Grace

[Tustavus]

I've made mention in a different thread in here that I personally don't like Grace so much. But I'm curious as to how other Disc Priests feel about it.

Do you guys like the way Grace currently works? Or is it a mechanic that is awkward in its current state?

My idea for changing it is to make it a buff you place on someone, similar to Focus Magic.

However, if people feel that is an OP way of making it, what if it was both my idea + current talent? What I mean there is that you could place it on a target, but they wouldn't get the + healing until you started healing them similar to what the current talent is like now. It could even have the current duration and everything, the only difference being that Grace won't fall off if you heal someone else.

Obviously I have some bias towards my idea, otherwise I wouldn't think it would be good enough to post about. However, I am not perfect, and I'm sure there's some things I'm missing here. So I want to hear what other priests think about the talent, and if there's some way to make it better, or if it is fine the way it is.

[Kelesti]

The problem with Grace is this:

You don't want it to interfere with your target switching, and Blizzard doesn't want it to be a) always active, or b) affect your shielding.

How do you balance this, without it being "Shadow Weaving 3.0 - The West Discipline Story"?

The Focus Magic idea works, but I dunno, then the rest of your heals are weaker unless you stay on that target. It feels counterintuitive. Then you'd either macro it into everything, off the GCD, or hate putting it up if it's on the GCD.

I think Flash Heal could use the benefit of the increased healing, but it shouldn't apply the effect itself.

[Tustavus]

The Focus Magic idea works, but I dunno, then the rest of your heals are weaker unless you stay on that target. It feels counterintuitive.

That's the thing, though. It already feels counterintuitive to me. If I heal anyone but the tank with almost any direct heal I have, then I'm making my heals on the tank smaller. If I heal the raid with Heals, then no one benefits from Grace, because I'm basically hitting raider X with Heal, then moving on to raider Y, and none of my heals actually benefit from the Grace they're putting up. The only way Grace is good is if you pick one person to spam with direct heals while applying hots/shields to every single other person you heal.

I'd disagree somewhat on hating it if it is on the GCD. If it's just a duration buff like say Focus Magic, then I'd apply it to the tank or whoever I'm healing the most during the fight. If that person changes for any reason, though, then I can change who I put it on. Then the question becomes "Is it worth wasting the GCD to give this person Grace?" It'd give more thought into healing as Disc, but would probably still be overall clunky.

And that's why I dislike Grace. It's awkward from almost every aspect you look at it. You always feel like you're not healing to your full potential, simply because you have a +healing buff, but it's never in the right place at the right time :|

[Kelesti]

That being said, the Focus Magic buff works... in PvE at least. For target switching rapid fire, especially in PvP... I can see this implication being quite off.

But I see what you are trying to reach with it, and it is something to do with moving it in a positive direction.

Of course, a castable buff would have to be one rank, and not two, so it also serves as a potential talent point free-up, yay trim?

[Tustavus]

The other downfall to my idea in PvP? Dispels would make Grace worthless.

My new idea? Go back to my touch up of combining the way Grace is now with my idea.

New Grace:

Rename the castable buff to Bless. Bless allows a target to have direct heals give them Grace in the exact same manner the current Grace works. Make Bless instant cast, no mana cost, no CD, and off the GCD. Make Bless undispellable. Bless can only be active on one target at a time.

Why would this be better than the current Grace then? Simple.

One - Grace gets cut to a 1 point talent (yay!)

Two - Players can now control exactly where their Grace is.

If you like the current Grace mechanics, all you have to do is macro Grace in your spells before the spell (which means more work for you if you like the current Grace.) If you don't like the current Grace mechanic, you can cast Bless on your target of choice, and have Grace only stack on that one person. A slightly longer duration on Grace wouldn't hurt, but that's just wishful thinking. This cuts down on the awkwardness of Grace by some degree, but also adds awkwardness in other areas. The biggest benefit though is more control, which in my opinion would be well worth the change.

[Azyoulike]

Grace is horrible, has been ever since they gimped it in 3.2 or thereabouts. It is flat out worse than Test of Faith when raid-healing, and though in principle it's better when tank healing, it's pretty ugly the way it deforms our playstyle.

Grace should just go back to the way it was, a non-exclusive buff. They can shorten the duration if they want to make it hard to maintain 3 stacks on multiple targets.

[Tustavus]

If they make it non-exclusive, then there's not much of a thought process behind the ability. Not only that, but they might as well just change it to "Adds 6% bonus healing to your spells." (more realistically 3% in that example, though.)

I don't mind the idea of Grace being something you have to track and can put where you want when you want. I just don't like the idea of the ability being something that either flies all around the raid or forces me to use an ability on CD (for those who like the idea of making Penance the proc.)

Making 1 or 2 abilities the trigger for Grace (like they have now) is a bad idea, because it limits you to only using those abilities on the person you want Grace on. Penance is even worse, in my opinion, because it makes an amazing ability into nothing more than one you spam on the tank for a +healing buff. Penance, as it stands in Wrath of the Lich King, is an amazing life saving ability. Take the power of Greater Heal, more efficiency than Greater Heal, and a faster hitting heal than Flash Heal, and you have Penance. In Cataclysm, with the higher HP pools and the idea of being less than 100% HP but not dead, this ability is brought down a bit. It should still be an ability that is very useful for raid healing, though.

The other thing about changing Grace to a buff on a single target is that you can now add more spells into the trigger of Grace. In Wrath, if Renew or PoH triggered Grace, Grace would bounce all around your raid and just be worthless (even though that's pretty much how it is now...) If it were a single target buff, however, and PoH triggered it, you would still have Grace exactly where you want it.

[nevermore]

Maybe they should change it so that only one spell - like Penance - applies Grace (and increase its duration to compensate?). This would allow the Priest to cast heals on the other group members without Grace falling off the tank.

Dunno. I personally don't like the whole talent, it feels too restrictive.

[Azyoulike]

If they make it non-exclusive, then there's not much of a thought process behind the ability. Not only that, but they might as well just change it to "Adds 6% bonus healing to your spells." (more realistically 3% in that example, though.)

It would still reward you for focusing on 1 target, it just wouldn't murder you when you sneak an off-heal other than Renew/PWS/PoH.

The more I think about it the more I think that they should instead keep Grace as it is but reward the priest for moving it - ie. When ever you cause Grace to leave a target X seconds is taken off penance's CD, or you gain a +x% absorb buff.

The latter would be particularly nice because it would mean that our heals would buff our shields as well as our shields buffing our heals.

[Nayt]

Maybe they should change it so that only one spell - like Penance - applies Grace (and increase its duration to compensate?). This would allow the Priest to cast heals on the other group members without Grace falling off the tank.

This.

Personally I don't mind Grace. My healing is fine when raid healing, and when assigned to MT heal my spells hit a little bit harder. I don't look at is as though I'm weaker if Grace is down, but rather that I'm a stronger healer when assigned to a single target. I do think that Grace would benefit greatly if only applied by a single spell though, a spell that would be primarily considered a "Tank Heal" to help minimize how often it jumps around when group/raid healing.

[Docta]

I find that mana hasn't been much of an issue so I just use BH to maintain grace stacks where I want them

[Zeuq]

Okay, some brainstorming on some possible mechanics for this that might make it interesting. The ideas can be mixed and matched to some extent.

1. As others have mentioned, perhaps make it so it's only applied by one spell, like Penance. Perhaps let the duration be long enough so that you can still cast an emergency Penance on someone other than your primary target without too much risk of dropping it on him, but not such that you could easily maintain the stack on more than 2 targets. For example, each tick of Penance adds one stack, and with a 25-30s duration, you can throw out an emergency Penance and still come back and still reapply it to the tank before it drops.

2. Rather than making it an exclusive buff, instead you have a maximum number of stacks, probably somewhere in the neighborhood of 6-10. If you're focusing on one target, the stacks will all be there. As you deviate, you'll drop some stacks on your main target as they apply elsewhere, but you won't have to start back from zero.

3. Sort of a mix between Focus Magic and Shadow Weaving, where you have some kind of a buff that you apply to a target (hopefully somehow tied with Penance) and you gain stacks when you heal them that increases your healing. With those stacks, all of your healing is increased on every target, but you can only refresh the stacks by healing the main target.

4. Make it more like an absorb version of beacon. It will redirect some portion of the healing/absorbs you do to the raid as absorbs to that target. I'd envision that it would simply apply some percentage of random DA procs on the raid to that target, which would help make them more useful.



So, thinking about it, if I were to implement a more interesting version, it would be a talent that depends on Divine Aegis, would be one point, and would be a buff that you could apply (probably 5-10 minute duration with a 30s-1m CD, on GCD) and would look something like this:

Applies the Blessed buff to a single player. When you the Blessed target with Penance, you gain Grace, which increases your healing and absorb effects by X% for Y seconds. In addition, whenever you heal or apply an absorbing effect to a target that is not blessed, a Divine Aegis of Z% of the amount healed/absorbed is also applied to the Blessed player. Stacks up to 3 times.

What do you all think of that? Depending on what value you choose for the duration, it could allow for significant raid healing between refreshing or simply just not punish you terribly if you deviate briefly. It would also help increase the value of absorbs, and I think it would be fairly useful in PVP.

[Azyoulike]

I don't look at is as though I'm weaker if Grace is down, but rather that I'm a stronger healer when assigned to a single target.

If this were true then that would be great, but historically it hasn't been. Instead Grace has been only just enough to keep single target heals in contention - better than holy priests perhaps - but worse than druids & shaman.