[Holy] Patch 5.4 PTR - Changes Discussion

[Tiberria]

I think in Blizzard's mind (not arguing whether or not it makes sense), the increased healing done by raid cooldowns getting higher 10 to 25 man target caps does not count as throughput when it comes to class balance. Their reason for putting those target cap increases there in the first place was to compensate for damage reduction cooldowns effectively being 2.5 times as effective in 25 mans while healing cooldowns don't scale. Arguably, they probably also don't even count the amount healed by the cooldowns themselves, because Devo Aura and PW: Barrier do not show up as throughput but the healing based raid cooldowns do.

Here is what average HPS for T15 looks like for 25H (all parses).

Holy Priest 98736
Disc Priest 91054 (-8%)
Resto Druid 87322 (-13%)
Mistweaver 87243 (-13%)
Holy Paladin 86799 (-14%)
Resto Shaman 78962 (-25%)

Now, if you were to follow my theory and remove the typical healing done by Divine Hymn, Tranquility, Revival and Healing Tide Totem (pulled numbers from our logs of 25H farm clears) from the output numbers, this is what the numbers look like.

Disc Priest 91054
Holy Paladin 86799 (-5%)
Holy Priest 86295 (-6%)
Resto Druid 76843 (-18%)
Mistweaver 76076 (-20%)
Resto Shaman 70750 (-29%)

Those are the numbers Blizzard is probably balancing around given their rationale for the 25 man target caps on raid cooldowns, and it probably explains why they think Paladins will be fine. Of course, you can argue that Devo Aura and PW: Barrier are not as good as the other cooldowns at the 10 man level and make an argument to have them buffed.

[Freia]

I think in Blizzard's mind (not arguing whether or not it makes sense), the increased healing done by raid cooldowns getting higher 10 to 25 man target caps does not count as throughput when it comes to class balance. Their reason for putting those target cap increases there in the first place was to compensate for damage reduction cooldowns effectively being 2.5 times as effective in 25 mans while healing cooldowns don't scale. Arguably, they probably also don't even count the amount healed by the cooldowns themselves, because Devo Aura and PW: Barrier do not show up as throughput but the healing based raid cooldowns do.

Here is what average HPS for T15 looks like for 25H (all parses).

Holy Priest 98736
Disc Priest 91054 (-8%)
Resto Druid 87322 (-13%)
Mistweaver 87243 (-13%)
Holy Paladin 86799 (-14%)
Resto Shaman 78962 (-25%)

Now, if you were to follow my theory and remove the typical healing done by Divine Hymn, Tranquility, Revival and Healing Tide Totem (pulled numbers from our logs of 25H farm clears) from the output numbers, this is what the numbers look like.

Disc Priest 91054
Holy Paladin 86799 (-5%)
Holy Priest 86295 (-6%)
Resto Druid 76843 (-18%)
Mistweaver 76076 (-20%)
Resto Shaman 70750 (-29%)

Those are the numbers Blizzard is probably balancing around given their rationale for the 25 man target caps on raid cooldowns, and it probably explains why they think Paladins will be fine. Of course, you can argue that Devo Aura and PW: Barrier are not as good as the other cooldowns at the 10 man level and make an argument to have them buffed.

Nope you can't take out the raid cooldowns when you yourself argue they need to be stronger than the DR cooldowns for balance(which you did earlier). You can't have stronger raid cooldowns and then expect those cooldowns not to be considered in overall throughput because if you added our throughput + Devo it would definitely not equal other healers throughput including their raid cooldowns.

[Deleted]

Those are the numbers Blizzard is probably balancing around given their rationale for the 25 man target caps on raid cooldowns, and it probably explains why they think Paladins will be fine. Of course, you can argue that Devo Aura and PW: Barrier are not as good as the other cooldowns at the 10 man level and make an argument to have them buffed.

Except we got nerfed from our live situation, so even if those numbers were accurate(hint: they are not), we would still be far too weak. We're way past the point where Devotion was going to get changed this expansion anyway.

Second, the numbers from raidbots heavily favor farm raids and mastery stacking for absorb classes and heavily nerf shaman numbers. The only real shaman numbers are on progress, and every shaman knows that.

Third. Shamans are still insanely overpowered in 5.4, and you're not dodging the nerf even if u make it to live.

[Freia]

Tibbee. Do us all a favor and stop posting in paladin forums. You are taking the exact same incorrect posts and plastering on every paladin forum you see. We get it, you have this pro shaman agenda and we are sick of it.

[Dubalicious]

Their reason for putting those target cap increases there in the first place was to compensate for damage reduction cooldowns effectively being 2.5 times as effective in 25 mans while healing cooldowns don't scale.

Have they officially said this?

Maybe I'm wrong, but haven't healing cooldowns completely outpaced damage reduction cooldowns this tier? Looking more at actual practice than what the numbers on a spreadsheet say (mostly just curious what everyone else's opinion is. Maybe it feels this way because Devo still feels extremely weak even when it's applicable)

[Freia]

Have they officially said this?

Maybe I'm wrong, but haven't healing cooldowns completely outpaced damage reduction cooldowns this tier? Looking more at actual practice than what the numbers on a spreadsheet say (mostly just curious what everyone else's opinion is. Maybe it feels this way because Devo still feels extremely weak even when it's applicable)

All I have seen is them say our numbers were not overpowered on live and that they would compensate to make up for the numbers the nerf to EF caused. That hasn't happened yet.

[Tiberria]

Have they officially said this?

Maybe I'm wrong, but haven't healing cooldowns completely outpaced damage reduction cooldowns this tier? Looking more at actual practice than what the numbers on a spreadsheet say (mostly just curious what everyone else's opinion is. Maybe it feels this way because Devo still feels extremely weak even when it's applicable)

I am pretty sure they said that in 5.3 when they made the changes, or they effectively implied it (because what else would be the reason for buffing them in 25 man only?).

There is no question that Devo Aura and PW: Barrier are weaker than any of the Tranq type cooldowns in terms of damage absorbed vs damage healed. If the healing cooldowns average 5 million healing (yes they can spike as high as 8 million, but just using a general average), Devo Aura would need to reduce 830,000 damage per second that it is active. That's ~33,000 per raid member per second, which means that it would have to be used during an ability that is ticking for ~167,000 per second or 1 million over the duration of the 6 second cooldown. For reference, Rampage on 25H Megaera is 87,500 damage per player per second. That puts Devo Aura at only about 50% as strong as the Tranq type abilities.

Devo Aura probably needs to be increased to either 40% damage reduction or a 12 second cooldown to be closer to on par.

[Simulacrum]

Have they officially said this?

Maybe I'm wrong, but haven't healing cooldowns completely outpaced damage reduction cooldowns this tier? Looking more at actual practice than what the numbers on a spreadsheet say (mostly just curious what everyone else's opinion is. Maybe it feels this way because Devo still feels extremely weak even when it's applicable)

Healing cooldowns are much more powerful than damage reduction cooldowns right now. Outside of something like your entire raid standing there staring at Sune as she blasts you all in the face with unmitigated nuclear inferno damage, you're never going to be in a situation where the damage the raid is taking is high enough that the 20% DR of devotion can even begin to compare to something like revival/tranqulity/hymn/tide, and that's being generous enough to assume that those cooldowns will be heavily overhealing.

PW:B is 5% stronger, lasts 4 seconds longer, and works on all damage, but even it isn't very impressive.

If they want them to be treated equally they need to just drop the raidwide %DR idea and turn those cooldowns into absorbs instead, or something equivalent to that.

[Elovan]

You guys need to relax and stop personally attacking people. Tibbee specifically said he was suggesting what Blizzard was looking at, not what he himself thinks is right. I vaguely remember a while ago GC or some other Blue saying something to the effect that they don't take cds like tranq/hymn into full account when balancing because they consider those used at a raid leaders discretion and is part of utility.

Obviously even if you did consider them extra utility instead of healing Holy Paladins at the moment are sorely lacking. I personally think Devo Aura should have remained a 2 min cd.

[Deleted]

So on Malkorok my cloak did at best 500k healing and for most atempts it did 0. Our shaman on the other hand was seeing up to 10% healing from the cloak. Guardian proved to be a lot better on Malkorok but it is still pathetic compared to any other raid cooldowns and even more so when you consider the 5 min cd.

My HPS was sitting arround 167k on average while our shaman was at 235k.

[Tiberria]

I was watching Midwinter's stream the entire test and their holy pally was outhealing their Resto Shaman and Resto Druid on 90% of the pulls and seemed to be doing an average of 300-350k HPS. Shaman was averaging ~250k and Druid somewhat lower than that.

They definitely need to do adjusted proc rates for the different healing specs to level out the gains from the legendary cloak (as well as not make it completely worthless for Disc).

[Euphonious]

My guardian was doing 4-6 million healing, my hps was around 250-300k hps (more accurate). Crushed shaman/druid. If you were around 167k average you were doing something horribly wrong.

[Deleted]

My guardian was doing 4-6 million healing, my hps was around 300-350k hps. Crushed shaman/druid. If you were around 167k average you were doing something horribly wrong.

What talents were you running with?

[Euphonious]

Holy Avenger / EF / Arcing Light

[Gilthresa]

Was running SH/HA/prism and was averaging about 330k hps. guardian was doing 4~ish mill healing per use

[Deleted]

Yea so EF > Selfless healer on Malkorok which I knew already but I didnt expect the healing to be that much of a difference. I was not watching Midwinters stream but if one guy is doing 350k hps and another 250k hps the third guy should be doing 0 hps unless they took excessive amounts of damage. Atleast that was aproxemately how much damage we seemed to take.

Come to think of it, it could also be the difference in tanks, our tank was doing 150-200k hps.

[Gilthresa]

Yea so EF > Selfless healer on Malkorok which I knew already but I didnt expect the healing to be that much of a difference. I was not watching Midwinters stream but if one guy is doing 350k hps and another 250k hps the third guy should be doing 0 hps unless they took excessive amounts of damage. Atleast that was aproxemately how much damage we seemed to take.

I dunno, I tried EF on malkorok and it was trash

[nightfalls]

Yea so EF > Selfless healer on Malkorok which I knew already but I didnt expect the healing to be that much of a difference. I was not watching Midwinters stream but if one guy is doing 350k hps and another 250k hps the third guy should be doing 0 hps unless they took excessive amounts of damage. Atleast that was aproxemately how much damage we seemed to take.

How far did your raid make it Pacer? Also, were 350k parses from Phase 1 or Phase 1 + Phase 2, or 2x Phase 1 + Phase 2 (more out of curiosity than anything). At least in P1, I don't see the level 45 talent choice as making a huge difference other than not taking SS.


Also, regarding "raid cooldown only" need I remind the forum: Healing Rain in my books does not count as a "3 minute raid cooldown" - if they wanted to buff the talent only for 25m, maybe they should have considered buffing the Earthliving proc from it or something. Right now, they have no logic whatsoever with that idea.

[Deleted]

Our best atempts were just past the first "second phase". I just had a look at slootbags stream and they basically cheese the start for the paladin to get as high hps as he does. 30 seconds into the pull he has done 13 million healing because he pops everything on the pull. Our shaman was bursting over 1 mil healing per second on the pull so I saw no reason to use my cds and rather saved them for the second phase (except for DF which you can use both times).

Edit: Saying that the paladin from Midwinter was doing 350k hps is a joke (right?), looking at one of their best atempts he was at 254k hps when he died and before that his hps was still going down. Not having any cds at all once they get into the next phase will not help at all either and they would wipe unless they chain tranq.

[Euphonious]

Edit: Saying that the paladin from Midwinter was doing 350k hps is a joke (right?), looking at one of their best atempts he was at 254k hps when he died and before that his hps was still going down. Not having any cds at all once they get into the next phase will not help at all either and they would wipe unless they chain tranq.

Not really since our shaman was saving all his cd's for the stacked phase and mine would've came back up for the next aoe damage phase. I guess if you're arguing that paly's suck because they do 175k hps without using any cd's that's fine but I'm not sure why you wouldn't want the most out of them. IE. At the start, then use shaman cd's for stacked phase, then cd's are back up for next aoe phase and guardian is up again at the end when you would need it.

edit: i was also running around a bit with bubble up to eat the orbs so that's a bit of an hps loss and some range issues.