Holy: Mastery

[AlexTheGreat]

More and more do I see mastery making it's way on t11 gear for priests.
Is it important to stack mastery as we get more gear?

[Zeuq]

Most Holy Priests are currently valuing Mastery above Haste (after reaching the minimum) and Crit. As such, Mastery/Spirit items are pretty much ideal. I'm certainly stacking Mastery and getting Haste where I can, and doing whatever I can to avoid Crit. I think that perhaps once reaching a certain point, Haste may regain some ground, due to larger mana pools and how Int, Haste, and Mastery each makes the others more valuable; however, I haven't run the math myself, so it's hard to say when such a point may come.

[Squishypants]

You need 12.5% haste to reach 5 ticks of renew which at level 85 is 1601.1 Haste Rating with no buffs.
With 3/3 Darkness it is 1181.5 rating, and with the 5% raid buff and 3/3 Darkness it is 515.4 rating.

The full chart of values can be found on the EJ Holy compendium thread. They also have the values needed to reach 6 ticks of Renew but that probably won't be much of a concern until later tiers.

After you reach the 5 tick cap with your talents/typical group comp you should stack Mastery.


Now if only they would make Mastery better for Shadow priests so my gear is more versatile. =/

[Kelesti]

Haste/Spirit still is best, because the 12.5% is based off stupid assumptions that mean nothing in either tank-healing or raid-healing.

Mastery is great, but its effect on output in raid content doesn't stop a mastery stacked priest from needing to cast more spells. Haste helps get those out faster, which matters more than the trickle over 6 seconds.

Don't get me wrong, I'll take upgrades with Mastery. It's not a crap stat. But as long as our healing is primarily directed through Heal/Greater/Prayer, dropping those casts is more important than a Renew that just barely ticks 5 times.

[Squishypants]

Well I suppose Mastery and Haste will have different values depending on what your role is. I find getting more oomph out of my AoE heals and renew in raids for no additional mana cost pretty valuable, more-so than a faster single target heal. That is just because I'm primarily focused on raid heals.

[Zeuq]

I agree with you that the whole "Haste cap" thing is pretty stupid particularly since Renew is not nearly as good as it used to be and the value is trivial to achieve. Hell, short of deliberately avoiding Haste and reforging out of all of it that you do have, it's hard to imagine how one wouldn't have at least 516 Haste just completely by accident in raid-ready gear (340+ ilevel). As such, I resolve that we stop refering to it as any sort of cap and, instead call it a Haste minimum, particularly since it's as trivial to achieve as the old 154 "Haste cap" was for PWS spamming Disc Priests. In either case, it's absolutely still valuable after those because, just as Disc Priests weren't (or at least, shouldn't have) just been spamming PWS, Holy Priests are definitely not just spamming Renew. As such, when comparing the values, it just makes more sense to assume that we're above the 5-tick plateau and the 6-tick plateau is unreachable.

But I don't understand how that translates to Haste being better. The whole point of Holy's Mastery is that you don't have to cast as many spells because each spell provides more HPM in addition to improving HPS, whereas Haste only Improves HPS. Currently, I'm sitting around 20% on my Mastery, and when tank healing, I consistently see it ticking for 2.5-3k; as such, every 2-3 ticks of it means that's one less Heal I need to cast to provide the same HPS. I will probably see similar results were I to reitemize more for Haste than Mastery, possibly even a bit better, but I would not see the same HPM benefits, and it seems to me that effectively increasing my HPM by 20% outweighs any reasonable expectation for the HPS improvement that Haste may have over Mastery.

That said, I don't rate Haste much below Mastery and I'm perfectly happy with a Haste/Spirit piece, it's only when I start getting pieces without Spirit or with Crit that I really see waiting those stats being meaningful.

[Deleted]

i think spirit > mastery > haste

i hope to bring haste at 15% to have mind control under 2.15 cast

i don't konw if reduce sw:f cd or increase haste by 2%. big truoble! lol


edit: this is for pvp! xD

[Kelesti]

Zeuq, I firmly agree with the belief that it should be called "minimum" and not a "cap" of any means at all.

And unlike DPS, I think pairing the two stats hand in hand actually is benefit. I'm not avoiding mastery, but so many people are avoiding haste, despite Echo of Light scaling with Haste. Not to mention the fact that even with every single equip being geared/gemmed/reforged for mastery, it on its own wouldn't be enough to counter AoE pulses, heavy tank damage, etc.

You need a healthy balance of both, with a bit of wiggle room on either side.

Personally, my preference is a slight priority of Haste over Mastery, because Haste gives me more Prayers and Heals, letting me sneak Heal in on a DPS, for example. But I still need both.

[Arrelliana]

Even though Kelesti is a forum moderator I could not disagree more about dropping mastery below haste at this current tier of raiding. I have read through several priest blogs as well as the math and spreadsheets posted on Elitist Jerks. This is the value of stats and why:

#1 Intellect (mana and throughput) our best stat by far. Heals hit harder and shadowfiend, hymn of hope, and replenishment all scale off this stat.

#2 Spirit: The longer a fight (especially over 4 mins long) this stat shines even more. As a holy priest the value just went up with the recent hotfix giving us even more in combat regen.

#3 Here is where the minimum/soft cap etc comes in..516 is the minimum haste rating to reach a 5 tick renew which reduces the period between ticks. This is both effective as it increases the heal per mana to the same as the heal spell and is an effective mobile cast when movement is required.

#4 This is where I place mastery after the haste minimum is reached. Mastery increases the efficiency of every single heal in our arsenal without costing any additional mana. It is a set amount and therefore very easy to see. It is an effective bonus when tank healing with renew rolling on a tank the typical echo of light (because it does continue to be applied and refreshed although it doesn't stack with each cast) is over 1k per second upwards of 2-3k depending on if there is a tank spike and I use flash heal. This is similar to a druid lifebloom stack continually going off on a tank while they cast nourish. Also renew is refreshed on the tank with each cast so the shorter period of time between renew ticks is benefit from the haste from #3. Flash heal + serendipity stacked gheal are more than fast enough to counter any heavy tank damage and the echo of light will continue to tick away. While spamming poh switching between groups the mastery keeps ticking.

It would take nearly 5.5% haste to shave .1 second off the cast time of poh. In a 60 second window you could cast 27 poh's @ a 2.2 second cast time or 28 with a 2.1 cast time. 1 extra poh per minute if your spamming would cost over 700 haste rating. That same amount rating in mastery would boost the effectiveness of your heals by almost 4% at no additional mana cost. We know it isn't realistic to spam PoH for a minute. The thing is..the haste that would benefit the fast casting for extra PoH or other heals compared to the same boost to all heals for mastery to me makes it a no brainer.



My biggest issue with saying the trickle doesn't matter during heavy aoe etc. is that we are never going to be able to top up the entire dps even spamming poh so all of the mastery heals at this point are 100% efficient. Echo of light/renew/poh/glyph of poh are all generally close in overheal % 20-30% when factoring in everything. The entire healing model is currently about triage and not letting dps be fully topped off so any trickle in heal is effective even from my experience so far on 9 of the current raid bosses.

#5 I do not avoid haste but place it here. I believe haste is still valuable but just not as valuable as mastery. Gear will naturally have haste or mastery and you will get haste and mastery as you gear up. If an item has spirit/crit on it..I will reforge the crit to mastery..if an item has spirit haste I will reforge the haste to mastery. If an items has spirit mastery I will do nothing. If an item has crit/mastery I will of course reforge crit to haste. Haste only allows me to increase output at the expense of mana and we do not have infinite mana pools anymore. The only time haste would surpass mastery is if reaction time is an issue.

#6 Crit is last currently as it is unreliable but does increase throughput without additional mana costs.

I respect personal choices and if you feel haste helps you heal better by all means haste yourself all you can. If I need a super fast heal I will stack serendipity and cast poh or just use flash. As disc just cast a shield then you get hasted PoH.

My opinion is strong because I want anyone who plays a priest to be the best possible player they can be and make informed decisions on gearing. :-)

[Kelesti]

#3 Here is where the minimum/soft cap etc comes in..516 is the minimum haste rating to reach a 5 tick renew which reduces the period between ticks. This is both effective as it increases the heal per mana to the same as the heal spell and is an effective mobile cast when movement is required.

Even as a moderator, I still am a player. My job's only to direct the discussion and I can take criticism quite well. Take blogs with a grain of salt though, because most are little more than carbon copies of either eachother's findings, or stuff taken from Elitist Jerks. If you read 8 blogs and EJ, and all 8 reference that, that's not to say you found 9 independent sources. That's saying you found one.

And I agree with Intellect and Spirit as priority stats, but Spirit has diminishing returns. A full mana bar doesn't do you much good, when you could have used faster/stronger Prayers.

Spirit has a "cap" in a sense. Under the upgraded lolregen, that cap will still vary from fight to fight, but we don't need to carry it on every piece anymore (currently running the awesome Earthen Ring Exalted gloves, and reforging a bit away from Spirit on my other pieces).

Placing it as an "always above X" is a little silly

What makes Haste so good up to that point? Your spells cast faster? Check. Your renew ticks faster? Check. Do either of these stop being true at 516 haste? Not at all. Congrats, you made Renew tick a fifth time so its HPM makes it a button to push while moving.

It isn't nearly enough of our output to stop Haste here though. Itemising heavily into mastery also doesn't benefit Renew, which further emphasizes the point: Renew isn't strong enough of a spell in current raid environments/itemisation to base our gearing around.

#4 This is where I place mastery after the haste minimum is reached. Mastery increases the efficiency of every single heal in our arsenal without costing any additional mana. It is a set amount and therefore very easy to see. It is an effective bonus when tank healing with renew rolling on a tank the typical echo of light (because it does continue to be applied and refreshed although it doesn't stack with each cast) is over 1k per second upwards of 2-3k depending on if there is a tank spike and I use flash heal. This is similar to a druid lifebloom stack continually going off on a tank while they cast nourish. Also renew is refreshed on the tank with each cast so the shorter period of time between renew ticks is benefit from the haste from #3. Flash heal + serendipity stacked gheal are more than fast enough to counter any heavy tank damage and the echo of light will continue to tick away. While spamming poh switching between groups the mastery keeps ticking.

Haste doesn't really "cost" you anything. It activates a second gear, where in high damage environments, a 2.5 second cast is still our "primary tool". Having this faster, more accessible, means that we lean less often on Flash Heal, or rolling Renews on many people to counter what Prayer can't.

Haste giving you that second gear may not be a "visible" output/mana increase, but just like Holy Concentration: even though it doesn't show up on a meter doesn't mean it's not a factor.

In addition, more Haste means that more casts land during Echo of Light ticks, allowing it to roll into itself for stronger output just the same.

But the bolded part here is a key point: Renew ticks 5 times off a single refresh off Chakra. So your gearing of Haste to reach that mark is pointless. It ticking faster also continues linearly at every single point of haste rating above and beyond the minimum.
The comparison of yours also makes a few assumptions between both Echo of Light and Prayer of Healing. 4% on all healing versus one additional cast may look the same on a meter, but play out vastly different in combat.

I do agree with you that the trickle is nice, but when people are getting hit as hard as they are, it's a contributing factor, not a replacement for a subsequent cast. Triage has a role here, for sure, and a lingering HoT like the Prayer Glyph and Echo of Light won't sustain someone to prevent you from needing another cast. Over the 6 second duration of either, you can realistically neglect one second's worth of damage, but that second heal should have already been inbound.

In your gearing strategies, I do the same, except prioritizing Haste, as I see it as a way to conserve mana by not needing to rely on expensive spells as often, and having higher effective HPS on single target, as I feel gearing priorities around a single spell is ridiculous, and spending mana/time to save time is redundant.

My opinion is strong because I want anyone who plays a priest to be the best possible player they can be and make informed decisions on gearing. :-)

That's why I've continued to post here, as long as I have

[ainra]

Kelesti, will you marry me? Just curious. I hate that when I try to say the same thing as you, it comes out like I smashed my face on the keyboard in comparison. Thanks for making it pretty, polite and perfectly said.

[Kelesti]

Heh, that's how I usually feel about most of my power posters here, letting them say what I feel, when I know they can do it better than I can

I have great respect for most of the people here, whether they disagree with me or not

There are a few exceptions of course...

[skiiwee29]

I personally value Spirit>haste>mastery>crit in that order. Reason I didnt list int is because 2 items 346 generally have the same Int value. While mastery for holy is a nice little HoT, I do not see it being a make or break item for fights where alot of healing is required, much like Magmaw. Its HpS is minimul for the ammount of health pools players have as it only heals for about 2k over 6 seconds which isnt much for a lvl 85 tank with 160k HP.

[Kelesti]

It's not quite that bad. It is significant sustained HPS, in an environment that hits in sporadic bursts.

A nice followthrough to help touch people up a bit, and it helps considerably in that role, just so long as no one thinks enough mastery is a substitute for additional healing income.

[muto]

Mastery> Haste> Critical Strike for secondary stats in my opinion. Prayer of healing spam isn't viable at all anymore, and having a 2.3 second cast Heal versus a 2.1 second cast Heal isn't going to make hardly an impact. I have my 12.5% haste cap for an extra Renew tick and now plan on stacking Mastery.

[harky]

Err. Haven't been to a raid yet, I assume? PoH is 30%+ of your healing. Often upwards of 40%. On some fights it will be 50%+. That's not including the portion from Echoes, or the glyph. So if by 'isn't viable anymore' you meant 'is the best way to raid heal' you'd be correct.

Renew will be <10%. If you hang out in Heal's Chakra there is no such thing as a '12.5% haste cap' and that is the type of fight where Renew will be your highest percentage of healing.

This whole talk of 12.5% being a 'cap' is utterly misleading. 12.5% Haste, which is just over 4% on gear, is nothing more than a minimum needed to make Renew worth casting when not in Heal's Chakra. When inside it the number becomes completely unimportant. The idea of getting to this figure is also pretty misleading.

Renew's primary use is to heal tanks. When you are doing a large amount of tank healing you will be in Serenity. When in Serenity Renew scales linearly with Haste and only gains ticking speed. When raid healing Renew will be cast rarely, with Prayer of Healing and Heal being your main spells.

Mastery works on ~65% of our healing in most cases. Haste works on around 85%. Additionally you gain Haste in a 7:5 ratio to Mastery. This means 1 Haste Rating gives the same percentage gain as 1.2 Mastery Rating. When modified this means 1 Haste Rating = ~1.6 Mastery. So 2 Haste is worth slightly more than 3 Mastery. The only reason Mastery should be thought of as better than this is when Mana is a large concern. This is because Mastery increases HPM and Haste does not. Still the gap in value point-per-point leaves Haste the superior stat. As Mana becomes a smaller problem Haste becomes a better and better option. If we ever reach T10.75 levels of gear we will again see Haste > Int > Mastery > Crit > Spirit as we did at the end of Wrath. That's somewhat unlikely, but at worst in current itemization Haste and Mastery are equal. This is true in <333 gear. As you pass 333 Haste passes Mastery. This will be less obvious in pre-raid content where Prayer of Healing is not such a massive part of your healing.

Edit: The equivalent of Wrath gearing would be at ~250k mana. If Cata only has 3 tiers of content as has been mentioned we should end at ~180k mana, well short of what happened in 277 gear at 80.

[Kelesti]

and having a 2.3 second cast Heal versus a 2.1 second cast Heal isn't going to make hardly an impact.

Ummm... What?

I have my 12.5% haste cap for an extra Renew tick and now plan on stacking Mastery.

So you'll go to an arbitrary madeup "cap" that a website notorious for having on-again-off-again theory for healers (nothing to what Landsoul is capable of), simply because a spreadsheet tells them to.

The math works, the theory and the practice don't. The logic doesn't either. You do it to benefit Renew, but then you stack a stat that has nothing to do with Renew?

12.5 is nothing, except for saying that "I read EJ like a bible". If you were a Rogue, Death Knight or a Fury Warrior, great! Healing? Spreadsheet math doesn't apply.

[harky]

Ummm... What?

10% Haste isn't noticeable apparently.

Anyway, it's nothing new. EJ was recommending people not go past '11%' in Wrath. Just a little lower than the 63% raid buffed Haste I had at the end of Wrath. (And no, I never got my PoH down to 1.5. 4% short... /qq)

[Kelesti]

10% Haste isn't noticeable apparently.

Anyway, it's nothing new. EJ was recommending people not go past '11%' in Wrath. Just a little lower than the 63% raid buffed Haste I had at the end of Wrath. (And no, I never got my PoH down to 1.5. 4% short... /qq)

I really stopped taking them at face value when in Sunwell, after a 1.3 second GCD, I was supposed to gear crit for higher thoroughput.

Landsoul is a genius, and Fury has never had someone better behind the scenes. The support for Death Knights and Rogues never ceases to amaze me. But yeah... They've always left something to be desired with "theory" and how it can't be applied to a spreadsheet in our case.

[muto]

Ummm... What?

So you'll go to an arbitrary madeup "cap" that a website notorious for having on-again-off-again theory for healers (nothing to what Landsoul is capable of), simply because a spreadsheet tells them to.

The math works, the theory and the practice don't. The logic doesn't either. You do it to benefit Renew, but then you stack a stat that has nothing to do with Renew?

12.5 is nothing, except for saying that "I read EJ like a bible". If you were a Rogue, Death Knight or a Fury Warrior, great! Healing? Spreadsheet math doesn't apply.

Divine Touch from casting Renew does apply Echo of Light actually. And why wouldn't spreadsheet math not apply to healers? Killing a boss with damage abilities is no different then bringing someone to full health with healing abilities. That point is moot.