Spirit of Redemption

[Deleted]

Spec wise, I'm not crazy about it especially for a raid healer. Mental Agility and Divine Touch should be filled up. SoR too if you can manage to convince her somehow. Anyways what I'd suggest is for her to give up three/four points from any of the following talents: Surge of Light, Tome of Light, Veiled Shadows, or Darkness (and I sorta put them in order of what I'd ditch first but any will do).

I basically use the same spec, with one point from Improved Renew switched to SoR and the Glyph of Guardian Spirit instead of Renew. It's okay for me because I almost never use Renew, so the points would be wasted, but I have to agree with you. If you tend to use Renew either skill both (Improved Renew and Divine Touch) or put just enough points in them to reach the next tier. Also I personally would ditch Veiled Shadows first, because Fade shouldn't be needed much in a raid environment and the only personal gain is the reduction of the Shadowfiend CD. But if the fight is shorter than 8 minutes you don't get another use out of it, even with Veiled Shadows.

[Ynna]

Spec wise, I'm not crazy about it especially for a raid healer. Mental Agility and Divine Touch should be filled up. SoR too if you can manage to convince her somehow. Anyways what I'd suggest is for her to give up three/four points from any of the following talents: Surge of Light, Tome of Light, Veiled Shadows, or Darkness (and I sorta put them in order of what I'd ditch first but any will do).

I'm not all that convinced about the value of Divine Touch. I've got in my spec because I have no idea what else I should take. It doesn't do significant healing, and the healing it does is hardly ever important. Anyway, Divine Touch is better than Veiled Shadows in any case.

[Aowyn]

SOR can be life saver, your healer saying that only fail healers take it is just wrong, there is nothing fail about personal preference and holy has been very versatile when it comes to personal preferences, SOR gives the chance to put GS on the tank when the boss is about to go down, to throw out a few last minute heals. It has on occasion just been annoying also. I spec’d out of it because I found that 9 times out of 10 I never use it and when I did die in mid raid I am asked to click it off to be quickly battle rez’d, so for me it has just been a wasted talent.

[Shakalager]

Tell your Priests to not die and SoR won't be needed

[zakaluka]

I've only had SoR save a wipe once in all the time I've been raiding. I've tried dropping SoR though, and the choices for replacement are pretty lackluster.

As a result I've wound up keeping it. I remember that one save I had on progression, and it's enough. the alternatives are more reliable as hps or utility bonuses than SoR but they're pretty minor.

Personally if I dropped SoR I'd only have two viable alternatives: desperate prayer (which i consider to be even worse than SoR tbh) and blessed resilience. BR has the benefit of making our serendipity trigger Binding Heal even better than it already is. If you find yourself shifting roles often maybe 1 point in State of Mind wouldn't hurt; I often find myself wishing I had 2/2 SoM but usually good planning gets around any hint of needing it.

During heavy raidwide AoE using Bind as a trigger for Serendipity into PoH is far and away our highest throughput cast sequence; If Bind were improved (by taking blessed resilience for instance), the initial spike after each pulse would be even higher, but the moment the priest tops off you lose this dump. Flash/PoH/Flash/PoH is actually lower HPS than continuous PoH, only to be used for evening the raid or giving the tank extra attention. I prefer Renew for raid evening because it actually has higher HPCT than PoH.

Just some thoughts. Probably BR is the best alternative especially in raidcomps where most other aoe healing comes from smartheals (druid hpally priest for instance?) If he feels DP is more important, i'd just go with it.

If you're thinking 'but you can die on purpose and get one final spike!' this is true but usually be the time you manage to purposefully die, the wipe is unavoidable. It doesn't really work in practice.

---------- Post added 2011-08-02 at 12:47 PM ----------

I'm not all that convinced about the value of Divine Touch.

After mathing it out DT is actually really really bad. But, you need it for rapid renewal, and once you have rapid renewal a couple interesting things happen. For one, taking the time to drop a renew on the lowest health raidmember during AoE actually raises your AoE throughput. All single target heals we have, excluding Binding Heal and Renew, bring our throughput down during aoe. Using FH even once will bring you off your highest possible throughput by about 10%, momentarily - serendipity doesn't make up for it. For this reason I have DT and RR. But if you look at how much healing your divine touch is actually doing, it's pretty negligible - the tooltip lies.

[nevermore]

when I did die in mid raid I am asked to click it off to be quickly battle rez’d, so for me it has just been a wasted talent.

Why on earth would you do that?! That defies any sort of logic, unless you're in a horribly wrong position for some reason.

[Shakalager]

Why on earth would you do that?! That defies any sort of logic, unless you're in a horribly wrong position for some reason.

I agree. You get free heals. They should wait to brez you after the free heals...

[Deleted]

desperate prayer (which i consider to be even worse than SoR tbh) and blessed resilience.

Desperate Prayer has saved my sorry little elven behind countless times over and over. It's an incredible "oh crap" button, especially when combined with Blessed Resilience it almost tops you off by itself. Awesome if you make a mistake (say, not moving fast enough out of the fire). And to boot: The heal is free and instant, whereas you'd need to use mana (and casting time) to top yourself the common way. Sure, the use is situational, and it's cooldown is long-ish, but I love Desperate Prayer and would never, ever let go of it.

[Themos]

SoR is nowhere near as godly as this thread makes it out to be.
If you have the talent, and the opportunity occurs... 'yay'
If you don't have the talent, don't expect this to cause your raids to wipe.
I don't have it, b/c I'd rather spend the points elsewhere and don't consider it important enough.


It's more preference than anything though, if you have issues with your healer, SoR should be at the bottom of the list of things that are wrong with him/her, this topic shouldn't be a contentious debate. If your priest is dying a lot, find out why.

1) Bad at running out of fire?
2) Not getting any healing from other healers?
3) A dps or tank doing something that kills the priest?

It's fairly easy to track down why your priest dies. Forget SoR and fix the actual problem, your raid will be better for it.

-T

[nartana]

SoR is nowhere near as godly as this thread makes it out to be.
If you have the talent, and the opportunity occurs... 'yay'
If you don't have the talent, don't expect this to cause your raids to wipe.
I don't have it, b/c I'd rather spend the points elsewhere and don't consider it important enough.


It's more preference than anything though, if you have issues with your healer, SoR should be at the bottom of the list of things that are wrong with him/her, this topic shouldn't be a contentious debate. If your priest is dying a lot, find out why.

1) Bad at running out of fire?
2) Not getting any healing from other healers?
3) A dps or tank doing something that kills the priest?

It's fairly easy to track down why your priest dies. Forget SoR and fix the actual problem, your raid will be better for it.

-T

The thread was started to see people's opinions on the talent for progression situations only. And during progression you are going to die, especially during the end of the fight with hard enrage mechanics, like H Rhyolith, Beth, and Baleroc and We had numerous wipes at sub 100k hp. I realize these wipes were do to other players' fail, but the wipes could have been kills had she been alive 15 seconds longer. KK ^-^

The talent is absolutely useless and garbage in a farm status raid.

[Callypso]

@OP:
I have NEVER had a raid where it was actually useful. And that's in 4 years of raiding.
It has however saved me in a heroic or two.

I have NEVER had a (progress) raid where it was NOT useful. And that's in 5 years of raiding.

It has never saved me in a heroic. It has however saved my group in heroics on many occasions.


When progressing, shit happens. Either because you screw up, or someone else does. In either way, the spirit form gives you another X seconds of 100% freecast healing when shit hits the fan. I lost count of the the number of 'close' kills we got where the raid was dieing around 10% left on the boss, all healers were running OOM, and me and the other holy priest intentionally got ourselves killed to make sure we could continue to top off the best dps'ers still alive for another good 10 seconds, and the boss dropping dead with 2 people alive. Not to mention those attempts where I died for whatever reason but was able to continue doing my job until the Combat resser got into range and/or the other healers had a moment to reorganize the healing.

[ainra]

The point I want to make is this: having SoR can be useful even if the kill is not within (or close to) those 15 seconds. As mentioned plenty of times previously, you die in progression, that's just what happens. Those 15 seconds of FREE heals could help out a ton. Get a rez after and you just saved yourself a bit of headache, hopefully. Not to mention, it gives a bit of a buffer for a rezzer to rez you, and they will have no problem finding you either! Is it ALWAYS useful? No. Are you terrible if you do/don't have it? No. It's a personal choice. If you ever have one of those times where you die and SoR absolutely saves the raid, you will probably spec into it without a second thought.