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  1. #41
    Quote Originally Posted by Noradin View Post
    I'm not saying it is a problem for all players or saying it is a problem for him, I'm just pointing out that it is misleading when interpreted as 'spamming PW:S and other absorbs is good and efficient and has basically no downsides', when it can in fact reduce the absolute healing potential of the healing team over the course of an encounter when done wrong (excessively).
    Then you're looking at bad Disc play with improper mana management. No one is advocating casting PW:S to the exclusion of everything else, certainly not over Atonement during low damage phases, and a good Disc will still be prioritizing Penance (and Solace/HF if you need Evangelism stacks)/PoM/level 90 talents/SS+PoH over PW:S.

    The issue with PW:S now is that it's going to scale far better than the other heals due to its practically non-existant overhealing. As it stands, the average PW:S now shields for an average of 180k (probably close to 200k now with top-end gear). For reference, this does almost as much HPS as a PoH that hits 4 people, but factor in the fact that your PoH will always have higher overhealing, and the balance in power shifts towards PW:S under almost every situation. Even under ideal conditions for PoH (heavy raid damage when the raid is stacked), there still will be non-trivial overhealing for PoH due to all snipe healing from raid wide smart heals, and you would be better served by using a PW:S->PoH rotation to take advantage of BT.

    Anyway, the problem isn't only with PW:S numbers, but also to do with the fact that the effort vs reward ratio is off when it comes to PW:S. It's an instant cast which means that it isn't susceptible to heavy movement (Winds on P3 H-Lei Shen, Durumu's Maze, DA Fonts to name a few), has great spot healing capabilities unlike group/raid wide AoE heals, and all this while still pulling great numbers. This isn't even including the fact that it serves as a great alternative tool, when SS is down, to mitigate burst mechanics. The main downside to PW:S is that it can be slightly inefficient, but the introduction of gear upgrades/LMG has made it very mana sustainable.
    Last edited by Basmothh; 2013-05-25 at 08:43 PM.

  2. #42
    Brewmaster ramennoodleking's Avatar
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    Nor do I plan on doing 25 Animus since I'm in a 10 man. I don't deny the effectiveness of instant increases to EHP through shields, but I wouldn't consider them "raid" savers as much as an individual buffer to allow more time for proper healing to go out. Maybe we are arguing semantics. Maybe the 10 vs 25 perspective is also the problem, since most of the time a 10 man disc priests runs very little spirit for an atonement heavy build, too little to support bubble spam, relyin instead on fast, cheap smart heals/DA.

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  3. #43
    Quote Originally Posted by ramennoodleking View Post
    Nor do I plan on doing 25 Animus since I'm in a 10 man. I don't deny the effectiveness of instant increases to EHP through shields, but I wouldn't consider them "raid" savers as much as an individual buffer to allow more time for proper healing to go out. Maybe we are arguing semantics. Maybe the 10 vs 25 perspective is also the problem, since most of the time a 10 man disc priests runs very little spirit for an atonement heavy build, too little to support bubble spam, relyin instead on fast, cheap smart heals/DA.
    Just for reference, my alt I've been playing is http://eu.battle.net/wow/en/characte...ll/Dracomaros/ - so full throughput, minimum regen.

    And two things - if you do not know the fight, nor have done it, you can't really make any assumptions about the best way to go around it to keep people alive. I doubt I'd find any people disagreeing with me that the main priority of this fight is bursting people up before they die again. The instant "healing" of the shield allows you to keep people alive, untill hot's and AOE heals have filled the HP bar of the people who goes low. The absorbtion allows you to handle matter swap more effectively (to the point that I'm shielding the swaps and the persons assigned to being swapped and having no deaths due to it). All in all, "spamming" shields is more effective for surviving the encounter than anything else, as most of the damage is either raidwide AOE (jolt), that you can't do anything about apart from Halo, and targetted nuke-dmg (fonts, matter swaps) that leaves you low enough to let the AOE finish you off.

  4. #44
    Brewmaster ramennoodleking's Avatar
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    You have 4000 more spirit than I do (12800 vs 8800). So I stand by my point.

    One encounter is hardly proof of anything. It's much the same way that certain class mechanics work best on certain fights. I'm speakin in general, you are speaking in specific. I don't really prefer to discuss this further because every encounter is different and it may end up being the same on 10 man, but so far out of 6 heroics I have done, none have had anything remotely close to bubble spam.
    Last edited by ramennoodleking; 2013-05-25 at 11:13 PM.

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  5. #45
    Quote Originally Posted by ramennoodleking View Post
    Nor do I plan on doing 25 Animus since I'm in a 10 man. I don't deny the effectiveness of instant increases to EHP through shields, but I wouldn't consider them "raid" savers as much as an individual buffer to allow more time for proper healing to go out. Maybe we are arguing semantics. Maybe the 10 vs 25 perspective is also the problem, since most of the time a 10 man disc priests runs very little spirit for an atonement heavy build, too little to support bubble spam, relyin instead on fast, cheap smart heals/DA.
    That is the definition of a raid saver though. People only die because healing didn't go out on them in time.

    While the buffer from PW:S may not see equal effectiveness on all fights, I think you can understand how having an instant cast single-target shield that absorbs for almost double its single target heal equivalent can be considered too powerful on fights with heavy movement or with deadly single targeted debuffs/damage (Cinders, Matter Swap to name a few).

    In fact, Disc's entire toolkit is rather adept at life saving heals, because apart from PW:S, Atonement's raid wide spot healing capability is unmatched. I honestly wouldn't be surprised, or even have an issue, if they decided to nerf absorbs (note: PW:S and 1 min SS are such outliers when compared to the general healing toolkit of most classes) further and compensated Disc by giving it more raw healing.
    Last edited by Basmothh; 2013-05-25 at 11:24 PM.

  6. #46
    Deleted
    Quote Originally Posted by Dracodraco View Post
    You haven't done Animus25 heroic yet, have you <.<? Trust me - on that fight, all you want is snap healing to make sure no one gets oneshot by the heavy damage going out. AOE healing is better left to the classes that excells at it (monks, druids), but can't snap heal the same way.
    Even if I didn't do that particular encounter myself, I can have an educated guess that shielding the debuff is pretty good, and not risking interrupting on jolts is too. But that is one particular fight, and I havent found any other on 25 man yet that would favor PWS "spamming". Further more, my comment was directed to somebody that says "PWS became spammable" in a topic about disc in 5.3. Did anything in 5.3 make PWS more spammable than it was before?

    I use PWS plenty, but I'd hardly say I "spam it". PWS is not a heal, unless you can predict very precisely dmg on some people (like dark animus debuff or tanks or some debuffed target), it will just be wasted. When 25 people are taking heavy dmg, unless there's some interrupt that favors instants, like in your example, PWS doesn't seem to me like the best answer.

    On short, its a great spell, but hardly something disc "spams" on a regular basis.

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by Saphiramoon View Post
    I use PWS plenty, but I'd hardly say I "spam it". PWS is not a heal, unless you can predict very precisely dmg on some people (like dark animus debuff or tanks or some debuffed target), it will just be wasted. When 25 people are taking heavy dmg, unless there's some interrupt that favors instants, like in your example, PWS doesn't seem to me like the best answer.
    You seem stuck on semantics. It has been said that there are other spells that a Disc will prioritize over PW:S, but PW:S has now become the go-to spell over PoH for most situations when those spells are on CD.

    Look at the top parses for many of the HM fights and you'd see many Disc Priests relying on heavy PW:S usage. Even on fights with heavy raid damage, you're still seeing pretty high usage of PW:S. And yes, the fact that you can do well relying on PW:S is an issue because PW:S doesn't have the same weaknesses as the other heals. It's not prone to getting sniped, which means that it will scale better than the other heals due to its low overhealing. It has no cast time, allowing you to circumvent phases with high movement (Jin'rokh's Storm, Durumu's Maze, DA, H-Lei Shen's Winds). It also doesn't have the same group and/or range restrictions as PoH. Further, it has the benefit of adding an EHP buffer unlike PoH, and it certainly has much better spot healing capabilities than most raid heals. Oh, and PW:S procs BT too.

    So yes, we can argue all day over what spamming PW:S construes, but the basic fact is that PW:S is far too strong for the type of spell that it is. I mean, looking at some of the top logs with proper AA usage shows PW:S shielding for an average of 200k, and it's only going to continue outscaling the other heals due to nature of absorbs. There's literally no other single target healing spell that does that, certainly not one that's an instant cast.

  8. #48
    shield spam fights that ive encountered are....

    H jinrok
    H primo
    H dark animus
    H twins
    H lei shen (last phase zzzzz)

    and this is 10man btw

    @OP i think shield in general are OP
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  9. #49
    Brewmaster ramennoodleking's Avatar
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    Everyone's experience can be different, but I've seen virtually no use for excessive shield usage on H Jin'rokh, H Twins, or H Primordius. So again, isolated experiences are...isolated.

    Not to say you are wrong--I definitely see the power of shielding and also predicted PW:S use increasing by quite a bit this tier. But the key lies in how you choose to build your disc priest. My opinion is, having played both holy and disc extensively, that the main draw this tier towards disc is the added dps and competitive healing done via Atonement. If I cut Atonement out of the equation, I feel extremely confident in my ability to save lives as holy. Therefore, my play style reflects my immediate progression needs, which as of now has been Disc geared towards Atonement. This reflects a 10 man perspective.

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  10. #50
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    Quote Originally Posted by Basmothh View Post
    You seem stuck on semantics. It has been said that there are other spells that a Disc will prioritize over PW:S, but PW:S has now become the go-to spell over PoH for most situations when those spells are on CD.
    I fail to see how a single target spell could become the "go-to" spell in situations of aoe dmg. Evidently, neither PoH is the
    "go-to" spell disc uses, in fact, its hardly used outside spirit shell, but in most parses of 25 man hcs I saw, spirit shell has a higher % than PWS and that means PoH really. I'd say that atm the spell that gets closest to a spammable thing for disc atonement.
    I may be stuck on semantics, but you seem stuck on hearsay: "it has been said" "a disc" etc. How about - "I play disc and I prioritize PWS over PoH and it works better"?
    As said, PWS holds a decent amount of my healing, up to 20% - but I would not call it a spell that I use outside specific need: on tanks, because they are guaranteed to take dmg (and guarantee me rapture) , on people with a specific debuff that take damage, when needing to heal on the move. But those are precise situations, it has nothing to do with how a druid, for ex, will use reju instead of most other heals. So yes, maybe I'm not getting the exact "semantics", but to me a spell that is spammed means something else. It means replacing a large part of other spells. Well, for me, PWS doesnt. It doesn't replace PoH for aoe healing and it doesn't replace atonement for spot healing. It doesn't replace mending, it doesn't replace cascade.

    Look at the top parses for many of the HM fights and you'd see many Disc Priests relying on heavy PW:S usage. Even on fights with heavy raid damage, you're still seeing pretty high usage of PW:S.
    Out of curiosity, I did. The highest PWS usage I've seen in the 10-12 logs I browsed was dark animus, with 22%. Most others vary betwen 10-15%. Can you put down some examples of those parses you saw with high usage of PWS?

    And yes, the fact that you can do well relying on PW:S is an issue because PW:S doesn't have the same weaknesses as the other heals. It's not prone to getting sniped, which means that it will scale better than the other heals due to its low overhealing. It has no cast time, allowing you to circumvent phases with high movement (Jin'rokh's Storm, Durumu's Maze, DA, H-Lei Shen's Winds). It also doesn't have the same group and/or range restrictions as PoH. Further, it has the benefit of adding an EHP buffer unlike PoH, and it certainly has much better spot healing capabilities than most raid heals. Oh, and PW:S procs BT too.
    After playing disc for 5 years, I know exactly what PWS is good for. Yes, it is instant, so is rejuvenation. Yes, rejuvenation is prone to overhealing, but so is PWS if your target didnt take further dmg. Not all damage is predictable. It has a 15 (glyphable to 13) seconds debuff attached. Ofc it doesnt have group/range restrictions, its a single target spell, how can you compare a single target spell with an aoe one? If prayer of healing hits 5 targets, it could heal for 350k non crit, bet you dont get that from PWS. As for spot healing, it has 0 value, PWS does not heal. It's a great spell, it saves lives, it offers a great buffer to give time for an actual heal from you or somebody else, it can even give a speed buff for your target to get out of shit faster, but what it does not do, is heal.

    Yes, I know, semantics. But if 3-4 targets in a party took damage during my raid, I'll most likely PoH, or if the raid is very spread and there is no indicator that PoH will hit efficiently, I might choose to Cascade or Penance or atonement or even PWS if one of them is on critical hp, but what I won't do is PWSx4. Its a great spell, in specific situations, not generally tossed on any target. The only thing that can be called "spammed" atm for disc is atonement.

    So yes, we can argue all day over what spamming PW:S construes, but the basic fact is that PW:S is far too strong for the type of spell that it is. I mean, looking at some of the top logs with proper AA usage shows PW:S shielding for an average of 200k, and it's only going to continue outscaling the other heals due to nature of absorbs. There's literally no other single target healing spell that does that, certainly not one that's an instant cast.
    Last I checked a 200 k PWS was a crit. Again, can you actually link these parses with "proper AA usage" doing average 200k shields? I'm really willing to be enlightened, I'm just partial to rumours.
    Last edited by mmoc318f6f4933; 2013-05-26 at 04:52 PM.

  11. #51
    Ah yes the 200k PW:S average... its quite easy to achieve - just hit PW:S only once per fight and pick those logs where it was a crit with your spelldamge buffs up.

  12. #52
    Deleted
    Fact is that there's quite few fights this tier where the hp buffer from absorb is significantly ahead of actual healing, most damage seems to be going out over several seconds or often even longer durations, and in these situations SS is far worse than recount gives it credit for. You can look at megaera, SS basically stops the first second of a rampage when the raid already is topped, meaning that the other healers aren't doing anything for this time. What SS actually does in this fight is to reduce the time of the rampage by a second, it doesn't reduce the actual healing that needs to be done during the rest of the period at all, at a significant mana cost for the priest. This looks really fancy on the meters, but it didn't really matter at all (for the early rampages it's in fact probably more useful to just have SS up during the rampage to avoid overhealing with PoH, which is insanely prone to that, if you aren't out to pad the meters). All this obviously applies to PW:S spam before the actual damage goes out as well, and once it's gone out the advantage of absorbs over normal healing is slim.

    Some fights are notable exceptions, dark animus being the main one, but in general the design of the fights in ToT doesn't really favor absorbs that much.

    Regarding PW:S numbers, it's not being spammed. Getting enough regen to support that is basically impossible, our cds have more output, especially since part of PW:S output is borrowed time which is entirely lost if you spam it, and in 10 man you lose out on the main perk disc has over the other healers (damage, not shields). You can look at the logs, if spamming PW:S was so incredibly effective you'd think that we'd see it at more than 20% tops.

    PW:S isn't hitting even close to 200k on average for me, not even in BiS gear and just using it under evengalism (which hardly would be ideal) should yield these numbers, monks and paladins can very easily hit 200k hps though.

  13. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by TyrantWave View Post
    Holy priest, shamans, and druids all got buffs to their AoE.

    Disc got nerfs to smite, atonement, Borrowed Time, and the DPS component of Penance. And still has piss poor sustained aoe compared to all other healers.

    As Venara said - we're more inline.

    Disc actually (imo) lacks behind the other healers in a "standard" situation - incoming sporadic damage, and no damage boosts.
    When there's a damage buff, or incoming damage is predictable / lines up with SS, then Disc starts rapidly getting stronger.

    All depends on the fight really.
    Shamans got a buff to their aoe? I don't recall seeing any buffs in the patch notes and holy priest got a buff in 25 man but I don't see any buff otherwise for them. Either way it seems to have balanced out with disc seemingly a little ahead but nothing to fret about.

  14. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Saphiramoon View Post
    Out of curiosity, I did. The highest PWS usage I've seen in the 10-12 logs I browsed was dark animus, with 22%. Most others vary betwen 10-15%. Can you put down some examples of those parses you saw with high usage of PWS?

    Last I checked a 200 k PWS was a crit. Again, can you actually link these parses with "proper AA usage" doing average 200k shields? I'm really willing to be enlightened, I'm just partial to rumours.
    worldoflogs.com/reports/mffmh0fl5r15rk1n/details/17/?s=507&e=728 Jin'rokh
    worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-90iu9qng4bfp0lwa/details/28/?s=4955&e=5374 Council
    worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-rzlmoyma2r89xom7/details/85/?s=13002&e=13600 Durumu
    worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-9kifovd7oylsyw4w/details/26/?s=61&e=427 DA
    worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-lggnndgnjhg6852w/details/10/?s=7984&e=8388 Primordius
    worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-t8li8dtgrmht9dk4/details/7/?s=3040&e=3269 Iron Qon's final phase

    Keep in mind that all these parses were before 5.3, so being able to upgrade your gear is going to push those values for PW:S higher post 5.3. Look at the numbers for Iron Qon - the HPS values for PW:S are just slightly below those of PoHx5 with the appropriate DA values factored in. So yes, PoH theoretically does more HPS than PW:S, but the reality is that PoH will always have higher overhealing than your PW:S even under ideal conditions for PoH. Of course, this doesn't even factor in the BT proc from each PW:S cast, which handily pushes PW:S ahead of PoH for raid healing.

    Quote Originally Posted by Saphiramoon View Post
    After playing disc for 5 years, I know exactly what PWS is good for. Yes, it is instant, so is rejuvenation. Yes, rejuvenation is prone to overhealing, but so is PWS if your target didnt take further dmg. Not all damage is predictable. It has a 15 (glyphable to 13) seconds debuff attached. Ofc it doesnt have group/range restrictions, its a single target spell, how can you compare a single target spell with an aoe one? If prayer of healing hits 5 targets, it could heal for 350k non crit, bet you dont get that from PWS. As for spot healing, it has 0 value, PWS does not heal. It's a great spell, it saves lives, it offers a great buffer to give time for an actual heal from you or somebody else, it can even give a speed buff for your target to get out of shit faster, but what it does not do, is heal.

    Yes, I know, semantics. But if 3-4 targets in a party took damage during my raid, I'll most likely PoH, or if the raid is very spread and there is no indicator that PoH will hit efficiently, I might choose to Cascade or Penance or atonement or even PWS if one of them is on critical hp, but what I won't do is PWSx4. Its a great spell, in specific situations, not generally tossed on any target. The only thing that can be called "spammed" atm for disc is atonement.
    1) Good Disc Priests know when to time their PW:S, and it's evident by the much lower overhealing numbers from PW:S.
    2) The fact that PW:S doesn't have the same range/group limitation as PoH means that PW:S can be used much more flexibly than PoH.
    3) Overhealing, even during heavy raid damage, pushes the HPS values for PW:S and PoH pretty close together.
    4) You're arguing semantics again. Effectively, damage mitigated by PW:S holds the same value as healing that damage. Fact of the matter, PW:S is hands down the best spell at spot 'healing' single targeted debuffs (think Cinders, Matter Swaps or Helm of Command to name a few), and it is the only spell to provide an instant EHP buffer.

    Also, I don't get why you keep bring up the Druid comparison. It has already been acknowledged that Disc should prioritze certain heals (notably PoM, Penance, SS+PoH and the level 90 talents), and especially Atonement during low damage phases, ahead of PW:S. Although, it must be mentioned that the changes to Glyph of Smite shifts the balance of power in PW:S favour when it comes to Smite based Atonement healing.

    Still, on any fight with moderate damage and/or movement, or on fights with burst mechanics (Static Shocks, Jolts) that cannot entirely be covered by SS, or even on fights whereby the raid is too spread (Jin'rokh's Ionization, Primordius, Dark Animus), PW:S handily comes out on top. For the type of spell that PW:S is, an instant cast absorb that shields for much more than any single target healing equivalent, it simply is too strong. The only reason you don't see much higher usage of PW:S is because of SS, but that doesn't mean that PW:S isn't too strong. SS is masking the strength of PW:S just like what DA in 5.1 did to Atonement.
    Last edited by Basmothh; 2013-05-26 at 09:32 PM.

  15. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by mmines View Post
    Shamans got a buff to their aoe? I don't recall seeing any buffs in the patch notes and holy priest got a buff in 25 man but I don't see any buff otherwise for them. Either way it seems to have balanced out with disc seemingly a little ahead but nothing to fret about.

    The buff was in regards to their tranq (same situation as holy, hitting more targets on 25 man).
    However they were also a part of the aoe healing fix, where the DR only counts the targets it actually heals, (eg 5 injured people in a stack of 24) and choosing players over pets in all situations where player healing could occur.
    This affected all smart heals, atonement, ground based and aoe heals.

  16. #56
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nestar View Post
    The buff was in regards to their tranq (same situation as holy, hitting more targets on 25 man).
    However they were also a part of the aoe healing fix, where the DR only counts the targets it actually heals, (eg 5 injured people in a stack of 24) and choosing players over pets in all situations where player healing could occur.
    This affected all smart heals, atonement, ground based and aoe heals.
    Pretty sure restoration didn't get one because the bugfix regarding ascendance made them powerful in 25. The DR change didn't go through PTR, the only change to healing mechanics was smart healing targets being vastly improved.

  17. #57
    Legendary! TirielWoW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Reglitch View Post
    Pretty sure restoration didn't get one because the bugfix regarding ascendance made them powerful in 25. The DR change didn't go through PTR, the only change to healing mechanics was smart healing targets being vastly improved.
    The DR didn't get through PTR, no. And the high numbers Tuesday were the result of their HR and, I believe, Conductivity and AG being bugged. I believe that was hotfixed Wed.
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  18. #58
    Quote Originally Posted by Reglitch View Post
    Pretty sure restoration didn't get one because the bugfix regarding ascendance made them powerful in 25. The DR change didn't go through PTR, the only change to healing mechanics was smart healing targets being vastly improved.

    Quote Originally Posted by HeatherRae View Post
    The DR didn't get through PTR, no. And the high numbers Tuesday were the result of their HR and, I believe, Conductivity and AG being bugged. I believe that was hotfixed Wed.
    I was under the impression the Healing Rain adjustment was the same situation as the Atonement one. I could be mistaken. I thought the pets/Diminishing Returns were a part of the same patch. (as far as healing rains not healing any pets as long as players in it are injured). Did the hotfix on wednesday to deal with VE's massive healing and whatnot undo that?

    As far as disc goes, It sure felt like atonement was working properly on my H-Horridon kill that week. Didn't look too close at logs for it, but right off the bat I didn't notice as much "Army of the dead +1 (39,999)" spam.

  19. #59
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    Quote Originally Posted by Basmothh View Post
    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/m...7/?s=507&e=728 Jin'rokh
    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=4955&e=5374 Council
    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...=13002&e=13600 Durumu
    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...26/?s=61&e=427 DA
    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7984&e=8388 Primordius
    http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=3040&e=3269 Iron Qon's final phase

    Keep in mind that all these parses were before 5.3, so being able to upgrade your gear is going to push those values for PW:S higher post 5.3. Look at the numbers for Iron Qon - the HPS values for PW:S are just slightly below those of PoHx5 with the appropriate DA values factored in. So yes, PoH theoretically does more HPS than PW:S, but the reality is that PoH will always have higher overhealing than your PW:S even under ideal conditions for PoH. Of course, this doesn't even factor in the BT proc from each PW:S cast, which handily pushes PW:S ahead of PoH for raid healing.
    Still, none of those encounters have more than 25% of the priests healing from PWS, mostly under 20% actually. If the spell is so good, and spammed, how come its under 20% of total healing? Theoretically it can do more hps than poh maybe, but they serve completely different purposes. You wont use PoH if the damage didnt happen yet, and you wont use PWS if the dmg already happened, maybe on several people. I still think a spell can be considered spammed when it replaces other spells better designed (or should I say, intended) for the purpose. Ofc in some fights, PoH wont be the best answer most of the times due to spreading, but that still means we choose a spell according to its limitations and not replacing it blindly.

    1) Good Disc Priests know when to time their PW:S, and it's evident by the much lower overhealing numbers from PW:S.
    How does this statement go with the spell being spammed? If you use it intelligently and time it, then you don't spam it? For me, spamming has a "mindless" component attached.

    2) The fact that PW:S doesn't have the same range/group limitation as PoH means that PW:S can be used much more flexibly than PoH.
    It can be, when the group limitation is a problem. When it's not, I suspect PoH+SS is still better - and there are plenty of encounters with stack up and heal tactics.

    3) Overhealing, even during heavy raid damage, pushes the HPS values for PW:S and PoH pretty close together.
    Depends on your setup and how badly you farm the place. If overhealing during heavy raid dmg while stacked is such a big deal, than maybe you run too many healers, or you just overgear the place? The worst heavy raid dmg that cross my mind now are megaera's rampages and overloads on council and we hardly can complain about overhealing on those. I'd say PoH suffers more from spread encounters where it doesnt get to hit enough people, or on encounters where damage is random and you can end up with 3 people needing healing and 2 not - but that is PoH's issues and being able to alleviate the issue of having a single aoe spell by using other spells is normal. Holy priests dont raid heal exclusively with PoH, I see no reason why disc should.

    4) You're arguing semantics again. Effectively, damage mitigated by PW:S holds the same value as healing that damage. Fact of the matter, PW:S is hands down the best spell at spot 'healing' single targeted debuffs (think Cinders, Matter Swaps or Helm of Command to name a few), and it is the only spell to provide an instant EHP buffer.
    Arguing semantics=/=picking at worthless straws. You agree yourself that good shielding requires good timing - which is what I stated too: you use PWS when logic dictates its a good opportunity to use them (tanks or raid debuffs of the sorts you listed), but that is not mindless spamming. I never stated that PWS isnt a good spell, I just argued the fact that it is spammed (at least outside overgeared stuff).

    Also, I don't get why you keep bring up the Druid comparison. It has already been acknowledged that Disc should prioritze certain heals (notably PoM, Penance, SS+PoH and the level 90 talents), and especially Atonement during low damage phases, ahead of PW:S. Although, it must be mentioned that the changes to Glyph of Smite shifts the balance of power in PW:S favour when it comes to Smite based Atonement healing.
    Eh, I only mentioned it once, to compare the advantages of PWS as being common to other spells? Reju was just the first thing that crossed my mind. So, again, disc should prioritize others spells in certain conditions - how does that go with spamming PWS?

    Still, on any fight with moderate damage and/or movement, or on fights with burst mechanics (Static Shocks, Jolts) that cannot entirely be covered by SS, or even on fights whereby the raid is too spread (Jin'rokh's Ionization, Primordius, Dark Animus), PW:S handily comes out on top. For the type of spell that PW:S is, an instant cast absorb that shields for much more than any single target healing equivalent, it simply is too strong. The only reason you don't see much higher usage of PW:S is because of SS, but that doesn't mean that PW:S isn't too strong. SS is masking the strength of PW:S just like what DA in 5.1 did to Atonement.
    Yes, its called using the right spell for the right issue. Nothing wrong with using a spell that is core to the specc. It's like complaining beacon is useful in a lot of encounters. At least the way I see it, blizzard wants PWS to be strong, because it is one of the very scarce alternatives we have for raid healing. As long as I dont see logs with priests getting 50%+ of their healing from PWS, I don't see the issue. We have a weak prayer of mending, a weak prayer of healing, a pretty much unusable renew, our level 90 talents arent any better than holy ones, atonement - as smart and handy it is, is not an especially high hps tool, our gheal doesn't have any particular strengths either, so all we are left really in terms of tools against heavy raid dmg are absorbs, as a mean to catch up from our rather pitiful actual healing.

    So maybe PWS is too strong, but we do have other areas where we are too weak. The fact that you will see excessive shielding in order to bypass any other heals on farm times is nothing surprising, nor should it be taken as a good argument on class mechanics. You wont be able to spam shields when appropriately geared, just like paladins wont be able to spam heals with 70% overhealing just to build IH. All classes end up spamming high hps spells when overgearing encounters.
    Last edited by mmoc318f6f4933; 2013-05-27 at 06:19 AM.

  20. #60
    Legendary! TirielWoW's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Nestar View Post
    I was under the impression the Healing Rain adjustment was the same situation as the Atonement one. I could be mistaken. I thought the pets/Diminishing Returns were a part of the same patch. (as far as healing rains not healing any pets as long as players in it are injured). Did the hotfix on wednesday to deal with VE's massive healing and whatnot undo that?
    Ghostcrawler said something to the effect that it proved to be too overpowered. I'd have to go find the tweet. The Shaman are, understandably, not happy about it. And yes, the hotfix that fixed VE also de-bugged HR/Conduct/AG. They were actually bugged to not have any DR at all. lol

    As far as disc goes, It sure felt like atonement was working properly on my H-Horridon kill that week. Didn't look too close at logs for it, but right off the bat I didn't notice as much "Army of the dead +1 (39,999)" spam.
    Mine seemed to be working just fine, as well.
    Tiriél US-Stormrage

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