So, uhh.

[Revitalize]

Why, as a Holy Priest, if you had Serendipity Charges and someone was low health, waste the GCD on a Renew that won't tick (levelling off spell is not a recovery spell), or Mending (which will get them killed)?

Why would you Flash Heal to do half the job, when a 2-charge Greater is a little slower of a cast, but has that much more output? Three charge is practically the same cast time (it's not, but fraking close), the point is moot.

Empowered healing heals for 2.1k
Ticks for 3k.
Flash heal is a 1.1s cast.
Compared to a 1.6.
By then, other cooldowns would be up.

[Kelesti]

I'm in the habit of not relying on other people to do my job, so it doesn't matter if other cooldowns or healers can catch up. And with the drop in Spell Damage (except Puricide-3, and of course Lana'thel... *twitch*), you could make a case for dropping Soul Warding for Divine Fury, thus dropping the cast time of Greater even more.

Empowered Renew heals for 2.1k, then they wait for 3 seconds. If someone needs "healz rite nao" it's not a spell you use.

Flash Heal can have 60% of the output of a Greater. When you factor Haste and Serendipity into the matter (and maybe even DF) the difference is so much less than even half a second.

Edit: By all means, it's not a spell you should spam, but it's not one that should've ever left your bars.

[Revitalize]

I'm in the habit of not relying on other people to do my job, so it doesn't matter if other cooldowns or healers can catch up. And with the drop in Spell Damage (except Puricide-3, and of course Lana'thel... *twitch*), you could make a case for dropping Soul Warding for Divine Fury, thus dropping the cast time of Greater even more.

Empowered Renew heals for 2.1k, then they wait for 3 seconds. If someone needs "healz rite nao" it's not a spell you use.

Flash Heal can have 60% of the output of a Greater. When you factor Haste and Serendipity into the matter (and maybe even DF) the difference is so much less than even half a second.

Edit: By all means, it's not a spell you should spam, but it's not one that should've ever left your bars.

I just think its silly with that sort of healing motive.
You're not the only healer in the raid, why have such a motive?
Its a group effort and sometimes you just have to develop trust with your other healers are reacting to damage as much as you are.

(Which sometimes isnt the case)

[Kelesti]

I just think its silly with that sort of healing motive.
You're not the only healer in the raid, why have such a motive?
Its a group effort and sometimes you just have to develop trust with your other healers are reacting to damage as much as you are.

(Which sometimes isnt the case)

I do trust my healers. I also know how to track HoTs and read HealComm to track incoming healing. If I have to spend time and mana on a target, and my counterpart has to do the same, I'm not wasting 1.2 seconds, I'm wasting 2.4 plus -his- mana.

I trust each of my healers to push out as much as they can on each target, just as I do the same for myself.

[Zeuq]

Wait... what? Revitalize, your numbers on Greater Heal are WAY off. I run 5/5 Divine Fury, so 3 stacks of Serendipity put the cast time of Greater Heal at 1.6s, which is only 0.1s slower than Flash Heal (ie, it's only 6.67% slower); even if you don't run DF, it's a 1.92s cast, or less than half a second slower. Once you apply Haste, say 25%, FH casts in 1.2s and GH in 1.28s (1.54s without DF). IOW, GH will land for close to twice as much in roughly the same amount of time. So, if a random raid member is down 15k, it just makes sense to do one GH and top them off in 1.28s than 2x FH and top them off in 2.4s; even without DF, it's still 1.54s vs. 2.4s.

And as Kelesti points out, your trust argument is a non-starter because trust is exactly the reason you SHOULD be using GH instead of FH in such a situation. If I don't trust my healers, then I'd expect them to be throwing heals randomly in the raid and quite possibly casting a LHW, FoL, FH, etc. at the same target. If I do trust my healers, then I expect them to be watching incoming heals, see that the big heal will top them off, and move on to heal someone else rather than try to snipe my heal to top the meters. Obviously, by the same token, if I see the same situation and someone else starts casting a smaller heal at them, I won't use GH and, instead, will probably choose FH, Renew, or another target, depending on the situation.

The whole point of a Holy Priest is that we have a large tool box and all the spells are useful, though some moreso than others. Greater Heal isn't a spell we should be casting a whole lot, but saying it isn't useful is just silly.

[Doctavice]

We're the jack of all trades @ healing; dont discount gh just because its situational, as Kelesti said popping a 3x serendipity GH on someone whos spiked low can have huge gains at a very minimal cast increase over flash... with ToF kicking in you can hit ~14k non crit with pretty attainable gear going into this tier. I will admit that I very seldom use GH in 25m(maybe 10 times in a 25m clear? not even) just due to the ammount of aoe heals etc going around but in 10m's 2healing I've defenitley seen it work magic & save us a wipe. It isnt BC anymore you shouldnt be spamming GH but don't make the mistake of removing the GH from your holy toolbox.

[harky]

This is the spec the priest telling her what to do is using (lightwell ????)
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...bVg8A7B,,11159

Weak spec. No reason for Lightwell. No reason for Improved Healing. If you take Divine Fury it should be maxed. Desperate Prayer is a great survival tool. Healing Focus shouldn't be passed up.

Spec they are trying to get her to use; (body and soul ???)
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...bVg8q_5,,11159

A much better spec, but still has a few errors. Again no reason for 4/5 DF, no reason for Imp Healing, no reason for 2/2 SoL. Drop to 1/2 SoL, max DF, max Emp Renew, take Healing Focus.

And spec my GF is using which seems pretty popular;
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...DjNAQoq,,11159

Decent spec, but I can't stand Priests who skip B&S. Maybe if you're not doing any achievements, maybe if you're not doing HMs, maybe if you have a partially retarded Disc Priest who blanket shields 24/7... but in a good guild? Not so much. I pretty much recommend 13/58 Renew w/ DF to everyone starting ICC. There's no nearly enough damage to warrant Spell Warding yet, there is no fight that Inner Focus can be exploited on (Valks for instance), there are multiple times B&S is very useful (all current bosses have a use for it, albeit situationally)... At the same time DF does allow a GH or two and if a guild is not using excessive healers you should be able to use it.

Either way the builds they're suggesting are worse than the build she's using, but hers isn't perfect either. At least not for ICC/ToGC.

[zeq]

Whoa this post turned into something big haha.

In my exp as a holy paladin, having a priest toss a GH on someone who spiked pretty low, will either hit to late and over heal the person just wasting mana. Half way into that cast a druid has full hots out, paladin has a holyshock+fol inc.



Prot/Ret Pally & Holy Priest still looking for a new home<3
Would love to transfer off this dead server where everyone thinks they are amazing.

[Revitalize]

Weak spec. No reason for Lightwell. No reason for Improved Healing. If you take Divine Fury it should be maxed. Desperate Prayer is a great survival tool. Healing Focus shouldn't be passed up.

A much better spec, but still has a few errors. Again no reason for 4/5 DF, no reason for Imp Healing, no reason for 2/2 SoL. Drop to 1/2 SoL, max DF, max Emp Renew, take Healing Focus.

Decent spec, but I can't stand Priests who skip B&S. Maybe if you're not doing any achievements, maybe if you're not doing HMs, maybe if you have a partially retarded Disc Priest who blanket shields 24/7... but in a good guild? Not so much. I pretty much recommend 13/58 Renew w/ DF to everyone starting ICC. There's no nearly enough damage to warrant Spell Warding yet, there is no fight that Inner Focus can be exploited on (Valks for instance), there are multiple times B&S is very useful (all current bosses have a use for it, albeit situationally)... At the same time DF does allow a GH or two and if a guild is not using excessive healers you should be able to use it.

Either way the builds they're suggesting are worse than the build she's using, but hers isn't perfect either. At least not for ICC/ToGC.

Whats wrong with shielding?
You dont shield everyone, but it is obnoxious as a disc priest to see someone else shielding.

[harky]

There are very few times when blindly raid shielding is actually a good idea. It basically works in a total of 4 fights. You might find it 'annoying' when someone else shields, but you'll find it much, much more annoying when you fail the Putricide achievement because weakened soul was up and prevented B&S from helping kite gas and costs you an attempt. Kiting flame orbs on princes? Kiting oozes? Making sure melee have a fungal spore? I could go on, but there are kiting aspects to all current ICC fights and Sindragosa.

The times when you'd want to use PW:S for Body and Soul and the times you'd want to shield a target as Disc are completely different. If you're finding a conflict you either don't know how to use B&S, or don't know how to play as Disc.

[Nezoia]

I'm in the habit of not relying on other people to do my job, so it doesn't matter if other cooldowns or healers can catch up.

That's doing it wrong. Healers need to rely on the other healers doing their job!

Empowered Renew heals for 2.1k, then they wait for 3 seconds. If someone needs "healz rite nao" it's not a spell you use.

"healz rite nao" is a paladin or druid task (Swiftmend). Not yours as a priest.

And if it's your task often, discipline would be a better choice.

PoM is a obvious ability to have constantly on CD in both talent builds, hence no mention of that or special ability in my generalization about what makes up the Holy Priests bread&butter spells.

[Baron01]

I believe it also matters what content do you primarily raid. Your talents can be very different when focusing on 10-man content rather than 25-man or vice versa.
Im focusing on 10-man content and mostly pug around when I can play. I cant justify changing my talents to pure raid healing because it would diminish my already gimped single-target healing. It is very well possible that in 10-man raid there will be 2 healers and both will have to contribute to tank healing as well as raid healing. I also run few HCs here and there, where those optional and leisure talents are just too good to be skipped.

This is my "all round" spec I use at the moment: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...wqqAlkp,,11159
I believe it still leaves me with reasonable single-target healing output and maintain all necessary tools for decent raid healing.
Some comments:
B&S - it is just too awesome for 5-man speed runs and kiting in raids, it is also great to remove poison form yourself in pugs via LFG
Holy reach - just one point at expense of holy prayer, never had problem with range on PoH. COH is primarily cast on melee which are traditionaly clumped together.
Empowered healing - i consider this "mandatory" talent to maintain at least limited single-target healing capability. I cant imagine going without it becuase I already feel gimped compared to my shaman alt with miles-worse gear. My priest's heals are slower, hit for less and crit far less often. Taking 40% away from greater heal or 20% from flash would just be suicide in my eyes*1.
*1 wrongly worded: should be 40%/20% of bonus healing - Thanks to Harky for pointing mistake

[harky]

Wow, fail advise is fail?

Holy Reach: This affects the radius of two spherical spells. Even on a flat plane this talent increases the area of CoH and PoH by 44%. In any three dimensional space it would by 72.8%. Hmm, yeah skipping that sounds brilliant. :

Empowered Healing: It's not 40% of GH and 20% of FH. That's probably why so many people take it. It's 40% of your spellpower and 20% of your spellpower. You're talking about 1600 off GH with 4k SP. That's less than 20% to GH. It's 800 off FH which is 10-15%. You should never take 5/5 Empowered Healing unless you already have 3/3 Blessed Resilience and more than 40% of your healing comes from Flash Heal and Greater Heal.

Your 'all around' spec, by the way, it complete crap. No Serendipity, 2/2 SoL, 0 Blessed Resil, no Inner Focus... and of course the above 'wtf' choices. I swear we don't need a Holy guide, we need a weekly seminar.

[supa]

I don't think inner focus is necessary. It honestly seems like a very bad 'oh shit' button. It increases crit which is not a very reliable stat as a healer. Maybe if all other healers are dead and the boss is down to a few percent, inner focus + Divine Hymn would work. Can you create other scenarios in which it is actually more useful than any other priest ability you can get in the tree otherwise?

[Baron01]

Wow, fail advise is fail?

I wanted to reply with something long and explanatory but...
My spec has 3/3 serendipity....
Your math is somewhat failing, you should consult your elementary math teacher before you spout something stupid next time.

20% of 30 yards of COH diameter is 6 yard gain which is 20% gain.

bear with me (i know it is complicated)

20% of 15 yards of COH radiums is 3 yards, multiply 2 to get amazingly again 6 yards, which is 20% gain again.

Everybody can read EJs and check few guides to be "pro" holy priest. Yes I can go raid-healing holy build of boredom. I choose not to though. If I for once in my 10-man raid feel under-performing due to my spec, I will immediately reset my talents to use cookie-cutter build.

[harky]

I'm sorry, but you seem to have missed a lesson in geometry.

Circle of Healing's radius is, by default, 15 yards. Increasing this by 20% results in 18 yards. The area of a circle is, of course pi * r * r. Pi is up for debate (and huge long numbers), but let's go with the trusty old 3.14. 3.14 * 15 * 15 = 706.5 square yards. 3.14 * 18 * 18 = 1017.36 square yards. 1017.36 / 706.5 = 1.44. So a 20% increase in radius is a 44% increase in area. Might want to brush off the books.

Oh and sorry, it's 0/3 Test of Faith, which is just as bad, if not worse.

I don't think inner focus is necessary. It honestly seems like a very bad 'oh shit' button. It increases crit which is not a very reliable stat as a healer. Maybe if all other healers are dead and the boss is down to a few percent, inner focus + Divine Hymn would work. Can you create other scenarios in which it is actually more useful than any other priest ability you can get in the tree otherwise?

It's nice to have in a general purpose build, which is what he posted it as. Yes, the crit isn't great, but the 100% free of cost heal can save the day. As far as a better example? Door strategy on Twins is the best one I can think of. I don't take Inner Focus, but it's still a good 'general' thing to have in a build as it adds utility that can be applied to a lot of situations either as an increase to healing, or as a mana saver.

[Fenixdown]

I think those priests are still living in BC, where Greater Heal was more effective than Flash in most situations due to it's mana efficiency.

However, GH is generally more mana efficient than Flash (depending on the circumstance) if you are specced fully into it. But that spec does now fall under the discipline builds, something else I believe these priests in question do not realize.

In short, the Greater Heal debate I don't see a point in (unless they are asking your girlfriend to go discipline), but as for Lightwell and B&S they do have situational uses. However, they are seldom (B&S has more, but Lightwell I've only seen actually effective for maybe two or three encounters from ToTC and above). Also, since tier set bonuses no longer benefit GH, Flash holy builds are better to utilize.

Basically, this guild you're talking about just needs to get out of BT and catch up to the times.

[Baron01]

This is drifting away from OP but it is past midnight here and I cant go sleep.

I consider WOW as a game with 3D graphics but predominant use of 2D in encounter mechanics and gameplay. Based on this premise, Holy Reach delivers exactly what the tooltip says "20% increase" in the maximum distance between player at which POH is cast and the receiving player. Anything inside the limit will match the criteria, and receive heal. Why would I ever consider area of the spell when it can be simplified to max distance between A and B.
There is so few fights where 3D space will come to play that Im not affraid to say those can be neglected untill next expansion--Kael'thas is one, ...

I was strong believer in inner focus until Blizzard nerfed our out of 5SR regen. With 5SR dancing being a lot less effective, I simply do not take the talent in holy.

Test of Faith is 25-man raid-healing talent, no doubt about that. In the content I deal with, it has limited potential.

Im not advocating gheal builds at all. I predominantly use flash heal and renew with obligatory POM/COH spam. SOL 2/2 is taken because I like to spam emp. renew, glyphed flash heal, and POM. Also, my crit is currently rather low therefore I cant afford to only have 50% chance to trigger SOL proc.

[harky]

Uh, no. You kind of missed the point again. 44% is the increase on a flat two-dimensional surface. Yes, CoH is actually a sphere (so is PoH), but that's actually a different formula that results in an even larger gain (4/3pi r^3, a 20% radius gain = 72.8% gain). Again, it isn't about being able to hit point A and point B at X distance apart. It's about A, B, C, D, E and F if you have the glyph. Take a piece of paper and a compass, spread out a bunch of dots on it, now make a circle and see how many you can get in it. Now increase the spread by 20% and repeat. That's the effect. It isn't something you can pass up in ICC, there are too many fights that require people to be spread out.

In regard to Test of Faith? If you're healing 5 or 10 mans this talent is actually substantially stronger than in 25s. In either case 5/5 Emp Healing is almost always inferior to 2/5 Emp Healing and 3/3 Blessed Resilience. The exceptions to that only occur when you get 40% or more of your healing from Flash Heal and Greater Heal. If that's the case you're either over-using FH/GH substantially, in which case you should take 5/5 Emp Healing and 3/3 Blessed Resil and drop Emp. Renew instead, or you're playing improperly and hurting your healing in much more meaningful ways.

[fabian]

Uh, no. You kind of missed the point again. 44% is the increase on a flat two-dimensional surface. Yes, CoH is actually a sphere (so is PoH), but that's actually a different formula that results in an even larger gain (4/3pi r^3, a 20% radius gain = 72.8% gain).

pi/pi is 1, so when considering how much of an increase it is, you really just need to compare the r^2 part(or r^3).

Test of Faith is 25-man raid-healing talent, no doubt about that. In the content I deal with, it has limited potential.

I'm mostly a Disc priest, but it is obvious to me that it is more effective in 10 mans since you're using a lower number of healers. In 25 mans you have more dedicated raid healers that can easily make that talent less useful.