Priest Mana Guide!

[Nikentic]

written by me, math and some info gathered from elitistjerks, wowhead for GCD stats, and a few other sites.


Operating outside the 5 second rule - uptime optimisation for Priests

terminology:

OO5SR - out of 5 second rule
I5SR - inside 5 second rule
IF - Inner Focus (talent)
GH - Greater Heal
FH - Flash Heal
GCD's - Global CoolDowns
PoH - Prayer of Healing
CoH - circle of healing
SOL - Surge Of Light
HC - Holy Concentration



Optimising mana by cheating the 5 second rule

The 5 second rule currently implemented by blizzard, is that as soon as a spell which costs mana is completed casting,
regardless of whether or not the spell hits, you will enter a 5 second period where your mana regen is reduced.
this period of lower mana regeneration is called acting I5SR. when you are I5SR, you gain very little from spirit as far as
mana regeneration is concerned, and only MP5 equips will allow you to regenrate mana effectively. The Meditation talent allows you to somewhat
bypass this restriction, as it allows 30% of your spirit to continue to benefit you with regen whilst casting. Every priest should spec into this talent.

The question is, how do we optimise our rotation/spell priorities so that we can benefit most from the times we are OO5SR?

our surefire way to beat the system is IF. Since the spell cast after IF costs us no mana, we are exempt from the 5 second rule.
Heavy Disc priests will benefit more from IF OO5SR regen, as talents into max Aspiration reduce the cooldown from 3 minutes to 2.4 minutes (144 seconds)
In order to optimise the use of IF the reccommended (by me!) rotation below can be applied to two situations due to crit bonuses allowing us to extend our 5 second rule benefits.

in both of the situations I'm going to go over, the thing you should primarily concentrate on is stacking GCD's. By stacking GCD's I mean that you apply any required instant
cast spell onto the end of a spell with a casting time. Lets look at a basic situation to explain this better. You're healing a tank who is at 60%, and has a Renew that is going to
drop in 4 seconds. you begin casting a GH, and as soon as the GH hits, you refresh the Renew. That way, your two cooldowns are stacked together. why does this benefit us?


When not stacking cooldowns:
(GCD shown below timescale)


|----------------Greater Heal Cast 2.5s--------------| |1.5s wait| |Renew||5 seconds till OO5sr|
|---1s GCD---| <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> |---1s GCD---|


total casting time: 5s including GCD until next available cast
total I5SR time: 6.5s




when stacking cooldowns:

|----------------Greater Heal Cast 2.5s--------------||Renew||5 seconds till oo5sr|
|---1s GCD---| <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>|---1s GCD---|

total casting time: 3.5s including GCD until next available cast
total I5SR time: 5s



As the two situations above suggest, delaying a required instant cast spell to ensure that the last tick is retained adds a 1.5s extra wait time until you can operate OO5SR.
over a boss fight this can severely hurt your regen if it happens too often. in stacking your GCD's and refreshing the renew, you will lose a tick, (roughly 1200 healing at T7 10 man naxx.)
In order to stop us losing this, the hard bit is timing the start of the cast, so that the 1.5s wait comes PRE GH.

|1.5s wait||----------------Greater Heal Cast 2.5s--------------||renew||5 seconds till oo5sr|

using the above method you retain all possible ticks of renew, and shorten the time that you are acting inside the 5 second rule.



Available to holy priests are other talents that are available for uptime and acting OO5sr.
- The 25 point talent Surge Of Light, benefiting from ANY critical.
- The 30 point talent holy Concentration, benefiting from FH, GH, BH criticals.

the above talents help because they make our next cast of Flash heal and greater heal respectively, mana free. They dont invoke the 5 second rule.

The two above are used in separate situations as each one is Proc'ed on different things.


For party healing:

As we wont be using GH as often for party healing, PoH, CoH and FH are our main tools.
To best use the OO5SR we need to use our IF, and using that, Proc a SOL.

- Pop If to start, making first cast free and improving crit by 25% (to help proc SOL).
- Constantly cast PoH and /stopcasting and recast until its necessary that the spell hits. When the situation arises, let the PoH hit, and hope for a proc.
- If SOL proc's you get to extend your OO5SR regen even further, (as nothing so far this rotation has cost mana, we are still OO5SR) as you get a mana free flash heal to top someone up.
only when you cast your next spell which costs mana will you enter the 5 second rule.

(Alternatively, instead of PoH you can just wait before casting a CoH, resulting in a similar result, with less healing for less mana cost. The rest of the rotation is the same.)


For Tank/Single Target healing:

- Pop IF to start, making first cast free and improving crit by 25% to help proc both SOL, and Holy Concentration.
- Constantly keep GH casting, and /stopcasting until needed. as above, let the spill hit when needed, and hope for a proc.
- If HC/SOL procs, you want to cast FH first to minimize overhealing. if the tank still needs a big boost, scratch that and go straight for GH.


rinse, repeat, stacking your GCD's.

Using the rotation above, taking into account that we get a proc on both, we manage to stay OO5sr for:

time before letting cast hit + greater heal cast + SOL flash heal cast + HC GH

still without entering the 5 second rule. the next cast we make which costs mana will however drop us back into the 5 second phase.




to further improve your oo5 regen, there's an item that drops in naxx, that you should use every IF rotation where you aren't at 100% mana. Spirit-World Glass


I hope this guide helps a few people.

Writen by me, taken from my guild forum

[saionjik]

I like it very much

[Nikentic]

great, atleast someone likes it.

[Ozrien]

I'll definitely rep to this, numbers seem solid, good strategy.

[ixtli]

Unless you have loads of haste, the GCD is still 1.5 seconds

[Nikentic]

that depends on what spell you cast. If you cast greater heal, the gcd is ended before you have finished your cast

[tumi2000]

Unless you have loads of haste, the GCD is still 1.5 seconds

Nope gcd is reduced by haste blizz implanted it a few patches ago

[Nikentic]

thanks for the feedback, soon back with an other guide.

[DarthSmoke]

the work you ve done has helped a lot, thx!

[Nikentic]

no problem.