[WoD] Saving Grace

[Deleted]

Option 2. The duration is reset to 10 for each new cast of Saving Grace. 10 seconds after the most recent cast, the debuff falls off.

[Basahkah]

I feel like this spell could be useful in very specific situations, but most of the time will go unused.

[Grubjuice]

So many people are poopooing this talent and i am not sure why
a 10% healing debuff (as long as you don't go stacking the debuff) is paultry considering the Spell power coefficient and low mana cost of this spell...

if you used it once and only once every 11~12 seconds.... even a nearly 90% uptime of a single-stack of the debuff would totally make this spell worth it in terms of mana efficiency and total healing done...


how much potential healing could you possibly loose out on in the 10 second follow-up to make >790% spell power of healing instantly and for only 3% mana not seem kinda awesome...?

[Hypasonic]

Yeah to be fair I haven't really looked at this talent past its tooltip, but I can see it having its uses to quickly top people up during periods of downtime.

[Thirteen]

how much potential healing could you possibly loose out on in the 10 second follow-up to make >790% spell power of healing instantly and for only 3% mana not seem kinda awesome...?

But that's the thing. How often would you need that much burst?

[tachycardias]

Everyone will think it's bad until some Pro comes along and says it's the bomb, and then it will be the best and all the other ones will be 'trash'. How it works around here.

[Larynx]

Everyone will think it's bad until some Pro comes along and says it's the bomb, and then it will be the best and all the other ones will be 'trash'. How it works around here.

Or you can do some basic math to figure out it is horseshit. I don't think "Pros" are the only people who have gone to Jr. High School.

[darthades]

Or you can do some basic math to figure out it is horseshit. I don't think "Pros" are the only people who have gone to Jr. High School.

Situationally is very powerful when single target burst is overwhelming, is good, FUN for casual pve and awesome for PvP.

And you talk about ignorance, lol.

[Nurasu]

Situationally is very powerful when single target burst is overwhelming, is good, FUN for casual pve and awesome for PvP.

And you talk about ignorance, lol.

It's nothing but a trap for "casual pve". It will find a niche in pvp, but only because CoW has such a long cast time.

[Larynx]

Situationally is very powerful when single target burst is overwhelming, is good, FUN for casual pve and awesome for PvP.

And you talk about ignorance, lol.

Situationally renew is useful for Disc.

That doesn't mean it's not horseshit.

[Thirteen]

Situationally is very powerful when single target burst is overwhelming

And when GS/Pain Sup is on cooldown. How often does that situation arise though? Now, I'm not saying that it will be trash on every single encounter (though I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case). In practice, based on damage patterns and even raid setup, it may be useful. That said, on paper, I don't think it works.

[Noradin]

Situationally renew is useful for Disc.

That doesn't mean it's not horseshit.

I liked it, it kept DA alive on the tank before the pull when someone delayed the pull again.

[Overdispersion]

Spam SG to whatever stack until it gets pointless, regen mana with potion of focus, yay start doing normal heals again. Very situational though and not very appealing.

[Basmothh]

Saving Grace might have a place in Disc's toolkit. Spam it 3-4 times then build 5 stacks of Evangelism since Atonement heals for a pittance anyway. The BIG downside is that you give up CoW, and that's honestly not a worthwhile trade.

As for Holy, the fact that it retroactively affects all your spells makes the talent very unenticing. If I need ST burst, I might as well use Flash Heal, because that at least generates stacks of Serendipity.

[Darkener]

Saving Grace is fine for PvP and niche PvE fights. It's probably the best choice for level 100 soloing.

[Deleted]

Lets do a simple calculation:

How much healing can you do with repeated applications of SG?

if the sp co-efficient is C and you cast n SGs in a row then it will simply be

C+0.9C+0.8C+...+ (1-0.1*(n-1))C = C(n-sum_over_n(0.1*(n-1))), where sum-over_n is the sum of all positive integer values of n for the expression in the brackets.

This equals C*(n-0.1*sum_over_n(n-1)) = C*(n-0.1*n*(n-1)/2)

At the same time those n casts will leave you with a 10s period where your healing is reduced by 0.1*n

So the total healing done by those n casts of SG is C*(n-0.1*n*(n-1)/2)) - 0.1n*HPSd*10, where HPSd is the HPS you could potentially be doing while the debuff is active.

Those in order for SG to be beneficial you would need C*(n-0.1*n*(n-1)/2)) - 0.1n*HPSd*10 > HPS*n*GCD+HPSd*10, where HPS is the HPS you could be doing during the time that you are casting SG and GCD is the time taken by a GCD given your current haste.

That requires C*(n-0.1*n*(n-1)/2)) - HPS*n*GCD> HPSd*10*(1+0.1*n)

In other words in order for SG to have a chance to be useful at all you have to a situation where SG is produces the highest possible HPS. Is there such a situation?

Renew heals for 368.75*sp per cast, glyphed binding heal for 399*sp per cast. PoM heals for 335*sp, PoH/CoH for 1108.3*sp.

So SG is actually more HPS than PoH until you get to 2 stacks. And it is better than renew or binding heal until you reach 5 stacks.

In any encounter where you are regular have 10s of very low HPS to get rid of the debuff, you can actually make a positive gain with SG. I doubt it will see the light of day much though.

[Noradin]

You have to take into account that after you decided to use SG, because it offered more healing than you exspected to loose subsequently the whole agrument you propose shifts to one stack more. At the same time you have to keep track of the next time where you will need you full healing to survive something, it there is no such thing, then SG will always (or never) win against you other spells, if there is such a thing it is effectively a trap with 10s delay and will frustrate heedless players endlessly (their teammates as well).
Just like someone using a healt potion to survive when you need invis before the CD is up to complete the Callenge Mode.

I think the healing reduction should be stronger and only affect SG (special kind of CD).

[Deleted]

You have to take into account that after you decided to use SG, because it offered more healing than you exspected to loose subsequently the whole agrument you propose shifts to one stack more. At the same time you have to keep track of the next time where you will need you full healing to survive something, it there is no such thing, then SG will always (or never) win against you other spells, if there is such a thing it is effectively a trap with 10s delay and will frustrate heedless players endlessly (their teammates as well).
Just like someone using a healt potion to survive when you need invis before the CD is up to complete the Callenge Mode.

I think the healing reduction should be stronger and only affect SG (special kind of CD).

The formula I posted above explains how the tradeoff with SG works. Although due to the healing debuff SG might be more HPS than other spells all the time, that is irrelevant to your overall HPS. If you cast SG at a point where you could have gotten more HPS by not using SG at all then, you are making a negative contribution to your HPS.

C*(n-0.1*n*(n-1)/2)) - HPS*n*GCD> HPSd*10*(1+0.1*n)

HPS is what your HPS would be WITHOUT the debuff. Since the term in the right is positive or zero, then the term in the left must also be positive in order for an additional cast of SG to have any value. So it is not really a trap at all. The value of the spell depends on what your HPS would be without SG and the debuff so every cast has hard-wired diminishing returns relative to your other spells. Even if afterwards there is a 10s period with zero healing, you can't spam SG all the way through. The healing from SG must be greater than the healing wou would do with other spells if you hadn't used SG at all. So you must always think of how much healing you could potentially get if you had used the GCDs you used for SG to cast something else instead. SG is always best used in multiples until you hit a certain threshold and then you just stop using it for 10s come what may.

Notice that every time you cast SG you get another stack of the debuff and extend its duration for one more GCD.

You are right however in that the a talent that is extremely hard to use intuitively. You must know exactly what you are doing. The formula however provides a somewhat intuitive rule for using SG. Don't cast it when it becomes worse than the spell you would other using the most would be without the debuff. Just stop using it and let the debuff expire. You must be aware of this if you pick this talent. If you are not it can sink you.

The whole point of SG in pve is burst healing. The type of encounter where SG is useful, is one where you have very sharp burst or where you have abilities hitting a few random targets extremely hard. I think CoW is probably going to be always better for disc, but if your aoe is not usable SG might be better situationally for holy.

It is probably the fact that the tradeoff is not very intuitive to calculate that kills this talent for most players.

[Jimjam38]

Since nothing else works, maybe we can get blizzards attention through the power of rhyme.

The mmo forums were on a new case;
The priest 100 talents were in a bad space,
Some were too strong, while others a waste,
Though the devs tuning PoM might help them save face.
But still CoW didn't fix disc's devaluing haste,
And irrespective of numbers, the worst, Saving Grace!

[Noradin]

It actually works like chances when farming (which people always get wrong as well).

While the average player will get the drop after around 100 kills (for example), the chance to get the drop from the next mob killed always stays the same (and thus the player would be exspected to get the drop after around 100 more kills), regardless of how many of them were already killed.
While the outside point of view is good to choose a strategy before starting (which you should then adhere to, see the 'two goats, one car' problem), tactics are based on the moment and will depend on the involved point of view.
Tactics are what people use intuitively, in the spur of the moment, and it is here where Saving Grace always (or never) wins against the alternatives in specific situations regardless of number of stacks already amassed. Which turns it into a strategic trap, thus potentially frustrating users and those depending on them. And this last part is why I think it is a bad idea, however much I like it otherwise.

Even good tactics can make a faulty strategy. Which is alright to exploit in a game (even fun), but highly questionable if affecting players not involved in the choice.
It is not good to make players fault their healers for trying to save them and falling into a trap in a thight situation because of that. It will be used to mask and shift the blame from players standing in fire to the healer who 'somehow' couldn't keep up the tank 15sec later. (Who stacked up his debuffs saving idiots, or gets blamed for intentionally letting them die when he could easily have saved them.)

Edit @Havoc: Overall HPS is subject to strategies, not to tactics, so it has to be thought about 'longterm' (therefore HPS healing per second), in the heat of the moment intuitive decisions will mostly be made by tactics (or should be for gameplay reasons), here the relative worth of SG always stays the same.