Holy Priest Gearing Questions.

[Waddy]

From what I've read on the forums it seems pretty much that people aren't happy with our t10, so my question is would it be better to buy the random items from the frost badge merchant before I buy my 10 man suit?

My main concern with this is I'd be losing like 4% haste and gaining a TON of crit which isn't as desirable is it?

[Waterwings]

haste is still a bigger win imo, crit aint rly that needed since most of the crit you need to be succesfull comes from specc and raid buffs.

The 2p t10 setbonus aint that bad, its just not extremely overpowered as our t9 set bonus was, as +20% healing from PoM still is, and always will be, INSANE

What you wanna upgrade and what not, are your choices.

[jifjosh]

Crit is good regeneration for us, but I know that I find myself consciously stacking haste because of all my instant casts and lack of mana problems.

Personally: I got helm and shoulders, and then I'm going for spirit cloak or the belt of Ossus (waiting to ask my priest friend her opinion). IMO they need to revamp the 4pc because it looks very clunky and I won't be putting 4pc together unless I get lucky in VOA and snag another piece of sanctified acolyte.

[Tinc]

I agree with not being happy about T10 as a holy priest. I'm currently using 2 piece ilvl258 T9 and 2 piece T10. The 2 piece bonus is pretty bad for holy, it normally accounts for 1-2% of my overall effective healing for a given boss fight.

I tried the 4 piece and found it too be awkward, lackluster, and borderline useless. When it procs, you need to pretty much immediately cast a flash heal to get any real use out of it, and at that moment, a flash heal may not be what heal you need to be using. Even the best case scenario, when you get a SoL proc on your CoH you don't save a huge amount of time on your CoH cd.

CoH (4 pc. & SoL procs) --> gcd --> Instant flash heal --> gcd --> CoH

So even if you had enough haste to bottom out your gcd to 1 second, you saved 4 seconds on your CoH cooldown in the absolute best case scenario. Garbage. Give me a constant 20% on my PoM anyday.

If I were you I would buy some of the random badge stuff rather than immediately going after 4 piece T10 unless you offspec disc in your raid. I really hope enough people complain about the 4 piece that they revamp it for holy.

[Worshaka]

Crit is good regeneration for us, but I know that I find myself consciously stacking haste because of all my instant casts and lack of mana problems.

Personally: I got helm and shoulders, and then I'm going for spirit cloak or the belt of Ossus (waiting to ask my priest friend her opinion). IMO they need to revamp the 4pc because it looks very clunky and I won't be putting 4pc together unless I get lucky in VOA and snag another piece of sanctified acolyte.

Crit is a mediocre regen stat, granted it has some effect, but nothing like Int or Spirit does. Crit is also a poor throughput stat based on the fact that its subject to RNG, usually overheals, accounts of only 50% more healing per cast and has a diminishing effect on HPS the more you get.

Haste on the other hand is the superior throughput stat once you reach a certain SP level. That's due to the fact that heals get so large that extra SP becomes overhealing... the ability to get more standard heals in a given amount of time is what really ups your effective HPS ability.

So in the current environment i'd be looking to keep the 30% or so natural crit you get with appropriate gear and look to get as much haste as you can without being neglectful. Pretty much the standard line in any gearing strategy.

[Banibaq]

At what point does one reach the SP level where it would be better to focus on haste (I assume you would still use reckless ametrines to get your haste up)?
Here is my Armory

Before you say anything, yes, my gear is very mixed. My mainspec is shadow and I have just recently decided to pick up a healing offspec not just to get queued into randoms faster but to also heal in raids eventually (i look at you Valithria). So what you see is my shadowgear mixed with w/e healing gear I snatched up along the way so far.

Also, I am still slightly confused when it comes to the gemming. As I have gathered from the sticky post above, INT is better than spirit as long as they are within 200-300 of each other. And only once I encounter fights in which I am not even going to use all of my mana, that's when I go for throughput. Did I get this right?

Thanks up front

-Bani

[Kelesti]

It's not really a Spell Power thing, but more or less a gear thing. If you have between 20 and 25% crit, it's a good idea to look at haste pieces. If have more than that? Drop a couple crit pieces to fall within that range, it's much more breathing room for much more haste which is overall a better thoroughput stat (but you will have more competition from every other clothy to do so, it's just that crit sucks >.>). If you're not running OoM, then you shouldn't be gemming Intellect and/or Spirit, gem Spell Power and Spell Power/Haste.

So there isn't really a Spell Power level that you should start looking at haste. They sort of go hand in hand the whole way.

And only once I encounter fights in which I am not even going to use all of my mana, that's when I go for throughput. Did I get this right?

That's the gist of being a healer, but your mana bar is literally quite huge and so once you get a feel for what you're doing and can work to extend it, you can balance between the regen you "need" and how to make what you're casting the most effective. There is no absolute number for this, nor is there even a remote guideline, and it does vary from fight to fight, group to group, and even from player to player within that group.

[Maxpowr]

It's not really a Spell Power thing, but more or less a gear thing. If you have between 20 and 25% crit, it's a good idea to look at haste pieces. If have more than that? Drop a couple crit pieces to fall within that range, it's much more breathing room for much more haste which is overall a better thoroughput stat (but you will have more competition from every other clothy to do so, it's just that crit sucks >.>). If you're not running OoM, then you shouldn't be gemming Intellect and/or Spirit, gem Spell Power and Spell Power/Haste.

So there isn't really a Spell Power level that you should start looking at haste. They sort of go hand in hand the whole way.
That's the gist of being a healer, but your mana bar is literally quite huge and so once you get a feel for what you're doing and can work to extend it, you can balance between the regen you "need" and how to make what you're casting the most effective. There is no absolute number for this, nor is there even a remote guideline, and it does vary from fight to fight, group to group, and even from player to player within that group.

Kelesti is pretty much spot on everything. I like having my holy crit in 20-25% range. Any less than that and I see my holy concentration upkeep drop considerably which leads to lower regen and me probably going OOM.

I mentioned this in the haste topic also. At a certain point, you should start valuing haste over SP. There is no exact number but eventually, more SP would just lead to more overheal and it will be wasted. I have already started to switch over to pure haste gems in a few spots because my overheals was getting too high for my liking.

[IgotRICKrolled]

It annoys me that healer Tier got crit and no haste on Head/Shoulder.

So I took Legs/Hands t10 Healer and T10 shadow Head/Shoulders, simply to get the haste and still be able to upgrade my tiers.

I loose some spirit by doing this, but that is not a problem in my current setup.

I still dont think the bonus' are worth spending emblems on, but the fact that I can upgrade them makes tier worth the space.

[rubberbands]

Here is some info on the 2PC bonus which i believe is still currently accurate:
http://www.wowwiki.com/Blessed_Healing