[6.2.3] Holy Priest PvE Guide and discussion

[Kacie]

I noticed this and i preferred the other discussion and this guide might be good for new players but i don't find it useful to experienced players no offence to the guy who did it but i liked mazi's guides better but she quit wow

[Tomali]

A guide would have to be very long to cover both beginner and advanced mechanics. It's not like discussion has to stop, the thread title is just being changed. That way someone could get caught up and continue to look at discussion on the class.

I will do my best to keep it updated based on the relevant discussions, time permitting.

[PosPosPos]

I noticed this and i preferred the other discussion and this guide might be good for new players but i don't find it useful to experienced players no offence to the guy who did it but i liked mazi's guides better but she quit wow

"Experienced players" would be making and contributing to advanced theorycrafting threads rather than reading guides. A lot of them keep to themselves anyway since they are more than knowledgeable and experienced enough to not need to come to resources like these.

[Alarinth]

Uh...why did the Holy Discussion thread get locked in favor of keeping this one open?

This thread is a guide, not a discussion thread. The other two specs have discussion threads, why is Holy's getting locked?

So as to conserve sticky-space. While this thread is a guide indeed, there is no reason it cannot serve as a holy discussion / theorycrafting resource as well. It makes more sense to have the OP dedicated to the guide, and everything that follows actual TC / discussions.

[PosPosPos]

Is there perhaps a chance we can go more in depth with 'jhaz healing'? I am interested in the concept, and have been trying to practice it myself, but being as that I haven't seen someone who is known to be successful at it, it's hard to judge if it I am in fact doing well.

-Does it have a different stat prio, such as benefiting from mastery more with since you use more direct heals? I noticed Jhaz has literally 0 bonus crit. Of course, it could be RNG, but that seems unlikely in any case.

With the Binding Heal/Renew refresh style, stat priority is pretty much Int > Spirit > MS > Mastery >= Haste > Crit > Versatility since you don't rely on spamming Renews, but rather refresh them with single target heals. If you do it properly, you should be able to maintain a majority of your Renew hots without needing to recast it directly.

-Are there fights where it is a significantly worse option, even if played perfectly?
-Are there certain fights were this is a much better option than renew/coh spam?

From a triage/throughput perspective, Binding Heal/Renew refresh is always better as long as it is played next to perfectly.

-How many renews should you be able to keep rolling for it to be a reasonable option?

Namely the tanks and targets assigned as soakers. Usually this is around 5-6 targets at most before you run out of GCDs to chain refresh Renews.

-Do you cast a direct heal on a target for the sake of rolling the renew, even if it would be largely overhealing?

The point of the playstyle is to not HoT targets that are going to not take significant sustained damage.

-Should you be using different talents, mainly SoL?
-If you use SoL, will you require a larger emphasis on spirit gear?
ect. ect.

SoL is mainly used when you have spirit on pretty much every piece and those pieces are up-to-date, or on shorter/special fights like Butcher and Brackenspore.

Otherwise, Mindbender/Solace is still the go-to talent so you have sufficient regen to deal with the increased MPS of BH rotations. Mindbender is actually better with BH/RR since Solace's low cd tends to get in the way of tightly refreshing your HoTs.

[ceddya]

From a triage/throughput perspective, Binding Heal/Renew refresh is always better as long as it is played next to perfectly.

There's a reason it's not used though, because it's not mana sustainable and doesn't provide raid healing that's evenly spread out. You also lose access to the CD reduction on CoH, which causes you to lose quite a bit of raid healing efficiency.

I'm sure it looks good number wise, but you're required to play near perfectly to even achieve those numbers.

[PosPosPos]

There's a reason it's not used though, because it's not mana sustainable and doesn't provide raid healing that's evenly spread out. You also lose access to the CD reduction on CoH, which causes you to lose quite a bit of raid healing efficiency.

I'm sure it looks good number wise, but you're required to play near perfectly to even achieve those numbers.

I don't use it often myself(I only use the full version on Butcher for the most part when healing for friends already running a disc), preferring to use a middle-ground version where I sit in AoE chakra and replace Renew with Binding Heal as a filler.

I tested the full version on a H Imp kill + few wipes once, it was pulling 5-10% more than the standard Renew/CoH rotation but made me feel a lot more exhausted doing it as I had to physically note when Renew was falling off specific targets while managing mana and Serendipity stacks over a long fight. Didn't help that I couldn't play it as close to perfectly as I possibly could have with more experience and muscle memory.

[appro]

There's a reason it's not used though, because it's not mana sustainable and doesn't provide raid healing that's evenly spread out. You also lose access to the CD reduction on CoH, which causes you to lose quite a bit of raid healing efficiency.

I'm sure it looks good number wise, but you're required to play near perfectly to even achieve those numbers.

Yellow chakra and the refresh renew build is used for two main reasons; it is incredibly efficient, particularly when the target being refreshed needs healing and secondly you have far greater control over your potential throughout. The second point is more prevalent on a fight like mythic butcher where specific targets need large amounts of throughput in a timely manner.

Relying on a 'smart' CoH which heals any target that has taken damage (not the lowest hp friendly) is risky, I would consider it somewhat irresponsible and its arguably less safe than direct healing to the priority targets.

Mostly you wont see refresh renew being played outside of bleeding edge progression as the sniping heals in blue chakra looks better on meters. Obviously this doesn't mean it is better though.

CoH is an efficient spell to use on CD in blue chakra, but its not as efficient as playing in yellow properly during the right circumstances. There is a place for both but a blanket statement saying one is greater is misleading and incorrect.

[ceddya]

Yellow chakra and the refresh renew build is used for two main reasons; it is incredibly efficient, particularly when the target being refreshed needs healing and secondly you have far greater control over your potential throughout. The second point is more prevalent on a fight like mythic butcher where specific targets need large amounts of throughput in a timely manner.

Its high efficiency is contingent on the fact that the person you are refreshing Renew on actually requires the healing from the extra 15 seconds of Renew. If you're using it in conjunction with Flash Heal, then it actually lowers your overall efficiency. If you're using it with BH, its efficiency is contingent on both you and the target requiring that healing. For most fights, how often does that happen for Serenity to be worth using over the CoH CD reduction from Sanctuary?

I'm not saying that Serenity has no place - it can certainly be used well for gimmick fights like Brackenspore or for specific phases of fights like Ko'ragh or Mar'gok, but Sanctuary will pull ahead for raid healing because it is much more flexible and sustainable. Even with bleeding edge progression guilds, the vast majority of Holy Priests are still using Sanctuary, and for good reason too. I fail to see why Serenity would be better, especially since most Holy Priests are brought in as generalist raid healers. If your Holy Priest isn't putting out the raid healing numbers, why even bring it over a Disc Priest or H-Pal?

It's also interesting that you mention Butcher, because it highlights how Serenity is actually used for greater HPS at the loss of overall sustainability. The top parse uses Serenity but actually goes OOM 45s before the kill.

[PosPosPos]

Its high efficiency is contingent on the fact that the person you are refreshing Renew on actually requires the healing from the extra 15 seconds of Renew. If you're using it in conjunction with Flash Heal, then it actually lowers your overall efficiency. If you're using it with BH, its efficiency is contingent on both you and the target requiring that healing. For most fights, how often does that happen for Serenity to be worth using over the CoH CD reduction from Sanctuary?

I'm not saying that Serenity has no place - it can certainly be used well for gimmick fights like Brackenspore or for specific phases of fights like Ko'ragh or Mar'gok, but Sanctuary will pull ahead for raid healing because it is much more flexible and sustainable. Even with bleeding edge progression guilds, the vast majority of Holy Priests are still using Sanctuary, and for good reason too. I fail to see why Serenity would be better, especially since most Holy Priests are brought in as generalist raid healers. If your Holy Priest isn't putting out the raid healing numbers, why even bring it over a Disc Priest or H-Pal?

It's also interesting that you mention Butcher, because it highlights how Serenity is actually used for greater HPS at the loss of overall sustainability. The top parse uses Serenity but actually goes OOM 45s before the kill.

Hence why Serenity users (should) sit on updated spirit items and trinkets. You only go oom if your base regen is too low to support the playstyle.

[ceddya]

Hence why Serenity users (should) sit on updated spirit items and trinkets. You only go oom if your base regen is too low to support the playstyle.

The Holy Priest who got that parse has Spirit in all possible slots except the trinket. I'm not sure if that even matters, because the Int on the Mythic trinket is massive.

[Tomali]

CoH is an efficient spell to use on CD in blue chakra, but its not as efficient as playing in yellow properly during the right circumstances. There is a place for both but a blanket statement saying one is greater is misleading and incorrect.

What percentage of people can properly do this? What percentage of people that can properly do this will be swayed to switch their playstyle?
This blanket statement I think is relevant to over 90% of holy priests, if not more because of the circumstances and skillcap needed.

[PosPosPos]

The Holy Priest who got that parse has Spirit in all possible slots except the trinket. I'm not sure if that even matters, because the Int on the Mythic trinket is massive.

Trinkets usually come with ~300 spirit per slot. That's essentially 3 spirit accessories. Also, how can you tell if the parsing priest slotted different items for the fight as opposed to simply what's on his armory?

[appro]

Its high efficiency is contingent on the fact that the person you are refreshing Renew on actually requires the healing from the extra 15 seconds of Renew. If you're using it in conjunction with Flash Heal, then it actually lowers your overall efficiency. If you're using it with BH, its efficiency is contingent on both you and the target requiring that healing. For most fights, how often does that happen for Serenity to be worth using over the CoH CD reduction from Sanctuary?

I'm not saying that Serenity has no place - it can certainly be used well for gimmick fights like Brackenspore or for specific phases of fights like Ko'ragh or Mar'gok, but Sanctuary will pull ahead for raid healing because it is much more flexible and sustainable. Even with bleeding edge progression guilds, the vast majority of Holy Priests are still using Sanctuary, and for good reason too. I fail to see why Serenity would be better, especially since most Holy Priests are brought in as generalist raid healers. If your Holy Priest isn't putting out the raid healing numbers, why even bring it over a Disc Priest or H-Pal?

It's also interesting that you mention Butcher, because it highlights how Serenity is actually used for greater HPS at the loss of overall sustainability. The top parse uses Serenity but actually goes OOM 45s before the kill.

Binding heal is always glyphed when playing in Chakra: Serenity, this causes yourself and 2 other targets to be healed (and potentially all 3 to have renew refreshed). Its not you and 1 other, its you and 2 others.
The 3rd glyph is typically CoH but during Highmaul is often replaced with a Spirit of Redemption glyph or the GS glyph.
Additionally, you should be refreshing with Holy Word: Serenity every 10 seconds and using SoL procs to refresh if you take the talent.
Again, its not possible to blanket statement which fights are best suited to which play style as everyone's gear, raid composition, strategy, and healing counterparts and their respective skill levels vary wildly. It is more accurate to say: "the lower gear of your raid (or the faster you progress through an instance) the more likely the Chakra: Serenity will pull ahead in efficiency as its potential throughput can be fully realised".

Sanctuary will pull ahead on raid healing when you out gear an encounter (or other healers in your raid do) - as previously stated this is due to its sniping. When our mastery HoT is allowed to tick alongside renew for a short while the Serenity/refresh renew playstyle has access to greater throughput - this is particularly evident when your stat priority is MS > haste ≥ mastery.

There is no point referencing logs at this point, everyone out gears the encounter. Holy priests typically aim to go OoM on butcher then suicide soak to make use of Glyph of the Redeemer. The same was often a strategy for early Ko'ragh kills but instead making use of Glyph of Spirit of Redemption. You can see both of these being used in my kill videos.

What percentage of people can properly do this? What percentage of people that can properly do this will be swayed to switch their playstyle?
This blanket statement I think is relevant to over 90% of holy priests, if not more because of the circumstances and skillcap needed.

10% is a large portion of people. It wouldn't matter if its less, the point is that you cannot categorically claim something as correct because the best (or in this case most efficient) solution only applies to the minority.

Trinkets usually come with ~300 spirit per slot. That's essentially 3 spirit accessories. Also, how can you tell if the parsing priest slotted different items for the fight as opposed to simply what's on his armory?

It is possible to crunch the numbers of logs to determine what gear someone is wearing (calculate mana regenerated to determine spirit, spell power coefficients to calculate intellect levels etc.) but I think its fair to assume ceddya is guessing by viewing the armory.

[ceddya]

Binding heal is always glyphed when playing in Chakra: Serenity, this causes yourself and 2 other targets to be healed (and potentially all 3 to have renew refreshed). Its not you and 1 other, its you and 2 others.
The 3rd glyph is typically CoH but during Highmaul is often replaced with a Spirit of Redemption glyph or the GS glyph.
Additionally, you should be refreshing with Holy Word: Serenity every 10 seconds and using SoL procs to refresh if you take the talent.
Again, its not possible to blanket statement which fights are best suited to which play style as everyone's gear, raid composition, strategy, and healing counterparts and their respective skill levels vary wildly. It is more accurate to say: "the lower gear of your raid (or the faster you progress through an instance) the more likely the Chakra: Serenity will pull ahead in efficiency as its potential throughput can be fully realised".

Sanctuary will pull ahead on raid healing when you out gear an encounter (or other healers in your raid do) - as previously stated this is due to its sniping. When our mastery HoT is allowed to tick alongside renew for a short while the Serenity/refresh renew playstyle has access to greater throughput - this is particularly evident when your stat priority is MS > haste ≥ mastery.

Yes, but you're depending on RNG for that extra BH heal to refresh the Renew for you. I don't think sustaining efficient Renew refreshing is an issue, but I don't see how that would be more effective than Sanctuary for raid healing.

I also disagree with Sanctuary's healing being all about 'sniping'. To me, a Holy Priest's main role in a raid is to be the generalist raid healer (i.e. maximizing raid healing output), especially when you have better specs better at spot healing. But hey, there are different approaches to using a Holy Priest, so it's impossible to say which is more valuable as long as the boss dies.

There is no point referencing logs at this point, everyone out gears the encounter. Holy priests typically aim to go OoM on butcher then suicide soak to make use of Glyph of the Redeemer. The same was often a strategy for early Ko'ragh kills but instead making use of Glyph of Spirit of Redemption. You can see both of these being used in my kill videos.

Interesting, I never did consider gaming SoR on Butcher because I'm the activator for one of the groups and dying would probably result in Cleaves wiping the raid. Still, it'll be pretty cool to try it on the other bosses!

[Deleted]

The guide is a bit weak on describing serenity healing, it isn't too complicated when chakra switches can be planned for specific phases. For beginners to the spec, I'd suggest always starting out a fight in serenity, then switching to sanctuary to help getting into the habit of chakra switching. SoL works very well with serenity, solace is just plain annoying because that's a gcd on an undirected heal every 10 secs, mindbender is fine.

Is mastery really > haste for Jhazrun style? I'm surprised, as it still centers around renew. From a practical standpoint you'd surely need good amounts of haste to get all those refreshes in!

[PosPosPos]

The guide is a bit weak on describing serenity healing, it isn't too complicated when chakra switches can be planned for specific phases. For beginners to the spec, I'd suggest always starting out a fight in serenity, then switching to sanctuary to help getting into the habit of chakra switching. SoL works very well with serenity, solace is just plain annoying because that's a gcd on an undirected heal every 10 secs, mindbender is fine.

Is mastery really > haste for Jhazrun style? I'm surprised, as it still centers around renew. From a practical standpoint you'd surely need good amounts of haste to get all those refreshes in!

Haste isn't higher because the BH playstyle is quite a bit more mana consuming than the perennial renew/coh playstyle. You still want some for the former, but not as much as you would for the latter.

[Genzen Han]

Looking for some help for our Holy Priest on Imperator:

warcraftlogs.com/reports/C4Mhwjx6TrYvDgbd/#type=summary&view=execution&boss=1705&wipes=1

Those are last night's logs. I don't know much about holy priest, so I was wondering if anyone could see any improvements that might be made or suggest reasons why her heals are lower than mine and the druid's. (also, any other advice anyone wants to offer is always appreciated).

[Myllior]

With the Binding Heal/Renew refresh style, stat priority is pretty much Int > Spirit > MS > Mastery >= Haste > Crit > Versatility since you don't rely on spamming Renews, but rather refresh them with single target heals. If you do it properly, you should be able to maintain a majority of your Renew hots without needing to recast it directly.

Unless I've missed something, the value of Mastery in the Renew-refreshing play style has the potential to be just as variable as it is in the Renew/Circle of Healing play style. For example, looking at the Butcher log mentioned earlier, 37% of their pre-secondary healing comes from Renew ticks and Lightwell ticks, which puts Mastery firmly at the bottom of the stat priority. Although this log is an outlier (I've not seen so much healing from heal over time effects in any other Holy Priest log), it does illustrate that Mastery isn't guaranteed a high priority by the Renew-refreshing play style.

Of course, what happens once people start getting their Tier 17 pieces remains to be seen, both for play style and the subsequent stat priority.

[Necessarily]

Looking for some help for our Holy Priest on Imperator:

warcraftlogs.com/reports/C4Mhwjx6TrYvDgbd/#type=summary&view=execution&boss=1705&wipes=1

Those are last night's logs. I don't know much about holy priest, so I was wondering if anyone could see any improvements that might be made or suggest reasons why her heals are lower than mine and the druid's. (also, any other advice anyone wants to offer is always appreciated).

A little tough to say with item levels hidden. The more you outgear the fight, the more likely you and the resto druid are to "shut out" a third healer (esp. a holy priest) during phases of minor damage (eg. the earlier phases of this fight. When the damage gets intense enough that you can't completely hold it with your shields, suddenly you start to see the other healers:

https://www.warcraftlogs.com/reports...=true&fight=12

Her spell breakdown is about where it should be. Her overhealing is pretty high, but again, if you're well-geared and doing your job, it probably will continue to be. The biggest thing I noticed was that her Divine Hymns were generally less-than-optimal, with several of them going over 50% overhealing. Is she making the decision to use that cooldown, or is someone calling it out for her? Whoever it is could probably use a bit better judgement.