Do u C wut i did thar?

• What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Eristhan, priest, 14/57/00.

• What is your primary group healing environment?

25-man raids. I’m mostly assigned to slash my wrists and wonder why I can’t spam CoH anymore.

• What is your favorite healing spell for your class and why?

Prayer of Mending. BING BING BING BING BING is the best sound in the game, ever. It’s a mana-efficient heal capable of both tank and raid healing if utilized properly. It’s a preemptive heal too, something I’ve always rather enjoyed.

• What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

Greater Heal. Quite often, I will get more use from Renew, Lightwell, and Divine Hymn, but can use Greater Heal as little as once per week. With Wrath’s style of healing today, there is a lot of spamming going on. You power-push the raid, snipe heals, and don’t stop. Greater Heal is too large, perhaps overhealing for as much as 50% or more, especially when raid healing. You can heal your target properly for less mana and time using Flash Heal.

• What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

We’re a power house. Holy Priests are capable of pulling a staggering amount of HPS without really trying or knowing what they are doing.

• What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

To continue my thoughts above, we’re boring. It’s my personal opinion, but we’re boring. If you’re talking in technical terms, a holy priest is currently considered the worst tank healer in the game due to inefficient and slow heals.

• In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

The raid is where I’ll be doing the most good. I do tend to cast Prayer of Mending and Renew on the tanks while spamming my little heart out on the raid with Flash Heal and Prayer of Healing. Circle of Healing is also used on cooldown, though sometimes it’s only used as an instant heal for tanks.

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

No preference.

• What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

No preference.

• What is your worst habit as a healer?

Playing god. No, really. If I’m too bored, I will let your health dip and cast a terrible or DOWNRANKED (lol) spell from opening my spellbook manually and see if you live.

• What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

“HEAL ME PLX.” Almost guaranteed to let you die.

• Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

In raw power, yes. In style of healing, I consider the holy priest a step up from a holy paladin. (Sorry pallies. i <3 u :< )

• What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

lol

• What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

That we suck. We don’t suck, we’re boring. Anyone who says a holy priest is fun is confusing power with fun.

• What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

Mana management, hands-down. No one seems to value spirit as highly as they should, gem correctly, they don’t seem to understand the crit stat.

• If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see ?

Pure awesome.

• Haste or Crit and why?

Ideally, crit would be at 33% raid buffed to allow the highest possible uptime of HC, and haste would be stacked after that. I don’t have any mana troubles, so my Crit’s a bit low, but so is my haste.

• What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Shaman. It’s the one healer I don’t have at 80.

• What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Grid + mouseover macros are my friends.

• Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

A balance, but I favor spellpower more than other priests in the guild. And honestly, it’s only so I can be a complete jerk and keep the strongest PoM up on the tank.

“lrn2math imo” was all that was needed to unleash my PISS-IGNORANT FURY.

A discipline priest had observed that there was no mp5 cloth in Ulduar, leaving him no option but to pick up extra mp5 from rings and weapons and so forth. I pointed out that mp5 does not scale with any buffs or talents, and was a very expensive stat to stack in comparison with spirit. A debate followed in guild chat until the whispered “lrn2math imo” came to my attention.

PISS-IGNORANT FURY.

For the purposes of this experiment, let’s assume the following:

mana regen = [(5 x √int) x spi] x 0.003345
mp5 = mana regen ÷ 2

He has 163 raw mp5 on his gear. He’ll need 326 regen from spirit to make that up. Sounds very hard so far. The truth is, unbuffed, he would need 1350 spirit (538 more than he has now) to meet that goal.

Now let’s add in Imp Mark, Arcane Intellect, and Divine Spirit. While we’re at it, let’s replace that +250mana chest enchant with +10 stats. He would now need 1285 spirit, 318 more than he would otherwise have with these buffs.

Finally, let’s give him Kings. 1225 spirit is needed. 161 more than he has completely raid buffed now. As far as ilvl points go (it’s how Blizzard decides how much of a certain stat to put on an item), mp5 is 1.6 times (60%) more expensive than spirit… to save you all of the fancy talk, he could easily make that up by replacing his mp5 items with spirit items of a lower ilvl.

Final note:

I actually went into this several days after the incident. I tilted my head, and added up the numbers. I’m glad I went into this objectively.