Power Infusion is Better than Heroism

Although I've been reviewing talents, I hadn't intended to review Power Infusion. It seems like a straightforward spell, a good buy for one point, and I've never seen a Disc priest without it. But lately I've seen some discussion on it, specifically whether it was worth casting on yourself or a DPS. Someone even said it was nothing to write home about! Because of this, I wanted to share some thoughts.

Before I justify the claim that PI is better than Heroism, here's the obligatory basics. Power Infusion speeds up casting and decreases the cost of spells. It provides a noticeable 20% increase in casting speed for 15 seconds, and saves some mana too. It is similar to Heroism/Bloodlust (with which its speed does not stack). It also doesn't stack with Arcane Power for mages.

Give it Away, or Keep it?

So PI gives haste and saves mana. No caster can argue with that. But how best to use it, casting it on a DPS, or saving it for oneself?

First, let's look at ourselves. When it comes to spell haste, Disc priests are often swimming in it. We'll often have Borrowed Time active for half of our spellcasts or more. And when it comes to mana, Rapture is usually ticking regularly. Now there are certainly times when predictable burst healing is needed, and casting PI on oneself can help. It is also very nice for General Vezax, for example. But more often than not, it can be superfluous on a Disc priest.

So, let's look at dropping it on a DPS. They'd probably enjoy some haste, they love Heroism after all! Comparing the two, we see that PI gives only 2/3 of the casting speed bonus, and for 15 seconds instead of 40. So one cast of PI on a DPS is about (2/3)*(15/40) as good as Heroism, that is, 25% as good (not counting the mana savings, since DPS rarely go OOM in an ideal world).

However, PI has a nice short cooldown. In fact, with Aspiration, it's just 96 seconds. This means you can easily cast PI on a given DPS four or five times during your average fight. If we add that up, now we're talking 100-125% of the bonus of a Heroism. That's right, for one lucky DPS, Power Infusion is better than Heroism. Or put another way, your DPS of choice gets two Heroisms per boss. Hax!

The Fine Print

Now, although PI can help a given DPS's performance more than Heroism, there are some limitations. Heroism is easy for DPS to make use of, since it's often called for by a raid leader at a set time, during a solid burn phase. It also comes with graphical and sound cues and lasts 40 seconds, so it's easy for DPS to stack other trinkets and procs with it.

Power Infusion, on the other hand, will be up for four or five separate 15-second periods, and the timing is controlled by a priest who may be frantically healing. So here's some ideas to help people make the most of PI:

• Pick a class that can benefit from the haste, like a mage or warlock.
• Pick a player that can handle stacking cooldowns and procs for max damage.
• Ideally, pick a player who knows in advance that your PI is coming.
• Use PI during burst damage phases, or at least times when your DPS player can focus on casting.
• But also use PI early and often, to get the most out of it.
• Don't use it during phases when Heroism is usually called for. Try to stagger it with Heroism.
• Use a macro to tell someone that you PI'd them. My macro is below.

Power Infusion Macro

Here is what I use to buff people, and tell them I did so. It casts PI (if in range and available) and whispers the target. It is 255 characters; I lengthened it because when it just said "You have [Power Infusion]," occasionally I would get a reply like "No, I didn't spec for it." Now my macro is a little more descriptive. (I would attach a "DPS for Dummies" book if I could!)

#show Power Infusion
/script local u,p="target","Power Infusion";if IsSpellInRange(p,u)==1 and GetSpellCooldown(p)==0 then SendChatMessage("You have "..GetSpellLink(p).." for 20 secs! Enjoy the haste!","WHISPER",nil,UnitName(u)) end
/cast Power Infusion

Something to Write Home About

So, overall, I am a big fan of PI. Back when it was the top-tier Disc talent I developed a "meh" feeling about it, since there's not much synergy with Disc (or with healing in general), but since then I have come to see its power. Blizzard keeps saying they won't give Heroism to another class, but really they've already given us a single-person version. Just find a smart DPS player to routinely PI, and pretty soon you will be receiving pleading tells to stay Disc instead of swapping to Holy or Shadow for any fights!

Talent Review: Body and Soul

Here's another quickie talent review: Body and Soul

I suspect a lot of people, like me, looked at this talent, said "That's cute," and moved on. It's not exactly a reason to spec into Holy, and when you hold it up against the nice passives deep in holy that can improve all healing by 1 or 2 percent, it's easy to think of it as a gimmicky talent.

And it is gimmicky. But it is also made of pure fun and win.

Body and Soul is basically an on-demand Sprint. With Blink's cooldown. Castable on anyone. This gives a lot of mobility whenever you or a party member needs it.

At first when I saw Body and Soul, I thought it would be pretty fun for flag running in BG's, maybe in raids for catching up with a stray tank or fleeing DPSer. But it turns out there are TONS of uses for this baby:

• Helping tanks get to mobs (from Violet Hold to Yogg's guardians)
• Helping tanks kite (Gluth's zombies or even Vezax)
• Helping people get out of AOE
• Fleeing Kologarn's eye beams
• Avoiding Mimiron's Laser Barrage
• Dancing for Heigan

The list goes on: basically anytime anyone needs to be somewhere else NOW, this talent can be a big help. And since most of those times involve avoiding damage, having the movement be attached to a PW:Shield is great!

And the cool thing is, people notice this buff. Hit someone with Power Infusion and they might not even notice it. Hit them with Pain Suppression and they might ask what the shiny bubble is. But hit them with this, and they will immediately notice it, and often (literally) leap for joy. I first used Body and Soul in a heroic and within minutes, I had a tank asking for it on every pull (and to get to the bank faster in Dalaran, but that's another story). With good communication, this could help a tank position mobs faster than ever before.

Now, that said, raiders have gotten by at 100% speed (or slightly more with boot-enchants of the running fast) for years now, so Body and Soul is clearly not essential. Could you get more throughput out of investing talent points elsewhere in Holy? Probably. But you will not have nearly as much fun as with spammable shield-sprint. And sometimes having the right person in the right place can save a raid as surely as any heal can.

A word of warning, though. If you spec into Body and Soul long enough for your tanks or raidmates to become accustomed to it, be prepared to hear about it if you ever respec. You may prefer Disc healing or whatever, but your friends will value their ability to run around like maniacs at 160% speed. =)

Talent Review: Improved Flash Heal

I'm trying to get back into posting, so here's another installment of my talent reviews. This time a Disc talent: Improved Flash Heal.

Originally I thought Improved Flash Heal was almost mandatory. Back in the day Flash Heal was our workhorse, and so doing anything to improve it was a given.

Later on, after thinking about it and reading a post about the talent, I decided it wasn't so hot. Mana comes a lot easier nowadays, and 10% crit on a spell we don't use as much as we used to isn't that exciting.

But now, I think I have a more balanced view. There are pros and cons to this talent.

Pros:

• Cheaper Flash Heal. Who doesn't like Flash Heal?
  
• More crit, when you need it most (low health target).
  
• More crit also equals more Divine Aegises. Aegisi? Aegooses?

Cons:

• Only affects Flash Heal. Who casts Flash Heal?
  
• Mana conservation not that big a deal for Disc priests.
  
• Crit effect only applies to low health targets.
  
• Unlike Test of Faith;s steady healing boost, this crit plays a RNG game with a low health target.

The pros may all seem to be heavily qualified by the cons, but let's look at an example situation where this talent shines: General Vezax. For Vezax, you need to conserve every last scrap of mana. And you need to focus on healing a single target, which means you're pretty much just casting shield, penance, and flash (in that priority order). With 3.2's longer Penance cooldown, you'll be casting flashes now and again, so you may as well get them cheaper. And you sure want to keep Inspiration up on the tank, so the extra crit doesn't hurt when it comes into play.

And the real test of any talent is, what else could you be getting with your talent points. In this tier of the Disc tree, you're basically comparing it to Focused Will. This used to be a PvP talent, but it now also increases your crit. Overall, I'd probably recommend going for Focused Will first (I am a crit fiend), but there are enough points to invest in both. At the very least, you can drop one point in Improved Flash Heal: the first point gives slightly more crit than the following points.

An interesting talent choice overall. Not the best talent for Disc priests (though I'm sure Holy would kill for it), but not bad either. And for times when mana may be tight, and single-target healing crucial, it's a solid choice.

Healing with Grace

I know I have been reviewing Holy Talents, but I wanted to insert a post on the Disc talent Grace. This talent is designed to increase our single-target healing capability, without giving us all the permanent +healing modifiers that Holy has.

The way it works is a little clumsy, and Blizzard has admitted they feel it's an awkward mechanic. But it does serve to increase our tank healing by 9% for just two talent points. (Or one point, if you don't mind the stack dropping occasionally due to the RNG). This is a big boost... of course with the caveat that if you heal anyone else, you'll lose the bonus until you cast a few more heals.

Or will you? The Grace stack is only refreshed (and moved to a new target if applicable) on casting a direct heal. That is, Flash, Greater, or Penance. It's not refreshed by shields, HoTs, or group heals. This means we are free to cast PW:Shield, Renew, Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending, and even Binding Heal on anyone we like without losing our Grace stack. This is a surprising amount of versatility given the initial impression of the talent's limitations.

Penance and Shield are a disc priest's meat and potatoes. Given that Grace works the way it does, Penance can be cast on a tank on cooldown, and Shield can be used on the tank every 15 seconds and on anyone else whenever else you like, while still maximizing Grace usage. Furthermore, a Prayer of Mending can be launched off every 10 seconds or so, bouncing across the raid (and creating little Divine Aegis shields too) without affecting the Grace stack, yet still benefiting from it when it bounces back to the tank.

Using this technique, you can heal multiple people while still getting full use out of Grace on your main ward. You can reserve Penance (and Flash in some cases) for the MT, but also help out an OT by keeping them shielded (with Glyph!) and Renew'd. If the OT needs a direct heal, you can even cast Binding Heal (which is as powerful and fast as Flash) without losing Grace on the MT.

Now, all of this advice is only relevant for some fights. In any easy fight, you probably won't need Grace, so you can Penance anyone who's low. And certainly in a hard fight, keeping your tank up takes priority to throwing out heals (especially expensive ones like Binding) to others. But I feel it's good to know how to finesse Grace, to keep up its bonus, while still healing someone who needs it in an emergency. A 9% bonus on one person may seem like a drop in the bucket, but we've all had times where a tank had 500 health for a few perilous seconds, and next time it might just be the bonus from Grace that gave him or her those 500 hit points to begin with.

Talent Review: Serendipity

A lot of people were excited to see Serendipity when it was first unveiled. It seemed to be Blizzard's answer to mixing up healer rotations, to let healers do things besides spamming one heal. But does it accomplish its purpose?

Serendipity builds up a stacking haste buff when you cast Flash and Binding Heals, that will speed up your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing up to 36%. That's a lot of haste; it basically will speed up the GHeal or PoH up to Flash Heal speed. Naturally, this will only be useful if you'll have reason to cast Flash Heals as well as use a big heal nuke from time to time. It's not like the old Improved Holy Concentration which let you simply spam GH and end up hasting a bunch of them.

So where is Serendipity powerful? For tank healing, it does not seem especially useful. One could throw in Flashes when a tank is mostly topped off, to provide a periodic haste buff to GH, which of course is never a bad thing. But where this talent really shines is in conjunction with PoH and Ulduar's raid damage. Prayer of Healing is very powerful targeted group heal. With even 1 or 2 points in Serendipity, a priest can "charge up" their PoH in advance, in preparation of an upcoming Tympanic Tantrum or other burst of AOE. This allows the PoH to land much sooner after damage hits, which also gives all healers more breathing room to top the raid up afterwards.

Serendipity has great synergy with Surge of Light. When assigned to raid healing, there is not always occasion to cast Flash Heals, especially when movement is necessary. But with SoL (proccing off CoH and PoM), there is almost always an opportunity to cast an instant Flash and refresh the Serendipity stack before it expires.

I feel that Serendipity is a useful talent in any environment with raid-wide AOE. It provides a good insurance policy, so that with a little planning, a large heal can be at one's fingertips at a moment's notice. In this way it can serve a role like Borrowed Time does for Disc priests.

The only thing I feel is missing is a good AddOn to track Serendipity's status, since you may wish to see the umber of stacks (to estimate PoH's current cast time), as well as the remaining buff duration (to know when to refresh it, if it will be needed soon).

Talent Review: Test of Faith

I thought I might do some quick posts reviewing Holy talent choices. As I said in my post on 3.1's viable talent specs, I feel the Disc tree really offers a best path, but the Holy tree offers a number of different options for talenting.

Test of Faith

This interesting talent increases your healing by 4/8/12% on targets below 50% health. 12% is a large bonus for 3 points, but is the 50% health requirement a good thing or a bad thing?

I think there's two ways to look at this talent. One the one hand, you could say Test of Faith is a bad talent if people are doing what they're supposed to, because if they don't stand in the fire or botch their abilities, they will rarely be below half health. On the other hand, you might say Test of Faith kicks in when you need it most, when people are in dire need of healing. And should you really pick your talents to help when everything is going fine, or to help you most when the raid needs all the healing it can get?

I think that both arguments are valid, but that there are two extenuating factors. First is that many of us are learning new bosses and new hard modes in Ulduar. This means that everyone is still learning where to stand, what to click, and how to avoid damage. People will be taking more damage as guilds learn encounters, so Test of Faith can be a good safety net. Also, there is a lot of raid damage in Ulduar, much of it nontrivial. Ignis's Flame Jets and Kologarn's Shockwave are two examples of raid-wide abilities that will bring many people below 50% health. Test of Faith can add a lot of oomph to the CoH's, PoH's, and PoM's that will be flying around.

Of course, the decision to invest in any talent comes down to what else the points could be spent on. This may be a number of other Holy talents but for me, I was comparing it to Blessed Resilience, which gives a flat 1% boost to all healing per point. Test of Faith gives 4 times the bonus per point, so you could look at total throughput and ask if Test of Faith will proc on your heals at least 25% of the time. If so, then it will affect your bottom line more than Blessed Resilience. Of course, the times Test of Faith procs are times when people need healing most, and when heals are least likely to overheal. So even if it only procs on 15-20% of your heals, perhaps it is still better overall.

Although I was skeptical of this talent early on, I have decided to use it. The +12% healing is a strong bonus, and given all the damage flying around in Ulduar, and the fact that our smart heals (CoH, PoM, DH) seek out injured players, it seems a good investment to me.

PW:Shield in the news

A few weeks ago I wondered if Power Word: Shield was overpowered, what with all the stacking bonuses it gets in the Disc tree. My reason for saying it might be "too good" was really just wondering if it made sense to base so much of Disc's benefits on one situational spell. It'd be like if 20 talent points in Holy affected Renew.

This week, others are noticing and pointing out how good PW:Shield is. Matt Low (of World of Matticus) posted on WoWInsider about how Disc can use preemptive shields as AOE mitigation. Disc has come a long way if what was once a panic button spell can now be used to pre-shield whole chunks of the raid against upcoming damage. Matt makes a good point that, thanks to Soul Warding making PW:Shield cheap and quickly recastable, this is a very viable strategy. I honestly think that in some encounters, you could do more "effective healing" this way than through Penance and Flash Heal.

There was also a post this week on the WoW forums, by a paladin who was comparing Disc's shielding to pally offerings. Most of the replies were critical of the analysis, but I think the paladin had some good points. Fully talented PW:Shield is a big instant-cast low-cost "heal" that also comes with an energize effect and a haste buff. Plus, frequent pre-shielding (as the WoWInsider post discussed) is clearly helpful in many places in Ulduar. I think Disc as a spec, and Shield as a spell, are very unique and powerful.

The Blizzard reply began, "Power Word: Shield is a really useful tool for Disc priests in particular. We want them using it." It's fortunate that Ghostcrawler said this, instead of, say, "We think Shield is a little too good and we're looking at scaling it back!" I do still wonder if Disc has a little too much invested in one spell, but on the balancing side, Weakened Soul keeps it from monopolizing our repertoire. And I do have to say, now that I've tried it, that the Glyph of Penance does give us a very attractive alternative spell to cast every six seconds!

Viable talent specs in 3.1

Many people have already posted on talent specs for 3.1. I wanted to post my own thoughts sooner. Hopefully these thoughts will remain relevant throughout 3.1, so the post isn't immediately out of date!

As priests, we have a few options for our two specs. We can use either or both specs for healing, DPSing, or PvPing. I think it really comes down to personal preference and guild situation whether one chooses to have 2 healing specs, or a healing spec and a PvP spec, or a raid healing spec and a trash DPSing spec, etc. I think I will start out like many priests and pick up a disc and a holy spec for starters, at least until the healers in my guild stabilize and I have a better idea of what's needed.

Here are what I think are the viable/best specs:

Deep Discipline PvE Healing (57/14/0)

In my opinion this is the logical best Disc spec. You get all the goodies, skip the PvP stuff, and get enough in Holy for Inspiration (and Desperate Prayer, a favorite of mine as a Dwarf!) You could make a case for putting 4 more in Holy to pick up Improved Healing, perhaps taking points from Focused Will or Improved Flash Heal, but I don't think it'd be worth it, with Penance's cheap cost. It depends on the frequency of casting Greater Heal as Disc.

Deep Holy PvE Healing (14/51/0 + 6)

This is the skeleton of most deep Holy builds, I think, covering all the essentials and leaving 6 points to place where you like. Circle of Healing and all the talents that help it, the staples Holy Concentration and Surge of Light, and all the passive healing boosts for big throughput. With the remaining points you can choose to also have a better Renew in your arsenal, the passive Test of Faith for healing where it counts, Serendipity for faster Greater Heals, or better efficiency from Mental Agility in Disc. You could shave a few more points off of say blessed Resilience or others too, depending on taste.

Holy/Disc PvE Healing (21/60/0)

I cooked up this odd spec, squeezing the Disc talent Soul Warding into a CoH build, and I'm not sure if it's any good. I thought of it because I think PW:Shield is underused by Holy priests as well as Disc ones, and Soul Warding would let you through out a couple of shields in between CoH cooldowns. Without Disc's massive shield buffs, it may not be worth it, but it could be interesting for dangerous trash packs, or perhaps for some gimmick encounter.

Holy/Disc DPS

The idea of a LolSmite spec has a soft spot for me, and with dual specs you can always get a wacky spec for your off spec. Surge of Smite is probably not going to top a raid damage meter but it can do decent DPS if you're looking for something fun to try. For more info I have to recommend Xel's new smite DPS blog.

Shadow DPS

Of course, Shadow is the traditional DPS spec, and comes with excellent trash-pack APE damage in Mind Sear, so it can be a good secondary spec for clearing trash. WoW Insider had a great post on shadow specs the other day.

PvP Healing or DPS

I'm afraid I haven't kept up with PvP in WotLK, and I don't want to post a PvP spec without any experience. I would imagine that deep Disc is the preferred arena spec for its enhanced survivability and shielding, but that deep Holy has potential especially in battlegrounds. The new talent Body and Soul seems very nice for the BG involving flags and quick travel.

Hopefully this spec advice is sound and helpful. Time will tell, as we advance through Ulduar, which specs are best for the encounters there. Have fun choosing a spec and switching between specs!

The difference between Holy and Discipline

Holy:

If you should perish,
You'll be reborn, phoenix-like:
Guardian Spirit

Discipline:

If you're hurting bad,
I'll say, "Suck it up and deal."
That's Pain Suppression

Is Power Word: Shield TOO good?

PW:Shield has historically been a good, well-balanced spell. It's an instant-cast shield, but you can also think of it as a front-loaded heal, or an extension to tank hit points, both of which are naturally very good. No other healer has a spell like it. It even has a cool echoing sound effect when people whack you while you are shielded! And yet the spell is balanced, by its cooldown and Weakened Soul, and untalented it's not as mana efficient as a heal.

It's been a spell that has always been very powerful, even back in WoW and TBC, and I think it has always been underappreciated and underused. Disc priests now understand its strength thanks to all of its new bells and whistles, but I think it's worth using as Holy too.

And if PW:Shield is good in 3.0, it will be amazing in 3.1! For Disc priests in 3.1, shields also cost 30% less mana, have no cooldown, energize the target with mana/rage/etc, and shielding anyone also reduces all incoming raid damage by 3%. This is in addition to how they are already stronger than normal shields, return mana when they are consumed, grant spell haste when cast, and with a glyph they even heal a bit. Don't forget the upcoming tier 8 set bonus, which grants 250 spell power each time you cast a shield. Not many spells have this many features!

So what prevents PW:Shield from being ridiculously overpowered? Once the 4-second cooldown is gone, only Weakened Soul will prevent it from being spammed. Weakened Soul makes using shield as a regular heal impractical, and means it will still only play a small role in tank healing.

I am not sure if this a healthy way for the Disc tree to work, with PW:Shield so insanely good, but with a harsh limit on how often you can use it to heal a tank (which is Disc's "specialty"). It seems a little odd to spend a dozen talent points on a spell, when perhaps it will only mitigate 1/8th of a boss's attacks. Is it unusual to have a spell so transformed by recent improvements, but have its balancing debuff unchanged since WoW's release?

An interesting side effect of all this is that PW:Shield is actually looking pretty good as a raid heal. A talented and glyphed shield costs very little and absorbs a whole lot (and heals 20% of that amount too). With no cooldown, and with Borrowed Time hasting each cast's global cooldown, it could mitigate a lot of raid damage from AOE or adds.

So, is PW:Shield too good? It depends on the encounter, and on how it's used, and on how Weakened Soul comes into play. We will see how well it does in 3.1. Perhaps the mechanic of Weakened Soul will be changed to let us shield tanks more often, or perhaps it will be kept as-is, to remind us that we're not just tank healers. In any case, PW:Shield and Penance will definitely remain Disc's signature spells, and all the shield buffs and the new Penance glyph should provide for some interesting options for Disc priests.