[Disc] 7.2 PTR Changes

[Iatros]

English is not my first language, so I apologize if its hard to read.


I did a spreadshit to compare how its ramp up > burst >ramp down on 7.2 and how it would be with this 7.2.5 PTR patch.

7.2 - low mana ramp up
Ramp up: 15s (8sec casting + 7 sec instant)
Mana: 391k
4s burst: 2sec with 19 ato + 1sec with 18 ato + 1sec with 17ato
Ramp Down: 7sec until u reach 7ato


7.2 - High mana/innervte ram up:
Ramp up: 14sec (12sec casting + 2sec instant)
Mana: 473k or 115k with innervate
4sec Burst: (3sec with 20 ato + 1sec with 19)
RAmp Down: 6sec until u reach 7



7.2.5 - Consuming 2 PWR charges
Ramp up: 12sec (4sec casting + 8sec instant)
Mana: 320k or 44k with innervate
4sec Burst: 4sec with 18ato
Ramp down: 1sec until u reach 7ato


upload photo

My thoughs:

The setup to burst heal will cost +-20% less mana, u will have more mobility, but u will have only 18 atonements on the burst, and one sec after, u wil be back to ur low ato phase (<7 ato)

We will have less flexibility on what burst we r covering because we will have to wait 30sec to get 2 charges again. And we wil not have the choice to burn mana to keep our low atonement phases between AoE spikes without spaming plea.
And will be harder to have 10s with high atonements to propely use Shadowfiend/mindbender (i think thats is the worst downside with this changes)

On the setup with a 4sec burst window following by ramp down period, considering a single spike AoE dmg (like Krosus), the lower duration of the new radiance its no a big deal, because the ramp down phase just overheal
But during fight/phases where u have a more consistant AoE dmg, its a very big nerf. From my calculations, the new ramp up - Burst - Rampdown has only 62,3% potential healing compared to the 7.2 live build.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=0By...1BTS09EMS1KSkE
*i used 11k haste reference so PWS CD is around 6sec, PWR cast around 2sec and global around 1sec


What do guys think about it?

**Its from 7.2 to 7.25, not from 7.1.5 to 7.2.... my bad

[Yunzi]

This is a buff to Shadow Covenant, since we now have no ability to respond quickly to raid damage when PWR is on cooldown. Our choices become Plea-spamming during which time other healers top everyone off or Rapturing, similarly way too slow.

Something else we should think about is how mana-restricted we now are, since extra PWRs are always the way we spend extra mana. Now there's a hard limit on how many PWRs we can cast, and without Shadow Covenant there's no other high-mana spell in our toolkit. As someone else already noted, this also raises the value of Shadow Mend, since the mana difference between Plea (2%) and Shadow Mend (2.8%) is now so narrow, with Shadow Mend doing a lot more direct healing.

The increased mana cost of Plea combined with the 11% throughput boost and half mana reduction of Smite is enough that it doesn't seem as if we'll maintain a high number of atonements throughout the fight. We can't use the "5+ atonements" rule blindly, as there becomes a real tradeoff between Smiting and Pleaing.

This also raises the value considerably of the Smite legendary belt.

[lifebinderx]

Thank u for doing somethinh usefull instead of crying. I believe disc will be more dps oriented now when no damage spikes exist since it is not ideal to try to keep 5+ attonement rule. I wonder how the stat values will be like

[Iatros]

This is a buff to Shadow Covenant, since we now have no ability to respond quickly to raid damage when PWR is on cooldown. Our choices become Plea-spamming during which time other healers top everyone off or Rapturing, similarly way too slow.

Something else we should think about is how mana-restricted we now are, since extra PWRs are always the way we spend extra mana. Now there's a hard limit on how many PWRs we can cast, and without Shadow Covenant there's no other high-mana spell in our toolkit. As someone else already noted, this also raises the value of Shadow Mend, since the mana difference between Plea (2%) and Shadow Mend (2.8%) is now so narrow, with Shadow Mend doing a lot more direct healing.

The increased mana cost of Plea combined with the 11% throughput boost and half mana reduction of Smite is enough that it doesn't seem as if we'll maintain a high number of atonements throughout the fight. We can't use the "5+ atonements" rule blindly, as there becomes a real tradeoff between Smiting and Pleaing.

This also raises the value considerably of the Smite legendary belt.

I dont belive that shadow convenant is viable. Either u focus on keep atonements on tanks and work on dps between the burst setups, or just go holy to heal a fight that isthe setup is not good. At least, that is what i am planning on doing.

[Saiyoran]

Rather than this just changing the throughput amount of the current playstyle, I'm hoping that this makes the whole "burst phase" playstyle much less emphasized in general, so we can do more shadow mending/smiting.

[Geschan]

The thing is, the burst style is just simply to good at what it does.
Healing the whole raid basically from dead to full hp every 90 seconds is an insane amount of heal.
Thanks to that discipline has to be more or less useless in between.

If Blizzard properly number tunes the new design, discipline should end up more flexible with it's healing and less dependent on external mana cooldowns.
Additionally the new design might help discipline's performance in 5 man dungeons where Light's Wrath is a lot weaker.

[Nurasu]

Rather than this just changing the throughput amount of the current playstyle, I'm hoping that this makes the whole "burst phase" playstyle much less emphasized in general, so we can do more shadow mending/smiting.

The problem is that outside of this burst-style, the mechanics aren't viable. They weren't on the drawing board, they weren't in alpha, they won't be now. There is no triage setting so all we're getting here is nerfed. We need more flexibility with Radiance I think, not less. It'll be interesting to see what its final iteration will be with the charges.

[Iatros]

upload photo

Thats the graph of the atonement setup
u can visually see how the healing potential is lower by looking at the área for the graph between the curves, the healing potential of the 7.2.5 burst is only 62,3% of the high mana of 7.2

On the setup with a 4sec burst window following by ramp down period, considering a single spike AoE dmg (like Krosus), the lower duration of the new radiance its no a big deal, because the ramp down phase just overheal
But during fight/phases where u have a more consistant AoE dmg, its a very biug nerf. From my calculations, the new ramp up - Burst - Rampdown has only 62,3% potential healing compared to the 7.2 live build.

[Memento1]

Hey Iatros, I REALLY appreciate you putting this together. I wanted to do something similar but kept being daunted by the amount of work. I cannot say how much I appreciate you doing all that.

However as I examined it, some things seemed off, and I found them. First off, you give the first plea in your low-mana 7.2 a cost as if you had zero atonements out, but you have 1 already from the shield, so I simply pushed all the plea costs up by one. Minor detail. Another minor detail - with 11k haste the global is around 1.16 seconds. This pushes early plea/shield atonements to fall off a little earlier in the burst cycle, but not affect too much else. But the big one is you calculate the atonement durations wrong, specifically of radiance. On Plea and Shield, the atonement is applied as you cast the spell and immediately ticks down. With Radiance, the atonement doesn't start until AFTER the cast finishes. You were marking it as if the countdown started when you started the cast, but it's at the end. That took 2 seconds off every radiance atonement in the whole chart.

So I redid it correctly calculating radiance atonements. I ALSO was interested in a 7.2.5 chart that had a full 20 atonements and ended with radiance casts (as their atonements will last the shortest), and added that as a pink line on the graph.

I hope someone else can double-check my math here, as I did it all by hand, but I think this is correct: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8...m0zcVd1clJBWWc

To reduce the clutter, Sheet 2 has only the two 20-atonement options. Sheet 3 has someone else's rotation for a 17 atonement high.

[MendUS]

This is a buff to Shadow Covenant

Nope.

If anything it's a buff to Grace, since Plea / SMend / PW:S benefit from it directly and these are going to be used more frequently now, but that remains to be seen.

[Serpicoxl]

It also promotes the use of shadow mend more ofte, without buffing it at all. That really says it all if you wonder if we are being buffed or nerfed.

[Kraide]

Nope.

If anything it's a buff to Grace, since Plea / SMend / PW:S benefit from it directly and these are going to be used more frequently now, but that remains to be seen.

I might argue "yes" to both he and yourself.

There's something about the set bonuses (note they are careful to buff spells we would use even if we were not using atonement at all: PW:S and Penance), as well as changes like the baked in The Penitent and moved tier for Shadow Covenant that, all put together, seems to strongly hint that Blizz is strongly altering their strat for Disc and may not be sharing the plan.

Note that the toolkit suddenly becomes a lot more balanced when you can use Penitant and Castigation together (for much stronger penance direct healing) and now can push "shadow healing" with SM and SC both with grace to have fairly decent single target and AoE heals without doing any damage at all.

The last thing to look out for is if mastery is "rebalanced" to something else that "appears" to help whether you deal damage or not... or if there's another change where mastery affects something else (like "Grace revamped: increases your non-Atonement healing and absorbtion by a percentage equal to your mastery on targets with atonement.) If so, it'll probably be clear that's the direction Blizz is taking.

[Popokolara]

I might argue "yes" to both he and yourself.

There's something about the set bonuses (note they are careful to buff spells we would use even if we were not using atonement at all: PW:S and Penance), as well as changes like the baked in The Penitent and moved tier for Shadow Covenant that, all put together, seems to strongly hint that Blizz is strongly altering their strat for Disc and may not be sharing the plan.

Note that the toolkit suddenly becomes a lot more balanced when you can use Penitant and Castigation together (for much stronger penance direct healing) and now can push "shadow healing" with SM and SC both with grace to have fairly decent single target and AoE heals without doing any damage at all.

The last thing to look out for is if mastery is "rebalanced" to something else that "appears" to help whether you deal damage or not... or if there's another change where mastery affects something else (like "Grace revamped: increases your non-Atonement healing and absorbtion by a percentage equal to your mastery on targets with atonement.) If so, it'll probably be clear that's the direction Blizz is taking.

Why do you believe shadow healing is being promoted? ST healing atm is more than decent, its just not as efficient as the godlike efficient wise atonement blanket. Shadow covenant hps and mana efficiency is and always has ben terrible, and it can create risks for the raid.

They explained their reasoning and the changes themselves are serving a very specific purpose right now, the only thing that doesnt make sense is their twisted idea of "limiting" the spec into atonement blanket gameplay, when all specs are limited to 1 optimal strategy and i believe its just PR damage control for disc getting out of hand - because what they say doesnt align with what they are doing most of the time.

For atonement to stop being the only way to roll, they need to redesign it as a mechanic and not play around with the small fish.

[Supliftz]

Shadow covenant gained 50% sp per person from live. It is still bad, but now it is up against PI, which makes it even worse.

That said, it's more than fine in 5 mans. That's where it excels in 7.2.5.

[Numiro]

On the setup with a 4sec burst window following by ramp down period, considering a single spike AoE dmg (like Krosus), the lower duration of the new radiance its no a big deal, because the ramp down phase just overheal
But during fight/phases where u have a more consistant AoE dmg, its a very biug nerf. From my calculations, the new ramp up - Burst - Rampdown has only 62,3% potential healing compared to the 7.2 live build.

I think you're forgetting the new talent Evangelism, increases atonement duration by 8 seconds every minute, so that'll push that entire curve on for longer, instead of dropping of at 16 seconds, it'd drop of at 24, meaning the healing potential would be bigger. It'd also mean you don't have to pwr twice for the next burst if it's within 30 seconds.

The "buffs" people are trying to push on Shadow Mend, Shadow Covenant, Grace etc, are non existent, because you don't have the globals nor the mana to heal individual targets during a burst phase, and if you're healing through a non burst phase, you should probably be holy.

[Iatros]

I think you're forgetting the new talent Evangelism, increases atonement duration by 8 seconds every minute, so that'll push that entire curve on for longer, instead of dropping of at 16 seconds, it'd drop of at 24, meaning the healing potential would be bigger. It'd also mean you don't have to pwr twice for the next burst if it's within 30 seconds.

The "buffs" people are trying to push on Shadow Mend, Shadow Covenant, Grace etc, are non existent, because you don't have the globals nor the mana to heal individual targets during a burst phase, and if you're healing through a non burst phase, you should probably be holy.

I did not forgot evangelism, i did this b4 they implemented evangelism.

[Kraide]

Shadow covenant gained 50% sp per person from live. It is still bad, but now it is up against PI, which makes it even worse.

That said, it's more than fine in 5 mans. That's where it excels in 7.2.5.

As of the new build, it is not up against PI, but up against Sanctuary and Clarity of Will. Purge the Wicked is up against Divine Star and Halo, and Power Infusion is moved to 100, against Evangelism and Grace.

All in all, it's probably a significantly more balanced tree, choice-wise.

[Zhaelan]

I don't know if it is a tooltip error or not but I'm seeing power word: radiance charge cd go up to 18 secs to make up for contrition >.>

Edit: Just got off the ptr and in addition to radiance going to 18 secs contrition is gone, so back to 15 secs atonements and radiance applies a 9 sec duration atonement.

[Atharaxie]

Working as intended. Contrition went baseline then gone. Radiance went from 50% ato duration to 60% so 9s.
And now radiance recharge time is 18s.

[Supliftz]

As of the new build, it is not up against PI, but up against Sanctuary and Clarity of Will. Purge the Wicked is up against Divine Star and Halo, and Power Infusion is moved to 100, against Evangelism and Grace.

All in all, it's probably a significantly more balanced tree, choice-wise.

tbh I wouldn't call a tier where there's 1 hps increase, and 2 hps losses a "balanced" tier.