Specing Holy: Empowered Healing or Blessed Resilience?
The argument on whether Blessed Resilience or Empowered Healing is more beneficial came up recently and I thought it was really time to familiarize myself with Empowered Healing better.
How does Empowered Healing work?
Elitist Jerks describes it as:
Empowered Healing reads Your Greater Heal spell gains an additional 40% of your bonus healing effects. This means 40% of your spellpower is applied to the healing of GHeal (and 20% to Flash Heal, as a secondary benefit).
The final formula for computing benefit to a Greater Heal from Empowered Healing with Cast Time coefficients:
[ Base_Healing_Range + HSE * 3.0/3.5 + 0.40 * spellpower]
This means that, at 3000 spellpower raid buffed (which you should be around for ICC), you’re looking at an additional 1200 healed per Greater Heal (and 600 for Flash Heal.) This is a significant amount of healing difference that obviously scales with gear.
Is it better to take Empowered Healing or Blessed Resilience?
To compare the two, we’ll have to look at Empowered Healing at 3 ranks, since Blessed Resilience is only a 3-point talent. Empowered Healing is only giving Greater Heal 24% bonus spellpower at 3 talent points, for a total of 720 additional healing at 3000 spellpower. Blessed Resilience, by contrast, is going to give 3% overall heals; for my 3000 spellpower Holy priest that is walking around 0/5 in Empowered Renew, a crit Greater Heal of 16000 could be getting 480 bonus healing from that Blessed Resilience.
720 > 480, so in terms of raw healing, Empowered Healing wins.
However, Blessed Resilience also has added PvP benefits that sets it apart from Empowered Healing. Since I PvP as a Holy priest, I am attracted to this additional benefit. This means that Blessed Resilience still slips its way into my spec despite Empowered Healing’s obvious benefit.
Looking for some more nitty-gritty math on this subject? Here is the Elitist Jerks theorycrafting on the matter, from frequent poster Sindaga:
“Empowered Healing vs. Blessed Resilience (yes, the PvP talent)
Taking two examples for empowered healing (Flash Heal & Binding Heal); this is due to the very low amount of greater heal casting, personally, done in Ulduar 25 and 10-man. Each heal will be looked at with empowered healing or with blessed resilience. Calculations will be done with 3000 spell power (a very attainable goal with even just a couple ulduar upgrades). The formula used will be as follows:
Spell = [Average + (Spellpower * coefficient)]*(talent modifiers)
i) Calculations with Empowered Healing (w/ spiritual healing modifier)
Flash Heal = [2049.5 + (3000 * 0.9668)]*1.1
Flash Heal = 5445 healing average
Binding Heal = [2237.5 + (3000 *0.9668)]*1.1
Binding Heal = 5652 healing average
Greater Heal = [4300.5 + (3000 * 2.2256)]*1.1
Greater Heal = 12075 healing averageii) Calculations with Blessed Resilience (w/ spiritual healing modifier)
Flash Heal = [2049.5 + (3000 * 0.8057)]*1.13
Flash Heal = 5047 healing average
Binding Heal = [2237.5 + (3000 *0.8057)]*1.13
Binding Heal = 4969 healing average
Greater Heal = [4300.5 + (3000 * 1.6111)]*1.13
Greater Heal = 10321 healing averageiii) Calculations with Blessed Resilience & Test of Faith (w/ spiritual healing modifier) – I found something interesting testing with Renew. If the spell is cast below 50%, the ticks (even if the health goes higher than 50%) stay with the 12% increased effectiveness.
Flash Heal = [2049.5 + (3000 * 0.8057)]*1.25
Flash Heal = 5583 healing average
Binding Heal = [2237.5 + (3000 *0.8057)]*1.25
Binding Heal = 5818 healing average
Greater Heal = [4300.5 + (3000 * 1.6111)]*1.25
Greater Heal = 11417 healing averageSo those are some pretty plain numbers. If you find yourself casting greater heal more than once in a blue moon, perhaps stick with Empowered Healing. If you regularly find yourself not casting it at all during fights then a spec for better output would first put the 5 points from empowered healing to 3/3 blessed resilience and then 2/3 Test of Faith.
Justification for taking test of faith is it provides more healing to those targets who need more health.” — Sindaga
The bottom line here is that putting 3 points in Blessed Resilience along with 2 in Test of Faith increases the amount healed on targets below 50% by a significant amount. If you’re looking to take advantage of Test of Faith in the next layer of the tree, it’s a good idea to pair it with Blessed Resilience – and you can easily take the points from Empowered Healing to make that happen. It’s entirely a play-style dependent call, and I personally prefer the constant levels of healing provided by Empowered Healing to the low-health dependent benefits of Test of Faith.
I take Body and Soul over Test of Faith–again, mostly a PvP decision–and I must say those speed bubbles are saving myself and other raid members from otherwise tragic deaths.
World of Matticus has an excellent post about Holy priest specing that covers this topic as well. 
Check out other popular posts from Johannah:
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By Glo, February 22, 2010 @ 11:28 pm
If you look at the math provided, it shows that Empowered Healing doesn’t simply add 40% or 20% of your spell power to those spells, but increases the spell coefficient by 40% and 20%.
Might want to change something here since the first formula and then the math later on in the post contradict each other.
Also, math proves that a MIXTURE of Blessed Resilience and Empowered Healing is the best. 3/3 Emp Heal and 3/3 Bless Res will maximize throughput since Blessed Resilience affects all of the other heals you use as a Holy Priest. As Holy, our strength is raid healing, so increases Prayer of Mending, Prayer of Healing, Circle of Healing, Renew, and Divine Hymn, by an extra 100 healing per tick/target adds up extremely fast. Much more than what you would get from the extra healing from GHeal, unless you really do nothing but stand there and spam GHeal…
By Kourtnie McKenzie, February 24, 2010 @ 11:42 am
Thanks for the input, Glo! It’s appreciated!