Alpha testers come here ! (Priest discussion)

[Dracodraco]

Don't get me wrong, I'm not opposed to removing bloat, I just want compensation for the skillcap and mechanic loss. Disc has really none of either at the moment.

Very little of what Disc has removed was bloat or overpowered. I mean, in what world are passives like Grace or Strength of Soul redundant or broken? Why Void Shift? Yet they keep Fear War, keep Shadowfiend despite removing the mana regen? I guess it might be useful for soloing + fade, but there's just no consistency here on what they remove and what they keep.

True.
I must say though, it does seem like (sort of in response to Nurasu aswell) that they're building Disc up to revolve *a lot* around Archangel and it's use/uptime etc... The new "skillcap" might just be more of the pre-cog disc play we have seen with spirit shell this expansion; Making sure to build up Evangelism during downtime, so that it's ready for when you "need" to heal "for real". Basicly, it becomes a balancing act between max uptime for output, and actually having the damn thing up when it's needed. Which, compared to how it is now (55% uptime or you suck maight) is going to be a *lot* better, and add sort-of a skillcap that we haven't had since we started getting heroic gear in ToT and realised we were best off pushing that button on CD. Tieing it with a lot of heavy bonusses means you have to think about it's use.

The issue is that so far, disc without Archangel feels too weak - far too weak, really. Archangel needs to be a boost to healing, not something that makes us break even when it's up. If they stay with 25% healing bonus, then our output without AA should be at 85-90% of what other healers have, so when we pop AA, we give 110% and gain the slight "edge" in throughput over the others - it shouldn't feel like we're at 75% without, then feel about right with it.

[Nurasu]

So you're agreeing with me then? That was really confusing for me, lol.

Eh, I thought a little background on the bloat reduction we've already gone through (in Cata) might be helpful for some. Sorry

[Larynx]

True.
I must say though, it does seem like (sort of in response to Nurasu aswell) that they're building Disc up to revolve *a lot* around Archangel and it's use/uptime etc... The new "skillcap" might just be more of the pre-cog disc play we have seen with spirit shell this expansion; Making sure to build up Evangelism during downtime, so that it's ready for when you "need" to heal "for real". Basicly, it becomes a balancing act between max uptime for output, and actually having the damn thing up when it's needed. Which, compared to how it is now (55% uptime or you suck maight) is going to be a *lot* better, and add sort-of a skillcap that we haven't had since we started getting heroic gear in ToT and realised we were best off pushing that button on CD. Tieing it with a lot of heavy bonusses means you have to think about it's use.

The issue is that so far, disc without Archangel feels too weak - far too weak, really. Archangel needs to be a boost to healing, not something that makes us break even when it's up. If they stay with 25% healing bonus, then our output without AA should be at 85-90% of what other healers have, so when we pop AA, we give 110% and gain the slight "edge" in throughput over the others - it shouldn't feel like we're at 75% without, then feel about right with it.

I see what you're saying. What gameplay considerations can really come out of this that we don't already have, though? Identify the time periods in a fight where Archangel must be used, identify how many CD intervals you can go through before your CD overlaps with the time period you need AA.

ie something easy like Garrosh. Need it every Whirl, likely. 50 seconds per whirl, use it such that you get the maximum duration of AA possible during a whirl, while maintaining optimal uptime otherwise. In other words, have your 18s of AA overlap with the ~5 seconds of Whirl + any other prereq you need.

I guess I may place too much value on AA at the moment, maybe? Do other Discs not do this and just use it on CD?

[Dracodraco]

I see what you're saying. What gameplay considerations can really come out of this that we don't already have, though? Identify the time periods in a fight where Archangel must be used, identify how many CD intervals you can go through before your CD overlaps with the time period you need AA.

ie something easy like Garrosh. Need it every Whirl, likely. 50 seconds per whirl, use it such that you get the maximum duration of AA possible during a whirl, while maintaining optimal uptime otherwise. In other words, have your 18s of AA overlap with the ~5 seconds of Whirl + any other prereq you need.

I guess I may place too much value on AA at the moment, maybe? Do other Discs not do this and just use it on CD?

I've ranked fairly high (been on my hunter the past month so fallen down a bit now), and I just mash that button on CD. I might delay it a *few* seconds for something like Cascade's CD, but in general, you won't find logs of me going below 50% uptime (30 sec cd, 18 sec up = 60% uptime maximum), and mostly around 55-57% minimum. I don't even really think about it anymore though, I usually just press the button. for whirls, they happen every 45 seconds, so can't really get AA up to cover every one of them without heavily delaying. On the other hand, I can start spirit shelling 10 seconds before a whirl, so it's usually not an issue (I'll have SS with AA bonus and divine aegis from a star up when the whirl starts).

But no, I really, *really* don't feel that there's any kind of decision making in Archangel at the moment. I might be wrong though, who knows?

[Larynx]

I've ranked fairly high (been on my hunter the past month so fallen down a bit now), and I just mash that button on CD. I might delay it a *few* seconds for something like Cascade's CD, but in general, you won't find logs of me going below 50% uptime (30 sec cd, 18 sec up = 60% uptime maximum), and mostly around 55-57% minimum. I don't even really think about it anymore though, I usually just press the button. for whirls, they happen every 45 seconds, so can't really get AA up to cover every one of them without heavily delaying. On the other hand, I can start spirit shelling 10 seconds before a whirl, so it's usually not an issue (I'll have SS with AA bonus and divine aegis from a star up when the whirl starts).

Well I mean I rank pretty high too, something around 95 average percentile, but lets not turn this into a shit flinging contest. =P

I just don't really see the benefit in mashing it, though? Delaying it by a max of 12 seconds to fit into the damage pattern of the fight seems pretty optimal. Take something like this:

45- Archangel + Divine Star
30- Divine Star + PoM
20- Inner Focus + PoH
16- Power Word: Shield
15- Archangel + Divine Star + Spirit Shell
0 - Divine Star + PoM

In preparation for an Empowered Whirl. Certainly mashing it here wouldn't be optimal, would it? Preparing and forcing it to line up in such a way like this is basically the most optimal HPS you can have for that moment of burst 45s later, especially on a fight like Garrosh where there's very little raid damage.

I'm going to go check my logs actually, and compare them to your optime.

Actually, I had a thought. You raid 25m, and Divine Star lines up twice for every AA you get off, and the CDs sync perfectly. Maybe that's the difference here? I do 10m.

[Nurasu]

I don't think Spirit Shell is really usable without the 4-piece mana reduction on PoH in AA. As on live, we will need to plan ahead for Spirit Shell except that AA is now tied directly into its functionality, so I suppose it may prove to be an increase in skill required for some... (but I don't know anyone who didn't use AA with Spirit Shell already). I think I'm with Larynx, in that there's not really any added gameplay for most of us - have AA for when you need SS.

I'll let you guys hash it out though - I feel out of my league :P

[Larynx]

I don't think Spirit Shell is really usable without the 4-piece mana reduction on PoH in AA. As on live, we will need to plan ahead for Spirit Shell except that AA is now tied directly into its functionality, so I suppose it may prove to be an increase in skill required for some... (but I don't know anyone who didn't use AA with Spirit Shell already). I think I'm with Larynx, in that there's not really any added gameplay for most of us - have AA for when you need SS.

I'll let you guys hash it out though - I feel out of my league :P

I only had 35% AA uptime on one fight I'm looking at, so you're probably better than me.

@Dracos I'm looking to average around 50-55%, some fights are little higher at 57 or 58%. I'll try using it on CD (within reason, delaying by like 3s seems reasonable) when I raid next on my disc and see if there's a difference.

Anyways, this is a bit off-topic. AA is gonna be more important next xpac, no doubt (or at least punish mashing it, likely), that is something I hope they expand on. I'm naive if I expect them to go with my concept of empowering abilities with AA, but I certainly want something to fill the void Disc has right now. I really do hope they don't think Disc is fine atm, and give us little cherry picked additions during the beta as appeasement (eg Borrowed Time) or a messy hotfix a month into WoD like MoP and Cataclysm. I don't understand why they're so silent about healers, and especially Disc.

[Dracodraco]

Well I mean I rank pretty high too, something around 95 average percentile, but lets not turn this into a shit flinging contest. =P

I just don't really see the benefit in mashing it, though? Delaying it by a max of 12 seconds to fit into the damage pattern of the fight seems pretty optimal. Take something like this:

45- Archangel + Divine Star
30- Divine Star + PoM
20- Inner Focus + PoH
16- Power Word: Shield
15- Archangel + Divine Star + Spirit Shell
0 - Divine Star + PoM

In preparation for an Empowered Whirl. Certainly mashing it here wouldn't be optimal, would it? Preparing and forcing it to line up in such a way like this is basically the most optimal HPS you can have for that moment of burst 45s later, especially on a fight like Garrosh where there's very little raid damage.

I'm going to go check my logs actually, and compare them to your optime.

Actually, I had a thought. You raid 25m, and Divine Star lines up twice for every AA you get off, and the CDs sync perfectly. Maybe that's the difference here? I do 10m.

The issue is that the vast majority of your healing will either be your heavy absorbs (that you line up before a whirl), or atonement on the tank/MC targets with dots rolling. Consider the following -

Garrosh P2 (let's just use that as the example) lasts 2:25 minutes -the first whirl happens 30 seconds in, then again 50 seconds later (sitting here looking at the timer from our first kill video. So that's:

00:07 Archangel (need to build stacks)
00:25 AA down.
00:30 Whirl.
00:37 Archangel
00:55 AA down.
01:07 Archangel
01:20 Whirl.
01:25 AA down.
01:37 Archangel
01:55 AA down.
02:07 Archangel
02:10 Whirl.
02:25 AA down, phase ends.

As you can see, it lines up perfectly to cover the last two whirls - however, not the first one. Thing is, I use spirit shell on the first and third whirl, which both can be accomplished before AA drops off, along with using divine star at 00:00 (to top the raid from intermission), then again at 00:16, and thus get divine aegis for the first hit (empowered by AA) and then a non-buffed AA. After that, I can safely hold divine star as there's zero raid damage (apart from dots on MCs) outside of the whirls, so sitting on divine star won't actually end up fucking any HPS up (why mash divine star every 15 sec if all it's gonna do is add less absorbs to the tank than I could get by atonementing?). It's not uncommon for me to sit on Dstar here to make full benefit of it on the whirls - but I never sit on archangel because it'll always benefit me (singletarget healing+DPS).


That said, you're right that it might be 10 man that's making you put more emphasis on it; after all, on almost every other fight, I hit my lvl 90 on CD. Garrosh P2 is "special", though :3 (and I'd probably use Halo at this point for super-absorb-whoreness if we used the 10 man tactic of running out with desecrates/spreading for empowered adds, but as we stay stacked, divine star it is).

Last, but not least - didn't mean to start any shitflinging with the ranks comment - it was more of a "well, hitting it on CD is giving me darn good results".

[davesignal]

They literally removed over one third of our abilities with zero compensation in the form of consolidation.

Bit less of a prune and more of chopping down the fucking tree.

And despite that, you're defending the reduced skillcap? What? I can't tell if you're agreeing with me and just confirming what I said, or using some weird counter-logic I can't understand.

This could be seen as a compensation in the form of consolidation. They're consolidating Inner Focus and Archangel. Hopefully the trend continues.

[Larynx]

The issue is that the vast majority of your healing will either be your heavy absorbs (that you line up before a whirl), or atonement on the tank/MC targets with dots rolling. Consider the following -

Garrosh P2 (let's just use that as the example) lasts 2:25 minutes -the first whirl happens 30 seconds in, then again 50 seconds later (sitting here looking at the timer from our first kill video. So that's:

00:07 Archangel (need to build stacks)
00:25 AA down.
00:30 Whirl.
00:37 Archangel
00:55 AA down.
01:07 Archangel
01:20 Whirl.
01:25 AA down.
01:37 Archangel
01:55 AA down.
02:07 Archangel
02:10 Whirl.
02:25 AA down, phase ends.

As you can see, it lines up perfectly to cover the last two whirls - however, not the first one. Thing is, I use spirit shell on the first and third whirl, which both can be accomplished before AA drops off, along with using divine star at 00:00 (to top the raid from intermission), then again at 00:16, and thus get divine aegis for the first hit (empowered by AA) and then a non-buffed AA. After that, I can safely hold divine star as there's zero raid damage (apart from dots on MCs) outside of the whirls, so sitting on divine star won't actually end up fucking any HPS up (why mash divine star every 15 sec if all it's gonna do is add less absorbs to the tank than I could get by atonementing?). It's not uncommon for me to sit on Dstar here to make full benefit of it on the whirls - but I never sit on archangel because it'll always benefit me (singletarget healing+DPS).


That said, you're right that it might be 10 man that's making you put more emphasis on it; after all, on almost every other fight, I hit my lvl 90 on CD. Garrosh P2 is "special", though :3 (and I'd probably use Halo at this point for super-absorb-whoreness if we used the 10 man tactic of running out with desecrates/spreading for empowered adds, but as we stay stacked, divine star it is).

Last, but not least - didn't mean to start any shitflinging with the ranks comment - it was more of a "well, hitting it on CD is giving me darn good results".

Point taken, thank you for the detailed post. I'll try this out when I get a chance next raid on my disc, truthfully it's likely much easier too (less room for error = better results). At the very least, we can definitely agree that Archangel will become more important next xpac. Hopefully you're correct and this makes up for a lot of the lost depth.

Ironically, and a bit hypocritically, the part I'm looking forward to the most is the 4pc. There's something really fun about spamming PoH when you can't get away with it normally when you have sub-8k spirit.

This could be seen as a compensation in the form of consolidation. They're consolidating Inner Focus and Archangel. Hopefully the trend continues.

Indeed it could, and likely is intended to be the compensation. Likewise, I hope it continues though at this point I'll take anything Blizzard throws at me. Disc truly has received almost nothing since the ability prune.

I just started thinking, did anything happen to that datamined "Holy Bolt" ability? Maybe they'll come through after all and this'll be a huge boon to the spec.

[Deleted]

I've ranked fairly high (been on my hunter the past month so fallen down a bit now), and I just mash that button on CD. I might delay it a *few* seconds for something like Cascade's CD, but in general, you won't find logs of me going below 50% uptime (30 sec cd, 18 sec up = 60% uptime maximum), and mostly around 55-57% minimum.

Just to echo this quickly; I'm a 10 man raider myself though without the progression that you lovely people have as we are still slumping our way through Siegecrafter. That said, I also keep a high uptime on AA - roughly 58% on Kor'kron Shamans in our most recent parse and 50% on Iron Juggernaut (run away during siege mode) / Thok (bad positioning, latency problems). I've also found it to be useful to use AA on cooldown with a little bit of wiggle room if I'm expecting a proc (Chi-Ji on the few fights where it is dusted off) or a CD is coming off.

The new empowered AA is kinda concerning. I agree that it appears to be getting too front loaded even if the good idea and enjoyable gameplay of holding AA is being reintroduced. I also have some worries that it might be pushing us into a Chakra-like situation though one that is either "All-healing poor" or "All-healing good".

I just started thinking, did anything happen to that datamined "Holy Bolt" ability? Maybe they'll come through after all and this'll be a huge boon to the spec.

Not seen anything about it. What info was datamined along with it?

[Basmothh]

It's not uncommon for me to sit on Dstar here to make full benefit of it on the whirls - but I never sit on archangel because it'll always benefit me (singletarget healing+DPS).


That said, you're right that it might be 10 man that's making you put more emphasis on it; after all, on almost every other fight, I hit my lvl 90 on CD. Garrosh P2 is "special", though :3 (and I'd probably use Halo at this point for super-absorb-whoreness if we used the 10 man tactic of running out with desecrates/spreading for empowered adds, but as we stay stacked, divine star it is).

Last, but not least - didn't mean to start any shitflinging with the ranks comment - it was more of a "well, hitting it on CD is giving me darn good results".

Is it really worth using AA on CD in P2 though? You lose the ability to precast AA/DS to build DA for Whirl 1 and 3. Casting AA/DS with 9-10s before a Whirl allows you to get your full AA/SS off, while also allowing you to cast another AA/DS 2-3s before Whirl ends. I can't imagine that the additional healing from using AA on CD is going to surpass that of an AA/DS, especially if you consider that there isn't much damage without Empowered Gripping Despair (using AA is also technically a small DPS loss considering you lose 5x Evan stacks).

I guess my point is that while the current incarnation of DS encourages us to use AA on CD for most fights, there are fights with timers that don't line up in 30s intervals (Whirling Corruption) or where you have to use Halo (Malk, Sha if your raid doesn't stack QQ) that can favour staggering the use of AA.

[rylai21]

Anyone else concerned about Renew not scaling with mastery on beta? It's currently a pretty huge chunk of my healing breakdown. Not sure if they just intended that to be a stat we avoid for Renew spam or what.

[Isheria]

You don't rly need mastery scaling with it that's what multistrike is for, adding mastery on top of it will make it stupidly good which it already is. The only way i can think mastery working with renew would be:

Echo of Light: Increases your healing of renew and it's multistrikes by x% and your direct heals and their multistrikes heal for an additional y% over 6 sec.

The above suggestion seems stupidly overpowered given the current power of renew.

[rylai21]

Right now my renew multistrikes aren't proccing echo. Not sure if working as intended or not. I've tweeted Celestalon about it but... yeah.

Echo of Light: Increases your healing of renew and it's multistrikes by x% and your direct heals and their multistrikes heal for an additional y% over 6 sec.

That's pretty much what I was thinking. Could always nerf base #'s on renew to compensate.

[Explicit Teemo Nudes]

I really hope they make PoM instant again... and increase the healing.

[Deleted]

I really hope they make PoM instant again... and increase the healing.

But that is the complete opposite of what they want to do for wod.

[Larynx]

Not seen anything about it. What info was datamined along with it?

It was just an icon labeled as a Priest ability, called Holy Bolt(s). The icon looked similar to Cascade, it's likely on page 2-4 atm.

edit:

http://media.mmo-champion.com/images...yBolts01_1.png

[Deleted]

I really hope they make PoM instant again... and increase the healing.

I agree it feels very odd to hard cast PoM, although I'm sure I'd get used to it. I still think priests have a LOT of movement compared to other specs I've tried on beta. FDCL really opens things up and renew remains instant with circle of healing. Doing some 5man content I never felt I was lacking options when moving

[Deleted]

I think they made some QoL for PvPers, dunno if it's any good but it looks kinda okish -> 'Shadow Orbs spent on Psychic Horror are refunded at a rate of 1 Shadow Orb per 5 sec.'

Btw, is divine insight that broken on beta that it does not get consumed or am I on shrooms, maybe both tho love Multi doting with DP.
Multistrike seems great choice for proc talents as you have a 2 chances with the multistrike on 1 spell, making it lovely for stuff like FLDC and DI(SI)
Sadly I think it will get nerfed as you have with 'lucky strike' 3 chances with 20% for Spike, and with multidoting it will be like now, on protectors with perma spikes.