Wrath of the Righteous - Start of Act 3
10 hours ago
Showing posts with label priest. Show all posts
Showing posts with label priest. Show all posts
So, about that T10 4piece change.
Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.
1) By a strange twist of awesomeness, whose details I am not at liberty to discuss, I miraculously acquired a free Leggings of Woven Death. Since I now have those, I figured what the hell, and went and purchased Meteor Chaser’s Raiment, because Dwarves look oh so hot in a turtleneck. Cough. This essentially killed my opportunity for the 4 piece bonus anyway.
2) Did I mention I’m slow? I don’t even want to see the stats on how many times I would miss the reset cooldown on my Penance. It would likely just throw off my tank-healing rotation, and confuse me.
Now, there was a lot of outcry about the crappy set bonuses for Disc Priests, because it just looked like Blizz was completely out of touch with what Disc Priests actually do most of the time. In 10 mans they may tank heal (and both tier bonuses for Disc Priests are very much directed towards tank healing IMO), but in 25s it is much more common for them to be raid healing – Pallies are just that much better in 25s. The tier bonuses don’t really do much for shield spamming – but to be fair, gear itemization in general does not do much for shield spamming Disc Priests. It’s a bit of a mess. Borrowed Time means you don’t need haste. Shields can’t crit, so you don’t need crit. You don’t need mana regen. So basically, everything that’s not Spellpower or at least Intellect is just *yawn*.
Priest Tier-10 4-Piece Healing Set Bonus: Redesigned. This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster's Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.
For Holy priests, I think it’s utter crap – and my main reasoning for that is coming directly from something Zusterke (for whom I have the utmost respect and admiration - who doesn't?) pointed out on the PlusHeal forums:
I'm confused by the idea that we get a FHeal bonus in the 2P and a Renew bonus in 4P when those spells seem to be competitors as filler spells.
I see Renew being touted more and more as a replacement for Flash Heal in many ways for Holy Priests, and I’m not sure yet how I feel about that. As someone who always ran with a lot of Druids, I hated it. Druids are better at HoTs, so it's better for me to focus on more burstiness while they deal with ... uhm, health pool softening. If you aren't druid-heavy, then yes, Renew is great.
In a raid, I do not heal in a vacuum - I heal as part of a team, and therefore, I consider the strengths of others in my team when making my own gear and talent choices. When I'm holy and healing next to a Druid, I rarely use Renew.
From a healer's perspective, there's a lot of fancy schmancy terminology in WoW. You've got people discussing throughput, mana management, mitigation, effective health, AoEability, clustering, stacking, proactive, reflexive, reactionary, etc etc etc. Sometimes when I want to feel good about myself, I just start throwing around these words like how I used Foucaultian terms in grad school. Makes people think you're smart or something.
Inevitably, these terms will get confused and misused. People will use one term when they mean another, or perhaps not understand the difference between two terms. And that's fine – after all, knowledge is relative. What one word means to you is not necessarily what it means to me. But I won't bore you with critical theory and philosophy today (I always get especially philosophical at 6 am, I have no idea why).
Let's look at a primary example of a word that is often misused or misunderstood conceptually. Fulguralis calls me a word nerd for a very good reason!
-verb
1. to lessen in force or intensity, as wrath, grief, harshness, or pain; moderate
2. to make less severe: to mitigate a punishment.
3. to make (a person, one's state of mind, disposition, etc) milder or more gentle; mollify; appease.
4. to become milder; lessen in severity.
Disc Priests are the king of damage mitigation amongst the healing classes, and I don't think there's any argument about that. However, I often hear of Druids being referred to as damage mitigators as well, and this grates on my word nerdiness, and does not accurately reflect the power of the HoT. If you say that Druids are damage mitigators, then it could be interpreted that a Disc Priest + Resto Druid is a poor healing combo for a ten man raid. This is absolutely untrue – Disc Priest & Resto Druid is a fantastic ten man healing combo.
I have been unable to find a term that adequately describes the purpose and power of the Druid HoT. The word for Disc Priest is, of course, mitigation, but I cannot conceive of a proper alternative for Druids. I understand, therefore, why people often refer to them as mitigative (lawl I will not be put off by that squiggly red line!).
The power of mitigation healing is that it reduces the impact of a big burst of damage, smoothing the incoming damage out a bit, taking off the peaks of pain. HoTs have this same power, but in a different way. Mitigation smooths out the incoming damage. HoTs smooth out the health pool. They result in similar effects, but go about it in different ways. Both Disc Priests and Resto Druids are "smoothers" if you will – but they are inherently different in their processes, and misunderstanding the difference can be fatal.
The fundamental difference between the two is best described in an example.
Let us say, for the sake of argument, that you have a tank with 35k health. This tank takes a hit of 37k damage, and consequently dies. A Disc Priest can actively prevent this by using one of their many mitigative abilities – be it Power Word: Shield, Pain Suppression, or perhaps a well timed Divine Aegis proc. These "mitigation" abilities are, in effect, temporary hit points that will be absorbed before any of the actual damage. If I pop a 5k shield on the tank, I have effectively increased their health to 40k, albeit temporarily. This is enough to allow them to survive that hit.
A resto druid cannot give that tank temporary hitpoints. However, if my Penance is on cooldown, a Resto Druid can do something that I cannot. What if, right after that tank takes that 37k hit, and is down to 3k health, he continues to take melee damage? With his health so low, and all my cooldowns blown, he could die before I get my Flash Heal cast off. But if he has HoTs on him, he will have health trickling in that may be enough to keep him alive between the time that he took his giant hit and the time that my Flash Heal or Greater Heal lands. THIS is the power of a Resto Druid.
Of course, in the effort to find the right word for teh HOTNESS that is a resto druid, the Twitterati came out and threw me a variety of potential words to meet my demands. None of them were perfect enough for me, but some of them were pretty epic.
Cadistra and Angelya suggested "lifestream".
Angelya again: Trickling?
Me: Trickle top-offing?
Sheqeri: Increased effective health?
Dristanel: Flailing? Foundation HoTs?
Matticus: Health gappiness?
Nibuca: Hottification? Pre-cognitive burst smoothing? Bursty effective armor displacement stamina throughput druid mob tree? (I get this strange sensation as if she were almost teasing me...)
Wonderful suggestions, eh? But I do believe that Deyndor takes the prize for the best suggestion of all time: Colander Heals. (I made sure I spelled it right this time! Ever notice that my spelling errors are mostly limited to double consonant words?) Do you have a difficult time conceptualizing Colander Heals? Well, LET ME DRAW YOU A PICTURE
Inspired by Megan and while working on the background stuff for my Know Your Blues series (and for the record, that is still in the works - but I am trying to build up enough backlog of posts from various CMs to be able to get a better feel for their posting personalities), I've been spending a lot more time on the WoW forums. I've done this in the past, getting involved on the forums in little bursts, so it's not entirely new to me but recently I've been struck by the fact that... well... the Priest forums? Are suddenly awesome.
I don't know when exactly it happened, because I'd been absent from them for about 6 months. The snarkiness and constant bickering over Flash Heal versus Greater Heal, the accusations of people gemming like an idiot, blah blah blah really got on my nerves. To me, the forums should be a place to really provide some info and advice for new players of your class, and to be a fun community place for people across different servers to get to know one another - and instead it was becoming a giant snarkfest.
But when I started popping over there a couple of weeks ago, the entire attitude was different. I discovered Paolo was a regular poster, that Nethaera was there offering up advice and general goofiness as well, that all these people on the forum felt they knew one another. Half the time they aren't talking about Priesting per se... they are just socializing.
And that, my friends, is part of building a community.
I attribute a lot of this to Nethaera, though I may be wrong and just be showing my fanboi colors. However, I think it's her job to foster a sense of community as a community moderator. I don't know if the CMs have "assignments" of different portions of the forums, but the Priest community seems to be hers. 6 months ago, there were never any Blue Posts in the Priest community, and now Nethaera posts little comments, and joins in on fun Priest discussions on a near-daily basis.
And then there's Paolo (who sent me an in-game tell the other day... I was completely starstruck or something. Also, terrified he was going to lecture me on my DK-birthing gem selection >.<), who is very involved in the Priest forum community. There's even a facebook group just for the group of Priests who goof off in the daily @DayoftheWeek thread.
Now, I don't know what the forums for other classes are like. But the one for Priests is unbelievably awesome. It is exactly what Class Forums are supposed to be - a Class based community.
If you're a Priest, and you haven't stopped over at the WoW forums for awhile out of pure reluctance, dip your feet in and at least say hi to Paolo. Go post in the @Tuesday thread and join the party. Everyone is welcome!
What if the Priest bloggers completely took over that place? Would we clean it up? Or have Nethaera and Paolo and countless others whose names I do not know already done that? Put aside whatever you may have thought about the WoW forums, and walk in with an open mind - just try reading and posting there for a week, and see if the recent changes can change your opinion of the WoW forums.
I don't know when exactly it happened, because I'd been absent from them for about 6 months. The snarkiness and constant bickering over Flash Heal versus Greater Heal, the accusations of people gemming like an idiot, blah blah blah really got on my nerves. To me, the forums should be a place to really provide some info and advice for new players of your class, and to be a fun community place for people across different servers to get to know one another - and instead it was becoming a giant snarkfest.
But when I started popping over there a couple of weeks ago, the entire attitude was different. I discovered Paolo was a regular poster, that Nethaera was there offering up advice and general goofiness as well, that all these people on the forum felt they knew one another. Half the time they aren't talking about Priesting per se... they are just socializing.
And that, my friends, is part of building a community.
I attribute a lot of this to Nethaera, though I may be wrong and just be showing my fanboi colors. However, I think it's her job to foster a sense of community as a community moderator. I don't know if the CMs have "assignments" of different portions of the forums, but the Priest community seems to be hers. 6 months ago, there were never any Blue Posts in the Priest community, and now Nethaera posts little comments, and joins in on fun Priest discussions on a near-daily basis.
And then there's Paolo (who sent me an in-game tell the other day... I was completely starstruck or something. Also, terrified he was going to lecture me on my DK-birthing gem selection >.<), who is very involved in the Priest forum community. There's even a facebook group just for the group of Priests who goof off in the daily @DayoftheWeek thread.
Now, I don't know what the forums for other classes are like. But the one for Priests is unbelievably awesome. It is exactly what Class Forums are supposed to be - a Class based community.
If you're a Priest, and you haven't stopped over at the WoW forums for awhile out of pure reluctance, dip your feet in and at least say hi to Paolo. Go post in the @Tuesday thread and join the party. Everyone is welcome!
What if the Priest bloggers completely took over that place? Would we clean it up? Or have Nethaera and Paolo and countless others whose names I do not know already done that? Put aside whatever you may have thought about the WoW forums, and walk in with an open mind - just try reading and posting there for a week, and see if the recent changes can change your opinion of the WoW forums.
Look! I'm going to do this all scientific like! Maybe if my thesis advisor runs across this, she will be proud instead of holding her head in her hands.
INTRODUCTION
Awhile back, Matticus did a little test in an effort to determine which bubble absorbs damage first, Power Word: Shield, or Divine Aegis. If I understand his methodology correctly, he essentially cast Power Word: Shield on himself as well as Divine Aegis, committed suicide by way of Molten Colossus, and examined his Combat Log to see which faded first. He tried this in various combos, proccing Divine Aegis first, and also using Power Word: Shield first. His conclusion was a "first come, first served" method. In other words, the bubble first cast/procced will be the first absorption used.
There was a comment on his post that suggested this might be inaccurate due to the way the combat log functions. I'm not really an expert on computery things, but I tend to agree with the commenter - when multiple effects occur at the same time (such as all your buffs fading when you die), the combat log has to have some order in which to list them that do not necessarily make any contextual sense. I.E. I'm not sure if this really determined which absorption works first, because everything drops off at the same time when you die, and is listed in a somewhat non-sensical way on the Combat Log. You can see this yourself if you ever note that your Combat Log may say you gained Spirit Tap before listing that you have slain a mob.
So I tried to test it too. I'm not as cool as Matt though, I didn't use Molten Colossi... I used various mobs around Icecrown while I did some dailies.
METHODOLOGY
I tested this by running around screaming wildly at mobs, standing around stoicly as they beat on me, helping them along with Shadow Word: Death, and tracking the results. Anytime Divine Aegis dissipated by timing out instead of by being fully absorbed, I threw out that result.
As a side note, self buffed, Shadow Word: Death is usually enough to make a Penance-procced Divine Aegis dissolve.
RESULTS
Both test versions were performed multiple times.
Test 1:
Based on my not-really-very-scientific-either tests, it appears that in every scenario, Divine Aegis is used first for absorption.
However, I don't have any super fancy awesome addons that tell me how much absorption is left on each shield, so the alternative conclusion is that whatever bubble you have with the least amount of absorption value left is the one used first.
Ideally, this would be the best way for the absorption priority to work - the bubble with the least amount of absorption left gets used up first, thereby preventing it from being wasted.
DISCUSSION
The main reason I suspect this is NOT the case is due to the inability to cast a new Power Word: Shield on someone that is "less powerful" than the one they are currently wearing, even if the current remaining absorption value is lower. This is in response to a question I posted yesterday - if you've ever received the "a stronger spell is currently in effect" error message when trying to bubble someone, you have run into this scenario. When you cast your first bubble on them, your spellpower was higher via a proc, or buff, or something like that, and therefore your bubble bigger. When you go to cast another bubble on them before the current one has expired, but after weakened soul has fallen off, you are unable to do so because now your spellpower (and therefore your bubble) is lower. It doesn't matter if there is only 10 hit points worth of absorption left on your target - it uses the original value of the bubble to determine priority.
The system is not currently "smart" enough to recognize this, most likely because it doesn't do a very good job of tracking the remaining absorption value on a shield. Therefore, "whatever bubble you have with the least amount of absorption value left" is most likely NOT the first one used, because I don't think the system recognizes that.
Feel free to leave me your thoughts, criticisms, suggestions, and results of any tests you perform yourself in the comments. I may try this again with some better addons to validate the potential alternative conclusion. It's a bit tricky, because you have to be very careful with the timing.
INTRODUCTION
Awhile back, Matticus did a little test in an effort to determine which bubble absorbs damage first, Power Word: Shield, or Divine Aegis. If I understand his methodology correctly, he essentially cast Power Word: Shield on himself as well as Divine Aegis, committed suicide by way of Molten Colossus, and examined his Combat Log to see which faded first. He tried this in various combos, proccing Divine Aegis first, and also using Power Word: Shield first. His conclusion was a "first come, first served" method. In other words, the bubble first cast/procced will be the first absorption used.
There was a comment on his post that suggested this might be inaccurate due to the way the combat log functions. I'm not really an expert on computery things, but I tend to agree with the commenter - when multiple effects occur at the same time (such as all your buffs fading when you die), the combat log has to have some order in which to list them that do not necessarily make any contextual sense. I.E. I'm not sure if this really determined which absorption works first, because everything drops off at the same time when you die, and is listed in a somewhat non-sensical way on the Combat Log. You can see this yourself if you ever note that your Combat Log may say you gained Spirit Tap before listing that you have slain a mob.
So I tried to test it too. I'm not as cool as Matt though, I didn't use Molten Colossi... I used various mobs around Icecrown while I did some dailies.
METHODOLOGY
I tested this by running around screaming wildly at mobs, standing around stoicly as they beat on me, helping them along with Shadow Word: Death, and tracking the results. Anytime Divine Aegis dissipated by timing out instead of by being fully absorbed, I threw out that result.
As a side note, self buffed, Shadow Word: Death is usually enough to make a Penance-procced Divine Aegis dissolve.
RESULTS
Both test versions were performed multiple times.
Test 1:
- Power Word: Shield first
- Divine Aegis second
- beat myself up (a la house elf)
- Divine Aegis dissolves via absorption
- Much much later, Power Word: Shield disappears
- Divine Aegis first
- Power Word: Shield second
- beat myself up (a la house elf)
- Divine Aegis dissolves via absorption (not by timing out)
- Much much later, Power Word: Shield disappears
Based on my not-really-very-scientific-either tests, it appears that in every scenario, Divine Aegis is used first for absorption.
However, I don't have any super fancy awesome addons that tell me how much absorption is left on each shield, so the alternative conclusion is that whatever bubble you have with the least amount of absorption value left is the one used first.
Ideally, this would be the best way for the absorption priority to work - the bubble with the least amount of absorption left gets used up first, thereby preventing it from being wasted.
DISCUSSION
The main reason I suspect this is NOT the case is due to the inability to cast a new Power Word: Shield on someone that is "less powerful" than the one they are currently wearing, even if the current remaining absorption value is lower. This is in response to a question I posted yesterday - if you've ever received the "a stronger spell is currently in effect" error message when trying to bubble someone, you have run into this scenario. When you cast your first bubble on them, your spellpower was higher via a proc, or buff, or something like that, and therefore your bubble bigger. When you go to cast another bubble on them before the current one has expired, but after weakened soul has fallen off, you are unable to do so because now your spellpower (and therefore your bubble) is lower. It doesn't matter if there is only 10 hit points worth of absorption left on your target - it uses the original value of the bubble to determine priority.
The system is not currently "smart" enough to recognize this, most likely because it doesn't do a very good job of tracking the remaining absorption value on a shield. Therefore, "whatever bubble you have with the least amount of absorption value left" is most likely NOT the first one used, because I don't think the system recognizes that.
Feel free to leave me your thoughts, criticisms, suggestions, and results of any tests you perform yourself in the comments. I may try this again with some better addons to validate the potential alternative conclusion. It's a bit tricky, because you have to be very careful with the timing.
The strangest thing has happened over the course of the past week or so. Somehow I suddenly became - dare i say it? - a good healer.
Now, I'm not saying I wasn't a good healer before. To be quite frank, I really don't know if I was a good healer or not. I tried to make up for whatever I lacked by being generally jovial and apologetic. Oh and being a dwarf, and therefore awesome. It's not like you have to be some expert WoW player to surf on over to blogger.com and create a healing blog after all. Don't be fooled by all the *sparkly* rhetoric.
While this revelation did not occur to me until last night, it began on Monday night in our regular 10 man ToC run.
For various reasons, the entire night was somewhat frustrating for me because I am the kind of person that really needs to focus in order to do well. Some people can pay attention to 18 different things at once, and still do a great job - not me. One thing I canNOT multitask is conversation. When one person is talking to me IRL, someone is asking me questions in vent, I'm trying to keep up with both raid and guild chat, and then multiple people are sending me tells, I just lose it. It probably comes from deep seated guilt issue involving a childhood friend and a dog, or an abusive half aunt twice removed or something, but I can't drop a conversation when someone is talking to me. I feel like I need to keep up my end, or else I'm a total failfriend.
Yet somehow, through the tears and frustration, and arguments, we got to Anubrekhan for only the second time in our short ToC10 experience, and we two shot him. And it was the best New Patch Eve raid ever. I was finally able to accept that 3.3 was coming, and embrace the new content knowing that I had finally seen the last of the old. True, it wasn't hard mode, and it wasn't 25 man, but I don't really care.
And the best part is, we successfully made it through phase 3 the very first time we'd ever seen it. I thought for sure it would be a struggle for us healers. But as a Disc priest? It's just awesome. I spent the entire time throwing bubbles and making last second saves with uber bursty Penance. Three times I let someone get below 5% health before I finally blasted them with a Penance. It was like this delicate ballet, and I was in the middle doing my Penance Pirouette.
And just as I'm really starting to have fun and get my groove on, SHAZAM I have a new achievement, and I'm looking around me saying "What? That's it?"
****
Yesterday I successfully pugged several of the new 5 mans as well as some other random heroic dungeons.
The crowning moment each time for me was Ick & Krick. Similar to the rogue in ToC 5 man, there are pools of poison that spawn in which you do not want to stand. But what I noticed was that you can see the pool splurge poison thingies being thrown at you, so you can move out of the way before they land (although you do seem to take one tick of damage before they even land, which is rather annoying).
I guess to many others this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but to me it was. For once, I proved that I am capable of good situational awareness. Before I specced Disc, I was always staring at healing bars, and never noticed these things. The difference is that as Holy, you are reacting to the damage people take, whereas for Disc, you are primarily trying to prevent it. Since you are attempting to prevent the damage, you need to be more aware of what damage is coming in - and if you have everyone shielded, you can afford to spare a few more glances around instead of glaring at green bars the whole time.
I'm not saying one spec is better than the other. But, having now healed higher end content in both specs, I'm integrating the lessons I learned from both of them and becoming a better healer because of it. (I was also quite proud of myself for spontaneously remembering to use Shackle Undead during Halls of Reflection on annoying random ranged ghosts.)
The point of this post is not to toot my own horn. My entire premise for writing this blog, and for reading so many other healing blogs, is that I firmly believe that we become better healers by learning about other healing classes. Although Holy/Disc are not two different classes, they are vastly different specs. And I can say, without any hesitation, that learning both specs has improved my healing skills for each one. It goes beyond healing better with members of different classes and specs, and relates more to the different skills used for each healer type.
Holy taught me trigger finger reflex response.
Disc taught me awareness of incoming damage.
Shadow taught me that just because a spell looks weak on the tooltip doesn't mean it's not super strong in practice. (Why hello there Vampiric Touch, so nice to meet you.)
Now, I'm not saying I wasn't a good healer before. To be quite frank, I really don't know if I was a good healer or not. I tried to make up for whatever I lacked by being generally jovial and apologetic. Oh and being a dwarf, and therefore awesome. It's not like you have to be some expert WoW player to surf on over to blogger.com and create a healing blog after all. Don't be fooled by all the *sparkly* rhetoric.
While this revelation did not occur to me until last night, it began on Monday night in our regular 10 man ToC run.
For various reasons, the entire night was somewhat frustrating for me because I am the kind of person that really needs to focus in order to do well. Some people can pay attention to 18 different things at once, and still do a great job - not me. One thing I canNOT multitask is conversation. When one person is talking to me IRL, someone is asking me questions in vent, I'm trying to keep up with both raid and guild chat, and then multiple people are sending me tells, I just lose it. It probably comes from deep seated guilt issue involving a childhood friend and a dog, or an abusive half aunt twice removed or something, but I can't drop a conversation when someone is talking to me. I feel like I need to keep up my end, or else I'm a total failfriend.
Yet somehow, through the tears and frustration, and arguments, we got to Anubrekhan for only the second time in our short ToC10 experience, and we two shot him. And it was the best New Patch Eve raid ever. I was finally able to accept that 3.3 was coming, and embrace the new content knowing that I had finally seen the last of the old. True, it wasn't hard mode, and it wasn't 25 man, but I don't really care.
And the best part is, we successfully made it through phase 3 the very first time we'd ever seen it. I thought for sure it would be a struggle for us healers. But as a Disc priest? It's just awesome. I spent the entire time throwing bubbles and making last second saves with uber bursty Penance. Three times I let someone get below 5% health before I finally blasted them with a Penance. It was like this delicate ballet, and I was in the middle doing my Penance Pirouette.
And just as I'm really starting to have fun and get my groove on, SHAZAM I have a new achievement, and I'm looking around me saying "What? That's it?"
****
Yesterday I successfully pugged several of the new 5 mans as well as some other random heroic dungeons.
The crowning moment each time for me was Ick & Krick. Similar to the rogue in ToC 5 man, there are pools of poison that spawn in which you do not want to stand. But what I noticed was that you can see the pool splurge poison thingies being thrown at you, so you can move out of the way before they land (although you do seem to take one tick of damage before they even land, which is rather annoying).
I guess to many others this wouldn't be that big of a deal, but to me it was. For once, I proved that I am capable of good situational awareness. Before I specced Disc, I was always staring at healing bars, and never noticed these things. The difference is that as Holy, you are reacting to the damage people take, whereas for Disc, you are primarily trying to prevent it. Since you are attempting to prevent the damage, you need to be more aware of what damage is coming in - and if you have everyone shielded, you can afford to spare a few more glances around instead of glaring at green bars the whole time.
I'm not saying one spec is better than the other. But, having now healed higher end content in both specs, I'm integrating the lessons I learned from both of them and becoming a better healer because of it. (I was also quite proud of myself for spontaneously remembering to use Shackle Undead during Halls of Reflection on annoying random ranged ghosts.)
The point of this post is not to toot my own horn. My entire premise for writing this blog, and for reading so many other healing blogs, is that I firmly believe that we become better healers by learning about other healing classes. Although Holy/Disc are not two different classes, they are vastly different specs. And I can say, without any hesitation, that learning both specs has improved my healing skills for each one. It goes beyond healing better with members of different classes and specs, and relates more to the different skills used for each healer type.
Holy taught me trigger finger reflex response.
Disc taught me awareness of incoming damage.
Shadow taught me that just because a spell looks weak on the tooltip doesn't mean it's not super strong in practice. (Why hello there Vampiric Touch, so nice to meet you.)
I was flying around Wintergrasp last night, farming a few eternals and trying half heartedly to get into a 25 man VoA group. Every now and then I'd remind those in /1 that I was a healer, lfg. There was a Death Knight following the same strategy, and I noted that both of us were in the LFG channel as well. This carried on for nearly an hour, as it appeared that no one wanted to make the effort to actually assemble the 25 man group, although there were plenty of people who wanted to run it.
Finally, I suppose the DK decided he would step forth, and he invited me to a group. Within 5 minutes he had a full 25 people heading into VoA. As we were clearing trash, we were having a conversation about dual boxing, and one of the other priests mentioned that it wasn't that hard to do: after all, Holy Priests only needed to use 2 spells to heal anyway.
Now, I'm not trying to be one of those people with nose in the air, claiming that MY class is extraordinairly difficult to play (I have a much more difficult time on my Pally, despite silly claims that Pallies are two-heal spammers), and if you find it so simple, you're obviously just doing it wrong. But... really? You feel Holy Priests ought to only use two spells?
"Wow. That's amazing. When I'm running holy, I'm using about 7 or 8 different spells," I comment. Another healer in the group seems to feel similarly, and mentions specific spells to figure out if this Obviously Superior Because I Only Need Two Spells To Heal Priest uses them. Renew? "Utterly useless, by the time it finishes healing the target, someone else has already healed them up." And so forth. This is the sort of thing I call Missing The Point. Miss Priesty Pants does not seem to understand the purpose of a HoT, I suppose. All you healing Druids, haven't you heard? You're utterly useless! That's why no one wants a Druid in their raid, after all, right?
I decided to just let it go. If she finds herself to be performing just fine with only two heals, well... more power to her. I don't really care how you heal, as long as you get your job done - and you don't give others crap for how they choose to get the very same job done. So go ahead and Flash Heal + Circle of Healing away. In a pugged VoA run it really doesn't matter much anyway.
But she really started to annoy me later.
After we finished off Koralon and began to make our way to Emalon, the same Priest made a comment in party chat (group 5, all healers!) along the lines of "Ugh, how pathetic. Our raid leader's dps is only 1500 lol". So I returned with "Well, this isn't exactly ToGC25." "Yeah but I mean, cmon. 1500? Really? The raid leader?" This is, of course, coming from the very same priest who insisted that her class only needs to use 2 spells to heal in a raid.
You ever have those moments when you wish that you'd been a bit ballisier, and said what you really want to say? Like...
"Well then you should kick him out. Oh wait. You can't. Because you weren't the one who took the time and made the effort to put together this run - he did. He sat around for an hour waiting for someone to do it, no one did it, so because he wanted to do VoA badly enough, most likely in order to improve his gear, experience, and therefore DPS, HE was the one who assembled the raid. He hasn't been bossing anyone around, or insulting anyone, or kicking anyone. All he's done is assembled enough people and taken on the PitA task of distributing the loot properly and fairly. In case you hadn't noticed, his weak DPS does not seem to have caused any problems for us. So, if you feel that any pugged raid assembled by someone with obviously inferior damage output is unworthy of your presence, don't let the door kick you on the way out."
But, I'm somewhat ashamed to say, I did not come forth and defend the DK raid leader. I went with the philosophy that arguing 7x4 is 28 against someone who insists it's 27 would instead make me the idiot.
Instead I did the following things:
Finally, I suppose the DK decided he would step forth, and he invited me to a group. Within 5 minutes he had a full 25 people heading into VoA. As we were clearing trash, we were having a conversation about dual boxing, and one of the other priests mentioned that it wasn't that hard to do: after all, Holy Priests only needed to use 2 spells to heal anyway.
Now, I'm not trying to be one of those people with nose in the air, claiming that MY class is extraordinairly difficult to play (I have a much more difficult time on my Pally, despite silly claims that Pallies are two-heal spammers), and if you find it so simple, you're obviously just doing it wrong. But... really? You feel Holy Priests ought to only use two spells?
"Wow. That's amazing. When I'm running holy, I'm using about 7 or 8 different spells," I comment. Another healer in the group seems to feel similarly, and mentions specific spells to figure out if this Obviously Superior Because I Only Need Two Spells To Heal Priest uses them. Renew? "Utterly useless, by the time it finishes healing the target, someone else has already healed them up." And so forth. This is the sort of thing I call Missing The Point. Miss Priesty Pants does not seem to understand the purpose of a HoT, I suppose. All you healing Druids, haven't you heard? You're utterly useless! That's why no one wants a Druid in their raid, after all, right?
I decided to just let it go. If she finds herself to be performing just fine with only two heals, well... more power to her. I don't really care how you heal, as long as you get your job done - and you don't give others crap for how they choose to get the very same job done. So go ahead and Flash Heal + Circle of Healing away. In a pugged VoA run it really doesn't matter much anyway.
But she really started to annoy me later.
After we finished off Koralon and began to make our way to Emalon, the same Priest made a comment in party chat (group 5, all healers!) along the lines of "Ugh, how pathetic. Our raid leader's dps is only 1500 lol". So I returned with "Well, this isn't exactly ToGC25." "Yeah but I mean, cmon. 1500? Really? The raid leader?" This is, of course, coming from the very same priest who insisted that her class only needs to use 2 spells to heal in a raid.
You ever have those moments when you wish that you'd been a bit ballisier, and said what you really want to say? Like...
"Well then you should kick him out. Oh wait. You can't. Because you weren't the one who took the time and made the effort to put together this run - he did. He sat around for an hour waiting for someone to do it, no one did it, so because he wanted to do VoA badly enough, most likely in order to improve his gear, experience, and therefore DPS, HE was the one who assembled the raid. He hasn't been bossing anyone around, or insulting anyone, or kicking anyone. All he's done is assembled enough people and taken on the PitA task of distributing the loot properly and fairly. In case you hadn't noticed, his weak DPS does not seem to have caused any problems for us. So, if you feel that any pugged raid assembled by someone with obviously inferior damage output is unworthy of your presence, don't let the door kick you on the way out."
But, I'm somewhat ashamed to say, I did not come forth and defend the DK raid leader. I went with the philosophy that arguing 7x4 is 28 against someone who insists it's 27 would instead make me the idiot.
Instead I did the following things:
- Laughed rudely when afore mentioned priest spent most of the Emalon fight struggling to stay alive (I guess Binding Heal is not one of those 2 spells a Holy Priest needs?)
- Sent a tell to the DK after we finished the raid, thanking him for organizing the group for the rest of us lazy bums, and to feel free to send me a tell if he ever needs a healer for something
- Wrote up a post on my blog in pure passive-aggressive fashion.
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As the only class that has two talent trees devoted to healing, it is inevitable that some priests who try to understand both healing trees will confuse things along the way.
It’s no secret that it can be very tricky to switch from one healing spec to the other. You’d think it would be fairly simple and straightforward; After all, most of the spells are the same for both specs. Binding Heal, Flash Heal, Prayer of Mending… these are all spells that should get quite a bit of usage no matter which spec you choose as a Priest.
However, the different synergies between talents for each tree means that the healing style is completely different for a Disc Priest as opposed to that of a Holy Priest. Or rather, it SHOULD be in order to use your talents in the best way.
While I’m sure there are some Disc Priests who respec to Holy and don’t adjust their healing styles properly, it seems to be a much bigger issue for those going in the opposite direction.
There are three distinguishing features of the Disc Priest who is still healing like a Holy:
All of these features tie into the same basic concepts. Holy Priests are bursty healers who can top charts and focus on green-bar-go-up abilities. Disc priests are mitigators, and until healing meters accurately reflect that ability, they will likely continue to be at the bottom of the healing meter.
It’s no secret that it can be very tricky to switch from one healing spec to the other. You’d think it would be fairly simple and straightforward; After all, most of the spells are the same for both specs. Binding Heal, Flash Heal, Prayer of Mending… these are all spells that should get quite a bit of usage no matter which spec you choose as a Priest.
However, the different synergies between talents for each tree means that the healing style is completely different for a Disc Priest as opposed to that of a Holy Priest. Or rather, it SHOULD be in order to use your talents in the best way.
While I’m sure there are some Disc Priests who respec to Holy and don’t adjust their healing styles properly, it seems to be a much bigger issue for those going in the opposite direction.
There are three distinguishing features of the Disc Priest who is still healing like a Holy:
- Rarely Casts Power Word: Shield – It’s not that Holy Priests don’t ever use bubbles, it’s just that in a raiding environment they aren’t really that useful, and they are expensive. We only have one gimmicky talent that ties in with Power Word: Shield. This is undoubtedly one of the more difficult things to become accustomed to when you switch from Holy to Disc, so expect there to be some learning curve for new Disc Priests as they figure out a good bubble balance. In a raiding environment, at the very least, a Disc priest should be bubbling often enough to maintain Renewed Hope on the whole raid.
- Tries to be a Burst Healer – Holy Priests are designed to do burst healing and too many respec to Disc just to get the awesome Penance, and still heal exactly the same - nothing says healing burst like Penance! Of course, this can work – particularly if the group outgears the instance. I told a story not long ago of a Disc Priest who did exactly this. However, if you are trying to be a burst healer as a Disc Priest, it is highly likely you are not taking full advantage of your abilities and strengths. Power Word: Shield and Penance are the two staple spells of the Disc Priest – and both need to be used.
- Proudly tops the Healing Meter – There are reasons a Disc Priest could be at the top of the healing meter that are completely legitimate. In general, however, there's a good reason why Disc Priests usually show up at the bottom. If you have a Disc Priest who is proudly spamming the healing meters and bragging about how they are at the top of the healing meter, then it is quite likely they are officially Missing The Point. When I'm specced Disc, if I'm at the top of the meter, I'm asking the other healers what's wrong.
All of these features tie into the same basic concepts. Holy Priests are bursty healers who can top charts and focus on green-bar-go-up abilities. Disc priests are mitigators, and until healing meters accurately reflect that ability, they will likely continue to be at the bottom of the healing meter.
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One of the most difficult things for me in regards to switching from Holy to Disc, is learning how to bubble properly. Since I rarely use Power Word: Shield when I run Holy, and since I'm a habit-based healer, I knew that training myself to bubble properly would be tricky.
I originally suspected that I would not bubble enough, so when I started as Disc, I forced myself to bubble all the time. As I mentioned before, this actually turned out to be a bad thing - I bubbled too often when people wouldn't take damage, and therefore spent far too much mana on bubbles without benefiting from Rapture. In effect, it's no different than overhealing. I was bubbling often enough to try and keep weakened soul up on every member of my five man at first, before I began to realize that was over-doing it.
I ran several heroics this past weekend, and my primary intent was to learn to bubble properly. Here are some of the tips I picked up for bubbling in a 5 man:
I know there are several Disc Priests who read this blog, so please provide more suggestions about proper bubbling procedures for the five man scenario in the comments - I'd love to hear them! I'll post about bubbling in raids at a later date.
Eventually I intend to put all of this information together into one long guide specifically on the art of bubbles for new Disc Priests. It's become something of an obsession with me, because as a healer, mana usage and mana regen is always on my mind - and for Disc Priests, bubble management is fundamental for mana management. I hear all the time about how Disc Priests should not have problems with mana, so I am trying to get to a point where I feel I can say that about myself as well.
I originally suspected that I would not bubble enough, so when I started as Disc, I forced myself to bubble all the time. As I mentioned before, this actually turned out to be a bad thing - I bubbled too often when people wouldn't take damage, and therefore spent far too much mana on bubbles without benefiting from Rapture. In effect, it's no different than overhealing. I was bubbling often enough to try and keep weakened soul up on every member of my five man at first, before I began to realize that was over-doing it.
I ran several heroics this past weekend, and my primary intent was to learn to bubble properly. Here are some of the tips I picked up for bubbling in a 5 man:
- Always bubble the tank. When Weakened Soul falls off, rebubble - you want weakened soul to remain on the tank at the very least.
- It's usually a good idea to keep a bubble up on yourself, whether or not you know you will be taking damage, but I don't think you need to worry about bubbling often enough to maintain Weakened Soul.
- If there is not a lot of group wide damage, and all the damage can effectively be picked up by the tank, then do not waste your mana bubbling the rest of the DPS.
- Squishy, high threat DPS (i.e. mages) who may have occasional trouble with aggro, particularly when there are multiple mobs and they are providing AoE damage, are good candidates for full time Bubblage. However, again, I do not find it necessary to bubble enough to maintain constant Weakened Soul.
- When there is group wide damage, it is then a good idea to bubble all members of your party. If everyone is likely to take a fairly large amount of unavoidable damage, this may warrant maintaining weakened soul on everyone, as best as you can.
- Regardless of the circumstances, be sure to bubble people often enough to keep up Renewed Hope buff for the whole party.
I know there are several Disc Priests who read this blog, so please provide more suggestions about proper bubbling procedures for the five man scenario in the comments - I'd love to hear them! I'll post about bubbling in raids at a later date.
Eventually I intend to put all of this information together into one long guide specifically on the art of bubbles for new Disc Priests. It's become something of an obsession with me, because as a healer, mana usage and mana regen is always on my mind - and for Disc Priests, bubble management is fundamental for mana management. I hear all the time about how Disc Priests should not have problems with mana, so I am trying to get to a point where I feel I can say that about myself as well.
One of the fun things about playing a Disc Priest is the amazing amount of utility. Because our best abilities take place before damage actually happens, and because this immediately makes us vastly different from other healers, there are all kinds of fun things you can do in the game that would be a lot trickier to do as a traditional healer.
Friday night I was sitting around Dalaran, Divine Hymning and chatting, and generally bored. A level 70 Hunter was begging in trade chat for a priest to help him tame a beast, offering 100 gold. To be honest, I normally ignore those kinds of requests, but my chatty friend nudged me and said that if I were bored, I should help the guy out - that he was likely trying to tame a beast, and a Disc priest would be perfect for it. I shrugged, and figured why not.
As it turned out, he was trying to tame some giant flamey green dog thing named Uvula. Or whatever.
Having never really helped a Hunter tame a beast before, we struggled for some time before I really figured out what the problem was. I didn't realize that Hunters had to keep aggro on their target for the entire time in order to tame it, but that was the biggest issue we were having. Since I'm level 80 and he was level 70, that certainly presented something of a problem - one shield on him after combat began, and I had aggro. He knew enough to recognize he needed a priest (Fear Ward against Terrifying Roar), and some heals, maybe a shield. The problem was the level differential.
But Divine Aegis saved the day! That and down-ranking... oh and Fade.
After the Hunter cheerfully tipped me 100g (which I originally thought I wasn't going to take, but after all that effort I changed my mind), Uvula respawned and I pwned his ass out of bitterness.
Have any great stories featuring the utility of a certain type of healer outside of the instanced environment? I'd love to hear them!
Friday night I was sitting around Dalaran, Divine Hymning and chatting, and generally bored. A level 70 Hunter was begging in trade chat for a priest to help him tame a beast, offering 100 gold. To be honest, I normally ignore those kinds of requests, but my chatty friend nudged me and said that if I were bored, I should help the guy out - that he was likely trying to tame a beast, and a Disc priest would be perfect for it. I shrugged, and figured why not.
As it turned out, he was trying to tame some giant flamey green dog thing named Uvula. Or whatever.
Having never really helped a Hunter tame a beast before, we struggled for some time before I really figured out what the problem was. I didn't realize that Hunters had to keep aggro on their target for the entire time in order to tame it, but that was the biggest issue we were having. Since I'm level 80 and he was level 70, that certainly presented something of a problem - one shield on him after combat began, and I had aggro. He knew enough to recognize he needed a priest (Fear Ward against Terrifying Roar), and some heals, maybe a shield. The problem was the level differential.
But Divine Aegis saved the day! That and down-ranking... oh and Fade.
- Buff hunter with Stamina and Fear Ward.
- HealyHealyHealy until Divine Aegis shield procs!
- Power Word: Shield (highest rank)
- Go Hunter, Go! Tame that tonsiltosser!
- Once Weakened Soul dropped off, cast a lower rank Power Word: Shield
- Immediately cast a lower rank Renew
- Immediately Fade baby Fade!
- Receive lootz (well not exactly, but the hunter was happy)
After the Hunter cheerfully tipped me 100g (which I originally thought I wasn't going to take, but after all that effort I changed my mind), Uvula respawned and I pwned his ass out of bitterness.
Have any great stories featuring the utility of a certain type of healer outside of the instanced environment? I'd love to hear them!
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Well last night I gave Disc spec a solid try. Not that I had never tried it before, obviously, but this time I had a new air of determination... this time it was NOT going to be "spec for a day", or, "if this goes badly, I'll just go back to Holy"... No. I had decided that no matter how miserably I flailed about waving hands full of bubbles, I was going to stick it out, and learn how to do this damn thing properly. I will no longer permit myself to despair, and run back to the safety and comfort of my Circle of Healing when things get tricky.
It went... alright.
True, this was not raiding. I felt it was best to start with some five mans. My guildmates and I spent an hour in heroic ToC, all of us learning a bit more each time. I've run it dozens of times on my priest, as holy... but my guildmates had only done it a handful of times, and I was certainly not as comfortable as a Disc Priest. I had, in fact, even tried it once as Disc... and the results provided the basis for my present day hesitance towards Disc Priesting.
Of course, that was before I had a lovely Meatloaf Macro.
There were a few things in particular with which I struggled, though I improved on the way.
So there you have it. My intial deep thoughts about converting from Holy to Disc and the 5 man experience. It helps that I know a lot of the theory behind Disc Priesting, though my hands on experience was insubstantial (Look at me, I'm Hermione Granger! Bushy hair and all...).
As a final thought on this topic for today, I would like to add that if you start getting bored with your toon, be it priest or otherwise, a solid respec will breathe new life into the journey. It feels almost as though I'm playing a completely different class, though many of the spells are the same. Though the spells are the same, their use is almost completely different... and in some ways, that's even trickier than playing an entirely new class.
It went... alright.
True, this was not raiding. I felt it was best to start with some five mans. My guildmates and I spent an hour in heroic ToC, all of us learning a bit more each time. I've run it dozens of times on my priest, as holy... but my guildmates had only done it a handful of times, and I was certainly not as comfortable as a Disc Priest. I had, in fact, even tried it once as Disc... and the results provided the basis for my present day hesitance towards Disc Priesting.
Of course, that was before I had a lovely Meatloaf Macro.
There were a few things in particular with which I struggled, though I improved on the way.
- You actually CAN bubble too much - who knew? Or rather, bubble improperly. I began having mana problems due to bubbling other members of my party who never took any damage... therefore Rapture never kicked in. After I realized this, I started bubbling only myself and the tank until I saw others begin to take damage.
- I need an addon that lets me know, in a non-annoying way, that the cooldown for Penance has passed.
- Pain Suppression can be a tricky little bugger. After using it on the tank, I guess he must have lost aggro on the hunter, because the troll quickly shot me down immediately after I used the spell. As a matter of fact, Pain Suppression is one of those spells that has me convinced that Disc Priests can handle certain types of raid healing - just not in the way to which most of us are accustomed, a la via strong AoE heals. To me, PS just screams "use me on the mage! The MAAAAAAGE!" It's definitely no Guardian Spirit.
- Now that I've mastered the art of remembering to use Divine Hymn (well, most of the time... it saved our butt at the end of the Black Knight), I now have Inner Focus and Power Infusion to remember. I've heard that others use macros for these... such as a combination of Inner Focus and Penance. I'm not sure if I want to bind Power Infusion to a macro, however. Any suggestions?
- I still do not have a solid rotation down for healing the tank. I am not utilizing Borrowed Time to its fullest extent, for certain. However, I don't believe I will really get to learn this well until I am assigned to heal the tank, and only the tank - as opposed to in a five man where I persistently need to break my single target rotation in order to heal other members of the five man. I was certainly unable to maintain Grace on the tank for the entire duration of any fight.
So there you have it. My intial deep thoughts about converting from Holy to Disc and the 5 man experience. It helps that I know a lot of the theory behind Disc Priesting, though my hands on experience was insubstantial (Look at me, I'm Hermione Granger! Bushy hair and all...).
As a final thought on this topic for today, I would like to add that if you start getting bored with your toon, be it priest or otherwise, a solid respec will breathe new life into the journey. It feels almost as though I'm playing a completely different class, though many of the spells are the same. Though the spells are the same, their use is almost completely different... and in some ways, that's even trickier than playing an entirely new class.
Last night, in the heat of yet another ToC battle, as the music notes tripped from my fingers, bouncing into the previously dwindling little green bars of my allies, I thought to myself, what does Divine Hymn sound like?
So, I looked at the tooltip... "You recite a Holy hymn..." What? You can't RECITE a DIVINE hymn in the heat of battle - that's not nearly passionate enough. I want to BURST FORTH with previously unknown musical talent, ripping through octaves and difficult notes with Mariah Careyish fervor, thank you very much.
(While it saddens me that my other healing friends cannot sing along with me in battle, I like to imagine that those swaying trees are backup dancers for my powerful rockingoutness. Dance trees, DANCE!)
So... What does YOUR Divine Hymn sound like?
Need some inspiration? I've spent this morning debating various genres that might represent Jessabelle's nightly solo. Perhaps an historic hymn like Amazing Grace with a nice Dwarven take? Or maybe a classic southern gospel that would make momma proud like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot? Maybe a choir of sweet angelic voices, from the Vienna boys choir?
Nah. Jbizzle wants to rock.
How about some Metallica, baby! Okay, not sure if I want to rock that much (plus, Hetfield's singing face is not what I want to see when saving the lives of others). Maybe something more in the Beatles realm? Hm, not sure if I'm really the "whispering words of wisdom" kind of gal.
Oh no, I've got it. Jessabelle would do ANYTHING for love. There is nothing more divine than Meatloaf.
Your turn! Leave it for me in a comment! I claim no credit for the throngs of women (and possibly even some men) throwing their lacy underthings at you whilst you Diving Hymn.
So, here's my new macro.
/cast Divine Hymn
/in 1 /s I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE
/in 3 /s I'D RUN RIGHT INTO HELL AND BACK
/in 5 /s OH I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE
/in 7 /s I'LL NEVER LIE TO YOU AND THAT'S A FACT
/in 8 /emote cracks open a Dr. Pepper.
(Thanks Erinys!)
So, I looked at the tooltip... "You recite a Holy hymn..." What? You can't RECITE a DIVINE hymn in the heat of battle - that's not nearly passionate enough. I want to BURST FORTH with previously unknown musical talent, ripping through octaves and difficult notes with Mariah Careyish fervor, thank you very much.
(While it saddens me that my other healing friends cannot sing along with me in battle, I like to imagine that those swaying trees are backup dancers for my powerful rockingoutness. Dance trees, DANCE!)
So... What does YOUR Divine Hymn sound like?
Need some inspiration? I've spent this morning debating various genres that might represent Jessabelle's nightly solo. Perhaps an historic hymn like Amazing Grace with a nice Dwarven take? Or maybe a classic southern gospel that would make momma proud like Swing Low, Sweet Chariot? Maybe a choir of sweet angelic voices, from the Vienna boys choir?
Nah. Jbizzle wants to rock.
How about some Metallica, baby! Okay, not sure if I want to rock that much (plus, Hetfield's singing face is not what I want to see when saving the lives of others). Maybe something more in the Beatles realm? Hm, not sure if I'm really the "whispering words of wisdom" kind of gal.
Oh no, I've got it. Jessabelle would do ANYTHING for love. There is nothing more divine than Meatloaf.
Your turn! Leave it for me in a comment! I claim no credit for the throngs of women (and possibly even some men) throwing their lacy underthings at you whilst you Diving Hymn.
So, here's my new macro.
/cast Divine Hymn
/in 1 /s I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE
/in 3 /s I'D RUN RIGHT INTO HELL AND BACK
/in 5 /s OH I WOULD DO ANYTHING FOR LOVE
/in 7 /s I'LL NEVER LIE TO YOU AND THAT'S A FACT
/in 8 /emote cracks open a Dr. Pepper.
(Thanks Erinys!)
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I'm so excited! My first email request for aid! It was like a little christmas gift in my inbox, and I giddily unwrapped it, squealing the whole time.
Yes, yes, I'm a dork, shut it.
So! My first emailed question was from a holy priest who was looking for help with some problems she found herself having with mana regen. As someone a bit new to the whole raid healing thing, she sent me an email with the following request.
(For privacy reasons, I'm not revealing her name, but she reads this blog, so if she wants to step up and say hi in the comments, she's welcome to do so /wave!)
I took a look at her gear and her stats, and the 348 number seemed to come from in "while casting" mana regen, unbuffed. I let her know that there was some tweaking she could do with her gems and replace some items with a bit more crit and less haste, but aside from that, it didn't look like gear was the real problem here. 348 while casting is similar to what I have, unbuffed.
I wanted to pass along the following considerations I emailed to her, because I think a lot of Holy Priests struggle with mana regen in the beginning of their raiding career. People can look at your gear and stats and spec, and tell you to pile on more spirit or intellect, but that's not always the problem. So if you're having mana regen problems as a Holy Priest, and you can't find anything really wrong with your gear, consider the following:
She responded to my email to give me a little update about how things are going, and she mentioned something that I wanted to address as well... but this post has already gone on long enough, so I'll save it for another day ;)
Yes, yes, I'm a dork, shut it.
So! My first emailed question was from a holy priest who was looking for help with some problems she found herself having with mana regen. As someone a bit new to the whole raid healing thing, she sent me an email with the following request.
"I don't do much raiding, I'm mostly healing five-mans, but I decided to really go for it and respec for raid healing. I followed your suggested build but I have one huge problem: my MP5 is only 348 during a fight. I don't think my gear is terrible, but I enter ToC-10 and I find myself popping my mana pet before the impaler is down. Heck, even in a heroic I see my bar get hit hard (albeit I mostly see this with under-DPSing pugs). "
(For privacy reasons, I'm not revealing her name, but she reads this blog, so if she wants to step up and say hi in the comments, she's welcome to do so /wave!)
I took a look at her gear and her stats, and the 348 number seemed to come from in "while casting" mana regen, unbuffed. I let her know that there was some tweaking she could do with her gems and replace some items with a bit more crit and less haste, but aside from that, it didn't look like gear was the real problem here. 348 while casting is similar to what I have, unbuffed.
I wanted to pass along the following considerations I emailed to her, because I think a lot of Holy Priests struggle with mana regen in the beginning of their raiding career. People can look at your gear and stats and spec, and tell you to pile on more spirit or intellect, but that's not always the problem. So if you're having mana regen problems as a Holy Priest, and you can't find anything really wrong with your gear, consider the following:
- What sort of buffs are you running with? In a ten man scenario, it can be a lot trickier to get the right raid balance that will give you all the mana regen buffs you would ideally like to have. Because of this, I usually have far more mana problems in a 10 man than in a 25 man. In 10 mans, i have the flask of pure mojo and spicy fried herring for personal mana regen, but I also depend quite a bit on getting a blessing of wisdom or mana spring totem in there somewhere, and always, ALWAYS Replenishment (frost mage, shadow priest, ret pally, destro lock, or survival hunter). The raid makeup may be something that you have absolutely no control over, but take a look at what you've got in your raid mix. If you're running with a pretty steady group, and your buffs will likely always be the same, then you can make adjustments to your gems, enchants, and talents accordingly.
- What are the other healers doing? What is the healing makeup? are you running 2 healers or 3? If you're running with just 2, then you probably will run into more mana problems. If you are running with a pally, are you wasting your mana having to help on the tank too much? If there's a druid, are you spending a lot of mana trying to heal up targets that are hotted when you don't need to? I'm not fond of pointing fingers at other healers when there's a problem, but healing should be a team - if one person is running out of mana, then it's a good idea to talk about it with the other healers to see what changes can be made.
- What is your casting style? I can throw in a couple of pointers on mistakes I've made in the past that left me mana starved, and you can check to see if you are doing any of the following things.
- Overusing Serendipity stacks - Everytime I see 3x Serendipity, i desperately want to use it properly. But the truth is, if you do this in a ten man you are going to go OOM pretty quick. Dont feel like you have to use it just because it's there. Use a Circle of Healing if you can, because it's cheaper and pretty powerful. You shouldn't need to use Greater Heal at all if you're on raid heals (except for Incinerate Flesh), especially if there's a third healer.
- Are you catching all your surge of light procs? Unlike Serendipity, the proc for SoL is much shorter, so you have to be sure to use it faster - and you definitely want to use it since it's free! If you find that you're missing a lot of the procs, pick up an add-on like SurgeTrack.
- Are you bubbling too much? For disc, you can never bubble too much, but for holy, our bubbles arent that great, and theyre kinda expensive too. In a 10 man, the only person I ever "pre-bubble" is the tank when he's pulling, and a feisty mage here and there - if you try to bubble too much, you will end up OOM.
- How are your overheals? If you run with a druid, check their overheals as well with recount, because often the overheals credited to a druid are actually due to another healer healing over their hots. This is inevitable, and to a certain extent completely acceptable - but if someone has a HoT on them, and they are unlikely to be in any immediate damage, let the HoT do its job. Make sure if you are running with a tree that you have an addon that tracks who has HoTs on them. If you aren't running with druids, are you and another healer often going for the same target? There are addons that will let you know who the other healers are healing (Healbot will do this if multiple people use it), but sometimes you just need to watch them, or have better assignments, or communicate more, that sort of thing.
She responded to my email to give me a little update about how things are going, and she mentioned something that I wanted to address as well... but this post has already gone on long enough, so I'll save it for another day ;)
I think I've confessed on multiple occasions to my fellow priests that one of my worst healer habits is my neglect of the obscenely powerful Divine Hymn. I believe I also mentioned somewhere that I am going to start forcing myself to use it, even when it's a waste, just to get myself into the habit, and remember where the damn button is.
Then Tamarind over at Righteous Orbs posted his response to the Healer Survey, and responded similarly to the question regarding bad healer habits, except with much cleverer terminology. Since I just can't get enough of his response, I'm quoting it to you for the second time is only a handful of days...
Since I can never read that response without laughing and smiling, I finally decided that this is the key to getting myself to use DH.
So I requested the aid of a friend of mine who shakes his head at my complete inability to write any type of macro, and he helped me create my new Divine Hymn macro. Here is is, if you'd like to use it too:
/cast Divine Hymn
/say This is a bloody battle, no time for singing!!!
(I changed it from the f-bomb in case it might upset others who are caught unawares by a cursing priest)
Just for the record, due solely to that macro, I used Diving Hymn about 15 times in one day. Sure, half of those were standing on the fountain in Dalaran, but at least I now know where the button is.
I think that as a tribute to our hilarious priestly RPing comrade on the other side of that giant lake called the Atlantic Ocean (at least, it is for me!), all of us healers should start a Tam-Fad, and make similar Divine Hymn macros. If I see anyone else using this macro, I will know right away that they are either a blogger or a blog-lover!
(psssst, word on the grapevine is that Death Goddess has begun a DPS version of the healing survey. I'm totally ignoring it. No, I refuse to link to it, don't even bother asking. Nyah.)
Then Tamarind over at Righteous Orbs posted his response to the Healer Survey, and responded similarly to the question regarding bad healer habits, except with much cleverer terminology. Since I just can't get enough of his response, I'm quoting it to you for the second time is only a handful of days...
"I’m another divine hymn reprobate. I’ve literally never ever used it.
It’s embarrassing but there never seems to be a situation in which some
other healing spell wouldn’t do the job better. Also it’s just got a
rubbish name. This is a fucking battle, no time for singing!"
Since I can never read that response without laughing and smiling, I finally decided that this is the key to getting myself to use DH.
So I requested the aid of a friend of mine who shakes his head at my complete inability to write any type of macro, and he helped me create my new Divine Hymn macro. Here is is, if you'd like to use it too:
/cast Divine Hymn
/say This is a bloody battle, no time for singing!!!
(I changed it from the f-bomb in case it might upset others who are caught unawares by a cursing priest)
Just for the record, due solely to that macro, I used Diving Hymn about 15 times in one day. Sure, half of those were standing on the fountain in Dalaran, but at least I now know where the button is.
I think that as a tribute to our hilarious priestly RPing comrade on the other side of that giant lake called the Atlantic Ocean (at least, it is for me!), all of us healers should start a Tam-Fad, and make similar Divine Hymn macros. If I see anyone else using this macro, I will know right away that they are either a blogger or a blog-lover!
(psssst, word on the grapevine is that Death Goddess has begun a DPS version of the healing survey. I'm totally ignoring it. No, I refuse to link to it, don't even bother asking. Nyah.)
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While I flail confusedly amongst the waters of various options for my poor bored healer, the only regular things I have been healing have been 5 mans (groan). I haven't been playing much during the week, because I've been suffering from the mild affects of seasonal change (i love leaves changing color, but my ears, nose, and throat apparently do not - and who would have thought that quitting smoking would make all these pains even WORSE?). So, my healing has been reduced to only five mans and the occasional weekend pug.
I've spoken before about the debate regarding whether or not Greater Heal is a useful spell, and therefore the talents associated with it. As proof of my belief that Greater Heal is not entirely worthless, I thought I would take a minute and discuss my current spec.
Greater Heal is mainly useful as a tank healing spell. Therefore, in a raid where holy priests are usually assigned to a raid healing role, it makes sense that Greater Heal gets little use, and therefore renders the talents associated with it as wasteful if there are better options. After all, if you intend and expect to usually heal the main tank in raids, you really ought to respec Disc, who get more benefit from Penance than Greater Heal anyway.
But in a five man, you will of course be doing a lot of healing on the main tank - so for Holy, Greater Heal is still useful. That might do a little to explain to any nay-sayers who wonder why I have so many Greater Heal talents!
Even in a full raid spec, it's really hard for me to let go of Divine Fury, so in a 5 man spec, I definitely hold onto it. I love cast time reductions, and hate to give them up - especially when the alternative talents are so very weak. Were I in full raid spec, I would dump Empowered Healing in favor of Blessed Resilience and Spiritual Healing. As it stands now, in 5 mans, I use Greater Heal combined with Serendipity enough to justify Empowered Healing.
Do you have any questions about Holy Priest specs? Want some guidance as to what talents to choose? I am happy to help! It's quite a bit of fun for me actually. Shoot me an email at my new email address, missmedicina at gmail dot com, let me know what sort of content you usually heal, what other healers are in your raid (if you raid), and I will do my best to advise you! If you permit me, I'll even post it here so that the rest of the community can give helpful feedback (please note that any rude or disparaging comments will be removed - if you want to be mean, check out the forums, or comment on wow.com ;)). I'm not as good with Disc specs or other classes, but I am still interested in hearing questions or feedback about them.
I've spoken before about the debate regarding whether or not Greater Heal is a useful spell, and therefore the talents associated with it. As proof of my belief that Greater Heal is not entirely worthless, I thought I would take a minute and discuss my current spec.
Greater Heal is mainly useful as a tank healing spell. Therefore, in a raid where holy priests are usually assigned to a raid healing role, it makes sense that Greater Heal gets little use, and therefore renders the talents associated with it as wasteful if there are better options. After all, if you intend and expect to usually heal the main tank in raids, you really ought to respec Disc, who get more benefit from Penance than Greater Heal anyway.
But in a five man, you will of course be doing a lot of healing on the main tank - so for Holy, Greater Heal is still useful. That might do a little to explain to any nay-sayers who wonder why I have so many Greater Heal talents!
Even in a full raid spec, it's really hard for me to let go of Divine Fury, so in a 5 man spec, I definitely hold onto it. I love cast time reductions, and hate to give them up - especially when the alternative talents are so very weak. Were I in full raid spec, I would dump Empowered Healing in favor of Blessed Resilience and Spiritual Healing. As it stands now, in 5 mans, I use Greater Heal combined with Serendipity enough to justify Empowered Healing.
Do you have any questions about Holy Priest specs? Want some guidance as to what talents to choose? I am happy to help! It's quite a bit of fun for me actually. Shoot me an email at my new email address, missmedicina at gmail dot com, let me know what sort of content you usually heal, what other healers are in your raid (if you raid), and I will do my best to advise you! If you permit me, I'll even post it here so that the rest of the community can give helpful feedback (please note that any rude or disparaging comments will be removed - if you want to be mean, check out the forums, or comment on wow.com ;)). I'm not as good with Disc specs or other classes, but I am still interested in hearing questions or feedback about them.
Alright, alright, so maybe I have a teeny tiny obsession with debating crit and haste. But can you blame me? You usually have to choose one at the expense of another, so I'm always curious and fascinated by what people choose for their healers and why. I've gone from crit obsessed to haste obsessed to somewhere in-between and back again, never able to be completely decisive about it. I dislike crit on principle, but.... Surge of Light is all shiny and I am drawn in like Bella to a shirtless sparkly sunlit Edward. *sparkle!!*
Therefore, I've been poring through all my favorite resto druid blogs reading about thoughts on the upcoming changes in 3.3 for druids in regards to haste. I warn you ahead of time that I am by no means an expert on Druids, and I'm almost positive that my Druid readers are going to have to set me right on a lot of my thoughts... but that is exactly the sort of feedback I'm hoping to get!
ETA: If you are looking for some interesting blog posts that resto druids have been posting lately on the topic, I recommend some Rolling Hots, Dreambound, some tricksy maths from Forrestump, and Restokin has some really helpful PTR testing - for the record, the way I understand it, Haste will both decrease the time between ticks on HoTs, AS WELL AS the total time the HoT ticks - therefore, with the Rapid Rejuvenation Glyph, you will not be getting MORE ticks to your HoTs, just faster ones. If this is wrong, please correct me!
Haste vs Crit for Druids
One of the things that has always confused me is the lack of viability for Haste and Crit for Druids. Before anyone rips me apart for saying that (be gentle, I'm not a druid myself!), I don't mean that these stats are useless for Druids, but merely that they seem to be a lot less useful for Druids than they are for other healing classes. As a Holy Priest, I can completely justify stacking either one sky high, though if I were to crunch the numbers, I may come up with good reasons to put a soft cap on either one. Since a lot of Druid heals are quickie casts, if not instant, then Haste really only seemed to matter up until GCD cap. And, since HoTs can't crit (unless you've got the T9 4piece set bonus, of course), Crit seemed kinda blah as well.
Ever since the changes to Shadowform for Priests, allowing DoTs to crit while in Shadowform, I've been wondering why HoTs can't crit while in Tree form. I see Druids on the whole, more than any other healing class, stack spellpower at the expense of haste and crit, because for other healers, those two latter stats seem stronger (I'm somewhat guessing here, I'll have to ask Codi over at MoarHPS to come over and beat me over the head with her calculator in order to have any maths to back any of this theorizing up). I'm sure some balancing would be necessary if HoTs were allowed to crit, but at the same time, that would mean Druids would stack more crit than they currently do, which would inevitably mean less spellpower as well.
Broadening the Niche? Should HoTs come closer to burst healing?
Another thing that intrigues me is that it seems as though the developers don't know how to get Druids to use crit and haste, and they are trying different things, and using different tools to test it - but with the same spell, Rejuvenation. First they try tinkering with a set bonus to see if Druids would be too OP with critting HoTs, and now it looks like they will try something similar with a glyph in 3.3.
I'm not impressed with the glyph, myself. I can see why many think it's very exciting, but to me, it's a bit similar in theory to Glyph of Renew - which I've always found stupid. If I wanted more healing in a shorter period of time, i.e. more burst... why wouldn't I just cast Flash Heal? The faster HoTs tick, the less time they are buffering... I'm not sure if that really IS a great thing.
Between the T9 set bonus for Druids, and the upcoming Glyph addition, I suspect that Blizz still hasn't figured out for sure how they want to handle some of the stat streamlining they are bringing in in Cataclysm. It feels like they are using the posterkids for HoTs as a way to test out how different stats might work with HoTs. I don't think this is a bad thing, for the record - I just found it interesting enough to bring it up. I suspect that if the changes work well for Druids, without breaking class balance, we may see all HoTs and DoTs for all classes being affected by both crit and haste in Cataclysm - or at least, with certain talents.
I'm still not sure if I like that or not... by speeding up the effect of HoTs and DoTs, it just brings them closer to being burst healing or burst damage in the first place, and eventually (taken to the extreme), it may completely degrade and diminish the niche, power, and value of *-over time effects.
BUT - Perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much. What say you?
Therefore, I've been poring through all my favorite resto druid blogs reading about thoughts on the upcoming changes in 3.3 for druids in regards to haste. I warn you ahead of time that I am by no means an expert on Druids, and I'm almost positive that my Druid readers are going to have to set me right on a lot of my thoughts... but that is exactly the sort of feedback I'm hoping to get!
ETA: If you are looking for some interesting blog posts that resto druids have been posting lately on the topic, I recommend some Rolling Hots, Dreambound, some tricksy maths from Forrestump, and Restokin has some really helpful PTR testing - for the record, the way I understand it, Haste will both decrease the time between ticks on HoTs, AS WELL AS the total time the HoT ticks - therefore, with the Rapid Rejuvenation Glyph, you will not be getting MORE ticks to your HoTs, just faster ones. If this is wrong, please correct me!
Haste vs Crit for Druids
One of the things that has always confused me is the lack of viability for Haste and Crit for Druids. Before anyone rips me apart for saying that (be gentle, I'm not a druid myself!), I don't mean that these stats are useless for Druids, but merely that they seem to be a lot less useful for Druids than they are for other healing classes. As a Holy Priest, I can completely justify stacking either one sky high, though if I were to crunch the numbers, I may come up with good reasons to put a soft cap on either one. Since a lot of Druid heals are quickie casts, if not instant, then Haste really only seemed to matter up until GCD cap. And, since HoTs can't crit (unless you've got the T9 4piece set bonus, of course), Crit seemed kinda blah as well.
Ever since the changes to Shadowform for Priests, allowing DoTs to crit while in Shadowform, I've been wondering why HoTs can't crit while in Tree form. I see Druids on the whole, more than any other healing class, stack spellpower at the expense of haste and crit, because for other healers, those two latter stats seem stronger (I'm somewhat guessing here, I'll have to ask Codi over at MoarHPS to come over and beat me over the head with her calculator in order to have any maths to back any of this theorizing up). I'm sure some balancing would be necessary if HoTs were allowed to crit, but at the same time, that would mean Druids would stack more crit than they currently do, which would inevitably mean less spellpower as well.
Broadening the Niche? Should HoTs come closer to burst healing?
Another thing that intrigues me is that it seems as though the developers don't know how to get Druids to use crit and haste, and they are trying different things, and using different tools to test it - but with the same spell, Rejuvenation. First they try tinkering with a set bonus to see if Druids would be too OP with critting HoTs, and now it looks like they will try something similar with a glyph in 3.3.
I'm not impressed with the glyph, myself. I can see why many think it's very exciting, but to me, it's a bit similar in theory to Glyph of Renew - which I've always found stupid. If I wanted more healing in a shorter period of time, i.e. more burst... why wouldn't I just cast Flash Heal? The faster HoTs tick, the less time they are buffering... I'm not sure if that really IS a great thing.
Between the T9 set bonus for Druids, and the upcoming Glyph addition, I suspect that Blizz still hasn't figured out for sure how they want to handle some of the stat streamlining they are bringing in in Cataclysm. It feels like they are using the posterkids for HoTs as a way to test out how different stats might work with HoTs. I don't think this is a bad thing, for the record - I just found it interesting enough to bring it up. I suspect that if the changes work well for Druids, without breaking class balance, we may see all HoTs and DoTs for all classes being affected by both crit and haste in Cataclysm - or at least, with certain talents.
I'm still not sure if I like that or not... by speeding up the effect of HoTs and DoTs, it just brings them closer to being burst healing or burst damage in the first place, and eventually (taken to the extreme), it may completely degrade and diminish the niche, power, and value of *-over time effects.
BUT - Perhaps I'm just thinking about it too much. What say you?
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