No tuning for priests?

[l33t]

That was actually wrong. Damage prevented is mathematically equivalent to damage healed. And in any practical setting, the former is generally superior by a long shot if you had to choose.

Really? Warriors have a raid-wide Last stand skill, which adds 20% to raid's HP pool. HP added is mathematically equivalent to HP healed. Are we going to call warriors raid healers now?

I stand firmly on my PoV. Healing done is healing, absorb done is survivability. Both are needed, but they are different at the core.

[Dracodraco]

Really? Warriors have a raid-wide Last stand skill, which adds 20% to raid's HP pool. HP added is mathematically equivalent to HP healed. Are we going to call warriors raid healers now?

I stand firmly on my PoV. Healing done is healing, absorb done is survivability. Both are needed, but they are different at the core.

You are entitled to your opinion, but it's borderline insane. Absorbtion is the same as healing, only better - if a tank takes a 300K hit, and has 250K hp, a 500K heal won't save him, but a 100K absorb prior would have. And it would then only require 200K raw healing to top him. The difference between a warrior's cooldown and absorbtion is that the warrior cooldown does not make up for healing done - when all is said and done, a 300K hp target going to 360K, then back down to 300K after 10 sec, who has taken 200K damage over the duration, will still need to be healed for 200K to go back to full. A target with 300K HP who had a 60K absorb shield will only need to be healed for 140K. Therein lies the difference - absorb is the same as healing, just more effective.

[Deleted]

From my experience in WoD so far, I can say Holy and Disc are equal as long as the damage is remarkable and constant, with just a few predictable spikes (or spikes that affect a large raid, so it's difficult to pre-shield everyone). Absorbs will ALWAYS be stronger, if you can pop them to reduce incoming damage till the point you can annihilate it; on the contrary, if damage is pulsing and people are actually not always at their full hp - like Blizzard said it should be in their new concept of "raiding" - then Holy can be absolutely viable.

Raiding with a Disc priest (I am Holy), the fights in which I cannot compete in any way at the moment are The Butcher (highly predictable spikes of heavy damage) and Brackenspore (infinite mana = infinite Divine Aegis from spell spamming).

[Deleted]

Raiding with a Disc priest (I am Holy), the fights in which I cannot compete in any way at the moment are The Butcher (highly predictable spikes of heavy damage) and Brackenspore (infinite mana = infinite Divine Aegis from spell spamming).

Considering "Brakenspore" I see a slight advantage in tankhealing for the disc. The crucial raid-healing during the spores comes from the mushrooms.
Way more important than raw numbers is the survival of the Rejuvenating Mushrooms and here I consider a glyphed guardian spirit (+260% incoming heal from everyone for 10 secs) superior over a pain supression (-40% damage for 8 secs) to give Toad a little more time to buff the raid.

[PosPosPos]

Really? Warriors have a raid-wide Last stand skill, which adds 20% to raid's HP pool. HP added is mathematically equivalent to HP healed. Are we going to call warriors raid healers now?

I stand firmly on my PoV. Healing done is healing, absorb done is survivability. Both are needed, but they are different at the core.

It's also on a long CD. Spammable absorbs are a totally different ball game which you are confusing it with.

[Deleted]

Considering "Brakenspore" I see a slight advantage in tankhealing for the disc. The crucial raid-healing during the spores comes from the mushrooms.
Way more important than raw numbers is the survival of the Rejuvenating Mushrooms and here I consider a glyphed guardian spirit (+260% incoming heal from everyone for 10 secs) superior over a pain supression (-40% damage for 8 secs) to give Toad a little more time to buff the raid.

Of course, I was merely talking about numbers and not raid utility

[Deleted]

You are entitled to your opinion, but it's borderline insane. Absorbtion is the same as healing, only better - if a tank takes a 300K hit, and has 250K hp, a 500K heal won't save him, but a 100K absorb prior would have. And it would then only require 200K raw healing to top him.

Very true, but a theoretical situation. This only works when your 250k HP tank is supposed to survive single hits greater than his maximum life. And I don't talk about unfortunate combinations of hits but the dreaded one-hit-death. Where in the current content are fight mechanics that require the tank to increase his effective life beyond max-health to survive (besides playing fight mechanics wrong)? If the tank is NOT at full hp, a heal is as good as an absorb and often even better because ongoing heals will leave the tank in a better position with more HP than before.

Today tanks die to a combination of hits with insufficient healing in between. A tank at 50% HP can be shielded or healed to full hp to survive the next hits. In reality both will happen (which is a good thing) in a good healer team. Again, the discs portion of the "healing" with PW:S will show with 100% in the logs while the other heals probably have (and should have) at least some overheal. This creates the unfortunate illusion that the disc has performed "better" when he is only favoured by the way the logs count the numbers.


Another thing I never get: How can people honestly call PW:B "the superior CD" when it only works when the raid is tightly stacked while all other healer's big raid-CDs do work with lesser restrictions?

[ZombiePriest]

Wait...so when I look at various disc priests on logs and 50% or more of their spell breakdown is Power Word: Shield, this is ok? Didn't blizzard say they didn't want this type of setup: where a class is using 50% or more in some logs, with ONE spell? How can that *not* be broken somehow?

[Deleted]

Wait...so when I look at various disc priests on logs and 50% or more of their spell breakdown is Power Word: Shield, this is ok? Didn't blizzard say they didn't want this type of setup: where a class is using 50% or more in some logs, with ONE spell? How can that *not* be broken somehow?

It's not broken, because a huge portion of this "healing" is worthless. It would have come from the other healers otherwise who now have more overheal.
There wouldn't be a problem at all if people learnt how to read these numbers.

[Necessarily]

It's not broken, because a huge portion of this "healing" is worthless. It would have come from the other healers otherwise who now have more overheal.
There wouldn't be a problem at all if people learnt how to read these numbers.

Sorry man, I main Holy and I love it, but you're starting to sound like a desperate apologist. If a disc priest can do another healer's (effective) healing faster, with less overheal, and less mana spent, then that disc priest is more useful to the raid. Period.

The nuance you're missing is that having absorb healers in your raid has diminishing returns (especially multiple disc priests). In almost every fight, if you have no absorb healers yet, adding a discipline priest will help your raid more than adding a holy priest. Optimally, you want a balance of both - if you already have several absorb healers, then the next holy priest you add will contribute more than the next disc priest. It's not that complicated.

Saying (repeatedly) "DISC PRIESTS AREN'T ACTUALLY HELPING THE RAID MORE" is uninformed and misleading. In some situations, they really are. In some, they aren't.

[Nurasu]

It's not broken, because a huge portion of this "healing" is worthless. It would have come from the other healers otherwise who now have more overheal.
There wouldn't be a problem at all if people learnt how to read these numbers.

Not sure I agree, but the more important part is that *all* healers are currently like this (except maybe paladins). Not sure why we're singling out disc here - Blizzard did a piss poor job with spell tuning this tier.

[Dracodraco]

Very true, but a theoretical situation. This only works when your 250k HP tank is supposed to survive single hits greater than his maximum life. And I don't talk about unfortunate combinations of hits but the dreaded one-hit-death. Where in the current content are fight mechanics that require the tank to increase his effective life beyond max-health to survive (besides playing fight mechanics wrong)? If the tank is NOT at full hp, a heal is as good as an absorb and often even better because ongoing heals will leave the tank in a better position with more HP than before.

Today tanks die to a combination of hits with insufficient healing in between. A tank at 50% HP can be shielded or healed to full hp to survive the next hits. In reality both will happen (which is a good thing) in a good healer team. Again, the discs portion of the "healing" with PW:S will show with 100% in the logs while the other heals probably have (and should have) at least some overheal. This creates the unfortunate illusion that the disc has performed "better" when he is only favoured by the way the logs count the numbers.


Another thing I never get: How can people honestly call PW:B "the superior CD" when it only works when the raid is tightly stacked while all other healer's big raid-CDs do work with lesser restrictions?

Have you started raiding Mythic yet? So far, both Tectus and Brackenspore can deliver fatal combo hits out of nowhere on tanks. Tectus admittedly is mainly when someone fucks up and the crystals go slightly wrong (and positions are SUPER important on tectus mythic), or a berserker charges someone and knocks tanks around / a earthwarper gets a flechette off during a berserker charge. The only way to play around that is to try and stunlock and kill stuff, really. Nothing of that would be the tanks, nor healers fault.
Brackenspore is just pure fucking damage - for one, he has necrotic breath, against which heals are useless (99% healing reduc), and on a first-kill lasting towards the enrage, you'll be dealing with max hits of 190K from the add, 150K from the boss. Not quite 1 hits, but include heavy movement from a bad wave, and the fact that our casted heals aren't instant (nor do they heal for 190K, to my knowledge anyway - maybe a resto shaman can get that high?) and we're basicly in a territory where tanks can easily die within a cast of a heal, to pure melee damage.

And I'd have to disagree that a heal is as good as (or better) than an absorb. A disc priest spamming an absorb does not cause overhealing for the other healers. If a 250K hp tank is sitting at 150K hp, and we have 3x healers pumping a heal into him:

A disc does a 50K CoW.
A paladin does a 50K holy light.
A druid does a 50K healing touch.

OR

A holy priest does a 50K heal.
A paladin does a 50K holy light.
A druid does a 50K healing touch.

Which situation is better for the tank? The one where he gets overhealed by 50K, or the one where he gets a 50K absorb shield?
Then another scenario -
Tank has lost 100K hp again. You can either have the disc CoW for 50K, or a holy priest heal for 50K. Which is better?
This is where you say "If the tank is NOT at full hp, a heal is as good as an absorb and often even better because ongoing heals will leave the tank in a better position with more HP than before. "
But that's simply not true. If I absorb 50K, his effective health is 200K. If I heal 50K, his effective health is 200K. It's the exact same - but the punchline is that if you heal for 50K, you are more prone to waste healing done, due to things like Scenario 1 (where 3x healers cast a heal on the tank).

Absorbs will *always* be superior. There's no scenario where other healers are involved, where you'd prefer to cast a heal over an equally sized absorb on a tank. Especially as you can refresh CoW (there's a slight argument to be made for an absorb shield expiring in a raid healing scenario, but it's very unlikely to think of anywhere that a tank wouldn't take damage for +15 seconds).


Also, who has ever called PW:B a superior CD?

[Deleted]

impressive how holy still hasn't recieved the "grace" passive, that bandaid skill fixed disc's garbage state in the beta and it will fix holy now.

[Nurasu]

impressive how holy still hasn't recieved the "grace" passive, that bandaid skill fixed disc's garbage state in the beta and it will fix holy now.

What are you talking about? If Holy received any sort of blanket buff it would completely outshine all other throughput healers. It doesn't have any problems with numbers, currently. Holy has the unique problem that it is attached to Disc.

[KaPe]

What are you talking about? If Holy received any sort of blanket buff it would completely outshine all other throughput healers. It doesn't have any problems with numbers, currently. Holy has the unique problem that it is attached to Disc.

Holy's other "problem" is that it basically ignores ones of its "main" mechanics, that being Serendipity, as well as PoH, with Renew spam all the way. Then again, PoH is bit poor for both specs (outside of EAA), so no big surprise here.

[Deleted]

What are you talking about? If Holy received any sort of blanket buff it would completely outshine all other throughput healers. It doesn't have any problems with numbers, currently. Holy has the unique problem that it is attached to Disc.

yeah that's what they always say(which is false). and that's why holy will always be gutter trash, because it has garbage throughput.

[Dracodraco]

yeah that's what they always say(which is false). and that's why holy will always be gutter trash, because it has garbage throughput.

Clue level rapidly approaching zero.
In it's own, a holy priest is a fine throughput healer. No issues there. The issue arises when you could have that throughput healer be a disc with absorbs instead.

[Darkener]

If you go directly from a raid spamming PWS and being top "healer" to a Dungeon to get your daily bonus you really see the difference between a support healer and the only healer. It's frustrating to lose Renew and Binding Heal, particularly when you want to move the health bar in the opposite direction and all the absorbs in the world are not going to accomplish that. I feel like healing as Disc requires too much babysitting, while you are babysitting one player another is being murdered. If a player steps in doo doo you better have a ton of mana or you're screwed. Absorbs are great, really great, super great, but they have their limitations. I find when Penance is on CD and someone gets low it's a game of casting endless numbers of Flash Heals if the mana is there. Disc is great in raids but I feel it's still way to weak in actual healing, and that is something all healers must be able to do.

[Grumpebear]

Shadow could use some love! It feels almost like the kit doesn't work well with itself atm.