This site makes extensive use of JavaScript.
Please
enable JavaScript
in your browser.
Live
PTR
Beta
Classic
The 18/53 raid healing build and its playstyle.
Post Reply
Return to board index
Post by
ignayshus
renamed from:
Learning how to play 18/53
because the title lacked enough controversy to spark discussion.
renamed again: now that the shock value is no longer necessary.
I've tested more holy specs than I care to think about in Uld10/25 and Naxx10/25. This is the one with which I am finally pleased and what follows is my experience with how to best play the spec.
The spec
or see
my armory.
I could go into all the calculations, but suffice to say there are only 3 moveable points (Desperate Prayer and Healing Focus) if you don't want to hurt your longevity or throughput for raid healing.
In my gear, I can trade 50 spell power to gain 19mp5 (raid buffed) by trading 1pt of Spiritual Guidance for Spiritual Redemption.
The priorities:
1. Build up Serendipity
2. Flash Heal if Serendipity is going to fall off.
3. Spend SoL procs before any other spell.
4. Circle of Healing
5. Prayer of Mending
6. Renew if the target can wait 3 seconds for a heal
7. Shield if they can't
8. Flash Heal if they can't wait AND can't be shielded.
Playing it well:
Know how much the following heal for without crit:
Flash Heal
Shield
Shield's instant heal
Renew tic
Renew's instant heal
Prayer of Mending
Don't overwrite your HoTs on anyone ever... EVER!
Don't heal on top of your HoTs if the hot will cover the damage and the person isn't in immediate need of attention.
Healing the MT:
You don't MT heal, but you can do a lot to pull the MT healers out of a tough spot.
1. Always keep a hot rolling.
2. Don't shield unless he needs it. Shield+Prom = 15k healing in 1.5 seconds, so you don't want to waste that when he's not critical.
3. Use up unneeded SoL procs on the MT
4. Flash Heal the MT once if Serendipity is going to drop off and nobody else needs healing.
5. Unless better served on an OT, usually the first target for Prayer of Mending is the MT.
Healing the OTs:
You probably will not main heal off tanks either though you can.
1. Always keep a hot rolling.
2. You can be liberal with the shielding if you want, though I usually save it to make sure my Maj Dragon Fig or Illustration stacks don't fall off.
Healing the Raid:
1. Use CoH liberally (even if only one person needs a heal), but not on targets off by themself.
2. Use Renew if CoH is down or the target temporarily has aggro.
3. Use Shield if a target has a 10k deficit or is about to get hit.
4. Don't be afraid to flash heal people if they need it, just don't lean on the spell. If you're casting flash heal more than 3 times in a row, you're leaning too heavily on it.
Responding to boss abilities on an individual:
1. Be aware of exactly how much damage a person will take due to an ability and respond accordingly.
- ex. ProM > Renew > Shield > SoL Flash is enough to keep people up through a slag pot.
Responding to raid wide damage:
1. ProM > CoH > Flash (unless you have 2+ stacks) > PoH
- still the best way to recover from AoE spikes.
- repeat as necessary
How does this compare to the
max flash heal
throughput spec?
I think the spec beats that one.
If all we ever cast was the Respon(se) to raid wide damage (noted above), and nothing else then the flash heal spec pulls ahead by 4-5%. This also requires the use of the flash heal glyph without which the difference drops to 2%.
Burst 12,494 vs 12,995 4%
Sustainable 10,800 vs 11,368 5%
Sustainable loses 3% without Glyph of Flash Heal (gains 2.5% if you take Spirit of Redemption).
But that's not all we do, we also spot heal, and this spec spot heals considerably better almost infinitely. Flash Heal spec requires mana naps, but 18/53 doesn't. It's a bit harder to play, but if played well you gain a lot of advantages.
Where it falls flat is tank healing, because it doesn't have Improved Healing or Empowered Healing.
Burst 5,947 vs 6592 11%
Sustainable 4,532 vs 5531 22%
Sustainable loses 10% without Improved Healing.
TLDR: Both specs recover from raid spikes equally well, but Flash Heal spec requires you to stop healing to regen, whereas 18/53 does not; however 18/53 does have a more complex priority system and requires some practice to use properly.
It has been thoroughly tested into Yogg25, and through Mim10.
Post by
Panik8
Wow, great post!
Post by
karlusdavius
look's sexy
Post by
OscarDivine
I'm not sure I entirely agree (but then that's why it's got a trolling thread name and is controversial right?)
Since healing is so much about personal preference, I would say that it looks like it would work for some, but definitely not for me. I am not a liberal user of shields as a Holy priest. Usually I'm cleaning up damage that has happened during the raid, like Oblivion on Kologarn or Tympanic Tantrums on XT-002.
Since most fights have alternating damage and rest phases, I think that the use of bubbles should be practically zero as a raid healer except to prevent low HP players from biting the dust during damage phases. Our bubbles don't benefit us or our targets the same way that it does for Disco. Now, this isn't to say we shouldn't be bubbling at ALL, but I don't believe that it should even be a huge part of our jobs as raid healers, and certainly not worth putting 3 points into.
I would argue that
Empowered Healing
is far more worth it, as we'll be using FH to build up Serendipity stacks. So take 20% to your Flash Heal or ... prevent slightly more damage on 1 maybe 2 targets before damage phases? "but what about the tank" you ask? You shouldn't be doing too much more than keeping Guardian Spirit up on the tank, rolling renews, and PoM's. Your bubble will interfere with the far more efficient and useful (to the caster) PWS of a Disco priest, who will then probably yell out on vent, "Who the EFF Is shielding my tank?"
Post by
56987
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ignayshus
It's cool, I really do want the feedback.
You'd be suprised at how much I flash heal, though 80-90% of them are free and unlike Flash Heal spec, I can use stacking trinkets like MDF and IDS and never have a 10 stack drop off.
There is no fight which has phases where there is NO damage, but when the big damage hits, you can't tell the difference between my spec and the throughput spec.
As for shields, every time I shield I gain a 250 spell power buff and some groups actually use holy paladins as MT healers.
Post by
ignayshus
Actually abzo, I'm always top 3 and usually the lowest overheal.
I've also not had to mana pot ever, usually don't need my fiend, but if I do fiend + hymn it's near the end and I wind up with about 20k mana left when the boss goes down.
I checked my coh overheal % for you. It's 50% across a 2 hour 45 min Uld25 clearing everything up to Vezax. The ratio holds about the same for individual boss fights as well.
Any other questions?
Post by
karlusdavius
You've got too many filler talents and this spec seems randomly generated to me.
Only Filler talent i see here is the 4/5 Divine Fury. Inspiration can be argued for filler, but it's still a damage mitigation talent, so is semi filler. I think the 3/3 shield aspect of the build is dodgy, but if it gives you time to pop a flash heal and you have the 4set bonus from tier 8, i think its worth running.
Post by
ignayshus
Talents and glyphs are chosen for their synergy with SoL and Holy Conc and how they affect the main spells I'll be using.
Talented Renew regardless if any healing is done can proc Holy Conc and SoL
Glyphed Shield regardless if any healing is done can proc SoL
CoH regardless if any healing is done can proc SoL
ProM can proc SoL
(are you noticing a trend yet?)
Shield is an instant 8k-9k heal (right there with flash heal spec'd flash crit)
Renew is a 4-5k heal delivered over three seconds (better than a flash heal spec'd flash when you consider flash's overheal % when a target isn't in a deep deficit).
Post by
ignayshus
3/3 shield is used to enhance it's hpm and to increase it's value for when a target really needs it.
In all it adds about 1k to the shield. Not a game changer but the points were needed to get to Mental Agi which grants me about 45mp5 if I remember correctly.
edit: Just checked against two extremes.
1/3 Mental Agi is worth as little as 27mp5 and as much as 55mp5 depending on the fight.
Post by
karlusdavius
Shield is an instant 8k-9k heal (right there with flash heal spec'd flash crit)
It's probably the way it written, but i don't get what your trying to say here?
Is that the shield value with a SoL flash heal after?
Post by
56987
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
ignayshus
I usually only shield when someone needs a lot of hp.
My shield hits for a base 6.5k + 20% as an instant heal (~1.5k non-crit or 2.25k crit)
6.5 + 1.5 = 8
6.5+ 2.25 = 8.75
Probably just me not being clear.
Post by
ignayshus
I have 1 question. Aren't you stretching this a bit far?
No, I'm just looking at our combat log parses, and responding based on that.
Our druids run about 33% overheal, I run 36% (with CoH being the most noticeable at 51%)
I'm tied for the most hps overall and have the most healing done over the entire night by 3.25% (I never fall below 3rd on any boss fight and I'm usually first)
The druids and I were a 3 way tie on Hodir and I came in third on Thorim because I went through the guantlet that time, while a disco priest and two druids took the arena.
Post by
342146
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Panik8
Your bubble will interfere with the far more efficient and useful (to the caster) PWS of a Disco priest, who will then probably yell out on vent, "Who the EFF Is shielding my tank?"
+1. I hate them Holy Priests messing with my Borrowed Time buff. I still respect what the OP is trying to do with this build, and in raids where he is the only priest (or where there aren't any Disco priests anyways), I think this build would work fine, despite not having 5/5 Empowered Healing. I agree that calling it superior to the accepted cookie-cutter Holy build is a bit presumtuous, but I can't blame a guy doing a little publicity around his idea. :)
I don't see the day I'll go back to holy, but the OP at least made me consider it with this spec... But all in all, if I'm gonna use PW:S (and I know I will, I'm bubble-addicted), I'll spec Disco and get the full benefit from them shields.
P.S.: I like
52/19/0
too, but I won't pretend it's better than the Disco spec Alek linked... :)
Post by
ignayshus
@AlektheBeast
What is your experience and would you care to provide an armory to back that up?
I ask because if you're a priest that regularly does hard-modes I'm especially interested in your input.
And fwiw putting your spec into Rawr generates considerably less sustainable HPS than my build or the commonly accepted 14/57 builds because you lack Surge of Light which is a big mana returner.
Post by
karlusdavius
Imo there is only 2 effective speccs:
disco:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVcbuhhVRIsffRtfxzc:mbAzcM
(Main tank healer)
holy:
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent#bVf0uZsxt0fMqVh0euAo:0dmzcM
(Mass healer)
taking a few different non-essential talents is ok, we can discuss about that (forever, and find out only that it is individually), but there are talents wich expirienced priest just can't exclude (like serendipity, empowered healing, rapture for disc... etc...)
If something else is working for you its fine but, imo, taking any other build would just nerf your healing.
Your holy build is nerfing your healing.
Silent Resolve is not needed.
Surge of Light is needed.
Healing Focus is very useful in AoE heavy fights (if im not mistaken it pushes pushback off the table with Paladin's aura)
5/5 Divine Fury is filler and would probably be better in Spell Warding. hodir is a good example where it would be useful.
As to abzo, probably best to drop the sarcasm. He might not go OOM due to the Mp5 Contribution. However, Ghostcrawler has stated that mana regen is still too high. I notice that if things go right our healers never drop below 50% mana. Even if things go a bit wayward, its very, very easy to regain mana quickly.
I see a Replenishment nerf coming, but probably not for a while
Post by
ignayshus
I raid with a disco priest about 50% of the time so I don't bubble the MT when he's around. Never had any complaints from him.
Though tbh I don't usually bubble the MT anyway, as even if there's not a disco priest around, I like to save my bubble for when a tank really needs the hps.
Post by
ignayshus
What? Filler? On this build? Filler talents help your MP5 a bit through, right. Oh, but wait, below you say you've never gotten low on mana....
Sorry I missed that one somehow, but better late than never.
There are fights where I have to Fiend + Hymn (as I've already stated) so my concern is for Hard Modes, which we're soon about to start doing exclusively; and the chatter I've heard is that mana is a real problem for healers in Hard Modes atm.
I'm sure you're aware that for any kind of progression once you have enough throughput (my build only provides 4% less than the min/max flash heal spec) that longevity is king. If it weren't so then the majority of priests wouldn't be using BC flasks like Flask of Distilled Wisdom or Guru's + Mighty Thoughts.
Post Reply
You are not logged in. Please
log in
to post a reply or
register
if you don't already have an account.
© 2021 Fanbyte
