[Priest] 5.2 PTR notes

[nobodysbaby]

I made that tweet atleast 2 weeks old (pre nerf announce). I wrote this before in this thread aswell; I feel Disc did not need the 250% raptures and perhaps the double dip mastery removal will help slightly but I doubt it is enough. I would have loved to see a nerf to DA and at the same time a buff to perhaps PoM (DI for disc to work as holy) or so to make disc less PoH dependant.

I also believe we can handle a discussion and we can see through some rage posts. I actually understand there is a frustration among the non absorbs classes.

[Docta]

I was wondering, do these changes affect the synergy of disc secondary stats increasing eachothers values?

[twistedmynd]

Here are my findings on crit vs mastery. Also looked at haste, int, and spirit for scaling, next tier, and more: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...714?page=5#100
and http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/to...714?page=6#101

[Soulstrike]

i wish they would just freaking give shadow priest another spell that generate shadow orb or finishing mind flay channeling granting a shadow orb. right now the spriest spells are boring and they are weak!!! buff spriests :/ (before saying SWD generate orb i want some dynamic rotationg when boss is 25%>)

[Maleric]

I made that tweet atleast 2 weeks old (pre nerf announce). I wrote this before in this thread aswell; I feel Disc did not need the 250% raptures and perhaps the double dip mastery removal will help slightly but I doubt it is enough. I would have loved to see a nerf to DA and at the same time a buff to perhaps PoM (DI for disc to work as holy) or so to make disc less PoH dependant.

I also believe we can handle a discussion and we can see through some rage posts. I actually understand there is a frustration among the non absorbs classes.

Frustration is understandable, what isn't understandable though is the totally over-the-top campaigning for nerfs to a spec that was trash two months ago. The spec is one round of buffs removed from being trash, it shouldn't be hard to understand that reverting the recent buffs will send disc right back in to the gutter that it was in at the start of the expansion. Yet people are saying stuff like this:

The SS change will not stop discs from topping meters on almost every fight if played properly, nor will the so called rapture "nerf" and nor will reducing DA from 50% to 30% if that change was made.

Really? The spec wasn't topping meters two months ago WHEN DA WAS 30%. It wasn't even close. Yet this genius thinks that it magically would be now. And he apparently wants the Rapture buff reverted to.

[Venaliter]

Frustration is understandable, what isn't understandable though is the totally over-the-top campaigning for nerfs to a spec that was trash two months ago.

If we created a new thread, they'd just come into that one. Just ignore it, Maleric. There are some....less then informed, or outright trolls...in the thread. We can't bar them, so just place them on ignore and move on. Don't reply to them. It's obvious who they are.

[Sparkiee]

@Maleric

Did you even take a glance at the evidence i told people to look at? Pretty sure you didnt. Raidbots is never 100% solid proof, but it shows data that the top disc priests are so, so so so far ahead of pretty much every other healing class on every fight bar about 3. The DA buff was also not the only buff applied if you care to take a look at the patch notes, the SS nerf is nothing near the almighty nerf of gods that you probably think it is either. The rapture buff is completely stupid from a PvE standpoint, as i said, all priests will be doing is dropping there current int flasks and food for spirit again at the beginning of 5.2, which they would not of done if this rapture change didnt come in. An extra 50% of your spirit on every rapture is pretty huge when you consider the amounts of spirit that are very easily possible with BiS gear + flasks / food. You need to realise Blizzard are not just "reverting all the buffs" they did and they are not out to "get us", its all simple balancing and your rightfully upset your class / spec is getting nerfed but you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Get off your high horse and understand the spec is stupidly good in the hands of somebody who knows what they are doing with it. Also, as i said before, stop calling troll on people and borderline insulting them in a sarcastic manner when you cant reply with any of your own opinions that actually make sense or have even the slightest shread of evidence supporting them.

[Venaliter]

Get off your high horse and understand the spec is stupidly good in the hands of somebody who knows what they are doing with it. Also, as i said before, stop calling troll on people and borderline insulting them in a sarcastic manner when you cant reply with any of your own opinions that actually make sense or have even the slightest shread of evidence supporting them.

If you insist on posting here, at least read the thread. We've all agreed the Rapture buff, to 250%, is insane. We also agreed Spirit Shell needed the nerf it got (approx. 15%). No one denies Disc was too strong in PvE.

If Disc is too strong, even after the nerfs applied to SS, we'll understand DA will have to be lowered to 40-45%. We can live with that, but I would insist (not that it means much) they are least run the numbers on 5.2 before nerfing us further.

In PvP, it's the reverse. Disc is barely functional and Holy is completely broken. We require buffs there; hopefully without breaking PvE. It's okay if they buff Holy PvE, too, because they *really* need it.

And honestly, to name a few priests on here (Kellisti, Maleric, Nobodysbaby, Yaelle, Danner, Falade, Havoc, Aica, Kape, Darkener) who's opinions I may not always agree with, but have come to respect, I would be VERY surprised if any one of them really, really wants to be ridiculously overpowered. I'd lay money they are most interested in being balanced.

[HamSandwichFace]

If you insist on posting here, at least read the thread. We've all agreed the Rapture buff, to 250%, is insane. We also agreed Spirit Shell needed the nerf it got (approx. 15%). No one denies Disc was too strong in PvE.

And if he's insulting you, it's because you are woefully uniformed. It's hard to take you seriously when you have no idea what your talking about. The DA "buff" you refer too has been live for long time. This is not a 5.2 buff. 5.2, excluding Rapture, is mostly nerfs.

If Disc is too strong, even after the nerfs applied to SS, we'll understand DA will have to be lowered to 40-45%. We can live with that, but I would insist (not that it means much) they are least run the numbers on 5.2 before nerfing us further.

In PvP, it's the reverse. Disc is barely functional and Holy is completely broken. We require buffs there; hopefully without breaking PvE. It's okay if they buff Holy PvE, too, because they *really* need it.

And honestly, to name a few priests on here (Kellisti, Maleric, Nobodysbaby, Yaelle, Danner, Falade, Havoc, Aica, Kape, Darkener) who's opinions I may not always agree with, but have come to respect, I would be VERY surprised if any one of them really, really wants to be ridiculously overpowered. I'd lay money they are most interested in being balanced.

I would never call someone bad but telling a Priest in a world 27th guild they're misinformed is just plain rude, he's better than you. Get over it. I am too.

SS is not getting nerfed by 15%. At most it's getting nerfed by 5-10% (numbers taken from math posted by BL's Maladii). On top of that, let's think for a moment that a good Disc is going to be ahead of most healers by 20%. SS is normally 30-50% of a Disc's entire healing done, thus the nerf (at most) is 5% to the overall healing value. Now we need to find another 15%.

Taking DA from 50% > 30%, when DA is normally 30%~ of your overall healing cuts your overall healing by another 6%, now we need to find another 9% to cut. This can easily be done with putting Rapture at 200% (and excluding all spirit procs/MTTs et al) and also increasing the mana cost of PoH (for Disc only) from 13500 to 21500 (as I suggested prior).

If you think this is too harsh. Think for a moment. Prior to 5.1 Mistweavers were roughly 20-25% ahead of every other healing class. Our AoE got nerfed by 25% flat (the new haste breakpoint on Renewing offset the 25% nerf to Renewing to around 20% but it's negligible, Uplift and Chi Burst got hit so hard) and on top of that Enveloping Mists (when Monk tank healing was considered pathetic by most raid leaders) got nerfed by 32%. What are you expecting? Do you expect Blizzard to let Disc Priests stay in such a state that guilds stack 3-4 of them on progression?

The way I see it, Disc is the brutal God amongst man healer they are now because of 5 factors:
> unlimited mana (not being addressed)
> SS destroying most raid mechanics (not being addressed)
> having the ability to spam an AoE heal 90% of the time (with the other 10% being PW:S, Cascades, Penance + PoM on the move etc) (goes hand in hand with unlimited mana I guess)
> having the best raid CDs (shouldn't be addressed, Disc is allowed to have the best raid CDs but it should be at the cost of something else)
> having the best scaling of secondary stats (Mastery should get nerfed in order to buff haste/crit, and this is being addressed on a minimal level)

Take Mistweavers for example, prior to 5.1 this is how I would've summed the class up:

> poor tank healing, good when you have 2/4 set respectively
> insane AoE healing unmatched at any level, at any capacity, by another healer
> borderline useless raid CDs outside of gimmicky mechanics (dispell etc)
> mana regen is too good

This is how I'd sum up Disc right now:

> good tank healing (on Sha of Fear HC normally a Disc/Monk will tank heal and both classes do fine, except Disc can spam PoH during Submerges/Implacables ready for Huddle)
> insane AoE healing unmatched at any level, at any capacity, by another healer
> insane raid CDs which beat every other raid CD in the entire game
> unlimited mana
> potential to break certain boss mechanics every 1 minute

Can you really disagree? I think you're just being obtuse when you would rather listen to a Priest who's barely done any heroics and argue their opinion is more valid, to the point you're calling someone misinformed, compared to a Priest who's 16/16 HC.

The Priest in question runs 9.3k spirit and probably doesn't go OOM at all, likewise I run 11750 spirit and I generally go OOM within 6 minutes.

[Sparkiee]

The Priest in question runs 9.3k spirit and probably doesn't go OOM at all, likewise I run 11750 spirit and I generally go OOM within 6 minutes.

Im just messing with stats for todays raid, i normaly run around 12k spirit, but i find im swimming in mana on every single fight (even when we use 3 discs and you could say its a little harder to find rapture procs). I reasoned with myself that 9.3k was a little low, i upped it to 10.7k and im gonna see how that works tonight with most of that reforged into crit, giving me about 20.02% crit raid buffed, just to see the impact.

[Venaliter]

I apologize, Spark, I read your post are saying DA was buffed in 5.2 from 30-50%, and that's not what you said. I edited the post to correct the error.

Back on topic, I agree that SS stacking is a problem. I suggested a "Weakened Shell debuff" on page 9. Ultimately, it feels like that is the only way to balance the power of absorbs.

Im just messing with stats for todays raid, i normaly run around 12k spirit, but i find im swimming in mana on every single fight (even when we use 3 discs and you could say its a little harder to find rapture procs).

Of course you are. Temp spirit procs are still in game. They were *not* hotfixed, and thus is not a reliable number.

[HamSandwichFace]

Im just messing with stats for todays raid, i normaly run around 12k spirit, but i find im swimming in mana on every single fight (even when we use 3 discs and you could say its a little harder to find rapture procs). I reasoned with myself that 9.3k was a little low, i upped it to 10.7k and im gonna see how that works tonight with most of that reforged into crit, giving me about 20.02% crit raid buffed, just to see the impact.

This is a depressing post.

In order for a Mistweaver to end a fight with 0 mana, having no breaks, currently you need around 25-26k unbuffed spirit.

[Maleric]

@Maleric

Did you even take a glance at the evidence i told people to look at? Pretty sure you didnt. Raidbots is never 100% solid proof, but it shows data that the top disc priests are so, so so so far ahead of pretty much every other healing class on every fight bar about 3. The DA buff was also not the only buff applied if you care to take a look at the patch notes, the SS nerf is nothing near the almighty nerf of gods that you probably think it is either. The rapture buff is completely stupid from a PvE standpoint, as i said, all priests will be doing is dropping there current int flasks and food for spirit again at the beginning of 5.2, which they would not of done if this rapture change didnt come in. An extra 50% of your spirit on every rapture is pretty huge when you consider the amounts of spirit that are very easily possible with BiS gear + flasks / food. You need to realise Blizzard are not just "reverting all the buffs" they did and they are not out to "get us", its all simple balancing and your rightfully upset your class / spec is getting nerfed but you need to wake up and smell the coffee.

Get off your high horse and understand the spec is stupidly good in the hands of somebody who knows what they are doing with it. Also, as i said before, stop calling troll on people and borderline insulting them in a sarcastic manner when you cant reply with any of your own opinions that actually make sense or have even the slightest shread of evidence supporting them.

How about you link that "evidence" and explain how it applies. You haven't yet made a coherent argument, you're just tossing out assertions.

[HamSandwichFace]

How about you link that "evidence" and explain how it applies. You haven't yet made a coherent argument, you're just tossing out assertions.

The guy is a Disc Priest with 16/16 HC, that's his evidence.

[Deleted]

Even though I know I'm not supposed to feed the troll, or even acknowledge it, I feel now is appropriate.

"I would never call someone bad but telling a Priest in a world 27th guild they're misinformed is just plain rude, he's better than you. Get over it. I am too"

Every time I see you post I chuckle inside, given that I know 2 of your guild members, 1 of whom is a reject from my own guild and was unable to cut it (and that despite the fact I regard most of the people I currently raid with as "motivated morons")

I'm a 16/16 HC priest too, and the majority of the stuff you sprout is not only utter shite, but parts are factually incorrect too.

Stating that someone's opinion is not valid, based on their progression, is one of the most ridiculous things you have stated so far.

Apologies to mods, rest assured this guy will obtain no further responses from me.

[Blachshma]

Holy Priests were the best in much of Vanilla, were the best for much of TBC, and by BT / SWP they were far and away better than everyone (even Shamans, who were good, but not as good as a well played holy priest).

Disc wasn't actually the best in Dragon Soul fyi. The reason why Disc was mandatory was because by stacking int (their best regen stat) and spamming shields on everyone in the raid they could remove a fight mechanic that would otherwise leave all your healers almost OOM by the end of Phase 1 (and the transitions were no good time to stop healing the tanks, so thats a problem) - that made Disc mandatory for one fight: the rest of the tier Disc was competitive, but nothing special.

The reason Disc is doing so well right now is that Blizzard shifted its plan for raid damage to "rather than making the raid take constant passive big damage all fight, lets make big spikes of damage that healers need to respond to with cooldowns and raid members may need to coordinate and use their support healing or raid damage reduction cooldowns - that's good for teamwork!" - what I don't think they really considered was that Discs emphasis on shielding allows them to start healing the damage spike 15 seconds before the other healers can. I don't think the next tier will be so raid-damage-bursty, and that's bad news for Discs strength right now, because when the raid goes back to random people taking damage spikes, discs lack of smart heals are going to wreck it (while things like CoH and Chain Heal and Wild Growth will dominate). Disc is fine.

Wait, so let me get this - because holy priests were best in early days of WoW, they should not be viable for 2 (some would argue 3) expansions now?

And have you tried the so called smart heal that is CoH lately? Do you know how little it does (it actually gets your hps down woth the set bonus). There is really no reaso to even use CoH unless you have to heal on movement (e.g 2nd boss of HoF in the tornado phase) and you don't really have a choice but to use it.

And disc isn't "fine" - disc is more OP than any other healer even in unpredictable damage. A well played disc makes all the other healers look like a joke by having nothing to do in boss fight. Discs are crying how bad they are now on PvP, but where is holy on PvP? Even worse. Where is holy on raw healing? Worse. Mana regen? Worse? Single target healing? Worse. AoE healing? Worse. Add to that we are the only healing the spec that has to consider if we are going to Single Target or AoE heal because if we made the wrong decision or just want to help with tank healing during a fight - we have a chakra cd, congrats!
And its not like we excel in AoE healing while in Sancturay Chakra - we are still worse than most classes and we bring nothing useful to a raid. in DS at least we had some raw healing to bring, this time we got squat.

But yeah, most priests will continue to whine about how "bad" disc is on pvp where the "non-disc" spec gets the shaft, again, and isn't viable on PvE nor PvP.

[Arlee]

Look, we don't really tolerate elitist attitudes around here. People in top guilds can absolutely be idiotic and be carried by others in their guild, just as people who play more casually can know a ton about how their class work. If you want people to take you seriously prove what you are saying in specific ways and help the community to be better. If you are just here to wave your epeen around please don't bother because it doesn't help anyone in the long run and creates a crap community.

(general comment not directed at a specific person)

[HamSandwichFace]

The bottom line is this:

Disc needs to be nerfed in 5.2 and at the moment it's barely being touched. There are so many things with the spec that are flat out broken that just aren't getting changed and that, itself, is really ridiculous.

I'm going to do a little math here*:
Base PoH: 30k
Mastery: 30%
Crit: 10%

* all of these stats are more than achievable currently, so the stats are not being misleading. In fact the values are really low.

this is how SS works currently: Average heal * 1.3 * (1 + mastery %) * (1 + critical %)
this is how SS works in 5.1: Average heal * (1 + (0.5 * (1 + mastery %))) * (1 + critical %)

So currently: 30000 * 1.3 * (1 + 30%) * (1 + 15%) = 58305
in 5.2: 30000 * (1 + (0.5 * (1 + 40%))) * (1 + 15%) = 58605

There you go. Math shows that SS is infact getting a buff under those above values in 5.2. Now, how about if we scale it up and imagine super-sick BiS gear?

Average PoH: 60000
Mastery: 50%
Crit: 20%

Currently: 60000 * 1.3 * (1 + 50%) * (1 + 20%) = 140400 (that's actually insane LOL)
in 5.2: 60000 * (1 + (0.5 * (1 + 50%))) * (1 + 15%) = 120750

You see? At lower gear levels SS is infact stronger in 5.2, but at a "better" gear level the scaling gets "less ridiculous". Even so, in my "super-omg-super-sick-gear" mode, each PoH under SS is doing 20k~ less healing, or 15%~ less. Now, if SS is around 30-35% of your overall healing done, then the nerf is nothing more than 5%~ (max) nerf to your throughput.

There you go, I proved your class is overpowered and being untouched by in 5.2 via math - the proof you wanted. Now what arguments are you going to use to argue Disc is 'fine' and 'needs to be this strong else it'll get benched'? Really, I'm looking forward to the replies.

[Deleted]

Look, we don't really tolerate elitist attitudes around here. People in top guilds can absolutely be idiotic and be carried by others in their guild, just as people who play more casually can know a ton about how their class work.

Someone is living in a dream world. In top 50 guilds this is not the case and you most certainly can't afford to carry people, end of story. When you break into the top 50-100 then it's a different story and you will see dead weight far more.

I dislike the fact you made a comment like that. It's a biased opinion, not a fact. In this case, the people in question are far from idiotic. If you didn't like the direction of the thread you should have locked it, not post a your non constructive opinion on the matter.

http://www.raidbots.com/dpsbot/Overa...00000000111111
For those that couldn't be bothered to look it up.

[Yvaelle]

Wait, so let me get this - because holy priests were best in early days of WoW, they should not be viable for 2 (some would argue 3) expansions now?

Not what I was saying at all. Your timeline suggested that Holy had never been on top, but your timeline didn't include the first two expansions when Holy was the only "true healer" by design, when all other healers were designed to be second-rate to Holy - while Holy was designed to do all their jobs as well or better as them, in the same spec at the same time. I'm not saying Holy deserves to suck because of that (no spec ever deserves to suck because it previously did well, just as no spec deserves to be OP because it previously sucked), I'm saying that suggesting that Holy has never shined isn't true.

CoH is still an amazing spell by the way, "there is really no reason to even use CoH unless you have to heal on movement" is absurd - if your raid is taking raid-wide damage, CoH should probably be your top priority spell, moving or not (exempting say, Lightwell/spring).

Re: "Disc isn't 'fine'" - I started that paragraph by saying that disc was doing very well right now. Then I explained why that was, then I said it was fine. To re-iterate the why in the middle though, the reason that Disc is so strong right now is that the design for raid damage / healing shifted in MoP to be about sudden spikes of raid-wide damage, Ghostcrawler said at one point that this was his brilliant plan to make people work together to survive - and it's strewn through just about every fight this tier: in a lot of fights these massive damage phases are the key to beating the fight more so than tanking or dps races.

Disc heals in a very unique way, shields allow them to effectively begin healing burst damage phases before they occur - before the other healers get to respond - if it were a running race, Disc gets a 15 second headstart into the sprint (the max HPS phases). Discs emphasis on shields is unique amongst healers, and because of that - Disc was allowed to go through beta and 5.0->5.1 getting sat out of every raid, because the risk with buffing them was making them overpowered because of the way raid damage goes out now (not because of the actual numbers that Disc heals for. Discs effective HPS isn't as high as you think it is - but if all the other healers don't heal for 15 seconds, and you allow one healer (any spec) to do max HPS raid healing for 15 seconds with 0% overhealing - guess who looks good at the end of the fight?

In unpredictable raid damage, Discs response time to random damage spikes goes way, way down (and this is how fights used to be generally - or at least the boss wouldn't give you a 15 second + telegraph before his aoe phase to pre-shield). CoH (that smart heal you don't use), Wild Growth, Chain Heal all get to the effective healing far faster than Disc can target the player and either Penance or cast a Flash heal or heal or gheal (during Penance cooldown). Even a holy priest targetting and Renewing will instant heal before a disc priest can respond with a flash heal. Lightwell/spring is a similarly smart heal - disc doesn't get those - and rolling PoH's on entire groups all fight in the hopes that someone in that group is the one taking the random damage spike will OOM you very fast. To be clear, I'm not saying Holy and Disc are equal right now - but saying that Disc is incredibly overpowered, or that Holy is vastly underpowered - isn't accurate.

Holy's biggest weakness is its former biggest strength. In Vanilla and TBC, Holy was designed to be equal or better than everyone at every kind of healing. When they decided the other healers should be the equal of Priests (Disc, btw - was at the time a secondary toon you leveled up and parked outside of a raid instant to cast Spirit Buff on the raid between attempts and then log back to your Holy priest). When they made all the specs equals, they gave everyone a strength - except Holy - Holy's supposed strength was that it was versatile - but when your jack of all trades but the master of none - your never the right tool for the job (where the job is the fight - if some fight demanded you be both good at raid healing and single target at different times and swap mid-fight, maybe Holy would be the "best" for that).

Being versatile (blizzard's euphemism for Holy) sucks, I completely agree - it's a dumb model. Being good at pre-healing short spikes of massive raid damage that each occur ~60 seconds apart, and then being told that all fights will now be that - is bound to earn you (Disc) some jealousy from the people who are good at other healing fight types (which apparently Blizzard doesn't really care about anymore) - but it's not Discs fault: cool your jets, Disc is getting nerfed.