[Priest] Ask a Beta Tester! MoP edition

[Deleted]

I hope this is not intended, but either Staggered damage from Monks ignores absorption effects (PWS, SS and I'm assuming Paladin mastery) or there is a rather annoying bug in place atm. Despite having both PWS and SS on my Monk tank in a couple of dungeons his health was still dropping consistently.

My one last hope for the current implementation of SS was it's steady absorption of the almost constant DoT left on monk tanks after taking damage; if it doesn't even do this... <insert meme of hands being thrown up in despair>

[Noradin]

That's a terrible idea, you'd need to cast it twice for it to heal someone who needs healing. Fundamentally, SS can never fully replace GH as they are completely different kinds of spells. Scaling issues aside, sometimes it's better to heal someone than to shield them.

I don't think your logic applies.

If you had two spells, a shield like SpS and a direct heal like GH, you would have to cast twice to apply both of them too. And you would cast the absorb first as well, since other players could cast the direct heal while you cast the absorb but can't cast the absorb while you cast the heal. So you would cast those two spells in a manner that mirrors this proposed SpS mechanic anyway - unless you rather not have an absorb spell at all?

Also, if you were alone, shielding first is good. If a hit would land it doesn't matter if its the absorb or the healtpool that takes the damage as long as the sum is bigger than the damage.
If no hit lands you can cancel the cast to preserve mana or let it land anyway leaving a absorb behind, depending on how likely the target is to recive additional damage.
You don't have to top everyone up all the time. Druids don't do it either, their hots take time as well. SpS is even better than a hot: although the healthbar will fill up slowly (as in you have to wait until after the absorb expires) the benefit is active as soon as you applie it.

Here's a few examples why it can't replace GH

Scenario 1
Spirit Shell falls off, and the tank takes damage before you can cast another SS
You PW:S, then penance the tank, then cast another spirit Shell.
PW:S gets fully absorbed, spirit shell doesn't, resulting in a waste of mana, and SS overhealing.

Well its the tank, boss damage might be erratic and penance is cheap so yes this is a way you could waste mana (in hindsight?).
How would you have done better with an additional direct heal, though?
Cast it instead of penance? You would have spent even more mana for the same effect and you could mirror sequence with the proposed change anyway by just casting SpS twice. I wouldn't matter if you get the absorb up first or the heal if the tank is in danger (unless your intention is to fight your healing comrades and not the boss).
Used no SpS afterwards? Well if you decided you didn't need it under those circumstance, why would you use it in your scenario?

Unless a big hit is incomming, in which case you would stack everything anyway and the wasted mana argument is invalid, you should just have casted SpS instead of penance and precast/cancelled a second SpS afterwards.

Scenario 2
Spirit Shell falls off, and the tank takes damage before you can cast another SS
You PW:S, then penance the tank
You wait for PW:S to be absorbed, then cast SS. Mean while the tank takes damage and drops to 75% health between PW:S breaking and SS landing
Penance is on CD and you don't want to waste mana by using FH to top the tank off, so you stack a second SS, the to keep tank safe, and toss up renew until penance comes off CD.
Healer 2 sees the tank needs to be topped off, and heals the tank. This wastes their mana because even though the tank is sitting at reduced health, the 100k shield you just put on them will last until your penance comes off CD.

Part of this is an interface problem with absorbs and hots that needs to be addressed anyway.

Again, why use penance? Because its cheap? Use SpS which should become cheap when train of thought works with it.

Also, if the tank is in danger to drop to 75% with a full PW:S getting used up in the progress and that makes warning bells go up for other healers, why didn't you put up SpS?
What kind of boss is that supposed to be? Maybe the other healer should get to know the effects of your healing a bit to know the tank is not in danger after loosing only 25% because you have absorbs? Where you not a disc priest the tank would have been even lower, would he be frantically casting his fastest emergency heals then? After just one hit?
Or does he have nothing better to do and is trying to snipe heals? And if he does so while even though he should not have mana to spare to do so, then you have other problems and should get your raid to fight the boss again and not the meters.

Scenario 3
A raid member takes damage, and the tank is safe
You can't penance, because you NEED to reserve it for the tank.
You cast SS
Healer 2 sees that person needs healing, and heals them.
You've wasted mana because your SS now over heals.

(Why do you need to reserve it for the tank? Because of the previous scenarios?)
Also, speak to your comrades.
An interface showing SpS for other healers would be great.
I don't see how this is a bigger problem than the one hots have.

If blizzard is hell bent on making us use SS, then the CD on penance needs to be removed or lowered drastically.

I think more along the line of making sure we don't need to use penance on CD due to mana efficiency issues.

Also an improved interface would be great, for both hots and absorbs.
The interface has always been something which could limit healers a great deal.

An idea I had for health bars for some time is to make the outline of healt bars twice as long, and add absorbs and hots in secondary colours. Like this:

'=' health points
'-' absorb
'_' hot

[======|      ]   full health, no absorbs, no hots
[======|---__ ]   full health, absorbs, hots
[===---|--    ]   health deficit, absorbs, no hots

I placed absorbs and not hots next to health points since those two are the current 'effective health pool'.
Additionally absorbs which expire without heal could fade while SpS absorbs would get a green tinge (or whatever color the health bar has).


I think SpS could be useable if additional casts on the same target converted the previous SpS into direct healing. I don't exspect the problems it would cause to be bigger than those hots have, I think they will be smaller. Of course it would need to get tested.

[derevka]

Don't worry, the worst case scenario won't be that bad.

/eyeroll

Color me concerned.

[Kelesti]

Don't worry, the worst case scenario won't be that bad.

/eyeroll

Color me concerned.

This has me bothered, as well. Mana with minimal Rapture management keeping us in pace with others, we'll need less Spirit, so more throughput stats. Then we'll be scaled back to accomodate higher stats, lower spirit. But when we can't take advantage of 12 second Raptures, how much are we going to suffer? Healing is never balanced in a vacuum, variables are in place... And a regen mechanic that's out of our hands compared to everyone else's passive... That will never be on par, only better/worse. And to think Discipline won't be balanced around a potential regen cap is playing the role of the fool, nothing more.

[Noradin]

I noticed that using SpS and direct heals in normal instances I really have to watch my mana, but using mostly PW:S, atonement (smite, holy fire, and penance), and the "from darkness comes light" talent it tends to feel alright.

[Deleted]

In the (hopefully) next build you receive, Discipline again has Greater Heal, Strength of Soul, and Power Word: Shield with no cooldown. We are also trying something really different with Spirit Shell. Let us know how it feels.

I wonder what really different means.

[Karfragnor]

I wonder what really different means.

Interesting! I hope the next build is soon.

[ramennoodleking]

This has me bothered, as well. Mana with minimal Rapture management keeping us in pace with others, we'll need less Spirit, so more throughput stats. Then we'll be scaled back to accomodate higher stats, lower spirit. But when we can't take advantage of 12 second Raptures, how much are we going to suffer? Healing is never balanced in a vacuum, variables are in place... And a regen mechanic that's out of our hands compared to everyone else's passive... That will never be on par, only better/worse. And to think Discipline won't be balanced around a potential regen cap is playing the role of the fool, nothing more.

But what kind of numbers are we REALLY talking about here? I've never crunched the numbers because I never cared, nor ever had a problem with Disc mana due to bad rapture management (though, admittedly, I've never actually tried to get optimal uptime, so my rapture may be abysmal). Is the gap truly going to be so large between excellent management and poor management that it makes such an incredibly large difference in regen? I just...I find that hard to believe. Don't get me wrong, compared to other healers "passive" regen models, I can see the complaint, but I also do not necessarily agree that bad management of rapture will lead to an utterly broke down and gassed out disc priest. You would almost never have to cast PW: S to truly see the effects. In todays raiding environment, not casting at least one shield even every 20 seconds seems silly. However, a 6 second cooldown on PW:S sucks pretty hard and does make it a bit more difficult to imagine handling.

I guess it truly will depend on exactly what Disc regen is going to be balanced around, but even with as bad as holy's regen was, particularly in early Cata, it was still manageable and playable. I guess I'd have to see it and feel it at 90, all of this conjecture about patch notes and whatnot is fine, but there's nothing like a good old-fashioned hands on experience to truly get a grasp of what it's going to be like.

Here's a very recent GC quote...and I don't usually like to quote blues, but hey, it fit pretty much what I was saying:

We don't think Rapture is "fundamentally flawed." We also added it back because so many Disc priests asked for it. It's challenging for us to present a design when some players want something and some don't want it.

Discipline would struggle if the spec was designed around flawless Rapture use, but it's not. Meditation is still there and in fact a Disc priest with flawless Rapture use would have more mana return than other healers. A priest who totally ignored PW:Shield would have lower mana return, but why are you playing Disc if you ignore PW:Shield? For many Disc priests who say benefit from Rapture every 20+ sec instead of the minimum 12, their sustainability should be comparable to other healers. Keep in mind what I said in the other thread about considering the entire package; the only real measurement of sustainability is how long the various healers can cast in average (low HPS) and scary (high HPS) situations without going OOM.

This was kind of my point. Rapture is only complex if you think about it that way. There are definitely moments where only the tank is taking dmg and the rest of the damage is too random to predict, so no question about it, optimizing rapture there would be difficult. But that doesn't mean that lull is going to break you down. There will ALWAYS be oppurtunities to get your rapture proc in, and elitist as this may sound, that is what will ultimately seperate the wheat from the chaff.

I like having the option to maximize my potential mana returns. It gives me the same satisfaction as when I'm able to line up a ton of intellect procs with SF/HoH on live. It just feels better. You might disagree, and that's fine, but Blizzard will never please everyone. Ever. lol

[Deleted]

In the (hopefully) next build you receive, Discipline again has Greater Heal, Strength of Soul, and Power Word: Shield with no cooldown. We are also trying something really different with Spirit Shell. Let us know how it feels.

*Please be a good Spirit Shell change, please please please please please please*

[Tarot]

The more I think about it, I really do like the idea of including all damage spells w/ attonement and how fun that would be. Imagine casting SW:Pain on targets giving periodic health to friendly players nearby to the enemy, or Mind Spike being some sort of fast, low mana, low heal. Imo, that would be something "NEW" & "FUN", w/o taking away the basic things Disc already has.

[Kelesti]

The more I think about it, I really do like the idea of including all damage spells w/ attonement and how fun that would be. Imagine casting SW:Pain on targets giving periodic health to friendly players nearby to the enemy, or Mind Spike being some sort of fast, low mana, low heal. Imo, that would be something "NEW" & "FUN", w/o taking away the basic things Disc already has.

so then our maximum HPS is scaled around our potential DPS output. Ask Shadow how well that went for them in BC.

[ramennoodleking]

so then our maximum HPS is scaled around our potential DPS output. Ask Shadow how well that went for them in BC.

Not really, since your max HPS will never be achievable by dpsing as a healer.

[Tarot]

"so then our maximum HPS is scaled around our potential DPS output. Ask Shadow how well that went for them in BC"


Well, you'd still be casting PW:S, Heal/SS/ GH (if it comes back), Penance and Arch Angel for when you need to PoH. So, it's not completely revolved around DPS output. Damage/mana cost for shadow spells as a healer is a luckluster ratio that would be situational depending on the specific spell (raid w/ multiple targets put SW:P on each one to achieve some sort of helpful periodic healing) I dont really see how that could really need much more scaling b/c it's very subtle, this is just a suggestion that is purely benefitial since Disc still, in my eyes, seems (and truthfully, always has) unidentified and misguided which is even more evident in MoP.

[Deathzero]

"so then our maximum HPS is scaled around our potential DPS output. Ask Shadow how well that went for them in BC"


Well, you'd still be casting PW:S, Heal/SS/ GH (if it comes back), Penance and Arch Angel for when you need to PoH. So, it's not completely revolved around DPS output. Damage/mana cost for shadow spells as a healer is a luckluster ratio that would be situational depending on the specific spell (raid w/ multiple targets put SW:P on each one to achieve some sort of helpful periodic healing) I dont really see how that could really need much more scaling b/c it's very subtle, this is just a suggestion that is purely benefitial since Disc still, in my eyes, seems (and truthfully, always has) unidentified and misguided which is even more evident in MoP.

A disc spec that holds even more potential dps will just become the third healer in heroic 10 mans. Meaning disc will be designed WITH a lower healing output cap then all the other specs that do not do dps because of the ability to offset it with dps. You can not have a class that can do competetive dps without limiting their healing cap it breaks the rules of the game. If it does do competetive dps without limiting too much healing it becomes required for raiding. They won't do it because as we seen in BC with shadowpriests our dps was gimped BECAUSE we were able to give mana to the raid. They buffed our dps to be competetive but removed the mana battery portion.

As kelti is saying... you can't have one and the other its be competetive in one and gimped in the other.

Any more spells to atonement and you will increase dps without gimping healing capabilities. There is no cost it raises the dps and healing output....

---------- Post added 2012-05-06 at 12:27 AM ----------

Not really, since your max HPS will never be achievable by dpsing as a healer.

Exactly ... so by adding more dps spells you allow more dps to be output and more healing at the same time. Atonement worked pretty well for maximizing healing in situations where you could pop your archangel for known healing burst situations.

[Dawn Falcon]

Rapture is only complex if you think about it that way.

It still means multiple disc priests, on some fights, are SOL on mana management.

[ramennoodleking]

It still means multiple disc priests, on some fights, are SOL on mana management.

If you are bringing 2 disc priests to a ten man, then you have more problems than rapture. Two disc priests in a 25 will have plenty of chances to get rapture off.

---------- Post added 2012-05-06 at 02:16 AM ----------

And deathzero, you are missing the point. Disc will either be able to do as it currently does, meh dpi with equivalent random "smart" healing (I.e. just smiling/holy fire the whole fight) or be able to push its max hps without dpsing. The two are NOT mutually exclusive. Disc dps would never be "competitive" with actual damage dealers, and the healing from dpsing would never be on par with a pure healer. But that doesn't mean disc wouldn't be able to ditch dpsing to just be that raw healer.

I fail to see how there would be any real difference than it is now, with the exception of a few more offensive spells proccing atonement.

[Tarot]

A disc spec that holds even more potential dps will just become the third healer in heroic 10 mans. Meaning disc will be designed WITH a lower healing output cap then all the other specs that do not do dps because of the ability to offset it with dps. You can not have a class that can do competetive dps without limiting their healing cap it breaks the rules of the game. If it does do competetive dps without limiting too much healing it becomes required for raiding. They won't do it because as we seen in BC with shadowpriests our dps was gimped BECAUSE we were able to give mana to the raid. They buffed our dps to be competetive but removed the mana battery portion.

As kelti is saying... you can't have one and the other its be competetive in one and gimped in the other.

Any more spells to atonement and you will increase dps without gimping healing capabilities. There is no cost it raises the dps and healing output....

---------- Post added 2012-05-06 at 12:27 AM ----------



Exactly ... so by adding more dps spells you allow more dps to be output and more healing at the same time. Atonement worked pretty well for maximizing healing in situations where you could pop your archangel for known healing burst situations.

I think we are all aware that effective dps and effective healing, through Attonement, will not happen. Discipline is not gaining any bonus damage to shadow and the mana cost is not changing. As it is now, Disc is lacking and not on par w/Holy (imo) and you can't cast two spells at once, either Smite or Holy Fire or Mind Spike G Heal(ect.). And something also to take into consideration, Disc will not see the same benefit casting Shadow Spells as Shadow does in turns of output of damage or MANA COST or Proc's even.

The only thing that I can see a debate is SW:Pain, but a minor smart heal every 3 secs (when the DoT ticks), even on multiple targets, is not game breaking given the factors that come into play; gcd, damage/amount healed by attonement, Mana cost, how many enemies, how many friendly players, and etc. The way I see it, it's a minor situational buffer. And even that's not much different than it is now. You can cast Renew on multiple targets and still Attonement Smite (deal damage to heal). And where Disc is atm, I dont see it being OP for the spec, even if it were on live now.

[Fabio]

If you are bringing 2 disc priests to a ten man, then you have more problems than rapture. Two disc priests in a 25 will have plenty of chances to get rapture off.

Why does "bring the player not the class blah blah blah" not apply to disc? You can accomodate 2 of any other healer, but not 2 discs.

GCs responses concern me greatly, I like rapture currently, but all I can see is that we'll ping-pong between OP or UP, as it's something that cannot be easily ballanced with a passive regen.

[Deleted]

Bear in mind rapture isn't as good as you think, since to even get the mana return you have to use an already inefficient spell first. Rapture is a net mana loss, not a mana gain now. Perhaps that will be different with lv 90 spirit numbers, we'll see.

If it is a mana gain then the difference between classes could be quite substantial. GC suggests casting every 20-25 seconds you get the same regen as other healers. Considering the difference between holy & disc (25% less spirit combat regen) if you were to proc rapture every 12 seconds that would equate to around 75% spirit regen, assuming what he says is roughly correct. That's quite a big difference.

[ramennoodleking]

Why does "bring the player not the class blah blah blah" not apply to disc? You can accomodate 2 of any other healer, but not 2 discs.

GCs responses concern me greatly, I like rapture currently, but all I can see is that we'll ping-pong between OP or UP, as it's something that cannot be easily ballanced with a passive regen.

Simply because the way weakened soul works. Your problem is lying with weakened soul, not with disc itself. If they changed it to where each priest created its own weakened soul debuff, however, you would end up with 6 disc priests in a raid all chaining PW:S on targets.

And how could his comment bother you? He CLEARLY says "in fact a Disc priest with flawless Rapture use would have more mana return than other healers," while one with 20+ seconds of uptime (which is pretty damn easy to get, you don't even have to try) would be on par with all other healer mana. The only way it would ever be underpowered is if you neglected the spell nearly entirely, which is a ludicrous notion. We have no basis by which to judge the raid encounters for MoP yet, and rapture has never been a problem in the past, so I simply don't see the use in crying about it just yet, not until we've stepped foot in a raid and can objectively say one way or the other.

---------- Post added 2012-05-06 at 02:29 PM ----------

Bear in mind rapture isn't as good as you think, since to even get the mana return you have to use an already inefficient spell first. Rapture is a net mana loss, not a mana gain now. Perhaps that will be different with lv 90 spirit numbers, we'll see.

If it is a mana gain then the difference between classes could be quite substantial. GC suggests casting every 20-25 seconds you get the same regen as other healers. Considering the difference between holy & disc (25% less spirit combat regen) if you were to proc rapture every 12 seconds that would equate to around 75% spirit regen, assuming what he says is roughly correct. That's quite a big difference.

An inefficient spell that still heals, and one that you will still use regardless of its inefficiency. I've never been like, "hey, I don't wanna use PW:S because its inefficient," I've always thought, "hurry up weakened soul so I can put another one on you."

If GC's numbers are correct, and really at this point none of us have any basis to object to them since we aren't there yet, you would only need to have rapture proc once ever 20ish seconds to be on par with others. That is ridiculously easy to do. I'm not saying GC can't be wrong, but at this point I think we will just have to wait and see when the content it is truly applicable in is open for testing.