Priest PW: Shield gimped?

[Deleted]

You need a minimum of seven casts to be guaranteed a crit, purely mathematically. Though crits are as you said random, with 15% crit you'd most likely only need 4-5. So I have no idea where your numbers come from...

Formula is :

(1-p)^n<=1-x
lg (1-p)^n <= lg (1-x)
n*lg(1-p) <= lg(1-x)
n >= lg(1-x)/lg(1-x)

You need to heal at least 10 times to score 1 crit with a probabilty of 80% and up.

Since english is not my native language and probability theory and math is pretty complex i cant really explain well how you need to do the maths.

[Azyoulike]

Well that's not necessarily the correct comparison, either. The only reason that comparison works now is because of aura damage, which should never have happened in the first place. Shields fill the role of Flash Heal closer, in that they're the instant "omg don't die" thing, when it comes to raid healing.

Not in the new huge HP pool environment. In that context most of the time shields will be competing against HoTs, and HoTs will be overhealing far less as the zone of 'damaged but not one-shottable' has been enormously increased.

Or preventing large spike damage.

See huge HP pool above. Shields can no longer meaningfully moderate spike damage. Well not unless they become enormous.

Whether or not it can kill someone independently is irrelevant, because from what we've seen, large spike damage can trigger side by side with something else that can kill you.

I refer once again to the huge HP pools (sense a pattern here?).

Shields have their place, and yes they could be beefed up a little bit. But they don't need to outpace Renew to do so, when they both fill different roles, for different reasons.

They fill extremely similar roles, and always have. Shields are like HoTs in one regime, and like instant heals such as Holy Shock in the other extremum. Their non-scaling with crit & haste meant that they were sized far more like hots than like instants, though they were always somewhat smaller than hots because of their superior behaviour in the 'imminent death' zone.
Now hots are scaling with haste/crit, and this means that either blizz will have to frig PW:Ss numbers every patch, or they need to think again how to balance it.

I'm not saying that Disc's PW:S should be bigger than renew for holy - I'm saying it should be bigger or at least equal to Renew for disc, and right now it looks like it won't be.

---------- Post added 2010-09-12 at 02:51 AM ----------

You need to heal at least 10 times to score 1 crit with a probabilty of 80% and up.

Is almost true, so close and yet so far. Actually what you have found is that after 10 casts you have a 20% chance of 0 crits. You should have said an 80% chance of AT LEAST one crit. That is NOT the same thing as saying:

... at 15% crit about every 10th heal crits and triggers DA

Which is patently false. You have neglected that you have non-zero chance of 2 crits, 3 crits etc. If you factored all those in you'd see that yes, on average at 15% crit-rate you have one crit every 6.666 casts.

[Kelesti]

Massive health pools on their own would preclude the need for ever using Flash Heal, ever. Or Flash of Light, Regrowth, Swiftmend, or Healing Surge. The fact is, we are expected to weave this in, as needed.

What we've been told thus far is people will be taking hits and sometimes need more than one heal (or healer) to bring them back up before they die. Massive Health Pools or not, preventative healing has an edge.

The problem itself doesn't lie in Shield alone, just as a Druid's isn't Rejuv alone. Shield does need buffs, but there needs to be something else for the spec to clutch onto.

[Ananan]

Sure, you need 10 casts to ensure a decent chance of a single crit, but that doesn't mean that the average crit-frequency won't be 1/0.15. Cast a couple thousand heals and about 1 in 6.67 of them will crit. That's clearly the number you were after Nocturna, when you said that "every 15 heals which summ up to 135k points healed you put a mastery boosted 3,24k bubble DA around that person".

[Deleted]

Formula is :

(1-p)^n<=1-x
lg (1-p)^n <= lg (1-x)
n*lg(1-p) <= lg(1-x)
n >= lg(1-x)/lg(1-x)

You need to heal at least 10 times to score 1 crit with a probabilty of 80% and up.

Since english is not my native language and probability theory and math is pretty complex i cant really explain well how you need to do the maths.

To make this a little bit easier for everyone else to understand:

The chance that you DON'T crit with one cast is 85%.
The chance that you DON'T crit with 10 cast in a row is therefore 0.85^10 = 0,197, which is equal to 19,7%.
And that means: The chance to crit at least once with 10 casts in a row is 100% - 19,7% = 80,3%.

Seven cast do NOT guarantee a crit, you will get a crit out of 7 casts ON AVARAGE.

And from there on it depends on what you are looking for:
If you look for the avarage effect, the 7 (or more exactly 6.67 casts) are perfect.
If you look for how consistent you can kick off the effect a '10 casts provide a 80% chance' is also ok.

[Azyoulike]

Massive health pools on their own would preclude the need for ever using Flash Heal, ever. Or Flash of Light, Regrowth, Swiftmend, or Healing Surge. The fact is, we are expected to weave this in, as needed.

Sure - but these are intended to be very situational spells, as their mana-costs demonstrate. That PW:S will be useful in that situation, even if mostly as a way to power up penance is true, but isn't enough.
PW:S is clearly meant to be the backbone of the spec.

Consider this - right now you believe that Holy is as good as Disc as a healer. You've made this statement many times, and broadly I agree with you.

Going into Cata, we see Renew & PW:S both getting nerfed heavily but with Renew getting a huge scaling buff. We see Holy getting stronger single target heals than Disc (Penance excepted). We see Holy keeping advantage on multi-target heals.

Disc gets 10% extra Int than holy so apparently more mana, Holy gets 20% extra regen, so not so much.

Right now the two trees aren't even remotely in sync in terms of power, but what is more worrying is that Disc is left with these horribly clunky mechanisms which were bearable when PW:S was the go-to spell but will not be as it becomes highly situational.

What we've been told thus far is people will be taking hits and sometimes need more than one heal (or healer) to bring them back up before they die. Massive Health Pools or not, preventative healing has an edge.

A tiny edge, when the shield is 10% of the HP pool not 30%. If you graph the advantages of Shields versus HoTs, they are better at very low HP where they can prevent a death on their own, they are better at max HP where there is expected future incoming damage, they are no better than equal in the middle.

The problem itself doesn't lie in Shield alone, just as a Druid's isn't Rejuv alone. Shield does need buffs, but there needs to be something else for the spec to clutch onto.

Improved PW:Sx2, Soul Wardingx3, Renewed Hopex2, Rapturex3, Borrowed Timex3, Strength of Soulx2

15 PvE talent points just for one spell. I'm fine having other buttons to press, but those other buttons will need some talent support, and they don't.

[Kelesti]

15 PvE talent points just for one spell. I'm fine having other buttons to press, but those other buttons will need some talent support, and they don't.

While some of those also support other heals, this is the biggest problem. There are too many talents buffing Shield (either just Shield, or "Shield and something else"), and not enough supporting others, to justify moving between them.

The problems largely lie in what other things can we give Discipline that:
A) Won't feel like Holy-lite
B) Still keep the core concept of the tree
C) Can be balanced around
D) And aren't 1 (or 2) button spam fests.

I agree the Tree needs some work, but where do we put it that isn't propping up Power Word: Shield to the point you don't even bother looking to secondary spells again?

[Azyoulike]

While some of those also support other heals,

Only the two points in renewed hope have any purpose if you aren't casting PW:S. The other 13 are completely tied to PW:S.

The problems largely lie in what other things can we give Discipline that:
A) Won't feel like Holy-lite
B) Still keep the core concept of the tree
C) Can be balanced around
D) And aren't 1 (or 2) button spam fests.

I'm not really sure that there is a viable core-concept for disc anymore. Absorption/prevention simply isn't sufficiently different from healing in the new regime. Being tied to it just means that we will have horribly gimped scaling.

Leaving that aside we need the structural problems fixed. Inspiration should be a first tier talent, it would actually fit disc better than holy - but it shouldn't be 2nd tier either way. Heal/GHeal/FHeal should be roughly equivalent between the two specs.

Grace needs to hurt less when we move it. One option would be to bring forward the CD on Penance by a few seconds whenever we dump a grace stack.

I agree the Tree needs some work, but where do we put it that isn't propping up Power Word: Shield to the point you don't even bother looking to secondary spells again?

My first concern is that the spec should be viable. I'm unconvinced that spamming Heal 50% of the time is much more interesting than spamming PW:S 50% of the time. The current numbers are so far out of whack between holy & disc it's not even funny. This is odd, because it should be easy for them to keep them in reasonable sync - far easier than two different classes.

[n1]

They should just change divine aegis to apply to all heals... change it to 20% or so. Having the total amount healed+absorbed be similar to holy spells straight heal. I would roll a priest just to have fun with that.

[Alraml]

Been having a look at the tree on the PTR today I can see 2 talents that need to improved or rolled into one talent:

- Improved Power Word Shield 2/2 = Increases the absorbtion of Power Word:Shield by 5/10%
- Soul Warding 3/3 = Reduces the CD of Power Word Shield by 1/2/3

I don't know why they haven't rolled them both into a single 2 point talent. I'd be a lot better if it was

2/2 (Increases absorbtion of Power Word: Shield by 5/10% and reduces it's CD by 1/2 (2/4) secs)

This depends on if the CD of Shield was changed from 3 to 2/4

Atm I don't want to put any points into Soul Warding. It's just not good enough

[Kiora]

One problem is that Discipline has eight three point talents (Twin Disciplines, Mental Agility, Inner Sanctum, Soul Warding, Attonement, Borrowed Time, Rapture and Divine Aegis) compared to Holy's three (Empowered Healing, Divine Fury and Test of Faith). Granted not all of those Discipline talents will be picked up in a standard build (For PvP or PvE build reasons and because there's more talents than available points), that is one area that could remove some of Discipline's bloat by turning some into two or one point talents.

Azalu's suggestion of merging IPW:S and Soul Warding would be another really good idea.

[Marraphy]

What's the point in speccing in disc then? There are no interesting mechanics, exept Strength of soul that support that. Any somewhat interesting talents are about PW:S, but we are not supposed to use it

Actually, we are supposed to use it.. ^^; Ghostcrawler just said it would not be all of our healing, we'll be using more direct heals.

Also, the Disc tree has been seeing some changes over the past couple of weeks in the Strength of Soul talent, buffed Renewed Hope crit chance, and the Power Word: Barrier buff, so it's only a matter of time before it's looking just as cool and smooth as Holy : D

[Nemrod]

I wish someone from Blizzard could explain why they had to change Disc at all? It's not like we get an insta 30% buff in Cataclysm which makes our shields as powerful as they are right now.

What's so bad about pre-shielding? I works perfectly with a Druid or Shaman on raid healing, plus we can support Tank healing with Penance and PoM. I know there are alot of Disc haters on these boards, a moderator among them, but if people would go away from the competetive gameplay that DPS is and look at cooperative healing (and has to be) maybe that would open a few eyes here.

[Azyoulike]

I wish someone from Blizzard could explain why they had to change Disc at all?

Because it wasn't working? The only thing that kept Disc in top-end gameplay after Ulduar were a few key fights that massively favoured the mechanic.

Besides, with every other healer changing they couldn't leave Disc unchanged, the issue isn't that they're changing disc needlessly - the issue is that so far they haven't changed it enough.

[mtawney1313]

AT 15% crit you need 15 heals to trigger ONE DA

Uhhh 15% crit means it would average 1.oo/.15 = 6.667 heals for each crit, not 15.

[Deleted]

Uhhh 15% crit means it would average 1.oo/.15 = 6.667 heals for each crit, not 15.

Typical case of posting before reading ?

Been discussed and corrected in like 10 posts 1 or 2 pages back.
Yay for not even going through 3 pages of a topic................^^

[Ultima]

Drop the critical strike chance discussion, or I'll drop you an infraction.

You have been warned.

[kronpas]

I wish someone from Blizzard could explain why they had to change Disc at all? It's not like we get an insta 30% buff in Cataclysm which makes our shields as powerful as they are right now.

What's so bad about pre-shielding? I works perfectly with a Druid or Shaman on raid healing, plus we can support Tank healing with Penance and PoM. I know there are alot of Disc haters on these boards, a moderator among them, but if people would go away from the competetive gameplay that DPS is and look at cooperative healing (and has to be) maybe that would open a few eyes here.

The mechanic is fun but hard to balance in both PvP and PvE, and I myself see it relatively "weak" compared to traditional healing style. The only fights disc shine are Heroic Lichking, Anoob-Arak and the like, where a disc priest is required to counter a particular mechanic. Outside of those, disc is either a pure single healing tree or mindless shield spamming tree - either is not fun for the priest himself.

[Marvel]

The mechanic is fun but hard to balance in both PvP and PvE, and I myself see it relatively "weak" compared to traditional healing style. The only fights disc shine are Heroic Lichking, Anoob-Arak and the like, where a disc priest is required to counter a particular mechanic. Outside of those, disc is either a pure single healing tree or mindless shield spamming tree - either is not fun for the priest himself.

I don't feel like this personally. I don't have any problem in any encounter in WOLTK, I use different spells, of course I use PW:S a lot, but not more than Druids use Rejuv, Pallies use Holy Light or Shamans use Chain Heal. I can't use only PW:S on Saurfang, but hey! i'm doing really good on this boss (not as good as pallies, but that's ok). And I truly hate LK-25(H) because its the only encounter I actually have to spam PW:S all day long, because my reflexes tell me to use other spells too, but I make myself to continue bubble-botting. I have no idea, why Blizz had to make this boss mechanic, but it's not OUR fault. Its not even so bad in LK 10(H), because i need to place 8 shields and then have 12 sec to cast other things. So I really don't see whats the whole big deal and how it is so much different from other classes

[Deleted]

The mechanic is fun but hard to balance in both PvP and PvE, and I myself see it relatively "weak" compared to traditional healing style. The only fights disc shine are Heroic Lichking, Anoob-Arak and the like, where a disc priest is required to counter a particular mechanic. Outside of those, disc is either a pure single healing tree or mindless shield spamming tree - either is not fun for the priest himself.

Atm the cata disc priest is even more single target heal than atm on live servers,
Instead of PW:S spam it shifted to HEAL spam, really way better than before :-)