Disc and the meters

[Nalnik]

I was wondering this the other day myself.

How should absorbs be counted?

I use Skada, but does that only guess at the total that can be absorbed, or is it a actually absorbed total taken from the Combat Log by the addon?

On the one hand, it's not actually healing done, but on the other, it's damage that would be taken that isn't, effectively making it an instant smart heal with no overhealing portion to the absorbed amount.

So, should it just be added to the Total Healing?

[Galueru]

I was wondering this the other day myself.

How should absorbs be counted?

Personally, I like to think of it as just "Mitigation".

[harky]

Meters do matter for healers and Disc is no exception. They're not all that matters, but they're not all that matters as DPS either. Meters are often more important as a healer than as DPS because healers need to gather more information to see if they're doing well. DPS simply need to see how much damage they're doing, which targets they're doing it to and with what abilities. Healers need to consider incoming damage, outgoing heals, death reports, dispels and so on. As much as people may not like it you really can look at a meter on heals and see someones skill level and effectiveness. There are class imbalances to look at, sure, but for the most part if someone is putting out more healing than you they're probably better than you are. They're also a great way to figure out if you have too many healers.

Some issues to keep in mind as Disc though:
1. There is currently no way to get a perfect readout of the worth of your shields. You need to understand the fight and its mechanics to be able to properly analyze if a Discipline Priest is effective.
2. Different parsing sources and meters make different assumptions to how your shields are working. None are completely accurate and all give conflicting reports.
3. The worth of absorbs is not the same as the worth of healing is every situation.


The first issue is something that we can't get around yet. The combat log itself does not allow for a proper parse. Blizzard has noted that they plan to fix this in the future, but for now there's nothing we can do. You have to objectively look at fight mechanics to see just how much of your absorbs were actually used. This is one of the major sources of bad Discipline Priests. The reason is that someone who doesn't understand a fight will look at someone who is blanketing the raid with shields and regardless of the fight they will look good. Parses don't allow for it to not look good. It will never look great, but you'll be able to put out consistently high numbers.

The second problem does complicate this though and leads to a bit of a divide. Skada, Recount GA, WoL and WMO all make different adjustments to assume how much you might have absorbed. Going back to issue #1 though... it's all just an assumption. There is no way to get it 100% accurate. The combat log simply does not support it. So when one person posts Skada reports doing 5k combined absorbs/heals and then another posts recount showing absorbs at 4k and heals at 2k the numbers simply will not match up. This is usually when someone steps up to say that meters don't matter anyway for healers, or that no one died, or just misses the point entirely.

The third is the biggest problem though. There is a growing percentage of the Priest community that believes that absorbs are flat out superior to heals. This is wrong. Very, very wrong. There are only three things which make absorbs superior to heals. First is if the absorbed amount directly prevents the target from dying from full health, or at a time when healing was not possible. Second is if a target is at full health and takes damage that is equal to or less than the total absorb amount. Third is if a fight specific mechanic can be dampened by shields.

In the first case you have the typical argument for shields and the Priest is literally saving a life by preventing damage that would have been fatal otherwise. The second is because if a target takes damage then they will eventually need healing, so absorbs given to players who are not topped off are worse than direct heals in general and equal at best. The third is simply for things which can be nullified with shields. Things like Lich King where a spell can be prevented from doing its full potential damage, or Anub'arak where you can dampen his self-heals, or several other encounters with bugs such as the original Saurfang in which shields prevented Blood Power gains. Outside of those cases healing is either superior, or equal to absorbs. Meters do need to be taken with a grain of salt, especially as Discipline, but ignoring them is foolish. Ignoring them leads to people raid shielding on fights that raid shielding sucks on. So does putting too much faith in them.

[Minia]

Skada counts absorbs from the combat log in my experience. Actual damage taken. You can test it by shielding on a fight where raid shielding is useless and see how low you are on skada.

[Bigslick]

Skada counts absorbs from the combat log in my experience. Actual damage taken. You can test it by shielding on a fight where raid shielding is useless and see how low you are on skada.

Skada, Recount, WoL, WMO, WWS, and any other meter / log parser out there all use the same combat log. It's not like one is magically extracting different information. The problem with the combat log is that it does not accurately assign credit for a given absorbed amount to a given absorb mechanic. If it says "Joetank is hit for 5608 Fire damage (5608 absorbed)" no program will be able to determine an accurate breakdown of how much of that might have been PWS, DA, sacred shield, valy'nar proc, savage defense, etc.

They're all just estimates. I'm not certain, but I think I remember reading that most of the parsers look to the most recent absorb affect applied (?)

[Myrrar]

If you are worried about it for yourself, know that you chose to be a disc priest and that you know you are doing your job.

If you are worried about it because your RL is saying your healing is too low tell him he's terrible and nees to learn how each class and spec works before he tries running a raid.

[TiduZ]

just use skada and upload your guilds parses to wmo/wol.

[Kaffeefilter]

thanks for the response, everyone.
just to clarify: i jerk of to meters. I used to be a damage dealer. Then i played restoshaman from Sunwell raids (prenerf) up to now. People form BC will know what im talking about. Resto shamans + stacking haste was just unbeatable back then. So when wotlk hit, all other healing classes pretty much pwn the shaman in the healing meters.
To get to the point: I switched to a priest to be on top again. But playing holy made me realize, that disc is way more fun. The downside is: It doesnt show up in the meters and i have once again nothing to jerk of about....

btw im just kidding, i have a (real) girl. i dont literaly jerk of to meters.

thanks

[kaloryth]

thanks for the response, everyone.
just to clarify: i jerk of to meters. I used to be a damage dealer. Then i played restoshaman from Sunwell raids (prenerf) up to now. People form BC will know what im talking about. Resto shamans + stacking haste was just unbeatable back then. So when wotlk hit, all other healing classes pretty much pwn the shaman in the healing meters.
To get to the point: I switched to a priest to be on top again. But playing holy made me realize, that disc is way more fun. The downside is: It doesnt show up in the meters and i have once again nothing to jerk of about....

btw im just kidding, i have a (real) girl. i dont literaly jerk of to meters.

thanks

Whenever I feel the need to be meter-whorey while playing Disc, I try to beat the next lowest person on the meters as disc.

[G l o w y r m]

*INC standard long ass Glowyrm post... Don't let that dissuade you from reading OP, lol*

Hey fellas,
myself and many others (i think) are dissapointed for damage absorbed by shields is not showing up in tools like recount etc. I cant imagine it to be such a big issue to implement, so it finally shows up and im not beeing blamed for heal less then holy specs. I think of it like combining healing done and damage absorbed by X.
Much like damage of pets and players can be displayed combined.

any thoughts ?

What kind of thoughts are you looking for? If the people you raid with really give you any grief about not healing as much as the other healers, they DO NOT UNDERSTAND THE DISCIPLINE SPEC AND IT'S BENEFITS. Seriously, tell them to go do a little bit of research, tell them to watch the world first kill videos released by top guilds in which you'll see a Discipline Priest in the raid much of the time.

The meters are not a definitive measure of contribution to the raid either. They only work best when you look at them in the context of every circumstance that was present while the data was recorded, which 90% of player do not do (I have a feeling many players wouldn't even understand what I meant by that either lol).

Discipline would be pretty high on the meters if there was a section called "Lives Saved / Wipes Prevented"...lol. Can't tell you how many times a clutch PW:S from my end on a Vampire about to die during air phase in Heroic 25 BQL saved the day. Really, losing a Vampire in that fight on Heroic can ruin the attempt.

Now for the the reason that it's hard to track absorbs. It's because of the way they work in the combat log. It comes down to the way Blizzard coded absorbs. The game doesn't really say who the absorbs belong to like the way you see "Joe was healed for 100 by Mike's Flash Heal", you just see "Joe was hit for 500 (Absorbed: 500)", the game doesn't follow who the absorb "belonged" to. So it's all very technical and I hope Blizzard is reworking the coding for this stuff come Cataclysm.

The way absorbs are tracked now by Recount plugins like RecountGuessedAbsorbs, which I suggest you download, are done by pretty much what that addon says, "guessing". They are OK at guessing who the absorbs belong to but they can mix them up sometimes and it may give credit to a Paladin for your PW:S or it might give you credit for the Paladin's Sacred Shield. Also, they can't track shields that were not fully absorbed. If you cast PW:S on someone but it wears off and only 20% of the shield gets used, you still get credit for a full PW:S absorption.

So, because of those 3 reasons, it's not entirely accurate, but it gives you a very decent idea of how much your shields and Divine Aegis helped out the raid. I usually try to take mental note during an encounter of how many shields I put out that don't get fully absorbed. I do this in a general way, and on some fights I might be think around 95% of my shields got fully used, on other fights I might think around 50% of my shields got fully used. So depending on which way I think it went, I'll subtract a decent amount in proportion to what I thought got used/didn't get used from what the RecountGuessedAbsorbs plugin says I absorbed. If I think 2/3 of my shields were fully used on a fight, and it says I absorbed 500k with PW:S, I might subtract 150k from that and say, "OK that's probably how much I really did." Even when I do that, I'm usually very high on the meters and the out of game log sites like World of Logs.

Speaking of World of Logs, sign up, learn how to use it, and put up some logs of your runs. If anyone during a run said something to you about being a crappy healer based purely off the meters, show them the log on the WoL site and they should shut up next time, or at least realize a Discipline Priests benefits don't lie in HPS.