Soooo sacred shield nerf?

[Nairobi]

I'm curious how much of that 30% will just be seen in a reduction in overhealing taken.

Will depend almost entirely on the fight, ofc, but I'd wager it's ~50% of the 30% on average. It's usually in the downtime that we see that overheal (over-absorb?)...which is pretty obvious... but with them trying to "reduce 1-tank-ability" we may see more of that in this tier. Sure, we can cast it on the other tank, but unless we taunt-swap for V stacking, it'll be a pretty gimp shield.

Did they change SS to apply as shield instantly now? Should give some throughput increase for when you reapply it.

Though that 30% nerf is of course bigger than that gain

I know that the HOLY version gets instant-on, but not sure/no clarifcation on if that applies to Prot/Ret as well. I'd be willing to bet no.

Even if we do get it though, as you and I have said, that gain will not offset the loss at all. It's really only a minor boost to taunt swap fights where you go from periods of low-V to high-V requently. On static fights, we have like one refresh for large gains (and then many small, stable/static refreshes).

- - - Updated - - -

I'm curious how much of that 30% will just be seen in a reduction in overhealing taken.

Did they change SS to apply as shield instantly now? Should give some throughput increase for when you reapply it.

Though that 30% nerf is of course bigger than that gain

I disagree with you. Any god protpally use it prepull yes, but you refresh it to have the vengeance on it rolling so you have a 200k shield instead of 18½k, since it doesn't update before you recast :P

So you use it from start, and very soon after to get a decent shield, so you can get a strong shield up far earlier than before.

Edit:
The use of "good" is btw silly from both of us, since i take any not being directly bad, do it :P
more edits >.<
I take it means we actually get one more shield on a full duration.

Right, but thats what I was referring to with "The ONLY change would be the first application after a V increase (and it'd have to be a BIG increase), where we get the new SS value ~3sec earlier. Over the course of a fight, this may happen 1-3 times, so you're looking at ~10 seconds of change." Specifically thinking of HC DA and HC LS here, as soon as I see V creep up to 150-200k I refresh it. The shield takes ~3 sec to update the actual absorb, but after that, it's cruise control.

So, even granting 3 of those "situations" (which doesn't exist on HC DA, but using HC LS as a format here between transistions to give extra credence to this point), you only get ~ 10 seconds of "benefit" from this change.

And that's only IF prot even GETS the Holy version of "instant-on".

[Deleted]

Instant-on however makes SS a stronger oh-shit button, especially to save team mates that go low.

[Deleted]

I'm more interested in the insta-tick, since it means that casting it on my coo-tank won't be so obnoxious. Although the only fight I ever did it was when we first did Horridon HC, and my DK coo-tank wanted it.

[Terridon]

Will depend almost entirely on the fight, ofc, but I'd wager it's ~50% of the 30% on average. It's usually in the downtime that we see that overheal (over-absorb?)...which is pretty obvious... but with them trying to "reduce 1-tank-ability" we may see more of that in this tier. Sure, we can cast it on the other tank, but unless we taunt-swap for V stacking, it'll be a pretty gimp shield.



I know that the HOLY version gets instant-on, but not sure/no clarifcation on if that applies to Prot/Ret as well. I'd be willing to bet no.

Even if we do get it though, as you and I have said, that gain will not offset the loss at all. It's really only a minor boost to taunt swap fights where you go from periods of low-V to high-V requently. On static fights, we have like one refresh for large gains (and then many small, stable/static refreshes).

- - - Updated - - -

Right, but thats what I was referring to with "The ONLY change would be the first application after a V increase (and it'd have to be a BIG increase), where we get the new SS value ~3sec earlier. Over the course of a fight, this may happen 1-3 times, so you're looking at ~10 seconds of change." Specifically thinking of HC DA and HC LS here, as soon as I see V creep up to 150-200k I refresh it. The shield takes ~3 sec to update the actual absorb, but after that, it's cruise control.

So, even granting 3 of those "situations" (which doesn't exist on HC DA, but using HC LS as a format here between transistions to give extra credence to this point), you only get ~ 10 seconds of "benefit" from this change.

And that's only IF prot even GETS the Holy version of "instant-on".

Is some fair point to that :P

[Nairobi]

Is some fair point to that :P

Most of the discussion hinges on whether or not all spec's get instant-on, or if it's just Holy's new toy. I can see it being Holy only, since it's got all those other fancy things like charges and cooldowns, which may render all of this moot anyhow.

I'm still conflicted (a little) about SS vs EF too, until we see a numbers pass

[celinamuna]

I can see EF being slightly silly if you combine it with the prot 4p bonus : hello not needing any healing at all for ~30(?) sec.

[Brael]

I've come up with a rough BiS list while utilizing the T16 4pc for the free EF at 3+ BoG stacks, what do you guys think about it?

http://ptr.wowhead.com/compare?items...:35:22:18:16:9

Did the gems/reforges very quickly, don't take them as literal

The melee amplification trinket just seems a bit too good to pass up as it'll reduce our haste cap by so much.

Edit: Having relooked at the Amp Trinket it looks like the amount was reduced by a whole lot.. would only reduce our need to about 19850 ish now? The horridon haste trinket I could see being used next tier if that stays the same..

[arel00]

A quick note regarding EF: I've run some LFRs and such stuff for the last days, just to have some recounts of the fights. EF current overhealing is well... something like 75%. Of course it was a very easy raid where both me and the healers were overgearing it by miles, but still it's quite demoralizing. Looks like we need to cut any EF healing by 3/4 before comparing, which makes the buff less good news than I'd hoped for, in face of the SS nerf. It does compensate, to be honest, if the effective healing turns out to be at least 40%. Right now tho, it's missing a straight 15% efficiency to that, and increasing the heal wouldn't really help.

[Deleted]

I don't really think that LFR is good indicator for it's potential overhealing, simply for the fact that most healers have 70%+ overheal there, fighting for every singly restorable HP. When ~50% of my healing comes from IH, then something is terribly wrong...

Also the most important question is: how will SS/EF change your survivability in dangerous burst scenarios? SS is a absorb, which could be better for heavy nukes, technically buffing your HP for them, but EF has half as long tick-timer.

[Nairobi]

I don't really think that LFR is good indicator for it's potential overhealing, simply for the fact that most healers have 70%+ overheal there, fighting for every singly restorable HP. When ~50% of my healing comes from IH, then something is terribly wrong...

Also the most important question is: how will SS/EF change your survivability in dangerous burst scenarios? SS is a absorb, which could be better for heavy nukes, technically buffing your HP for them, but EF has half as long tick-timer.

Ding ding ding.

In any burst aka "dangerous" scenario, which are really the only ones we care about, absorbs will always be better than reactive healing. No matter how fast EF ticks, if you don't live through the hit, it doesn't matter.

EF will certainly shine in situations of low-to-moderate sustained, stable damage, which allows it to work to full efficiency/potential. But....find me a fight like that.

[Weightlifter]

Looks like they reversed the nerf for ret

[Sorshen]

A 30% cut along with the huge nerf to vengeance might prove to be a bit too much.

[Deleted]

A 30% cut along with the huge nerf to vengeance might prove to be a bit too much.

I definitely agree, as a fellow prot, that the current nerfs look to be slightly too much. However, I'd be significantly less worried if this was something they had introduced in the midst of the tuning cycle instead of now. I think the 30% nerf coupled with the vengeance changes as they stand now are excessive, and would force even 10HC prots to stack significantly more stam than we do now. Whilst the fact that we can expect to reach 50% haste and have significant itemization budget left over next tier gives us the room to do that without significant downsides, I think we can all agree that we'd prefer to not have to, as stamina is an entirely boring stat. I know that I personally would rather divert the leftover stats to mastery, or even crit.

We do, however, as a class community, have to concede that a nerf to prot's SS isn't as entirely unwarranted as the now-reversed nerf they had planned for Ret. It is, as it stands on live, an extremely powerful skill, and our healing self-sufficiency at quite high vengeance levels attests to that. I would certainly have preferred that they buffed other classes to bring them in line with the top-tier tanks, but I would find a 10-15% nerf to SS in 5.4 hard to complain about. The current version, however, looks to be entirely too much - but I would be very surprised if it went live in the current state.