Legendary item sucks for Disc Priest, again.

[Deleted]

Back in the days of MoP:
Remember the legendary healer cloak? It's effect was pretty useless for disc, because your heals almost exclusively were smart heals and the majority of your throughput (absorbs) were not affected. In the end most disc priests went with the damage cloak.

Now in WoD:
Again a huge build up until you can finally get your legendary ring. But then, Déjà-vu, it's effect works fine for all other healers, but has only minimal effect for Disc Priests.



Why does the legendary ring suck for Disc Priests?
-The increased healing/absorb of the empowerment doesn't work with Atonement. But since even Archangel doesn't work with Atonement, this isn't really surprising. RiP Atonement.
-The absorb proc of the legendary ring at the end of the empowerment only counts effective healing and completely ignores all of your absorbs, which is basically all of the "healing" you do, if you know how to play disc.
-Negative interaction with other healers: All damage absorbed during the empowerment prevents other healers from doing effective healing and ulitmately lowers the amount absorbed from the legendary ring's effect after the empowerment ends.
-Disc has no raid cooldowns to push out massive amounts of effective healing, like all other healers do.
-Disc ability to do big amounts of effective healing (aside from penance every 9 sec) is pretty limited in general. Most of the time those "nasty absorbs" get in the way.

What does work with the legendary ring?
-The ring has a 2 min cooldown, same as Power Infusion. But compared to the raid cooldowns that other healers can utilise, this is only a minor perk.
-You can double dip from the empowerment with your normal healing spells. E.g.: If you crit with a healing spell while empowered, the healing will be boosted by XX%, and the absorb by another XX%. But, let's be realistic, you will only utilise this "bug(?)" once if you have Empowered Archangel up and go back to shield spam after that. Probably Blizz will fix it, just to mock disc priests some more.



I know, there are a bunch of people that might say: "You deserve this, that's what you get for stealing our effective healing, I hate disc priests!!111", or something of the sort. But you have to admit, that it's pretty depressing if you can only get a fraction out of the legendary item compared to other healers, just because you play another spec. You had to do the same quests, but you basically didn't get the same reward. Should Disc Priests afk during the empowerent, so your other healers can do more effective healing with their big raid cooldowns, so no absorbs mess with the absorb proc of the ring? Where is the logic in that? I could go on and on about items, talents and spells (e.g. lifeleech, twist of faith) that don't interact with absorbs, but this is probably the first time you can get a disadvantge if you use your absorbs. Didn't they test all this stuff, or do they simply not care? Even the damage dealer ring isn't an option this time, because atonement is dead, your damage is lower than in Mists and you can't activate the ring as a healer.



Possible fix:
Make Disc Priest (and perhaps Paladin) happy and let aborbs count towards the effective healing. It's that simple and a logical solution. The other healers still have their big raid cooldowns that they can use with the ring, anyway.

[Soisoisoi]

You know over-using bold takes away the point of using it? :P


OT: There's not much point doing anything with how Disc is atm anyway, they need to overhaul the spec to make them not revolve around Absorbs so they can make things as useful as they are to other specs.

[Skagasm]

This is an insane complaint. Any other spec in the game would gladly accept receiving a reduced personal benefit from every legendary if it meant they got to spend that time as the undisputed best at their role.

Having some healers benefit less from the ring than others is perfectly fine. It's not like there's a scenario where you'll ever want to pop the ring and then every single throughput healer CD simultaneously anyway. If you really feel like your raid would be better served by you not shielding when the ring is up maybe you've used the ring at the wrong time or maybe you're running with too many healers or maybe you're just being a crazy whiner.

The argument that shielding during the ring reduces the effectiveness of the shield at the end implies that the raid should try and take extra damage during the ring's use so there's more effective healing so there's a bigger shield at the end. It's completely illogical. It's not like 500% of effective healing gets turned into a shield at the end.

Absorbs are so supremely useful that they're basically mandatory. The idea that it's a sin against Disc Priests (and Paladins) that there's a specific and largely meaningless context where their absorbs are slightly less overpowered than normal is absurd.

[Fabio]

Between this, the archy trink for holy (and to a lesser extent disc and shadow) and some uninspiring set bonus, i think the priesr dev duties went to an intern this year.

Unfortunately all this thread will do is degenerate into a bunch of non discs qqing about how this is deserved.

Edit: looks like it only took a couple of posts before the first qq landed lol.

An uninspiring "legendary" is disappointing whether you are top of your respective role or not. If you don't understand that then there's no hope for you. Further the op explains how discs devalue the legendary for other healers too.

[rtzqt]

Honestly, I feel like using the 715 Epic Caster DPS Ring is a throughput increase over the legendary, and I will probably be swapping back to it until i can increase the ilevel of the healer ring to a point where the base stat increase makes it better than the int proc + Mastery + vers on the dps ring. I argued this with my GM (Resto Shaman) and he said that if I use the legendary healer ring it benefits the overall absorb at the end, which helps the raid as a whole, but judging from some of the logs from my attempts, very little of my healing contributed to the final absorb anyway.

Like you said, in MoP I used the DPS Cloak and it was a great (better) alternative to the shitty healing legendary cape, but unfortunately this isn't the case for this expansion.

I don't really understand why Blizzard decided to ignore the proc that was on non-legendary ring, because not every class revolves around lining up cooldowns to match the legendary ring usage. Classes like Windwalkers and Disc are much stronger with a mainstan proc than they are with a 2minute dps cooldown with nothing big to line it up with.

Just using the unbuffed value of my power word shields as an example:
Legendary Healer Ring (735 iLevel, 250 Int) = 64,995
Legendary DPS Ring (735 iLevel, 250 int, 188 Mastery, 130 Versatility) = 66,872
Non-Legendary DPS Ring (715 ilevel, 207 int, 156 Mastery, 108 Versatility) = 66,150

Because the difference between the values of the Legendary Healer Ring versus the Non-Legendary DPS Ring, without even factoring the 15% int proc that has a decently high uptime, I can't really see a viable reason for me to want to use the Legendary Healer Ring.
But I am interested in hearing other Disc Priests' opinions on this matter.

[Ryethe]

You know over-using bold takes away the point of using it? :P


OT: There's not much point doing anything with how Disc is atm anyway, they need to overhaul the spec to make them not revolve around Absorbs so they can make things as useful as they are to other specs.

Yeah but if you just read his bolded points and nothing else it's basically his tl;dr. Pretty effective

[Deleted]

The legendary ring is actually the most powerful on a Discipline Priest.

In WoW there has always been two types of damage patterns for raid damage (this is what you ultimately use the ring for, so we'll ignore tank healing): burst damage > break > burst damage > break as a damage pattern (Iron Reaver, Iskar, normal Gorefiend phase as a few examples) or sustained damage over a long period of time (HHC, feast of souls Gorefiend phase, Socrethar as a few examples). In both scenarios the Discipline Priest using the ring wins. Let me explain why. I'll use Gorefiend as the example because it's the best example of both damage patterns in 1 encounter.

On the normal phase of Gorefiend you take burst damage every so often, and then there is nothing to heal for quite some time. The idea is that you take a massive amount of damage from Surging Shadows + Touch of Doom (x3) hitting at the same time, that Blizzard gives you time to heal those people up because 2 healers are always inside the stomach. Sure, people take damage from chains and may take damage from unkilled Gorebound Essences, but the idea behind the phase is that no raid CDs are required unless you mess up, you simply heal burst before the new burst of damage occurs. If the legendary ring is used here this is what happens:

10 sec before burst > ring is activated > everyone on full life so no ehps can be done from throughput healers > disc spams PWS on everyone > burst occurs > everything, or close to everything, is absorbed > throughput healers heal rest of the damage > ring effect ends > absorb wasted because no more damage is incoming for some time.

This would however be a terrible use of the ring in my honest opinion, but some encounters (Iron Reaver, Iskar, Kilrogg, Xhul'Horac etc) only have this type of damage pattern and so the ring is used primarily in this situation. For throughput healers in this scenario, the ring is largely a waste and difficult to utilise. Throughput healers gain the most from the ring during heavy periods of sustained damage right?

On the feast of souls phase on Gorefiend the raid does take a huge amount of damage over time and generally favours throughput healers. The -optimum- use for someone wanting to rank is to have the ring activated while all the other healers are collecting an unstable soul and the healer not doing so is using all their CDs to maximise their ehps during the 15 duration. However in practice this will never happen: Discs cast 90% of their toolkit on the move, Shamans can continue casting on the move, Druids can continue casting on the move, MWs can have 15-16 players buffed with ReM and have RJW in effect while running out. The reality is this happens:

ring is activated > disc begins spam shielding people > all healers are spamming throughput heals on raid > the shields from disc dwarf any effective throughput healing to be done for some time > ring effect ends > the absorb is split 4 ways (if you're 5 healing) or 3 ways (if you're 4 healing) among the 4 throughput healers, Disc gains very little from the "absorb explosion".

--

It's important to note also, if you're the only throughput healer with the ring in a mythic raid the maximum absorb you will ever do is around 1.3-1.5 million because even if you get that glorious 100% effective tranquility (never happens) or that amazing 100% effective HTT/Revival (never happens) the absorb which happens 15 seconds later is going to be hard pressed to be fully used. 1.3 to 1.5 million absorb as a throughput healer after the ring's effective is what you should expect with no other ring competition. When every healer gets their ring however, that absorb is going to be split multiple ways and ultimately unless you're in a guild which will let you pad and will have every other healer AFK while you do your Incarnation + WG + HOTW + Tranquility spam with the ring activated, largely you're going to be disappointed with the result.

It's actually sad this is the case but ultimately it's not surprising. Discipline, even with it not benefiting from the final explosion, does gain the most from the legendary ring.

[masati]

It's definitely not ideal but I don't really see this hurting disc's effectiveness or position in raids much. 2 workarounds off that occur to me is either using the dps ring like the above poster suggested. Mastery is always nice and unless you need the spirit I don't think it would hurt you too much.

The other idea to to try to make the most of it. Saving empowered archangel PoH + power infusion + cascade could still workout nicely for healing depending on mana and such.

I don't have the legendary ring yet but ill test it once I get it. 32 tomes and just mannoroth left

[chrrie]

Honestly, I feel like using the 715 Epic Caster DPS Ring is a throughput increase over the legendary, and I will probably be swapping back to it until i can increase the ilevel of the healer ring to a point where the base stat increase makes it better than the int proc + Mastery + vers on the dps ring. I argued this with my GM (Resto Shaman) and he said that if I use the legendary healer ring it benefits the overall absorb at the end, which helps the raid as a whole, but judging from some of the logs from my attempts, very little of my healing contributed to the final absorb anyway.

...

Because the difference between the values of the Legendary Healer Ring versus the Non-Legendary DPS Ring, without even factoring the 15% int proc that has a decently high uptime, I can't really see a viable reason for me to want to use the Legendary Healer Ring.
But I am interested in hearing other Disc Priests' opinions on this matter.

Overall I would think a +25% to all healing and absorbs for 15 seconds every 2 minutes is going be a much bigger increase to throughput than the non-legendary DPS ring would give you. It's true we don't contribute much to the absorb unless we Penance and PoH spam, but I would still take this over static mastery and an int buff (which in my logs has between a 15-25% uptime).

[Thirteen]

But you have to admit, that it's pretty depressing if you can only get a fraction out of the legendary item compared to other healers, just because you play another spec.

Yeah but it's equally depressing for other specs to do a fraction of your healing, just because they play non-disc. Works both ways.

[Overdispersion]

Yeah but it's equally depressing for other specs to do a fraction of your healing, just because they play non-disc. Works both ways.

Ahh ye. Disc is soooooo good on the meters.

[Thirteen]

Ahh ye. Disc is soooooo good on the meters.

I'm not sure what you're implying, but if it's that disc is only good on meters, you're wrong. Your disc priest is by far the most important person in your raid, and the backbone of your healing team. Playing without a disc (or a bad one) is deliberately shooting yourself in the foot.

[Rfx]

To be fair, you can't really say it's not expected or even justified. With how the ring works, and how disc works, it's to be expected that you'd never get the same benefit as other specs do. Having said that, it really isn't bad for disc. Disc get's the same 25% increased HPS as it works with absorbs all they lose is the shield effect of the ring which isn't even that good. The absorb is the weak part of the ring. Our 3 non-disc healers have the ring (We pretty much 3 or 4heal everything on mythic at this point) the absorbs the ring provides range from totally irrelevant to here's half a power word: shield. If the ring didn't work off effective healing then you'd have every right to complain but that's not how it works and the ring really isn't bad for disc.

Yes, increasing absorbs done by 25% does mean the ring shield will be lower, and yes that's counter-intuitive but the absorb proc is NOT the main part of the ring.

If you think Barrier is not a raid cooldown you are sorely mistaken.

Whether it's "justified" or not in why the ring works as it does, the larger issue is how the disc spec works and it is obviously not something they would "fix" between tiers or during a tier rather then just reworking the spec/class in the expansion. But to say the ring straight out sucks for disc is just idiotic.

[PosPosPos]

Just using the unbuffed value of my power word shields as an example:
Legendary Healer Ring (735 iLevel, 250 Int) = 64,995
Legendary DPS Ring (735 iLevel, 250 int, 188 Mastery, 130 Versatility) = 66,872
Non-Legendary DPS Ring (715 ilevel, 207 int, 156 Mastery, 108 Versatility) = 66,150

Because the difference between the values of the Legendary Healer Ring versus the Non-Legendary DPS Ring, without even factoring the 15% int proc that has a decently high uptime, I can't really see a viable reason for me to want to use the Legendary Healer Ring.
But I am interested in hearing other Disc Priests' opinions on this matter.

Did it ever occur to you at some point that you obviously can't gauge the throughput value of Haste and Spirit by the base value of your spells?

Goodness gracious people, common sense - Haste reduces cast time/GCD and Spirit increases your time to OoM, it is it painfully evident to anybody with even superficial knowledge on the subject matter that it wouldn't increase your shield base values.

[Overdispersion]

I'm not sure what you're implying, but if it's that disc is only good on meters, you're wrong. Your disc priest is by far the most important person in your raid, and the backbone of your healing team. Playing without a disc (or a bad one) is deliberately shooting yourself in the foot.

Yeah but it's equally depressing for other specs to do a fraction of your healing,


That's literally what you said which is not true unless you're doing lfr or by fractions mean 99/100.

[Deleted]

Yeah but it's equally depressing for other specs to do a fraction of your healing,


That's literally what you said which is not true unless you're doing lfr or by fractions mean 99/100.

When the Disc gets the legendary ring and begins dwarfing every other healer through even bigger margins, what Thirteen said is pretty much true.

[PosPosPos]

When the Disc gets the legendary ring and begins dwarfing every other healer through even bigger margins, what Thirteen said is pretty much true.

Not remotely true on mythic.

Most encounters are dominated by Holy Paladins and Mistweavers on progression. And if you are talking about heroics or lower, then stop overhealing encounters.

[Overdispersion]

When the Disc gets the legendary ring and begins dwarfing every other healer through even bigger margins, what Thirteen said is pretty much true.

Ayyyy. Look at all those fights disc is dwarfing other specs.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/8#metric=hps

[Deleted]

Ayyyy. Look at all those fights disc is dwarfing other specs.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/rankings/8#metric=hps

Not remotely true on mythic.

Most encounters are dominated by Holy Paladins and Mistweavers on progression. And if you are talking about heroics or lower, then stop overhealing encounters.

If you want to take a look at HPS just look at https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8#metric=hps to get an understanding I feel. You are correct, current HPS is dominated by MWs, then Paladins, then Discipline. That's not really surprising in my opinion: MW HPS is completely nuts this tier, a lot of the fights are friendly towards MWs/Paladins, but would you ever sit your Disc Priest in favour of a MW? I don't think you would. The healing and niche provided by Discipline is too strong to warrant them ever losing a raid spot. And yes, the legendary ring will make the healing numbers shift dramatically in the coming weeks. The thread though is about the legendary ring "being bad" for Discipline when in reality it's strongest on a Discipline Priest.

[PosPosPos]

If you want to take a look at HPS just look at https://www.warcraftlogs.com/statistics/8#metric=hps to get an understanding I feel.

Mistweavers are topping HPS, unsurprisingly, but would you ever sit your Disc Priest in favour of a MW? I don't think you would. The healing and niche provided by Discipline is too strong to warrant them ever losing a raid spot. And yes, the legendary ring will make that number shift dramatically in the coming weeks. The thread though is about the legendary ring "being bad" for Discipline when in reality it's strongest on a Discipline Priest.

That's not the point being contested, so kindly stop the strawman argument.

The point was that Disc is not dwarfing other specs in output like you and Thirteen claimed.

Next, if you want the legendary ring accounted for, just put the range to 1 week - lots of players in mythic level guilds have gotten their ring already, and then compare it to previous weeks. You would easily notice that disc has been steadily dropping on the rankings the more rings there are in raid.

It's a no-brainer the ring isn't as good for disc as it is for throughput healers in general.

- - - Updated - - -

I see 6.2 hasn't changed much for resto shamans lol

Not a lot of blue on those lists...

It's just that Mistweavers have officially subverted Shamans on their stacked niche, combined with how strong their 4pc is.