PW:S buffed in 5.4

[TirielWoW]

Many people tend to over-exaggerate the "Rapture Problem"--- priests, druids, pallies, whomever.

Stating its scaling on spirit is too high, does ignore the reason that Rapture exists. Rapture is there to throttle our PWS casting, and the "regen" aspect is a byproduct... its not intended to be a net gain ability. Rapture needs to exist to refund the cost of PW:S. PWS, has to have a substantial, but not completely prohibitively,( so it still can be cast when its the right spell to cast) mana cost to prevent WOTLK-Era spamming of the spell. I always liken it to a reverse Arcane Blast. Additionally, it also penalizes haphazard shielding if the shield isnt absorbed.

Having Rapture return the whole cost is fine, and is something that I've been a supporter of for a long while.. it makes sense, and now we don thave these foolish spirit shenanigans linked to it. Also remember WHY Rapture exists, and i think the change makes perfect sense.

While I agree with you about the stated intention of Rapture, and while I also agree with you that a fixed return is much better than one that scales, I'd like to point out that Blizzard themselves nerfed the cost of PW: Shield in 5.3 (or was it 5.2?) specifically because they said they want us to cast more shields. In fact, when I tweeted to Ghostcrawler that bubble spam sucks, and I hate doing it (after doing just that on Heroic Durumu and having something like 35-40% of my healing come from PW: Shield), he tweeted back saying that he didn't see why that was a problem. Because it was a "thoughtful" playstyle.

There is nothing "thoughtful" about spamming bubbles across your raid group. At all. But if they aren't intending for us to do that, then they need to change some of their language, and do some other fixes, because this change to Rapture will not inhibit that playstyle one iota.

[Deleted]

Imagine a world where the change was that the shield returned 100% of mana cost, no cd. Shields, shields everywhere

[TirielWoW]

Imagine a world where the change was that the shield returned 100% of mana cost, no cd. Shields, shields everywhere

That's what the Rapture bug did. :-P

[Anastacy]

HeatherRae, would you kindly point me towards at least one healing method that IS "thoughtful" in the current state of the game?

[Whicker]

So she does what ever other Disc Priest does, but she does it with 7k~ spirit? Well I'm glad PW:S is getting buffed, because what Discipline needs is buffs....

I'm sorry if I'm coming across as an ass, but truthfully the spec is so ridiculous that this week I could only manage 22k hps on Primordius HC because we had 4 Disc Priests present. Now I don't know about you, but that just screams silly. It's just totally demoralizing playing with Disc Priests and hoping either a) they screw up, or b) the screw fucks up in order to do any considerable amount of meaningful healing.

Discipline needs nerfs and this isn't a nerf and the SS change has only been done because of the Disc 4pc and the CDR trinket (which truthfully just needs to be deleted, it's such a bad idea).

You should be angry at your raid leader not the disc priests. It would be the same if a non abs class healed with 4 holy paladins too.

[TirielWoW]

HeatherRae, would you kindly point me towards at least one healing method that IS "thoughtful" in the current state of the game?

That wasn't my point, actually. Those were GC's words, not mine. That bubble spam is a "thoughtful" way of healing. With downsides. It's not thoughtful, and there are no downsides (other than not being able to immediately snipe everyone else's healing again as soon as the bubble is eaten through).

But I'll bite. A more "thoughtful" style of healing would be making use of more than one aspect of your spellbook. I actually feel like I'm doing something more interesting as Holy because I use a greater range of my spells.

[benadryl]

It is indeed a nerf. Other then low geared discs most of us are around 10k+ spirit and will need even more next tier. Disc is not the class they should be looking at for too much regen. Monks running with 6k spirit and shamans with 8k are a bigger issue.

the monks running with 6k spirit are fistweaving and you can't fistweave effectively without gear and the meta. if a monk doesn't get a revival off at the perfect time every time priests blow them away in HPS no matter what else they do

what they need to do is get rid of pally/priest/druid smartheals and actually make them do something for the first time in 2 years

[AvatarM]

in pingwings logs, he averages 2-3 resto shaman. that's a lot of extra spirit on top of ~7k w/ heroic horridon's.

Pingwing is healing with 7k spirit less cause she is probably trying some setups. Testing stuff while farming content, she always do that. I watch her stream very often in twitch. She ran the entire Apex progress with high spirit. She atm is with high haste, probably testing numbers of PoH during SS.

- - - Updated - - -

the monks running with 6k spirit are fistweaving

what they need to do is get rid of pally/priest/druid smartheals and actually make them do something for the first time in 2 years

No, most monks run with 6k less spirit, even when they are not fistweaving.

[derevka]

the monks running with 6k spirit are fistweaving

To be a bit more precise the low spirit monks are leveraging the LMG's rppm via free jab, and then free eminence and free chi... which turns into a lot of free healing via fistweave or uplift, but more importantly: mana tea

[Floopa]

You should be angry at your raid leader not the disc priests. It would be the same if a non abs class healed with 4 holy paladins too.

No, if 4 other non-Disc Priests were present I would top healing because I'm better than them. However when a in the example I gave (we 6 healed it with me (MW), 4 Disc Priests and a Resto Shaman) my Renewing Mists had an 87%~ overhealing value and my Uplift had a 92% overhealing value.

[TirielWoW]

To be a bit more precise the low spirit monks are leveraging the LMG's rppm via free jab, and then free eminence and free chi... which turns into a lot of free healing via fistweave or uplift, but more importantly: mana tea

Yeah, they're able to double-dip.

[Anastacy]

That wasn't my point, actually. Those were GC's words, not mine. That bubble spam is a "thoughtful" way of healing. With downsides. It's not thoughtful, and there are no downsides (other than not being able to immediately snipe everyone else's healing again as soon as the bubble is eaten through).

But I'll bite. A more "thoughtful" style of healing would be making use of more than one aspect of your spellbook. I actually feel like I'm doing something more interesting as Holy because I use a greater range of my spells.

Specific examples? I mean, CoH when 6 targets need healing and the CD is up isn't really thoughtful either. PoM fishing by chain casting PoH isn't either. Neither is simply PoH'ing because 5 targets in the same group are injured. Or PoM on CD when all charges are eaten. DH after a big raid wide hit or Rampage type ability? Big huge thoughts there.

What exactly do you think is so thoughtful about Holy, is my question.

[TirielWoW]

Specific examples? I mean, CoH when 6 targets need healing and the CD is up isn't really thoughtful either. PoM fishing by chain casting PoH isn't either. Neither is simply PoH'ing because 5 targets in the same group are injured. Or PoM on CD when all charges are eaten. DH after a big raid wide hit or Rampage type ability? Big huge thoughts there.

What exactly do you think is so thoughtful about Holy, is my question.

I actually feel like I'm doing something more interesting as Holy because I use a greater range of my spells.

I quoted and bolded what I said so that maybe you would stop trying to derail the conversation. It had very little to do with my playing Holy, except when I said that it feels like I'm doing something more interesting when I play Holy, as opposed to feeling mindless and stupid when I am Disc and have to bubble spam on some encounters.

I would really like you to argue to me how, in any way, bubble spam can be considered "thoughtful" or "intriguing" gameplay.

[Deleted]

I would really like you to argue to me how, in any way, bubble spam can be considered "thoughtful" or "intriguing" gameplay.

Do you bubble spam 25 people blindly? And for how long can you keep doing it?

edit: I completely agree on the fact that its absolutely normal to feel holy being more fun. I'm not entirely sure I understand your vision on disc. Exclusive bubble spamming isnt the best way to play the specc, just like exclusive - I dunno - prayer of healing - isn't the best way to play holy. There are some encounters where I spam shields more than normal - on certain phases. Maybe my gear is not that good, but I certainly couldn't hold blindly spamming shields.

[TirielWoW]

Do you bubble spam 25 people blindly? And for how long can you keep doing it?

edit: I completely agree on the fact that its absolutely normal to feel holy being more fun. I'm not entirely sure I understand your vision on disc. Exclusive bubble spamming isnt the best way to play the specc, just like exclusive - I dunno - prayer of healing - isn't the best way to play holy. There are some encounters where I spam shields more than normal - on certain phases. Maybe my gear is not that good, but I certainly couldn't hold blindly spamming shields.

It's a completely possible playstyle. I'll grant you that hitting Prayer of Mending off CD isn't much more "intuitive" than simply spamming a shield an average of every 4 seconds, but neither playstyle should be encouraged, and that is what it's felt like.

[Venaliter]

This change will just make spirit less usefull and thus make disc priests favor low spirit play styles
P.S.: I think the title of this thread should be changed to "PW:S nerfed in 5.4", it is misleading as it is.

Doubtful. If Disc lacks sufficient mana, they will begin to pick up more spirit. I have concerns about the PvP effects of this change, though, where Disc mana wasn't strong, at least in 5.2, unless you parked in Inner Will forever.

[Anastacy]

I quoted and bolded what I said so that maybe you would stop trying to derail the conversation. It had very little to do with my playing Holy, except when I said that it feels like I'm doing something more interesting when I play Holy, as opposed to feeling mindless and stupid when I am Disc and have to bubble spam on some encounters.

I would really like you to argue to me how, in any way, bubble spam can be considered "thoughtful" or "intriguing" gameplay.

What you originally said, and what I originally responded to, was this:

"There is nothing "thoughtful" about spamming bubbles across your raid group. At all. But if they aren't intending for us to do that, then they need to change some of their language, and do some other fixes, because this change to Rapture will not inhibit that playstyle one iota."

The bolded part is usually a phrase people add for emphasis...sort of a "this is right, and the other is wrong" sort of way. You then retracted and said that those were GC's words, without directly quoting him. So, this is either your words, or his, but then you said:

"But I'll bite. A more "thoughtful" style of healing would be making use of more than one aspect of your spellbook. I actually feel like I'm doing something more interesting as Holy because I use a greater range of my spells."

Blanket statements are never useful in a discussion, because they're usually incorrect.

Point me to a log where a Disc Priest did useful healing and only use PW:S (aka bubble spam). While at the same time, point me to a log where a Holy Priest of the same caliber whose top 3 heals *were not*: PoM, PoH, or EoL.

Then, please...please...I'm really begging you to...explain how spamming PoH and fished PoM procs (and getting free EoL ticks) is more engaging than "bubble spamming" (plus the other things that good Discs use). While you've directly and indirectly stated that this is your opinion (some people like "bubble spam" [if it even existed past WotLK]), I'd like you to tell me why 1 button is better than the other.

These arguments about Disc Priests only bubble spamming are almost just as bad as the old arguments that all we did was Atonement.

[Dracodraco]

We don't have a resto shaman in the raid at all times and they are running 17k spirit when they are there. My platforms are fucking up majorly all the time, with ppl taking double bouncing balls or spawning adds, getting hit by overcharge chaining diffusion chain, stacking badly for static shock (I am in the platform without solo soaking). Unfortunately I have 7 people to heal not 6 and sometimes I have 3 in one group and 4 in another. So I use CDs differently. I PI pop archangel as soon as we go in and roll PWS on everyone for the first set of balls, then spirit shell PoH/Flash the static shock, then inner focus PoH and roll PWS + barrier for the second static shock, but that is rarely enough to keep up with the damage. Even healing up the static shock is painfully slow with PoH and flash and in fact it ends up being more mana efficient to use glyphed binding heal. It is not uncomon to have 3-4 ppl coming wiht 50% HP to stack with 3s left on static shock. It is even more common to have 2-3 people stack badly and end up with 4-5ppl at 5% with 250k balls incoming. Yeah, I use binding heal and PWS quite a lot and yeah I am gasping for mana when phase 2 hits.

Out of interest, why don't you have your raidleader switch the groups around to make sure you get a 5->2 group (so one group can be fully healed by PoH)? It'd make your life ALOT easier.
Also, as you're a priest, I assumed as much as you were on the platform where you have to "deal" with static shock - but as you usually do the fight with 5x healers, they must have given you the "spare" healer too, right? So you're 2 people to heal the group up. Nothing else makes sense. Which means if you stack Spirit shell to full on the 5 group, PW:S the 2x that aren't in your 5 group, it's basicly absorbs across the board.
Either way, they can't expect a healer to deal with 2x static shock soaks in a row. It'd be borderline impossible for any class to keep up with the damage.

Then she's doing something horribly wrong.

Mind explaining why? Mana is not tight anymore. Consider this:
1K spirit is 560 Mp5, or 112 mana per second.
The longest fight we currently have is probably Lei Shen, at 10 minutes, or 600 seconds.
600*112=67.2K mana.

However, optimal usage of your shadowfiend + solace, according to the disc-guide thread in this forum, returns around 650K mana in a 10 minute fight. So for simplicity - 1K spirit is equal to about 10% of the mana you gain over a fight through Solace+Shadowfiend.
This doesn't account for trinket procs adding mana.
This doesn't account for mana hymn.
This doesn't account for Rapture numbers (which currently, will obviously be smaller due to using less spirit).

Considering all the above, why is it so hard to believe that when spirit is such a "small" part of the mana regen disc priest has, that some priests do just as well with 7K as others do with 10K? It's a difference of 200K mana, spread out over a 10 minute fight. There may be point where you sit at full mana, rendering your regen useless and diminishing spirits value (P1 and P2 are both extremely lenient on healing - a well placed halo per thunderstruck and atonement spam in P1 ensures you're doing about double the healing of any other healer, using a raid CD like tranq etc on each movement nullifies the AOE-ticks. P2 is even more lenient as there's no thunderstrucks or high AOE damage, just the small hits from bouncing bolts + ball lightning spawns that can never kill anyone [that you could predict]). Considering P1+2 is about 50% of the fight where regen doesn't matter, and I would usually end those on 100% mana due to fiend+1x tide, my regen during those phases are completly useless (this was with 8K spirit). That's 100K mana that I gain, but I don't get any use of, if I had 11K spirit instead of 8K.


So eh. To the people saying 7-8K spirit is lower than any disc should go - I urge you to actually take a look at the fights you did, see how much regen you get from "other" sources than pure spirit combat regen, then consider if you couldn't have gotten the exact same result with 3K spirit less.

I love how you're distorting the truth by saying "She basically spams PW:S".

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=1146&e=1677
Horridon, 8:51 fight, 32 shields, 1 shield per 16secs

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...?s=7981&e=8279
Primordius, 4:58 fight, 18 shields, 1 shield per 16.55secs

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/t...?s=1184&e=1487
Dark Animus, 5:02 fight, 19 shields, 1 shield per 15.89secs

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/t...?s=2127&e=2555
Iron Qon, 7:07 fight, 19 shields. 1 shield per 22.47secs

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...21/?s=32&e=438
Raden, 6:45 fight, 11 shields. 1 shield per 33.72secs

Wow so many shields... So much PW:S spam...

On the last two weeks, there are two logs where Pingwing's using PW:S for more than Rapture range; on Dark Animus with a shield per 7.92secs and Lei Shen per 8.31secs.

And even that's not some heavy shield spamming... On Animus 10hc, last week I casted a shield every 4.84secs... That's spamming.

Alot of fights, spamming shields is far from the most "efficient" way to go. The only fight of the above you linked where more shields than she used would be "good" is probably Animus. Look at Primordius, for example - she got 2x crit, 2x mastery, 1x haste buff. Shields wouldn't have been affected by the haste, and with 2x crit and 2x mastery she could basicly pick which playstyle to go for, and she decided for Atonement/Divine aegis coverage.

As for Horridon, Qon and Ra Den, you wouldn't really use more shields than the rapture proc on either encounter.
Horridon has one steady source of incomming damage - on the tanks. Apart from that, the raid won't take any predictable damage outside of Dire Call (which you'd spirit shell rather than PW:S (as seen by her SS being top heal). And heck, who are we even kidding - if you're not atonement spamming outside of setting up spirit shells for dire call, then you're doing it wrong on horridon.

Qon again has one predictable source of incomming damage, the tank. In P1 you can cover the melee much better with divine aegis/spirit shell against Roshak. In p2, all the damage is random and atonement is better suited for it. Same for P3. In P4, you're all stacked and PoH becomes more effective to use. Outside of Rapture, no point.

Ra Den:
Only damage that is predictable is vita jumps+tank damage. They have 3x disc priests, so there's surely competition for the Rapture procs from the tank. The vita jumps aren't in danger of dying to anything, so there's no point shielding them - rather let atonement heal them up and do more damage to adds/orbs/boss.
P2 is same scenario as qon - you're getting full 5-target groups to cast PoH on, so no point in the shields.

All in all - there's a difference between the best possible HPS in a raid (which I'm pretty sure will be achived through "scumbagging" shields on sources of damage that you know will happen, but won't actually "hurt" anyone), and the "best" way to play, just like there is for DPS players.

[Deleted]

It's a completely possible playstyle. I'll grant you that hitting Prayer of Mending off CD isn't much more "intuitive" than simply spamming a shield an average of every 4 seconds, but neither playstyle should be encouraged, and that is what it's felt like.

Might be a completely possible playstyle but so is holy using only prayer of healing: boring and not even optimal. I'm fairly sure any healer could spam a single spell, but why would you? Maybe I'm behind in how the hardcore ones are doing it nowadays, but are there good logs out there of disc priests spamming PWS exclusively and doing well?

Maybe I'm daft, but how can a shield be "thoughtless" when we obviously cant just spam them regardless if they are needed or not ( at least I cant). I cant think of any encounter in ToT where I could just toss a shield every 4 seconds without thought. Sure there are some phases when you know the damage will be unavoidable or highly likely to happen, or the targets have some debuff that warrants the shields to be used, but I wouldn't call that just "thoughtless spamming" . And what do you do in rest? Those phases aren't continuous.

As said, I'm all cool with the fact that you personally don't find the specc engaging, but it doesn't mean it cant be, if played right. When I have to play holy, all I do really is PoH/PoM procs/circle if needed. I even got ranked on occasions with that kind of playstyle. I'm sure it can be more diverse, but just spamming those 3 buttons seems good enough. It goes the same for disc. You can do a lot more as disc behind those hps numbers. There is a satisfaction into even seeing your target survived because you popped a quick shield on him/her, or a quick penance. Those things are not visible on logs, but they are part of the many reason I love the specc, and feel it a lot more engaging than the blind aoe spam that holy usually does in 25 mans.

Also, I cant see how this change to rapture encourages that kind of playstyle. I already run with more spirit than that 9k-ish, and it's not because I'm hoarding it uselessly, but because that's the level I decided I need to get through the fight. For me, its going to be a nerf.

As for downsides of PWS - that you mentioned there are none, I'd say their cost and the fact that if you slapped them on a target that didnt end up take dmg - they wont do any healing are good enough downsides. It has the same downsides as any spell really.

[TirielWoW]

What you originally said, and what I originally responded to, was this:

"There is nothing "thoughtful" about spamming bubbles across your raid group. At all. But if they aren't intending for us to do that, then they need to change some of their language, and do some other fixes, because this change to Rapture will not inhibit that playstyle one iota."

The bolded part is usually a phrase people add for emphasis...sort of a "this is right, and the other is wrong" sort of way. You then retracted and said that those were GC's words, without directly quoting him.

I think you need to re-read what I wrote if you think I was "retracting a statement" when I said that.

So, this is either your words, or his,

Obviously I'm lying.

but then you said:

"But I'll bite. A more "thoughtful" style of healing would be making use of more than one aspect of your spellbook. I actually feel like I'm doing something more interesting as Holy because I use a greater range of my spells."

Blanket statements are never useful in a discussion, because they're usually incorrect.

I didn't know that I had to qualify my posts where I said, "I actually feel like I'm doing something more interesting" as my own opinion. I would have thought that was blatantly obvious from the language I used. And, you can disagree with my opinion, but that doesn't make you right, nor does it make me wrong. All it indicates is a difference of opinion. In my opinion, in my own experience, I feel like I'm doing something more interesting as Holy because I use a greater range of my spells.

There. Does that fix it for you? Just a little bit?

Point me to a log where a Disc Priest did useful healing and only use PW:S (aka bubble spam). While at the same time, point me to a log where a Holy Priest of the same caliber whose top 3 heals *were not*: PoM, PoH, or EoL.

It doesn't matter what the Holy Priest's top three heals were as long as there's a good distribution of them. When one spell - one single spell - is making up 40%+ of your throughput, there is a problem. And that's as true of Power Word: Shield as it is of Prayer of Mending (though I have yet to see a single parse where PoM made up that great of a portion of healing).

Then, please...please...I'm really begging you to...explain how spamming PoH and fished PoM procs (and getting free EoL ticks) is more engaging than "bubble spamming" (plus the other things that good Discs use). While you've directly and indirectly stated that this is your opinion (some people like "bubble spam" [if it even existed past WotLK]), I'd like you to tell me why 1 button is better than the other.

First I'd like you to tell me where these Priests with endless mana are who have the regen to simply mindlessly spam PoH, irregardless of overheal and actual healing needs, to fish for procs on something that will primarily overheal anyway in such a situation. I want to meet them, and then I want to mug them for their gear, because if I played that way, I'd be sucking on fumes in under a minute.

These arguments about Disc Priests only bubble spamming are almost just as bad as the old arguments that all we did was Atonement.

I really wish you would have actually read my original post. Because this was never intended to be an argument about whether or not all Disc Priests bubble spam. If you'd actually read the post (I still don't think you did, because you're so off-base with your responses that I'm honestly flabbergasted), you'd know that.