[holy]balancing haste, mastery (and crit?) in 10-man. Please help... :(

[Circeis 0]

Hello all,

I've been a holy priest since the beginning of WotLK to its very end and came back at 5.4. I am now very uncomfortable with my holy, a shame as I used to be able to do 10-man heroic almost eyes closed. I am thankful to websites like elitist-jerks (I've been an avid reader for almost a year) and icy-veins to be highly trustable and allow people like me to quickly go back in the game.

I have spent countless hours thinking, reading and testing all I could think of about my holy spec and from my understanding, And yet I feel even more lost, perhaps I even got it all wrong, thus this thread.

From my understanding:

It seems to be almost all about balancing haste and mastery.

• Mastery because of the passive Mastery: Echo of Light which I feel is the core of the spec now. Basically free extra healing.
• Haste because it makes Renew and Holy Word: Sanctuaryhit faster.

The dilema is that every haste point taken is a "lost" mastery point, thus the question of balance. To make matters worse I don't understand what I shall do of critic rating, as I do not have procs on critic anymore.

All the articles I found, written from 5.0 to early 5.4, agree on the following:

• haste until 1st extra hit on renew (4721 rating is the most recurent value)
• the more mastery you can get, but it is less efficient in 10-man raiding.
• increased haste requires more spirit, because it tends to increase mana consumption. And 10-man raiding is more intense on the healing than 25-man.

Being over 40%, raidbuffed, in mastery, I was wondering if I could benefit from a little more haste. I have read about other classes that felt pretty similar on that particular matter (balancing haste and mastery), paladin and warlock for instance, and it seems clear that the haste cap depends of the ilevel.

Back on my priest, looking at the t-16 4pcs bonus and this haste chart, it feels like common sense to aim extra tick for sanctuary. Based on my current ilevel (559), it would be logical to aim at 7425 rating, the next cap, as I would be too short on mastery to reach 10118 rating on my current gear. Seeing how great Sanctuary does, combined with Divine Star, it seems like a must have, and the most sexiest thing on earth on the paper.

In a raiding context though, the results are very confusing. It goes from efficient, to insanly good (Thok, Galakras for instance) on part 2 and 3 in SoO. Yet awfully bad on part 4. Part 1 being completely random. I know you cannot always trust the recount because of many external parameters. But clearly, something is wrong with my approach.

To go in depth on that last part I'll install a logger this week-end and provide data. I have no definite spell rotation, though I rely mostly on prayer of mending, and renew. The rest of the rotation depends of the situation of course.

Why critic rating above mastery?

As said above, I completely see the point of critic rating at WotLK. I fail to understand why IV guide (which I have no doubt is legit) puts critic rating above mastery in 10-man now. Putting aside some very situational examples coupled with the increased critical chances granted by Chakra: Serenity. I can see why if you are holy/disci and share your gear. But It feels very wrong to me to rely on a "third priority" stat and ignore something as big as Mastery: Echo of Light.

Switching back to my former configuration (4721 haste cap then the most mastery I can get) I realized that mastery healing was way less efficient now that I had gained about 20 ilevel points. Weird thing is that it felt and did good at about 530, in SoO flex. And now I feel like I have got it all wrong. I’m scared as hell to go for HC, because my guild would really like to rely on me for the HC group as they lack a good and well geared healer, and I would really hate to fail on that.

My armory link:

http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/character/Ysondre/Célèstïa/advanced

Thanks in advance.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Circeis

[Gwenymph 414]

Unfortunately, as you've realized haste just does not have the impact it used to.  Gearing/reforging/gemming for the 4721 haste breakpoint no longer pays off.  The play style of getting the extra Sanc and Renew ticks does not hold up against a Mastery/Crit heavy build.

 

I have 2 raiding priest (1 10m, 1 25m) and begrudgingly moved away from the haste breakpoint on both of them.  The raid healing that the Dev Watercooler for WoD Blue article mentioned trying to get rid of is the reason we don't go for any haste now.  It's about getting everyone back to full asap so they don't die at the hands of the next ability.  There is so much Mastery on our gear in SoO that you can gem and reforge into Crit.  I did a quick search on H2Priest for the "bye bye holy haste" post that had theory crafting behind it but had no luck.

 

Both of my priest run under 7% haste now and the resulting efficiency from making the haste switch was immediately noticeable. Some habits are hard to break and in this case, the gear scaling along with the damage output of encounters has limited Holy choices for play style min/max.  Dev's claim to be fixing this in WoD.  Until then, while Holy plays the waiting game, it's safe (and backed by thoerycrafting that I can't find on H2P) to drop all your haste and try to get Crit and Mastery to grow together while you tackle SoO.

Edited March 20, 2014 by Gwenymph

[kitsu 55]

crit is rated over mastery because you get more out of it. your base mastery is so high, and the 4pc is so nice, that each point of secondaries you can reforge or gem as you please is better spent on crit.

 

although in ten man i run fdcl, di, and am almost always in serenity. this build focuses on speed heals and recover vs output, and pairs well with a blanket healer like a traditional shaman, tree, or monk.

[Circeis 0]

A heartfelt thank you for your quick replies, this question is very painful and drives me mad. 

 

@gwenymph>The bitter irony in here is that I have always been strongly against haste at WotLK and preferred to rely on critic rating at the time. I would really like to read the article you are referring to, do you have any details to give me so I can find it? I have remodeled my stats according to your advice for some testing. I must say it goes against my intuition to actually lower my mastery for HM and rely on something that will supposedly "slow down" my reaction-time to increased damages. But It might be one of the last option on the list, and as someone taught me, Eliminate all other factors, and the one which remains must be the truth. Do you have any link to the priests you are referring to? I failed to see them in your roster, the only two holy priests I see around 7% haste are not geared to raid 10-man.
I'm referring to this guild and I guess it is not yours.

@kitsu>I really have an apprehension with this, because a high mastery appears to me as the best way to provide a strong, continuous, and controllable healing. But I'm not a dogmatic person, I can be reasoned ! You made a very good point reminding me it involves getting more instant heals. The issue is it still relies on something very random on which I have no control other than cast more spells and pray for a proc and a crit. While I can see a way to increase my critic rating to a viable rate, I still fail to see how lowering my ability to cast spells is viable, again especially in a HM context where I expect it to be increased. But again those are questions and doubts that can only be dealt with reading the article Gwenymph mentions and to do some testing.

[Circeis 0]

Oh dear, sorry for double post but I think I understood completely wrong what you first stated. I'm not a native English-speaker, but when I read "crit is rated over mastery" I first understood, and perhaps this is influenced by what was said about haste, that i need more critical rating than mastery. But I now realise you could mean it is more valuable, without necessarily referring to the actual amount I require.

 

Any numbers to throw out for I can get a better picture ?

Edited March 20, 2014 by Circeis

[Gwenymph 414]

If you want to continue to look for the post I was not able to find it was on:  www.howtopriest.com

 

There are a number of posts about "raiding as holy" and "holy stats"

 

The thread about progression in 10m w/o haste was, I believe from, Decoy.   If not by him I know he was involved in it because I remember one particular post that reference keeping your disc gear and reforging b/c of all the SoO mastery, gemming and reforging to crit, omitting haste.

[kitsu 55]

i look at mastery as adding a percentage of a fraction of a heal. where crit is a chance to double your heal. the nice thing about crit is that if your mastery hot is based on a crit its much larger than a regular heal. because you already have a base abount of mastery, you'll always get the mastery hot, but you have to acquire some crit in order to get a decent amount of crits.

 

i dont like thinking of crit as random. to me it is more organic. you may not be able to depend on one particular thing critting, but you can absolutely depend on a large percentage of things critting if you have a lot of crit.

 

i like to have my crit at or above 28% and i like to have about 6k haste. i run 15k spirit, but i bet i could get that down and still do okay.

[Gwenymph 414]

i look at mastery as adding a percentage of a fraction of a heal. where crit is a chance to double your heal. the nice thing about crit is that if your mastery hot is based on a crit its much larger than a regular heal. because you already have a base abount of mastery, you'll always get the mastery hot, but you have to acquire some crit in order to get a decent amount of crits.

 

i dont like thinking of crit as random. to me it is more organic. you may not be able to depend on one particular thing critting, but you can absolutely depend on a large percentage of things critting if you have a lot of crit.

 

i like to have my crit at or above 28% and i like to have about 6k haste. i run 15k spirit, but i bet i could get that down and still do okay.

 

I'm not sure if you were helping OP or trying to convince me.  If the latter, you and I are on the same page, no convincing needed.  I was just trying to KISS it to him as far as gemming and reforging into Crit.  I also like what you said about Crit being random.  There was another great post about that on the other forums as well.  "the more crit you have, the less random it is."

[kitsu 55]

it was more for OP. even if people are new to things and instructions would help more than abstract concepts, i think people seeking info should get exposure to new ideas and perspectives. 

 

when someone comes up with a list of breakpoints like its gold and is fixated on expecting things to be a certain way, i usually say things in the hopes that theyll consider that there are different perspectives.

 

i dont think all healers need to compete on output like dps compete on numbers. sure some dps have strong and weak points and others are just brilliant at everything, but healing is a lot different. there are disc priest who cant be stopped on output but if an entire raid is low on hp, a disc isnt going to fill their bars up all of a sudden. if a monk is putting up huge numbers on the charts and almost everyone is fine, but one specific person gets in trouble, what is the monk going to do? a holy priest is a single touch away from solving problems like that and can be a real value even if a large portion of output is in the hands of others.