Holy: Mastery

[Kelesti]

Divine Touch from casting Renew does apply Echo of Light actually.

A 16% bonus from 15% of a heal, realisticallt speaking it might not be there.

And why wouldn't spreadsheet math not apply to healers? Killing a boss with damage abilities is no different then bringing someone to full health with healing abilities. That point is moot.

Triage, how many healers you are working with (or against, depending on your guild group) actual encounter mechanics...

Tell me, what encounter allows all healers to take advantage of 100% of their crit rating, cooldowns, full HoTs rolling, etc? Dreamwalker.

How many Dreamwalker fights are there? None so far. Spreadsheet math works because including RNG and unlimited time, the boss' health goes down in a linear fashion.

People's health pools don't start at one and have an entire fight to boost themselves up to full. Damage comes in bursts and needs to be countered, and no spreadsheet will ever compare against real encounter experience.

[Arrelliana]

I still miss Bob Turkey's theorycrafting, I could always follow what he said with his math and assumptions. Assumptions is also the key thing in any of this conversation. On a sub 4 min fight spirit is good but not as good as a 7 min fight..or as good as when when you can time cooldowns vs. a lull to regen (magmaw has these lulls).

My current numbers I use are based on a .6(burst):1 sustained healing strategy. This puts mastery ahead of haste where I want to be as I can still drain my mana bar and burst over 20k hps. When I can't drain my mana bar then spirit will become a non-issue for me. The one thing I still disagree with is renew being so low. Renew is still the same HPM as heal..so why not just throw a renew and let it top up the dps if you know the damage pattern? I know harky doesn't care much for renew but I still consider it a viable option even if only the initial empowered heal benefits from mastery.

Here are my actual numbers I use Intellect (6.43) > Spirit (5.72) > Mastery (1.574) > Haste (1.41) > Crit (0.718) (spellpower is valued above mastery but well below int/spirit)

This doesn't over value spirit compared to int as far as gemming goes/enchants etc. If you notice haste is very close to mastery. Once I push my gear to the point mana is not as much of a concern and I can go to a 1:1 burst:sustained ratio haste will surpass mastery as my stat of choice. Haste is is ahead of mastery for burst healing easily. For Single target tank healing..mastery to me is still slightly ahead of haste since it rolls so to speak and ticks every second. Good buffer so to speak.

But I will agree with this, I don't take ej's numbers for granted. I always have my playstyle and role in raids and I always look at parses from top guilds that kill the bosses I haven't yet to see what their priests are doing. And never to be underestimated is healer comp. This can drastically alter your playstyle or role in a fight.

[Posh]

I think I understand harky's point about haste vs mastery. But you say mastery comes closer to haste when mana is a big problem. How can we say it wont be in future raids? What if encounters will be longer or more healing intensive so they "scale with our gear" (dunno if the expression is completely correct but u get the idea)?

It would seem to me that when you do the step from one type of content to another (say from hcs to raid nowadays content or from nowadays content to future content) mastery comes closer to haste but when you start having part of the gear from the instance you are running then haste is by far better. I probably expressed my idea in a terrible way but english is not my mother tongue sorry...

[harky]

Since our Int/Spirit scale up with gear and our mana cost on spells remains the same it will always become easier to heal as content progresses. Initially you deal with this excess mana by feeling more 'free' in spell selection, but the long term shift is the ability to cast more spells. This has been the case since TBC when the Haste stat was introduced. The entire game engine would need a rewrite to implement what you're describing.

[Abandon]

Divine Touch from casting Renew does apply Echo of Light actually. And why wouldn't spreadsheet math not apply to healers? Killing a boss with damage abilities is no different then bringing someone to full health with healing abilities. That point is moot.

It's completely different, to the point of being polar opposites. DPS spreadsheets calculate stats based on how they will impact your DPS assuming you will be attempting to reach the highest DPS. Healing involves making decisions about spell choice and management based on situations that change every fight, you are never going to be "HPSing" to try and get the highest healing numbers when you should be focusing on a specific task. Also, there is no way for DPS to "overhurt" an add, there is no way for them to lose effectiveness on their abilities, while with healing overhealing gains no benefit and wastes mana.

[Kelesti]

I know harky doesn't care much for renew but I still consider it a viable option even if only the initial empowered heal benefits from mastery.

It's not that its HPS is too low. It's an awesome tool to use, it's just no longer the "go to" spell that it was in most of ICC, and its mana cost makes it quite restrictive to use as a multi-target recovery option, even if it is as efficient as Heal.

It's not that Renew sucks, it's that Prayer's much better "most" of the time, and Heal is still easier to use despite its longer cast time.

For the people that think Mastery is the be-all-end-all stat of how awesome it is, then why do they justify gearing enough haste for Renew? It's not because that specific points makes your Heal faster. Only 2.5% of your Renew's total healing is affected by Mastery. Capping out your haste at a certain point for this spell means that this spell is a priority. If this spell is a priority, then why are you gearing away from making it do more?

It either is, or it isn't.

516's the new 154. A number some spreadsheet came up with, not actual player experience.

Back in response to Posh. Even with a preference for Mastery as it is, it's good to see Haste keeping pace with it even in your eyes. That means even above and beyond the completely ridiculously bad lolcap of 516, you'll still seek to take advantage of it on upgrades.

[leviedk]

I never got why people ever referred to 516 as a cap to be blunt. I always just assumed that it was the minimum value to make dropping a Renew a viably efficient option (versus just casting Heal). Then again these are WoW players we're talking about, and EJ is the law. :/

(Personally at this point, I assume I'll be favoring Mastery over Haste, but not enough to reforge out of Haste. The only stat I think I'll be avoiding at all costs is Crit. RNG and I don't get along at all.)

[Cerunnir]

I tend to gear with some balance in mind. Yes, mastery may be our best stat at the moment, with haste trailing a little bit behind and crit being way behind. But the best way to gear in my opinion is to balance out stats. For example I will aim to get (this is only example numbers) 1500 Mastery, 1300 haste and 900 crit. Its not advisable to completly forgo a stat even though its considered "bad".

Best way to gear your priest at the moment is to first make certain you have spirit on every item, with the possible exception of trinkets. Then try to balance the other stats in such a way that mastery comes out ahead with spirit trailing behind and crit being lowest.

Currenly im not anywhere near this goal, but I still find myself almost never running out of mana. In normal dungeons I find myself almost never having to drink with wise use of my mana CD's. In heroics I have to drink a little bit between each trash pull, but mostly just to be safe and keep my mana topped off if the next pull goes sour. Bosses may either drain my mana entirely or almost not at all. It all depends on how well the group execute the fight.

My four most used spells are heal (obviously), prayer of healing, renew(refreshed with heal) and Holy word serenity. (I do use all my heals though depening on situation) Staying in heal chakra, unless a heavy AOE phase is incoming. I find prayer of healing to be supremly effective for keeping people relativly healthy if the fight dish out aoe damage. I use Holy Word:Serenity(For the crit boost), then 2xflash and a greater for healing per second burst if a tank go low fast. This is quite draining so I try to avoid it if at all possible. If I need to do heavy aoe healing I tend to first cast a prayer of mending, then a circle of healing, then a prayer of healing. Then I wait 4 seconds and start another prayer of healing so the Mastery and PoH HoT get to run its full duration.

I rarely have mana issues if the group is half-decent. I dont understand what the priests who complain about mana are doing, I suspect they are a bit quick to push the fast and expensive flash heal.

[Kelesti]

Then again these are WoW players we're talking about, and EJ is the law. :/

It is. When you play a Fury Warrior, Rogue, or Death Knight. Anything else and you're just asking for mediocrity at its best.

[leviedk]

It is. When you play a Fury Warrior, Rogue, or Death Knight. Anything else and you're just asking for mediocrity at its best.

Oh, don't misunderstand me. I know there's brilliant support for Fury, DK's and Rogues, but we're on the Priest forum.

[Kelesti]

Oh, don't misunderstand me. I know there's brilliant support for Fury, DK's and Rogues, but we're on the Priest forum.

*nod* Sorry. I thought you were agreeing with them.

* Kel does an epic facepalm-desk, resulting in a broken hand

[Rystastic]

(Personally at this point, I assume I'll be favoring Mastery over Haste, but not enough to reforge out of Haste. The only stat I think I'll be avoiding at all costs is Crit. RNG and I don't get along at all.)

I've mostly been doing (in terms of secondary stats anyway) haste > mastery > > > > > > > > > crit.

In fact, I have zero items with crit on them at all. I don't see mastery as "bad" it's just that haste affects every single spell that I cast, instant or not, because I don't have enough haste to GCD cap myself. As long as mastery can't affect every spell (looking at you renew and PW:S) I cast, it will always be slightly inferior to haste.

This said, hpriest was always about striking a balance with your stats. That's why we don't gem pure haste or pure intel like shaman or paladins of the past.

[leviedk]

*nod* Sorry. I thought you were agreeing with them.

* Kel does an epic facepalm-desk, resulting in a broken hand

My bad. Sarcasm + Internet forum = failure waiting to happen.

[harky]

This said, hpriest was always about striking a balance with your stats. That's why we don't gem pure haste or pure intel like shaman or paladins of the past.

Seriously? I should probably change my gems.

Nope, double checked. All Int except for two socket bonuses that give Int.


In any case there are a few misunderstandings in the thread. One is that Renew is high HPS. It's actually very low HPS. Lower than Heal in fact. What it does have is higher healing per execute time. This is important mainly because of a balance between its very solid HPM and very high cost. For Renew to be high HPS it must be on many targets simultaneously. The problem with this is that Prayer of Healing has higher healing per execute as well as lower costs. So in any situation where Renew spam would even be worthwhile PoH spam would be less costly and higher output.

Oh and discussions of Mastery working on Renew? Renew gains .16% per 179.28 Mastery Rating. This is lower than the amount PW:S gains from Crit. Both are irrelevant. The more you use Renew the worse Mastery will become. Either way a lot of people don't quite get why Haste is even being taken. It is not about maximum potential output, in which case you would want to keep Haste, Mastery and Crit at roughly equal levels of rating as each degrades at a similar pace in relative value. It isn't about spamming heals as fast as you can, it's about adaptability. The faster you are on your feet the more you will like the feel of haste.

[Lysdexic]

It isn't about spamming heals as fast as you can, it's about adaptability. The faster you are on your feet the more you will like the feel of haste.

I think anybody who has done even a little bit of PvP can understand this. "FUCKFKCUKFUCKFCUKFUKC GCD CANT DO X" (X being SW usually for me).