3.1 Talent Build, What's Yours?Follow

Yeah, I put it in enlightenment just because of the little bit of haste.

Oh, and I love the crit chance on multiple targets with the Inner Focus (+25% added to your regular crit) / Prayer of Healing combo. Those are hotkeyed to my F4,F5 for rapid deployment.

Edited, Mar 3rd 2009 10:02am by dadanox

That's what I thought before I realized that Reflective Shield only works if you shield yourself and the mobs are hitting you.

And no Aspiration in a Penance build? Go shame yourself!

Bah, disregard. Okay, swap Aspiration for Reflective Shield. *grumbles grumpily*

On the plus side, between Aspiration and the new Penance glyph, the game's best healing spell will be on a six second cooldown. That's nice. So my glyph lineup will be focused on three of the spells I cast most-- Shield, Flash, and Penance. (This is from a raiding perspective; in five- and ten-mans GHeal is far more important than Flash.)

I've just been used to not taking Aspiration, maybe that had something to do with it.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuZcxtccMqiu0euVo

Holy build with focus on raid-healing + lightwell

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhhVRIsffRt0xtc

Discipline build with focus on MT healing

Those are the 2 that I probably will have in my dual-specc setup.

Ooh, they made Mental agility 3 points.

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=0503203133300512031323231251235001030000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000&glyph=120906030206&version=9658
That'll be it. They removed so much bloat out of the disc tree that for the first time in WoW history I have a spec in which I have every talent I want. I'll also be able to drop the Flash Heal glyph thanks to the talent, so I'm replacing that with the Mass Dispel glyph. -65% mana cost on a spell I use that often is seriously nice.

Also, I'm thinking we're going to see a lot of this around.

Holy seems like it's no longer my thing; I love Guardian Spirit but I'd be too restricted in the tree if I wanted to pick up Mental Agility for CoH. I did take a stab at making a holy PvP tree. It seems holy PvP right now relies heavily on Renew and ProM. What I've build here I'm thinking to be far from viable, but the start is definitely there.

I like some of the changes you've made (including imp mana burn for example), but I think the lack of emphasis on ProM is going to bite you in the *** with a build like that; as Holy, it's basically your only decent instant spell. Getting 3 seconds of that CD really matters, I think. I'm actually not too worried about efficiency - if you pick up imp mana burn you'll be able to outlast most other healers anyway, and Holy Concentration should proc often enough as well.

Edited, Mar 12th 2009 8:19pm by Mozared

Moza, I'm surprised you chose Desperate Prayer and Improved Renew in a PvE build while skipping Enlightenment. In my experience, I don't live long enough for Desperate Prayer to be worth it... lots of other tools to survive casual attacks, and you won't survive serious attacks regardless. As for Improved Renew, maybe it's just me, but I find myself using that spell less and less. It's probably a function of the current version of Rapture.

However, I also still have Divine Fury, and with the potential in 3.1 to get Penance down to a six-second cooldown that might be useless, too.

I noticed the new Patch notes don't say one whit about Rapture.
I keep hearing rumors about them taking a back-peddle on the change.
Which I sincerely hope is true.




I agree with the idea that Renew is under appreciated, Moz.

Although I'm not so sure about that Rapture > Renew assessment in regards to Mana. Penance is just mana-licious all around, so I think you're right as far as that. Also, I deeply fear Penance math, for it dwells in the dark realm of Statistics and Probability, and eats lesser number nerds for breakfast.

But Flash Heal!
I think that's a more questionable cookie that I can comfortably tackle.



As far as I understand the situation;




Rapture makes Flash Heal return 2.5% a mana pool - for all intents and purposes making Flash Heal only really cost 15.5% a mana pool. This is a generous estimate. Rapture only returns up to 2.5% of a mana pool based on the amount healed. According to Elitist Jerk's Rapture Spreadsheet currently Greater Heal is the only spell in the Disc ******* that can graze that 2.5% ceiling. But it has to stand on it's tippy toes and hop around a little, at a whopping 10k HP. Realistically Flash heal will never get the full 2.5% benefit, but for the sake of a good argument I'll give it.


On the surface
Flash Heal's 15.5% cost for 1887 to 2193 HP is much better than Renew's 17% cost for 1400 HP.

So let's throw those spellpower coefficients into the mix with a theoretical 1800 SP:



Yowza.

So with 1800 Spell Power;
Flash Heal's 15.5% cost for 3327 to 3633 Hp is less than Renew's 17% cost for 4784 HP.

Even at a modest 1000 Spell Power we're looking at;
Flash heal's 15.5% cost for 2687 to 2993 HP is less than Renew's 17% cost for 3320 HP.


Practically speaking, Renew is a more mana efficient heal than Flash Heal with Rapture. And I didn't even touch the Improved Renew talent with a 10 foot pole.

Then it becomes a battle of the little things.
Critical Hit is in Flash Heal's corner, and while Rapture nullifies that advantage a bit by turning a blind eye to Overhealing, there's always Critical Hit's back-up buddy Grace. But Grace has got to contend with Renew's HOT status, meaning he rides the threat meter low and works when your occupied elsewhere. But oh, but oh, we're at the precipice of the slippery slope into the dark realm of Statistics and Probability at this point, so given my lesser number nerd status I'll leave my argument here and let you good folks make the judgment call for yourself.


Sufficed to say, Renew really is under appreciated.
And I take the Improved Renew talent.


Edited, Mar 13th 2009 2:33am by Zemzelette

You're forgetting to calculate something very important. Glyphs and Talents.

Original Spell costs 18% base mana
Imp Flash Heal reduces the cost by 15% (new talent)
Glyph of Flash heal reduces the cost by 10%

I'm not positive exactly hwo it works (if the % are added together then reduced or if the cost is reduced one by one) so I will use both examples, just to cover my bases.

Pretending you have an 8k base mana pool, flash heal will cost 1440 unglyphed and untalented.

Now assuming the % reduction is added together then taken from the cost of the spell, with both glyph and talent You are looking at a reduction in cost of 360 mana, or in other words the new cost of Flash Heal is 13.5% Base Mana.

Assuming the cost reduced if first reduced by the talent and then by the glyph, we have an initial reduction in cost of 216, making FH cost 1224. Then we reduce the cost from the glyph by 122, which makes the end cost of FH 1102, or 13.78% of base mana.

I'm not sure how the % reductions are reduced, but work with either a 13.5% or 13.78% mana cost and then factor in the mana return of rapture and it's a whole new story.

;p We sort of put ourselves on apples to oranges with that one.
Here I am calculating for the now (Rapture), and you calculate for the future (Improved Flash Heal).

But it's interesting point all the same. Lemme' toy with it. :3

Full Improved Renew vs. Full Improved Flash Heal Talent + Flash Heal Glyph + Receiving the Full Rapture Benefit + Assuming best case scenario for the percent reduction (13.5%) all being done through a priest with 1800 Spellpower (so I can just use old numbers >.>)

Flash Heal ends up costing 11% of a mana pool and outputting 3327 to 3633.

Renew ends up costing 17% of a mana pool and outputting 5501.



To help put this into perspective, we'll take the 8k mana pool.

Flash heal ends up costing 880 mana making it a 1 : 3.78 to 1 : 4.12 mana:heal ratio

Renew ends up costing 1360 mana making it a 1 : 4.04 mana:heal ratio



So assuming we get to keep Rapture (::crosses fingers:::), assuming Flash heal got Rapture's full benefit, assuming no critical heals, assuming you have the flash heal glyph and assuming you've taken the full flash heal talent...Improved Renew and Flash Heal are just about Even.



Edited, Mar 17th 2009 2:07pm by Zemzelette

Okay, here's my PVE spec. Notice something weird? Yes, Improved Flash Heal is an amazing talent...but with a 6-second Penance cooldown, I'm skipping it, and the flash heal glyph.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhhVRIoffktfg0cc

And PVP spec: will have to test it out. Made some hard decisions, fear I'll miss my dispel buffers martyrdom, blessed recovery and inspiration.

http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bxIbuhGiRIoffktbAz

Yeah I was just making sure my math is correct.


As far as scaling goes though, Emp Renews HoT will realistically never scale enough to surpass the 5% of Imp Renew. But Emp renew does increase total healing more than Imp renew simply because of the instant heal added to it.

So in the end, when deciding which talent to go with, it comes down to how you use renew. My renew tends to get cast on the tank nearly every time. If I would guess I would say 3% of my renew casts are on a DPS who would benefit from the instant heal to make it more worthwhile than Imp. But that's my circumstance now, if it changes and I find myself renewing DPS more, then there is no doubt I will switch talents and take Emp renew.

Why does everyone ignore silent resolve? I would think that it would make it significantly less likely that you would aggro.