+Healing versus int/spirit

[Jeniwyn]

I'd say that in general while leveling the +healing helm is alot better. The reason behind it is that you rarely have the luxury to drink to full between the pulls and that trash is the real meat of the dungeons unlike most raids.

Id like to amend my answer with the following caveat though. If the answer is allowed, you should really keep both and switch between the two. I posted about this method in the priest BiS thread and it actually applies even more while leveling than it does at 60. If you feel confident about addon usage I'd give it a try.

[krarox]

HI!

Great answers, and one important question then probably is, how long fights actually take in general, to determine what to use and when. Bosses i guess take several minutes, but i have a sneaky suspicion that even semihard pulls actually take 3-5 mins or something even if it feels like they go pretty fast. But im only 54 so i dont know for sure?

Best regards

[Ana]

The big pulls in UBRS (5+ mobs) usually take around a minute and a half, or less. You can gauge it somewhat accurately by checking if, and how often, CC targets need to be CCed again. Sheep is a good indicator.

[Armilus]

Some people have calculated that for shorter fights (2-3 min), int is worth 2.3 times more than healing. And since almost every fight before BWL is under 3 minutes...yeah.

Don't know why people keep pushing this "healing is the absolute best stat, way better than int" thing, it's kinda wrong. If you ignore int and stack healing to downrank, you're just offsetting the inevitable lack of max mana to do the same amount of healing.

Well, no not really.

With no +healing each rank of your healing spells has roughly the same health per mana. As you add +healing the mana cost per HP healed goes down way faster on lower ranks. This is because of the total amount healed by the spell, a certain percentage is base healing and the rest is from your +heal. The base healing costs mana and the health from +healing is free. Lower ranked spells have a smaller percentage of total healing that is from the base healing so their health per mana goes up way faster.

You also have to consider that int adds a limited resource where as +heal is applied to every cast for free. That means +heal stacks with mana regen where as int does not.

If you are looking at only casting 1 heal for an entire fight, then yes they are about equal. If you want to spam healing on the tank for the entire fight then int is not going to help you.

Most people focus on over healing and healing meters WAY too much. The leading cause of tank death is not healers running out of mana or not landing big enough heals, it's heals not landing at the right time. If your are healing a tank and you don't run out of mana then it really really does not matter how much you over heal. When you are looking at spamming heals for the longest amount of time possible you are always going to be using your lowest rank heal unless it's a really short fight.

Here's the mana cost per second of spamming various ranks of heals:
Heal (Rank 1): 53
Heal (Rank 2): 70
Heal (Rank 3): 87
Heal (Rank 4): 104
GHeal (Rank 1): 126
GHeal (Rank 2): 155
GHeal (Rank 3): 185
GHeal (Rank 4): 223

Notice that the mana cost per second goes up by 17 for each rank of Heal but for GHeal it's a jump of 29, 30, 38.

With my current gear I can spam heal rank 2 for about 110s without using any potions and without raid buffs (that is including regen). For rank 3 I can only spam for about 80s. If I want to up-rank to Heal Rank 3 I need another 30 seconds of mana and Heal Rank 3 uses 87 mana per second, so that is 2610 mana or 174 int. If I need to spam heals for as long as possible, ranking up is not an option.

Another thing to consider is mana regen. It doesn't matter what rank of spell you are spamming, your mana regen is going to be the same. If you regen 14 mana per second (about what I have now) that extends the time that you can spam Heal Rank 2 by WAY more than it extends the time of a higher rank. This is because the ratio between your mana regen per second and your mana usage per second is way lower than for a higher rank spell.

In short, on any fight where mana is actually an issue (i.e. not a short fight) then using your lowest rank spell is always best because you don't have to cancel heals and your raid is landing heals on the tank WAY more often so the tank doesn't die. +heal also happens to scale with lower rank spells way better than higher rank spells and the same goes for mana regen.

The theory crafters are not taking into account factors like the frequency of heals landing on a tank or the increased impact of mana regen on lower rank spells when they come up with numbers like 1 int = 2.3 +heal.

The great thing about +heal is that you can still up-rank on shorter fights, you are just going from heal rank 2 to heal rank 3 instead of heal rank 4 to gheal rank 1.

Blizzard also did not itemize gear with the 1int = 2.3 +heal ratio.

Boots of Pure Thought (Item level 70):
12int = 27.86
12spi = 9.93
62 healing = 62

Total: 99.79

Boots of Transcendence (Item level 76):
17int = 39.47
17spi = 14.07
35 healing = 35

Total: 88.5375

Even in a short fight, the gear with max +heal on it comes out ahead because blizzard valued int as much lower than 2.322 +heal.

Edit: I should also add that on trash pulls which is most of a raid you are way better off with +heal over int because you will need to drink WAY less. If you stack +heal you spam lower rank spells even on trash and there are enough short breaks that you never need to stop and drink.

[PriestInOurTime]

Mindlessly spamming Heal Rank 2 on the tank without aborting is just such a terrible approach to healing. If you are going to play like that at least play a paladin, they do that stuff way better.

[Armilus]

Mindlessly spamming Heal Rank 2 on the tank without aborting is just such a terrible approach to healing. If you are going to play like that at least play a paladin, they do that stuff way better.

I agree 100%. You should absolutely be using shield, flash heal, gheal rank 4 and prayer of healing (preferably with inner focus) as needed. I didn't say anything about mindlessly spamming it, I said don't cancel your heals, there is a big difference. Either the tank isn't being hit that hard, in which case you should only start casting when it will likely be needed by the time the cast ends; or the tank is taking lots of damage and there is a good chance they will die because you cancelled a heal 0.1s before they were hit hard.

[Jeniwyn]

I said don't cancel your heals

That is some pretty horrible advice. Heals that are not needed should in general certainly be canceled, that is mana saved for another heal later that actually will be needed.

[Armilus]

I said don't cancel your heals

That is some pretty horrible advice. Heals that are not needed should in general certainly be canceled, that is mana saved for another heal later that actually will be needed.

That's the whole point... you plan for the length of the fight in advance. You don't have to worry about wasting mana because you already know you will have more than enough for the entire duration of the fight.

When you are cancelling heals you can't cancel the heal 0.01s before it goes off, that's impossible. Latency, human reaction time, etc. adds up to at least 300-400ms. That means on a 2.5s cast, you have to cancel at 2.1s or maybe 2.3 at best if you have very low latency and VERY fast reaction time. So at best 8% of the time the tank will be hit between when you cancelled your heal and when it went off but this value is realistically more like 16%.

If you are cancelling your heals then 16% of the time you will cancel when you would have been better off not cancelling the heal.

Look at all the possible scenarios:
Tank is hit when you just started casting.
Tank is hit when you are 0.1 seconds into your cast.
Tank is hit when you are 0.2 seconds into your cast.
...
Tank is hit when you are 2.2 seconds into your cast.
Tank is hit when you are 2.3 seconds into your cast.
Tank is hit when you are 2.4 seconds into your cast.

The BEST case scenario for keeping a tank alive is that last one, when your heal lands 0.1 seconds after the tank is hit. The next best scenario is when your heal lands 0.2 seconds after the tank is hit.

The WORST case scenario for keeping a tank alive is when they are hit either just as you start casting or just before you start casting.

When you cancel your heals you are making it impossible to get the 8-15% BEST outcomes and shifting that probability directly to the WORST case scenario.

Please explain to my why it is horrible advice to say that you should not make it impossible to get the best 15% of results in favor of having a 15% chance to get the worst result?

If your argument is mana, then explain to me how having extra mana sitting in your mana bar at the end of the fight keeps the tank alive.

[Jeniwyn]

It is fairly simple. The argument is indeed resources. The size of the heals that you cast can go up significantly if you cancel-cast your heals. In your scenario, where you seem to be afraid of the tank going from full hp to zero, casting bigger heals would certainly be more helpful than every now and then managing to land a small slow cast heal spot on after a hit.

There are times where accepting pure overheal and not canceling is reasonable, but those situations are the exceptions, not the rule. Generally when the tank is or will be subject to some nasty debuff this might be wise. In those situations I'd also strongly advise heals with significantly higher hps than heal 2.

[imabaer]

That's the whole point... you plan for the length of the fight in advance. You don't have to worry about wasting mana because you already know you will have more than enough for the entire duration of the fight.

...what? No, that's not the way progression fights work. Things happen. People coordinate poorly for a few seconds, DPS take damage or die on accident, you get hit with a debuff at exactly the wrong time. There's a reason you always carry mana potions with you. Mana is always important, because you don't ever know 100% what is going to happen.

Any fight where you're not worried about mana is a fight that you're overgeared for, meaning you generally have the content on farm. And if you have the content on farm, you can heal just about however you want to heal. Also, you're a priest. You are THE most versatile healing class in vanilla, bar none. Your schtick is having more options, sometimes at the cost of mana.

When you are cancelling heals you can't cancel the heal 0.01s before it goes off, that's impossible. Latency, human reaction time, etc. adds up to at least 300-400ms. That means on a 2.5s cast, you have to cancel at 2.1s or maybe 2.3 at best if you have very low latency and VERY fast reaction time. So at best 8% of the time the tank will be hit between when you cancelled your heal and when it went off but this value is realistically more like 16%.

If you are cancelling your heals then 16% of the time you will cancel when you would have been better off not cancelling the heal.

Look at all the possible scenarios:
Tank is hit when you just started casting.
Tank is hit when you are 0.1 seconds into your cast.
Tank is hit when you are 0.2 seconds into your cast.
...
Tank is hit when you are 2.2 seconds into your cast.
Tank is hit when you are 2.3 seconds into your cast.
Tank is hit when you are 2.4 seconds into your cast.

The BEST case scenario for keeping a tank alive is that last one, when your heal lands 0.1 seconds after the tank is hit. The next best scenario is when your heal lands 0.2 seconds after the tank is hit.

The WORST case scenario for keeping a tank alive is when they are hit either just as you start casting or just before you start casting.

When you cancel your heals you are making it impossible to get the 8-15% BEST outcomes and shifting that probability directly to the WORST case scenario.

Please explain to my why it is horrible advice to say that you should not make it impossible to get the best 15% of results in favor of having a 15% chance to get the worst result?

If your argument is mana, then explain to me how having extra mana sitting in your mana bar at the end of the fight keeps the tank alive.

You are over complicating things.

A dedicated main tank healer is generally going to want to be ready for spike damage. Consistent damage that a spammed deranked heal will be able to handle isn't generally going to be what kills your tank, especially if the healers are using HoTs. It's the unexpected chunks of damage that do so.

GCD is 1.5 seconds. Ideally, you want to cancel anytime after that and, depending on latency, before you hit 2.1-2.3, and immediately start recasting a heal after that. Short of refreshing a HoT or using another instant, your medium-large heal is constantly in a state of having its cast time reduced by 0-2.0 seconds, so if the tank spikes, you're ready for it. If you're going to overheal by a lot, you make a judgment call based on how the fight has been going.

As a plus, this maximizes your time out of the 5SR. Until the cast finishes, you don't actually enter it.

Cast cancelling gives you better burst healing and more regen time. It's not the only technique you should be using, but it's a very, very useful one that you should be exploiting.