Is Windward Heart that bad for healers ?

[Amajed 3]

Hi , I've looked into all the healers guid at Icy-veins.com and none of them recommend Windward Heart for a healer as a BiS.

I thought its better than Seal of the Seven Signs

any explanation would be appreciated :)

thanks

[Zagam 1,982]

Likely because you have better odds of being hit by a bus, flying in the air, catching a winning lottery ticket, being caught by Spiderman, and dropped carefully and painlessly in front of a supermodel than see that trinket drop.

IMO, it's a pretty darn good trinket.

[Amajed 3]

lets talk about some1 who have it already .. or got hit by a bus and so on with the story :P

should he use it ? or not ?

[Zagam 1,982]

http://wow.joystiq.com/tag/windward-heart/

This article says it is the best trinket in the game with a 20 second internal cooldown along with the heal proc being a "smart heal" indicating it will always pick the person who has the lowest amount of health to ensure little to no overhealing. I think this coupled with the Spirit stacking trinket would be any healers dream set. With Maw of the Dragonlord, I would imagine any healer using this trinket and Maw would see a 10 to 15% extra healing throughput without changing playstyles.

TL;DR: Yes, he should use it.

[Amajed 3]

Then it should be in the BiS section in the guides pages for healers , right ?

Thanks Zagam :)

[Vlad 411]

The trinket is almost unobtainable due to its very low drop rate.

It is good, but it's not outstandingly better than, say, Seal of the Seven Signs.

[woostoff 0]

Hey im a 408ilvl savior resto shaman and my current healing trinkets are the spirit trinket off of spin heroic and the heroic heart, once i got both of those trinkets i saw a huge increase in my healing done. I find it works really well for classes with big aoe heals that can crit ie healing rain and holy radiance. So in my opinion it is in fact BiS for all healers

[Zagam 1,982]

Likely because you have better odds of being hit by a bus, flying in the air, catching a winning lottery ticket, being caught by Spiderman, and dropped carefully and painlessly in front of a supermodel than see that trinket drop.

IMO, it's a pretty darn good trinket.

I hate to quote myself, but just as Vlad said, those of us feel the pain of having our BiS trinkets rolling on this stupid shared loot 1% drop table. Bone-Link Fettish, Cunning of the Cruel, Vial of Shadows, Indomitable Pride, and the Heart...seeing them should make you excited. Winning them? Go ahead and write home to momma.

[Sorciere 1]

It depends on your build. Windward Heart depens on a crit. My disc priest has a haste > mastery > crit build with atonement so I'd much rather have Seal of the Seven Signs.

Honestly I think I'd still prefer the Seal on any build. I don't want an RNG smart heal. Period. If you want smart heals, spec atonement. A hast proc allows you to heal more than one target more quickly. One smart heal on a crit only benefits one in your raid. Suppose it's your weakest dps - wouldn't you rather have more haste to heal your tank? I know I would.

[Stoove 347]

I think that due to the different proc conditions, you will see more procs of Windward Heart when you really need it than Seal. That alone would make it better, IMO.

[Zagam 1,982]

It depends on your build. Windward Heart depens on a crit. My disc priest has a haste > mastery > crit build with atonement so I'd much rather have Seal of the Seven Signs.

Honestly I think I'd still prefer the Seal on any build. I don't want an RNG smart heal. Period. If you want smart heals, spec atonement. A hast proc allows you to heal more than one target more quickly. One smart heal on a crit only benefits one in your raid. Suppose it's your weakest dps - wouldn't you rather have more haste to heal your tank? I know I would.

Seal of the Seven Signs has a 75 second ICD that you cannot control. Haste does nothing for healers except speed up casts, which most of the time you don't really need. Windward Heart is a passive extra heal with no mana cost and a 20 sec ICD. You say that it requires a crit, but surely casting 10 spells with a HoT rolling somewhere will eventually lead you to one crit...it's almost required by the laws of mathematics. Oh, and the icing on the cake is that it picks the lowest health person which means it will almost always be a 100% effective heal with no overhealing. Heart is so much better than Seal that it's hard to find the words to describe it.

[Fatbearirl 0]

Seal of the Seven Signs has a 75 second ICD that you cannot control. Haste does nothing for healers except speed up casts, which most of the time you don't really need.

I actually agree with you... Windward Heart is better than Seal, but this quoted section is definitely not true.

For healing classes that use HOTs, especially Resto Druids, it's important to understand that you can reach ridiculously high HASTE SOFT CAPS when Velocity (the Seal proc) is active.

While its active, you can get two or even three additional ticks on some of your HOTs (I think... this is off the top of my head), meaning that you'd be increasing your healing throughput substantially for that short period of time.

The only reason why Windward Heart is better, even for RDruids, is because Seal's proc has a ridiculously long ICD.

tldr: Yes, Windward Heart is BIS, but Seal is really not that far behind. It has its usages, and is especially beneficial for RDruids who can maximize the usefulness of the haste proc.

Edited August 7, 2012 by Fatbearirl

[Zagam 1,982]

I actually agree with you... Windward Heart is better than Seal, but this quoted section is definitely not true.

For healing classes that use HOTs, especially Resto Druids, it's important to understand that you can reach ridiculously high HASTE SOFT CAPS when Velocity (the Seal proc) is active.

While its active, you can get two or even three additional ticks on some of your HOTs (I think... this is off the top of my head), meaning that you'd be increasing your healing throughput substantially for that short period of time.

So, what you're saying is that Seal is in the decent to good range because that haste proc can shove thresholds of HoTs to higher limits? For healers using HoTs with how most healing works now, all this would do is increase overhealing unless it happened to proc right when you needed it (after the 7th Hour of Twilight on Ultraxion or the last 5% of Heroic Madness). If you could decide when the proc happened, the trinket would skyrocket in value. However, it darn near always procs as you cast your first heal and lasts for 20 seconds. If you were to set up Power Auras, you would know that in 55 seconds, your trinket will proc again...so I guess you *could* time your other CDs around this, but is it really worth that effort? I just don't think you could slow or speed up your raid's DPS to accomodate your haste proc in times when it would be most beneficial.

I know that Heart is rare...I'm not saying Seal is bad. But I am definitely saying Seal and Heart are nowhere in the same league as each other. If Heart hasn't dropped, love the Seal you have. If anything, it gives you a pretty good amount of Int at least.

[Fatbearirl 0]

lol, I never said it was the most ideal trinket or BIS or anything... in fact, I made it very clear that I believed Heart was better.

I mostly just had an issue with you saying "Haste does nothing for healers except speed up casts, which most of the time you don't really need."

Haste is the best stat for some healers.

[Jaenny 2]

The haste trinket can also be useful as a Holypaladin, e.G in spine, you passively heal 100% of the time to make the debuff go away, and the haste helps a lot, i even like it more than the trinket, its always situational, you cant really say which is bis for when, also think about ultraxion heroic, or dw hc, you constantly heal 100% of the time

[Hapie 9]

How could you say that haste is fairly useless as a healer? It's one of their best stats.. ie. More HoT's. Quicker casts..

[Crixalis 14]

How could you say that haste is fairly useless as a healer? It's one of their best stats.. ie. More HoT's. Quicker casts..

You're right, but at some point in progression, your haste would be past of what you planned to cap for, i.e. soft haste cap, and then after it's only up to you if you want to gear for haste (depending on class/spec). The trinket has a 2minute ICD, which means it will probably take a bit to get it to proccing. You'll still want to go for trinkets that have short ICDs but strong procs (i.e. Heart of Unliving).

[Morideth 6]

I don't think this was mentioned yet, but let's not forget that the proc DOES scale with spellpower (unlike the previous tier's clone trinket Eye of Blazing Power).

I checked the logs of one of our H Madness kills to get some numbers, and the proc was 4.2% of our Resto Shaman's healing done. The average heal was for 27k, and the average crit was for 43.5k, proccing a total of 29 times. Note that his crit chance without raid buffs is just over 18%, so it doesn't take a lot of crit to benefit from this trinket.

I would say that, generally, the trinket is BiS, although its usefulness varies from class to class, However, as many others have mentioned, it is extremely rare. In the roughly 130 kills we've done on the first 6 bosses on heroic, we saw our first one just last week.

Edited August 10, 2012 by Morideth

[Zagam 1,982]

How could you say that haste is fairly useless as a healer? It's one of their best stats.. ie. More HoT's. Quicker casts..

Reading comprehension would go a long way...if you take a look, I said verbatim: "Haste does nothing for healers except speed up casts, which most of the time you don't really need."

Do you need this haste buff on Morchok? No

Do you need this haste buff on Zon'ozz? It might be beneficial during the Black Phase...but what happens if your DPS kill all of the adds and you get back into your groups and THEN your proc happens? Waste

Do you need this haste buff on Yor'sahj? Again, only if your other healer is bad or during the Green-Yellow-Red-Black fun fest...but what happens if it proc'd while the Oozes were walking towards Yor'sahj? It won't be up when you really want it.

Do you need this haste buff on Hagara? Water phase? Lightning phase? How do you control it?

Do you need this haste buff on Ultraxion? It would be applicable due to there being constant, increasing damage.

Do you need this haste buff on Warmaster? It would have its uses, but honestly, if you're healing a lot on Warmaster, tell your raiders to quit standing in the big glowing red beam of damage.

Spine? Yes, I can see this trinket being useful all the time on Spine. Absolutely no argument there.

Madness? You have a 20% haste buff for 4/5 of the fight, so any proc from your trinket will suffer immensely from diminishing returns. If it were to proc at a great time on Kalecgos' platform, you might benefit. But more so than Morideth's experience with his/her Druid partner? Hardly.

To sum it up, yes, I understand Haste is good for healers. I'm not arguing that at all. What I'm arguing is the proc from the trinket being garbage. If anyone can debate that without telling me I don't know what I'm talking about because healers need more haste, HoTs, and lower cast times, let me know. All I'm saying is this haste proc proc'ing when you don't need it to will only increase your overhealing and decrease your overall effectiveness at healing.

Edited August 10, 2012 by Zagam

[Stoove 347]

What Zagam said is true, but remember that SoSS isn't ***BAD*** for healers. It's just not as good as Windward Heart, is all. The Intellect alone is hella tasty...

[Krazyito 521]

I main a resto druid with only 2.2k spirit using both mentioned trinkets so the spirit trinket is useless to me because with the spec I have spirit does not help all that much. (barring I don't have to do dispels on heroic spine, if that were the case I use Jaws of Defeat and Heart of Unliving)

Come MoP though, I may have to change my mind..