Image courtesy of alexkalina
When Priests get to the upper echelon of raiding, they’re going to eventually run into one extremely important question. It’s pointless to have more than one Priest pick up Improved Divine Spirit. Joveta did an excellent feature showcasing the differences between the two specs. I’m not here to regurgitate what she illustrated. I’m here to help you decide which lucky monkey gets to go IDS.
The Supremes is a raiding Guild with 3 Priests, 4 Mages, and a handful of Resto Druids. It also has miscellaneous DPS.
Raid times:
- Tuesday, 4 hours, farm content
- Thursday, 4 hours, farm content
- Sunday, 7 hours, progression content
Let’s assume you’ve got 3 Priests:
- Steve McQueen: Always shows up, never missed a raid, sports 2350 healing
- Stevie Wonder: Can only commit to 2 of the 3 raiding days, sports 2100+ healing
- Steve Harvey: Able to only come on the last raiding day that Wonder isn’t able to attend, sports 2100 healing
Optimizing for Time
When you’re deep into raiding, it’s either CoH or IDS. You don’t need more than one IDS. From this perspective, you want to pick the most stable Priest who is able to come every day. This will ensure that every raid you go into has the IDS buff. This is the best bet since raids will go that much quicker. Just look at Joveta’s post for all the numbers. Go with Steve McQueen for guaranteed IDS.
Optimizing for Performance
On the other hand, one would argue that farm content doesn’t necessarily need IDS at all. By making Steve McQueen pickup IDS, his healing output does get slightly diminished. Another solution is to make Steve Harvey go IDS. This ensures that progression night raids will have the buff. If you really want to pick things up, you can ask Stevie Wonder and Steve Harvey to grab IDS. This way, you don’t handcuff Steve McQueen’s all star performance.
Picking out volunteers for IDS is never easy. I’ve rarely ever encountered an individual who wanted to do IDS. I myself had to respec IDS because our Priest corps is no longer as stable as it once was. One of them took off for college, the other’s having computer issues. I’m the current lynchpin Priest and I swallowed an extremely bitter pill in order to pick up IDS knowing that our floater Priests can stay IDS.
Anyway, there’s many ways to pick out who should get IDS. If you happen to have a Priest who wants the job, by all means let ’em have at it! If not, I highly suggest coin tossing as an alternative. I hear dice rolling is an excellent choice as well. Now dart throwing is a revolutionary way to make decisions as is bottle spinning…
They don’t have any tanks?! /gasp!
I kid. 😛
Ya, there’s definitely a small wave of insanity that ensues when it looks like we may not have IDS in the raid. It’s usually solved by a disgruntled respec or two. It looks like this is something that may be less of a concern in the expansion though.
Veneretios last blog post..How to Talk about your Warrior now and soon
@Lassirra: They’re the Supremes for a reason!
I loved the “gets to” in the title. That kind of positive language has me rolling with laughter! For example, I’m always “awarding” gear points to the people who get drops, not “taking away” their dkp.
Our discipline priest was a volunteer, thankfully! It’s better this way.
New blog post: Deciding Who Gets to Pick IDS http://tinyurl.com/5exza2
As my guild is extremely short on priests, after I hit 70 and went holy I have always been the IDS priest. We recently added a holy priest who was disc and respecced IDS and I talked him into going CoH since I was already IDS. I think I got him hooked on the healing output…
However, having always been IDS, I’m used to the extra spirit and perfectly willing to volunteer. 😛
@Allindra – that’s exactly the way I feel. Having never been CoH, I have nothing to compare it with, but I love playing as IDS. Although, I’ve also not progressed to the content where everyone says CoH shines. I’ve been tempted to try out CoH, but I figure as long as I’m loving what I’m doing, I might as well stay like it is.. That way when I do get to that level, I can just be the IDS piece of the puzzle and spare others the pain of respeccing. (Which, IMHO, seems incredibly selfish and silly)
Just a grammatical note:
The way it was: This way, you don’t handcuff Steve McQueen’s performance all star performance.
The way it should be This way, you don’t handcuff Steve McQueen’s all star performance.
@Retronius: That’s not really a grammar thing. That’s more of a Matt fails at typing thing. But thanks =). Fixing it! ^^
I started with two or three priests in my current guild – all holy. We were breaking into ZA with Kara/Badge gear. At the time my considerations of who “gets” IDS duty were not only who was reliable in terms of raid schedules, but most importantly – *who’s stats could support a CoH build* (high enough +heal and a mana pool big enough). Surely a CoH build is not the only kind of holy build but it was something our guild wanted to try out (especially for fights like Malacrass). So, because I was the best geared out of the three priests, I took the CoH spot, while another (just as reliable, but not geared as well) took the IDS role. Now that all the priests’ gear has evened out, we might mix things up – but I love my CoH!
I would debate with anyone whether or not there isn’t a role for a healing full disc priest in a raid. It is often dismissed as a bad choice, but I disagree.
I was asked to get Pain Suppression for Gurtogg Bloodboil while in Black Temple. This included getting Power Infusion plus a nice stamina increase and mana pool. I can single target heal VERY well and last a long time.
An added bonus is being able to put points in both Improved Power Word Shield and in Improved Inner Fire.