Holy Priest crit build viable today?

[Rezhka]

Back on wotlk, i was stacking my priest with full crit and lesser haste (i dont remember the exact number, but its pretty low i reckon). i have like 35% crit chance on holy spell unbuff, and like 7% or so on haste. The reason for this is the Surge of Light on late WoTLK that work awesomely on me. The free Flash Heal cant crit, but its instant and proc with 50% chance from any of my crit spell. even when Flash Heal didnt heal as much as today, i'm still love it. who's not love free instant heal lol. and that also affecting my healing style as holy priest. I always use PoM (my most favourite healing spell of all), and its always topping my healing chart (WoTLK talent on holy also have a reduction on PoM cd to 6 secs iirc).

So now with new SoL that only have 6% chance and limited trigger to proc it, i wonder if its still worth it to stack crit as much as i did? and as i mention above, my healing style is "instant-cast" oriented. so mostly i prior my heal with PoM, Renew, CoH, and Serenity. i dont see any other efficient way atm to get SoL except Heal spam, hence i'm doing it anyway, eventho i hate it :-/. i love being an instant-cast healer. well, i'm still casting my big heal and any other heal that require casting but its just on some dire situation.

And what's the soft haste cap for priest to get an extra tick on Renew and even Sanctuary? i'm thinking to build my holy priest with crit and mastery. so is it viable? what do you guys think? note that i never raid with my holy priest and i'm still gearing her up. so any input would be a great help .

[VitesseEOD]

In a word, no. Neither is being an "instant healer" none of your instant cast spells should be anywhere near your highest output, nor should they have been in wrath!

[Rezhka]

In a word, no. Neither is being an "instant healer" none of your instant cast spells should be anywhere near your highest output, nor should they have been in wrath!

but every time i check my healing recount, i always find PoM and Renew on my top healing chart. i wonder why its not Heal as the top, tho i always spam it whenever wherever. perhaps its just my healing style. but its viable on wrath from my experience. in fact i raid ICC with this build (not heroic tho).

could you please provide me some data or your experience or at least an explaination? because a simple 'no' is likely considerable input...

[Deleted]

but every time i check my healing recount, i always find PoM and Renew on my top healing chart. i wonder why its not Heal as the top, tho i always spam it whenever wherever. perhaps its just my healing style. but its viable on wrath from my experience. in fact i raid ICC with this build (not heroic tho).

could you please provide me some data or your experience or at least an explaination? because a simple 'no' is likely considerable input...

Having renew as your top healing spell on a raid boss is an idicator that you're doing it wrong. Renew is ineffective (and will be even more ineffective if you drop haste for crit), if you started using PoH and CoH more, you might notice a big increase in HPS while keeping your mana high, you'll also notice the value of mastery going up as well.

When all else fail, just ask elitist jerks, since they have the math to back up their simple "no": "Avoid Crit, which has the worst conversion factors and is devalued further by our talents to increase it."

[Tihr]

In late ICC, instants were basically all you used (CoH and PoM on CD, with Renew filler), but you can't play this anymore. For high raid damage, you'll want to be in the Sanctuary Chakra. Have a PoM up on someone that's near to someone else, before the raid damage comes in. When it hits, you can drop a CoH, then start PoHing. You'll always want to try keep CoH on cooldown. Your spell breakdown on a fight like this will be CoH and PoH both around 30-35%, and your mastery around 10% of your healing, the rest being Flash/Greater/Heal/Renew/Lightwell, etc.

Stat priority is a bit up in the air. It completely depends on how you want to play. Mastery and haste are pretty consistent stats, since they're always there. You'll want to be gearing either for mastery, haste, or a mix of the two, which I'd recommend. Crit is inconsistent, because there's only a chance a spell might crit.

Int > Spirit > Haste or Mastery > Crit

[Zeuq]

Crit is a poor stat for Holy. First, as others mention, it's inconsistent. You can get a crit when you don't really need it, and not get it when you do want it. Haste and Mastery both provide predictable throughput and so are superior in this fashion. Second, it scales poorly. Unlike DPS, Crit Heals are only for 150% instead of 200%, as such, when comparing HPS per point of itemization, it is less than both Haste and Mastery; even moreso when you consider it's unpredictability and, thus, higher chance for overheal. Third, you get plenty of it free already. When you do want Crit is for tank healing, but when you're tank healing, you get 10% from Chakra:Serenity, and you have 25% more from HW:Serenity up often, and you get plenty more from Intellect and raid buffs as well, so you'll have little trouble with Inspiration uptime.

That said, Crit does have one advantage of Haste, in that it increases HPM where Haste does not; however, Haste has the benefit of often allowing one to use more efficient spells (eg, Heal instead of GH, or GH instead of FH) which can make up for some of the HPM difference. Moreso, because Haste has great HPS gains, you can likely see equal or greater sustainability with more consistent/predictable throughput.

Mastery's only real disadvantage to Crit that I can see is that it lacks any real burst potential but, like with Haste, consistent predictable healing will probably help avoid the need for that, and not having to rely on Crit to potentially save someone.


In short, whether you favor Haste or Mastery, either is clearly superior to Crit in my view. As such, I place Crit at the lowest possible gearing priority to avoid whenever possible (which is easy except for the 4-piece), and reforge out of it when it's not.

[Deleted]

Forget the whole instant cast jump around style of wolk healing. We're hard casting A LOT now.

The extra tick on renew comes at 12,5% haste (remember to include buffs/talents). I don't think there is an extra tick on sanctuary, but don't worry about that it's usefullness is severly limited, and it should only be used in situations where you know people can stand still in it for almost the entire duration and you need the added healing.

As other has mentioned crit is not really good compared to the other stats. Haste upto 12,5% (raid buffed) then mastery or more haste, that's the general consensus.