More Pruning... What's left for disc?

[Darkener]

@Aimee and all Disc Mains, let's say that the new healing model and health pools achieves the ultimate goal of all players having missing health at all times such that all healers have effective healing always. That suggests that the highest HPS raid healing specs will shine on meters, even if they posses zero absorbs in their toolkit because, well, no overheal. Let's also assume that there may be some (or many) fights in WoD where there are >15s periods of zero incoming damage where the only overheal is absorbs falling off. We will call this the "Perfect Storm" fight for pure raid healers, and at this point it is based purely on encounter design. Let's also assume that in WoD Disc max HPS (healing + absorbs) is balanced to be slightly less than the pure HPS specs.

Now let's assume that an entire Tier in WoD features this kind of encounter, with only 1 or 2 fights that are more like SoO and the healing meters always break down this way:

Top 3 Healers:
1. Resto Druid (always seems to be at the top)
2 & 3. Holy Priest / Resto Shaman (depending on stack or spread)

Middle of the pac:
4 & 5. Holy Paladin / Mistweaver

Always seems to be at the bottom:
6. Discipline

Two questions:
1. Do you agree that Disc is balanced correctly, and it's just the Perfect Storm encounters that are screwing the numbers so there should be no need to buff Discipline?

2. Do you enjoy playing Disc enough to always be at the bottom of the meters (and have a guild that will let you play it versus Holy), or would you switch to Holy for many of these fights or switch to an Alt?

[Deleted]

Dude, your questions are just plain stupid.

In a context where every fights are biased toward pure throughput, it's normal for throughput healers to be ahead of absorb healers. That's called balance. There's always be fights in which mecanics favor absorb. For those fights it's normal for absorb healers to be ahead...

If the shitty situation you described happens (talk about poor encounter design), then it will be up to each of us to choose what to do. I'm a priest healer, I care about my class and I like having 2 healing specs I can swap. I'll certainly go holy if the gameplay is more engaging to me and the result is better for my team. I'll still use my disc spec for funsies or during farm.

Some of us are just playing disc because its currently OP and they'll reroll as soon as they see that druid is ahead.
Some of us are sick of playing whack a mole and will stick to disc because they like the spec. For those who play it well enough, they'll still have their raid spot because a good healer is better than a poor healer with a OP class. Any good raid leader knows that...

EDIT : the way you wrote your post seems to imply you're trying to reverse the current holy priest situation. Holy is in a bad place right now (when you just look at meters) because it inherently lacks snipes, not because disc is too strong. Nerfing disc won't bring holy in a better place, you'll just have more post saying shaman are op instead of disc that's all.

[Deleted]

@Aimee and all Disc Mains, let's say that the new healing model and health pools achieves the ultimate goal of all players having missing health at all times such that all healers have effective healing always.

You don't need to achieve this situation though - you just need enough health deficits that shields aren't so prominent. But sure, we can play with your example.

Two questions:
1. Do you agree that Disc is balanced correctly, and it's just the Perfect Storm encounters that are screwing the numbers so there should be no need to buff Discipline?

That depends on the relative difference between positions 1 and 6 really. If Discipline were so bad that its representation dropped to the position of Holy currently in SoO then yes, something should be done. Just as something should be done for Holy at the moment / going into WoD. If the numbers were 5%-10% of a difference I, personally, wouldn't be concerned.

Of course, the problem with Holy / Discipline at the moment is pretty complicated. Discipline provides shields which are strong in SoO while Holy doesn't really have the toolset for competing against Druids / Shaman (similar to the problem with Mistweavers).

2. Do you enjoy playing Disc enough to always be at the bottom of the meters?

Yes as the other formats of healing in WoW currently are pretty boring and, unsurprisingly, haven't suddenly become new and exciting after 7 years or so. Of course, one of the biggest concerns that people like to dismiss with "oh, you'll have too many shields... oh Atonement requires no thinking..." is that the style of healing that makes Discipline fun and different doesn't look like it will be around in WoD.

DPS often get revamped - they are given new procs, more involved rotations and new gameplay to keep them engaging. What happened to Discipline during MoP, completely by accident, is kinda similar to such a revamp. To then go back? Doesn't strike me as appealing... Even losing the LMG and the gameplay it brought is a real shame.

[Thirteen]

[snip]

First of all, you can't expect to have no overhealing. Having less is entirely possible, and as a holy priest I welcome it, but having none, not so much. While we're here, we can't also assume that all classes are balanced. Not balanced in the sense that "they work in the types of boss encounters we have right now", but more in the sense that they can all, potentially, do the same amount of healing. This is obviously not the case, nor is it going to be, ever. A few, among many of the reasons, are that the classes simply work differently (druids are very HoT based, discipline priests have no HoTs), some cooldown may be better than others at times (discipline doesn't even have a proper throughput cooldown), and many, many others. I guess what I'm saying is, you can't compare classes in a vacuum. How things play out largely depends on the boss mechanics, strategies used and probably most importantly, player competence. In an ideal world, all healing classes would be equally viable on all encounters. The reality is that while they may be equal in the long run, they'll likely perform differently on different encounters. For example, discipline priests, that can use Penance on the go [citation needed] will probably outperform healers like holy priests who focus on hardcasting on encounters that require mobility.
Slightly offtopic:
How is the "players won't be topped off" concept going to play out in practice? How is it even going to be achieved? Anub'Arak is a prime example of this kind of encounter, but realistically, you can't build many, if any encounters like that one.

[Larynx]

How is the "players won't be topped off" concept going to play out in practice? How is it even going to be achieved? Anub'Arak is a prime example of this kind of encounter, but realistically, you can't build many, if any encounters like that one.

Well it's pretty simple in theory. Two ways to approach it:

Damage taken over the entire fight is equivalent to healing done, differing only by an amount less than the health of individuals in the raid. To accomplish this, just tightly tune healing and damage numbers.

The other way to approach it is the give us different sets of spells for the same situation, differing only by HPS and HPM. So in other words, Heal, Greater Heal, Flash Heal. Make mana a very important resource to manage, so we don't waste mana on a spell with more HPS when we don't need to top people off. In an environment without huge burst damage, people don't need to be at 100% health as soon as possible, so we wont waste the mana on it. Someone is at 90% health? Doesn't matter, let the peripheral healing and HoTs deal with it. (This option is much more likely, it's basically what a triage model means)

In actuality, it's probably super hard to implement, but that's how it would be done.

We might also get a model like Garrosh, with no sustained damage, but predictable periods of huge burst damage. Triage still works well in that, healing numbers just need to be tuned super low compared to the present.

[Noradin]

How is the "players won't be topped off" concept going to play out in practice? How is it even going to be achieved? Anub'Arak is a prime example of this kind of encounter, but realistically, you can't build many, if any encounters like that one.

On the top of my head I can only think of one way that would work for most encounters and classes:
Make all healing spells behave slightly like the shaman healing mastery - healing for more when players have less health left, then have the encounters do more damage than there is hps on targets at 100%, but less than there is hps on targets at 0%. Health pools will stabilize somewhere in the middle unless damage patterns are too bursty.

[Deleted]

Currently disc can spec into a fairly massive absorb spec (well over 50% of raw throughput as absorbs), which is just silly.

Blizzard will do one of three things

1) Rebalance disc to have more heals and less absorbs (does not look likely atm)

2) Make the damage pattern very similar in every encounter and then balance all specs to have similar throughput in that environment (boring for us healers)

3) Stick with the current model, in which case disc will be OP or rubbish dependeing on the exact damage pattern. If it ends up being broken they will make a stupid hotfix and try to address it next patch.

MoP was a case of 3.

Holy is very strong in SoO and currently along with shamans they have the highest raw throughput. Lets not forget holy priests and shamans were used very early on to get kills with less than the intended minimum healer number on some bosses. Holy isn't played much because it takes a very very good player to translate that raw power to effective healing in the current environment.

I think people are not really thinking carefully about what "never being topped up means".

Basically there are only three ways to have a raid where most players have a near constant health deficit.

a) incoming damage = maximum healing output. This is an impossible scenario since healer output and incoming damage varies a lot between raid groups. Also raids facing this situation try to bring an extra healer.

b) There is constant pulsing damage such as one hit every 2-3 seconds. This is a scenario where the size of the healthpools is irrelevant. Since the pulsing is constant it has to be tuned to a certain healer output. In a situation with large healthpools compared to healer output this means the health will go to 80-90% every 2-3seconds and then go back to full again within 2-3 seconds. This is functionally no different than the health bars going to 30% every 2-3 seconds and then going back to full again within those 2-3 seconds.

c) Burst and lull. With large healthpools that mean long bursts where health will go down despite healers healing as much as they can, but people won't die because of their large healthpools then you get a short lull in the damage where you have to heal everyone back to full again.

(b) and (c) can be combined in various ways to make a more complicated damage pattern.

(b) makes it impossible for disc to build large absorb buffers, so the only benefit of absorbs is lower overheal. Even if raw throughput between disc and other classes is balanced, the actual output of disc will vary massively depending on the exact numbers, while the output of other healers is much less sensitive to the exact specifics. That means unless all encounters with (b) as their main form of damage have exactly the same numbers, disc will suck or be OP

(c) without (b) allows disc to build absorb buffers. The size of the buffer relative to the incoming damage is a key element. The bigger the chunk of the incoming damage that can be absorbed the stronger disc is. Again while the other healers are mostly insensitive to the exact numbers disc is highly dependent on it. Unless all burst and lull is exactly the same accross all encounters disc will either suck or be OP depending on specifics.

a combination of (b) and (c) means that absorbs are functionally no different than normal heals. Overhealing will be very low and there is no dead time for disc to to build absorb buffers. In these encounters if disc raw throughput is balanced for other types of damage no one will want to play disc in that encounter.

There is also another model where there is constant random damage (ie. a few people are targeted and take a lot of damage every few seconds). This means most of the raid will be full health and you will just be chasing up a few targets with single target heals. Disc should absolutely destroy the meters in such encounters, unless we don't have enough mana for constant absorb rolling, in which case HoTs will rule and disc will be rubbish.

I think it is a mistake giving disc so many absorbs. It is just not going to be possible to balance it, without making every encounter feel the same for healers.

[Basmothh]

Every encounter feels the same not because of absorbs, but because there really isn't much variance in designing raid damage. As you've said, you either have constant damage, burst/lulls or a combination of the two. Constant raid damage (assuming that it's not undertuned like SoO) favours the higher throughput healers, whereas burst/lulls favours the lower throughput healers with absorbs.

The only reason absorbs feel too strong is because they've either massively undertuned raid damage relative to healing potency and/or the fact that there isn't a proper balance between the types of raid damage (i.e. Disc's dominance in HoF was largely due to every fight being all about burst/lulls in damage). Of course, emphasis has to be placed that Disc's balancing necessitates that it has a lower potential raw healing than the others, and that's really not something that I have an issue with if raids feature a reasonable variety of damage models.

Anyway, the simplest way to actually make healing more interesting is for Blizzard to start designing encounters to have healer-only mechanics. I do miss fights like Sinestra or Baleroc.

[Deleted]

1) Rebalance disc to have more heals and less absorbs (does not look likely atm)

Why remove Inner Focus or move Spirit Shell into a talent if Discipline isn't being rebalanced to have less absorbs? The majority of Discipline's shielding comes from passively generated DA. We won't be sitting at 50% crit going into WoD and without reforging we won't be able to stack crit with the same ease. Gear is also supposedly going to scale in a more linear fashion.

Much of what made Discipline stupidly powerful in model 3) was uncapped L90 talents that could easily generate lots and lots of yummy DA - both of these facilities should be diminished in WoD along with the ability to run a low spirit build due to Rapture + LMG + good use of PW: Solace. Rapture + LMG won't be around (neither will LMG + L90) and with increasing mana costs Discipline probably won't be able to shield as much.

Gaining CoW might be enough to offset this but it seems like quite the burden for one talent to bear not to mention that it comes at the cost of being able to perform raw healing. It isn't something we are getting gratis.

So, on the flip side, I feel Disc having less shields looks pretty likely. Unless I am mistaken (very probable), this was actually stated as a design intention for Disc.

I think people are not really thinking carefully about what "never being topped up means".

I think this has become something of an awkward parlance to mean situations where healing can get through more often. Average player health closer to 50% than 100% might be a better way of putting things?

There is also another model where there is constant random damage (ie. a few people are targeted and take a lot of damage every few seconds). This means most of the raid will be full health and you will just be chasing up a few targets with single target heals. Disc should absolutely destroy the meters in such encounters, unless we don't have enough mana for constant absorb rolling, in which case HoTs will rule and disc will be rubbish.

This works if Discipline is provided with sufficient opportunity to perform as a tank healer. Not exactly what I'd want to see but still. The best option surely would be to combine these different types of damage patterns to create varied and interesting encounters? I know I was so over the monotonous ticking damage aura encounters by Lana'thel.

[Deleted]

Discipline can now spec into a build that has more of its raw healing as absorbs that we ever had even in the days when PoH applied automatic aegis.

The reason is a rebalancing. PoH is now fairly massive compared to every other heal that disc has. At least half the PoH casts will be cast under spirit shell assuming a 1 min cooldown on it. CoW is a 20s fairly beefy absorb. Yes you lose heal, but you gain the ability to roll many more single target absorbs on the raid or on a single target than you ever could.

In SoO a lot of players relied a lot on atonement and the level 90s. In WoD as things are shaping up, spirit shell PWS and CoW will be a larger chunk of healing once we get the right gear for it, so the absorb level will rise rather than fall.

In wod with larger healthpools spikes in damage will drop the raid health over a longer period and it will take longer to heal up the deficit.

Complex damage patterns end up being difficult to predict without trial and error. Disc could be OP or terrible depending on the exact settings, but other healers are generally not so sensitive.

If you have random single target damage disc can roll shields and catch it as it happens. Depending on how sustainably disc can roll absorbs, it can dominate the encounter completely or perform poorly.

[Dracodraco]

If you have random single target damage disc can roll shields and catch it as it happens. Depending on how sustainably disc can roll absorbs, it can dominate the encounter completely or perform poorly.

Random singletarget damage (think Malice hits) is probably the worst scenario ever for disc without lvl 90 talents to cover the raid in aegis. It's simply not possible to catch the damage reliably/often enough without wasting huge resources trying to get shields on people who end up never using them. Snap healers are far better at that. The only reason disc is king of those encounters right now is Atonement and 90 talents.

[Jimjam38]

@Aimee and all Disc Mains, let's say that the new healing model and health pools achieves the ultimate goal of all players having missing health at all times such that all healers have effective healing always. That suggests that the highest HPS raid healing specs will shine on meters, even if they posses zero absorbs in their toolkit because, well, no overheal. Let's also assume that there may be some (or many) fights in WoD where there are >15s periods of zero incoming damage where the only overheal is absorbs falling off. We will call this the "Perfect Storm" fight for pure raid healers, and at this point it is based purely on encounter design. Let's also assume that in WoD Disc max HPS (healing + absorbs) is balanced to be slightly less than the pure HPS specs.

Now let's assume that an entire Tier in WoD features this kind of encounter, with only 1 or 2 fights that are more like SoO and the healing meters always break down this way:

Top 3 Healers:
1. Resto Druid (always seems to be at the top)
2 & 3. Holy Priest / Resto Shaman (depending on stack or spread)

Middle of the pac:
4 & 5. Holy Paladin / Mistweaver

Always seems to be at the bottom:
6. Discipline

Two questions:
1. Do you agree that Disc is balanced correctly, and it's just the Perfect Storm encounters that are screwing the numbers so there should be no need to buff Discipline?

2. Do you enjoy playing Disc enough to always be at the bottom of the meters (and have a guild that will let you play it versus Holy), or would you switch to Holy for many of these fights or switch to an Alt?

IMO, balanced correctly is not a numbers thing, its a usefulness thing. If you're still useful to the raid because of what abilities and utility you offer, then you're balanced correctly. If you're getting sat because there is just no reason to have you, then you're not balanced correctly. In the situation you described, throughput healers will always have a place, because what they offer (throughput) makes them always valuable. Depending on both the mechanics of the fights, and on what utility disc has when the time comes, they may still be genuinely useful to the raid, regardless of hps output, and thus I'd still be happy to play it ON THE CONDITION that it remains an actually fun spec to play. PWS spam is not my idea of a fun spec, but if they manage to retain an interesting, engaging style while also having useful abilities, I will continue to play disc. If disc remains as it currently is, which I consider to be a fun play style (ie smiteweaving, which i would describe as the synergistic play between Atonement, Train of Thought, Archangel, Rapture, Twist of Fate etc) I would still play it on most encounters in WoD, however after the excessive changes and cuts, I cant forsee it being particularly enjoyable. Even if the tuning was broken and PWS spam topped the meters, I'd still not enjoy it and would rather play a MW or Hpriest which still have actual synergy between their abilities.

- - - Updated - - -

On another note:

Empowered Archangel Name Changed from Enhanced Strength of Soul to Empowered Archangel. Strength of Soul can also trigger from Penance. The next Prayer of Healing you cast after activating Archangel has 100% increased critical strike chance.

Surely I'm not the only person at least a little offended by this? Instead of giving us an actual perk, they've just returned us a shitty version of Inner Focus with more restricted usage. This has probably happened to a few other specs, but none of the ones I've been following. They should just give us back inner focus and train of thought already, and not in the form of some shity half-arsed perk. Or better yet, make some actual revisions to the spec rather than just amputating core abilities.
INb4 "t17 disc 2pc: Smite has a 0.000075% chance to reset the cooldown of penance". GG

As an aside:
The way I'm seeing it, a lot of the perks they've introduced are just a facade intended to make it look like we're gaining something. The reality is that most perks are no change at all. Any perk that's simply "increases x ability by y%" is not actually a buff, because the abilities numbers have been re-tuned for level 100, and any actual throughput increase from said perks has been countered by tuning the ability to do less damage without it, so the overall net gain is essentially nothing. The only perks that actually gain something are the ones that actually offer a new mechanic, eg, Enhanced Focused Will, Enhanced Shadow Orbs, Enhanced Shadow Word: Death, Improved Flame Shock (enh shammy) etc. These perks are actually a gain for the spec, since they introduce additional mechanical elements to the abilities they affect. The numbers gain from this can be tuned to a degree, but they're still undeniably a gain, where as the increases x by y are much less seemingly so. This of course only applies to level 100, which is what the game is being balanced around anyway, so "increases x by y" perks will be a gain from their damage at level 90, but in terms of level 100 tuning, the offer no net gain. I expect the other, probably unintended, side affect of blizzard balancing around having these perks, is that without them, in the weeks during the prepatch while everyones trying to farm their garry heirlooms, is that some specs will probably be highly under powered compared to before the prepatch, as their primary spells will be balanced for the perks they dont yet have...

[Larynx]

^In regards to Focused Will, taking Glyph of the Inquisitor will = 100% uptime on Focused Will nearly, would it not? Basically a passive 10% damage boost/10% healing boost to atonement.

Just a thought, I'm in an optimistic mood. >_>

[Jimjam38]

^In regards to Focused Will, taking Glyph of the Inquisitor will = 100% uptime on Focused Will nearly, would it not? Basically a passive 10% damage boost/10% healing boost to atonement.

Just a thought, I'm in an optimistic mood. >_>

Yeah it would, possibly a dangerous choice on some encounters, but it does offer a small island of skill cap in an otherwise dull ocean of disengaging spec

Also, in a moment of clarity, I realised that, as Celestalon would insist, Enhanced Archangel is 'functionally completely different' from Inner Focus, because reasons.

[Deleted]

Discipline can now spec into a build that has more of its raw healing as absorbs that we ever had even in the days when PoH applied automatic aegis.

The reason is a rebalancing. PoH is now fairly massive compared to every other heal that disc has. At least half the PoH casts will be cast under spirit shell assuming a 1 min cooldown on it. CoW is a 20s fairly beefy absorb. Yes you lose heal, but you gain the ability to roll many more single target absorbs on the raid or on a single target than you ever could.

In SoO a lot of players relied a lot on atonement and the level 90s. In WoD as things are shaping up, spirit shell PWS and CoW will be a larger chunk of healing once we get the right gear for it, so the absorb level will rise rather than fall.

The thing is, the change from an environment with 50% to 60% crit to one where we are back around 20% to 30% is going to be massive. I just checked over some of my healing from recent encounters - 70% of it is absorbs with more than half coming from Divine Aegis so CoW has a lot of work to do to even out the loss of DA that will come with less crit and mastery. Heavy use of single target absorbs through CoW is a poor replacement (in terms of output) for 60%+ crit uncapped Divine Star - especially since one can choose to put up this DA and then go straight into PW:S spam which should be a greater number of shields more quickly than CoW rolling.

However, I'm now in two minds though as to whether or not we are being pushed towards a greater amount of absorbs - especially after reflecting on the Empowered Archangel perk. That said, I'm not totally convinced that we will have more raw absorbs yet but changes are moving in that direction.

^In regards to Focused Will, taking Glyph of the Inquisitor will = 100% uptime on Focused Will nearly, would it not? Basically a passive 10% damage boost/10% healing boost to atonement.

A useful major glyph for Disc? I'll take that!

[Jimjam38]

I just watched Darkener's vid of disc on the beta that he posted on one of the threads for me a few days ago. It looks like atonement heals are procing Words of Mending. Is that intended or not? I cant see it very well, but it looks like the multi strikes might be aswell. If it is, that might be what keeps me playing disc, it looks so fun weaving the words of mending stacks with surge of light procs, i can imagine having so many PoM's up at once with a heavy multi-strike build damn i hope that's intended. This is the most exciting thing I've seen in the whole beta. If they brought back Train of Thought we might even have a really viable spec again, god forbid.

[Noradin]

Is till think the they made a mistake with Focused Will when they first changed the way our crit worked, instead of making it guarantee a crit they should have made it double the heal, but prevent critting (maybe increase the heal with crit like Spirit Shell does the absorbs), because a big heal on demand is and always was exactly what disc needed to catch up after damage happended. Which would have allowed for weaker absorbs overall and reduced the main problems of the spec (for the spec and for others) somewhat.

[Deleted]

I just watched Darkener's vid of disc on the beta that he posted on one of the threads for me a few days ago. It looks like atonement heals are procing Words of Mending. Is that intended or not? I cant see it very well, but it looks like the multi strikes might be aswell. If it is, that might be what keeps me playing disc, it looks so fun weaving the words of mending stacks with surge of light procs, i can imagine having so many PoM's up at once with a heavy multi-strike build damn i hope that's intended. This is the most exciting thing I've seen in the whole beta. If they brought back Train of Thought we might even have a really viable spec again, god forbid.

No, it isn't intended. Isheria posted a tweet in one of the the threads with a reply from Celes - Atonement shouldn't proc WoM at all (boooooo).

[Darkener]

^In regards to Focused Will, taking Glyph of the Inquisitor will = 100% uptime on Focused Will nearly, would it not? Basically a passive 10% damage boost/10% healing boost to atonement.

Just a thought, I'm in an optimistic mood. >_>

It's 100% uptime on only 1 stack, which is 5% increased damage. You would have to be taking damage to get the second stack for 10%.

- - - Updated - - -

No, it isn't intended. Isheria posted a tweet in one of the the threads with a reply from Celes - Atonement shouldn't proc WoM at all (boooooo).

They still haven't fixed it yet though, Atonement is still procing stacks of WoM. They fixed the Surge of Light bug and Spirit Shell now works. I'm hoping they have it generate at least one stack. Since Evangelism procs from Atonement only once they can certainly have WoM do the same thing.

[Deleted]

They still haven't fixed it yet though, Atonement is still procing stacks of WoM. They fixed the Surge of Light bug and Spirit Shell now works. I'm hoping they have it generate at least one stack. Since Evangelism procs from Atonement only once they can certainly have WoM do the same thing.

Evangelism occurs due to direct damage from Penance / Smite / Holy Fire, not Atonement healing. WoM could be tied to those damaging abilities in the same way for Discipline though.