Need a holy opinionFollow

He appears to have a tank healing spec as Holy. (13)8 points (in)directly contributing to Gheal which is not a spell that Holy should be relying on for raid healing. If he wants to be a single target healer, then fine. Holy can do the job (although less effectively than disc.)

As far as gemming, 120 points solely into spirit and 20 into crit... The spirit gemming is a common move that can be justified when you are attempting to beef up both SP and regen at the same time. Not bad to supplement gear this way as it is added until you have a better feel for your needs (throughput vs efficiency). However, I disagree with using it as a starting point for gemming strategy. More regen=Int/ Bigger heals=SP. Respect your blue slot bonuses if wanted, using purples and greens. Gem your spirit mixed in with what you really want.

Gear is fine, the hit is a bit discerning until you look where it is located. Shoulder needs to be enchanted, boots have a sub-par enchant, cloak enchant is questionable (again attempting to bolster spirit in an attempt to avoid a decision; While his haste is perhaps overdone at this time, possibly in an effort to utilize pieces for both Shadow and Holy, he should be looking to trade some of the haste gear for crit gear for Holy, until that change happens, the haste enchant on cloak would be wasted.)

EJ thread with very useful food for thought.

I like Renew as Holy for certain healing setups. The more druids there are, the less Renews I cast. It is just another way that priests can utilize their diversity to fill gaps in healing teams.

*edit bad spelling and inferior punctuation is not a bannable offense, I hope.

Edited, Jan 26th 2010 2:03pm by Trylofer

Edited, Jan 26th 2010 2:23pm by Trylofer

Even with all of that spirit stacking, it doesn't amount to much when he doesn't have meditation. He has 166 mana regen while casting. I can see him trying to play the 5SR, or if he is casting and in the 5SR for 90% of the fight, he is running out of mana about 3/4 of the way in, either way I would wager that he is going to be falling on the healing charts.

His intel is fine, but his spell power is extremely low 2490 unbuffed, he should be closer to 2700~2800. His crit is really low too, he needs to boost that more. He should try to get closer to 25%(holy).

As far as his spec, I really don't know what he was going for, to be honest. Trylofer is suggesting a Tank Healing Hybrid, but he is forgoing some extremely valuable talents for some ok talents.

First, lose the point in lightwell. It's a great spell on paper, but not in game. I was in ToC 5 man the other day and the healing priest dropped a lightwell, and I tried to kill it because I thought it was the lightwell that the priestess mob drops. Seriously though, the majority of people in raids have a hard time using their warlock healthstones, it's even more unlikely that they will remember much less move the camera around to try and manually click on a lightwell. That point can go into surge of light.

Silent Resolve is unnecessary. You shouldn't be pulling aggro, if you do, you have fade. If he pulls aggro after fading, then you need better tanks. So he can lose the point in that.

Blessed resilience is next to go. It's nice if you have the points to spec into it, but when compared with what he is losing Imp. Inner Fire & Meditation > BR. Put those points into Imp. Inner Fire and Meditation.

Now is were it gets a little wishy washy. If he is playing more of a tank assistant healing role, then you can afford to lose a few points in empowered renew. Keep 1 point in there for some sort of instant heal, but he will more than likely be casting flash heals most of the time and rather than renew. Use those 2 points to fill up Meditation.

Now desperate prayer is questionable. Some priests will swear buy it. For me personally it's a waste. If it's a wipe I am usually the last to die, if I do die during a raid, it's because I was stunned an unable to heal. With Renew, Bubble, CoH all being instant casts, that are more than enough heals to cast on the go if I am dying from fire and need to stay alive and run at the same time. Not to mention binding heal.

But I won't hold it against him if he wants to keep it, if he doesn't feel the need to keep it, then use that point to go into inner focus. A free casted Divine Hymn is sweet, or a free prayer of healing with 55% crit chance can be pretty sweet in times of need.

His spec should look like this after what I've suggested.

That's a pretty effective all purpose spec.

I would suggest to him switching the spec first, since that's probably going to be the cheapest change, and the biggest impact. Once he does that, he probably will notice his mana efficiency to be extremely high. If you end a fight with +80% mana, then you can afford to lose some efficiency for throughput.

Which then would be gem changes. I would suggest for his current gear, red sockets = spellpower, yellow socket = sp/crit(until he gets about 25% crit, then you can switch to pure int or sp/haste), and blue sp/spirit. Go to the EJ forum for more detail on the value of socket bonuses and when you should and shouldn't match the bonuses.

If, after the spec change and the gem change, he is still finding himself with high mana efficiency and doing more than normal raid healing(especially on festergut), he can switch to a more standard raiding spec.

Something similar to this

Where it gives up some mana efficient talents like Improved Healing, and replaces them with throughput like empowered renew and blessed resilience. Some survival talents thrown in there as well.

That's pretty much it really. I can't make any more suggestions unless I knew what his go to spells were, and even then it's dependant on the raid make-up.

Oh and a quick look at his achievements shows he has only healed the 1st 3 bosses of ICC 10.

Thank you. ^_^

Everything above backs up my main concerns and this gives me a better idea of how to start the conversation with the priest. The last thing I wanted to do was voice my concerns/suggestions and sound like a bossy know it all.

I will work with them on their spec first. We want them as a strong raid healer and that set up may work in the 10s for the first wing of ICC10, but they are going to struggle with mana as we get further in. Hopefully everything else will fall into place after that. Depending on how open they are to the advice maybe the gbank will be willing to help with the regemming. :)

I'll either suggest the second spec Synn listed or maybe thisone. We have tank heals covered with a holy pally and disc priest, I don't see them having a need to cast a single GH. However with their spellpower being low they may need the added boost from EmpH for their FH.

That's a fine spec, there may be some issues with a few encounters, but nothing really major. Just some things to think about.

Fights like Saurfang and Festergut require your ranged to be spread out 12 & 10 yards apart. The second point in Holy Reach may be more valuable than the 10% reduced cost of PoM and PoH(more about PoM since he will be casting that far more often). But like you pointed out, you are worried about the mana and the range may not be an issue at all.

The other thing to consider is the empowered healing. You may want to consider that he has 6 talent points improving his heals. He may want to try to focus more on renew healing(without the glyph) than flash healing. He may be surprised with the results.

Here is our logs from Friday nights ToC25 Twins fight, which is pretty much a pure raid healing fight.
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/iqmwxq18umknz2zy/sum/healingDone/

Renew is my 3rd best spell, which if you add the HoT with the Empowered instant accounted for 25.4% of my healing, just under CoH and PoM.

The point is, if he is investing 6 points into that spell, he may want to use it more often. Also, as long as no one is clipping the HoTs, renew does heal for more than FH. He can and of course should cast FH when health gets to an uncomfortablely low level. Then he probably should get in a nice 7k-10k flash heal to bring them up, but usually I only use FH when surge of light procs.

I kind of got off track with explaining renew. Anyway, if he does find himself comfortable and pleased with using renew over flash heal, I would suggest putting those 3 points into blessed resilience. Emp Healing only increases Flash Heal, considering he should never really have to cast greater heal. Whereas BR gives 3% increased healing to CoH, PoM, Renew, PoH, and FH, basically all of the spells he will be casting 95% of the time.

But like I said, yours is a fine spec, just wanted to bring to attention some things you might want to consider.

Edit: The above link is actually healing for the whole raid, this is for the twins fight:
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/iqmwxq18umknz2zy/sum/healingDone/?s=4287&e=4593
Renew is actually my #1 spell, they just don't combine the instant empowered with the HoT.

Edited, Jan 27th 2010 4:08pm by SynnTastic

Rough math for difference between BR and EH:

Blessed Resilience effect:
(Tooltip amount + (Spellpower * spell coefficient))*BR%
Emp Healing effect:
(Tooltip amount + (Spellpower * spell coefficient*EmpH%))

A list of coefficents is listed on the EJ page linked previously.

To summarize, Fheal's (and Binding Heal's) coeffiecient is 80.7%; or about 16% more of your spellpower will effectively be used with EmpH. At 2500 SP, a Fheal will hit for a base amount 3904-4210. With EmpH it hits for 4308-4614. With BR it hits for 4021-4327. This translates to ~6.9% gain on the the net effect instead of the 17% difference that you may have been expecting.

If we add in other talents like Spiritual Healing's 10%, Fheal hits for 4738-5075 (SoL proc gains an extra 5% from Twin Disciplines, or 4974-5329) with EmpH, and 4423-4759 (SoL: 4644-4997) with BR. Again, ~6.9% more effect. I interpret this as % scaling effects such as Kings will have little effect on the % difference between the two. Linear effects (adding more SP) will produce a % gain, so higher levels of SP gear will gain more from EmpH.

The final clincher for BR is that it affects all of your healing spells and is multiplicative with other factors such as Spiritual Healing, Twin Disciplines, Test of Faith and... Improved Renew. Which leads me to my last point and a comment in the OP. Renew's coefficient is a whopping 188% (216% with fully talented Emp Renew). With that incredible multiplier, many holy priests can forego SP and crit, stack haste and spam the crap out of Renew. Instead of filler, it becomes a go-to spell with PoM and CoH on cd. Pre-emptive healing that druids can provide so well can be duplicated. Don't wait for damage to be done, be proactive. Get yourself some of that wonderful gear out of the ICC 5-mans and create a kit that gives you about 25% haste. SoL procs will be far and few, but you won't need them,

I have seen threads about how holy is getting drowned by druid healers and I say, BAH! Priests do not have to conform to a certain gearing and playstyle. Change it up a bit and allow yourself to meet the challenge instead of merely allowing other healers strength's to dominate you. If you rely on having a druid or shaman to perform that task, then you are no priest in my book! PREESTS 4ever!!! I'M INVINCIBLE!!!

"You're a looney."

I wouldn't suggest her switching up her play style yet. I guess I was just so happy to find her casting PH and CoH instead of playing whack-a-mole with FH and Renew...

I'm working with her on her spec tonight (gah >.< no meditation...) then I will go over the basics before pulling her into ICC10. PoM is at the top of the list, but I don't want to overload her. Just give her some guidance and see if she works towards improving herself.

Thanks for breaking everything down. There is a reason I went for a degree in sociology and not math... Not that sociology is math free, but I was always happy to compile the research and leave the charts/numbers to the people in the group who actually enjoy them.