[Priest] State of Holy - 4.2.0

[Kelesti]

Release Candidate, go!
Apparently, because I was too busy enjoying a hockey game and the party afterwards, I was late putting this up... or something. I dunno.

Continued from the 4.1 thread, let's see what we have coming up for us:

Uhh....

....Mana Tide was nerfed...

On the surface, that's pretty much it when it comes to us. However, take note of a couple things: One, heroic geared Priests won't be jumping into normal t12, for obvious reasons, but the 2pc12 looks to restore less mana than 4pc11. Also of note: Spirit gear is a little more hidden, this time around. Crummy itemisation may be a way that Blizzard can keep us in check, rather than letting us blindly stack spirit to the point of regen not mattering... normally, this wasn't an issue because we were capped. Without 4pc11, and with the nerfed Mana Tide, this may not be the case.

Time will tell.

I did not mess around on the PTR this time around, so I can't really say for certain what fights we need to watch out for, or much at all really. So please, if you'd like to fill us in, or on some other hidden changes, be my guest.

"As always, what's your take?"

Edit: Also of note, the 4pc12 bonus and its ensuing "make Lightwell like" threads will most likely give me several trips to the psyche-ward, or at least a trip to the emergency from a hemorrhage to the brain via embedding a desk into my skull.

[phaffo]

Thanks for sticking all three threads. I didn't like the gateway thread thing at all.

[nobodysbaby]

I am talking raiding, and I am talking about Holy Priest in their by far most common roles, raidhealing.

Crit heals will gain a 150-->200% buff in 4.2, wich I think is good. Crit wasn't wanted by many healing classes, specially not Holy Priest, currently at the bottom with 10-11% Crit (perhaps with Paladin), avoiding/reforging their Crit ---> Mastery and Haste wich are far more beneficial.

I am a little concerned about Holy priest scaling once again, since I think they are already a bit discriminated by lacking Manaregen talents from Intellect (Rapture, +% Intellect talents, Revitalize etc), wich scales better with output. I do believe this is one of the reasons druids are scaling so well atm, but that is another topic

Disc:
15% Int (giving increased crit)
Aegis (absorb based on crit)
Renewed Hope (10% crit on Weakened Soul/Grace targets)
Inner Focus (25% crit on a CD).

Shammy:
Tidal Waves (+crit to Healing surge after Riptide)
Acuity (3% crit).

Druid:
6% Int from Heart of the Wild talent
Natures Bounty (+crit Regrowth)
Nature's Majesty (4% crit to all spells)

Paladin:
Last Word (+crit to WoG)
Divine Favor (+20% crit & haste on a CD)
Infusion of Light (+10% crit on HS)
Rule of Law (15% crit WoG)

Holy Priest:
Nothing to crit if you aren't doing 5 mans and use HW Serenity.


I am not saying all these talents will be used by all, but they are there. And, I might've missed something aswell What's your thought about this?

[Kelesti]

Reasons to stack crit as a raid healer:

Druid: lolwut? Regrowth? Seriously?
Shaman: Ancestral Awakening, when you're casting single target heals. Resurgence when you're OoM. Haste and Mastery are still the better output stats, and spirit's still the better regen stat.
Paladin: lolpallyraidhealing. Infusion of Light's pretty awesome. Crit scales with Holy Radiance, whereas Mastery doesn't. Still doesn't make crit better than Spirit or Haste.

Discipline Priest raid-healing: ...what?

Seeing as you made the specification for raid-healing, crit is first and foremost an RNG stat. Increase it to 300% and it doesn't change the fact that RNG is RNG. Increase its percentage per rating, and stack it like mad, and you still cannot eliminate that aspect of it.

Holy Priests realized this a long time ago, and discovered that it was better to increase your output all the time, rather than having a chance to give you a bigger output. It might sim out nicer, but sims are averages, nothing more.

Quite frankly, I'm glad that there's no talents that benefit crit (beyond Chakra (Serenity) and Holy Word: Serenity), because it doesn't try to convince people it's a viable stat, when it's not.

[nobodysbaby]

I was writing about Holy Priest in their roles as raidhealers, not all other classes. And Disc can raidheal, why not? I was comparing the benefits from the crit buff, nothing else.

The fact that Crit is not be the most valuable stat for us, does far from mean it is totally worthless, specially with heavy burst and tank damage. Neither was I talking about stacking crit. If you want to talk about worthless, lets talk about some of our Holy talents.

I think Kelesti, maybe you could act a little less EJ and like you have the best oppinions about every aspect of priest, specially since you are a moderator here. Pls.

[Kelesti]

I was writing about Holy Priest in their roles as raidhealers, not all other classes. And Disc can raidheal, why not? I was comparing the benefits from the crit buff, nothing else.

I was writing about the actual benefits raid healers see from stacking crit. And a Discipline raid healer (not tank healer) sees very low benefit from crit rating. Sure they see Aegis when they crit, but they also see that crit aegis being potentially useless. Not only that, but they can trigger Aegis without relying on a crit.

It's not a stat worth actually pursuing, and they would purge it from their gear choosing either haste/mastery hybrid, or gear permitting full mastery and bubble-bots. Crit is a terrible stat for raid healing Priests of either spec.

Crit has fundamental flaws in the raid healing dynamic, one that Spiritus went over in his guide before he took it down.

The fact that Crit is not be the most valuable stat for us, does far from mean it is totally worthless, specially with heavy burst and tank damage. Neither was I talking about stacking crit. If you want to talk about worthless, lets talk about some of our Holy talents.

By "some" you mean State of Mind, right? Because the rest may not be "omg amazing" but still pull their weight and give a Priest reasons to spec into/out of them as they see fit (successful talent design).

I think Kelesti, maybe you could act a little less EJ and like you have the best oppinions about every aspect of priest, specially since you are a moderator here. Pls.

Why? EJ says crit's a good stat (or at least it did, for the past 4 1/2 years, but knowing them they'd still be putting it above haste). I think you could perhaps entertain the notion that crit is a stat worth pursuing, and try to persuade me with real reasons? Other than "we get nothing from crit" which is pointless, because as it stands, even if we did: crit would still be terrible. But go ahead, and prove me wrong.

For your logic, make crit 300% instead of 200%, and deliver me a reason why having "+crit" talents, or effects that trigger off crit would be beneficial to us as raid healers. A proof should be easier with the logic skewed more in your favor with 300%, afterall the buff to 200% makes you think we're missing out on something.

[nobodysbaby]

The only point I am trying to make here Kelesti, is that Holy Priest will be the "biggest looser" from the +crit buff, since we idd don't choose crit or have any extra crit.

Add to that we lack +% Intellect and the benefit from Intellect other classes have.

This... Makes me worried about our scaling.

No need to get complicated.

Ofc we miss out if we lack crit and they buff crit. It's not always overheal, specially not hardmodes.

[Skelly]

Scaling coefficients within holy spells should account for not having an intellect talent buff. If not.. Better respec to disc.

[nobodysbaby]

I hope so. The current state holy is in is fair, but could be better, and i certainly don't want it to slip any further. I don't really like charts, but I am going to post one anyway.

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/#1u00000

Considering we do lack any kind of raid CD i think we could be better.

[Kelesti]

The only point I am trying to make here Kelesti, is that Holy Priest will be the "biggest looser" from the +crit buff, since we idd don't choose crit or have any extra crit.

Add to that we lack +% Intellect and the benefit from Intellect other classes have.

Only one spec has +Intellect, and it's the only one that doesn't have +Heal baked into the passives.

The only other "benefits from Intellect" are Intellect based regen mechanics (which Shaman is lacking entirely, theirs being non-scaling off crit).

We don't have to worry about our scaling, because thanks to our spirit bonus, we need less of it to compete with other healers, thus allowing us to move onto Haste and Mastery that much sooner. Whether we have The +Crit buff in our raid doesn't really affect our output, our scaling isn't a concern from that issue. Our scaling comes from haste, mastery, our Intellect/Spellpower coefficients (which again, only one healer has higher intellect scaling, but no +heal).

If we had talents for +crit, would we actually take them? If Darkness was crit instead of haste, not a chance. If darkness was both, Tank Healing Discipline would be all over those points. Raid Healing Discipline wouldn't care. Holy wouldn't care.

We don't choose crit, we don't talent crit, and with the smaller talent trees we wouldn't even if we had the option to.

It's not always overheal, specially not hardmodes.

That's actually not why crit is bad. The point is, it's there when you don't need it, but not there when you do.

From Spiritus' no-longer supported Discipline guide:

(5) CRIT: Should be avoided! Even with the proposed DA “double dip” on PoH crits, CRIT is still a horrible stat for a disc raid healer. When multi-target raid healing, you cannot allow RNG to dictate how your “extra” throughput gets allocated.

As an example, let’s look at tank healing [assumed 30%crit average]:
Tank: [ ][x][ ][ ][ ][ ][x][x][ ][ ]
The boxes represent spell casts and the “x” represents a crit. As can be seen, none of these crits will be wasted as long as the Tank is taking damage and the proper spell is used.

Now let’s look at how crit can affect raid healing [assumed 30%crit average]:

Now, for the sake of argument, let’s assume it takes 3 PoH worth of healing to prevent the death of all five of these raiders, however, our CRIT-heavy disc raid healer can only fit in 2PoH casts in period of time before death. Let’s also assume our disc priest has enough MST to have 200% crits.

Raider1[x][x]||[_][x][_] Raider1 receives two crits. Raider1 is alive.
Raider2[_][_]||[x][_][_] Raider2 receives no crits. Raider2 is dead.
Raider3[_][_]||[_][_][x] Raider3 receives no crits. Raider3 is dead.
Raider4[x][_]||[_][_][_] Raider4 receives one crit. Raider4 is alive.
Raider5[_][_]||[_][x][x] Raider5 receives no crits. Raider5 is dead.

Now, the reason why I show three more PoH casts is to illustrate how these random crits could look like over a longer period to demonstrate that I’m not cherry picking something to make it look bad. In fact, in this scenario, no matter how large the PoH-DA double dip on crit coefficient is, our CRIT based disc raid healer, on average, can only save a maximum of 3 raiders. However, a HST based disc raid healer would save all five every-time, with sufficient haste to squeeze in the 3rd cast before the “death” mark.

Crit is an unreliable stat, one that pretty much every raid healer avoids (except Paladins, but they smell funny). If it happens, great. But it doesn't affect scaling at all, nor is it something we actively pursue.

Intellect gives us more than crit, that's why we really shouldn't be concerned about our scaling under these circumstances.

---------- Post added 2011-06-13 at 01:50 AM ----------

I hope so. The current state holy is in is fair, but could be better, and i certainly don't want it to slip any further. I don't really like charts, but I am going to post one anyway.

http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/#1u00000

Considering we do lack any kind of raid CD i think we could be better.

Meters were saying we were useless in Wrath, which couldn't be further from the truth. Granted, I'd like State of Mind to turn into a cooldown of some kind so I don't need to indulge myself into Archangel, but really... Shaman stack mastery to look lower on a parse, because like us, when the burst damage goes out and people start dying, that's where they/we shine (unlike Druids). Give Druids higher output, Shaman and Holy Priests are still the gatekeepers holding all the keys.

[nobodysbaby]

I'll get back to you, Kelesti, off to work Have a nice day!

[Kelesti]

I'll get back to you, Kelesti, off to work Have a nice day!

Looking forward to it.

[Ynna]

The only point I am trying to make here Kelesti, is that Holy Priest will be the "biggest looser" from the +crit buff, since we idd don't choose crit or have any extra crit.

Add to that we lack +% Intellect and the benefit from Intellect other classes have.

This... Makes me worried about our scaling.

No need to get complicated.

Ofc we miss out if we lack crit and they buff crit. It's not always overheal, specially not hardmodes.

A crit that doesn't overheal, is just a bonus, something nice to have, but not something you should expect. The change to crit doesn't change anything. The only ones who are getting something out of the crit change are paladins and tank-healing discipline priests, and only to some extent. These are not the people you will lose your raid spot for, since they fill a different niche.

[Deleted]

The only point I am trying to make here Kelesti, is that Holy Priest will be the "biggest looser" from the +crit buff, since we idd don't choose crit or have any extra crit.

Add to that we lack +% Intellect and the benefit from Intellect other classes have.

This... Makes me worried about our scaling.

No need to get complicated.

Ofc we miss out if we lack crit and they buff crit. It's not always overheal, specially not hardmodes.

Careful about what you're saying with that int-scaling thing. Every class has a 2nd way of regen instead of the standard spi-regen. Druids and disc go with int%, shamans with crit, holly-priests with extra spiritregen. All of this scales with better gear except for paladins where judging gives a fixed amount, whatever your gearlevel is. I'ld think you're far from the worst in this regard.
About the crit: hots-classes would get more from this and then again shamans and disco's make good use of crit anyhow. Paladins just need the standard bit from int and not more. Again quite similar and holly's (as hot healers) are not the worst off imo.

EDIT: Also crit is crap for paladins since it seems many people think otherwise. The only reason they pick crit is because it's still better than mastery... (more detailed: it gives infusion of light true, but overall waaay too much rng since we only use direct heals not counting holy radiance)
Oh yea we also pick crit because it's hard to find spi+haste gear in the current tier but look closer: every paladin reforges that crit to haste.

[Kelesti]

EDIT: Also crit is crap for paladins since it seems many people think otherwise. The only reason they pick crit is because it's still better than mastery... (more detailed: it gives infusion of light true, but overall waaay too much rng since we only use direct heals not counting holy radiance)

I've gone on the record saying crit isn't good, several times over.

Also: lolpallyraidheals.

[nobodysbaby]

About the crit: hots-classes would get more from this and then again shamans and disco's make good use of crit anyhow. Paladins just need the standard bit from int and not more. Again quite similar and holly's (as hot healers) are not the worst off imo.

Holy Priest HoT healers? Not much since WotLK. As I see it, other classes will benefit more then Holy Priest from the 150-200% crit buff since they have, by far, the lowest crit chance on heals. So we have different oppinions, np. Let's see how it turns out.

---------- Post added 2011-06-13 at 01:46 PM ----------

The only ones who are getting something out of the crit change are paladins and tank-healing discipline priests, and only to some extent. These are not the people you will lose your raid spot for, since they fill a different niche.

I do believe Druids will benefit from the crit bonus to, and much more so then Holy Priests, simply because they have more heals that will crit, simple maths.

---------- Post added 2011-06-13 at 01:59 PM ----------

That's actually not why crit is bad. The point is, it's there when you don't need it, but not there when you do.

From Spiritus' no-longer supported Discipline guide:
Crit is an unreliable stat, one that pretty much every raid healer avoids (except Paladins, but they smell funny). If it happens, great. But it doesn't affect scaling at all, nor is it something we actively pursue.

Meters were saying we were useless in Wrath, which couldn't be further from the truth. Granted, I'd like State of Mind to turn into a cooldown of some kind so I don't need to indulge myself into Archangel, but really... Shaman stack mastery to look lower on a parse, because like us, when the burst damage goes out and people start dying, that's where they/we shine (unlike Druids). Give Druids higher output, Shaman and Holy Priests are still the gatekeepers holding all the keys.

Crit is unreliable, yeah, but does that really mean it is worthless? I don't understand how you can state that it will be there only when you don't need it. More 200% crit heals I would for sure welcome.

Well there's one thing we agree on: State of Mind. In my oppinion the whole Chakra system turned out to something very weird and not needed, specially since Sanctuary is so utterly crap. "Chakra will be the reason you will want to play Holy Priest", i remember Ghostcrawler said... *giggle*

[Mazi]

Crit isn't worthless - but you're never going to value it over Int/Spi/Haste/Mastery, ever. Therefore you are going to want to pick as many items as possible WITHOUT Crit and Reforge out of Crit wherever possible.

Don't forget that Stat for Stat Crit also gives you less (it takes more Crit points to equal a full percentage)

[nobodysbaby]

Crit isn't worthless - but you're never going to value it over Int/Spi/Haste/Mastery, ever. Therefore you are going to want to pick as many items as possible WITHOUT Crit and Reforge out of Crit wherever possible.

Don't forget that Stat for Stat Crit also gives you less (it takes more Crit points to equal a full percentage)

Noone ever stated anything different.

[Kelesti]

Noone ever stated anything different.

But it's the same with Paladins, Druids, Shaman, and Discipline (Raid Healers). Everyone's trying to get out of the crit rating because it's terrible.

The buff to 200% makes it look nicer on a spreadsheet, as an average but really, haste and mastery are still better. I don't know why you think we'd be getting left behind on this.

[nobodysbaby]

But it's the same with Paladins, Druids, Shaman, and Discipline (Raid Healers). Everyone's trying to get out of the crit rating because it's terrible.

The buff to 200% makes it look nicer on a spreadsheet, as an average but really, haste and mastery are still better. I don't know why you think we'd be getting left behind on this.

Because our heals crit a lot less then other classes, and I never, ever stated that I prefer crit in front of any other stat. It might be just a minor different, but still, I would just like to point it out.