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Greater Heal is Dead.
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Author:  Beneficence [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:44 am ]
Post subject:  Greater Heal is Dead.
Or is it? To be honest, I'm not really sure -- I just know I've been using it a hell of a lot less lately - I imagine there are some pretty passionate views out there about it, haha.

A combination of improved efficiency and more consistency on flash heal, higher server latencies post-wrath and better reaction times have really lead me towards Flash Heal much more. Despite blizzard's attempts to herd us back into religious mana conservation, the regen scheme is still something you can 'graduate' (as they put it) out of on many fights, so greater heal's added efficiency isn't so crucial.

Throughput on Greater Heal is notable higher than flash heal, but i'm finding it difficult to think of a situation where i need very high single target throughput, where i can consistently rely on the target to live for 2.5 seconds, haha.

My last naxx run, I did 3% of my total effective healing with GHeal and that's pretty much par for the course these days-- it's usually between 2 and 5%. I've been finding that in a cooperative raid environment, there tends to be a lot of little heals flying around out there, and the bigger ones are more clunky and less usable for the mana waste via overhealing they produce -- plus the increased post-wrath server latencies I previously mentioned have made stop casting more difficult.

All of this, and the fact that -- in most cases -- our array of other tools helps prevent the need for regular, large heals, leads me to wonder if the spell really merits all the points that are dedicated to it, in a raid environment.

Does anyone have any thoughts or opinions on this? I'd love to hear them!

Also, I've been thinking about dropping 2 of the points I have in improved healing for Holy Reach (clicking on my sig will take you to my armory). With CoH on a 6 second cooldown, in AoE heavy situations Healing Reach will help the spell reach greater potential when I am able to cast it -- and even with a 6 second cooldown, I still use CoH more than GHeal based on the current raid designs. I'm just hesitant to break away from such an oldschool bread and butter talent. =/
Author:  NewfieDave [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:27 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
I rarely, if ever, use Greater Heal while raid healing. Even when Clearcasting procs I find myself just using another Flash Heal. Speed is the name of the healing game right now, and every time I try and cast a Greater Heal it gets sniped. It's more useful for topping up a tank that's taken a big hit, but even Patchwerk can be healed with Flash Heal spam.

As bad as that makes the spell sound, I wouldn't drop the related talents because I use a lot of Greater Heal in heroics.
Author:  Kregath [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:47 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
My last Naxx10 run I had 34% healing done using Greater Heal, I still feel dirty when I use Flash Heal so I often fall back to stopcasting Greater Heal.

Even Prayer of Mending was higher up on my heal total than Flash heal in my case, sitting at 25%.

However I think this is purely a gear issue, you are overgeared for what you are running, thus Flash Heal just feel easier to use for the content, Myself and my healing partner was not overgeared for the content we were running and were running it for the first time with only 2 healers.

I found myself doing the same thing in Kara after I completely overgeared it, I would just Flash Heal the tanks during trash and pick up stop casting when I got to the bosses.
Author:  Avonar [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:02 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
I still most definitely use it, especially on heroics and when I'm doing main tank healing. A specific example is stacking heals on a tank on the Patchwerk fight.

That's what I love about priests - we always have the right tool for the job. Greater Heal is simply one of our many tools.
Author:  prmprm [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:21 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
For me GHeal is "almost" dead , with the right amount of gear\mana and right spec i now have the speed , crit ( God HPS ) and mana return
if correctly speced ... so i am these days only using FHeal in Raids\HC ( My FHeal cost when overhealing is "just" around 450mana with the FHeal glyph and serepentity 3/3 or what ever the name of that talent now is again ) ...

Feels good to have about 24K mana pool in buffed raids and a FHeal in 1.3-1.4 seconds that heals for 4.3k - 7.8k when it crits ( which it does alot if like i have about 25% crit when raid buffed and 3/3 Holy Concentration )

p.s I will drop my Powerword:shield glyph for the CoH glyph now since the 6CD will be applied which means that a 6:th target is great now since the CD will be applied in the patch ....
Author:  Zusterke [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:43 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
When comparing single target heals for holy priests, I noticed FHeal with glyph + serendipity makes an effective, rather efficient heal. Still:
- HPS: GHeal > FHeal
- HPM: GHeal > FHeal
- HPM: GHeal + serendipity (50% overheal) = FHeal (without serendipity)
- MPS: GHeal = FHeal

With the MPS of GHeal & FHeal being the same (almost), they put the same strain on your mana. This is a very important conclusion! In terms of managing your mana, they are quite comparable. FHeal offers a more fine grained control but GHeal does more healing over time and per mana. So, FHeal is no longer the horror story it used to be in TBC.

IMO, the selection between GHeal and FHeal should be based on the damage and healing pattern: if a higher heal/target (and higher HPS) is welcome, then GHeal can do a better job. If not, then Fheal allows you to heal more targets. That is the logic I use, and with great success.

In this respect it is possible that FHeal works better with a raidgroup that uses mnay small heals, where large heals don't work so well. In fact, it could be GHeal contributes little to none in such an environment. But I found such environments rare, and environments where the extra edge GHeal gives me common. Would I drop GHeal entirely? No. I've found too much use for GHeal in most raids. Even though a FHeal spam as replacement could work, my GHeal would work better. I'm quite sure that you can drop any 1 or 2 spells from the holy priest arsenal and still have a competent healer. But everytime you do that, you weaken the flexibility and options you have. So, from where I stand those talent points are well invested. In fact, I would see no better choice :)
Author:  prmprm [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 5:54 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
Good conclusion , BUT like you have already mentioned , time is also an crucial part in quick and "keep" a live healing , thats why i more like the FHeal more these days then the GHela becuse there are more times for me when i start the GHeal and "something" happends that need my attention , where if i used FHeal had been done already making me start another FHeal somewhere else in the raid ...

In the end , as long as your raid is alive and you have mana left for the trash\bosses thats what matter in the end and FHeal with right spec \ glyphs does perform great in mana\healing & time perspective for me .. ;)
Author:  Draugor [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 6:59 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
You're right, Bene, but there are still times when I find it useful to throw a BT hasted GH on a tank when there's lots of stuff going around. Malygos 10 man springs to mind, it's good when penance is on cd to shield someone who just took a breath and then throw a 1.7 sec gheal on the tank, then going back into a more stable rotation.

I think under the right circumstances it's still a viable "oh shit" button. But my preference is penance, every day of the week. I find my heals as disc to be split very evenly b/w PoM (esp. set bonus), FH and penance.
Author:  prmprm [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
I think its time for me to try a deep Disc spec , never done it ... feels nice to have a 1.7 sec GHeal .. ;)
Author:  Draugor [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 7:52 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
prmprm wrote:
I think its time for me to try a deep Disc spec , never done it ... feels nice to have a 1.7 sec GHeal .. ;)


The 1.7sec cast is with borrowed time -- i alluded to it by "toss a shield and cast..." If you want to heal as disc, first try it out on some pvp, 5 mans, heroics, etc. Throw away everything you thought you knew about healing, and start fresh. I made the change about a month ago and absolutely love it. Being proactive rather than reactive is a very different way to look at encounters. I find my knowledge of the encounters went through the roof when I started to look into predictable damage, etc. which helps in every aspect of my raiding.
Author:  prmprm [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:05 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
Draugor wrote:
prmprm wrote:
I think its time for me to try a deep Disc spec , never done it ... feels nice to have a 1.7 sec GHeal .. ;)


The 1.7sec cast is with borrowed time -- i alluded to it by "toss a shield and cast..." If you want to heal as disc, first try it out on some pvp, 5 mans, heroics, etc. Throw away everything you thought you knew about healing, and start fresh. I made the change about a month ago and absolutely love it. Being proactive rather than reactive is a very different way to look at encounters. I find my knowledge of the encounters went through the roof when I started to look into predictable damage, etc. which helps in every aspect of my raiding.


How often does borrowed time proc for you , i guess there are none CD on it also .. :)
Author:  Draugor [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 10:34 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
borrowed time "procs" every time you cast a PWS on someone, lasts for 5 seconds or until next spell cast. best practice is to use a shield every time it's up. penance is affected by the haste of this but does not consume the charge.
Author:  Beneficence [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 11:18 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
I'm really glad to see so many opinions out there =) Thanks for the input guys <3

While I was asking generally about how other people find their usage of GHeal vs FHeal post-Wrath, I also selfishly buried a question for myself in there. I think the core of this question is, assuming that GHeal is a present but little-used part of one's spell rotation, given my current spec -- would the potential improvement to CoH from Holy Reach (i.e. increased coverage possibly leading to a smaller need for additional heals in the intervening six second cooldown) outweigh a static 10% mana cost reduction to GHeal?

NewfieDave wrote:
Speed is the name of the healing game right now, and every time I try and cast a Greater Heal it gets sniped. It's more useful for topping up a tank that's taken a big hit, but even Patchwerk can be healed with Flash Heal spam.

As bad as that makes the spell sound, I wouldn't drop the related talents because I use a lot of Greater Heal in heroics.

I think this raises some good points. First, while I wouldn't say my GHeals are constantly getting completely sniped, they do consistently not heal for their full value to a point where Flash Heal would still have proc'd Serendipity. Despite GHeals higher HpM, it is less efficient than Flash Heal in some cases given the task at hand as FH simply costs less mana for one cast, period (HC/IHC excepted).

Second, I agree -- I rarely use GHeal on patchwork -- it's in a priority system. 1) Is my target hurt at this very moment? Flash Heal 2) Is PoM in the field (Tank bouncing is AWESOME on this fight), 3) Is renew on (at least) the tank I was assigned to? 4) GHeal stopcasting on my target until he/she needs it, or one of the other priorities ceases to be true.

Third, Greater Heal still has a place, I don't want to make it sound like I'm disputing that -- Heroics is a good example of where that place is larger. I would still use Greater Heal if the situation merited it, of course -- however I don't find many situations that test my mana where GHeal is obviously more appropriate.

Kregath wrote:
My last Naxx10 run I had 34% healing done using Greater Heal, I still feel dirty when I use Flash Heal so I often fall back to stopcasting Greater Heal.

Even Prayer of Mending was higher up on my heal total than Flash heal in my case, sitting at 25%.

I found myself doing the same thing in Kara after I completely overgeared it, I would just Flash Heal the tanks during trash and pick up stop casting when I got to the bosses.

I find myself in the opposite situation, generally in Naxx10 and 25, Flash Heal, Circle of Healing and PoM make up my top 3 heals: Flash and CoH fight for 1st place and PoM is usually 3rd, however they're all in a relatively tight 20-32% band. Renew is usually 4th. I think it can be difficult to get into a mindframe that makes it okay to use flash heal after it built such a poor rep in vanilla and BC and I do miss GHeal1, but FH is a great spell now.

The reference you make to Kara is a good one-- GEAR progression through farm content inherently moves away from Greater Heal towards Flash Heal. Your gear is better, so you can support the small added cost of choosing FHeal -- which is done primarily because shorter casts are more comfortable and less risky. Also--your tank(s) are getting better geared, meaning they don't take as much damage generally -- partially negating the need for use of GHeal.

Zusterke wrote:
When comparing single target heals for holy priests, I noticed FHeal with glyph + serendipity makes an effective, rather efficient heal. Still:
- HPS: GHeal > FHeal
- HPM: GHeal > FHeal
- HPM: GHeal + serendipity (50% overheal) = FHeal (without serendipity)
- MPS: GHeal = FHeal

With the MPS of GHeal & FHeal being the same (almost), they put the same strain on your mana. This is a very important conclusion! In terms of managing your mana, they are quite comparable. FHeal offers a more fine grained control but GHeal does more healing over time and per mana. So, FHeal is no longer the horror story it used to be in TBC.

IMO, the selection between GHeal and FHeal should be based on the damage and healing pattern: if a higher heal/target (and higher HPS) is welcome, then GHeal can do a better job. If not, then Fheal allows you to heal more targets. That is the logic I use, and with great success.


I've made it my policy to never argue with Zusterke math! hehe. My own numbers agree with your for the most part Z: HPS and HPM is greater for Greater Heal (hence the name? haha) and MpS over time is roughly equal.

The only thing I have a small disagreement with is your HpM example of a GHeal serendipity proc vs. FHeal sans serendipity. I think you'd find it impossible to replicate this situation based on the values these spells produce with ONE set of gear. Let my clarify: It's easy to replicate the situation, just not as easy to replicate your results based on it. Assuming my gear, unbuffed, my average GHeal (at 50% overheal) would land for 4963 and my average FHeal would hit for 4860. We're assuming the target was missing 4963 HP. Greater Heal costs 787 mana or 6.3 HpM and Flash heal costs 625 mana or 7.8 hpm.

One could say that 1.5 HpM is a relative small difference, and thus they're roughly equal. However, if you do that you're practicing a double standard because, at the above referenced level of gear, the HpM values for the full effect of each spell (no serendipity) is 9.45 for GHeal and 7.78 for Flash, making the difference only 1.67 HpM, or based on your evaluation of the data in this case: roughly equal. So my point would be that while GHeal exceeds Flash Heal's HpM, it's not by a great deal.

Another factor to consider (well, that we are effectively considering, in the above) is Throughput Efficiency (HpS/Cost or HpSpM). When we are talking about only one spell being cast, and not a chain of multiple GHeals or FHeals, Flash Heal has the greater Throughput Efficiency - making it the more desirable cast if it's capable of yielding a high enough portion of the result GHeal would create to justify the lower mana cost.

Draugor wrote:
You're right, Bene, but there are still times when I find it useful to throw a BT hasted GH on a tank when there's lots of stuff going around. Malygos 10 man springs to mind, it's good when penance is on cd to shield someone who just took a breath and then throw a 1.7 sec gheal on the tank, then going back into a more stable rotation.

I think under the right circumstances it's still a viable "oh shit" button. But my preference is penance, every day of the week. I find my heals as disc to be split very evenly b/w PoM (esp. set bonus), FH and penance.

I apologize for my ignorance, but I have yet to play Discipline in a raid situation and I would imagine Greater Heal plays a larger role in that spec, especially considering you have direct control over hasting it and the cooldown on penance. I think as a result of the more powerful (and often more expensive) base heals that Holy spec brings (in addition to CoH and the 3sec reduced C/D on PoM), GHeal represents a smaller overall part of our toolbox.

Great opinions and discussion so far, imo! Any other thoughts?
Author:  Chebyshev [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 11:23 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
On the contrary to your last point, I don't think gheal is or should be a large part of a disc priest's healing. We don't get all the stuff in holy to improve it and we get a spell (Penance) that replaces it every 8 seconds. I healed the remaining bosses in Naxx 10 last night (Thadd, Sapph and Kel) and I don't think I casted a single gheal. The only time I'll consider casting it is if I shield someone, Penance and then they are still around half life. Then I'll get a hasted gheal off. This little sequence is just ridiculous HPS. It takes me about 1.5 + 1.7 + 1.8 = 5s to get that whole sequence off and does around 6k + 9k + 9k = 24k healing if nothing crits.
Author:  Draugor [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:15 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
Beneficence wrote:
I apologize for my ignorance, but I have yet to play Discipline in a raid situation and I would imagine Greater Heal plays a larger role in that spec, especially considering you have direct control over hasting it and the cooldown on penance.


No, you use gheal even less as it's strictly situational at best. You'll seldom if ever cast it unless you do the old shield/penance/gheal on a target that just got pwned. Penance has three chances to crit, and heals for 10k with 0 crits, upwards of 13-14k if it all crits, so it generally heals the target to full. I don't have as much haste as I did when I was holy, but have pumped my gear into int/crit/mp5 to make up for it...so I've removed gheal from my main bar.
Author:  Beanne [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:19 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
Depends on the fight, naxx is undertuned according to GC (it's undertuned to the point where I can probably tank heal using non CD'ed coh). The only fight I use greater heal consistently at the moment is Sarth 3D and Maly 25 (on the tank) on both my priests. edit: I forgot about patch but we 2 heal that one practically (on 10 and 25 man).

I have a feeling greater heals will have a renaissance in Ulduar.
Author:  Kestrel [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 12:32 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
As a Holy Priest, pre-3.0, GH was my #1 spell, by a wide margin. Given my mana pool, spirit, Mp5 and gear, I could pretty much spam GH nonstop and not be concerned about going OOM.

Post-3.0, mana management is a much larger concern; still, I rarely find myself unable to cast, unless I've been battle rezzed and an innervate isn't available, or I've gotten careless/panicky in the heat of unexpected things happening in a fight. However, given Glyphs, the greater efficiency of Flash Heal (compared to pre-3.0), and the nature of fights, the precedence of spells is generally something similar to PoM, Renew, Flash, PoH, CoH, Binding, Greater. (Could be I've just become a better healer, too!)

Too often, my GH cast is a tenth of a second (or less) too late; I've also become much more used to casting Guardian Spirit, Flash, Greater. A well-placed Lightwell doesn't hurt a thing, either.

Unquestionably, GH remains much more efficient than FH, all other things being equal. However, all things are not equal, including (and especially) cast time: I can frequently cast three successive Flash Heals (with SoL) in less time than it takes for a single Greater Heal.

Is Greater Heal dead? No. However, like almost every spell we have now, it's not a one-size fits all; rather, it's much more a situational heal than it used to be.
Author:  Beanne [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 1:16 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
I was also thinking the number of healers make a difference. If you take too many, and in Naxx, 5 is too many for us >_<, your greater heals will be too late, because all the healers are bored and are just whackamoling everything. Our best geared pally with raid buffs and his talent(s) and gear, can cast sub 1 sec fols and 1.3 holy lights (in fact he is complaining he clips his fols they are so fast, but somehow I don't feel sorry for him =p), you betcha he's going to snipe all your gheals if he's bored.
Author:  Zusterke [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 2:57 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
Beneficence wrote:
The only thing I have a small disagreement with is your HpM example of a GHeal serendipity proc vs. FHeal sans serendipity. I think you'd find it impossible to replicate this situation based on the values these spells produce with ONE set of gear. Let my clarify: It's easy to replicate the situation, just not as easy to replicate your results based on it. Assuming my gear, unbuffed, my average GHeal (at 50% overheal) would land for 4963 and my average FHeal would hit for 4860. We're assuming the target was missing 4963 HP. Greater Heal costs 787 mana or 6.3 HpM and Flash heal costs 625 mana or 7.8 hpm.


Yeah I checked my numbers again and it seems I'm off by roughly a 10% margin. I don't have the exact number right here on me (I'll post it tomorrow). The only thing is that this difference improves in favor for GHeal with gear. That is a very relative point though: GHeal scales better but unless the damage and healthbars scale along the extra healing is just more overhealing. Anyway.. The point is that getting a high overheal on GHeal comes our worse than a FHeal without serendipity even though GHeal will score beter overall.

I get 30% or less overheal on my GHeal consistently and about 20% on my FHeal. Needless to say GHeal is more efficient. Depending on the setup, the extra HPS is actually welcome if not needed. But... can one do without? I think one can. Is it viable? I think it is. Is it better? I'm not sure about that.
In my build I already have 1 point in Holy Reach because I felt it would be handy. I think it's ok for CoH but even better for Holy Nova. I wouldn't mind an extra point in there but I doubt I would do it at the expense of my main nuke spell.

I'd say give it a shot. I see no reason why it would fail so let us know if you feel it actually made you better :)
Author:  Beneficence [ Mon Jan 19, 2009 4:07 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Greater Heal is Dead.
Haha sorry, i didn't mean to estimate discipline so poorly, I should probably get around to trying it out soon and learn first-hand.

Zusterke wrote:
I get 30% or less overheal on my GHeal consistently and about 20% on my FHeal. Needless to say GHeal is more efficient. Depending on the setup, the extra HPS is actually welcome if not needed. But... can one do without? I think one can. Is it viable? I think it is. Is it better? I'm not sure about that.

This ties in with what Beanne just said and it's a great point. In the raid setup we're using atm (typically 6 healers) my overheal on flash tends to be about 30-40% and my overheal on GHeal tends to be 50-60%. I do stop-cast when it's important, but so often it's not.

When you have well skilled and well geared healers, it's easy to step on each others heals a bit when the content is easy, i'm really hoping Ulduar will be more challenging -- although I am having fun ('fun') with Sarth +3v1.0. Other than that though, it really is mostly just whack-a-mole =/

Unless Ulduar represents a significant shift, Blizzard should probably consider boosting Greater Heal's efficiency by lowering its cost a bit, to further differentiate it from Flash Heal and make it an unquestionably unique tool in the box.
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