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#1 Dec 13 2010 at 1:57 PM Rating: Excellent
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Can't someone give me a nice little cheat sheet on the stats I should be shooting for before trying to heal heroics? Minimum spellpower, regen, whatever? I tried googling "holy priest heroic stats" but I couldn't find anything for Cata yet. But I know you guys know.
#2 Dec 13 2010 at 5:08 PM Rating: Good
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teacake wrote:
Can't someone give me a nice little cheat sheet on the stats I should be shooting for before trying to heal heroics? Minimum spellpower, regen, whatever? I tried googling "holy priest heroic stats" but I couldn't find anything for Cata yet. But I know you guys know.



Roughly 1600 Spirit, avoid crit, try and be at 10%+ buffed haste, push Int as high as you can Int gems or Int/x everywhere, mastery is good but as always focus on regen until it is not an issue.

That would be my advice but someone else may know better.
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#3 Dec 13 2010 at 5:12 PM Rating: Good
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If you are healing you should have Spirit on everything until regen isn't a concern, the number is a goal someone in a five man said they was pushing but that guy was disc so can maybe go lower.
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#4 Dec 13 2010 at 5:21 PM Rating: Excellent
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Horsemouth wrote:

Roughly 1600 Spirit, avoid crit, try and be at 10%+ buffed haste, push Int as high as you can Int gems or Int/x everywhere, mastery is good but as always focus on regen until it is not an issue.

That would be my advice but someone else may know better.


Yeah, I'm okay with stat priority, I'm looking for cold hard numbers. Like in Wrath, I didn't attempt a heroic until I had 1500spellpower and 15k mana. That kind of thing. It's an aribitrary bar, largely, but I feel more confident if I've drawn a line like that. The 1600 spirit suggestion helps, thanks.

I prioritize stats like so for Holy:

1. Intellect is your meat, potatoes, AND pie.
2. Spirit until you're fine with mana, which you'll pretty much never be, so Spirit.
3. Mastery
4. Haste
5. Reforge Crit to Spirit or Mastery as the piece dictates. Usually that will be Mastery since Spirit should be on all healing gear, but when it's so early that you're still working with quest rewards and rep gear, that's not always perfect. Reforging rule number one at this stage is to make sure every piece has at least some Spirit.

So I think you and I only disagree on the Mastery/Haste order, which at this point isn't that important, since this early on collecting enough of the main stats will take precedence over fine tuning the secondary ones.

Side note, I love how cheap reforging is. I'm sure it'll get a lot more expensive as the iLevels get higher, but I like that I can just reforge a quest reward I'll only be wearing for one night, because why not?
#5 Dec 13 2010 at 5:29 PM Rating: Good
Interesting. I've been generally happy while I am leveling, but reforging crit to added spirit seems like a good tip for my current gear.

Edited, Dec 13th 2010 6:29pm by dadanox
#6 Dec 13 2010 at 5:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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Yeah, it costs me more to change my hair at the barber shop than it does to reforge an item. And if I change my hair with every new robe (must match, obvii), why not reforge too?
#7 Dec 13 2010 at 5:40 PM Rating: Good
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Wasn't really putting them in order. :P

But once all your gear level is high enough to be able to queue for heroics, assuming you didn't cheat, and you are pushing Int/SP with chants/gems while keeping Spirit around 1600 you should have enough SP for heroics.

Once you can't farm more regular gear or are missing only one or two pieces it should put you at a high enough level of SP for your heals to be healy enough in a heroic.

DPS not interrupting, CCing and pulling aggro should be are bigger concerns than enough SP anyway.
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#8 Dec 13 2010 at 7:04 PM Rating: Good
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Just get the average ilevel needed - 329. If you've got this while keeping in mind that you only want stuff with int and spirit (just ignore stuff with int + mastery/haste/crit, that's all caster gear), you'll be set. At the moment, I recommend going holy and using Lightwell as a crutch, as it is damn overpowered - disc seems to be meh. Also, don't spec into the smite trick if you do go disc.
#9 Dec 13 2010 at 8:22 PM Rating: Excellent
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Thanks Moz, very helpful.
#10 Dec 14 2010 at 3:47 AM Rating: Decent
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Really? I'm not levelling fast, 83 now, and healing pug dungeons as smite disc - and I'm using a lot of smite. For all except 1 dungeon (unfortunate group) I've not gone oom or had all that much trouble, sure there's been the occasional death, but no wipes. Am I going to struggle at 85?

Was thinking I'd like to experiment with holy once at 85 and can drop the levelling spec.

The stats I'd pick for disc are pretty much the same as those you've listed for holy, which is handy.
#11 Dec 14 2010 at 6:25 AM Rating: Good
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On a side note, 1742 seeems to be the new hit raid cap, so those of use who are healy/Shadow have a similar target to hit with spirit (preferably).
#12 Dec 14 2010 at 9:35 AM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
Really? I'm not levelling fast, 83 now, and healing pug dungeons as smite disc - and I'm using a lot of smite. For all except 1 dungeon (unfortunate group) I've not gone oom or had all that much trouble, sure there's been the occasional death, but no wipes. Am I going to struggle at 85?

Sure, but do you feel like you absolutely couldn't have gone without it? That's the whole point. Smite healing is just as effective as simply using Heal, but A) it's more micromanagement, B) it means you get less profit from Strength of Soul, and mostly importantly, C) it requires you to spent FIVE talent points just to get something that you already have - a mana-efficient (tank) heal that you can use as your main 'nuke' in general situations.

Long story short; you spent 5 talent points just to get something that's cool the initial instance or two, but past that only fulfills a function you had another more efficient spell for in the first place. If you skip the whole Smite ordeal, you suddenly only have to put 31 points in disc to get exactly everything you want, gain an additional 10% less mana cost on PW:S, and end up with a free point that can be used to either buff up your main heals or lower your Shadowfiend CD by 30 seconds. Also note that Archangel also stops 'giving you free mana' at 85 - before that, SmiteX5 into Archangel is a slight mana gain - at 85, it just breaks you even.

Quote:
The stats I'd pick for disc are pretty much the same as those you've listed for holy, which is handy.

EJ states that disc wants to balance out mastery, crit and haste because these stats synergetically make eachother better - I find myself agreeing with that. For holy, crit's a bit meh, haste is decent and mastery is totally awesome. Basically, what I say is; if you're fully decided on disc/holy, just gear accordingly - but if you're not sure, then just balance all three additional stats out. It's not like you're completely gimping yourself if you get some crit as holy.

The only thing you should avoid at all costs is getting gear without spirit on it - trust me on this. I went into the expansion fairly open minded, but found I was still WAY too stuck in the WOTLK mindset anyway. You do NOT roll on caster DPS gear 'just for the throughput' anymore - if you even have just three of such items, your mana pool will be about as helpful to your healing as a dead fish tied to your hand is to disarm bombs...
#13 Dec 14 2010 at 11:04 AM Rating: Decent
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You do make a very convincing argument Mozared, and I'm confused as to how I want to spec now - maybe holy is the way forward after all! I had a read through what EJ had to say today. While the disc heal-healing theory all makes sense, it's based around simple single-target healing, which simply isn't reality; this affects Grace and SoS.

Smite healing seems to work perfectly well in 5-mans so far, maybe I'll just stick with it for now while chewing over the other options and experimenting more with how disc heal-healing feels.

Was happy to discover from EJs that inspiration procs from the PW:shield glyph heal.
#14 Dec 14 2010 at 11:23 AM Rating: Decent
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Smite healing seems to work perfectly well in 5-mans so far, maybe I'll just stick with it for now while chewing over the other options and experimenting more with how disc heal-healing feels.

Oh yeah, there's nothing wrong with Smite healing per se - it's just not worth the investment. If you've already made it, there's no harm in rolling with it until 85, possibly even until past heroics.

As for what else to do - if you want to stay disc, just put all those points in Mental Agility and one in Inner Sanctum. You *will* notice the 10% less mana on anything but your normal heals, I promise.

Holy as it is seems to be the bizarro-version of disc. You run OOM a little bit faster, but have so much more regeneration that it matters a lot less. Where disc has an advantage on tank healing, holy has it on group healing. And where disc uses all its abilities, I've been using surprisingly little Chakra as holy. The thing is that Chakra enables multiple spells and all - the problem is that you do not need 'more' spells as holy; you need more mana.
#15 Dec 14 2010 at 12:43 PM Rating: Excellent
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Mozared wrote:
I've been using surprisingly little Chakra as holy. The thing is that Chakra enables multiple spells and all - the problem is that you do not need 'more' spells as holy; you need more mana.


I've gotten in the habit of automatically hitting my Chakra key as soon as the tank pulls, after I've cast my Renew but before I start casting Heal. With mana being an issue, refreshing my Renew rather than having to recast it seems like a dandy idea, and although the extra crit isn't a huge deal, casting bigger spells means at least a chance of casting fewer spells.

Plus, when **** meets fan, Holy Word-Flash-Flash-Gheal is a very nice burst (when you've got the mana to afford it). Sure Guardian Spirit is better for emergencies, but as it's got a cooldown it never hurts to have one more trick on the bag.
#16 Dec 14 2010 at 4:02 PM Rating: Good
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Recently there has been a good deal of talk about the usefulness of SoS. I can entirely see where it is coming from as the tank should have WS or Grace so the RH buff will be there regardless and PW:S isn't as strong as it used to be so you are using it on the tank to get BT haste on your next series of moves and makes sure they gain the RH benefit in case your Grace stack has shifted. Also if you push SoS you start to get shields breaking inside the Rapture CD which then starts to be a mana drain as PW:S roughly breaks even with Rapture as opposed to giving back extra mana.

The Smite trick does seem more situational from what I have seen from Cata healing after the first several instances. I'll likely use it as a 2nd Disc build when I get around to leveling my priest. Will go with a Smite free build as the other. Neither will use any points in SoS, I have never liked the talent and I still don't.

Will try to use Smite build but have the other as a backup if it doesn't have the needed out put. I do like the Smite idea and will try to make it work but if it isn't going to work, it isn't going to work.
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#17 Dec 15 2010 at 3:18 AM Rating: Decent
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Don't have SoS either, seemed rather pointless for smite disc, cos we're mostly smiting, not mostly using heal.

Smite does in general work, and so long as you're getting 5xsmites and archangel in, mana is not an issue. There are situations where its a bit hopeless or a bit annoying though - such as if the tank is having to run a lot e.g. to pick up ads or move out of an aoe, or seconds lost because a mob died before you got your smite in. Perhaps it is just a bit too unreliable to have as your only PvE healing spec.

So maybe its time to give holy a go, I've missed circle of healing and an efficient renew.
#18 Dec 15 2010 at 5:09 AM Rating: Good
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Callu wrote:
Don't have SoS either, seemed rather pointless for smite disc, cos we're mostly smiting, not mostly using heal.

Smite does in general work, and so long as you're getting 5xsmites and archangel in, mana is not an issue. There are situations where its a bit hopeless or a bit annoying though - such as if the tank is having to run a lot e.g. to pick up ads or move out of an aoe, or seconds lost because a mob died before you got your smite in. Perhaps it is just a bit too unreliable to have as your only PvE healing spec.

So maybe its time to give holy a go, I've missed circle of healing and an efficient renew.


You don't pop wings as soon as you can. You keep the buff up to make Smite and Penance cheaper and pop them when you need the healing boost. You get better mana savings keeping the buff at five stacks for longer periods than the return from AA. As your Smite cost becomes closer to Heal's and Penance is cheaper and up more often to boot. Penance is extremely efficient and will always put full Grace stacks up on its target.

SoS isn't strong because tank shields get popped too fast, PW:S isn't as strong as it used to be and reducing the WS debuff below the Rapture CD is silly as you lose mana procs.
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#19 Dec 15 2010 at 9:06 AM Rating: Decent
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Quote:
You don't pop wings as soon as you can. You keep the buff up to make Smite and Penance cheaper and pop them when you need the healing boost. You get better mana savings keeping the buff at five stacks for longer periods than the return from AA. As your Smite cost becomes closer to Heal's and Penance is cheaper and up more often to boot. Penance is extremely efficient and will always put full Grace stacks up on its target.

Yeah, but do this and your mana will suffer. Even with five stacks of Evangelism, as long as you're not using Archangel you're still losing mana. You'll notice the difference.

Edit: As for SoS - I can very well imagine why it's a week talent. The whole synergy with Rapture is an extremely valid point. It's just that there isn't much else to pick up if you go Smiteless anyway, and that I predict it will be easier for Blizzard to balance PW:S in the future than it is for them to balance Smite.

Edited, Dec 15th 2010 4:08pm by Mozared
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