Disc 5.2 Nerf Discussion

[Manamontana]

why not jsut decrease the imposed HP cap from DA and SS? down from 40% an 60%, to maybe 20% and 30% respectively.

You'll still be blanketing the raid primarily for DA stacking if that happens. That's what Blizzard wants to stop.

[ambident]

reducing DA and/or giving spirit shell a longer cd just encourages stacking more priests to retain the same level of control over encounters.

[Noradin]

Back when they first added DA to PoH to make it viable the problem of using it to stack absorbs was discussed. One possible solution mentioned was to simply make PoH convert all previous DA on the targets healed into instant direct healing and just leaving the new DA caused by that PoH behind.

This would have solved the throughput problem (PoH healing way less for Disc than for Holy with no alternatives like Holy has) and prevented excessive DA stacking. It would even improve Disc's ability to heal groups back up after heavy raiddamage not on a fixed timer, something it would currently struggle with if such encounters came back.

I think something like this would work better than just removing DA form PoH completely, which might make it too weak due to targeting limitations and lack of complimentary aoe smartheals. It's easier to balance as well. (Since there would be two more numbers to tweak whereas the version currently tested has none on the side of disc priests.)

[Havoc12]

On the PTR testing of Horridon our Disc Priest was doing the same about of raw HPS as the buffed Resto Druid was, sometimes even higher.

That tells us absolutely nothing. How far into the fight did you get. I doubt you actually killed him so you are only seeing a fragment of the fight. Tank healing seems to be the brunt the healing here and most of the raid healing is single target too. What kind of HPS are you reaching. High overheal fights disc can get an advantage over resto, but try the same with a good paladin and you will see what I am talking about.

Also how good is your resto, what assignments you got and how do you know that a disc priest is doing ok. Did you priest try holy at all?

All in all we know exactly where disc priests will be after 5.2, because we know how we did at the start of MoP. Single target heals were buffed a bit, spirit shell nerfed a lot, PoH nerfed (slightly lower HPS and no absorbs), mana costs lowered. If we were not viable at the start of MoP how is it possible that these buffs will make us viable.

The answer is it won't. We were able to stack absorbs in the start of MoP and spirit shell healed for much more back then. Did anyone think disc was OP then? The answer is absorbs on their own are just not the problem. The problem is blizzard overbuffing PoH and spirit shell to ridiculous extents so a PoH puts the same amount of absorb as a PWS does.

Blizzard current iteration of changes will just lead to more crappy hotfixes....

[Manamontana]

That tells us absolutely nothing. How far into the fight did you get. I doubt you actually killed him so you are only seeing a fragment of the fight. Tank healing seems to be the brunt the healing here and most of the raid healing is single target too. What kind of HPS are you reaching. High overheal fights disc can get an advantage over resto, but try the same with a good paladin and you will see what I am talking about.

Also how good is your resto, what assignments you got and how do you know that a disc priest is doing ok. Did you priest try holy at all?

All in all we know exactly where disc priests will be after 5.2, because we know how we did at the start of MoP. Single target heals were buffed a bit, spirit shell nerfed a lot, PoH nerfed (slightly lower HPS and no absorbs), mana costs lowered. If we were not viable at the start of MoP how is it possible that these buffs will make us viable.

The answer is it won't. We were able to stack absorbs in the start of MoP and spirit shell healed for much more back then. Did anyone think disc was OP then? The answer is absorbs on their own are just not the problem. The problem is blizzard overbuffing PoH and spirit shell to ridiculous extents so a PoH puts the same amount of absorb as a PWS does.

Blizzard current iteration of changes will just lead to more crappy hotfixes....

The boss was killed. The druid is a trial, but a great one (IMO). Priest likes Holy but plays what is best and she believes Disc > Holy. They 2 healed the fight. It may come as a surprise, but in 5.2 bad Discs will get caught out and hopefully they'll be punished for it. Just like Mistweavers who rode the 'OP' bandwagon. Utterly nerfed and most Mistweavers rerolled because they were terrible.

Discs will be more than fine, Discs scale really well and it's just a joke that PoH is used more to blanket DA than to actually heal.

[HolyLathusDisc]

They could just make DA work like echo of light as well.

Basically make it not stack, just add the difference to the old shield ect.

[Darkener]

I wonder if Blizzard has even considered how the PWS change will affect the PWS glyph. If they are reducing the ability to shield via PoH and instead want us to shield via PWS more, then why would we want to glyph PWS and lose even more absorb, by 20%?

[espoire]

I wonder if Blizzard has even considered how the PWS change will affect the PWS glyph. If they are reducing the ability to shield via PoH and instead want us to shield via PWS more, then why would we want to glyph PWS and lose even more absorb, by 20%?

That glyph seems useless to me anyway. Not sure when you would ever want it.

[Saphiramoon]

Prayer of Healing according to wowhead:

"A powerful prayer heals the friendly target's party members within 30 yards for 8450 to 8927 (+ 83.8% of SpellPower)."

Let's assume 20% crit, 40% mastery, 10% haste (arbitrary and low, considering uptime on Borrowed Time will be higher next patch) and 27500 SP, all are of course raid buffed:
Mazor.

Dear Mazor. I have my hat with a little salt near me, but, if you will check what I actually said:

You claimed non Aegis PoH can do 100k hps, have you ever checked how much actual healing from poh alone does your disc priest do? Go check that, add the overhealing to it, and you'll get the actual practical output POH will have. I'll eat my hat if its 100k.

I asked about what actually happens in a raid, numbers taken from a log, with AA/grace/PI and whatever you want in the equation, not numbers from wowhead. Key word is practical output, not theoretical. In a practical raid, the possibility of poh hitting 5 ppl is extremely rare due to range issues. I did assume no overhealing, even if even that is a bit of a stretch, a spell like PoH actually has a large chance on overhealing, especially if it manages to crit on a person that doesn't need any particularly high healing, due to the fact that all other healers have smart spells, therefor there will never be a situation in which all your party members lack the same amount of health. Right now, I am having a hard time imagining which boss would allow poh to hit 5 ppl most of the time, as most of them have some sort of spread mechanic.

im holding massive reservations about DA being withdrawn from PoH. after literally jsut doing garalon hc (other healer a holy pally) if DA wasnt there, as a disc priest i would feel incredibly vulnerable not being able to "reliably" mitigate the incoming damage

why not jsut decrease the imposed HP cap from DA and SS? down from 40% an 60%, to maybe 20% and 30% respectively.

I think caps on absorbs in some sort of form would be good to not allow extreme uses. I also think a guaranteed DA on poh should be a much lower amount than crits on single target spells. Normally, considering its 50% with a 20-30% chance (depending on gear), I'd say DA should also be @10-15% on poh (though that would make it look a bit like pala mastery).

Another solution would be a new mechanic for DA stacking (something like what Noradin said), or a completely new aoe spell that we could use when poh isnt the best answer.

[Manamontana]

If your PoHs aren't hitting all 5 party members, tell your raid leader to give you assistance so you can organise groups. Our Priests are able to hit 5 targets all the time: even on Sha of Fear HC.

[Saphiramoon]

If your PoHs aren't hitting all 5 party members, tell your raid leader to give you assistance so you can organise groups. Our Priests are able to hit 5 targets all the time: even on Sha of Fear HC.

10 man or 25 man? Because in a 10 man, you basically have tanks+melee in a group, and ranged+healers in another and you dont need to spread on a larger distance than in 25 man, you can have your entire raid in a 40 yards range. Its a different thing to heal a raid that needs to spread 8 yards between 5 ppl and a raid that needs to spread 8 yards between 17. In 25 melees usually are pretty bunched up but due to healing rain/efflo/chain heal, they are also less likely to need healing. Also, we dont always have 7-8 melees to fill exactly 2 groups with tanks, or sometimes tanks need to be fairly apart (ex, dogs, where I am exiled with a tank away at the end of the room). The ranged+healers tho, I'd need to ask them to position themselves according to groups. I tried, it never really worked. I am using a spell indicator to tell me which target is more likely to be in range of poh (not really sure how it calculates it really, all it has is a threshold of healing done, which is prolly overall, so it feels only half reliable to me, it could just tell you that 2 ppl in that party together will take that threshold healing needed). I can see aegis on my frames, and hitting 5 targets is always fucked up on any fight that requires spreading.

Then, if only 3 ppl in a party need healing, its still better to use poh than anything else atm, since casting 3 single target spells is slower and more expensive. You could say I could atonement heal, but even that takes 4-5 seconds for 3 ppl, and 3 ppl are the 8th part of the raid compared to 10 man where they are a third. If I have to heal 9 ppl that took dmg in 3 different parties, casting 3xpoh and spending 7 seconds on it is still better than casting smite/holy fire/penance for 13 seconds with a chance to land heals on pets (which are also more in 25 man).

[Manamontana]

10 man or 25 man?

25 of course.

Although I don't pay much attention it works like this:

group 1 = tanks + Mistweavers (melee range)
group 2 = pure melee (melee range)
group 3 = healers (stand in middle / melee on fights where they can like Tsulong etc)
group 4 = ranged dps, stand left
group 5 = ranged dps, stand right

[Saphiramoon]

25 of course.

Although I don't pay much attention it works like this:

group 1 = tanks + Mistweavers (melee range)
group 2 = pure melee (melee range)
group 3 = healers (stand in middle / melee on fights where they can like Tsulong etc)
group 4 = ranged dps, stand left
group 5 = ranged dps, stand right

I guess your raid is more organized than mine. My healing officer is a paladin and she doesn't give a damn about groups (heck, I spent a month this expansion to convince my raidleader that barrier is a decent raid cd, and he still prefers AM, or devotion aura, as they call it now), I even have to ask her to put melees in a group together and that's all I can hope for. I can ask ppl to kingdom come for them to arrange in a way to compliment my poh, they wont do it, all I'd get would be "olol you just want to get some ranks".

[Spazzeh]

25 of course.

Although I don't pay much attention it works like this:

group 1 = tanks + Mistweavers (melee range)
group 2 = pure melee (melee range)
group 3 = healers (stand in middle / melee on fights where they can like Tsulong etc)
group 4 = ranged dps, stand left
group 5 = ranged dps, stand right

Ive never seen Sha on 25man, just 10, so bear with me...im assuming platforms work the same, and a certain number of RANDOM people are ported to the platform, yah?

What happens to PoH then?

[Manamontana]

Ive never seen Sha on 25man, just 10, so bear with me...im assuming platforms work the same, and a certain number of RANDOM people are ported to the platform, yah?

What happens to PoH then?

No-one takes damage on the platforms if it's done right. Only the tank.

[Spazzeh]

No-one takes damage on the platforms if it's done right. Only the tank.

Its not about whether they do or don't, its about what happens to PoH usage when you cant control raid positioning.

[Mazor]

Then, if only 3 ppl in a party need healing, its still better to use poh than anything else atm

You managed to roll most of Disc's mechanical issues into 1 phrase right here.
In fact, someone calculated in the US forums that using PoH (on live) to heal 1 person is the best HPM/HPS you can do, provided the DA on all members will be used (which isn't far fetched, to be honest).

If you are healing in a 25 man setting, and 3 people really need heals, you and the other 3-7 healers can spot heal them easily. If they really are in risk of dying, a disc has the added bonus of being able to PW:S all 3 (assuming only one Disc I guess, that is another mechanical problem that will float come 5.2) and get this throughput going, while letting the other healers heal said targets. Or you can just even go on with atonement, the best sustained snipe healing in game (which will still be the case come 5.2).

If you are healing in a 10 man setting, 3 people is a considerably larger portion of the raid, and if 3 people need healing right now that usually means it's time to start thinking about CDs or at least burn through mana to keep them alive.

At any case, most healers will not start using spammable AoE heals when 3 people took damage.

You claimed non Aegis PoH can do 100k hps, have you ever checked how much actual healing from poh alone does your disc priest do? Go check that, add the overhealing to it, and you'll get the actual practical output POH will have. I'll eat my hat if its 100k.

You ask me to go to a current WoL and dig numbers for average PoH hit and overheal. This is ridiculous. That is the problem right there. Priests ATM spam PoH despite knowing it might overheal 50% and sometimes even 100% just because of DA, said numbers are not usable to the model planned for 5.2.

Also, I strongly disagree that we should care only about the healing (as opposed to shields) that comes from PoH usage. You never ignored it so far, why start now, because it's unpredictable? Might as well ignore crits, Monk's mastery, Paladin's Divine Purpose Procs, Resto Shaman Resurgence or Earthliving Weapon, etc.

If you want me to recalculate these numbers based on a 30% overheal estimate (a number I randomly generated, I'm a real RNG!) that would make more sense, in which case I'll just use real numbers from my Disc co-healer's PoH spell. His Ilevel is 498 I think, might be 497.

Average hit is around 47.5K taken from WoL (I took total healing, divided it by the non overhealing component, and then by total number of entries) so it averages crits, Inner Focus and Archangel. It doesn't count DA, and haste.

Let's assume 10% haste raid buffed, 3% from Borrowed Time (this will be much higher come 5.2), and 2% additional benefit from Power Infusion also 40% mastery (no Heroism/Bloodlust, those are often used for DPS gain, not healers, so no guarantee you'll get them when you want, as opposed to PI).
This averages out to just below 110K. So we have 77K HPS if we use the 30% overheal.
He crits around 23% of his PoHs so 0.374*110K*0.7=29K or so. *** explanation below if you care.
Let's say 30% of DA overheals as well, so effectively we have 20K. (Absurdly high DA overheal IMO, but RNG is RNG!)
Totaling 97K effective HPS. (from a raw 138.5K HPS)

Fight is Spirit Kings HC if it matters.


*** This part might require some explanation.
Since I used his average hit of PoH per target earlier on (including crits), I couldn't just take 23% of that as the crit value, crit is already part of that number. What I did instead is find the ratio of 23% crit from the overall heal.
So from 100 PoH entries you get 77 normal hits valuing 1 (normalized of course) each, and 23 crits valuing 2 (normalized) each, therefore the crit component of the overall is 46/123=0.374, nevermind the meta for this calculation, it's not 100% accurate anyway, no need to over complicate stuff.
The formula is (crit portion)*(total healing per second)*(Divine Aegis component)=raw DA.


This might be skewed one way or another because of Inner Focus, the crit % does seem somewhat high, but looking at other fights (Protectors normal elite, Feng HC, Empress normal) it's somewhat consistent.

Have a nice day,
Mazor.

[Macanam]

"olol you just want to get some ranks".

Sounds like you need a new raid leader who understands that arranging groups properly to suit the priest(s) in the raid will improve overall raid performance, unless there is another valid reason to have people in the groups they are in.

[Saphiramoon]

Sounds like you need a new raid leader who understands that arranging groups properly to suit the priest(s) in the raid will improve overall raid performance, unless there is another valid reason to have people in the groups they are in.

Actually that's what other healers usually comment :P. I play for my guild alone and that comes before performance for me, so I wont complain, sorry if it sounded so, maybe from this position I shouldn't talk at all . I'll just continue watching the debate here until we have some test results.

[Macanam]

Actually that's what other healers usually comment :P. I play for my guild alone and that comes before performance for me, so I wont complain, sorry if it sounded so, maybe from this position I shouldn't talk at all . I'll just continue watching the debate here until we have some test results.

Either way, the raid groups should be set up to help the healers as much as possible.