How much spirit should holy priest aim for in raids?

[Deleted]

Reading the recent blue post, I saw that Blizzard expect us to be able to heal just fine in heroics with 1800 spirit. Sounds good to me, I healed fine in ilvl 329 gear, but it made me think about how much spirit I have and if I need that much. I plan to get into raiding soon since I have an average ilvl of 345 (stupid healing trinks won't drop) and I have quite a lot of spirit, WAY too much for heroics (never have to pop cooldowns anymore and usually stable above 50% mana left). When does it start to become a good idea to reforge spirit into haste/mastery? How much spirit, non raid-buffed, should a holy priest aim for? (More is better, sure, but having tons of mana left after a boss is a waste of other stats).

[Deleted]

~2450-2600 spirit

[Danner]

Raids are definitively more taxing than heroics. I barely use my shadowfiend in heroics anymore either, unless I end up with a can't-bother-to-cc PUG with low DPS. In which case nothing really helps. For raids, mana is much more tight as some fights expect you to liberally use flash heals and chainspam prayer of healing.

1800 spirit is barely enough for the easier raid encounters (council of winds, omnitron, possibly magmaw), but generally you will either need a strong force of shammies (manatide) or paladins (to carry you) or amazing DPSers (to shorten encouter durations). Expect to use manapots at every single try, use a tight mana budget, and still be starving. Holy Priest regen is pretty amazing now (90% combat regen!), and until it is nerfed in 4.0.6, you should really seek to carry your group, not the other way around. Ideally, you should be the last person running OOM, while clad in blues, and your epic geared paladins will envy you.

With 1800 spirit, you aren't really taking advantage of that OP regen. The regen is one of the primary reasons why holypriests can compete with paladins right now. Without it, you will be totally incapable of healing some of the harder encounters (like Chimaeron). You just don't have enough mana towards the end. I would at least aim for 500 more spirit, probably more after the regen nerf hit in the next patch. For a quick fix, get yourself a darkmoon card: tsunami. It seriously rocks and is well worth the 35k gold it sells for on my server (fishing is a great moneymaker). Also, the BoE epic staff (don't recall the name) is an amazing investment, at least from a throughput point of view.

That said, spirit isn't everything. A healthy dose of throughput takes you a long way. And playstyle affect mana usage more than anything.

[xandamere]

So basically healing comes down to throughput versus efficiency. Stats like haste, int, mastery, and crit increase your throughput...you cast faster, bigger heals. Spirit increases efficiency, letting you cast for longer. Yes, this is a simplistic definition because mastery sort of also increases efficiency, as does int, etc. Bear with me.

I still favor stacking all spirit. Why? Because you can always increase your throughput by casting less efficient but bigger/fast spells, like mixing in more flash/greater heals and fewer small heals. But if you go the other way, gearing for haste/mastery/whatever and reducing spirit, you can't increase your regen in any other way. Until you get to the point where you can spam prayer of healing or flash heal (or hell, even greater heal) for 5 minutes straight without stopping, you can always increase your healing throughput by using the bigger spells.

At least that's my opinion, but it's served me pretty well thus far.

[Deleted]

That's good to hear, I guess I'll refrain from reforging spirit then since I'm currently at 2556 spirit, which sounds like it will be just about right to start raiding.

[Tavin]

I'm sitting at 2866 spirit, still dying to get hold of maloriak trinket, an extra 580 spirit yum! If you are doing hardmodes, you will need every bit of spirit you can get.

For starting to raid, well I started 2nd day of cataclysm before our hotfix to regen. Was sitting at roughly 2.2k combat regen. At fights where you know when they will use bloodlust (hopefully before execute phase) save shadowfiend for it.

And the problem i see most healers do and then saying "I'm oom gg" is that they save their mana cooldowns Way too long. If you lost 30k mana and you know that your xx ability will give you 25-30k, use it. Don't save it longer than you have to.

[Deleted]

I'm sitting at 2866 spirit, still dying to get hold of maloriak trinket, an extra 580 spirit yum! If you are doing hardmodes, you will need every bit of spirit you can get.

For starting to raid, well I started 2nd day of cataclysm before our hotfix to regen. Was sitting at roughly 2.2k combat regen. At fights where you know when they will use bloodlust (hopefully before execute phase) save shadowfiend for it.

And the problem i see most healers do and then saying "I'm oom gg" is that they save their mana cooldowns Way too long. If you lost 30k mana and you know that your xx ability will give you 25-30k, use it. Don't save it longer than you have to.

True, I definitely have a tendency to use my Arcane Torrent way too seldom. Since it's just a 2 minute cooldown, it can be used several times on some bosses, but I always wait until shit hits the fan.

I have an extra question btw: By using hymn of hope and shadowfiend at the same time, you can make your shadowfiend more effective (since max mana is increased and shadowfiend gain is based on max mana). Question is, is it more effective in the long term to use them at the same time or split them up?

[Tavin]

You can rarely use shadowfiend more than once on an encounter. So if you can, save it for bloodlust. Hymn should be used on bloodlust as well, so, yes you can use them at the same time for maximum gain if you won't get full by both.
Keep in mind that hymn only effects the 3 people who have lowest mana atm.
So unless you aren't one of them, it wont even effect you (which is usually the case for me in 25 mans).

[GoldenGunned]

theres no magic number - aim to have spirit on every piece of gear and reforge those that dont into spirit.

[Deleted]

theres no magic number - aim to have spirit on every piece of gear and reforge those that dont into spirit.

Exactly. Thus you should end up on 2100-ish in iLevel 246 gear, which is more than enough!

[Deviante]

Currently have 2923 spirit with 5 stacks of Darkmoon card. I also have Heartsong on my weapon, Darkglow embroidery on cloak and Tear of blood as my second trinket that can proc 1710 spirit. I don't usually have to even use shadowfiend on raid bosses and I mainly use it as extra dps during bloodlust. I don't remember having any mana issues so far in the game, but we did start raiding with a shaman healer in our roster and I would have propably oomed without a mana tide totem on few fights... But tbh, only Nefarian and Cho'gall are fights where you might have mana issues even if you aren't running with full 346 items... At least with a shaman x_x

[Caladia]

Currently have 2923 spirit with 5 stacks of Darkmoon card. I also have Heartsong on my weapon, Darkglow embroidery on cloak and Tear of blood as my second trinket that can proc 1710 spirit. I don't usually have to even use shadowfiend on raid bosses and I mainly use it as extra dps during bloodlust. I don't remember having any mana issues so far in the game, but we did start raiding with a shaman healer in our roster and I would have propably oomed without a mana tide totem on few fights... But tbh, only Nefarian and Cho'gall are fights where you might have mana issues even if you aren't running with full 346 items... At least with a shaman x_x

Wish I was running with a Shaman then. Though I'm not sure how much the Mana Tide changes will effect super mana regen. We tried Halfus last week and got a bad combo for learning. At 7%, our best attempt, the Druid and I were pushing close to 11k hps with the Paladin coming up on 10k hps and we were all pretty much oom.

Of course it doesn't help when the Paladin, one of the tanks, and a few DPS weren't geared properly yet. >< I'm looking forward to going in there with everyone being properly geared and slapping him around.

But back to OP, I have 2.2k Spirit I think unbuffed. That's enough in-combat regen that I can spam Heal non-stop. My gloves don't have Spirit on them, and I'm wearing double mastery trinkets so no additional Spirit there either. When I do get a few new pieces it'll be even better.

[Deleted]

I'm sitting on 2600 atm as mainly discipline priest, but even when I switch to holy, I find no problems with mana, unless raids fuck-up, which isn't your problem to solve. But you should just try out by yourself, reforge if you feel you have too mana and could pick some output instead of it. Everybody is playing in their own style.

[zito]

You have enough spirit when you don't have mana issues, if you are having mana issues get more spirit if you don't focus on other stats.

[Maxpowr]

For holy, if I had to put a min spirit requirement to start raiding, it would be 2250 (from gear alone). Any less than that and you will be running oom on raid fights. That amount of spirit will mostly come through with gear. An i346 holy priest should be easily able to attain that amount if they gear properly. As long as you keep on getting gear with spirit already on it, you will be fine for raids.

[harky]

I haven't found much need for Spirit beyond ~2900. The less haste you have the lower this number will be, but anything under ~2500 is quite uncomfortable.

Note: I do not use Spirit flasks. This means if you are using them ~2750 and ~2300 Spirit unbuffed would be about the equivalent.

[Mercarcher]

I've yet to run into mana problems at 1600 spirit. I'm currently 9/12. I do have 5400 int though.

[Arcsecant]

With jar of ancient remedies, core of ripness, and 2 resto shaman in our 25 man, I'm finding myself reforging some of the spirit on my gear into haste. There is most definitely such a thing as too much spirit. We haven't done any hardmodes yet but I don't think I will have to reforge back because hopefully by then I will have 4 piece t11.

[Scraggie]

You can rarely use shadowfiend more than once on an encounter. ).

I use shadowfiend twice on every fight. Make sure you pop it early in fight sitting around 70% mana. And you should have it up before the end of the fight. Even better when you can pop it with hymn for the extra mana. I have yet to oom on any recent encounters and end fights with generally a high mana pool. Thats sitting with 2500 spirit atm.

[scandore8472]

So basically healing comes down to throughput versus efficiency. Stats like haste, int, mastery, and crit increase your throughput...you cast faster, bigger heals. Spirit increases efficiency, letting you cast for longer. Yes, this is a simplistic definition because mastery sort of also increases efficiency, as does int, etc. Bear with me.

Int is also a fairly good regen stat as it increases the amount of mana we gain back from shadow fiend and HoH as well as throughput.