Disc Priest. Shadow Covenant. Debate.

[makketota]

Ideally you want to cast Shadow Mend and Shadow Covenant in opposite situations - Mend when the player is highly likely to take immediate additional damage (tanks, damage debuffed) and Covenant when the player is unlikely to take near-future damage, hence allowing for the 6-second timer to run out and the healing absorb to go away with no additional healing needed until after the 6 seconds.

Using a bursty aoe heal on someone not about to take damage in the near-future just doesn't make any sense. In a raid situatuion you would add more value by just maxing your damage while the other healers tops those players slowly up.

[Deleted]

I always wonder why 99% of healers in this game are pure shit, seeing this thread I now understand. Not only are they incapable of pressing the right buttons in the right order, they also feel the need to invent new gameplay methodologies that only function in their own head and try to persuade the rest of the community to become as shit as them.

[Supliftz]

Now that I have read your thoughtful analysis I see the inescapable logic leading to your conclusions! And your numbers really back up your ideas as well, thanks for enlightening us all.

i could just link any top end parse for any relevant progression boss.

or I could just say don't play disc because it's proven that SC is a horrible talent.

[Yunzi]

Using a bursty aoe heal on someone not about to take damage in the near-future just doesn't make any sense. In a raid situatuion you would add more value by just maxing your damage while the other healers tops those players slowly up.

Let's calm down with the term "burst" - it may be some Discs favorite word this xpac but it doesn't apply to Shadow Covenant, which is just a multi-target heal.

If you're going to have other healers do what Shadow Covenant does then there's no point in taking Shadow Covenant. Selecting Shadow Covenant in the first place implies that you're taking on a reactionary multi-target healing role similar to that of shaman or holy priests.

I used the term "ideally" there with some care. Realistically you're going to cast Shadow Covenant whenever you judge that it's the best way to spend that GCD - whenever several players need healing and you don't have many atonements out. Within the larger scope of the fight generally though, there may be additional damage following the Shadow Covenant within or not within 6 seconds, which impacts the value of the spell.

[vertigo12]

Discipline priest right now are like the enforcers and regulatory board of the healing community. They keep all healers disciplined ad in check.

I'll give you an overview wit one of the rationale of Legion's Discipline priest design:
Remember back in TBC where overhealing proliferates? Where healing meter's at its pioneering stage and most of the list are overpopulated by overrhealing?

Or remember that era where Shadow priests are helpful sub-healers with partywide vampiric embrace?

Discipline as of now are the true shadow healers as compared to the now more DPS-centric Shadow Priest. Atonement healing basically is spell leeching with scaling partial damage;it is converted as heals.

Remember my previous post regarding mastering pain? If you aren't aware, we did lost Renew as part of our healing toolkit which was part of the healing rotation back in previous expansions so we can top off health drains from damage. Now we concentrate that pain first by inflicting it (through SW:P), then acknowledging that wounds need healing (through Atonement). We are then unique from other DoT healer counter parts: Renew and Echoes of Light from Holy priests and HoT invested Resto Druids.

Shadow Mend and Covenant gauges a discipline priest user's understanding of pain.
You accustom yourself with pain in terms of loosing health,then endure it by damage reducing cooldowns or through absorption mechanics.Finally you give yourself and your body time by being immune to healing (in a sense) with Shadow Covenant.

In actuality, Shadow Covenant does not prevent healing. It never states that the affected targets CANNOT be healed, nor THEY ARE IMMUNE from healing mechanics. The community just misunderstood the spell primarily because no one even gives time to understand it. It is complex and needs advance mind setting. It does encourage more healing because the effect calls for more healing. (A heal is partially absorbed i.e. half of the spell power multiplier over 6 seconds). Think of it as advanced damage done that instead of eating health, it consumes incoming heals.

Regardless how high the amount of number a heal produce or flashes on screen, once a target approaches 100% health the remaining healing amount or surplus heal is technically wasted heals or overheals as we know it. That overhealing is then put to good use...

[makketota]

Discipline priest right now are like the enforcers and regulatory board of the healing community. They keep all healers disciplined.

I'll give you an overview wit one of the rationale of Legion's Discipline priest design:
Remember back in TBC where overhealing proliferates? Where healing meters are its pioneering stage and most of the list are overpopulated with overhealing?
Or remember that era where Shadow priests are helpful subhealers with partywide vampiric embrace?

Discipline as of now are the true shadow healers as compared to the now more DPS-centric Shadow Priest. Atonement healing basically is spell leeching with scaling partial damage which is converted to heals.

Remember my previous post regarding mastering pain? If you aren't aware, we did lost Renew as part of our healing toolkit which was part of the healing rotation back in previous expansion to able to top off health drains from damage. Now we concentrate that pain first by inflicting it (through SW:P), then acknowledging that wounds need healing (through Atonement). We are then unique from other DoT healer counter parts , Renew centric and Echoes of Light Holy priest and HoT invested Resto Druids.

Shadow Mend and Covenant gauges a discipline priest user's understanding of pain.
You accustom yourself with pain by in terms of loosing health,then endure it by damage reducing cooldowns or through absorption mechanics, then finally you give yourself time and your body by being immune to healing (in a sense) with Shadow Covenant.

In actuality, Shadow Covenant does not prevent healing. It never states that the affected targets CANNOT be healed, nor THEY ARE IMMUNE from healing mechanics. The community just misunderstood the spell primarily because no one even gives time to understand it. It is complex and needs advance mind setting. It does encourage more healing because the effect calls for more healing. (A heal is partially absorbed i.e. half of the spell power multiplier over 6 seconds).

Regardless how high amount of number a heal produce or flash on screen once a target approaches 100% health, the remaining healing amount or surplus heal is technically wasted heals or overheals as we know it.

I think people are well aware of Shadow convenant's mechanic. But the truth is that if healing is needed within the debuffs expiration it's effectivly a 225% sp heal per target. This is almost half of what Penance will output on with 5 atonements if you include penance specific modifiers. The biggest reason however to never consider it - is because it replaces Power Word: Radience. ( This changes is 7.1.5 to not replace Radience )

[vertigo12]

[QUOTE=makketota;43991120]But the truth is that if healing is needed within the debuffs expiration it's effectivly a 225% sp heal per target.[QUOTE=makketota;43991120]
There's a reason why PW:S, CoW, Rupture exist. So does ToF and either Atonement heals as surplus/overhealing.

[QUOTE=makketota;43991120]

I think people are well aware of Shadow convenant's mechanic. This is almost half of what Penance will output on with 5 atonements if you include penance specific modifiers. The biggest reason however to never consider it - is because it replaces Power Word: Radience. ( This changes is 7.1.5 to not replace Radience )

Yes but to be able to make Atoned Penance, you are required to still cast premeditated heals to provide the Atonement buff. Not to mention by either using Single target Atonement providing skills or through radiance, Affected target are increased by 2, Mana cost reduction vs PW:R, Health regain increased vs. atonement, does not rely on Atonement healing (which we all know is not always a reliable source or methodology of healing). All of these benefits are on live.

To be able to make Penance as a Raid-wide heal, atonement buff should be on 2 or more targets. You might have used PI or Rupture by that time.

So far there is no Talent, Set Bonus, or Artifact trait existing that is proc based free penance cast. Schism's old mechanics which turns the last bolt of penance into an AoE damage was reworked as well.

[Supliftz]

Discipline priest right now are like the enforcers and regulatory board of the healing community. They keep all healers disciplined ad in check.

I'll give you an overview wit one of the rationale of Legion's Discipline priest design:
Remember back in TBC where overhealing proliferates? Where healing meter's at its pioneering stage and most of the list are overpopulated by overrhealing?

Or remember that era where Shadow priests are helpful sub-healers with partywide vampiric embrace?

Discipline as of now are the true shadow healers as compared to the now more DPS-centric Shadow Priest. Atonement healing basically is spell leeching with scaling partial damage;it is converted as heals.

Remember my previous post regarding mastering pain? If you aren't aware, we did lost Renew as part of our healing toolkit which was part of the healing rotation back in previous expansions so we can top off health drains from damage. Now we concentrate that pain first by inflicting it (through SW:P), then acknowledging that wounds need healing (through Atonement). We are then unique from other DoT healer counter parts: Renew and Echoes of Light from Holy priests and HoT invested Resto Druids.

Shadow Mend and Covenant gauges a discipline priest user's understanding of pain.
You accustom yourself with pain in terms of loosing health,then endure it by damage reducing cooldowns or through absorption mechanics.Finally you give yourself and your body time by being immune to healing (in a sense) with Shadow Covenant.

In actuality, Shadow Covenant does not prevent healing. It never states that the affected targets CANNOT be healed, nor THEY ARE IMMUNE from healing mechanics. The community just misunderstood the spell primarily because no one even gives time to understand it. It is complex and needs advance mind setting. It does encourage more healing because the effect calls for more healing. (A heal is partially absorbed i.e. half of the spell power multiplier over 6 seconds). Think of it as advanced damage done that instead of eating health, it consumes incoming heals.

Regardless how high the amount of number a heal produce or flashes on screen, once a target approaches 100% health the remaining healing amount or surplus heal is technically wasted heals or overheals as we know it. That overhealing is then put to good use...

do you wanna try making this post again without the verbal diarrhea attached to it.

[longxia]

do you wanna try making this post again without the verbal diarrhea attached to it.

MMO-Champion needs a "hide user" function to filter out trolls/mentally unwell posters. Regarding this guys previous nutty rambling I quoted Steve Jobs, "Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple". This is the concept he built Apple on.

So what Im getting at is that if Mr Pretentious really had any ideas worth sharing he could do so in plain language, and that using waffle and pseudo-intellectual babble is just a sign of muddled thinking, wasting the time of anyone reading his dribble.


Edit: Mr Pretentious (Vertigo) completely rewrote his post into readable English. It's so funny to me that he could have written that way the whole time but instead has a long post history of insane rambling. What joy he gets from doing that I really cant comprehend.

Edit2: I personally dont use or like Apple but the relevant point is that Steve Jobs built a multi-billion dollar empire on the principle of working very, very hard behind the scenes to make the front end super simple and clean, wheras Vertigo seems to instead make great effort to make posts *more* complicated and as nonsensical as possible. That takes no genius.

Shadow Covenant: the new version has a possible niche use in saving multiple people on <20% health from dying in the next few seconds, bringing their actual health up to a level where they will survive long enough for larger heals to land. This would synergise well with Resto Druid hots, which eventually produce huge throughput over time but is of less use when people need heals *immediately* not over 18 seconds.

I still wont take it, in fact I still intend to abandon disc altogether (the Lights Wrath mechanic sucks), but I can see the point of Shadow Covenant.

[Pearl1717]

This fucking thread lmao.

[Raiz]

MMO-Champion needs a "hide user" function to filter out trolls/mentally unwell posters. Regarding this guys previous nutty rambling I quoted Steve Jobs, "Simple can be harder than complex: you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple". This is the concept he built Apple on.

So what Im getting at is that if Mr Pretentious really had any ideas worth sharing he could do so in plain language, and that using waffle and pseudo-intellectual babble is just a sign of muddled thinking, wasting the time of anyone reading his dribble.

Alright, seems like this vertigo's guy wasn't even sarcastic. W/e.
Anyway, while this quote is true, can we all agree that most apple products are a f*****g disgrace ?

[Veiled]

what in the world...

[Supliftz]

Shadow Covenant: the new version has a possible niche use in saving multiple people on <20% health from dying in the next few seconds, bringing their actual health up to a level where they will survive long enough for larger heals to land. This would synergise well with Resto Druid hots, which eventually produce huge throughput over time but is of less use when people need heals *immediately* not over 18 seconds.

I still wont take it, in fact I still intend to abandon disc altogether (the Lights Wrath mechanic sucks), but I can see the point of Shadow Covenant.

If you seriously believe a 450% sp heal is good enough to save people's lives lol.

PW:S is ~600% atm, and that's like ~10% of your hp.

[Sukhoi]

It needs to be removed and forgot about. /thread

I do want it to be replaced with something that's actually useful. With swp becoming 18 seconds in 7.1.5 it could be argued even ptw needs to be reworked now. In my perfect world i'd really like to see shadow covenant replaced with, idk a couple options:

1. A mass atonement dump, but this would mot likely need a fairly large cd since we're not reliant on huge healing cds like tranquility and frankly we don't need one.

More reasonably:
2. A decrease in the mana cost for plea scaling or a mana cap for the scaling.
3. Some rework to divine aegis that somehow isn't broken to hell, or some other kind of passive absorb that would interact with shield discipline.
4. A cd reduction for rapture?

You can see where im going with this, our mana sucks.

[Supliftz]

SW:P is already 18 seconds live

[MendUS]

what in the world...

The fact that this thread has lasted 5 pages makes me have the same reaction.

[vulena]

Yes but to be able to make Atoned Penance, you are required to still cast premeditated heals to provide the Atonement buff.

This is literally the fundamental premise of Disc. If this bothers you or is an issue or an exception to your play style, you are fucking TERRIBLE at disc.

[MendUS]

It needs to be removed and forgot about. /thread

I do want it to be replaced with something that's actually useful. With swp becoming 18 seconds in 7.1.5 it could be argued even ptw needs to be reworked now. In my perfect world i'd really like to see shadow covenant replaced with, idk a couple options:

1. A mass atonement dump, but this would mot likely need a fairly large cd since we're not reliant on huge healing cds like tranquility and frankly we don't need one.

More reasonably:
2. A decrease in the mana cost for plea scaling or a mana cap for the scaling.
3. Some rework to divine aegis that somehow isn't broken to hell, or some other kind of passive absorb that would interact with shield discipline.
4. A cd reduction for rapture?

You can see where im going with this, our mana sucks.

Are you aware what a reduction in mana cost would do to the spec at the highest levels of play? We would be broken.

[longxia]

If you seriously believe a 450% sp heal is good enough to save people's lives lol.

PW:S is ~600% atm, and that's like ~10% of your hp.

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=774/rejuvenation 20% SP per second
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=61295/riptide 17% SP per second
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=139/renew 21% SP per second

So an instant 450% SP heal is as effective as ~23 seconds of most hots. Do you see how actually looking at numbers can be quite useful? Wheras waffle like "If you seriously believe a 450% sp heal is good enough to save people's lives lol" is not useful at all to anyone in the world, its just pointless personal attacks on someone you will never meet. You're wasting your time and the time of anyone who reads your bro-science emotional outbursts.

[davesignal]

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=774/rejuvenation 20% SP per second
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=61295/riptide 17% SP per second
http://www.wowhead.com/spell=139/renew 21% SP per second

So an instant 450% SP heal is as effective as ~23 seconds of most hots. Do you see how actually looking at numbers can be quite useful? Wheras waffle like "If you seriously believe a 450% sp heal is good enough to save people's lives lol" is not useful at all to anyone in the world, its just pointless personal attacks on someone you will never meet. You're wasting your time and the time of anyone who reads your bro-science emotional outbursts.

Defending the current crop of Disc priests makes my skin crawl, but: Rejuvenation is a crucial part of the Resto toolkit for reasons not evident in the base HOT, same as Riptide. Renew is garbo-- and you'll note it has a higher SP coeffecient than EITHER of the other two HOTs mentioned-- and is only a spell of note because you get it for free from Benediction.

That is not a good comparison to make.