Best Holy Talent Spec

[Jeniwyn]

Something is badly wrong with your raid if you constantly use PoH and it's actually needed. I use it at Vael only and with Inner Focus on those rare "OH SHIT" moments when my group has taken serious damage. Meaning I cast it once or twice per raid.

I'd be willing to bet that rather than there being a serious problem with our raids, you are missing truckloads of situations where PoH would be the best spell to cast.

[Garfunkel]

That's of course possible. Obviously I'm speaking only of my own experience from Blacklisted, but it's a pretty rare situation where the entire group where I am placed takes significant damage AND the rest of the raid is also sufficiently hurt so that throwing a PoH is worth the time and mana. If you got a lot of raiders getting hurt all the time, it might not be the fault of the healers but stupid people standing in a rain of fire or remaining in cleave zone or something like that.

[Jeniwyn]

I think that you vastly overestimate how bad the situation must be for PoH to be the best spell.

[Ana]

PoH is best when you don't overheal half of it.
You will generally overheal half of it unless paladins are bad (or extremely busy elsewhere).

[Imbaslap]

I wouldn't downplay holy nova. it is our only instant heal +party heal nearby when we are flying in mid air (surgers for example)
outside of desperate prayer, I like having an instant cast aoe damage/heal ability. my preference though.

spirit of redemption rarely comes into use in raids. better off ignoring it unless you have a low survivability rate in raids.

if you're an undergeared or t1 geared priest. go for the 10% max mana talent over the +heal. it may help your ability to heal longer.
in full bwl gear, I am close to 9500 mana without distilled wisdom on. this is where you would choose more +heal in holy over the max mana talent.

(the scaling of the +heal talent is directly proportional to how much +heal you have.) 10% wont give much fluff if you barely have any at the start of raiding. its best to switch to it once you have a good amount of +healing and gear.


also curious as to the effectiveness of Lightwell.

[res]

Lightwell doesn't scale with healing, is interrupted on receiving damage, has a 10 minute cooldown, and requires DPS to do something else than look at damagemeters (when I tested it during one week of raiding in almost all cases most of the charges were used up by a single person because people tend to click more than once on the lightwell to make sure they get the buff, using up several charges).

It might be decent when you're a fresh 60 but it becomes deprecated quickly because it doesn't scale at all, but from my experience putting down a lightwell will lead to a general increase in happiness because all the other priests and melee will laugh at you on teamspeak when you use it.

Edit:
Regarding Prayer of Healing, this must obviously have to do with how you organize the raid, for example my guild usually runs a set-up similar to this (not on vael):



But I'm guessing the people who say they use prayer of healing all the time probably run a setup more similar to what we use on vael, which would be more optimized for priest/druid group healing:



The raid set-up can have a big impact on healer (priest) performance and not just for DPS, which is probably overlooked by a lot of groups (like mine) who just bunch all the healers together.

[Jeniwyn]

But I'm guessing the people who say they use prayer of healing all the time probably run a setup more similar to what we use on vael, which would be more optimized for priest/druid group healing:



The raid set-up can have a big impact on healer (priest) performance and not just for DPS, which is probably overlooked by a lot of groups (like mine) who just bunch all the healers together.

Yes, that looks a lot like our raids.

You should probably tell them to stop overlooking that. My approach to maximizing healing output comes from the retail mentality of doing that in order to eventually cut healers and bring more dps, but even if you don't have that aim helping the healers you have heal more and faster should always be a good thing.

If this really is rare, that might go a long way to explain why Beetite and I (and Donerra catching up as he gets gear) are so high on the Raidstats lists. I must say that I didn't expect that many other guilds made things hard for their priests for no good reason. If you set it up like that for Vael, why would you ever change it back to something worse? Slightly mind-boggling.

[res]

If you set it up like that for Vael, why would you ever change it back to something worse? Slightly mind-boggling.

It's the melee dps groups being vocal - we usually only run with 2 hunters so that would be 2 more melee dps without the hunter buffs if we moved priests in there.

However, by optimizing healers like this you could probably cut a healer or two and replace them with DPS which would increase the overall damage done.
The problem with this is if you already have well established healers and everyone is friends, preforming well and getting along it can be problematic to change the raid line-up.

So in short:

Change would lead to increased performance but also replacing well established players because of their roles. This could be solved by having the healers re-roll DPS but the overall problem I think, at least in my groups case, is that change would lead to unnecessary tension within the group (both for melee and healers) so optimizing could prove decremental to the guild ("If it's not broken don't fix it").

Will try to change line-up during our next raid, but would be safer to do with new content update so you can further justify changes (like AQ).

[Imbaslap]

Lightwell doesn't scale with healing, is interrupted on receiving damage, has a 10 minute cooldown, and requires DPS to do something else than look at damagemeters (when I tested it during one week of raiding in almost all cases most of the charges were used up by a single person because people tend to click more than once on the lightwell to make sure they get the buff, using up several charges).

It might be decent when you're a fresh 60 but it becomes deprecated quickly because it doesn't scale at all, but from my experience putting down a lightwell will lead to a general increase in happiness because all the other priests and melee will laugh at you on teamspeak when you use it.

Edit:
Regarding Prayer of Healing, this must obviously have to do with how you organize the raid, for example my guild usually runs a set-up similar to this (not on vael):



But I'm guessing the people who say they use prayer of healing all the time probably run a setup more similar to what we use on vael, which would be more optimized for priest/druid group healing:



The raid set-up can have a big impact on healer (priest) performance and not just for DPS, which is probably overlooked by a lot of groups (like mine) who just bunch all the healers together.

I feel bad when I see the first picture a lot on twitch streams.. it just shows that correct raid composition and grouping of the classes are lacking in leadership roles. that or a lack of knowledge of other classes while being in a leadership role.

doesn't take more than 15s to move correct classes around before a boss and after.

[Ayag]

I don't believe there is one "best" spec and I usually swap between those three, mainly to test them and to vary a bit

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bxRhsVVoZrxxcc0V

26/25, the mana pool is pretty handy for trash-healing and as a personal preference I enjoy having a huge manapool.

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bxRhsV0oZrxxcc0Vx

Classic 21/30. Not much to explain, it is the most balanced healing spec.

http://db.vanillagaming.org/?talent#bxrhsZfxtccMqx

16/35, this one might actually be the "best" healing spec but it requires you to work with your fellow priests to ensure enough can buff spirit. The idea there is to get rid of -10% mana on cast which, while being a good talent, is not essential.

In the first two speccs, you are free to remove 1 point in Spiritual Healing to get Spirit of Redemption. While often an overlooked talent, I do think it has his uses, especially on progression. It won't happen often, but it could break or make a fight, and overall if you can help people stay alive longer, this is what you kinda need in progression.

If you find yourself dying often, I would consider moving 3/3 imp shield over the reduced threat (if you are horde obviously). This is not "better" but if you aggro less than your fellow healers, you might less die. Kind of a selfish PoV I am aware of that, but while you get warmed up to raid dynamics etc. it can definitely be helpful.

I've seen arguments over PoH. Well, you don't use that often but I think this is a really useful spell and validate the 16/35 spec. There is quite some situations where PoH becomes relevant (Huhuran's enrage, Anubisath Guardians in AQ20/40, poison bolts volley affecting the whole raid meaning your party can all lose 600-1200 HP, etc.).

I quite can't be sure how you can reach 9500 mana with full T2 without a flask. Are you alliance ? Doubt BoK would push you that far but it definitely helps.