Caught out by the Rapture - a bug story

[Azyoulike]

Something of a long post here, so apologies in advance. I've been musing about one of Disc's signature talents and contemplating it's myriad failings.

• Rapture: don't believe the (anti)-hype
  The first big issue with Rapture is that people actually make the mistake of believing the tooltip. Poor neophyte disco priests think that there is a 12 second CD that actually reliably cools you down to one proc every 12 seconds. Silly rabbits. Experienced priests of course, know that it's more complicated - but blizz can't fix the tooltip because the way it actually works is so ridiculous.
• Rapture bug: can't fix, won't fix
  This leads to the second issue, priests are actually somewhat dependent on that bug. On fights where we can't exploit it we either can't shield spam so much or have to switch in regen trinkets. If blizz were to fix rapture they'd probably have to buff our single target HPS, that would leave us OP in PvP. It's a huge cascade of unintended consequences that results in Blizz letting the Status continue to Quo.
• The Rapture Enigma: why does more SP mean less regen?
  The rapture bug is a fickle mistress. Today the shields you're happily spamming on an encounter all break together returning huge mana. Next week you have a new weapon and your shields are just that little bit too big. Rapture is the only mechanic in WoW where too much SP from gear will oom you, and do so aggressively.
• Modelling Rapture: look at the code ye mighty and despair
  Disc priests are the hardest healers to model, without doubt. Even if rapture was fixed we'd still be the most mysterious and unquantifiable of healers, but at least our mana situation would be somewhat predictable. This isn't a huge issue, but it's what got me thinking about this in the first place.

So in the face of all this, the logical change would just be to scrap the 12 second CD. Lets examine the reasons why not to do just that

• Disc would be OP in PvE with that extra mana:
  This is prima facie ridiculous. We already get that extra mana on the fights where shield spam is most OP. This would just give us a certain degree of consistency. Besides disc doesn't have an effective way of turning mana into OP throughput. It's quite effectively limited by CDs & scaling & stacking in PvE.
  
• Disc would be OP in PvP with that extra mana:
  This is harder to dismiss. To be on the safe side we should fix the issue in a way that will entail a cost pvpers would consider greater than the benefit.

My Solution:

The glyph of rapture. Removes the 12 second CD. PvErs would be quite happy swapping it for glyph of FH when they're primarily raid-shielding. PvPers would be unlikely to prefer it to any of their existing choices, certainly not in 2s or 3s where disco is strongest.

It would also give disco an actual choice of glyphs, which is currently pretty limited for PvE.

Let the ripping apart begin!

[harky]

That was actually pretty short. I don't believe this is an issue. The 'bug' isn't specific to rapture and is tied to the way WoW servers and clients interact. That is simultaneous mutually exclusive actions.

You throw out 5 shields.
An attack occurs which hits all five targets at the exact same time for enough damage to destroy the shields.
Those player's clients send the server information.
The server returns mana to the Priest.
The Priest's client sends information that Rapture has procced.
The server stops returning mana.
Too late all your mana are belong to us!

Two mages duel.
They both cast sheep at the exact same time.
The server receives the casts and CCs both Mages.
Both Mages recieve a client side error that they can't cast that right now.


If this were an actual problem facing Disc it would require either a client/server overhaul (ouch), or a remodeling of Rapture. That said, it isn't a problem. Disc doesn't have mana problems even with the somewhat inconsistent returns based on spellpower, tank avoidance, boss damage, etc. As Disc is by far the most stable healer in terms of regen I don't see why Blizz would wnt to waste time fixing something that has no real impact.

[Azyoulike]

If this were an actual problem facing Disc it would require either a client/server overhaul (ouch), or a remodeling of Rapture. That said, it isn't a problem. Disc doesn't have mana problems even with the somewhat inconsistent returns based on spellpower, tank avoidance, boss damage, etc. As Disc is by far the most stable healer in terms of regen I don't see why Blizz would wnt to waste time fixing something that has no real impact.

I think the impact is there, how can it not be? If I'm spamming 10 shields every 15 seconds and they're being consumed simultaneously, then I'll regen upwards of 7k mana. If they're being consumed piecemeal I'll get 700. Particularly in 10s where you may not get a full set of mana buffs that can be very annoying - particularly as disc depends on not needing to gear for regen as we don't get our throughput for free.

Besides it's just so inelegant right now.