[7.0] Legion Discipline Priest Guide and Discussion

[Totaltotemic]

The formular is

b*(1+0.1*n)

with basis value (b) and number of atonements (n).

I would call that additive in this context since every atonement adds 10% of the basis value to the total (arithmetic progression) and would expect multiplicative to mean geometric progression.
When we talk about how some set of buffs act together on the same stat we call it additive if they are added up before being multiplicated to the base value and multipicative when each one is multiplied to the others, thus if we are to speak of the buffs to Light's Wrath as seperate then those act together in an additive way.

Otherwise we would expect

b*(1+0.1)^n

which would be great but unfortunately we won't get.

Sure, if you ignore context entirely. The poster was asking if the boost from Atonements was 10% additive spellpower or a multiplicative 10% increase to the base. He even quite explicitly laid this out with examples. The word you're looking for isn't even multiplicative; it would be compounding or exponential to describe a geometic progression.

Now what's an ironic twist is that the total healing done by Light's Wrath is actually exponential based on the total number of Atonements out.

[phyx]

Had a couple of interesting conversations with RL's of guild that are not all that highly ranked - >1000. As I expected as soon as the spec was announced - we will definitely be ignored in favor of the Holy spec, except the lucky few disc that will remain raiding in the favorite spec. We are not in the worse position than we were with spamming shields - if they bump up our healing we will again be the OP spec, if they don't, any serious guild (not even that serious) will just copy HC guilds and ignore discs. Sad story.

[PosPosPos]

Had a couple of interesting conversations with RL's of guild that are not all that highly ranked - >1000. As I expected as soon as the spec was announced - we will definitely be ignored in favor of the Holy spec, except the lucky few disc that will remain raiding in the favorite spec. We are not in the worse position than we were with spamming shields - if they bump up our healing we will again be the OP spec, if they don't, any serious guild (not even that serious) will just copy HC guilds and ignore discs. Sad story.

It's funny how you wholeheartedly believe that "serious" guilds will copy the misguided inclinations of guilds with far lower skill levels and lesser knowledge.

[Noradin]

Now what's an ironic twist is that the total healing done by Light's Wrath is actually exponential based on the total number of Atonements out.

Yes, obviously, since its damage scales with the number of atonements and the healing is half the product of the number of atonements and damage it scales cubical with the total number of atonements.

- - - Updated - - -

Sure, if you ignore context entirely. The poster was asking if the boost from Atonements was 10% additive spellpower or a multiplicative 10% increase to the base.

Ah ok, I didn't read it that way.
I understood him to ask if it each additional atonement inceases the damage by another 10% additionally or multiplically, or in other words and increase of 10% with respect to the base dammage or 10% with respect to the damage with one less. (According to the wording of the tooltip both might apply, but nowadays Blizzard has decided to always use the "additive solution" for stackable buffs.)

[Davryn]

In a super-conservative mode, when there is very little damage going on and you are only maintaining 2-3 atonements, would you stop casting PWS because it is less HPM than Plea? I haven't done the math but it seems that PWS HPM would surpass Plea at around 4+ atonements.

[Atharaxie]

It's funny how you wholeheartedly believe that "serious" guilds will copy the misguided inclinations of guilds with far lower skill levels and lesser knowledge.

What bother some disc (out there looking for a raid spot) is not how top guilds will act toward priest but how disc will be percieved by wannabe hardcore RL. Perception is the key word here. If some RL heard from his cousin, the son of his landlord and the little voices in youtube, that "Disc are only 70% of a real healer", then he would fear for his place of 20th server.
That's sad, that's true, that's human nature, that's the sign that you should seek another guild.

[TirielWoW]

In a super-conservative mode, when there is very little damage going on and you are only maintaining 2-3 atonements, would you stop casting PWS because it is less HPM than Plea? I haven't done the math but it seems that PWS HPM would surpass Plea at around 4+ atonements.

Even accounting for the shield itself?

[Davryn]

Even accounting for the shield itself?

In Total's guide, he makes the point that the value of the Plea heal is way lower than the value of the atonement that it applies. As such, I'm assuming that the PWS shield value (which is about 2.3 times the value of Plea heal) is not going to matter too much, and it's going to primarily depend on the mana cost of plea vs. mana cost of PWS. Plea costs 3456 mana at 5 atonements, whereas PWS costs 3,200.

Without doing the heavy math that would be required to estimate the value of atonement, I'm guessing that PWS becomes worth casting over Plea when you have 4 atonements up. If you have 3 or less, then you would be better off casting Plea (even if PWS is off CD).

Here's the quote: "TL;DR For Atonement application spells, PW:S will get its value anyway, and Plea/PWR are so small compared to the Atonement healing that we can discard the immediate healing value and only look at the spells as Atonement applying spells."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...UKd2672Ntg/pub

[TirielWoW]

I'm just not convinced that evaluating PW: Shield without taking into account the absorb value of the shield is a way to get an accurate idea of whether it's more or less HPM than Plea.

[Davryn]

Of course, we would need to take into account both the absorb and atonement values. Unfortunately I don't know the atonement value without doing extensive theorycrafting and testing. Even so, I am quite confident that at low atonement number, Plea will be more efficient than PWS. I'm just not sure exactly how many atonements are necessary (2, 3, 4?) for PWS to overtake Plea in efficiency.

[TirielWoW]

Of course, we would need to take into account both the absorb and atonement values. Unfortunately I don't know the atonement value without doing extensive theorycrafting and testing. Even so, I am quite confident that at low atonement number, Plea will be more efficient than PWS. I'm just not sure exactly how many atonements are necessary (2, 3, 4?) for PWS to overtake Plea in efficiency.

Okay, no. You can't evaluate the Atonement value because you don't know what it will be, no. But you can evaluate the absorb shield and the small heal from Plea because you do know their values. Especially since you're almost always shielding a tank or someone else taking immediate damage.

[VigilantRose]

Of course, we would need to take into account both the absorb and atonement values. Unfortunately I don't know the atonement value without doing extensive theorycrafting and testing. Even so, I am quite confident that at low atonement number, Plea will be more efficient than PWS. I'm just not sure exactly how many atonements are necessary (2, 3, 4?) for PWS to overtake Plea in efficiency.

You just have to make some basic assumptions. Let's assume we spend 30% of our casting time maintaining PtW and casting Penance on cooldown. This would yield 4 * 175 / 9 + 520 / 20 = 100% Spellpower/sec damage or about 45% Spellpower/sec healing per Atonement. Since Atonement lasts 15 sec, this rotation would yield 675% Spellpower healing per Atonement.

So with that sort of rotation, PW:S would be (550 + 675) / 2 = 612.5 while Plea would be (225 + 675) / 0.36 = 2500. So at around 4 Atonement, they're roughly equal. PW:R would be around 5 targets. These ratios don't vary all that much when you apply different (reasonable) assumptions about the damage pattern.

[Yunzi]

All the math in the world can't make for entirely accurate representations of the value of any spell, since we're missing the context.

On the pre-pull for example, Pleas are great, since they are cheap at a low number of atoned players.

Whether to cast PWS or Plea on the active tank when a low number of atonements are out depends considerably on the next-few-seconds degree of danger (of dying) of the tank. If we're going to be doing a lot of DPS and covering the tank that way and the tank is currently at near full health, why not Plea him instead of PWS?

As the degree of danger to the tank increases, the value of PWS increases - in a mythic progression fight I can hardly imagine considering saving a bit of mana to apply Plea instead of PWS - there's always the chance that right after applying atonement the tank will take a few crits in a row from the boss and drop low, and the PWS might actually save his life.

There's an added value of PWS over Plea here - healers burn their mitigation spells when a tank drops low in health. If the reason that the druid just used his Ironbark on the tank when he dropped low in health was our choice of Plea over PWS and later in the fight that Ironbark would have been crucial, our choice may end up wiping the raid.

[Totaltotemic]

The real question is in what world where mana is so scarce that you're sticking to 2 or 3 Atonements are you also spending mana on Penance or Smite at all during this time? It's a silly discussion because if you're skimping that much on Atonements, you should also be cutting out almost all damage that costs mana.

In Total's guide, he makes the point that the value of the Plea heal is way lower than the value of the atonement that it applies. As such, I'm assuming that the PWS shield value (which is about 2.3 times the value of Plea heal) is not going to matter too much, and it's going to primarily depend on the mana cost of plea vs. mana cost of PWS. Plea costs 3456 mana at 5 atonements, whereas PWS costs 3,200.

Without doing the heavy math that would be required to estimate the value of atonement, I'm guessing that PWS becomes worth casting over Plea when you have 4 atonements up. If you have 3 or less, then you would be better off casting Plea (even if PWS is off CD).

Here's the quote: "TL;DR For Atonement application spells, PW:S will get its value anyway, and Plea/PWR are so small compared to the Atonement healing that we can discard the immediate healing value and only look at the spells as Atonement applying spells."

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...UKd2672Ntg/pub

Like that's a ridiculously out of context quote. That entire document is assuming you're spending a fairly high amount of mana on damage spells any time you're spending a decent amount of mana on Atonement. If you are doing neither, than the inverse of the following applies

Disc will do more healing if we pile as much damage in the time when we have as many Atonements as we can than if we spread both number of Atonements and damage done out evenly over a fight. This means that Disc functions best as a burst healer even when damage is steady.

Disc will also do LESS healing if we try to do meaningful healing with only using a tiny amount of mana than if we just saved that mana and used it to magnify the lumped together damage and healing spells. This is why Disc functions as a burst healer, because the other side of your healing getting better and more efficient as it is compounded is that it gets worse and worse the thinner you spread yourself. Don't spend mana on Penance if it will only heal 2 or 3 people in an environment where mana is relevant, it's such a waste.

Of course the reality is that this situation never occurs. Mana is scarce in Legion, but not so scarce that you're worried that having 4 or 5 Atonements up and doing minimum damage (Penance and PtW) is spending too much mana.

[Davryn]

That's a good point, I did not consider the fact that DPS spells would not be worth casting with so few atonements.

I was thinking about an extreme case like a 12 minute fight with very spiky damage distribution. There would have to be a limit to mana expenditure outside of the burst phases to ensure that you don't go OOM before the end.

Based on your points, I expect that if we ran into mana problems in an extremely long fight like this, it would be more worthwhile to simply stop casting abilities altogether instead of trying to maintain a small (3 or less) number of atonements.

[Yunzi]

During periods when the tank is taking medium to high damage and the raid is taking little to no damage, we can conserve mana by simply spamming the tank with direct healing - PWS, Shadow Mend, and even Clarity of Will if that is part of the fight design so we were able to select it. Atonement healing is for the raid.

[phyx]

It's funny how you wholeheartedly believe that "serious" guilds will copy the misguided inclinations of guilds with far lower skill levels and lesser knowledge.

HC = hardcore, not heroic

[PosPosPos]

HC = hardcore, not heroic

Then use full words instead of abbreviations to try and refer to something that's less common the other use(s).

[Totaltotemic]

conserve mana by simply spamming the tank with direct healing - PWS, Shadow Mend, and even Clarity of Will

Lol okay. Sure.

[Davryn]

During periods when the tank is taking medium to high damage and the raid is taking little to no damage, we can conserve mana by simply spamming the tank with direct healing - PWS, Shadow Mend, and even Clarity of Will if that is part of the fight design so we were able to select it. Atonement healing is for the raid.

Looking at the numbers, it appears that Plea on the tank for atonement, followed by Smite would be considerably more mana efficient than PWS and Shadowmend on the tank. Of course you might need PWS + Shadowmend/CoW to keep the tank alive, depending on your healer comp, but it's not what I would do if I wanted to conserve mana.