QQ: Disc or Holy

About two months ago we had the big nerf to penance.  I’m still recovering QQ’ing about that.  I still find myself hitting penance with a second or two left on the cool down.  It’s only killed a few people but for some reason I’m just not adjusting to the change.

Gear for Two Jobs

I remember being so happy when dual specilizations where announced.  I thought, now I can heal for everything and when I’m solo’ing I can switch to shadow pwn.  And that’s how it was for quite awhile.

Then the summer came along and started eating my healers.  I suddenly found myself without a variety of healers and having lots of single target disc priests…. I never thought I’d see the day when disc was so popular.  Don’t get me wrong, disc healers are okay at raid healing but they just don’t cut it if thats all you have.  A resto druid, holy priest, or a resto shaman will easily compliment a disc priest and get the job done.  But we didn’t have that.

I decided I’d drop my silly shadow spec (*cry*) and pickup holy as an off spec.  The last time I was really holy was preCOH nerf, how much could it have changed?!

A lot.

The changes to renew are pretty awesome, I found myself putting it on the same hotkey that I used for shielding as disc.  They filled about the same roll for what I needed done.  COH was bound to the penance key so I was hitting it on cooldown.

I don’t really like holy, it doesn’t feel as comfortable (or forgiving) as disc but it isn’t bad.  The problem though is that the gear is so significantly different.  I find myself going OOM far faster as holy than as disc, simply because my spirit isn’t where it should be.

I picked up the 100 spirit trinket from Ulduar 10 and it helps quite a bit (especially with the reduced mana cost).  I’m considering turning in my triumph badges for t9 and socketing it with purified dreadstones (spell power / spirit) gems.  /shrug

My disc gear would probably translate a little better as well if I switched it to spell power gems instead of my intellect heavy stuff.  I don’t really want to though.  Holy is kind of like the dark side to me, I don’t want to go to far or I might not come back!

Another weird thing I’ve noticed with holy is that the meters certainly say I’m healing for a fuckton… but I don’t feel like I am.  I think its simply because of the way COH works with its lots of healing spread out so you don’t see its effect as much.  And things like renew getting a few ticks in (my renew was ticking for like 2500 in a raid… thats insane!) which adds up quite a bit.  Peeps are living better now though, so it must be working.

/shrug

Have a great Sunday everyone!

HOLY rubber ducky batman!

Burnout = Change

I’ve started several drafts, some of them being the same and quickly abandoned them.  I’m fighting a major case of burnout with WoW at the moment.  My main form of entertainment, raiding, is on farm.  Our recent conquering of Sartharion +3 has left us with nothing but achievements to work on.

I hate achievements.

Luckily for me we’ve decided not to waste time trying to do them now.  No one wants to spend 4hrs in Naxx25 trying to get achievements when we could full clear it in under 3.  Sydera at World of Matticus sums it up much better in this post.

This has left me with a ‘what to do’ feeling.  I’ve scoured the sites looking at 3.1 information, mainly loot and how pretty it looks.  I’ve read up on some of the bosses trying to get a feel for them and even watched a few of the live streams, which is pretty awesome to watch.

I’ve also been heavily contemplating going back to Holy.  I enjoyed Discipline, it was fun, but I like healing the raid.  Holy does that far more efficiently than Disicipline does now and my first love, Renew, is getting an amazing talent upgrade  (Empowered Renew 3/3: Your Renew spells gain an additional 15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew spell will instantly heal the target for 15% of the total periodic effect).  That’s pretty sweet.

I have an older copy of my toon on the test server (he’s missing some of my most recent upgrades) and logged him in to check out the possibilities of going Holy again.  The changes in the way each spec works is a great time to rethink my priorities, which is raid healing and to focus my spec more on that.

MMO-Champion.com has an update to talent calculator HERE that allows you to see the changes of 3.1.  Using that talent calculator I’ve come up with this rough Holy spec.  It’s untested and will require some testing tweeks but that will happen when 3.1 rolls out.  Some of the reasons I chose certain things over others…..

Soul Warding > Guardian Spirit:  It took awhile, but I got used to using Pain Suppression on tanks as an oh shit button.  I can easily see Guardian Spirit replacing that, but I’m not tank healing anymore.  I’m raid healing.  Being able to spam PW:S, also at a 30% reduced mana cost, will be extremely helpful I think.  Much more helpful than being able to save someone roughly every 3 minutes.

Blessed Resilience(BR) 3/3 instead of Divine Providence(DP) 5/5 (4/5 atm):  Blessed Resilience used to be a PvP talent that used to reduce your ability to get crit, it now also increases your healing by 1% per point.  Divine Providence increases healing of POH, POM, COH, Binding, Holy Nova, and Divine Hymn by 2%.  Its a tough call whether to have 1% to all my spells or 2% to specific spells.  I’ll have to review my WWS post 3.1 to see if I should be switching that 1 point, but for now I think the increase to Greater Heal and Renew is worth it.

Blessed Resilience > Surge of Light(SoL)?:  I struggled with this one.  COH almost guarantees an SoL proc (or it used to, haven’t had these talents in awhile).  While I would need an addon so that I could pay attention to my SoL proc its a free instant Flash Heal that could be worth it.  I think this choice is going to effected a lot by what my main heals turn out to be.  If I endup moving 1 point out of BR then it is likely I will drop it and pickup SoL.

A big change to the Holy tree is how Holy Concentration works.  Holy Concentration now increases your mana regen from spirit by 50% for 8 seconds after critically healing with a Flash, G.Heal, Binding, or Renew.  Even with the nerfs to spirit mana regen I expect this talent to significantly outshine the mana return that Discipline is getting.

Another interesting talent is Body & Soul 2/2, when you PW:S someone their movement speed increases by 60% for 4 seconds and when you cast Abolish Disease on yourself it has a 100% chance to also cure a poison effect.  An awesome PvP talent change, just in a spot I would consider horrible.  It is deep in the Holy tree and we all know that if you are PvP’ing, you are Discipline.  Granted, I don’t PvP much but I don’t think Holy has what it takes to work in an Arena setting.

I’ve rambled enough today, again sorry for my delays in postings to those who are still sticking around to read me =)

3.0.8 Live

And Ghostcrawler said let there be a 6 second cooldown on circle of healing.

And there was.

In all reality its not as big game changing omg the world is ending as people thought it was.  I did Naxx25 tonight on my resto shaman and was pleasantly suprised when I found I had something to do.  On to the important stuff though!

• Abolish Disease and Cure Disease can now be cast while in Shadowform.
• Holy: Circle of Healing now has a 6 second cooldown.
• Levitate is now castable on others.
• Mana Burn: Now burns a percentage of maximum mana.
• Shadow
  • Shadowform: You can now shift into Shadowform while mounted or sitting.
  • Vampiric Embrace- Mana cost of this spell has been removed.

• Dispersion: This ability can no longer be cast while affected by Cyclone; doing so consumed the cooldown to no effect.
• Guardian Spirit: It is no longer possible for simultaneous killing blows to trigger the heal from this ability multiple times.
• Improved Holy Concentration: The tooltip has been rewritten to indicate that this talent reduces cast time rather than providing haste.
• Mind Flay: Fixed a bug with targeting where you would not deal damage if not facing the target while channeling. Also corrected an issue where the damage from this ability was slightly delayed.
• Prayer of Mending: Will now only benefit from the healing talents of the priest who cast the original spell.
• Rapture: This talent will now correctly return mana for Power Word: Shield based on the caster’s mana poll instead of the target’s mana pool.
• Shadow Weaving: Shadow Word: Death: Will now only apply one copy of this buff per cast.
• Shadow Word: Pain now will gain the correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target.
• Surge of Light: Prayer of Mending will no longer sometimes cause Surge of Light to trigger on Priests who do not have that talent.
• Twisted Faith: This talent will no longer sometimes cause Shadow Word: Pain to fail due to a more powerful spell being in effect.

Glyph Changes:

• Glyph of Spirit Redemption – Increases the duration of Spirit of Redemption by 6 seconds. (Old – All heals cast while Spirit of Redemption is active have a 20% chance to increase the remaining duration of Spirit of Redemption by 4sec.
• Glyph of Dispel Magic — Your Dispel Magic spell also heals your target for 3% of maximum health. (Down from 6%)
• Glyph of Mind Flay — Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but it only reduces the target’s movement speed by 10%. (Old – No longer reduced target’s movement speed)

A lot of shit in there that I don’t really care about… the shadow priest changes, don’t care.  Its fun for solo’ing but raiding it kinna blows chunks (but that doesn’t mean I don’t love my shadow priests friends)!  Things I want to hit on though…

1. Glyph of Spirit of Redemption change was a suprise from my point of view.  One of my guildies swore by it though and I do remember her turning into a ghost and staying that way for quite awhile.  I had imagined it being quite overpowered with the ability to just spam circles.  I wish I had a chance to try it out before the nerf, it must have been OP.
2. Rapture fix… hawt dam.  On Patchwerk this past weekend I regen’d 32,000 mana from rapture alone.  Thats F’ing hawt.  It would have been even better had I regen’d mana from those bubbles as well.  I’m excited to see this weekends WWS reports to find out just how major the regen is from the shields.  I was just a bit shy of 29,000 mana pool this weekend and I got a few upgrades so we’ll see how it goes.

I’m still not using Penance as much as you should be.  I think you are supposed to use it every cooldown whereas I’m using it as more of a panic button.  I’ll do a shield on someone, usually the MT and then do a borrowed time penance on someone.  Penance doesn’t consume borrowed time so I still have the haste and can follow up with a greater heal on the main tank.

LIVE BLOGGING:  I’m in heroic halls of stone at the moment.  I’m using an addon called Eavesdrop that allows me to see mana gains and such.  I’ve been using power word shield on my tank (a paladin with 5569 mana pool) and my PWS absorbs around 4500 damage.  This is only returning about 100 mana for a full use of the shield… that seems rather insignificant.  I thought that it might still be bugged (using the users mana pool numbers or w/e, cuz I’m using a paladin tank atm).  I had him put on some of his healy gear, increased his mana around 2k and saw no change in the gain from Rapture on using PWS.  I was hoping for bigger numbers, maybe when my mana pool is back at 29k for the raids.  /shrug

Day After 3.0.8 EDIT:  Checked the healing forums this morning to find a confirmation from other priests that rapture wasn’t fixed.  The only reason I was seeing any mana return was because my tank was a paladin.  Priests have become severly bugged from what I’ve read.  COH is having issues on Malygos, saying it is an invalid target for a lot of priests, even when cast on themselves.  Many priests are seeing the same issue on Malygos Vortex with other instant cast spells (renew, POM, PWS).  Some priests are having issues with attempting to refresh POM.  It is telling them that a more powerful spell is active.  I had that issue with PWS in my 5man last night.  It wouldn’t allow me to refresh it until it had completely worn off or been used.  It is also absorbing less damage then it was prepatch.  Yea for patch day.