3.3.5 Thoughs on... Renew & Lightwell

[alexaspi]

Post your thoughts below on the effectiveness of a Renew spam holy priest and the capability of lightwell.

Q's to consider:

-If playing renew spam, why not just be disc bubblepopper?
-Is lightwell viable enough to be used during ICC?
-Can serendipity and renew spam together be viable?



Cheers.

[taralej]

If you wanna spam Renew, then you might as well just reroll druid. Hpriest is a jack of all trades kind of healer, but nevertheless it specialises in chunky AoE healing above all else, not HoTs. Renew is just there for additional help and in the end it will end up as overhealing. About Lightwell - I don't see why it wouldn't be viable. Just pop it near the melee group and let them use it. Useful in fights such as Sindra or Festergut where players suffer from DoTs and will welcome a HoT on demand. Also, by using Lightwell you are letting players take care of themselves and giving yourself more time to tend to other raid members instead of spamming Renew on GCD. As a MDPS, I like it when I see a Hpriest popping Lightwell near me because I know 100% that I won't die from random DoTs.

[DarkenedHue]

-If playing renew spam, why not just be disc bubblepopper?

HoT blanketing and Shield blanketing do somewhat different things. In a situation where damage is periodically going out against numerous targets, a HoT like Renew lasts a lot longer (thereby increasing the effectiveness of the blanket, as well as the number of targets you can reliably blanket), and it doesn't render all other incidental healing that might have been dealt to the target obsolete.

A lot of what it comes down to is also the base potency of Renew in comparison to Flash/Binding/Greater Heal. Holy Priest single target spot-healing is miserably weak. While speccing into your direct healing abilities does improve them somewhat, you're still weaker in that area compared to basically every other healer in the game. Outside of 10-mans and such, no one is really depending on a Hpriest's spot healing to save them. Renew on the other hand is actually powerful enough on its own that talenting into the ability carves you a very valuable niche. Your blanket healing capabilities are boosted tremendously, and you also gain Empowered Renew - which, while tiny, is a convenient and valuable source of instant healing. The popularity of renew spec at end-game has to do with the fact that Holy Priests are usually better served not gimping themselves by giving up an extremely valuable healing enhancement simply to turn their character into an inferior Resto Shaman.

Keep in mind that even when Renew specced, spamming Renew isn't actually most of what you do, apart from ticking aura fights like BQL or PP. PoM and CoH maintain their places as the cornerstones of your healing toolkit. Outside of these you spot heal with FH/GH/PoH, and keep Renew up only on targets that you know are going to have damage coming towards them (usually the tanks, or people with adds hitting them or some kind of debuff). Renew and Empowered Renew are actually powerful enough that even these incidental uses of your Renew ability will usually end up proving more valuable than the points to improve your direct healing.

-Is lightwell viable enough to be used during ICC?

It's been years since I last tried it so I can't comment on this. Even when fully working however, the spell's design flaws are severe enough that you might very well opt to put that point somewhere else.

-Can serendipity and renew spam together be viable?

Absolutely. Some of the most common end-game builds feature these two together. Don't be misled into thinking that there's no point to picking up Serendipity if you don't also grab talents that improve Greater Heal. Remember that serendipity also speeds up Prayer of Healing casts. PoH is the largest up-front healing bomb in your arsenal, even if it's only party-wide. Serendipity-hasted PoHs serve as a good filler for when PoM and CoH are both on CD, and you need to heal numerous targets in the same party. The Serendipity + PoH synergy is also great on LK because of how Infest works.

[Mercy]

-If playing renew spam, why not just be disc bubblepopper?

Good question. When doing 30% nerf ICC, you can get away with "Renew Spam" and a lot of people seem to enjoy it. But if I'm to be completely honest, if you want HoT gameplay, you're better off playing a Druid. Proper play of a Priest, even with Empowered Renew, requires the casting of other spells.

-Is lightwell viable enough to be used during ICC?

Lightwell has two major issues that make it problematic to use. First, you need to get people who lack situational awareness to actually click the damn thing, and even then to only click it once - not spam click it. Second, the HoT it provides breaks on incoming damage. So, as you can imagine, its uses are rather quite limited. I would only personally suggest it for a non-serious talent build, or that it's fine for someone to take if they aren't taking the game too seriously.

The exception being when you are grouped with players that know how to use the Lightwell properly, and can do so at times that won't cause the heal effect to be broken by damage.

-Can serendipity and renew spam together be viable?

I'll assume by having these two together, you mean having talents for both at the same time and being able to utilize both. Yes, it is very viable, and it works great in almost any content. But once you push into heroic ICC or 25-man raid sizes, you really ought to consider committing to one or the other in terms of play-style. The reason for this is that you can't fully optimize your talents for both at the same time. You will have to drop talents that support one or the other if you want to include both Serendipity and Empowered Renew in your build. At that tip of the content, you will need to fully optimize your play-style, so having both is not really an option there. That's not to say that a Serendipity Holy Priest can't pick up any Renew talents, because they can. Usually at that point it is best to grab the Renew-related talents and Serendipity itself, but discard talents related to Greater Heal.

[AluschI]

-Is lightwell viable enough to be used during ICC?

Lightwells design is against the healing design of wow.
What does is needs to make lightwell usefull?
- healer has only enough time/mana to focus on tank or dps
- dps need enough time and the will to maintain selfheal

Only situation were is was realy usefull was vanilla 5man dungeons with a group in green gear. At this time heal had heavy mana problems and usualy need to drink after every trash group. Heals were not able to heal tank and DDs if both getting heavy dmg. DDs were more concerned about keeping themselfs alive, avoiding dmg, using pots and def abilitis was very usual.
Today players and game changed, DDs dont want to keep themselfs alive, if they die they blame the heal instead of changing their gamestyle. Heals usually do not have mana problems. Heals are now capable of saving nealry everyone in group even if stupid DDs keep staying in fire, with a mana pool big enough to rush through the whole dungeon.

Heal in ICC:
- overheal is more than 200% of effectiv heal
- if someone dies it is usual by heavy dmg within 1-2 secs, nothing that a hot can heal
- nearly every healer has to much drive by heal, even hpala provides good group heal by accident
- heals have enough free time on their hands, that one dropping DD gets saved by 100k combined heal of all sources
- heals do not have that big of a mana problem that they need to avoid wasting mana on overheal or need to use something like lightwell to prevent unnecessary healing

Being a good healer, it is more important to be the best in whack the mole, instead of being tactical with healing, saving mana and preventing overheal. Spam heal and hope that you do not go oom.

[alexaspi]

Thanks for the replies everyone! With everything considered, it raises more questions such as :

-What niche does Renew spamming specifically fit?
-Is there no absolute-best build to fit every playstyle, and therefore, upto the player's choice based on raid composition and skill level?
-In aura fights, it can be agreed that the effectiveness of Empowered Renew blanketing is greater than that of Disc bubble-popping? However, this brings up the question about the single-target healing availability provided by a disc priest compared to that of a holy priest?

This post was really to have a discussion about priests in the state of 3.3.5! All opinions and comments are welcome and should be met with an educated response :) x

Also, is it generally accepted that priests are pretty much a jack-of-all trades in terms of healing compared to other healing classes? I sometimes feel as if priests are outshone by other healing classes.

Cheers

[Mercy]

-What niche does Renew spamming specifically fit?

If you're spamming Renew and not referring to just an Empowered Renew build, then you are filling the HoT role. In which, a Druid fills that same role better.

-Is there no absolute-best build to fit every playstyle, and therefore, upto the player's choice based on raid composition and skill level?

Sure, you can get talents that enable you to do "everything", but it's not optimized. What you're speaking of here is essentially the Jack of All Trades, which is also consequently Master of None. The Holy Priest spec is a very versatile spec. It can accomplish many things. It is the most versatile healer spec in Wrath. This is the result of the large amount of talent choices and the wide range of variables that those talents can address within your raid content and raid composition.

-In aura fights, it can be agreed that the effectiveness of Empowered Renew blanketing is greater than that of Disc bubble-popping? However, this brings up the question about the single-target healing availability provided by a disc priest compared to that of a holy priest?

That really depends to the extent of the aura damage in question. Sometimes it's better to prevent the damage. Sometimes it's better to heal it off. In a larger raid setting, the answer to that question is usually "Why not both?"
Discipline has more efficient Flash Heals and Penance serves as a really nice "nuke" or short but steady stream of healing to a single target. Which makes it pretty decent in healing a single target when dealing with damage chunks. A Holy Priest is less efficient in this regard, but if utilizing Greater Heal and Serendipity, can be more powerful in that single target healing. Though in such a situation, it is worth noting that a Holydin will be more effective at single-target healing if that option is available.

This post was really to have a discussion about priests in the state of 3.3.5! All opinions and comments are welcome and should be met with an educated response :) x

Plenty of us around are more than happy to, I'm sure. I also have a guide here that might answer some questions you may have.

Also, is it generally accepted that priests are pretty much a jack-of-all trades in terms of healing compared to other healing classes? I sometimes feel as if priests are outshone by other healing classes.

"Jack of All Trades, Master of None"? Generally, yes. However, there is one niche that a Holy Priest can fill that all other healers can't compare to. That is the nuke group healing capability of the Holy Priest. The versatility of the Holy Priest is in itself a strength, though. It allows the character to fill in potential holes in a group's healer composition during creation of the group. This strength is also wonderful on the fly, too. Such as during a boss fight when one of the other healers has to focus on something and you can help them cover their other responsibilities, or you can pick up the slack of a downed healer.

[taralej]

HPriests are in no way outshone by other classes. Being a jack of all trades is good, not bad, as you will be taken as a healer every time, no matter what. Paladins are great at single-target healing but suck at everything else. Discos are great at proactive "healing", but their raid healing is nonexistent and their single-target healing is mediocre at best. Shamans are awesome raid healers through Chain Heal, but their single target healing is meh. Resto druids have amazing raid healing and more often than not top the meters, but they have almost no direct healing.

So, as you can see, all healers have one or more significant weaknesses... All, except holy priests :)

[Beanlord]

Resto druids have amazing raid healing and more often than not top the meters, but they have almost no direct healing.

This is false. A resto druid can outheal a holy priest in purely single target healing rather easily. I've no idea where you got this idea about "almost no direct healing" from.

So, as you can see, all healers have one or more significant weaknesses... All, except holy priests :)

Discouting their cousin spec discipline, they have the worst single target healing compared to everyone else.

[DarkenedHue]

-What niche does Renew spamming specifically fit?

Assuming you're talking about the act of Renew spamming, and not simply a Renew-focused spec, then you Renew primarily in ticking aura or AoE heavy fights as a filler in between CoH and PoM uses. BQL and PP are examples of ticking aura fights, and LDW on heroic is another example of an encounter where HoT blanketing in anticipation of AoE damage tends to be useful, because of all the sudden bursts of AoE that tend to happen throughout the encounter. People are brought to lower health all the time from things like the boss' Frostbolt Volley, her DnD, ghost explosions, mind-controlled players that weren't CC'd quick enough, etc. HoT blankets are a great insurance to have against these things.

-Is there no absolute-best build to fit every playstyle, and therefore, upto the player's choice based on raid composition and skill level?

This is technically true, yep.

-In aura fights, it can be agreed that the effectiveness of Empowered Renew blanketing is greater than that of Disc bubble-popping? However, this brings up the question about the single-target healing availability provided by a disc priest compared to that of a holy priest?

It tends to be more useful. This isn't to say a Disc will be behind on the HPS meters in those fights, but a lot of that healing is achieved by causing heals that would've otherwise happened anyway to simply over-heal. This is particularly true of AoE fights where you can expect massive amounts of raid-wide healing going out. The Bubble also breaks a lot sooner than the duration of a Renew.

Hpriest and Disc Priest single target healing is somewhat comparable. In strict HPS terms the Holy Priest will be better if they have Empowered Healing/Serendipity. Neither of them have particularly impressive single-target healing, but the passive Discipline talent Divine Aegis is invaluable and will realistically bridge the hps gap and then some any time the Disc actually tank heals. It's amazing. It's kind of like a permanent Val'anyr proc - any crit heal leaves a small amt of EHP on the tank for his next hit. If the tank gets an avoidance streak, the DA absorb bank grows even if all the Flash Heal/Penance overheals.

Also, is it generally accepted that priests are pretty much a jack-of-all trades in terms of healing compared to other healing classes? I sometimes feel as if priests are outshone by other healing classes.

"Jack of all Trades" implies to me there wouldn't be something they'd be the absolute worst at, and Holy Priests have the weakest single target healing by a margin (ignoring Discipline Priests). Their passive tank healing toolkit is garbage (apart from GS and the Inspiration talent which didn't stack with a Rshammy's equivalent Ancestral Fortitude), and this is a weakness it's necessary to be cognizant of on tank-intensive fights where you might be needed to occasionally assist with tank healing.