Improved Divine Spirit by the numbers
by Eliah Hecht 
Feb 5th 2007 at 3:33PM
Having just hit 70 on my priest this morning, my mind is on heal specs. I'll probably stay with my holy DPS spec for a little while for attunements and rep grinding and whatnot, but sooner or later I'm going to go healbot. I just know it. For my money, the big debate as far as healbot specs go right now is Improved Divine Spirit (IDS) -- that is, whether you'll be better off with 21/40/0 or 23/38/0 (builds are for illustration only; I haven't been able to figure out whether Holy Concentration is worth it or not). These builds differ by only two points: the first has no points in IDS and 5/5 Empowered Healing (EH), the second has 2/2 IDS and 3/5 EH.Anyway, I was researching the issue, and eventually made my way over to the worldofwar.net Priest forums, where theorycraft superstar Trepidation (aka Trep) crunched the numbers and came up with a very nice chart of how much more you'd get from EH vs. IDS for various heals and various values of +heal and spirit. EH always helps your Greater Heal and Flash Heal more than IDS does; the question is whether the boost IDS gives the rest of your group, as well as your other heals, gives it the edge. The charts are too long to repost here, but I encourage you to go check them out. However, for commonly-quoted early endgame values of +1000 heal and 500 spirit, here's the breakdown:
What has your experience been? Have any of you had a chance to test some pure healing priest builds yet? Another question I've been wondering about, as I alluded to above, is Holy Concentration. I like it in theory, but I'm having trouble freeing up three points for it. How has it been working out for you, if anyone has it?
- Rank 1 Gheal: 1.74%
- Rank 7 Gheal: 1.10%
- Rank 7 Flash: 1.17%
What has your experience been? Have any of you had a chance to test some pure healing priest builds yet? Another question I've been wondering about, as I alluded to above, is Holy Concentration. I like it in theory, but I'm having trouble freeing up three points for it. How has it been working out for you, if anyone has it?
Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Talents
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Silvan Feb 7th 2007 7:25PM
Personally leveled 1-60 disc/holy..raided and pvp'd disc/holy raiding spec for 2 years.
BC came out and I went 61-70 shadow, then the min I dinged 70 I ran back and respec'd disc/holy again. The point of that background information is that I have played priest a very very long time. Holy Concentration are 3 points I won't ever regret spending.
My current spec is this http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxg0zhxubZfxxcc0VVh
Which was made before I had much raiding time spent with all my new spells. Since then prayer of mending has become a top spell used for me and I am heavily considering respecing to free 2 points for healing prayers.
Xur Feb 5th 2007 6:26PM
My guild has only been doing small raids since the expansion launched, giving people a break to level, explore, etc. We maintained a pretty heavy raiding schedule pre-xpac, and we expect to return to it in a week or two.
In heavy raiding situations, IDS is very important. In 40-man raids, having 1 or 2 Priests with IDS was fine; they'd handle Spirit buffs, while the other 2-4 Priests would handle Fort, and it all worked out. In 25-man raids, I expect Priest numbers to be cut down a bit (our guild has many, many druids, and a good selection of Palllies and upcomign Shaman), so I expect IDS to become even more of a requirement for raiding than it was in the past.
Having not personally seen the new end-game large raids, I don't know how much overhealing is likely to be an issue (in general, the xpac hit point/damage inflation should make it less of a problem than pre-xpac), but my experience suggests that most of the EH bonus would add to overhealing anyway.
We will of course be re-evaluating again after we have some real 25-man end-game experience, but for now, I'd recommend IDS over EH without reservation.
Based on old raiding experience and looking at the numbers (that is, no direct experience with the relevant content), I would even recommend Holy Concentration over EH -- the ersatz mana `regen' being typically more useful than more points of overhealing. My experience comes from 40-man raids with a healer-heavy guild, though; I'd love to hear of actual 70/25 raid experience.
Gorehorn Feb 5th 2007 5:21PM
There's a little problem to the question brought up and that is the fact that EH only helps you while IDS also helps any other caster in the group/raid.
It seems to me that IDS should be specced by at least one member of a raid but this may very well be enough.
Wideruled Feb 5th 2007 6:05PM
Ill probably be the only IDS priest in my guild. im 68 right at the moment, and have a perfectly balanced spec: 29/29 I dont heal for tons, but i generally never run out of mana with another healer present either.
When i tell the casters i group with that i have IDS they LOVE me. Soon i forsee me being the only priest they want to group with!
Wideruled
Dentarg
Jason Feb 5th 2007 6:59PM
DS and IDS is definitely only needed by one player in the raid. Why is that? Because if you take DS, you might as well take IDS along with it. Improved group buffs aren't about you; they're about buffing the rest of the raid or group a little bit more. From that perspective, they're well worth the points you'll put into them.
Ben Feb 5th 2007 7:08PM
I've had Holy Concentration since respeccing at 70 and I like it a lot. It procs fairly often....not so frequently that it's a game breaker, but it's an awesome little bonus that's always welcome. If you're having issues keeping your mana up, it can help you conserve it. If your tank is under control when it procs it's a good excuse to toss a quick Flash Heal on someone else in the group who normally wouldn't get healing priority. I've even gotten lucky and had it proc off a small, cheap heal when I was low on mana and then been able to follow it up with a big one for free. Oh, and it is possible to get it to proc twice in a row (and theoretically more, though I've never seen it)....3 heals for the price of one is a beautiful thing.
Plus if you're doing a pure healing build, what are your other options? The only things I've had to skip in the Holy tree aside from the damage/defense talents are Inspiration, Healing Prayers, and Lightwell.
I also agree with #3 that there's a point at which more +healing just becomes more +overhealing. I'm sitting at about 1160 healing and having difficulty believing that more will do me much good...my biggest heal crits for around 6k and even my rank 1 Greater Heal is landing for nearly 2000 (I'm using this as my default heal in groups since it's cheap, moderately powerful and has a chance to proc Holy Concentration).
I'm now shifting my focus to mana regen...trying to keep the +healing right in that 1100 range while building up my mp/5 and spirit (Meditation FTW).
moink Feb 5th 2007 9:47PM
I'm shadow right now for leveling, but at 70 I plan to go back to a mostly Disc build: 42/19/0 with holy only going down as far as Improved Healing. I call it the "more heals not bigger heals" build. I've sold my guild on it and they're trying to convince the other priests, even though I keep telling them we need a mix of specs in the raid.
We'll see. If my heals can't keep the tank up, I'll respec holy. But if raiding at 70 is anything like raiding at 60, more heals is more important than bigger heals. Bigger heals just means overhealing.
Ben Feb 6th 2007 12:25AM
More +healing isn't necessarily about bigger heals, it's also about downranking. Like I said above, I'm primarily using rank 1 Greater Heal which only costs 314 mana, but with all my healing gear it lands for about 2000 a pop.
I love a lot of the talents in the top half of the discipline tree, but after about 25 points spent there I think you have just about all the talents that affect your ability to do more heals per fight.
Mark Feb 6th 2007 7:22AM
I've solved the problem by putting all points in Shadow and staying there :)
Jonathon Pop Feb 6th 2007 8:48AM
I'm an IDS Priest here and I think a few of the others have nailed it. IDS is excellent in group/Raid Situations, especially if you have a mage and lock in your group. What I do is put only one point into HC that way you might get it to proc at some time, and it only costs you one point rather than dropping 3 in there.
I've focused most my points in healing talents, none of that holy damage business, I find it pointless. Especially since its so easy for us priests to now have a full set of DPS gear that we can wear while soloing. There are so many quests with +crit and +damage and heal gear that is what I wear most of the time. My smites crit for around 1500 and Starshards (which I think is an underrated spell for NE priests who like to solo as Holy/Disc specs) hits for about 1700 over a few seconds. The fact that there is so much gear out there now that is easy to obtain makes having two sets of gear very viable.
blasphemousBlake Feb 6th 2007 9:54AM
To the comment on helping casters in your group, you can take warlocks out of your fanclub.
I have a 70 UD lock with about 810 unbuffed +shadow dmg and about 200 BUFFED spirit. Being that IDS is based off your targets spirit, the extra 20 dmg really isn't a big deal to me and would rather have a kickin renew thrown on me that hits hard so i can lifetap away :)
Zequel Feb 6th 2007 12:27PM
Re #7: Downranking has been seriously nerfed. Look at the 2.0 Release Notes, you lose a lot of +healing by downranking now.
Roguerhunter Feb 6th 2007 12:31PM
Well guys, my G/F has a 61 Priest and I also play it at times with the Guild needs it for Raiding. I have done my extensive research on Builds and no one is bad its the players style and what they like and what they wear as well. My main is a 60 Full GM Hunter and my G/F is a Full GM Priest as far as gear goes. Heres a Great Talent Build for Raiding. Please note HC is that what mages have when put in Arcane concentration it procs every so ofter 100% casting on spells. Spirit FTW to some people. You have to take your guild in account. We have several best friends that are Pallies and usually always there in instances with us so the Spirit helps all mana casters so its never a problem to have him or someone else cast a heal in sub of "HC" to proc... Here is a Build Highly recomended for Healing /Mana Regen.. There will always be several builds and as a hunter theres many ways to ditch out DPS either in BS/MM/SUR specs. No one person is truely right....
OK Priests Build I hope you guys like it and will explain...
http://www.wowhead.com/?talent=bxMuzhxZcxtzf0qVuVo
All the Holy talents is a no brainer I hope its helps out with increasing heals. There is a calculator that actually prints out numbers and thus far these come out to a higher % in healing.
The discipline tree well you go with 50/50 Martydom because you need the other find talents when raiding. if you bubble yourself well you can cast clearly at times. No Silent resolve because you hope a Pallie will give you Salvation or you can count on a DPS class to pull them off you and then cast your fade...
Well guys I hope that was insightful and I plan on reading your comments...
Eliah Hecht Feb 6th 2007 12:42PM
Roguerhunter: that build's OK; a couple of comments:
-Healing Focus is key to be able to heal when you're getting beat on.
-Inspiration is a lot better than you think.
-Circle of Healing is probably a lot worse than you think.
-Imp. PW:S is a ridiculously weak talent. You'd be much better served putting those points in Silent Resolve. Remember, it does stack with Salv, and even so you'll still be pulling aggro from time to time.
-I've never had Martyrdom, so I can't speak from personal experience, but it really looks like a PvP talent to me. I don't get crit very often at all in PvE, and when I do, 6s of cast time protection is just not going to make much of a difference. I'd put this in Silent Resolve as well -- unless you have it for PvP purposes.
Roguerhunter Feb 6th 2007 2:00PM
OMG I just wrote a whole colum and it didnt go through.. here I go ahain! I will try to shorten it up this time.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=74208497&sid=1
Re: Is silent resolve a viable PVP talent?
1) Plenty of threat reducing trinkets if you need it
2) Fade
3) A good tank will hold aggro
4) 5 points are needed elsewhere
5) It's only 20%
6) It's useless for 'PVP' since you'll be the first target regardless
7) Pop a shield and heal away (a good group will realize the priest is in trouble and will take aggro off)
8) Psychic scream if you can/last resort
The big thing is 20%. Dispels are relatively cheap and there is still a good chance they will dispel you anyway. Percentage based spells (based on chance) are worthless. Blackout, Silent Resolve's dispel bonus, flash heal armor bonus talent, are nice when they go off, but useless otherwise and they don't warrant the 5 wasted points that could promise a bonus elsewhere.
As you can see play style is key! My Guildies always state I am a different healer that of my G/F. Both good but different style. I tend to use Imp. PW:S a lot and thus making my job to do less heals and regen mana. Look at Pallies Shield, buddle run attack/heal PWN mob or Player. Also saves there lives a lot same with priest. if you know how to use your player then you know how to use every talent towars your advantage in different situations. Heres a plus added note, in case you didnt know this one or thought of it this way..
Players with pets especially hunters are a priests beast friend! Imp. PW:S on pet with renew your golden. Experience Hunters or classes with pets must know when and how to do this. But if Tank loses argo send in pet especially a BM spec hunter "taunt" they have buffed us in this dept in argo. Try sending in Tank and then send in pet and pull your pet back you will see your pet has good argo most of the times but use it wisely. Also back to Imp. PW:S, pop this when mob comes to you and let the pet pull argo off till the Tank regains. makes a huge difference. Also when a pet needs to keep argo for a bit till tank gets heals also a good way to look at it. Think about your party/raid and where you benifit the most for everyone.. OK now I will later reply back to the other comments you posted I have written enough lol...
Ben Feb 6th 2007 9:46PM
#11, I know it's been nerfed, but nerfed does not mean completely useless, just less powerful. Downranking is still a very viable way to get more heals out of your mana bar; with approximately 1200 +healing my lowest rank of GH still gets a bonus of about 900.
And Roguerhunter, your build is clearly made for someone who does some PvP and some raiding, which is fine if that's how you play, but for a pure PvE healing build there are better ways to distribute those points.