Serendipity Vs Imp Pws

[makominami]

Recently i got in a debate with a couple people after failing 15 times on 10 man blood queen, this is after a putri one shot. They were wondering why i hadn't taken serendipity as part of my holy spec that use for only two fights currently in icc, rather i had taken improved power word shield.
During the blood queen i was supposed to heal one group (Ranged), and my cycle was pom,coh, renew renew renew renew renew. and using pws to support people that got the "brain link"
now the second party was saying i should use poh vs the renews

Now i tried to explain my type of healing style in this situation and it didn't get into their thick heads.

here are the raw numbers comparing these two styles
now these numbers are not effected by raid buffs

Coh + Renews Flash x3 + Poh (with serendipity)

Mana cost: 3280 Mana Cost: 4958
Total healing: ~50080 Total healing: ~42100
Set up time: ~6 sec Set up time: ~7 sec

Now by my numbers it seems alot better to stick with renew, if there is something i'm missing about not using the renew strat i would love if a holy priest could enlighten me, Thanks

[Aneurin]

I'm sorry but why does Flash x3 + Poh have a 12 second setup time? Looks more like a 4 second setup time to me.

[makominami]

From the time it took me to from the start to cast three flash heals to the time Poh hit it was 12 seconds

[Aneurin]

Even with absolutely 0 haste it would be something like..
Flash heal starts (0 seconds) -> Flash heal ends (1.5 seconds) -> Flash Heal starts (1.6 seconds) -> Flash Heal ends (3.1 seconds) -> Flash Heal starts (3.2 seconds) -> Flash Heal ends (4.7 seconds) -> Prayer of Healing Starts (4.8 seconds) -> Prayer of Healing Ends (6.7 Seconds).
Obviously you must be pausing between casts, but if people are dying...
Renew is always really mana efficent but since it has a over time effect it wont be as reliable against burst damage as the burst healing of PoH.
I'm not saying it's wrong with cycling renews, I like it as well, I'm just confused as to how the second thing had such a big ramp up time for you since it's not really a fair comparison :P

[makominami]

your correct i just retested it, i might had some issues with clicking ingame stopwatch, But its still faster and less mana and heals for more

[exeq]

Something is wrong with your numbers. First, time. Coh + 5x Renew is 6 GCD. 3x flash is 3x GCD, serendepity PoH is close to GCD. So it's 6 GCD vs 4+ GCD (depending on haste GCD = 1 sec - 1.5 sec). Also you need to wait another 15 sec (12 sec glyphed) for renews to heal for given values.
About healing done and mana cost: You should also know that FH and PoH can crit increasing healing done, And flash heal is very often casted for free via surge of light talent reducing total cost.

Ps. There is no reason not to put CoH in your second rotation. So it's like CoH + Flash healx3 + PoH. With 30% crit you had about 60% chance to get free instant Flash Heal (after casting CoH or PoH)

[makominami]

I was not taking RNG into effect using average numbers , based on your logic, that means empowered renew could crit and COH can crit, im gylphed for renew so it only ticks to 12 ( 4 times )

I forgot to mention that with either rotation i was hitting pom every CD

[magicism]

I was not taking RNG into effect using average numbers , based on your logic, that means empowered renew could crit and COH can crit, im gylphed for renew so it only ticks to 12 ( 4 times )

Surely you still didn't take that in to account?
And also you can't take RNG out of the equation entirely. I mean there IS going to be a lot more extra random healing in the second rotation. You don't have 0% crit chance. Sure your ideal rotation one is gunna but obviously not in this situation, and that is what a holy priest is about. You need to be able to adapt quickly to a fight and what happens because we are the ones with the tools that are so flexible and make the difference.

[exeq]

With rotation of CoH > 3x Flash > PoH and 30% crit you have 81% chance that at least one of your Flash heal will be free (and about 25% chance of having two free flash heals. You cant just ignore that fact.

To sum up: First rotation is for steady low-to-medium dmg. Second one is for burst damage. But if you play holy just for two fights and on those fight your rotation is enough to keep people alive then it doesn't really matter.

[Cyrila]

People are missing the important part of this thread... How can you possibly fail on Blood Queen?

[Worshaka]

Recently i got in a debate with a couple people after failing 15 times on 10 man blood queen, this is after a putri one shot. They were wondering why i hadn't taken serendipity as part of my holy spec that use for only two fights currently in icc, rather i had taken improved power word shield.
During the blood queen i was supposed to heal one group (Ranged), and my cycle was pom,coh, renew renew renew renew renew. and using pws to support people that got the "brain link"
now the second party was saying i should use poh vs the renews

Now i tried to explain my type of healing style in this situation and it didn't get into their thick heads.

here are the raw numbers comparing these two styles
now these numbers are not effected by raid buffs

Coh + Renews Flash x3 + Poh (with serendipity)

Mana cost: 3280 Mana Cost: 4958
Total healing: ~50080 Total healing: ~42100
Set up time: ~6 sec Set up time: ~7 sec

Now by my numbers it seems alot better to stick with renew, if there is something i'm missing about not using the renew strat i would love if a holy priest could enlighten me, Thanks

Firstly, PW:S is a poor holy spell in terms of the healing effect compared to it's execute time. Just about any other instant you can think of provides better healing with the exception of the first up hit of Renew, however as you are aware renew provides its benefit over time.

Not taking serendipity its a bad choice and something you should change immediately. While renew is a strong spell and I advocate its use, you shouldn't shelf using FH and POH. The main strength of holy is it's versatility and it's ability to cater to just about any situation with a variety of different healing methods.

Personally you'd be better off FH the brain link target as a way to stack serendpity, pump out PoM every CD and fill with renew and use PoH or GH when an entire party starts to get a bit low or one person in your raid gets in danger of death.

I would shelve PW:S unless you have body & soul and then I would use it sparingly, perhaps as a way to help people kite out the flame or get brain link people together quicker... but I hardly see this a necessity as doing both those things are easily done at normal running speed.

[Maxpowr]

I would shelve PW:S unless you have body & soul and then I would use it sparingly, perhaps as a way to help people kite out the flame or get brain link people together quicker... but I hardly see this a necessity as doing both those things are easily done at normal running speed.

^A thousand times this. I see absolutely no reason for a holy priest to use PW:S or spec into B&S.

As for Serendipity, it is a must have holy talent. Holy priests are the kings of burst damage healing because of that talent. Although I may not cast a PoH or GH when it hits 3 stacks, having the option to cast one of those quickly is why it is great.

[Contrivez]

You can effectively mesh all 3 together, with renew spam proccing sol, coh on cooldown to proc sol, within 3-5 GCDS (1.2 seconds roughly with avg. holy priest haste) and setup your poh.

Maxxing out on haste is always interpreted as reducing prayer/flash cast times, but honestly that's the EXTRA gain you get from haste. The real value of haste is it's ability to reduce the global cooldown which maximizes throughput, specifically when using instant casts (renew, coh --> sol, pom uptime).

People forget this, but the milliseconds add up very quickly when you're raid healing, specifically in situations where a holy priest is maximinizing his/her raid healing output during non burst times of fights.

[Izenhart]

Recently i got in a debate with a couple people after failing 15 times on 10 man blood queen, this is after a putri one shot. They were wondering why i hadn't taken serendipity as part of my holy spec that use for only two fights currently in icc, rather i had taken improved power word shield.
During the blood queen i was supposed to heal one group (Ranged), and my cycle was pom,coh, renew renew renew renew renew. and using pws to support people that got the "brain link"
now the second party was saying i should use poh vs the renews

Now i tried to explain my type of healing style in this situation and it didn't get into their thick heads.

here are the raw numbers comparing these two styles
now these numbers are not effected by raid buffs

Coh + Renews Flash x3 + Poh (with serendipity)

Mana cost: 3280 Mana Cost: 4958
Total healing: ~50080 Total healing: ~42100
Set up time: ~6 sec Set up time: ~7 sec

Now by my numbers it seems alot better to stick with renew, if there is something i'm missing about not using the renew strat i would love if a holy priest could enlighten me, Thanks

That's a very random math, considering you'll have a very concrete chance to have at least 1 free FH, that FH heal can crit and Renew can't (except for the talent).

I'm not sure I got your point, but you should use all of them.
Use CoH and Renew as filler, use SoL everytime it procs, and when you know you'll NEED a PoH, cast the FH you need to get to 3 stacks and then cast it.

[Taxidermy]

use PoM with the CD. Use CoH with the CD use your SoL procs for instant flash on the brain link targets or players with shroud of sorrow. Cast renews everywhere you can. If players take a lot of dmg you should have 3 Serendipity just from SoL cast a 1.3 Prayer healing all of them for 5k+ non crit and if your glyphed PoH > GS for this fight than you can LoL even more because hot ticks for 700 along with renew will allow you enough time to continue the rotation of PoM CoH use surge of light Renew Use surge of lights Flash chunked players 3x serendipity is stacked for when players in group A or players in group B get chunked with damage. Using imp PW:S is silly considering it has a 4 second CD and does not scale nearly as well as serendipity does.

The difference between a good priest and a mediocre priest will be your ability in recognizing the incoming damage and the best/most efficient way to heal this incoming damage using CoH/PoM/Renew/PoH/Flash Heal/ Gheal occasionaly with serendipity on a tank if he dips low. PW:S is not a good holy spell considering flash heal will do more work stack serendipity and overall has more of a benefit in the holy tree.

Personaly I like to use my CoH on the linked players then PoM one and use my SoL on the other topping both players rather quickly. and i will usually follow up a link with a prayer of healing since i have 3 serendipity and i have been ignoring my group for the most part healing the debuffs. I get a lot of efficient HPS and i do not waste a lot of time at all

[Zeuq]

It seems others have answered the question about healing Blood Queen, so I won't get into that; instead, I'm more interested in the thread title and the assertion that IPWS is better than Serendipity, yet neither spell sequence incorporates PWS.

Regardless, Serendipity is virtually a required talent, but not because of a rotation like FHx3->PoH. Ideally, you will build up Serendipity stacks from SoL procs or random FHs. The versatiliy that Serendipity provides is undeniable, in either making a GH roughly a GCD or the burst healing from a sub 2s PoH. Moreso, in cases where the damage is predictable, you can proactively build up stacks beforehand.

Compare this to PWS. Do you ever really cast it? Ignore B&S instances where you cast it for movement speed, as you would cast it then with or without IPWS. In the vast majority of cases, a SoL proc, Renew, or even FH is a superior choice to casting PWS. I think on an average raid, PWS makes up maybe 1-2% of my total healing, thus IPWS is roughly 0.05-0.1% effective healing per talent point. Even if Serendipity isn't terribly useful on a particular fight, it'll only take one clutch GH or PoH to make up that difference.

[tatienne]

Am I the only one who likes binding heal? when there's no SoL to be had and a flash is needed to get someone that's low up and there is constant raiddamage it just seems to trump FH when I'm one of two people that needs healing (mostly timewise). it also have twice the chance of procing SoL and holy concentration. I'm only mentioning it since it adds stacks to serendipity and the fights you're talking about has some constant raiddamage.

[muto]

I'm sorry but why does Flash x3 + Poh have a 12 second setup time? Looks more like a 4 second setup time to me.

quicker then that with surge of light procs..

[Myzrael]

As holy priest when it comes to AoE healing, I'd use PoM every cd, CoH every cd and Renew in between, sometimes Holy Nova, sometimes PoH depending of situation and instant flash heals from Surge of Light procs to keep Serenditipity up.
Seredipity is better than Improved Shield for holy priests, for both single and AoE healing.