[Priest] 5.2 PTR notes

[HamSandwichFace]

The Rapture change makes Qin-Xi and Spirits BiS instead of Relic + Spirits. Currently Relic + Spirits is BiS.

Passive spirit gains will still apply to Rapture. Similar to how passive spirit (Empty Fruit Barrel, Heart of Unliving, Qin-Xi) boost the power of Mana Tide totem.

Most Resto Shaman raid without around 12k spirit unbuffed (and they go the same route as all other healers: int flask/food) thus you can argue Mana Tide is a 200% gain for 16 seconds every 180 seconds or a 17.78% passive increase to spirit. Using my previous values (which are a lot more realistic than any other value, ask any Priest about BiS trinkets: currently Relic/Spirits is BiS, in 5.1 Qin-Xi will replace Relic of Chi-Ji) then the 14829 spirit value is increased by 8.88% = 16146 (rounded up).

16146 * 200% * 50 = 1614600

Compared to the 5.2 value which was 1652550

So yea, if you have 1 Resto Shaman your mana gain through Rapture is still buffed by 37950.

If you're currently raiding without a Resto Shaman (as our Discs are) the change is a bigger buff.

If you're raiding with 2 Resto Shaman you'll probably see a loss of around 40k~ mana.

Not really that bad now is it considering (current) Disc Priest mana is totally ridiculous and over the top.

[KaPe]

Let's not forget that unless you time your Rapture perfectly with each and every Mana Tide, the "nerf" will be even less significant. Plus it's not always that shield pops *exactly* when you want it to which might prevent from getting 2 procs per tide anyway.

Either way, all 5.2 changes are something that could have been done in a simple hotfix, not in a major patch. It's simply yet another round of tweaks to PoH - since it's not like you use any other heal with Spirit Shell. (funny how it doesn't even work with penance) Nerf both of those things severely and introduce some other options. Hell, maybe it could 'fix' pvp, too - it's not like people spam PoH there, do they?

And I just can't wait to see "Chakra now adds +35%, up from 25%" in future notes, as a way to "fix" Holy even more.

[Deleted]

The Rapture change makes Qin-Xi and Spirits BiS instead of Relic + Spirits. Currently Relic + Spirits is BiS.

Passive spirit gains will still apply to Rapture. Similar to how passive spirit (Empty Fruit Barrel, Heart of Unliving, Qin-Xi) boost the power of Mana Tide totem.

Most Resto Shaman raid without around 12k spirit unbuffed (and they go the same route as all other healers: int flask/food) thus you can argue Mana Tide is a 200% gain for 16 seconds every 180 seconds or a 17.78% passive increase to spirit. Using my previous values (which are a lot more realistic than any other value, ask any Priest about BiS trinkets: currently Relic/Spirits is BiS, in 5.1 Qin-Xi will replace Relic of Chi-Ji) then the 14829 spirit value is increased by 8.88% = 16146 (rounded up).

16146 * 200% * 50 = 1614600

Compared to the 5.2 value which was 1652550

So yea, if you have 1 Resto Shaman your mana gain through Rapture is still buffed by 37950.

If you're currently raiding without a Resto Shaman (as our Discs are) the change is a bigger buff.

If you're raiding with 2 Resto Shaman you'll probably see a loss of around 40k~ mana.

Not really that bad now is it considering (current) Disc Priest mana is totally ridiculous and over the top.

1.) Trinkets. You change trinkets yet entirely disregard the output we gain/lose by changing them up. Having a int proc rather than passive int is (arguably) significantly weaker for output, even if the regen is higher. Hence it's far more accurate to use the same trinkets for both scenarios even if BiS (once again, arguably) changes.

2.) Shamans will most likely have more than 12k spirit ub'd in the next content. 12k is ub and not what the actual number in a raid is even now. In 25 man content one could even argue that it's better for the raid if the shaman stacks spirit (possibly even using a spirit flask) more heavily to allow the other healers to gem for other stats.

3.) You obviously can't just split the mana tide cd and calculate it like that considering the cd and the duration, in a fight that lasts just long enough for mana tide to finish ticking the value is almost twice that in your calculations and in most it's somewhere between.

So despite freely picking the values that suits you best you struggle to make the 5.2 rapture change seem like a buff even if just one shaman is involved. Should I use the values I 'want' and add in the fact that a good disc priest can get two rapture procs during each mana tide and see where we end up? All you're proving is that you can get whatever result you want if you try hard enough. The values for the rapture nerf indicate that the purpose is to change the fact that discs gain way more from mana tide than other healers, and it accomplishes this purpose.

Let's not forget that unless you time your Rapture perfectly with each and every Mana Tide, the "nerf" will be even less significant. Plus it's not always that shield pops *exactly* when you want it to which might prevent from getting 2 procs per tide anyway.

Either way, all 5.2 changes are something that could have been done in a simple hotfix, not in a major patch. It's simply yet another round of tweaks to PoH - since it's not like you use any other heal with Spirit Shell. (funny how it doesn't even work with penance) Nerf both of those things severely and introduce some other options. Hell, maybe it could 'fix' pvp, too - it's not like people spam PoH there, do they?

And I just can't wait to see "Chakra now adds +35%, up from 25%" in future notes, as a way to "fix" Holy even more.

The math is assuming that you are NOT timing rapture with mana tide to get two procs each time.

That the spirit shell nerf hurts other usage for shell than PoH (yes currently it has some) more severly is another reason why I don't like the 5.2 suggestions that much. Nerfing/changing PoH (group targetting is silly) and tweaking the rest of our skillset accordingly is something I (and probably most discs) would love to see, assuming that blizzard don't screw things up and send us into the dumpster for half a year.

I think ghostcrawler has stated that they plan to remove/tweak the way chakra works in the future.

[Venaliter]

It's simply yet another round of tweaks to PoH - since it's not like you use any other heal with Spirit Shell. (funny how it doesn't even work with penance) Nerf both of those things severely and introduce some other options.

Perhaps increasing PoH's mana cost and decreasing everything else would be a good way to to get us off the path of spambot PoH. Don't know. Maybe. Would certainly help PvP for both Disc and Holy.

[Deleted]

Perhaps increasing PoH's mana cost and decreasing everything else would be a good way to to get us off the path of spambot PoH. Don't know. Maybe. Would certainly help PvP for both Disc and Holy.

Considering how most of our spells (apart from PoH) have very poor output (mana is honestly a small issue compared to the other things that we lack in pvp atm) and that we have no reliable instant/spot heal(s) I think this would put us in an awful spot (unless the PoH nerf wasn't that big, and if that's the case we'd still spam it, just a bit less). Personally I think disc just needs a complete rework, the spec is so focused on shell/PoH currently that any significant nerfs/changes there needs massive compensation elsewhere.

[HamSandwichFace]

Perhaps increasing PoH's mana cost and decreasing everything else would be a good way to to get us off the path of spambot PoH. Don't know. Maybe. Would certainly help PvP for both Disc and Holy.

Amazing.

I remember someone mentioning increasing PoHs mana cost and making DA baseline to make other spells more 'worthy' of usage.

That person must be some sort of genius.

[Venaliter]

Personally I think disc just needs a complete rework, the spec is so focused on shell/PoH currently that any significant nerfs/changes there needs massive compensation elsewhere.

I don't think Disc needs a rework. Holy does. Agree about DA.

[Deleted]

Amazing.

I remember someone mentioning increasing PoHs mana cost and making DA baseline to make other spells more 'worthy' of usage.

That person must be some sort of genius.

I remember the same person making about a million retarded suggestions and arbitrary suggesting very silly numbers for every change.

[Venaliter]

Posted this on GC's twitter:

[@Ghostcrawler] An off the wall thought: if you extend Focused Will to Holy, you could make it also restore mana on hit, without breaking PvE too much.

Maybe something like 1% mana on hit? I don't know. It's pretty similar to Water Shield, but it wouldn't effect PvE at all. What do you guys think?

[Deleted]

Would be nice, but we really have more/bigger issues in pvp than mana, mostly because our previous advantages (cc, damage, mana burn) have been removed/given to other classes in mop while our weaknesses (mana, healing, to some degree survivability/mobility) remain. I simply don't see a good enough reason to bring a disc over a different healer atm. Our burst healing is worse than every other class (and relies on fheal, which is the main reason why mana is an issue in the first place), our dps is negligable (just like most healers to be fair) which means that one of our major single target healing tools gets significantly weaker as well (atonement), our cc is inferior (2 sec cast fear on a 45 sec cd or melee range, compare that to a pala) and our mobility is comparatively weak. I don't feel that mana or survivability are that significant issues right now (since the most bursty classes have been brought more in line) but these are still below every other class, which would be fine if we brought something unique/worthwhile in return.

We do bring offensive dispel (also brought by shamans) and are decent at avoiding cc chains (though so are most healers) and this is quite frankly not enough to warrant bringing a disc over a shaman (which has all of this) or a hpala (all but offensive dispels) for almost every setup. I don't feel that we should be buffed in every (or even most) area(s) I've mentioned but we are simply overshadowed in almost all of them atm.

[Venaliter]

Would be nice, but we really have more/bigger issues in pvp than mana,

I view mana as a significant concern.

mostly because our previous advantages (damage, mana burn) have been removed/given to other classes in mop while our weaknesses remain

No argument here. Our CC is pretty pathetic compared to monks, shamans, paladins and especially druids. I'd like psychic horror to be baseline to all priests. I'd also like Mass Dispel significantly less punishing to use.

Holy, of course, is terrible in all departments except DPS.

[HamSandwichFace]

What CC do Mistweavers have?

You mean the melee range Paralyse which lasts 3 seconds unless in melee range + behind your opponent?
You mean the 5 second melee range Stun which lasts 5 seconds?

As I said, there are more Disc priests above 2200 rating than there are Mistweavers

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/aren...ompType=filter
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/aren...ompType=filter

Only 1 is a Mistweaver.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/aren...ompType=filter
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/aren...ompType=filter

Compared to 9.

You're basically better than Mistweavers in PvP as Disc.

[Amnesti]

What CC do Mistweavers have?

You mean the melee range Paralyse which lasts 3 seconds unless in melee range + behind your opponent?
You mean the 5 second melee range Stun which lasts 5 seconds?

As I said, there are more Disc priests above 2200 rating than there are Mistweavers

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/aren...ompType=filter
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/aren...ompType=filter

Only 1 is a Mistweaver.

http://us.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/aren...ompType=filter
http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/pvp/aren...ompType=filter

Compared to 9.

You're basically better than Mistweavers in PvP as Disc.

This is just getting sad.

[Venaliter]

This is just getting sad.

Just ignore him; literally. He rarely has anything useful, just a visceral hatred of Disc. He apparantly has not heard of Ring of Peace, and that Paralysis is now a better version of Sap.

[HamSandwichFace]

It must be hard accepting the fact that Disc is OP in PvE and not actually as bad as people make it out to be in PvP too.

I guess facts are slapping people around left, right and centre.

What's worse: a person throwing around a blanket statement saying 'Disc has the worst CC of any healer' or the person actually pointing out that, factually, that isn't the case?

[Anastacy]

It must be hard accepting the fact that Disc is OP in PvE and not actually as bad as people make it out to be in PvP too.

I guess facts are slapping people around left, right and centre.

What's worse: a person throwing around a blanket statement saying 'Disc has the worst CC of any healer' or the person actually pointing out that, factually, that isn't the case?

You are hand picking arguments, AGAIN! (Lol)

You can't compare Monk CC to Priest CC without acknowledging Monk's superior mobility. Priests had better CC/utility, but that is gone...COUPLED with lack of mobility.

You keep cherry picking points from someone who explains a list of things just to try and prove a point. This is why we lawl.

Edit: 1 and 9 are't good numbers for EITHER class, but to suggest that an 8 player difference shows some sort of power for Priests over Monks is absurd.

[HamSandwichFace]

You are hand picking arguments, AGAIN! (Lol)

You can't compare Monk CC to Priest CC without acknowledging Monk's superior mobility. Priests had better CC/utility, but that is gone...COUPLED with lack of mobility.

You keep cherry picking points from someone who explains a list of things just to try and prove a point. This is why we lawl.

I think PI should be usable on other players. When I'm playing my Disc Priest I often take it even though it's pointless and I never actually need to use it. I also think PS should increase the absorption value by PW:S by 100% while it's active.

[Blachshma]

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.

CoH, our flagship spell basically, is weak. No matter how you look at it, if we aren't in movement or need a very quick burst to prevent a wipe, there is little reason to use it. PoH is a far better choice despite the group limitation, especially when combined with holy Divine Insight (the only nice thing we got in this expansion). You are wrong for using it in other situations - this isn't Cata, the spell is too weak for its mana cost.

I got no problem with MoP bosses mechanics, but absorbs really shouldn't be that strong. A good disc priest can pretty much heal a group through all the big damage, leaving the other healers nothing but leftovers.

As for disc, have I personally blamed disc priests for anything that you're saying to me "its not discs fault"? I don't think so (though I do think its funny some discs still cry they want Divine Hymn back). Discs nerfs are also laughable. The rapture nerf is arguably a buff (and as gear scales in later tiers, will become even more of a monster), and the mastery nerf - yep its a nerf, but not a nerf that's nearly big enough to balance things out. Absorbs should be disc's niche, but not their core healing.

[Deleted]

I remember someone mentioning increasing PoHs mana cost and making DA baseline to make other spells more 'worthy' of usage.

Increasing the mana cost on PoH would kill holy priests.
DA baseline to all spells would be a copy of paladin mastery.

I don't think Disc needs a rework. Holy does. Agree about DA.

I disagree with you. The specc is strong due to ludicrous buffs in terms of numbers to hide the mechanic issues. Reword doesn't mean "buff numbers", but find a good balance of spells that when you used correctly compete with other healers. Atm, what we have is "we dont have the spells to build an actual different specc than holy, but we'll slap passive absorbs in and win by default on the meters because they cant be beaten". The difference between a disc priest and a holy priest without coh and shiny useless sparkles on the floor is using 5 offensive spells every 30 seconds and pressing 2 cds - archangel and SS. Oh, and shields for rapture every 15-ish seconds. They said they want chakras to be the reason priests would go holy, well, for me, its the reason to not go holy.

I dont think blizzard could actually get 2 healing speccs for one class, and that's why holy and disc are never properly balanced. They tried during beta for the 2 speccs to divide the current priest spell arsenal in two and give some to a specc and some to the other to force them to press different buttons. It failed, priests dont have that many spells to cover for 2 speccs, regardless what ppl say about the "huge arsenal" of priests. We used to have it, but all other healers got new spells over the last expansions, while priests generally didn't, or got useless stuff like chakra. Getting new cds - like Archangel, Barrier and SS is all good, but cds dont change what you do for 80% of your time. Does anybody care about disc priests smiting for 15% of the time, and pressing cds for another 5%? No, they see the one button PoH spam - which was visible a mile away when they failed to give disc anything else worth using as a spell - after all, what did we do for more than half a cata? A single target spell on a 10 seconds cd doesn't make a specc. I saw some tweet about how "unfair" is for disc to do more healing with one spell than holy using "some many spells". What so many spells? They use CoH, which does more than penance because it is an aoe smart heal and because it has a lower cd, but its the same one button used ever x seconds really. They get more out of PoM because of DI - so they press PoM a bit more often and disc has to press PWS for rapture. They get some almost passive healing from lightwell, which requires half a neuron to slap down on cd, not a lot more different than disc getting passive aegis. Lets face it, both speccs are over-reliant on PoH. I change one keybind (coh/penance) when I respecc, and have few mouseovemacros for chakra and lightwell and GS, but what I see most of the time in both speccs is that poh cast bar. That's why they buffed it so ludicrously, they shot 2 birds with one bullet. Nerf PoH and you kill 2 speccs. Buff it, and you save both, disc more because everything disc has powerful is linked to poh. As for spirit shell? It was the new shiny toy they made for mop, and they saw it not being that visible after a month of raiding. Now when have they made a new spell/class and just left it mediocre from the start? We had cata with encounters tailored for barrier for the same reason. Radiance and Dragon Soul anybody? They dont make new toys and not make sure kids do play with them till they break. Spirit Shell not good enough at the start of MoP? Np, lets buff poh.

I know they have a huge reservoir of ready made stuff with a 7 years old game (or is it 8 by now?), and also that the game got so huge that its hard to make big enough changes to the whole of it, but damn, they could come up with more than shuffling/rehashing/polishing the good old damn stuff sometimes. I got a new button as disc for mop: spirit shell. What do I do after I press it? Oh, right, spam more poh, as I didn't do it enough in Cata, after they came up with the brilliant idea to tie guaranteed aegis to it. I mean, nothing like balancing a mastery between having the same effect 100% on one spell and 10% on the rest, not like healers ever hated RNG.

Sorry for the rant on what I see as general disc issues. I dont expect much from patches tbh other than number adjusting. I think removing the crit buffs from disc from cata was a mistake: they were active when using some abilities that were not tied to poh and at least made mastery a bit more meaningful when not spamming poh. Without crit and poh, disc mastery is the worst thing ever invented, and the crit would have to come from spec specific things, not gear. Look at how they destroyed firemages with one blow in their talents. In order for disc mastery to become meaningful, the specc should work around crit, but atm we have nothing about it. The person that worked on disc priests for mop didnt have a clue what the specc is about, and that's why we have the unbalanced monster we have now: a specc that uses one spell, because its the only one with any decent synergy with other talents and encounter specific - aoe dmg. It's like making a cake using flour and water and adding more baking powder to it so atleast its bigger if not actually a cake.

What's worse: a person throwing around a blanket statement saying 'Disc has the worst CC of any healer' or the person actually pointing out that, factually, that isn't the case?

I could throw out in the bucket this too: a person claiming he knows how to fix a specc because he played an alt as the said class, and being completely unbias and well-intended, when all he wants is to get back to his main and never be bothered about a disc priest again. It's like going to the wolf to ask for advice on how to make better barns for sheep.

[nobodysbaby]

As I wrote on EU forums; This is so FL all over again.

Disc will always have a spot in progression raids (yes, they had before the buffs to) because of their mechanics. Holy needs a niche to, something to make them contribute to more than just healing.

I am not saying flat out buff Hpriest, or nerf Dpriest, I don't think that's the answer at all. We need some design changes, our regen mechanics to.

I would like to see something like the old Inspiration, or a remade version with +% healing taken. Or some other utility. They also have Hymn of Hope to play around with here. Lightwell and DH in all it's glory, it still can't even be remotly compared (when it comes to progression raiding) to SS+PWB and DA.

I also would like to see Disc do more healing and a smaller % absorbs, because it does affect other healers too much (being shut out from being able to heal during absorbs) and it is simply too good to be able to soak so much damage, and above that you can stack Disc if you want even bigger cushions or even ignore boss mechanics, and at the same time be on par with raw healers.