Holy Priest BiS

[starshards]

Thanks for putting this together.

Just fyi Enchanted Gold Bloodrobe is a warlock only quest reward, not that it was near the top.

[Macalister]

I just have a question on the stat weights. Why is 1mp5 at 3 and spr at 0.7? I will do a comparison on two chest items: Alanna's Embrace and Nature's Embrace.

Nature's embrace: 0 stam 0 int 0 spr, 22 +heal and 8mp5
Alanna's Embrace: 20 stam 20 int 20spr and 11 +heal no mp5.

1 point of spr equals 0.125 mana per second, or 0.625 mp5 while not casting. 1 spr also equals 0.25 +heal.
20 spr would equate to 12.5 mp5 while not casting and with the talent meditation, 1.875 mp5 while casting. Now add the +heal which would be an extra 5 +heal. This would make the item have 12.5 mp5 out of 5sec cast and a total of 16 +heal. Don't forget the extra mana of the int as well. So, is Nature's Embrace better than Alanna's embrace like your spreadsheet says?

Edit: Choker of enlightenment link: http://web.archive.org/web/200503011152 ... item=17109 It is missing on your list.

This is the way I see it, I might be in the wrong as I haven't really played priest for very long.

The fight is 5 minutes and you will be casting constantly.
Nature's Embrace will net you 480 mana during the 5 minute period and the 22 healing.
Alanna's Embrace start you off with 200 additional mana and will net you 150 mana over the 5 minutes and 16 healing.

If the fight were to be shorter than 2 min Alanna's might be on par manawise but Nature's Embrace still has more healing.

Added the link for the Choker and removed Enchanted something robe.

[Uzephi]

I just have a question on the stat weights. Why is 1mp5 at 3 and spr at 0.7? I will do a comparison on two chest items: Alanna's Embrace and Nature's Embrace.

Nature's embrace: 0 stam 0 int 0 spr, 22 +heal and 8mp5
Alanna's Embrace: 20 stam 20 int 20spr and 11 +heal no mp5.

1 point of spr equals 0.125 mana per second, or 0.625 mp5 while not casting. 1 spr also equals 0.25 +heal.
20 spr would equate to 12.5 mp5 while not casting and with the talent meditation, 1.875 mp5 while casting. Now add the +heal which would be an extra 5 +heal. This would make the item have 12.5 mp5 out of 5sec cast and a total of 16 +heal. Don't forget the extra mana of the int as well. So, is Nature's Embrace better than Alanna's embrace like your spreadsheet says?

Edit: Choker of enlightenment link: http://web.archive.org/web/200503011152 ... item=17109 It is missing on your list.

This is the way I see it, I might be in the wrong as I haven't really played priest for very long.

The fight is 5 minutes and you will be casting constantly.
Nature's Embrace will net you 480 mana during the 5 minute period and the 22 healing.
Alanna's Embrace start you off with 200 additional mana and will net you 150 mana over the 5 minutes and 16 healing.

If the fight were to be shorter than 2 min Alanna's might be on par manawise but Nature's Embrace still has more healing.

Added the link for the Choker and removed Enchanted something robe.

Before the changes to the 5 second rule, priest wouldn't be casting constantly. You always want to be out of 5 seconds to get your full mana regen as a priest. Below is some short reading on the 5SR.

http://www.wowhead.com/forums&topic=208 ... -love-hate
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2593004919
http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/633 ... -rule-quot
http://wow.gamepedia.com/Advanced_insta ... econd_Rule
http://vanilla-wow.wikia.com/wiki/Advan ... or_priests

From the last link: "Firstly, Spirit and spell-power are the two most important attributes for a holy priest. For a Discipline priest, spirit does not boost spell-power, reducing its effectiveness substantially, but not making it obsolete as an attribute. The reasons for spirit being such an important attributes to all healing priests and most healers, for that matter, will be explained in later sections."

"The most efficient way to heal, in the end, is to take "Regen Naps" Whenever possible. As a priest, your likely to have large amounts of spirit, so staying OO5SR is beneficial. Rather than healing every time the tank needs a heal, its more efficient to wait as long as possible, in order to stay OO5SR as long as possible, and heal in large waves, all at once."

While mp5 stacking is a decent playstyle if you want to be a pseudo pally/priest combo, spamming heals isn't the most efficient way of playing a priest. The math you gave is the lower number which isn't realistically plausible. You wouldn't be regening 1.875 mp5 the whole fight. The best math to do is half the spirit regen and use that for math on mana regen as you should be at least OO5SR for half the fight for mana regen. What fight is realistically 5 minutes? The logs show the longest Ragnaros fight is 2.5mins. We also are talking straight stats on not counting in Blessing of Kings for alliance, which would give you an extra 2 int and 2 spr. Also, don't forget that the extra 200 health is nice for those raid wide damage fights. We can argue until our heads turn blue, but I know when I raided back in retail, seeing a priest stacking mp5 over spirit was frowned upon as that is the paladin way of healing.

[varth]

The main takeaway I have from this thread is

Buy Ghostweave gloves and belt, they are BiS pretty easily and super cheap

Buy magisters bracers, cheap and BiS

Buy holy shroud, cheap and close to BiS until you can afford Cassandras

Buy Mistwalkers Boots, cheap and very close to BiS

I managed to obtain every single one of those items for 20g or less, it's a very cheap and efficient way to start off at lvl 60 with pretty darn good items. Do the Brd Quest for the Cape and Ring, do Strath for the ring, and you have 7 slots already with BiS or close.

[Liselle]

Thanks for this list!

If you are Horde, I suggest a cloak absolutely amazing, free and obtained at level 50: http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=19121

It has not +spirit but the cloak is awesome for the level, and will be with you for a very long time at 60 till you get your greedy hands on some of the best cloaks out there, as healer or shadow

The elite quest required in Hinterlands is a bit long but every melee in the game will want to do it thanks to the other quest reward, the Rune of the Guard Captain

Is the Virtuous set in the server, by the way? Virtuous is an amazing set and the quest rewards in the way to get it are awesome. Unfortunatelly the yellow looks are... omg... :p.

[Kulle]

One item that is overlooked in the list is Papal Fez. It has a less healing on it, but +17 int over cassandra's grace and holy shroud.
http://db.vanillagaming.org/?item=9431#wh-comments

Also to the people talking about Nature's embrace... in 1.12 as we currently are they do holy DAMAGE. not healing power. So they're not very high up on the list in my books, even though I am currently wearing them waiting for exalted or truefaith to drop.

[Pottu]

Stickied as requested.

[res]

I've used this as a template to make my own list of BiS items, since this one doesn't seem to be updated that often. If you want to use it you can check it out here.

[DarkPhenomenon]

The stats listed for hands of the exalted herald are wrong, they have 30 healing making them much higher on the list than they currently are.

[res]

The stats listed for hands of the exalted herald are wrong, they have 30 healing making them much higher on the list than they currently are.

Maybe you should check out this thread.