit and haste, but it has zero spirit. So you make the choice, do you want risky 100% thoroughput, or balanced thoroughput or regen?

Some sites put some arbitrary number on haste and say "this is a number you should strive for". I could say "You should strive for 1000 mp5 while casting, 4k spell power, 35% crit and 28% haste all self buffed" and it makes no difference as these are all what you're being told, and not the reasons why.

Elitist Jerks, for example, pushes out a "soft cap" on haste somewhere between 500-600, and the reason for that is your instant casts (and Flash Heal) reach 1 second Global Cooldown during a Bloodlust. I don't know about you, but Bloodlust isn't up 100%, 80%, or even 50% of a fight (unless you're doing Naxx in your 5-man heroic farmed 232 tier gear, grats on "progression" guys : ).

According to them, pushing past that "cap" of haste would have negative, or at least negligible value. I say otherwise (but of course, don't have the regen to support 800 haste at the moment. :P), given that if your Flash Heal is faster than the Global Cooldown, it still "lands" faster, and you could switch to Greater Heal for more "oomph" given too much haste. Having more at all times is better than trimming down because of a buff that's up a fraction of the time.

And as Zeuq said, if all you do is chain cast, haste does have a negative reaction to your regen. With the exception of LOLwer Spire, you generally don't play "catch up" with spells to get ahead; if you do you're bringing too many healers.

[Waterwings]

Whats all this talk about mana problems?

I havent had "Real" mana problems since, like. my old blue gear in which i did naxx.

Nowadays i barely need an innervate on any fight. And that is with full raid buffs including haste in buffs heroism for the fight, no int/mp5 gemming, actualy i got 760 haste, while still wearing crit bracers.. My gemming is: Red=SP Yellow=SP-haste Blue = SP-spirit.

Now i do use an intelect trinket, which ofcourse boosts my replenishment regen by alot. This will probardly mean that i have to switch maybe a few gems for some int for the hardmodes in ICC.

Nevertheless, if you are an average raider and know your game, have made progress etc, You will not need to gem for mp5/regen that much.

Remember our job is to effective heal, and to overheal as less as possible. We are no paladins or druids, we DO go oom if we spam.

[rubberbands]

Some sites put some arbitrary number on haste and say "this is a number you should strive for" [...] it makes no difference as these are all what you're being told, and not the reasons why.Elitist Jerks, for example, pushes out a "soft cap" on haste somewhere between 500-600, and the reason for that is your instant casts (and Flash Heal) reach 1 second Global Cooldown during a Bloodlust.

Exactly. Alot of people like to quote the EJ compendium as the be it and end all or bible of healing. It is not. Find out for yourself what you need more. Ultimately, you must convince yourself that what you are leaning towards is sound, meets what you require and practical. Just try to avoid the nasty fallacious sliperry slopes of healing.

For example, if youre thinking of going crit, ask yourself why. Do you think your SOL proc and HC uptime is insufficient? How much would adding crit rating actually help this? Is your aim to get small COHs to crit? You must be able to adequately answer these questions first.

I also feel that too many people talk about "caps" without defining what the cap is about, or talking about "going faster than 1 second GCD" without mentioning when that happens

And as Zeuq said, if all you do is chain cast, haste does have a negative reaction to your regen.

This. Whether or not haste makes you "oom faster" is really in your hands. I have a relatively higher haste than most characters and still consider mana as a secondary or tertiary problem. One of the biggest fallacies of healing: "haste makes you oom faster"

Personally I would recommend going for haste. It puts you in great control of your own heals, if you can get what i mean. Remember, many people think that healers only have one resource:mana. In actuality the much more pressing resource is time. But like I said this is personal opinion.What other people have posted here so far is still somewhat sound so to be fair to them, do consider the other opinions as well

[Welund]

good players dont need loads of haste to heal properly

Its not about "Needing" it. Its just one of many paths defining the way you like to respond to situations.

[Kaysha]

Basically, I have the feeling this issue is approached from the wrong side.

What it revolves around, is the incoming DPS on the raid. It needs to be offset by a HPS that matches it, and this amount of HPS comes from all sources that give healing (PW:S, Shadow Priest healing, etc ...).The main part, of course, comes from the healing cadre. I will assume only healing coming from the healing cadre in my thoughts below.

The effect of Haste is to increase the maximum HPS possible. But this is something different than the required HPS over the raid as a whole.

If the HPS is lower than the incoming DPS, the raid will drop lower and lower in hitpoints, in the long run leading to casualties and potentially a wipe. In fact, raiding like this makes it a DPS race. This is where Haste rating can help, to increase the HPS to the point where it equals - or surpasses - the incoming DPS.

If the HPS is higher than the incoming DPS, the raid should be safe and no one should be dieing. Increasing the Haste rating doesn't do anything here; you're not casting healing spells if you don't have to and you waste no mana on spells you're not casting, or are you? The only thing Haste does in this case is that it liberates you quicker, allowing you to cast the next spell sooner, as needed. It prevents you from being locked in a spellcast, while you should already be casting the next one.

There's no downside that I can see to getting more Haste.

Critical Strike Rating is a different thing altogether. You cannot count on a crit. If you do, you will find your targets dieing under your hands, when that crit doesn't come. Yes, a critical strike on your heal is nice, if your target is low on health, but there's no guarantee that you will get one. Even if you can boost your crit chance, it's still that: a chance. It causes greater fluctuations in your healing output as whole, over which you have no influence. With Haste, you have (much) more control over it.

As such, I see two downsides to aiming for high crit:
a) You can get a crit heal, while you were just topping someone off. That's a lot of wasted HPS, especially if you aim for crits to carry your sustained HPS;
b) The RNG can curse you, causing you to not get that crit that you needed on your low HP target. Because you didn't get that crit, the target dies;

Haste in that respect performs better in both scenario's. In scenario a), you just top off the target faster. In scenario b), you get a faster heal off on your target, allowing for a faster followup (or another healer to heal the target as well, after that). The only downside is that it costs mana, where a crit doesn't.

[rubberbands]

Yes, a critical strike on your heal is nice, if your target is low on health, but there's no guarantee that you will get one. Even if you can boost your crit chance, it's still that: a chance. It causes greater fluctuations in your healing output as whole, over which you have no influence. With Haste, you have (much) more control over it.

Same thinking

[Zeuq]

I highly dissagree with Zeuq,

As holy priest i have been mainly focussing on haste. This is cause you can put More healing in less time, and you can be way more efficient with more haste.

Crit, yeah its nice. but i never depend on a crit heal, yeah a crit heal brings more manaregen, but. I dont have any manaregen as it is.

I'm not quite sure what exactly you disagree with me on so highly since your Crit is in the 25-30% amount I mentioned. I actually prefer Haste as a throughput stat over Crit because, as others mentioned, it's dependable where Crit is not and because the thing that Holy Priests excel at, raid-wide burst damage, benefits more from Haste than from Crit. The main reason I recommended Crit as a first priority is because it is also a regen stat. Given that the OP is specifically asking about how to value stats, it's important to consider the entire value of Crit and Haste.

Yes, looking at your armory, you get away with less Crit than I do, and I'll take your word that you don't have mana problems. OTOH, I have a little more Crit and a fair bit less Haste (though I'm in the process of switching gemming for more Haste as I see how it affects my mana) but I also use two throughput trinkets instead of just one, and I also have no mana problems. Using that regen trinket is the price you pay for all that extra Haste when you could have extra SP instead. Given the option for throughput stats, IMO, SP wins out because it affects everything, where Haste doesn't scale well with CoH and PoM.


Also, I completely agree with Kelesti with regard to the suppose Haste cap. Yes, Haste loses some value with Heroism/Blood Lust up, but I don't think it's enough to make a significant impact in the value of Haste. It's up 40s out of out of the fight which is only 11% of a 6m fight so, at worst, any Haste paste the H/BL soft-cap is losing 11% of it's value. Moreover, H/BL is usually during burn phases of a fight, so it seldom has any direct correlation with times when healers need to push more HPS (with the exception of Saurfang, but even then it's more of an afterthought) thus, you ought to be able to cover whatever healing needs to be done during Heroism without it, so that potentially lost throughput doesn't mean a whole lot anyway except for possibly a few spare GCDs toward DPS. IOW, we're probably looking at a neglible loss on the value of Haste past the H/BL soft-cap on the order of just 2-3%.

[misazadia]

When in doubt, you could always refer to:

http://eu.wowarmory.com/character-sh...ill&n=Poptisse

atleast just for some inspiration

[rubberbands]

Yes, Haste loses some value with Heroism/Blood Lust up, but I don't think it's enough to make a significant impact in the value of Haste. It's up 40s out of out of the fight which is only 11% of a 6m fight so, at worst, any Haste paste the H/BL soft-cap is losing 11% of it's value. Moreover, H/BL is usually during burn phases of a fight, so it seldom has any direct correlation with times when healers need to push more HPS (with the exception of Saurfang, but even then it's more of an afterthought) [...]

Well said. One more point I would like to expand abit on what shorter GCDs mean. As we all know healing is very time sensitive. I always like to call the GCD a "danger window" because once youre in the GCD, you lose control of what you can do. Yes, your prom can still bounce and hot(s) will still roll, but you still lose control. The raid situation is always changing. A shorter GCD always lets you regain control of your character faster, and react and make changes faster. (faster reaction not = sniping for the record)

Also remember, while SOL procs are instant, they are still on the GCD. Even if crit "helps" to proc SOL more, youre still waiting on the same (slower) GCD, regardless of whether the flash heal was instant or not.