Healers & specialisations... wut?

[nevermore]

Well yeah. I'm sure (or I really hope at least) the developers will make all 5 healing speccs as balanced as possible.

Yet still, as the above poster pointed out, 10% extra intellect (=7% extra spell power I think) is just very, very gimp compared to +25% healing when we talk about the exact same spells (excluding talent-tree specific spells obviously), same boosting talents (yes, the Holy ones) and same coefficients.

I hope I'm wrong.

[Zeuq]

I'm not crying death and doom. It is my belief that 25% more healing is the better deal.

A spell heals for 10k. Add 25% to that and it heals for 12500. I seriously doubt that 10% or even 15% more intellect is going to increase spell power by 2500.

So to me the 25% more healing looks more attractive.

Quite the contrary. Let's use FH as it currently exists (I'd use Heal, but I don't know the numbers on it). It has an average base of 2040 and a SP contribution of 80.57%. So, without those bonuses, a Priest with 6k SP (a guess at reasonable 85 levels, could be wrong) would heal for 6874. A Holy Priest would, thus, heal for 8592 where Disc would heal for 7599. That seems pretty far behind, but there's other factors at play here. First, they'll scale closer as SP increases. Second, Discipline has other effects like extra Crit from Renewed Hope, Grace, and Borrowed Time to take into account, and Holy has no such effects outside of very targetted ones in certain Chakra states; hell, Grace alone makes up a large chunk of that gap. Third, Disc has absorbs from DA procs, not to mention more chance for them from the extra Crit on Renewed Hope and the extra Crit granted from Int that isn't granted from Healing. Finally, DA procs may still benefit roughly equally from +Healing as a direct heal would, but I don't think PWS would scale at all with +Healing, not to mention that bonus Int would mean more Crit, leading to more throughput, and more longevity, leading to less need to gear for regen or more use of higher cost, higher throughput spells.

So, using that example, I actually think what we'd see is that, over the course of many casts, if all of the the absorbs and Crits are useful, Discipline will have superior throughput, but if they're not useful at all, Holy will. It seems to me that if you're mindlessly throwing Heals around, you won't get much effect from the bonus from Grace, or Renewed Hope, or even many of the absorbs, but a competent Disc Priest who can make effective use of those tools, such that a reasonable percentage of the Crits and absorbs are useful, then they ought to be not too far off from eachother. That isn't any different than how a good Holy Priest will now need to know how to appropriately manage his Chakra states or he could very well be stuck in the wrong one, and have +10% throughput loss on the spells he needs. And, of course, if it turns out to be that bad, a small adjustment to Mental Strength or Spiritual Healing by a few % or fussing with the base or coefficients of spells can easily bring them in line.


TLDR: I think it's easy to fret about it because the percentages are so much different, but it's a lot closer than it looks intuitively, and it's easily fixed if it's off. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

[Repo123]

I copied my disc priest to the ptr. I only play in bgs, so numbers will be low compared to you raiders.

Disc - Holy
Health--- 28180 - 28180
Mana--- 36103 - 31858
Crit--- 30.01 - 28.31
Spell Power--- 3144 - 2861
Greater Heal/GH Crit--- 11.7/16.9 - 12.6/20.6
Flash Heal/FH Crit--- 8.7/12.1 - 9.8/15.2
Heal/Heal Crit--- 5.9/8.2 - 6.3/10.2

All of holy's heals were without the benefit of Chakra.

Sorry about the jumble of numbers. I can't get it to work like I want.

Though my gear is not the greatest, I would assume the different (in percentages) will carry out the same.

[Ultima]

Cause 10% more INT means what 3-4 more spells ? Big deal
Crit doesnt matter for PW:S at all

As is explained in the post above 25% to healing would help the disc mastery way better than 10% more int.
25% to all heals is way better than 10% more int.

Right, are you trolling or something?

"15% (or 10%) more Intellect is not only a Mana Pool and Critical Strike chance increase, it is also a Spell Power increase, do not forget it. Your comment about PW:S is irrelevant, not sure why you even said that."

[Deleted]

Quite the contrary. Let's use FH as it currently exists (I'd use Heal, but I don't know the numbers on it). It has an average base of 2040 and a SP contribution of 80.57%. So, without those bonuses, a Priest with 6k SP (a guess at reasonable 85 levels, could be wrong) would heal for 6874. A Holy Priest would, thus, heal for 8592 where Disc would heal for 7599. That seems pretty far behind, but there's other factors at play here. First, they'll scale closer as SP increases. Second, Discipline has other effects like extra Crit from Renewed Hope, Grace, and Borrowed Time to take into account, and Holy has no such effects outside of very targetted ones in certain Chakra states; hell, Grace alone makes up a large chunk of that gap. Third, Disc has absorbs from DA procs, not to mention more chance for them from the extra Crit on Renewed Hope and the extra Crit granted from Int that isn't granted from Healing. Finally, DA procs may still benefit roughly equally from +Healing as a direct heal would, but I don't think PWS would scale at all with +Healing, not to mention that bonus Int would mean more Crit, leading to more throughput, and more longevity, leading to less need to gear for regen or more use of higher cost, higher throughput spells.

So, using that example, I actually think what we'd see is that, over the course of many casts, if all of the the absorbs and Crits are useful, Discipline will have superior throughput, but if they're not useful at all, Holy will. It seems to me that if you're mindlessly throwing Heals around, you won't get much effect from the bonus from Grace, or Renewed Hope, or even many of the absorbs, but a competent Disc Priest who can make effective use of those tools, such that a reasonable percentage of the Crits and absorbs are useful, then they ought to be not too far off from eachother. That isn't any different than how a good Holy Priest will now need to know how to appropriately manage his Chakra states or he could very well be stuck in the wrong one, and have +10% throughput loss on the spells he needs. And, of course, if it turns out to be that bad, a small adjustment to Mental Strength or Spiritual Healing by a few % or fussing with the base or coefficients of spells can easily bring them in line.


TLDR: I think it's easy to fret about it because the percentages are so much different, but it's a lot closer than it looks intuitively, and it's easily fixed if it's off. I wouldn't worry too much about it.

First of all 6K SP is pretty unreasonabel and therefore any closer scaling as SP increaes is irrelevant since it isnt likely to happen .

Assume you got like 5k INT then 10% more would be 500 more int and at lvl 80 roughly 166 int equals 1% crit, meaning 500 more int is about 2-3% more crit....hardly a huge benefit.

Grace is in the current state pretty useless if you swap ONE time from the tank the effect is gone.........
ONCE healing ONE other raidmember kills grace, thats hardly mindlessly throwing heals around and i would love to see you maintaining grace even half of the time without one person getting killed.

I cant see what renewed hope or borrowed time has to do whether +healing or +int is better.

At 6k SP 1k difference means higher DA bubbles on top of the bigger heal.

"15% (or 10%) more Intellect is not only a Mana Pool and Critical Strike chance increase, it is also a Spell Power increase, do not forget it. Your comment about PW:S is irrelevant, not sure why you even said that."

At 5000 INT its 2-3% more crit and 500 more SP

[Rystastic]

First of all 6K SP is pretty unreasonabel and therefore any closer scaling as SP increaes is irrelevant since it isnt likely to happen .

Assume you got like 5k INT then 10% more would be 500 more int and at lvl 80 roughly 166 int equals 1% crit, meaning 500 more int is about 2-3% more crit....hardly a huge benefit.

If you have 5k intellect raiding in cataclysm, you have a base 5k spellpower (Which is less than reasonable considering raiding in ICC25 you can have 4-4.5k spellpower). Plus the spellpower from your weapon (the blues are like 1500 iirc) which is easily 6.5k spellpower.

Not to mention that 500 intellect that you get free from your mastery (at 5k intellect) is another 500 spellpower. The intellect:spellpower ratio is a 1:1

[AetherMcLoud]

How is 6k SP "pretty unreasonable"? I have ~4k spellpower on live raidbuffed, so I'd say in cata it's going to be more like 10+k (remember they want those 5 levels to "feel" like 10 levels). The goddamn staff from a level 85 instance that was posted had freaking ~2000 spellpower alone.

[Samurai]

Yeah i sit on 4600 spellpower as Disc raid buffed (<3 Demo's), we will have miles more then 6k spellpower.
And hitting 5k int is extremely likely, and likely very early, especially with raid buffs, i am normally sitting on 2050 or so raid buffed now.

10% (15%) Int is an awesome buff for disc imo. Mana Pool + Crit (for DA) + Spellpower (for PW:S and heals) sounds like win to me

[Torne]

who the hell cares about the current BETA numbers on anything?
wait for endgame testing. If any healer is worse than the others, he will get buffed. end of story.

[Samurai]

Well more then likely, if disc is broken they will leave it broken until 4.1 lol

[chir0n]

Are shields considered healing in cata?
I wouldn't be surprized if say +healing wouldn't affect those.
If that is the case the only solution is to give intellect, which gives spellpower and crit.

For paladins, as they are now, they can do without the healing boost. Same is with shamans, cause their heals tend to be slow I guess they get reduced casttime instead. Saves them from stacking haste

[Repo123]

First of all 6K SP is pretty unreasonabel and therefore any closer scaling as SP increaes is irrelevant since it isnt likely to happen .

Assume you got like 5k INT then 10% more would be 500 more int and at lvl 80 roughly 166 int equals 1% crit, meaning 500 more int is about 2-3% more crit....hardly a huge benefit.

Grace is in the current state pretty useless if you swap ONE time from the tank the effect is gone.........
ONCE healing ONE other raidmember kills grace, thats hardly mindlessly throwing heals around and i would love to see you maintaining grace even half of the time without one person getting killed.

I cant see what renewed hope or borrowed time has to do whether +healing or +int is better.

At 6k SP 1k difference means higher DA bubbles on top of the bigger heal.




At 5000 INT its 2-3% more crit and 500 more SP

4241 more intellect = 283 more spell power, and it equals 1.71% more crit.

[smoomin]

First of all 6K SP is pretty unreasonabel and therefore any closer scaling as SP increaes is irrelevant since it isnt likely to happen .

Assume you got like 5k INT then 10% more would be 500 more int and at lvl 80 roughly 166 int equals 1% crit, meaning 500 more int is about 2-3% more crit....hardly a huge benefit.

Seriously what on earth are you talking about. 15% int ( if its still 15% ) is MUCH better for a disc priest than flat healing , just stop you're bad theroycrafting attempts.

[Bigslick]

...bad theroycrafting...

1000% off topic, but somehow when I read those 2 words as written the song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" started playing in my mind. Not for any relevance, just the semi-homonym.

<Edit> Re: the 'bad theroy' part, so at least it had some trigger. I'm not completely insane, only 40%.

[VermillionMadness]

Seriously what on earth are you talking about. 15% int ( if its still 15% ) is MUCH better for a disc priest than flat healing , just stop you're bad theroycrafting attempts.

That depends alot on our mix to be honest. If we are doing 75% heals and 25% absorbs, then in fact the 25% healing will be better at least until we the break point when the base values are no longer a large enough portion to skew the results.

~~~~~~~~
If you want some of the math behind that I can spit it out.

[Ultima]

1000% off topic, but somehow when I read those 2 words as written the song "Bad, Bad Leroy Brown" started playing in my mind. Not for any relevance, just the semi-homonym.

Thanks for that.

[VermillionMadness]

Did anyone else notice that grace 3 stacks at 4%.

Not enough to make up the absolute tank healing deficit between holy and disc(ESPECIALLY at 80, when disc can't get the -10% taken from holy), but still a nicety

[Repo123]

Seriously what on earth are you talking about. 15% int ( if its still 15% ) is MUCH better for a disc priest than flat healing , just stop you're bad theroycrafting attempts.

I still don't see where it's better. On a priest with 30k mana, 15% more intellect doesn't even equal 5000 more mana, whereas 25% healing makes your heals 25% more efficient. And that's not counting the increase Chakra provides. To me, that's a no brainer.

The benefit to crit is less than 2%, and additional mana regen is less than 70 per 5. Once again, that doesn't compare to 25% more efficient healing.

Simple math imho.

Additionally, and a little off topic...Shield of disc with 36k mana and 3144 spell power (PVP Gear)aborbs 3847, while holy with 31.8k mana and 2831 spell power absorbs 3498. Not a big difference, and certainly not enough to make up the advantages holy holds on actual healing.

[Samurai]

Additionally, and a little off topic...Shield of disc with 36k mana and 3144 spell power (PVP Gear)aborbs 3847, while holy with 31.8k mana and 2831 spell power absorbs 3498. Not a big difference, and certainly not enough to make up the advantages holy holds on actual healing.

Disc PVE shields are much much higher then that.
Even outside ICC they absorb ~9-10k in T10 gear

[Repo123]

Disc PVE shields are much much higher then that.
Even outside ICC they absorb ~9-10k in T10 gear

I have no doubt. I was just trying to illustrate that in the scheme of things, Holy is well ahead of Disc in the healing game. Even if you count absorbs, Holy will still easily dominate Disc.