4.2 crit change and Chakra: Serenity

[zakaluka]

The crit improvement in 4.2 could be a tremendous buff for Chakra: Serenity.
In support of all this, a spreadhseet I made a while back showing averages of HPM/HPCT on all heals in a hpriest's spellbook accounting for crit and mastery
HPCT and HPM for single spells
These are 4.0.6 values and old values at that. Note this is for single spells! If you want the HPCT HPM values of spell chains you have to crunch it a bit. I have another version with a bunch of spellchains calculated, but it's a bit much to look at. Maybe I'll post the rest if people are actually interested in seeing.


For holy priests, these effects already interact in some pretty interesting ways -

Chakra: Serenity - Increases the critical effect chance of your direct healing spells by 10%, and causes your direct heals to refresh the duration of your Renew on the target.
Holy Word: Serenity - Instantly heals the target for 5198 to 6100, and increases the critical effect chance of your healing spells on the target by 25% for 6 sec.
Test of Faith - Increases healing by 12% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.
Serendipity - When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 20% and mana cost reduced by 10%.
Surge of Light - You have a 6% chance when you Smite, Heal, Flash Heal, Binding Heal or Greater Heal to cause your next Flash Heal to be instant cast and cost no mana.

In patch 4.1, I should have a static 49% crit rate on any target i've just applied HW:S to. I've done some testing, and in practice it's more like 40%. Some kind of strange multiplication going on here, the 10% and 25% aren't additive. Crit is no good for triage but it does effect overall throughput/efficiency, and at 40% it's predictable enough. Almost half your heals crit.

If you need more throughput in Serenity chakra you might just throw in some Gheals here and there. But what if you:
(1) Save your HW:S a few seconds until there's a target that can accept a flash heal crit
(2) Then HW:S/Flash
(3) Save up and consume all your Serendipity procs?

Since serendipity lasts 20 sec you lose it if you don't complete or continue the chain with each HW:S. In theory you get to skip one, but in practice you'll lose the proc to latency if you try.

I ran the numbers on this a while back, and did a pretty big test. A Flash-Flash-Gheal chain under the HW:S crit buff approaches Heal in efficiency but has about 3x the throughput. Or if you prefer, HPCT, if the chain is spread out. And that doesn't account for Surge of Light or Test of Faith, so I think your Flashes and GHeals can actually be as efficient overall as your regular heals if you use them at the right moments.

With surge of light procs your hardcast Flash Heals have more value - you get to the 2 stack Serendipity for one hardcast every SoL.

Something that can't really be accounted for is Test of Faith. If you aim a HW:S/Flash or HW:S/Gheal at the lowest health target, it's also the most likely target to be below 50% health. When there's a LOT of directed damage going out it happens more often than I thought it would. That heal already has a very high crit rate and also now receives a 12% buff. So you're making sure that 1.4 second cast Gheal has a very high chance to crit for 60k (I have actually been seeing this a lot). And since the target is low health, that 60k crit won't overheal.

Most people have an understandable reaction to my strategy - 'nifty idea, but you're trying too hard.' I get it, this healing strategy will never be popular. It feels like tank healing. But I say that it's more efficient for spread heals than PoH in Sanctuary if PoH is going to be overhealing. It can also net you reasonable throughput, ~10-11k depending on whether you get to roll a renew or two in there. Still not nearly what Sanctuary can get you during a heavy AoE phase, but better than what sanc can get you outside of heavy AoE.

I look at Chakra: Serenity's bad throughput (subscribing to normal spell priority) and think about all the different ways that our talents add spell synergies. Then I want to say - how can I exploit these mechanics for the best possible throughput while keeping things efficient? This seems like the logical answer to me.

Now, in 4.2 if the value of a crit is 200%, flash-flash-gheal under HW:S becomes more mana efficient than normal spread heals, on average. Without even accounting for SoL or Test of Faith. In my opinion, 4.2 won't re-prioritize crit as top secondary. 50% more on a crit, sure, but crit has a significantly worse conversion factor. Haste is good for triage but bad for mana effic. Crit is bad for triage but good for mana effic. Maybe they'll be equalized a bit? But, 4.2 should greatly improve Chakra: Serenity because it gives you two significant sources of static crit, maybe adding value to Mastery/Spirit.

I have another whole thought process on the best way to do it, but this post needs to end here. Now, I'm ready to be flamed . I usually get flamed.