The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Ego Mailbag
by Vonya
Okay, I know this is copping out again, I haven’t even built up a backlog of emails yet or anything. But I can’t think of anything priestly to write about - probably because I haven’t had much time to actually log into the game lately. Seriously, I think I did dailies on my hunter…once…since last Saturday. Remind me again why I thought taking two intensive night classes was a good idea?
Anyrate, I’m lucky enough to have gotten a good email that I think you guys can help out on answering.
I have a question, one you might find silly but one i’m having trouble with.
Currently, with the gear I have, and buffs, totems and potions, I can attain 2038 to healing bonus. My problem is, I don’t see the benefit of a lot of my spells … they seem to be healing as well as they did at 1800 to healing. I’m now starting to turn to battleground gear and arena gear however, with each additional piece i’m trading healing bonus for stamina and int.
Is there a cap off point to the bonus healing? In other words is there a point where bonus healing becomes moot after a certain point?
Your tanks’ gear has probably increased as well - I’ll bet your mana efficiency is better now than if you were to regear back down to your old levels.
However, I can definitely see what you’re saying - it’s really difficult to measure healing efficiency. Why should you choose +heal over some other stat-heavy piece of gear? At what point does it level out, and you can start eyeballing other stats a bit more closely, because you’re not frantic to get your heal up?
As far as I know, there’s not an answer. You get the +heal because healing is what you do - obviously that’s a primary stat for a healer. Increasing your +heal stat is for the harder-hitting content, where each heal needs to be that much bigger.
There is no ceiling - no number where priests can say “okay, I have enough now”. The best we can do is point out our major stats and make sure each one is high. You can’t stack +heal at the detriment of your stamina or you’ll be cannon fodder. You can’t ignore +heal completely, or you’ll reach a point where you’re not able to keep your tank alive.
As a matter of fact, now that I think about it, I’ve been in situations where I’ve outgeared the tank, and it’s obvious. My max-rank gheal is too much - in order to avoid drastic overheal, I have to let their health go down to an alarming level. I downranked my heal there so I didn’t efficiency my tank to death, but it does mean that there’s a noticeable difference if you go back to old content and less-geared tanks with your shiny new purples. (For those interested, it was a mid-Kara geared Pally tank in Heroic Shattered Halls, as opposed to the ready-for-SSC-geared warrior I usually heal. Same player, different toon. Yes, it’s EgoTank, and yes, he has a mid-kara geared-or-better version of every tank available in the game, and a few dpsers besides. The man borders on the divine - he’s definitely not human.)
If your heals “feel” like they’re doing the same as always - if you’re healing at about the same rate, running out of mana at about the same rate, and in general feeling as though you’re not moving forward despite gear upgrades - and yet the content you are tackling and the gear of your tank is increasing - then you’re actually improving at the perfect rate (gear-wise. We shall assume that skill level remains unchanged).
But a calculateable and measurable number where you can say “Okay, no more +heal now” - I don’t think that exists.
Certainly not in the sense that a hunter can say “Okay, no more +hit now”.
March 13th, 2008
My general guide… I expect your GH to do between 25 and 50% of the tank’s health - ideally between 35 and 40%. Yes, this means I expect that if we go into a fight I have a nominal expectation that the tank should lose no worse than 1/6 his health per second ASSUMING I can do perfect chaincasting. If my tank (without my healing) would die in less than 10 seconds, he’s in too high an instance for him - gear, skill, talents, level (some or all) needs improvement. But the point is, I should have an idea of my tank’s (or tanks’) normal health is. And I should base my healing capability on what’s needed.
There are specific exceptions, of course, but those are generally the places where you put two or three full-time healers full-time on each tank while the rest of your 25 or 40 man raid goes nuts.
March 13th, 2008
2k is a good number. I’ve just hit it in fact, Dark Blessing hooray! If you look through gankbang.com, you’ll notice relatively few people have much more than that. Their spirit starts going through the roof, however.
The real answer is lootzor.com and/or ItemValue. Both allow you to weight different stats to produce an ordering, you’ll still want to disagree now and then but you should think very carefully about large deviations.
Just killed Kael’thas with the lock \o/ [/blow]
I use heal = 100, mp5 = 500, haste = 100, spirit = 300, stamina = 75. Those are indubitably less than ideal, so tweak to taste. My priest is an alt and there is a limit to the theorycrafting I’m willing to do for him
[blow instrument="owntrumpet"]I have T5 geared mage, lock and priest, part-Kara geared warrior and each of a hunter, rogue and paladin in Outland. Can has divine status now kek?
March 13th, 2008
Eldr,
My problem with a solid number is that it’s based on where you are now. I mean, you’re fighting Kael’thas. (kudos, btw). But for the priest that’s just dinged 70, pushing for +2K heal NOW sacrifices so much that he or she is going to be pretty close to worthless in, well, most everything. Lousy regen, no stamina… you get the picture. Oh, and as for lootzor… I love it. But it assumes you already know (or are pretty sure of) the answer to the question Ego received already. Which is something of a catch-22, don’t you think?
March 13th, 2008
I can only really comment that it seems to me that priests don’t seem to scale as well as other classes at some +heal point, and that seems to be around 2K heal. The curve feels like it levels out around there compared to other classes. Ive got no numbers for it, and I hate theorycrafting. (its a game, and I do enough stats at work…so I find it difficult doing it at home lol).
For instance, I typically run at 2350+heal/305mp5 casting/10K health/11K mana. Those numbers are fairly easy to come by for me since Im in T6. Lowered tier geared toons typically have to juggle some of those numbers while improving others.
My values change slightly for some situations like when I change to shadow gear for Mother or go for more +heal for RoS or do bg’s/arena. But I always use 10K health due to the random and not so random damage that happens in the instances that I run in.
I noticed a definite leveling off of high end heal numbers around 2K. I remember watching my numbers back in the 14-1700 range and a gh would show obvious progress. I don’t see the same rate of change from 2K on…except for when I crit. I do get nice numbers when I crit, but normal heals - not so much.
My preference is +heal actually. I love it and I would sacrifice a little mp5 for it (not that much tho). What it does give me; however, is flexibility. I can downrank spells now so that I will know what it will land for before I even cast it. I get mana efficiency from it, I know exactly what the targets health will be while I’m casting and I also know the threshold point of when to heal now, and when to heal *NOW* (if you get my meaning).
So ja, I have no numbers. This is just my impression from playing. The +heal debate has been going on since the game started and only intensified when TBC came. I really think it comes down to play style/preference more so than anything else.
I really do recommend making it a priority getting to and staying at 10K health regardless of +heal
March 13th, 2008
gawd. even when I think I made a small reply, it comes out as a wall of text.
Sorry I crit you all….again
March 13th, 2008
How easy it is for *you* (your build/your gear/your wealth) to trade-off one for the other is how to evaluate each. If you are willing to theorycraft that is great, and helps you plan things out. The alternative, learning as you go (perhaps the latest raid content never drains your mana but you are dying more often — umm, need to switch from mp5 to stam consumables, or swap out some Royal Nightseye’s for Solid Stars of Elune), works great too.
March 14th, 2008
We were a healer for a good long while, and we’re trying it again from a priestly angle. This question has actually come up a few times in the past month on various forums, so it’s kinda neat to see it crop up here too.
The end result continues to be the same, though. You hit it right on.
We admit, it’s one of the big reasons we’re enjoying my hunter as he collects gear for Karazhan. There are actual, set-in-stone identifiable numbers that we can improve and know we’re improving. Good times!
March 14th, 2008
With most Priests our + Healing starts to stagger at 2k. Not because it isn’t useful, but because at these item levels gear starts to focus on our other stats.
So while a T4 Priest can have 2k Healing, a T5 Priest will have that plus another 1k HP.
There are 2 huge factors to upping your healing as well.
First, it allows you to down rank spells. I can spam Gheal Rank 1 on the tank all day, and with T5 2 piece bonus, I’m basically a Paladin.
Second… well this is going to be a 2 part one. Renew ticks for more, which stablizes alot of tanks and levels out how fast their HP drops per tick. Also CoH heals for more. It brings your CoH from 800ish to 1100… which is super cool.
When picking gear I normally choose what ever is over budgeted for that item slot. If I find an item with more MP5 than it should have for it’s level, I tend to hop on items like that. This is assuming I am not low on any one stat.
March 17th, 2008
Mmm. Good thoughts.
And yes, it is far too easy for a Hunter to say, “Moar hit, moar hit… OK stop hit”.
I knew a couple who couldn’t, though. They were absolutely, positively obsessed with minimizing their chance to miss… one went a full hundred points beyond her hitcap
March 18th, 2008
@Trackhoof
…beyond….BEYOND the hitcap?
/cry
Why, oh why? It’s called a hitCAP for a reason! It’s not a hitRECOMMENDATION. or a hitSUGGESTION.
It’s the CAP
The top!
The end - abandon all hope, ye who enter here!
*rends clothing*
Hunters like that make me cry. *sniff* Yes they do.