Empowered Healing - Good or Bad?

[Aleksej89]

I have seen that many PvE Holy Priests skip Empowered Healing talent (http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=33162).

Can you folks please tell me is it a good idea to skip Empowered Healing talent, and why if so?

[Lothan]

My experience is that greater heal is rarely used anymore. While the bonus to flash heal and binding heal are nice, there are better places to spend those points. However I will admit that I don't play holy very often, but this is my findings from when I do.

[Serenityx]

They never Flash heal or greater heal so they see no use in higher throughput of that talent. Sadly most holy priest have turned into renew bots, weather this is more useful than say using all of your spells depending on the situation instead of trying to be a druid but never could compete with a good one at being a druid and doing a druids job, well i guess that is up to each and every individual. I think you can see what i think about it.

I won't give you advice but personally i like empowered healing, i will admit if i change those points for something else i would notice very little difference. Some state that it is game changing to not get this talent and to get some other ones, i guess wait till you get several responses and decide for yourself, don't take any particular person's advice because usually they will only try to prove how their way is better and not show how another way could be useful as well.

[llDemonll]

i took it...but that was just for an offspec the first night we killed green dragon (whatever her name is) for 10m

[Berlain]

I'm a fan of Empowered Healing as well; if for no other reason than I refuse to be a full-time Renew bot. I've been rolling with this build lately for 25 ICC. I use Empowered Healing because a) when Surge of Light procs (and it procs often,) I want that insta-Flash Heal to act as a mini-nuke. b) I'm still using Flash Heal to build up Serendipity to get hasted Prayer of Healing's on occasion when I know big AE damage is incoming (though I'm considering dropping that for Blessed Resilience for the across-the-board 3% boost, I just have been lazy and haven't gotten around to trying it yet, but even when I do point 'a' applies.)

[Zeuq]

The math basically shows that it's roughly equivalent point for point to Blessed Resilience if ~45% of your healing is FH+BH+GH, but since most of us don't cast it that much, it's generally an inferior talent. And Test of Faith is similar to Blessed Resilience, except it gives more when it's really needed, so I'd consider that superior to both. So, assuming you're picking up Empowered Renew--because otherwise you're a FH spammer and it's a moot point and you should have 5/5 in that talent--that leaves you with 4-5 points to spend between Empowered Healing, Surge of Light, Healing Prayers, and Body and Soul. Then, you have 1-2 points in SoL and, since many priests like the utility of Body & Soul, that can easily eat up all your talents right there. Similarly, if you still feel you need the mana from Healing Prayers, that can easily use up those points.

Really, it all comes down to how much you cast Flash Heal and how much you're willing to trade for a little extra utility so if you don't cast Flash Heal a lot, it's the first talent on the chopping board. If you do, clearly you'd be dropping Empowered Renew instead.


On Preview:

Berlain, even if you cast FH a lot, you're still not losing too much by going 2/5 EH and 3/3 BR, but now all your other heals get that benefit as well. Instead, you'll probably see better results dropping IF and 2 points from EH for BR. In fact, doing that, at 4k SP, you'd only lose ~97 off your FH, while still getting 3% to all your other heals, for a considerable net benefit. Even if you stick with 2/5 EH and 3/3 BR, compared to 5/5 EH and 0/3 BR, you still only lose ~244 off your FH, so the 3% extra healing is ahead unless FH makes up at least 45% of your healing at 4k SP. IOW, BR is better than EH for all but the most FH spammy types.

And, if I'm reading it right, you're considering dropping Serendipity? Please say I misread that.

[harky]

I'm a fan of Empowered Healing as well; if for no other reason than I refuse to be a full-time Renew bot. I've been rolling with this build lately for 25 ICC.

Brief rundown of that build:
1. 2/2 Surge of Light shouldn't be taken by anyone ever. For specs that use FH a lot it's a throughput decrease to have SoL at all. For Renew builds you won't use SoL on every proc, but only in specific cases, so taking 1/2 grants enough up-time to exploit the talent, while 2/2 has nearly no benefit at all.
2. Healing Prayers is higher mana regen than Inner Focus. That combined with the minimum 1 point taken from SoL allows you to max Healing Prayers.
3. As Zeuq explained 2/5 Emp Healing and 3/3 Blessed Resil is near universally better than 5/5 Emp Healing. 5/5 Emp Healing should only be taken by pure FH builds in which case you still have 3/3 Blessed Resil.
4. A Priest without B&S is a wasted body in serious content. If you're casual, you're casual, if you're not then skipping it is short sighted and in a word: Dumb.

[Berlain]

If you're casual, you're casual

I'd probably rate myself as serious-casual. I care enough to try, but don't put in too many all night raids - got wife aggro and such to concern myself with ;D Thanks for the pointers I'll tinker with the build and see where it takes me.

[harky]

I'd probably rate myself as serious-casual. I care enough to try, but don't put in too many all night raids - got wife aggro and such to concern myself with ;D Thanks for the pointers I'll tinker with the build and see where it takes me.

Serious-casual = casual to me. With Wrath's lax difficulty if you're not killing a new boss every week, or have all available bosses down or being worked on, then you're casual. Anything less than 12 hours is casual by default, unless you're clearing all the current tier's bosses in 12 hours or less. So take that with a grain of salt.

[Maxpowr]

My guild is currently working through P2 of LK25 (reg).

I used to love Flash heal but now I am a renew bot.

As others have said, dumping 5 points into a talent for spells we may not use much (GH and BH specifically) is just not worth it. Same can be said about Divine Fury.

Given Blizz's current MO of constant "light" damage and not spike damage, it strongly favors a renew build.

[tehmark]

Brief rundown of that build:
1. 2/2 Surge of Light shouldn't be taken by anyone ever. For specs that use FH a lot it's a throughput decrease to have SoL at all. For Renew builds you won't use SoL on every proc, but only in specific cases, s

I still think 2/2 is good for raid healing, you can't really argue with a free heal.

[harky]

SoL does not grant a free heal. It removes the mana cost of a spell, but that does not make it free. The cost is in throughput. Using a SoL charge should only be done when you know a target needs ~4k health instantly. Otherwise SoL is nothing but the removal of crit from a Flash Heal, or the replacement of a Renew with a crit-free Flash Heal. There are no encounters in the game where the situation comes up that makes this a good trade with any consistency. Since 1/2 SoL is still 25% it will be up for the majority of a fight and allow you to have SoL up when needed. 2/2 SoL just means you'll get a lot of SoL refreshes, or allow you to heal in a horrible manner. Take your pick. Renew specs should take 1/2, Flash Heal specs should take 0/2, or 1/2 depending on taste.

[Danner]

To follow up on what Harky just said (he's quite right!):

A flash heal is a backloaded cast landing 1.5 seconds (disregarding haste) after you cast it.
A SoL-flash heal is a frontloaded cast landing instantly, but with a 1.5 second GCD (again, disregarding haste). And no crit.
Haste may reduce these casting time numbers of equal amounts.

Basically, if you saved someone by landing the frontloaded fheal, 1.5 seconds earlier, you did well in picking SoL.
But it's very rare for a single fheal to save anyone alone anymore.
If that 1.5 seconds didn't make any difference, you lost out a chance to crit.

The manacost saved is rather inconsequential at this point. Most priests have enough regen to cast fheal forever anyway. It's our cheapest heal after all. Back in the days when this talent gave us OOFRS dancing, it was bloody awesome. Now, it's... a good tool to have if you need a fast heal while on the run. But mostly, that heal is called renew.

0 or 1 talent point. Not two

[G l o w y r m]

The math basically shows that it's roughly equivalent point for point to Blessed Resilience if ~45% of your healing is FH+BH+GH, but since most of us don't cast it that much, it's generally an inferior talent. And Test of Faith is similar to Blessed Resilience, except it gives more when it's really needed, so I'd consider that superior to both.

Exactly, this is my understanding of it as well.

Berlain, even if you cast FH a lot, you're still not losing too much by going 2/5 EH and 3/3 BR, but now all your other heals get that benefit as well. Instead, you'll probably see better results dropping IF and 2 points from EH for BR. In fact, doing that, at 4k SP, you'd only lose ~97 off your FH, while still getting 3% to all your other heals, for a considerable net benefit. Even if you stick with 2/5 EH and 3/3 BR, compared to 5/5 EH and 0/3 BR, you still only lose ~244 off your FH, so the 3% extra healing is ahead unless FH makes up at least 45% of your healing at 4k SP. IOW, BR is better than EH for all but the most FH spammy types.

YES! I have been telling people this forever. Even if you are an avid Flash Heal caster that runs with 5/5 Empowered Healing, dropping to 2/5 for 3/3 Blessed Resilience will net you a very significant increase in healing since Holy's greatest strength is raid healing, and all of our other spells that BR affect will be increased per target/tick/cast.


Regarding SoL - Usually if I'm casting Flash Heal, it's because I only want to give about 4k health or save someone. SoL does both of those better than regular Flash Heal. As Holy, I'll heal burst raid damage and then "clean up" with Flash Heal. By that point I don't care if it crits, it will probably just be overheal. Also losing the crit means no HC proc but you just said regen is fine.

So why not have a frontload spell rather than a backload spell?

If someone actually needs a Flash Heal larger than a non crit, I'm usually not the only person throwing a heal their way, so I would rather have the utility of SoL to buffer the hurt person. As Holy, I know I'm not a single target healer so I like the idea of getting a quick heal out and then continuing to do something else, like spreading more Renews, PoMs and COH's. If someone is really low and needs a bigger heal, that's the Pallies job, I'll just make sure he stays alive for that heal with my frontloaded SoL

I fail to see how SoL is healing in a "horrible manner". The only argument is that I'm losing the crit which really means I'm losing a little bit of extra healing. It's been more rare for me that I need a Flash Heal bigger than 4k and if someone actually does it's not really my job. I'll take the speed over the extra healing.

I've had much success with an almost all instant cast rotation (Renew, PoM, CoH, SoL). It allows me to cover more ground quickly.

[kelevandros]

You do forget one aspect of SoL 2/2 in your current analysis. In a renew heavy playstyle more frequent SoLs mean faster serendipity stack up without actual use of flash heal.

[llDemonll]

4 renew then CoH? so you get 1 fheal and 1 less renew in between CoH? PoM is also bouncing every 8 seconds (new one every 8 seconds), you shouldnt need more than 1/2 SoL

[Worshaka]

1. Empowered Healing

EH isn't a bad talent but when it comes down to min/maxing in the holy tree, you can spend 3 of the 5 potential points in EH on BR... and as has been discussed the 3% total healing aspect of BR is more throughput than 3 points in EH.

Some go with 2/5 EH for that reason, but you can use those 2 points to pick up B&S instead which is what a lot of holy priests do.

In summary, EH isn't bad but its not as effective as BR and for the small throughput effect of 2/5 a lot of priests prefer the utility of B&S.

2. SoL

A lot of priests make the mistake that they want a huge amount of SoL procs. They think this is a good thing because of the fact they now get an instant cast FH that costs 0 mana.

Having FH cost 0 mana doesn't actually mean a lot, mana pools are so big and regen is so huge that the mp/5 aspect of the talent doesn't actually mean a lot. Sure every bit helps but at the end of the day if you had to pay for all your FHs you could do so easily.

Some others forget that SoL means that FH can no longer crit, this is negative to your burst heal capability not to mention it prevents a chance of a HC proc. So the mana you saved with SoL has a negative relationship with HC uptime.

Too many SoLs promote poor spell selection or simply go wasted. If you get SoL procs al the time and use them chances are you are now casting FH too often. If you dont use them all then what was the point of getting more of them?

In addition the difference in proc chance between 1/2 and 2/2 isn't double... this is due to the fact that we have spells that hit multiple targets and thus 1 GCD can have multi crits. Thats not to say taht 2/2 doesnt give a decent chance increase but it's not as effecient as the first point.

Lastly 1/2 just gives you enough procs to utilise well. I can't see any need for more SoL and as i've described above, more would just be annoying.

[axxey]

Basically it's not worth it to only use half the talent and 90% of priests these days are violently opposed to great heal(which gets more out of the talent).

If you're healing 10man with a druid and don't want to go disc you could quite happily pump your single target throughput with divine fury and empowered healing.

I personally take divine fury over spell warding and use serendipity stacks on great heal far more often than prayer of healing in a 10man.