Circle of Healing or Circle of Terrible?
by Eliah Hecht 
Dec 12th 2006 at 1:55PM
First Holy Nova. Then Lightwell. As of 2.0.1, Circle of Healing is the top-tier Holy talent for Priests. Notice a trend? All these talents have been considered...um..."less than optimal" by many vocal members of the priestly community. And folks have tried to defend all three of them by pointing out that they are nice to have in certain situations. Well, today Drysc plays the "situationally useful" card with respect to CoH over in the WoW General forums: "[CoH] has some amazing tactical uses; that you can sit (likely well) out of harms way and send heals to a group of players. To equalize some of that ability the healing potency isn't as strong as a normal prayer of healing maybe, but I don't think it's anything to be scoffed at either. I would be surprised if the talent was completely overlooked in strategies for future dungeons and encounters, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was relied on for more than a few".
Basically, what I'm reading Drysc as saying here is "yes, CoH is fairly useless right now, so we're going to try to design some encounters around it so Priests don't feel too bad about having it." I'm not a designer, but honestly, that doesn't seem like a good skill-designing strategy to me. Wouldn't it be better just to fix CoH so it wasn't restricted to only healing people in the same party, or else raise the healing/lower the mana cost?
But that's just my perspective. I'm pretty sure I'll be speccing 14/37 for raid heals. What have you guys found? Is CoH worth taking even when it means you've got to skip Meditation and Inner Focus, or is it just another lolwell?
Some numbers, for the curious: rank 3 (top rank for a 60) CoH costs 500 mana and heals for 380-420, affecting your target and any of their party members within 15 yards of them. It's an instant cast, which is its biggest real advantage. Its mana efficiency is significantly below 1 healed per mana (hpm), which I think is unique for a priest heal; Greater Heal 5 is somewhere around 3 hpm, Prayer of Healing 5 very close to 1 hpm, and Flash Heal 7 and Renew 10 both around 2 hpm (these are all without taking any +healing or talents into account). Of course, both CoH and PoH get much more efficient if you end up hitting multiple damaged targets with them.
Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sylythn Dec 12th 2006 5:19PM
"Of course, both CoH and PoH get much more efficient if you end up hitting multiple damaged targets with them."
Which is the whole point of the talent...I'd say the ability to refresh your whole party to full health, or save them all from dying for a few more seconds, as an instant cast is a damn good talent.
Therizo Dec 12th 2006 2:13PM
Oy, you guys have degenerated lately. Now you're just reposting forum gripes and misinterpreting blue posts. But more on target, is it really so hard to imagine the situational uses this spell would have? Any raiding situation where a group other than your own is getting hit all at once. Say all your healers are in the group with the tree druid, and your 3 rogues are in a group with the feral druid and warrior with improved battle shout. improved healing, improved dps, and a solution to take care of those big 360 cleaves or AOE spells. A LOT of the 41 point talents are situational or only fit a particular type of play (PvP/solo, smallgroup, raid, etc). If any one was more universally applicable than others, you'd see less diversity in spec, which I don't think matches the philosophy of the game.
And please, no more posts about the looking for group tool.
Matt Park Dec 12th 2006 5:16PM
Why don't you just ask Shamans how they like Chain Heal? Seems like that would be a better comparison.
Eliah Hecht Dec 12th 2006 2:26PM
@1: Sorry about the degeneracy; I'm new here. I'm still not quite so steady on my feet.
As far as the general situationality of 41-point talents, you make a good point. Yes, if you happen to have *all* your priests optimally allocated, as well as *all* the people that are taking splash damage, that brings the efficiency of CoH on line with the efficiency of most other Priest heals. But should that really be necessary? I mean, it looks like even Lightwell is easier to use well than CoH.
And don't forget that the party members have to be within 15 yards of the target. Though come to think of it, I can come up with a few fights where that might not be such a problem--for instance, my guild usually has me do the healing behind Magmadar. If those guys were grouped up right, then yeah, the spell would be good there.
But my issue is really: if it's *that* situational, is it really worth having to go so deep into one tree? It's not like it's uber in the situations where it's good; it's just good in those situations. I say make CoH trainable, and give us "summon tree druid" ^_~.
James Dec 12th 2006 2:37PM
So let's see:
It's instant.
It can heal up to five people.
It's RANGED, not centered on your self.
It's a reasonable mana cost.
= Useful. Possibly even NICE!
As a warrior, I'd sure like a 51pt Protection Talent this useful...
Heike Dec 12th 2006 3:00PM
Except you don't just *happen* to your priests and dps classes in the right groups - you design your raids around them.
Combined with tree druids, this is an *awesome* thing to happen to raid healing. The single drawback with druid tree spirit adding healing to their group members is that for fights where prayer of healing is really crucial, you had to split up healers anyway. CoH can help mitigate that. Two or three trees in a group with two or three priests is an easy +200 or +300 to healing - *AND* you can really take full advantage of some of the DPS class attack buffs.
Sure it's situational - it's situational to raiding situations. But then, not every end point talent is supposed to be the answer to every person's playstyle - otherwise why bother with three trees to begin with?
DÖT Dec 12th 2006 3:24PM
So for some reason, one I really don't understand, there continue to be posts about things not working the way players want, skills not having the right effect, mobs being too glitchy or not acting the same as they did before...but what everyone seems to forget is that the 2.0.1 patch is the backbone of TBC expansion. Not everything has full functionality or even partial functionality...hell there is a boat to the Darkshore graveyard from Auberdine (Yes, I realize that the boat doesn't work because the content is not available yet, but still)! The patch was released to placate players because of the delay in the expansion. Blizzard couldn't get everything finished early enough so they gave us something to play with for another month...be happy we got anything at all - we could have gotten no patch and no release date.
kiki Dec 12th 2006 3:37PM
Sure there are instances where it would be useful, but is it worth speccing to? No. Meditation, Divine spirit (and imp divine spirit), and Inner Focus are much more useful than a talent that we might use a few times on a raid.
I also happen to agree with the warrior above. I play both classes in raid/instances and have rolled every other class in the game (the priest is my main although probably not for much longer). It seems that out of anyone, both priests and warriors got the biggest load of crap for raiding, which i find funny considering I thought we were the 2 most crucial classes to a raid. It's now not worth it more than ever to have a heavy prot build or a heavy holy build. Meanwhile, I can spec anyway I choose on my warlock/hunter/rogue/mage and still be able to do a massive amount of damage (our job). With warriors and priests, this is just not the case. We cannot effectively do our job without being specced correctly and the spec's we are forced to are completely worthless.
Yes, these points are argueable, but generally, that's what it boils down to. I don't hear mages QQing because they can't raid while specced a certain way. I don't hear rogues QQing because they can't raid using swords.
Mar Dec 12th 2006 3:35PM
You know everyone says lightwell is cool, but I've never seen it used in MC, BWL, or Naxx. I've never seen raid strategy designed around optional spells. Even for Vael, we have some priests who prayer of healing instead of holy nova.
If blizzard actually wants to design a battle aorund this spell in a dungeon, wouldn't that actually be counter to what they are trying to do in the expansion with the "not being forced to spec a certain tree" mantra?
Do they design a spell for a dungeon or s dungeon for a spell? Either way, sounds pretty dumb to me. Since the spell heals under 1000 on average (assuming good gear). You can use it as a top off spell or a sort of emergency spell. But the output is so low that it isn't very successful.
For 41 points as a priest.. the "healing class" I'd like a spell that breaks me out of the group only mass heals. You can cap it at 5 people, but make it location based, not group based.
I'm not really impressed with the holy tree's additions. All of it is in the mediocre, nothing really changed category. Now discipline is a whole other story. Reflective shield is great.
Dur13l@gmail.com Dec 12th 2006 3:46PM
@1. IF you can write better then please by all means do so. I for one dont go anywhere near the Official forums beacuse i find that people are far too anal and nit picky....please dont bring that here.
As far as the Talent goes i couldnt tell ya what is better but as the Raids MT i have notices i hardly drop below 50% in most boss fights anymore and the priest say that for one the Tanks gear got a bit of a buff along with Stam. Put that with setting our groups just a bit different and we have found this to be a useful talent.
Is it the greatest in the game? no...but it has saved our butts a few times already.
Physical Original Dec 12th 2006 3:59PM
*cough*healing totem*cough*
Look how long its taken blizz to fix the healing totem? there was just something about 10hp a tick that was... I dunno, retarded for a good long time (the new numbers are pretty nice).
Lets be honest though, this is a "oops the party just goofed and got hit by an AoE breath weapon" fix for priests. Now instead of losing the rogue the next time he walks into a cleave attack, you give everybody an extra 5 seconds to get themselves together. Is it situational? yes. Is is a required talent? no. Will it make you a better healer? only if you are a good player (no talent can fix a bad player).
Priests are just whining because they didn't get Natures Swiftness again.
jpc Dec 12th 2006 4:49PM
The reason tanks are alive more isn't because of this new ability. It's because HoT's stack now. That's the hugest thing ever. This talent and all the other new holy talents basically suck. As a priest who tried them I can say that these are not worth breaking a build with meditation and inner focus. You'd be better off staying with the good old 21/30/0 build for raiding or possibly 20/31/0 if you enjoy being lol'ed at (lolwell).
The problem with priests is that they don't have a *good* hybrid build. Either Spiritual healing needs to be moved back to tier2 or divine fury and improved healing need to move to tiers 1 and 2 respectively to give us a viable hybrid build that includes good healing. In fact, the talents I mentioned plus only like 3 others are all priests really need. The other talents are just there for you to try to eke out some damage from the holy tree.
Woild Dec 12th 2006 6:15PM
@2, lay off the druid jokes huh? Sounds like somebody got outhealed by a tree :P
caleb Dec 12th 2006 6:10PM
It's very simple, CoH sucks! Priest talents are alright but compared to the enjoyment of playing a priest, most priest will choose to reroll.
It seems that what priest get is more spells to group heal. So that's how these group spell should be looked at. The sad thing is they still suck. why go down to 41 holy when you can get almost the same thing at 11 holy?????
Lieblos Dec 12th 2006 8:34PM
Give us summonable tanks!!!! XD
Eliah Hecht Dec 12th 2006 8:12PM
@14: Yes, yes I did get outhealed by a tree. So you know what I did? Rolled a Druid, for the sole purpose of getting treeform eventually.
I didn't mean to hate on Druids. I love the class.
Alx Dec 12th 2006 11:15PM
I think CoH has its uses. However there is a big problem. I expect blizz to put a good talent which deserves the 41 pts!! Put Coh somewhere below that point and come up with a worthy talent..
Zules Dec 13th 2006 9:59AM
Is CoH useful? I'm not sure I'll find out. I couldn't make myself give up what felt like critical talents in the discipline tree to try it out, and the one priest in our guild that went full Holy specced to shadow only two days later.
I definitely see situational uses for it, and I'm all for more instants. I don't see getting it if it means my *healing* spec talents in discipline have to go by the wayside.
DrBonez Dec 13th 2006 8:02PM
Is it just me or does CoH bear a remakable resemblance to Holy Nova.
Don't get me wrong it's an aoe heal etc. But look at it this way, for how long was holy nova the 31 point talent for holy?
Did any one use it?
What happend to it in the end?
It got majorly buffed and moved to an 11 point talent.
Hope for the future maybe?
Then again I'm not sure I want to wait for the next priest overhaul to see it happen.
Then again I don't think the devs are ever going to create a 41 point talent that's going to beat Imp DS so it doesn't matter all that much to me how cruddy the 41 point holy talent is.
Thomas Dec 14th 2006 11:58AM
Hmm, I don't plan on getting CoH personally but I am working on getting my 51 priest up to Lightwell. Nearly everyone in my raiding alliance and guild (quite rightly I'm sure) laugh at my decision, but I see multiple uses for the spell. Given time and after the TBC expansion hits, I'm sure we'll see reasons for CoH. However, it needs to distinguish itself a bit more - right now it feels like a tossup between Holy Nova (I love this spell!) and Prayer of Healing.
I am all for instant spells, though due to the nature of the new nerf to priests, instant spells don't get the full benefits of +healing gear as do longer cast spells. However, if situation warrants a quick heal spell on a group of your friends, this could just fit the bill.