6.0.2 Holy Priest Questions

[Kaethur]

So, with 6.0.2 dropping. I'm thinking that Holy Priest is going to be the way to go with all of the changes (plus it's always been my favorite healing spec).

My questions mainly have to do with stat priority. I'm in a 25m now (obviously reduced to 20m come patch) and I've seen many different threads and discussions about Holy. A lot of them favor haste breakpoints, but it seems that many of them are due to renew blanketing which is only really viable in 10m (correct me if I am wrong). So I'm wondering what the stat priorities are going to be in a 20m Mythic guild. I'd appreciate it if your responses included reasoning and/or numbers that this is based upon.

Another thing is that with Disc, spirit is no issue and I reforge/gem out of every bit of spirit right now for added crit/mastery. I know Holy will be more mana-regen dependent and I'm wondering what a good spirit point would be. I do realize that this is largely dependent on your style of play, but just a rough guesstimate would be perfect.

Lastly, the tier bonuses seem very lackluster to me. What do you all think?

I appreciate all the help in advance! Thank you guys!

[appro]

Thank Isheria for this:

Multistrike > haste > crit > mastery > versatility
sanctuary + renew (glyph) + coh + PoM with WoM and glyph + ToF + cascade + solace for mana but it really depends on your kill times and numbers of healers.

Renew blanketing is the done thing in 20m mythic. When sitting in Sanc it reduces the CD of CoH.
I kind of get the feeling that holy will be more likely to save a life (lightspring) whereas it used to be disc (atonement) - how each spec plays out remains to been seen yet.
In 6.0 I don't think there is any harm in stacking haste as much as possible given there is no breakpoints and partial ticks are a thing now. I could be wrong but I've not seen anything to contradict this.

Also worth noting that in the 6.0 prepatch all spirit (on armour) and hit (on everything) is being removed.
If you're lucky you will have some hit/spirit + crit/haste gear laying around as spirit/hit + crit will become crit + haste and similarly spirit/hit + haste will become crit + haste.
If you're really you'll have the cleave trinket from Nazgrim already as the cleave component is being converted to multistrike.

Isheria was saying the set bonuses are still okay to take even though the gear will be mastery/crit.
He/She? is more likely to be correct than I however I remain uncertain as I've got HWF gear that will convert to haste/crit for every armour (tier) slot except pants as they don't exist. I can see 2 set being good in my situation as its only 1 extra bit of gear but 4 being questionable because of the shitty stats.

[Symmone]

Disc can be played just fine if thats what you prefer. It wont be the same but its not going to be as bad as the doom and gloom police have said.

[Isheria]

Renew is your new primary filler, it is massively buffed over the MoP version and has the best interaction with the newly redesigned sanctuary chakra which reduces CoH cd by 1 sec for every heal cast. Haste is the best stat to stack before WoD then it will be multistrike closely followed by haste. Stat priority for level 90 is haste > crit > everything else. PoH is now used only to dump massive healing quickly, it is extremely ineffecient mana wise but has very high throughput, at level 90 you won't have any problems since mana is limitless so feel free to use whenever. Never use this without 2 serendipity stacks at least, again at level 90 you can ignore this since mana is limitless as already mentioned.

Haste directly buffs your renew plus allows you quicker access to your primary cd which is CoH and it's also massively buffed, haste breakpoints have also been removed so any haste you have is never wasted.
CoH now heals for slightly more than PoH, doesn't have the group restriction and it's instant. PoM is also what you should be casting on cd as well, it now has a 1.5 sec cast time so it will probably get you some time getting used to this but you'll soon get accustomed to it in the end.

Mastery after these changes is the worst stat to have because it buffs only direct heals, avoid it like the plague whenever you can which ain't really an option at level 90 since it's present on too many pieces.
Spirit is not something you will need at level 90 at least because baseline mana regen is vastly increased, you regen 4% max mana every 5 sec with 0 extra spirit on gear, mana is virtually endless so feel free to spam away whatever.

Chakra states no longer have passive healing bonuses so you're not penalised for using the improper spell on each one. For 5-mans stay exclusively in serenity and refresh renews whenever needed, important change to know is that now cascade no longer refreshes renew. For raiding you stay almost exclusively at sanctuary and make good use of the CoH cd reduction with renew as your primary filler and CoH, PoM whenever they are available.

Tier bonuses are extremely good to have as well, 2p directly buffs your PoH which you should use at 2 serendipity stacks when available which you'll get by using surge of light procs, this obviously changes at level 100 since you won't have access to these bonuses and you won't be using surge of light since solace will be the superior talent to choose. 4p is handy to have as well despite the limitations of sanctuary, relatively long cd and not as powerful as other similar abilities.

[emni]

Awesome write-up Isheria! But are 90 talents really so weak now that they don't even deserve a mention?

[Isheria]

Yes your level 90 talents have been nerfed into oblivion, healing has been nerfed by over 50% on all 3 of them and diminishing returns have been reinstated for divine star and halo. In addition cascade and halo now have 1.5 sec cast times, divine star still remains instant.

[emni]

Owh that really sucks. Thanks for the response!

[nobodysbaby]

Yes your level 90 talents have been nerfed into oblivion, healing has been nerfed by over 50% on all 3 of them and diminishing returns have been reinstated for divine star and halo. In addition cascade and halo now have 1.5 sec cast times, divine star still remains instant.

Do these spells have any use at all I wonder? Only been doing some 5m, but HP wont move. Same with DH, what a joke! Only spells I find somewhat "effective" is CoH(!-mark), Renew and fillers BH/FH proccs. PoM's and PoH are weak to, but lvl90+Hymn seems utterly... lost for words! Why did they decide to go with this?

[appro]

Do these spells have any use at all I wonder? Only been doing some 5m, but HP wont move. Same with DH, what a joke! Only spells I find somewhat "effective" is CoH(!-mark), Renew and fillers BH/FH proccs. PoM's and PoH are weak to, but lvl90+Hymn seems utterly... lost for words! Why did they decide to go with this?

Hymn is a flat heal raid wide. It doesn't appear to be overly strong in 5m because of this but in 20m its solid.
Previously I believe it would heal the 5 (12 in a 25m instance) lowest targets.

90 talents are nerf'd significantly but they still have their place.
From memory the guide is:
divine star when stacked and can't move out,
halo when stacked and you can move out to hit the clumped raid at full power,
and cascade for the other situations (spread)

[Teiam]

As someone who is looking to switch back to my priest for WoD I was wondering which glyphs for holy people will be using come 6.0 and WoD

[Isheria]

Default talent and glyph setup for level 90: http://wod.wowhead.com/talent#pxDT|f0Gabq
Default talent and glyph setup for level 100: http://wod.wowhead.com/talent#pxdT1|f0Gabq

Some interchangeable glyphs: Circle of healing can be replaced with more utility glyphs if you are doing 5-mans or can't handle the additional mana cost (irrelevant at 90 since mana is a non-issue) such as guardian spirit one or restored faith one which transforms your life grip into an intervene.
Prayer of Mending can be swapped for binding heal, especially useful at 5-mans with serenity since you can refresh 3 renews with 1 cast for a relatively low mana cost.

Prayer of Mending glyph is especially powerful when you get access to words of mending at level 100 because PoM is now uncapped and you can have more than 1 out at the same time and all of them benefit from this glyph. PoMs from multiple priests now stack so no more overwriting each other's PoM nonsense that exists on live.

Renew glyph is basically mandatory because stronger ticks are more beneficial than 1 extra tick and a few less powerful ticks. In most cases the very last tick of your renew will likely overheal, unless the fight is super gimmick like malkorok where this doesn't happen ever.

[Kacie]

Default talent and glyph setup for level 90: http://wod.wowhead.com/talent#pxDT|f0Gabq
Default talent and glyph setup for level 100: http://wod.wowhead.com/talent#pxdT1|f0Gabq

Some interchangeable glyphs: Circle of healing can be replaced with more utility glyphs if you are doing 5-mans or can't handle the additional mana cost (irrelevant at 90 since mana is a non-issue) such as guardian spirit one or restored faith one which transforms your life grip into an intervene.
Prayer of Mending can be swapped for binding heal, especially useful at 5-mans with serenity since you can refresh 3 renews with 1 cast for a relatively low mana cost.

Prayer of Mending glyph is especially powerful when you get access to words of mending at level 100 because PoM is now uncapped and you can have more than 1 out at the same time and all of them benefit from this glyph. PoMs from multiple priests now stack so no more overwriting each other's PoM nonsense that exists on live.

Renew glyph is basically mandatory because stronger ticks are more beneficial than 1 extra tick and a few less powerful ticks. In most cases the very last tick of your renew will likely overheal, unless the fight is super gimmick like malkorok where this doesn't happen ever.

Thank You Isheria

[Clebane]

I'm trying to calculate the healing value for CoH. Here's my formula

(GetSpellBonusHealing()*2.21666)*(1 + GetCombatRatingBonus(CR_VERSATILITY_DAMAGE_DONE)/100)

But this number if off by more than 10%. Am I missing a passive to holy priests?
If I swap to disc, I can calculate Holy Nova just fine as well as other heals.

[Myllior]

Am I missing a passive to holy priests?

There is a 10% passive healing bonus for Holy Priests; that will account for most of the discrepancy. The rest comes about because some spells still use the old (B + c.S) model with base healing B; while most spells have B = 0 (i.e. no base healing) or B = 1, Circle of Healing appears to have B = 51 (ballpark). Why this is, I don't know, but if you adjust your formula to include these effects then it should be accurate.

I.e.: CoH = (1.1)(51 + 2.21666*S)(1 + V)

[Deleted]

Hymn is a flat heal raid wide. It doesn't appear to be overly strong in 5m because of this but in 20m its solid.
Previously I believe it would heal the 5 (12 in a 25m instance) lowest targets.

90 talents are nerf'd significantly but they still have their place.
From memory the guide is:
divine star when stacked and can't move out,
halo when stacked and you can move out to hit the clumped raid at full power,
and cascade for the other situations (spread)

Actually its divine star never ever, unless it gets buffed before release. Halo when the raid is all stacked, otherwise cascade.

- - - Updated - - -

Yes your level 90 talents have been nerfed into oblivion, healing has been nerfed by over 50% on all 3 of them and diminishing returns have been reinstated for divine star and halo. In addition cascade and halo now have 1.5 sec cast times, divine star still remains instant.

Halo and Cascade are still sizeable increases. DS is not as terrible for holy as it is for disc, but it pays a hefty penalty for being instant.

[Clebane]

There is a 10% passive healing bonus for Holy Priests; that will account for most of the discrepancy. The rest comes about because some spells still use the old (B + c.S) model with base healing B; while most spells have B = 0 (i.e. no base healing) or B = 1, Circle of Healing appears to have B = 51 (ballpark). Why this is, I don't know, but if you adjust your formula to include these effects then it should be accurate.

I.e.: CoH = (1.1)(51 + 2.21666*S)(1 + V)

Awesome. Thanks!

[appro]

Actually its divine star never ever, unless it gets buffed before release. Halo when the raid is all stacked, otherwise cascade.

- - - Updated - - -

Halo and Cascade are still sizeable increases. DS is not as terrible for holy as it is for disc, but it pays a hefty penalty for being instant.

Divine star helps to reset CoH more often than cascade/halo (Chakra: Sanctuary). Picking 90 talents is a mix of positioning and damage patterns (hence why I said "guide" not "concrete rule"). I wouldn't be surprised if divine star ended up being the most appropriate choice in the majority of situations in SoO 6.0.

[Deleted]

Quick question about gemming in 6.0.2 lvl 90 holy, what about int? haste>crit>mastery while only gemming int+x in red+blue?

[Isheria]

Due to expertise and hit changes many gems that provided those stats have been altered and you can now gem double throughput secondary stats. Based on that you should gem haste/crit on every socket since spirit is redundant at level 90, here's the possible choices you have:

Red socket : Crafty Vermilion Onyx, Accurate Imperial Amethyst
Yellow Socket: Crafty Vermilion Onyx, Lightning Wild Jade
Blue Socket: Accurate Imperial Amethyst, Lightning Wild Jade

[Deleted]

Due to expertise and hit changes many gems that provided those stats have been altered and you can now gem double throughput secondary stats. Based on that you should gem haste/crit on every socket since spirit is redundant at level 90, here's the possible choices you have:

Red socket : Crafty Vermilion Onyx, Accurate Imperial Amethyst
Yellow Socket: Crafty Vermilion Onyx, Lightning Wild Jade
Blue Socket: Accurate Imperial Amethyst, Lightning Wild Jade

Exactly what i was looking for, thanks!