Now that the COH nerf is live, what do you think?

[Vellaunus]

First let me start off by saying that the two abilities Surge of Light and Holy Concentration have completely changed the way I play a holy priest now. Because of them, the way I generaly play my holy priest is as follows.

The 6 second cooldown on CoH really did not change my play style at all. My main use for CoH is to proc Surge of Light from a critical hit on at least one of the targets. I will then use Flash Heal instantly and free on whoever needs it. Outside of SoL procs, flash heal should not be used often at all except in very select cases such as single target emergencies (like Patch), on clothies with too little health, or when the healers are not working well together. If all the healers are trying to snipe the fastest heals to top the healing meeters (like a holy priest constantly trying to get in a flash heal because thier Greater Heal takes too long), congradulations, you are in a newb guild/pug raid that does not work well together. Have fun with your huge amounts of wasted mana from overhealing and FH then go /emo on the Blizzard message boards about how your class always goes OoM.

Now, as far as when the entire raid takes huge amounts of damage, there is a GREAT undersused spell in the game, Prayer of Healing. Lets take for example, Vortex on Malygos. Before the fight I tell the other healers "don't heal my group during vortex, I can keep them all up". During the vortex I just hit PoH which then almost always procs an instant free FH (which I will use on the lowest health target or tank) then I will CoH for another free FH and then rinse and repeat until the vortex is over. I just healed 6 members of the raid with complete ease and relitively very little mana. No over healing happened from other healers because they knew that I could do the part I said I will do (I really wish I could target a raid group with PoH though). If there are two priests in the raid, even better. Put one in each group and never worry about mass raid damage again.

For single target healing, Greater Heal is where it is at. Unless your tank is loosing health faster than you can cast GH (on very rare fights or phases), you should never have to cast FH unless you have a bunch of healers trying to snipe heals from each other (the sign of poor orginization). GH has the added benifit of a Surge of Light and/or Holy Concentration proc on crits allowing for some extra manaless heals. Crit is just AMAZING on holy priests now. GH until it crits, then possibly three free heals in a row (SoL gives a free FH, HC gives a free FH or GH) then throw in a meditation for some serious out of 5 second mana returns (making spirit way more important than MP5 these days).

Note the lack of CoH spam healing mentioned in these very basic holy priest tactics. The only place I really miss the spamming of CoH is on fights like Alextraza where you have to always be on the run (no time to stop and cast).

[Deleted]

During the vortex I just hit PoH which then almost always procs an instant free FH (which I will use on the lowest health target or tank) then I will CoH for another free FH and then rinse and repeat until the vortex is over.

You must be a hell of a priest, healing your group with prayer of healing during a vortex

[Worshaka]

Pretty much what was just said... i'd only point out that SoL isn't as good as you make out.. it's a 50% chance on crit to proc... so casting CoH doesnt' guarantee a proc, nor does casting Prayer of Healing... but a combination of PoM boucning around during vortex and CoH or even Holy Nova will make the chance very high.

Again I tend to agree about Flash Heal except in instances where you have low health raid memebers, such as a mage or someone undergeared and it's important that they be at full health as much as possible (3 drake sarth for example). In that case it can be desirable to cast the fastest spell you have to get them back to full health rather than let them take a bit more damage so you can use the effecient Gheal instead.

I find Gheal far more useful on people taking consistent damage rather than people taking occasional hits unless they are large occasional hits.

Renew is also a great spell if you know people can afford the time to heal slowly, so instead of Gheal or Flash Heal you can renew a target and know that they will be full in 3-4 ticks. Again people can snipe this type of healing and waste mana, thats a decent point.

[amung]

Excuse me if I am misunderstanding you, but you are basically agreeing that CoH isn't an effective heal, and goes one step further by saying that the only reason to cast it is to get a SoL proc?

No, not what I'm saying at all. I think of an effective heal as something I can use to top up raid members, and what this does is give the other healers a bit more time to heal the melee group (very little point using on ranged, since there's very few fights where the ranged are in a tight group) while I can get back to my main focus, whether that's the MT, OT, whatever.

[Danner]

Then I apologize for putting words in your mouth, amung. Seems like I was misunderstanding after all.

--

Pre-patch, I counted CoH as an active HoT. As long as you kept casting it, people stayed alive. Nowadays, I'm not really sure what the heal is really trying to do. It's like casting a Hot that ticks once. Ultimately, I believe the usefulness of CoH all comes down to the boss' damage pattern and who you heal with.

Take Thaddeus. He loves to hurt 5-6 people with a very heavy hitting chain lightning. I can cast CoH and slightly improve the HP of almost everyone who got hurt. In fact, this might very possibly nudge them over the magical limit that enables them to eat a second chain lightning 5 seconds later. Yet CoH is not an effective heal on this fight - you (or another healer) still need to single-target up every person who got hurt. They need a a real healing spell to be declared all patched up. Sure, if you have 3 holypriests, each of us casting CoH will patch the damage nicely. But at least my guild don't have this setup.

Take Gluth. The decimate reduce everyone to 5% HP. But even though CoH is a very decent healing spell in terms of pure throughput, it's not my primary choice of heal for this situation. My first objective is to get the kiting mages and other aoe'ers up in health. GS, Shields and flash heals is the way to go. Unless I'm on the MT, in which case the first objective is to get the MT up in health through the same means. Next, I could cast CoH on the raid - but I won't. My second priority is usually to cast Prayer of Healing. That's a real healing spell. Then I would single-target cast flash heal on whomever is below 50% until there is none. Then CoH might be a decent alternative. But I'm still not sure it's making much of a difference even then.

Take malygos phase 2 then. Your entire raid is bombarded by ranged mobs hitting for some seriously heavy amounts of damage, 8-12k. If a raider is hit, he will usually drop below half HP. One CoH will not save him. I still cast it if I'm on the run to a new bubble and my other instant heals is on cooldown, but it's not really saving anyone. One flash heal will save the raider in question, enabling him to take another bombardement. But I cannot save everyone with flash heal, especially when running.

Or Sartharion 3D. At least my guild is simply strongarming the boss, ignoring the portals. Seems that most guilds do. Of course this means there will be some quite insane raidwide damage before and right after Shadron dies. When the twilight torment hits, Raiders will drop in HP. CoH will be a stick attempting to stop a flood. I can save one person for the next 10 seconds by throwing a flash heal on him. Or I can save noone by casting CoH. If we had 2 more holypriests or druids casting WG/CoH on the same people, we could've saved 6 raiders this way. That was our old way of healing this fight. Now people just seem to die

Even Sapphiron is not really CoH friendly. It's really a boss where the damage pattern is matching thehealing done by CoH. But CoH feels very futile. It doesn't really save anyone. It just delays the inevitable death of six raiders by one GCD. Also, there is the mana considerations to keep in mind - Sapphiron is a fight you need to conserve mana on.

There are bosses where CoH is useful. But mostly, it depends on your healers. If your healing team is mostly assembled with druids and holypriests, CoH will make a significant contribution as it's part of a larger package. If not, it's only really sniping the real heals that will come, without making much of a difference. My guild is at least running with a varied team of healers, where most of them are not HoT-based.

---

To illustrate my new peeve with CoH, twist it to the extreme. Imagine CoH as a raidwide heal healing everyone inside the AoE. For about 500 HP. Major raidwide healing done? Absolutely. Worth to cast? You decide. I personally think CoH is a lot closer to this raidwide heal than it is to chain heal.

[Lady Jane]

1. Healing meters are a bad way to assess healers... the CoH nerf had nothing to do with heal meters and people who think that topping the heal meter makes them a good healer or the best healer in their raid pretty much proves the fact they are the worst.

Only if you don't know how to read them right, just the basic linking of it and how is nr 1/2/3 etc indeed doesn't say alot. Kinda depends as well.
Get Recount and look into spells used, effective healing etc etc and you can easily weave out bad and good healers. Ive seen shamans cast nothing but CH on bosses where mostly single target damage goes around, priests spam nothing but CoH, priests spamming nothing but PoH on Sapphiron, CoH second and PoM was somewhere far off.
Healing meters can tell you alot about someone's playstyle. Once on 4H we had 2 healers on Thane's side, priest and a druid, MT died on switching with Rivendare on a meteor. And the priest yelling how he was healing alone and doing all he could. Recount showing he only used PoM, wasn't in fact shielding or flashing the tank when he went out alone to switch and the druid had more healing done anyway.

[Lady Jane]

You could just spec Discipline throw a penace and a PWS (when needed) into your current rotation and you would be twice as effective. Not trying to be mean but I just don't think enough people ever give Discipline a chance, especially if you are using a rotation like that.

Perhaps, I was thinking of trying it sometimes. I was disc from 70-80 and for some heroics, but switching to holy. From my experience my flashes just heal for alot more and with 1030+ mp5 I don't rlly need all the mana efficiency. We have priests with spirit in the raids, so I don't need to respec for that, but in "oh shit" situations Im the only one with GS. ^^

My stats being (MH/OH):
2288 SP
19,21% crit
186 Haste
1034 mp5

(- Staff)
2234 SP
20,85% crit
123 Haste
1066 mp5

Would it really be that more beneficial to spec disc, because it doesn't feel like that to me, since throwing around flashes actually heals for quite a nice amount.

[Ananan]

Pretty much what was just said... i'd only point out that SoL isn't as good as you make out.. it's a 50% chance on crit to proc... so casting CoH doesnt' guarantee a proc, nor does casting Prayer of Healing...

I agree with this guy. I see too many people claim that their CoH "almost always" procs SoL, and they're all lying!

With 25% crit the chance of proccing is:

1 - (1 - 0.25 * 0.5)^5 = 0.487

So with 25% crit you'll see a 49%-ish proc-chance on PoH and unglyphed CoH. Glyphed CoH would be 55% - still far from almost always.

[cyzzie]

i still use pennance / flash heal most of the time


... oh wait ... whats that CoH you are talking about anyway ...

[jgnoel86]

My stats being (MH/OH):
2288 SP
19,21% crit
186 Haste
1034 mp5

(- Staff)
2234 SP
20,85% crit
123 Haste
1066 mp5

Not intended to bash here so please don't take it that way, but I'm assuming you are refering to regen when you say 1066 mp5 because if you really have over 1k mp5 your close to considered a god as far as priests go. I have just under 1k regen but dont come anywhere close to 1k mp5 I think I'm at 300 something.

As for the CoH nerf, It really didn't affect me that much, now it just takes longer to top people off after I Fort the raid, i can live with it.

[Sedative]

It's still suprising how many people confuse regen with mp5 after 4 years...

[seano508]

I love the talk of PoH. Those of us with a brain and not going out of our way to be a smartass knew that you meant casting is after you land. Fights like Laotheb (sp?) show holy priests power with a precast PoH and a CoH right after healing nearly a whole 10 man. Take 2 priests and you can practically 2 heal a 25 man.

I dont know why some of you think that PW:S is worth its gcd for a holy priest, thats a lot of mana and what 2500 mitigation? Cast a PoM. Let Disc handle shields.

I like to keep a rolling renew on tanks during patch, and spam fheal gheal rotations.

Lastly, some of you all amped up about getting to spam fheal need to reroll. Go be a paladin. We are the swiss armyknives, not the hammer.

[Lady Jane]

Not intended to bash here so please don't take it that way, but I'm assuming you are refering to regen when you say 1066 mp5 because if you really have over 1k mp5 your close to considered a god as far as priests go. I have just under 1k regen but dont come anywhere close to 1k mp5 I think I'm at 300 something.

As for the CoH nerf, It really didn't affect me that much, now it just takes longer to top people off after I Fort the raid, i can live with it.

1066 Regen yeah, 346 mp5 ^^

[Ufgood]

So everyone is speccing DISC now? :P

[Deleted]

It is early days, but my resto shammy is back to more or less spamming chain heal since the change to coh and wg. Personally, I prefer the more varied pre-patch healing as a shaman.

[Ananan]

The nerf itself was great, but it left the CoH spell feeling quite lackluster. It lost some of its charm with its spamability and now it needs a push towards working better together with other spells and other healers. WG on the other hand is still amazing. I love that spell.

So, what I think can be done is to give CoH some better synergy, and I think the designers are looking into that too. What I'm after is something like "targets healed by CoH take double healing from all HoT ticks for 3 seconds". Druids would like you then instead of mumbling about heal-sniping, and holy would get a boost in pvp with Renew and Lightwell up. Maybe that exact wording would make it effect tank healing too much, but something like that.

Here's another random idea that's probably simpler to implement anyway. Make CoH increase the maximum health of everyone it heals by 1000 (or whatever) for 6 seconds. Then it would do something, and it would snipe less while still doing the same healing. It would also be a change that has zero potential of trivializing any form of healing.

Heck, I wouldn't mind if they made increasing maximum health for short amounts of time part of the niche for holy. I'm starting to get a feeling that I might be disappointed when the real changes are revealed though.

[nobodysbaby]

I didn't like the coh-spell as it was too OP, but I'm no fan of CD, I had prefered some penatly for using it more then once, on rare occasions I can feel a bit powerless without its spam-ability But playing a priest is not for spamming, other classes do that better;P

Still, PoM is a great spell, I had it as nr1 healing done in a Naxx run

I feel tho, that priests grouphealing got nerfed too much, since both PoH and Holy Nova only are for own partygroup, and we are stuck with renews and flashheals (wich are severly underpowered compared to other classes equal spells). But Bliz promised something exciting for priest in Ulduar patch, so I'm waiting.

[lizard]

Now if only they could learn to get out of the rock showers and blizzards...

damage is rage is damage. stfu and heal.

[Kayleta]

I dunno why all of a sudden they decided to put a 6 sec cool down on it : /

[Sonic018]

In My experience, Blizzard has only done de cd on these spells to please their favourite class: druids ^^

In fact, the only thing that has actually changes is, that in large AoE dmg fights, priests can't beat druids on effective healoutput anymore. And this conclusion is kind of dangerous, considering the large support a healdruid brings to a raid. Thats the bad news ^^.

The good news is, the Priest is still number 2 in effective healoutput. The margin between both classes in high AoE dmg fiights is in between 0.5 and 1.5%
But still, in overall dmg fights, some pretty single target dmg and aoe dmg, the druid has absolutely no chance. Thaddius is a good example.

The good news is, that we still beat every other healing class by a large amount. In some fights, pallies and shamans can almost equal our healoutput, but in general they are some 1-4% behind, which is, in my POV a good thing. Not because I want to play the better class, but considering the enomous support of a shaman and the exiting single target heal of a palli, this makes sense. The reason why druids should be above priests is still a big mistery (the only explanation is my first sentence ). In fact, their isn't one.

After all, I never complained about the nerf itself, but more about the braindamaged devs. They actually thought, the nerf would just rescale things a bit without larger consequences. A lot of priest told them about some major issues with the healing tree which would increase in importance as CoH gets nerfed. Only now, GC is considering them. First they nerf everything, because their numbers seem wrong (they're right about that), but they always forget the consequences of their actions. It's the same story for hunters at the moment. I think Blizz sometimes forget, that the game isn't all about numbers, but also about the machanics as a whole. Ok, after the nerf, some encounters got maginally more difficult than before. But the heal tree of priests has a lot of issues:

1. A simple test if everything is allright is to check if priests are top on healmeters. If not, then something is wrong, because the healpriest has almost no group support. 3 ways to solve this problem: the first is to nerf healdruids a bit (the most obvious, but since druids are blizzards favourite class, it probalbly won't happen) the second is to buff healpriests a bit (this doesn't mean CoH, some work on the broken spells could do it also) and the last one is to give priests also some sort of grp support. (forget about solution 3, the karma of the priests is far too low from the devs side, and also more group support would make encounters easier again)

Personally I'd prefer solution 2. Not that solution 1 would be that bad, but I can live without the druidflaming community^^. Actually the devs think so to, so they are now analysing the priest trees. Don't count on a huge buff of anthing, probably we'll get more nerfed than buffed, but still, the signs are good that some of our spells get fixed.

So the CoH nerf did not destry the healpriest, but the new issues and the broken spells should have been fixed in the same time, another spell gets nerfed. And, we should beat healdruids again after 3.1. If not, the balance idea is still kind of difficult to understand

Maybe, the CoH nerf was a really good thing, if renew, holy nova, prayer of healing, our manaregeneration spells... get fixed in 3.1. without destroying the rest ^^