Holy Spec Clarification...

[harky]

Fabian, the order doesn't change is the issue. The difference between 'tank specs' is actually very minor and some raid healers use the spec. The larger shift is the glyph shift to Nourish and Rapid Rejuv. The reason most Druids don't tank heal is because Paladins are a bit better at it and suck at raid healing.

[fabian]

Fabian, the order doesn't change is the issue. The difference between 'tank specs' is actually very minor and some raid healers use the spec. The larger shift is the glyph shift to Nourish and Rapid Rejuv. The reason most Druids don't tank heal is because Paladins are a bit better at it and suck at raid healing.

I used spec as in changing one's play style/glyphs/talents. Spec is for specialty, correct? So when changing "specs" one could apply it to changing glyphs/talents, although it is often used when just changing talents.

[harky]

Difference is you could carry a stack of the swapped glyphs around with you and change on the fly in a couple seconds. So yeah, you could say you're shifting your glyph specialty, or something similar, but most people use 'spec' to define talent tree specialization. I usually carry a stock of Nourish, Rapid Rejuv, Wild Growth and Rejuv glyphs around on me in 10s for that reason. It lets me walk around with a tank and raid 'spec' as well as my Moonkin spec.

[Waddy]

Has anyone even stopped to look at my OP lol? I set the context for which I wanted people to help me with was 10 man in a 2 heal environment with a holy pally. The reason I went holy was for the increased aoe healing output.

Btw, the whole Disc Vs Holy Pally thing is so old it's stupid. What's even more stupid is people who argue that a disc priest could never out heal a paladin on a MT. Well, of course they couldn't but that isn't required. Holy pallys are too powerful for the job they need to do in 10 man normal modes, I have solo healed the tank on disc against festergut for our first kill so it's not like a disc CAN'T do the job it's that they can't reach the same potential a holy pally can.

For the really dumb people out there, what I'm getting at is lebron james is 1000x more effective at basketball than a high school student. But, if the scenario for comparison was set to a 7 foot goal and the objective was just to dunk the basketball most high school students could easily dunk the ball. Well, so can lebron james in fact he could prolly dunk it upside down and have a 20 min hangtime but the objective is JUST to dunk the ball once so in essence both pass the necessary requirements.

[Waddy]

Getting the thread back on track...

I'm fooling around with a new spec and gem strat for holy in 10 man 2 healing normal modes.

This is the talent spec I'm using for it:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...V74itXw,,11623

Explanation:

I'm not a huge fan of spending 2 points for a gimmick like Body and Soul. Same reason I don't put 1 point into Lightwell.

I'm also not a big fan of using renew as my primary source of single target healing, especially when the raid needs to be topped off quickly in between certain abilities. I also find it to be somewhat out of synergy with the way our talents are built, using serendipity to haste our longer casting spells.

We're also doing Dreamwalker soon and I'm wanting a spec that can do a great deal of single target throughput.

I love having Inner Focus for an ace in the hole or for certain predictable massive damage to the raid. Also really good for recovering on certain fight screw ups.

My only real question about my talent build is if I would benefit more form 2 points in Healing Prayers over Surge of Light, the only time I really find Surge of Light to be a life saver is when it just happens to be up and someone takes unpredictable spike damage for being stupid. However, I'm not sure how much 20% off PoM would really save me in the long run and same thing with PoH considering I don't even use it on a lot of fights in ICC.

I've also changed up the way I'm doing gemming and stat priority. After looking at my logs for mana regen after a full night of raiding I realized 35% of my entire mana regen came from replenishment and it's already been proven that int > spirit or mp5 in terms of mana regen with replenishment. So, my new stat priority is as follows:

SP > Int > Haste until SP reaches 4000 raid buffed and I'm not letting haste drop below 11% in the meantime. I have had very little mana issues in general so I'm basically focusing on pure SP atm. I have a nack for being very efficient with my spells, predicting incoming damage and being able to use the right spell for the right job so I tend to not overheal nearly as much as most others I play with who just spam their heals constantly and spent 3x as much mana as me for most of the time less overall healing.

What say you?

[b``]

Sucks that ur being forced to respec but can understand ur guildies choice. Holy Paladins atm are just awesome at tank healing, tanks just don't die when a Holy Paladin is raiding.

[Waddy]

Actually, reason we did the switch is the holy pally is my brother and he hates tanking so much he was gonna quit if he couldn't go holy. It's understandable since he's been a healer in every game we've ever played and tanking is kinda boring hehe. I am actually fine with the switch I just wanted a bit of info on it was all.

[harky]

Waddy, things get derailed all the time (which I helped, yay), but look back at the first few replies. The issue is your question was really simple and at the same time very personal. The best you'll get is some loose gear standards (20%+ haste, 25k+ mana, 30% crit buffed, etc) and some simple spec and play-style advise. Telling someone how to heal is like telling someone how to fix their relationship. No matter what you do it's either going to be basic universal advise, or wrong.

1. Body and Soul is much more important than you're giving it credit for and if you want to be a good Holy Priest it's something you need to learn eventually. I know a lot of people are fighting that, but a lot of people are just bad.

2. Flash Heal builds can work, but despite what you may think the Renew builds are used because they bring people up quicker. If it's a 5 man group then often that isn't the case, but in 10s there are so many people involved that once a few Renews are ticking at once the output difference can't be overcome.

3. You shouldn't be taking portals on Dreamwalker in 10 if you're two healing. Every other class is better to send in and should be sent in your place.

4. If you get a lot out of Inner Focus keep it. It's a 'taste' talent and if you like the flavor then go for it.

5. If you want to stick to a Flash Heal build, which I do not advise, you should not have Surge of Light at all. You can get away with 1 point, but if you ever need to heal tanks (you will when 2 healing), then you should have 0 points in it. It reduces throughput in exchange for mana.

6. You should have 2/2 Healing Prayers in any Holy build. Prayer of Healing is a huge mana hog and will be your top heal on several ICC fights.

7. You should be gearing much more for Haste. 11-14% was decent in Naxx-Ulduar, but since Haste and SP scale off each other the importance does as well. The higher your SP is the more Haste is worth. Do yourself a favor and do not look at over-healing numbers at all. Look at how well your mana is holding out and how much effective healing you put out.

[Waddy]

Yeah, looking back at the OP was kind of bad for what I was meaning to ask hehe. Oh well, hope this is a more clarified response.

Your point about Body and Soul I just don't see it man, I mean I could probably find a place in every fight where it COULD help the fight. I just don't see it helping enough to justify dropping 2 points out of say inner focus and I guess empowered healing.

Only reason I like the flash heal build better is I'm the kind of person who for whatever reason gets stuck on shouldbe instead of is, so for me because our t10 has flash heal based mechanics and serendipity is a flash heal based mechanic and our major throughput talent is based on flash heal I'm stuck with the mindset that it has to be the " right " thing to use. That can be a completely retarded thing to say and I'm not even really defending it, chances are I'm wrong but I don't think it's enough to make me a bad healer just a stubborn one.

I'm actually not versed enough in dreamwalker, like I said we're still working on blood queen and putricide it's just coming up and I was assuming I'd be in there. ( probably wrong hehe )

Thanx for the tip on surge of light that fixes one of my issues.

As for the haste comment, I absolutely would LOVE to gear more for haste. I just can't find any gear out there with it that isn't a horrible tradeoff. I have 2 pieces of gear that have incredible amounts of haste like 5% more but also have hit and crit and would be an overall reduction of sp and int so much so that it's not worth it imo. If I can find some gear that doesn't significantly drop my int / sp and increases haste you better believe I'm gonna roll for it hehe.

Anyways, thx for the advice man.

[OMGCat]

Your gems are kind of odd, if I were you I wouldn't gem straight SP as you are, neglecting regen is a bad idea, especially once you get into hard modes.

[Weena2]

You seem to have some huge misconception about druid healers; while we might not get close to paladins, we sure give any other healer a run for his money. We have 3 singletarget hots providing a lot of steady healing, an emergency ability on a short cooldown(swiftmend), and we have a 1sec flash heal critting for about 12-14k with ~50% crit chance, leaving a seed on the target healing for 30% of a critical heal on the next hit

The reason i said druids should not focus on tank healing is because they are by far the best raid healer, and to waste your resto druids amazing raid heals on the tank isn't a very smart idea. I probably didn't say it well enough but while you should/could be putting hots on the tank, i don't believe you should stick on him the whole encounter

[Waddy]

I'm definitely not ignoring regen by any means, there's a reason I have tailoring and the meta socket I do. I'm also using the highest INT pieces I can use, and I'm substituting my yellow sockets in places where I'd only gain 1 sp instead for the 12sp-10int gems. int > spirit or mp5 for regen so in that case I'm fine.

[Heleon]

your a priest make cast random macros and put them on hotkeys 1-5 roll your finger up and down the key board while clicking on random grid squares and get top hps XD

JK

[Waddy]

The thing to keep in mind is I have 4 slots where I could stick 12sp - 10 int gems in to complete the socket bonuses and I would be trading 18 sp to do it. The problem I'm having with that is 40int = ~720 mana, which if my calculations are correct would equate to 1.44 mana second more than I have now. In a 5 min fight that's only ~450 mana which isn't even a spell cast...

I have 6 pieces that I could stick 12sp - 10 spirit in instead of pure sp which would cost me roughly 30 sp and would give me 60spirit. 60 spirit translates into 7 mana a second more than I have now which would equate to 2201 mana. That is actually 2 spells but again is that really worth it in the whole scheme of regen? The majority of the regen I'm getting from meditation and holy concentration, not to mention the massive amount of int I'm already getting form my gear.

I'd be substituting almost 100 spellpower to gain back almost 3000 mana a fight, and I'm not actually sure how you would judge the value of that tradeoff but it doesn't seem worth it imo.

[Regression]

http://www.wowarmory.com/character-s...a&cn=Rickytick

My problem is I have a lot less experience as holy so I'm hoping for some quick tips and critiques to get me back up to par since we're doing Blood Queen and Putricide progression this weekend.

What I've been doing is basically just renewing anyone who takes damage, keeping it on the tank at all times.

Using PoM on the tank at all times.

During aoe situations like early festergut and such I'm spamming CoH on every cooldown.

However... This is where I get stuck, I find it hard to fit flash heals in here somewhere unless it's like 1 person who's getting nuked other than the tank. So I basically just use it anytime I get a proc of SoL but that's usually not enough to build the serendipity needed to make a PoH worth casting over renew and coh spam... So, any tips or advice is very much appreciated.

Gear looks pretty good, would reccomend getting rid of the Nibelung for the Mag'hari staff from 10 man Saurfang..one of the best weapons IMO for a holy priest. As a raid healer I personally use renew a lot. You're saying you do too, but I don't see any talents into empowered renew. While many do not like the talent, I find it to be a huge benefit in saving lives. I can't count how many times now in ICC has someone got too deep in fire or just unlucky that the empowered renew saved them from death. I'm talking receiving the heal and then dropping to 0%(1-200 hp). If they didn't get that it would have been game over for them. So I do reccomend at least trying it, with the glyph of renew. (I replaced my COH glyph for it.)

As far as getting Serendipity...some may disagree on my PoV but this is how I do it and just today I was #1 on heals on our 25 man Festergut attempts.(while this fight is very good for CoH and especially PoH if you use serendipity right, it still applies to most everything.) I am very agressive with my mana usage, if there's no raid damage I'll be flash healing tanks, or minor cleaves/aoe, even if it's going to be 50-100% overheal I look at it as I'm stacking my sependipity. That way I have more 1.5ish PoHs to throw. On our 25 man fights today I can tell you I was near OOM by the first exhale, but proper use of shadowfiend + Hymm put me at near full mana for the next big raid damage. It's all about how you use the fiend IMO. Spam those flash heals to keep it up if you have to. If you find you're still heavily using mana to the point you can't do it just ease up a bit. Serendipity lasts 20 seconds, so it's easy to get 1 stack, CoH/PoM whatever, get another, and another and be ready to roll for that burst damage.

Take it with a grain of salt, every healer is different and that's how I do it.

[Waddy]

Yeah, the topic's kind of shifted. I wasn't as clear in the first post as I was on I think the 3rd page. Check it out for a better idea of what I'm doing now.

[Bigslick]

Some massive derailing made for some interesting conversation through the pages, which I enjoyed as it shed some insights on holy healing (to which I'm finally shifting my dual spec to in the event the utility of disc drops heavily versus other healers with the increasingly scaled zone buff).

A thought to consider which surprisingly wasn't covered as yet:

Ok, so my guild decided tonight that they wanted to swap our MT palladin from prot to holy since we've been consistently having to pug an extra healer and tanks seem more available.

That being said, I'm now being swapped to holy because well it's just better at raid healing than disc in 10 mans.

If you no longer have a pally tank, remember that remaining disc will keep up renewed hope for the overall 3% incoming damage reduction, which would otherwise be lost by your going holy (and probably would be lost on most of the raid even if you had a pally tank, unless your makeup provided enough buffs elsewhere to allow them to blanket Sanctuary). The value of this 3% shouldn't be underestimated, though certainly there are a few fights where holy would still outweigh disc.