The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Talent Review - Healing Priests
by Vonya
Well, now that we’ve spent the last way-too-long on things that are generalities, let’s do a bit of a flip and talk about specifics of priesting again. What can I say, I like to mix things up, keep you on your toes.
What talents should you, the healing priest take? There are a lot of options. Some of the options that I label as “useless” are must-haves for a different KIND of priest build. I’m focusing here on the priest who is spending most or all of their time healing for groups or raids. (bearing in mind that I can only advise healers up through the raids that I have been on - if something becomes incredibly useful in Black Temple or SCC, I cannot confirm it, and so I will not.)
I am going to walk through the ENTIRE healing tree. I’ll only grab those talents from the Disc tree that I consider to be “key” talents. If it’s not mentioned, it’s because I don’t really care that it’s there.
Low-Level Gimmes
You -will- respec. You don’t have to do it a frillion times, but you should expect to do it at least once. When you’re little baby priest is just starting to place their first talent points, there are some talents that are, without a doubt, better than others.
Spirit Tap - Gives you a chance to gain a bonus to your Spirit after killing a target. For the duration, your Mana may regenerate at a 50% rate while casting. Lasts 15 seconds.
If you are doing any soloing at all, this talent is your moneymaker. The mana regen it provides is unparalleled, allowing you to keep moving after killing a mob and rarely stop to drink.
Wand Specialization - Increases your damage with Wands.
The best early wands are made my enchanters and are insanely cheap. There’s a rather long period where you actually do more dps with an enchanter wand than you do with your spells. Boosting that wand damage in the early levels is definitely not a bad idea, and wanding allows you to stay outside of the Five Second Rule, and is thus a good way to dps and regen mana at the same time. This talent is subject to diminishing returns and most likely won’t be one that you keep at higher levels.
Improved Shadow Word : Pain - Increases the duration of your Shadow Word: Pain spell.
Gives two free ticks of the spell. ONLY useful if the mob is going to survive long enough to eat those two ticks, but in soloing it’s generally considered a very useful low-level talent. Also good for instancing, where the mobs tend to live longer.
Mind Flay - Assault the target’s mind with Shadow energy, causing damage over time and slowing the target to 50% of their movement speed.
This spell is efficient, and ruthlessly so. If you’re going to be shadow for any length of time at all, it will be your staple damage spell, and you’ll learn to love it. Even if you’re just using it at lower levels till you can start instancing, you can’t go wrong with this talent.
Must-Have Talents
Now that we’ve got the baby talents out of the way, let’s move forward. If you’re doing end-game healing, be it instancing or raiding, these are what I would call “must-haves”. Can you heal without them? Yes. But these will make your healing better.
Divine Fury - Reduces the casting time of your Smite, Holy Fire, Heal, and Greater Heal spells.
Hallelujah! This is THE talent. THE talent. Reducing the cast time on your Greater Heal? Yes please! Get this talent. Even with it, the spell seems to drag on sometimes. This is definitely a must-have talent.
Improved Healing - Reduces the Mana cost of your Lesser Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal spells.
Right now, mana regen is one of the biggest hurdles for a healing priest. Anything that increases my mana efficiency is like fine wine to me. Take this talent, you have no excuse not to.
Spiritual Healing - Increases the amount healed by your healing spells.
Despite the misleading name, this has nothing to do with spirit. You shouldn’t REALLY be so deep in the Discipline tree that you can’t put points here, and it’s an extremely useful talent. Making your heals stronger is never a bad thing. Honestly, I can’t think of a reason NOT to take this talent.
Unbreakable Will - Increases your chance to resist Stun, Fear, and Silence effects.
Your other option is improved wanding. Need I say more? With the upcoming changes so that fear no longer wipes aggro, there’s no reason not to take this talent - not being feared so you can continue healing is a Very. Good. Thing. Add in the nerf to Fear Ward, and you’re going to need this.
Silent Resolve - Reduces the threat generated by your spells and reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled.
I have heard arguments that you don’t have to have this talent maxx’d out. They’re good arguments, and I’m not denying that they’re worthwhile. I am, however, noticing that every single point of aggro counts, and I will argue that ignoring this talent is going to force you to steal aggro unless you somehow manage to CC every single mob except the one being killed.
Improved Power Word : Fortitude - Increases the effect of your Power Word: Fortitude spell.
You’ll probably be -expected- by your raid to have this maxx’d out. PW:F is a great buff to begin with, I see no reason to turn my nose up at making it even better.
Inner Focus - When activated, reduces the Mana cost of your next spell by 100% and increases its critical effect chance by 25% if it is capable of a critical effect.
Free heals? Yes, please. This little puppy keeps you outside the FSR and gives you one free heal after you’ve run out of mana. It’s a superlative talent.
Meditation - Allows some of your Mana regeneration to continue while casting
This, my friends, is the reason you enter the Discipline tree. You’ll note a lot of really useful stuff that I put in the “must-have” tree…all of them pale in comparison to this spell. Getting buffed to be twice as good as it was (now 30% instead of 15%), even at its old rate of return it was a required talent for both healing AND shadow priests. Every healer should go far enough into the discipline tree to get this talent.
Almost Must-Have Talents
These were spells that I almost want to put on the Must-Have list, but I don’t want to dilute the importance of the others. These are what I’d call “strong suggestions”.
Healing Focus - Gives you a chance to avoid interruption caused by damage taken while casting any healing spell.
Yes, I know. The point of being a healer is that you don’t want to get hit. Shouldn’t get hit. If you’re getting hit, something’s wrong. So why waste talents on something that requires you to get hit in order to be useful? Trust me. I’ve just tried out a build that didn’t have this talent, and I feel the need for it. Your heals still get interrupted on an irritatingly frequent basis, but I promise you now that it’s MUCH worse without this talent.
Improved Renew - Increases the amount healed by your renew spell.
It’s not gonna make or break you, but it’s a nice place to put some talent points. I use my renew a lot to smooth out the damage on a tank, and generally follow up a big heal with one of these to give me a little extra boost at spending time inside the Five Second Rule. This talent makes me smile, but I wouldn’t say it’s going to gimp your abilities as a healer to not have it.
Healing Prayers - Reduces the Mana cost of your Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending spells.
Again, the magic words of reducing mana cost. Prayer of Mending is my beloved Frisbee. Making it even MORE efficient doesn’t hurt my feelings. Prayer of Healing I use less often, but still often enough to see a benefit from this talent. I love it, but the world won’t stop if you don’t take it.
Holy Concentration - Gives you a chance to enter a Clearcasting state after casting any Flash Heal or Greater Heal spell. The Clearcasting state reduces the mana cost of your next Flash Heal or Greater Heal spell by 100%.
There are healers that swear by this spell, and I won’t argue with them. If you can get deep enough in the holy tree to reach it, I recommend grabbing it. The clearcasting state makes your next Greater Heal or Flash Heal FREE - this means you’re still outside the five second rule after you cast it. A glorious thing. However, it’s situational in that someone else has to need a heal NOW - if you keep your team topped off, it may wither away without being used. In a raid situation, however, that’s almost never the case, so I would recommend this MORE for a raiding healing priest.
Circle of Healing - Heals target party member and other party members within 15 yards of the target.
FOR ENDGAME RAIDING, this talent rocks. For anything else, it’s almost not worth the point. Anything above 10-man content, you’ll see this become exponentially more useful. If you’re not yet into 25-mans, don’t worry about it, IMO. Left in the “suggested” section because of the dramatic shift once you get into bigger raids.
Mental Agility - Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells.
This discipline talent is one that I try to save enough points for. Why? Because I love to HoT, I use Frisbee multiple times in every fight, and if I had Circle of Healing, I’d benefit from it even more. I highly recommend this talent, but not at the expense of boosting your healing ability.
Spirit-Heavy Build
There are two general healing builds recommended for priests. One which is spirit-heavy, relies on spirit gear and talents accordingly. Your raid will want at least one spirit-heavy priest, and I like this build. It’s a solid, useful healing build.
Spirit of Redemption - Increases total Spirit by 5% and upon death, the priest becomes the Spirit of Redemption for 15 sec. The Spirit of Redemption cannot move, attack, be attacked or targeted by any spells or effects. While in this form the priest can cast any healing spell free of cost. When the effect ends, the priest dies.
Yes, yes, Improved Death. But seriously, folks, I’d almost recommend this for any healing build. The boost to spirit is undeniable, and anyone who thinks priests don’t die has obviously never been called a “squishy”. We wear cloth. And if our heals draw aggro, there’s a chance we’re going to die. Being able to continue healing past that point is very nice. As an example, I died on Illhoof last weekend - got caught in the chains and the other healer wasn’t able to keep me up. Nothing against the other healer, even I have trouble healing a clothie by myself through the chains. I wonder if I can use Inner Fire to mitigate some of that…whups! Tangent. So I died. I was able to top the raid off, toss out heals and a free lightwell before I had true death - and that time gave our druid warning to shift out of boomkin and toss me a battle rez. It was a beautiful thing. Situationally useful, but the spirit tacked on is a constant benefit. This spell gets the Egotistical Priest Stamp of Approval, despite it’s much-bemoaned drawbacks. Plus, it’s a requirement for Lightwell, but that’s only a minor bonus, and is honestly almost has accidental value.
Spiritual Guidance - Increases spell damage and healing based on total Spirit.
If you have a spirit-heavy build, you’ve got no excuse to not take this talent. You can easily reach it even if you go all the way to improved Divine Spirit. This is like…Improved Improved Divine Spirit.
Improved Divine Spirit - Your Divine Spirit and Prayer of Spirit spells also increase the target’s spell damage and healing by an amount equal to a percentage of their total Spirit.
I’m not going to bother just posting Divine Spirit. Note that this buff does not stack. Having more than one priest in your raid with this talent is actually a bad idea - it means that the other healy priest is not able to reach the bottom of the holy tree. The assistance that this buff provides the OTHER casters in your raid is minimal. Spirit is simply not a stat that they’re able to maximize, so they won’t notice much of a change. HOWEVER. For the spirit-based priest, this talent is a huge benefit to your healing. Everyone benefits a little from having their spirit boosted, but the main recipients of this buff would be other healers - other classes that have a reason to stack spirit in the first place. Tree-druids will love you forever. If your raid needs a Divine Spirit buff and you decide to become that priest - go whole hog and spec and gear with an eye to spirit. The pure-healing priest may (may) end up with beefier heals, but YOU helped provide that beefiness with your buff, and your healing is nothing to sneeze at.
Going any deeper into the Disc tree than Improved Divine spirit may severely limit your healing capabilities. Even going that far is arguably lowering your healing for anyone that is not going fully into the spirit-healing build.
Healing-Heavy Build
Empowered Healing - Your Greater Heal and your Flash Heal spells gain an additional percentage of your bonus healing effects.
If you’re stacking on the plus heal gear, this is your talent point, my friend. Love it, it’s one of the only reasons to go this far down the holy tree.
Hmmm, okay, there’s not a whole lot other than this for the Healing Heavy build. You make it into the bottom of the holy tree and have more freedom with where you place your points.
Useless
Here are talents that just…frankly…don’t really make sense for us. Some of them are somewhat required, but overall they’re yawnworthy for the healing priest.
Holy Specialization - Increases the critical effect chance of your Holy spells.
combined with
Inspiration - Increases your target’s armor value from items for 15 seconds after getting a critical effect from your Flash Heal, Heal, Greater Heal, or Prayer of Healing spell.
You’ll probably end up with these anyway, because you need -somewhere- to put talent points, and this certainly doesn’t hurt. But we as healers do not focus on spell crit or int as primary stats, so our spell crit rating tends to be somewhat shoddy, making this talent almost useless. It’s lovely when it DOES proc, don’t get me wrong. It’s just that it happens rarely enough that it’s sort of a ho-hum situation. We can’t count on it to happen when we want it to, nor do we really have the capability to choose to gear towards making it happen without severely limiting ourselves. It’s like adding vanilla sprinkles to our hot cocoa. A nice touch, but we really just want the cocoa. You’d never take one without the other though - my advice is to grab Inspiration when you need to place a point, then put points in Holy Specialization as you need to place points. I generally don’t end up with a fully-specc’d Holy Specialization, but I always end up with points placed between these two somewhere.
Spell Warding - Decreases spell damage taken.
There are far better places to put talents if you’re going for a healing build. The idea IS that you want to avoid getting hit, and I’d rather boost my healing than boost my survivability. I spend 98% of my healing time not getting hit, so I will place my points accordingly. Here’s an example of a good pvp talent, and possibly a soloing talent. Healing? Notsomuch.
Holy Nova - Causes an explosion of holy light around the caster, causing Holy damage to all enemy targets within 10 yards and healing all party members within 10 yards. These effects cause no threat.
Okay, this is in the “useless” bin because it is. It’s so situational that it’s not even funny. The dps it provides is so bad that it makes level one mages point and laugh at you behind your back. The healing it provides is never enough to justify the global cooldown if you’re using it in a panic situation. It’s fairly expensive - generally it takes an entire mana bar to kill whatever it is you’re AOEing. The no threat is nice, but since you’d almost never use it anyway, that doesn’t matter. It is, however, VERY cool, and possibly one of the only “fun” healy spells on the market. I won’t tease you for taking it, even though it has no use and is technically a waste of a point. Sometimes it is intensely satisfying to go somewhere low-level and mow down some mobs with a fun glowy AOE, and who am I to argue?
Blessed Recovery - After being struck by a melee or ranged critical hit, heal some of the damage taken over 6 sec.
Again, not planning on getting hit, and there are other places I’d rather put these points.
Holy Reach - Increases the range of your Smite and Holy Fire spells and the radius of your Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova spells.
As a healer, you don’t use Smite and Holy Fire, and you’re not likely to care about the radius of your Holy Nova. It’s only the Prayer of Healing that benefits, which is your expensive, cast-time group heal. If they’d extend the benefit of this to Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing, etc, then I might forgive it. (Thanks to the Egotistical Reader who pointed out my mistake here!)
Searing Light - Increases the damage of your Smite and Holy Fire spells.
If you are wasting mana on Smite and Holy Fire, you make the Great Healing Goddess in the Sky cry. Don’t make her cry.
Surge of Light - Your spell criticals have a chance to cause your next Smite spell to be instant cast, cost no mana but be incapable of a critical hit. This effect lasts 10 sec.
Don’t make her cry.
Lightwell - Creates a holy Lightwell. Friendly targets can click the Lightwell to restore health over 6 sec. Any damage taken will cancel the effect. Lightwell lasts for 3 min or 5 charges.
I know, I know, this got buffed so that the heal it provides is beyond useful and into the awesome range. However, the effect is canceled when someone takes damage AND it has the cooldown from hell on it. The only place that I’ve used it and felt like it made a significant difference is on Moroes, when he garrotes the ranged players or something. They can pull a hit from the lightwell and then the healers don’t have to babysit them, the tanks, and the shackle targets. I -like- the spell, but I have yet to find a way to use it effectively, given the cooldown that almost negates its use on trash fights. Love to toss this down when Spirit of Redemption (Improved Death) is up, though. Means I can do even more healing from beyond the grave, and might prevent a full wipe. Still, even with that, it’s more of a neat toy than a spell that you’d depend on.
Blessed Resilience - Critical hits made against you have a chance to prevent you from being critically hit again for 6 sec.
Again, the point is to not get hit. If you’re this far down in the holy tree, I don’t know why you’d be all that more concerned about multiple, successive critical hits against you. I’m truly baffled as to why it’s even down here. Seems like it should be in the disc tree so that pvp priests can reach it without jumping through hoops.
Improved Power Word : Shield - Increase the damage absorbed by your Power Word: Shield.
Great for soloing, nearly laughable for raid or instance healing. If I needed to have a place to put points, I’d probably pick this, especially with the rumors of increased benefit from +healing this receives. For now, it’s really just not worth the points for a healing priest.
P.S. WTB synonyms for “talent points”
November 8th, 2007
Holy Reach increases the radius of Prayer of Healing (The Flash Heal for the entire party), not Prayer of Mending (aka Frisbee), that still has the same 20 yard range it always has. So it’s even more useless than you thought.
November 8th, 2007
@George
DOH!
You are so right. Fixing that immediately. I really wish I knew where I got that impression - it’s been in my head far too long. My upcoming respec will most definitely ignore it.
November 8th, 2007
Excellent article. Just one thing that came to me while reading. With the increased crit chance (25%) from Inner Focus, does Inspiration move up at all? I’m pretty sure the math doesn’t support it, but I was thinking the IF buff (which you’re only using when you really need it) might come very close to making Inspiration proc half the time or better. What am I missing?
November 8th, 2007
Here’s a neat trick with Inspiration. As rare as it seems, there may be times in a Raid where everybody’s already topped off. If you already have a full pool, you can spam rank 1 Flash heal to activate the armor buff (which then chains into Holy Concentration giving you a free heal).
I’m one of the few Priests that swear by Holy Concentration, as well. Activate Inner Focus, and it’s a 1 in 4 chance of ANOTHER free heal.
No Mental Strength? You don’t like having that slightly larger cushion of mana to work with? I’d consider adding that in there in place of Silent Resolve for raiding priests (Paladin’s Blessing of Salvation mitigates the need to spec into threat reduction).
November 8th, 2007
@Brem
Incorporating the crit chance from Inner Focus shouldn’t affect the viability of Inspiration. The three minute cooldown keeps it from being usable on a regular basis, and the crit chance only affects the spell cast immediately after triggering it. Sure, that means you’re almost guaranteed a crit on that one heal, thus sparking the Inspiration buff, but an almost-guaranteed buff once every three minutes at best really doesn’t force me to weigh it more carefully.
I’ve actually got my Inner Focus Macro’d together with my Prayer of Healing. I still use it separately, but if I’m doing a group heal, increasing the chance of critting on the group is always a good thing as far as I’m concerned. =]
@Matticus
Ah, if you have paladins to give the buff, then perhaps it’s a decent tradeoff. I don’t respec when I want to do something other than 25-mans - I don’t have a paladin to buff me when I’m running heroics, and very rarely do I have one available when I run 10-mans. So I don’t depend upon the buff, since I only play with another paladin for about two hours out of the week.
So the 10% isn’t mathematically worth it for me - I need the reduced threat for non-raiding, and…well, lessee. Right now I’ve got arcane brilliance up, and I’ve got 10605 mana. That means I’d have an extra 1060 mana in my pocket - that’s a little more than one extra greater heal (max rank)
It certainly doesn’t HURT - for those able to dance outside the FSR, it means you’ve got a larger “pool” that you can refill and thus draw on when you don’t have the option of the FSR. And it scales well with gear, as you get more and more int.
So it’s situational, really. If I find myself mostly partying with a pally, I could see making the swap, but my current playstyle demands I have a lowered threat.
November 8th, 2007
Good arguments. I guess I just like looking at that other Priest in the raid and thinking to myself “my mana pool is larger than yours”. =)
November 8th, 2007
Re: Holy Reach
Don’t have Circle of Healing myself, but those that I’ve met with it usually take Holy Reach too for the extra radius. Probably about the only reason you’ld take it though
@Matticus
Since when did Holy Concentration have anything to do with crits?
November 9th, 2007
Re: Inspiration
First, Inspiration is +25% Armor Value (not mentioned in post, might want to add it)
Inspiration is an absolutely required talent for a healing priest, period. It was amazing back when it cost 5 talent points, and it’s still amazing now that it only costs 3.
NapkinMath(tm):
Tank has 16K armor, 15K health, 500 BV, tanking a boss that hits for 5000 unmitigated.
Tank’s damage reduction is 57.2%. Incoming unblocked is (5000 * (1-.572) = 2140)
Tank gets hit for (2140 - 500 = 1640)
With Inspiration up, tank has 20K armor. Tanks DR is now 62.6%.
Tank gets hit for (1870 - 500 = 1370).
The Inspiration buff took TWENTY percent off the incoming hit.
(If the boss hits for 10k unmitigated, the #s work to 3780 / 3240 / 16.6% difference)
The other reason to get Inspiration is that it is about the only thing that lets healing priests “stack” - extra Priests/Shaman with the talent significantly increase the buff’s uptime.
From EJ: “Holy Raiding Compendium”
“Q: Should I take inspiration?
A: Yes. There’s nothing else worth taking that is raid-centric at the 3rd tier of our holy tree, and it’s amazing for tank healing. If you choose not to take it, you should always attempt to *not* heal tanks, since you will be gimped compared to any other holy priest or resto shaman who *does* have the talent.”
(Now, it’s not much good if you always run with a Bear MT, as they’re nearly armor-capped as it is, and you don’t get the benefit of the “BV reduction after armor DR” that makes Inspiration so strong for warriors/paladins)
November 9th, 2007
You mentioned the ‘Spirit’ and the ‘pure-healing’ priests, which are both common ways to gear a priest. You also acknowledged the fact that priests are not nearly as mana efficient as other healing classes. I understand that should not be taking damage in raids, but the fact is that it happens…alot. Having a enough health to take a hit and finish healing your target before needing to heal yourself makes a large difference too. I know it may sound completely backwards, but I find that gearing based on stats in the following order seems to work best for me: mp5 > Stamina > Healing > Spirit > Intellect. I use the +12 int, chance to restore mana meta gem, 2 +9 healing +4 int gems, and 8 +9 healing, +2 mp5 gems. My view on enchants is healing > mp5 > stam with spellsurge on my weapon. Fully raid buffed, I have around 10k health, 11.5k mana, 1750 healing, 250 mp5 (while casting excluding metagem proc, spellsurge, clearcasting, Eye of Gruul, and Inner Focus), and can outlast and usually outheal any other healer I raid with. My 23/38/0 spec is a good mix of raid healing/PVP talents (because respecing daily is just too expensive)
If you engage in Arena PVP at all, Martyrdom and Blessed Resilience are a night and day difference in survivability, and Improved Manaburn (especially when paired with Heroism/Bloodlust) can swing a match in your favor.
@ Matticus, while spamming rank 1 Fheal to proc Inspiration and/or Holy Concentration gives you something to do, it absolutely kills your time outside the 5second rule, and ends up being less efficient than you could otherwise be. Also, very rarely would that extra armor be a life/death difference for the tank.
To summarize, you nailed the must have talents, but everything else is completly player dependant
November 9th, 2007
Jabari, I disagree. (with the EJ poster as well).
Mandatory selections are those for which the benefits are frequent if not certain. This fact is what moves it into - at best - the almost-must-have category.
Its primary flaw is that it only happens on crits, and at that only on certain spells. Yes, GH and FH are high-use selections. Heck, if you’re MT Heals the odds are they form 2/3 of your casts. Which means you CANNOT RELY UPON IT. It’s great when it happens. It’s the ‘making it happen’ that’s the weakness.
Now to get optimal use you need to spend 5 points in Holy Spec as Ego noted. For most of us that brings you from ~11 to ~16% chance of a crit. If you sacrifice other stats - like healbonus and spirit and int and, well, you get the idea - you can push that higher.
But it’s still a sometimes effect which more often than not will NOT proc till late in the battle - maybe even as that last heal so the tank’s ready for the next battle faster. And all I have to do is sacrifice guaranteed healing for a gambler’s chance of my tank being harder to damage.
November 9th, 2007
Heheh…I did find a pretty cool situational use for Holy Nova the other night (waiting for 2.3 to do a tuneup respec on Osprey): I was asked by the guild to come in and sub for Shattered Halls after the tank (70 Warrior? Pally?) had to quit for the night. So our tank was a 66 Pally. Not important; but the other Priest (66 Disc build) doesn’t have Holy Nova.
When we got to the non-elite skellie masses, it was pretty awesome to see how much damamge I could do with Holy Nova, while healing those DPSers who WERE taking damage.
(OH…and last month…in SM, enroute to the HHM–a couple people would gather all the trash mobs in the graveyard just in front of the Great Pumpkin, and with a mage spamming arcane blast, and me spamming Holy Nova…it was just too much fun!)
But yeah…pretty useless otherwise.
November 9th, 2007
[...] has an excellent "back to basics" article on must-take, might-take, and don’t-take talents for healy priests. Just remember: Don’t make the Great Healing Goddess in the Sky [...]
November 11th, 2007
Inspiration as the above poster mentioned is actually a staple of raid healing. While priest crit chance sucks, it provides a LOT of mitigation. It can make the difference of a tank dying or not and thus the raid wiping or not. If you’re going to be main tank healing at all, you really should always have it, or at least one priest who will always have it should be there. The further your progression, the more vital it becomes, especially if you have plate wearing MT’s. I’ve seen it make a ton of difference, though my healy raid experience is limited (Lurker/VR are the highest encounters I’ve healed so far).
I like lightwell now. It’s also fabulous x20 on Void Reaver and during Magtheridon after phase 1, or Gruul after a shatter. It has actually helped the raid out quite a bit during those instances specifically, and quite a few others. I wouldn’t die without it, but it’s made a noticeable difference, especially for melee groups.
November 11th, 2007
I disagree with both Jabari and Repentia. Inspiration is good, but it is not mandatory.
Note this is largely swayed by my bias - if it’s a random chance, it’s not reliable. If it’s not reliable, it’s not mandatory.
To make best use of it I need to push up my crit chances. If I take this, I’d best be using 8 points - 3 for inspiration and 5 for Holy Spec (as Ego noted). That’ll take me to ~1/6 chance of it proccing — if I’m chaincasting GH I’ll usually see it proc in the first 15 seconds of the fight, and can probably keep it up till I’m oom at 30 seconds into the fight. Since I know the battles will take longer than that and so I’ll not be chaincasting, I’d better take some +spellcrit gear to improve my chances. Which means I get to give up mp5 or +heal or, well, something, in order to push my chances up to more reliable — at least 20%, preferably 25 or 30%.
So to get this useful proc, I have to spend 8 talent points and sacrifice +heal, mp5, and stat bonuses on gear.
No. Not mandatory.
November 11th, 2007
I, too, disagree with your assessment of Inspiration. It is indeed very useful for raiding. Because boss fights are so long, it is *very* reliable. I can absolutely rely on in proccing quite a few times throughout the fight, meaning that the tank spends a percentage of the time with increased mitigation. Yes, that’s not mandatory, but it is very helpful.
You *did* class Holy Concentration as almost must-have, and yet it is just as much a random chance as Inspiration. That doesn’t make it unreliable.
You also mentioned that you’ll “probably end up with these anyway”. That is not because there is literally nowhere else to put the points. It’s because these talents are more useful than Spell Warding, Blessed Recovery, or Holy Nova. So doesn’t that imply that they are useful? If they were really useless, then you could stick points in any of the abovementioned talents without a second thought, and I don’t think you would. Heck, if Inspiration was useless I’d stick a point in Holy Nova at least, just for entertainment value.
November 12th, 2007
On the inspiration discussion; on tanks it is awesomeness due to its mitigation. On non-melee classes it is essentialy wasted.
So If you are on MT healing duty often, you should better have it imho. More so considering it is really easy to pick up in the holy tree, there is not much else there that helps raidhealing that much.
Indeed the quote is spot on, let’s spam it again.
From EJ: “Holy Raiding Compendium”
“Q: Should I take inspiration?
A: Yes. There’s nothing else worth taking that is raid-centric at the 3rd tier of our holy tree, and it’s amazing for tank healing. If you choose not to take it, you should always attempt to *not* heal tanks, since you will be gimped compared to any other holy priest or resto shaman who *does* have the talent.”
November 12th, 2007
I see that quote. It carefully ignores a critical point: if it’s mandatory, then inspiration is an 8 talent-point talent.
If you fail to take the 5 point Holy Spec, your proc is ~1:10 instead of ~1:6. Assuming your are blowing mana to chain-GH the tank then you will have it proc once every 20 seconds — or once in your chain of heals before OOM.
Note I do not say it’s bad - in fact, it’s a very strong talent. But I have other things I’d rather spend my 8 points in other things. (As it happens, I have 2 points in my current spec given to inspiration - and none in holy spec. I needed the points spent to finish running up to a higher tier.)
Oh - as a final point of consideration. The author of the holy raiding compendium gave a cookie cutter build - two, actually - for readers. I would like to point out that the one he considers appropriate for first priest - 23/38, because 2/2 IDS is mandatory - includes Holy Fire.
In other words, according to constantius not only is Inspiration a must, so is (apparently) Holy Fire. Here, let me link both the compendium and the build.
http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t17086-priest_holy_raiding_compendium/
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxT0zhxzbZfhtcc0qVuc
November 12th, 2007
[...] bit of heat and talent Over on Ego’s site, there’s a bit of heat developing because she didn’t consider Inspiration to be [...]
November 12th, 2007
The biggest thing inspiration does is for the MT healers in bosses where a normal swing does alot of dmg (like Gurtogg Bloodboil and Archimonde and even Tidewalker on a lesser level) is when the boss parries an attack by the MT and resets the swing timer to essentially double swing. Now no healer regardless of how much Haste you have or buffs you put on can deal with this unless your psychic and you have Nature’s Swiftness up. By the time you realize what happens its often too late.
So the solutions for this are… Load up the Tank with a crap ton of h.o.t.s and hope to god they tick at some point between those two swings.(Depending on your raid compostition this may or may not be viable, i know we raid with 1 resto druid and 2 healing priests) Or you can have at least a shaman and a priest spec into ancestral fortitude and inspiration. This gives you a boost to mitigation that will make or break some of those fights, when bad situations arise.
Now many people have said that to unlock some of the higher tiered Holy talents your other options at this level pretty much suck for PVE. Holy nova which is situational at best, more comical then anything else. And a bane to rogue gankfest in PVP. Spell Warding again pretty situtional, I would rather have something that is iffy at best centered around my primary job than taking something that might help me in 4-6 encounters at all. Especially when you guild farms multiple bosses regularly. Blessed Recovery is a flat out Arena/PVP talent. If you are getting hit by regular mobs so often that they are critting you enough for this to be viable, your tanks should be shot. Literally drug out into the street kicking and screaming and shot.
Again at that tier their isnt much anything else to really consider going after. Its situationally useful. But if PVE is your bag and your a healer its 100% of what you are gonna be doing anyway.
Madmantwo
Horde Priest
Reawaken guild
Staghelm
November 12th, 2007
Huh. I’s just a simple warrior, and I sure ain’t gonna tell anyone from another class how the should or shouldn’t spec themselves. But there is a few factors I’d suggest you priests keep in mind when deciding whether or not Inspiration is worth paying for. First is avoidance - the attack either misses, is dodged, or is parried, so there’s no benefit from the armor bonus. For a warrior this typically runs in the neighborhood of 35-38%, depending on yer gear quality. Second is magical attacks - armor is useless against these, so again no benefit from Inspiration for some attacks. And third is of course the percentage of time it’s actually up. This has sorta been touched on, but I expects it’s a very hard number to quantify.
So, using Jabari’s 5k hitting boss example, I comes up with
damage reduction = 270 * (1-0.38) * (1 - %percent bosses using magical attacks) * %time Inspiration up
which comes out to something less than 167 per hit. Maybe about 50-100? Hard to say.
Anywho, that’s me two coppers from the healee’s perspective. Lucks to you making your speccing choices.
November 12th, 2007
Elyxaar, sorry, I was completely thinking of something else entirely. =)
November 13th, 2007
I pulled the wowwebstats for our guild the last time we killed Gurtogg Bloodboil. Someone had mentioned the armor cap on tanks but also on this fight random people will get a debuff that forces them to tank the boss for a moment. He still is hitting like a truck so anything you can do to help does.
I was the only priest in the raid with inspiration at the time. And this is how much it got around.
http://wowwebstats.com/42tsi562crkww?s=4067-4570&ab=91
So if you dont think it comes up enough to make a difference that was about an 8 minute fight. Yeah it wasnt up constantly but it sure does help out a ton.
November 13th, 2007
@Kirk:
“To make best use of it I need to push up my crit chances.”
You really don’t - individual crit% doesn’t really affect the Inspiration “uptime” all that much (and is subject to diminishing returns). Notice how I didn’t say that taking 5/5 Holy Spec was required?
The number of healers that can provide the buff has a far greater effect than any individual’s healer’s crit chance. As I said above, Inspiration is one of the very few things that allows healing priests to “stack” - the first priest brings Fort (and probably IDS), the 2nd would normally be better as a Paladin (for another Blessing), except that the 2nd healing priest adds a huge amount of Inspiration uptime.
(Napkinmath for uptime calcs below)
@Ratshag:
I was modelling a “DR per hit” scenario - it looks like you’re trying to move it to a “incoming DPS” calculation. For that, you need to know the creature’s swing speed and such.
NapkinMath Pt. 2(tm):
I’ll go with the 10K hit, every 3 seconds, same Warrior as before, with 38% avoidance. All physical damage.
Normal incoming DPS: (3780 (dph) * .62(non-avoided)) / 3 (s) = 781.2 DPS.
Insp incoming DPS: (3240 * .62) / 3 = 669.6 DPS.
Difference of 111.6 DPS.
@Nobody in particular:
Now, for Inspriation uptime:
(Formula from EJ:)
Inspiration Uptime = 1 - (1 - crit%)^(15/(second between heals))
In a “GH Spam, no lag” situation, an 8% crit rate (reasonable for a 0/5 holy spec) is ~ 40%. Pretty nice, yeah? Add a second priest with that (both at 0/5 holy spec), and you’re gonna be around 65% uptime.
With 5/5 Holy Spec (13% crit), the single priest is at ~56% uptime. Double priest is at ~80%.
Now, I understand that priests aren’t “GH Spamming” all the time (Dances with 5SR), so take that into account with the uptime numbers.
Slightly paraphrasing a quote I found in one of the priest EJ threads:
“[While deciding spec], there has never been a time that I said, hrm I wonder if it is a good idea to significantly increase the armor of the guy standing between me and a repair bill…”
December 6th, 2007
I have to say, when ish hits the fan and everyone in my group is getting hit hard, there’s nothing better than a fade+inner focus+prayer of healing. More often than not, it crits on 3/5 people in the group, and you’d be surprised how much the inspiration buff can help in giving me the room to sort out my next move. Just my two cents as a new healy priest :-).
February 18th, 2008
Hi, just thought i’d query a few things..
Matticus Said:
“I’m one of the few Priests that swear by Holy Concentration, as well. Activate Inner Focus, and it’s a 1 in 4 chance of ANOTHER free heal.”
Are you implying that the Holy Concentration proc is affected by spell criticals? It isn’t! It’s a 6% chance (3/3) to proc from the same spells regardless of whether you crit or not. This isn’t to say the talent isn’t useful, but theres no surefire way of making it reliable.
Additionally, holy reach DOES affect CoH, so increasing its radius makes it extremely useful, it also renders CoH more viable for 5-10 mans, as it will pretty much heal the whole party - depending on setup.
Enjoying the blog!