Vamp. Embrace Beta-

[Deleted]

Mixed news everyone! As a further step towards total homogenization, vampiric embrace has received a significant cut to a mere 6% heal.

There are a number of related bugs pertaining to this such as the tooltip only reading 'heals 6% of damage dealt' and as a possible beneficial bug, the casting priest appears to be double dipping from the heal (i.e. one tick of vampiric touch is providing me with two heals[one for being the caster, one for being a group member?]).

While I would expand on this further, the final bug I am faced with is the fact that vampiric embrace is currently: not working at all. each heal is providing +0 hp.
Glitch or not, change is afoot!

Any further information people have, feel free to share-!

[Sharaki]

You won't get VE heals from 1hp Dummy as it doesn't do damage. I hope you noted that already.

[Deleted]

No, this is coming from mobs who give both experience and/or honor. Tests currently reveal that vampiric embrace is healing me for naught. Before this gets derailed as a 'lolbetaisbeta' thread, the 6% nerf is acknowledged.
Compared to the old 25% talented in wrath this is almost trivialised and in cataclysm endgame self heals which work off of hp% (such as drain life), may overtake it in effectiveness.

Vampiric embrace as a raid buff carries talented weight, if its use has been cut by so much that it becomes neigh un-noticable then it will still be holding us back from carrying other utility since we're theoretically still bringing passive, free healing.

This thread was meant to be more of a discussion over whether the lower healing we will bring will still hold up against other classes raid utility, particularly when progression guilds will likely fall into 10mans to push content sooner, your raid space suddenly has tighter competition.

[Aiurwyn]

If I am not mistaken the healing you do to your party hasn't changed and has been 3% for quite a while so it is only a nerf to self-healing, which tbh

As for standing up many people have said YES. We already have the mitigation of dps plate wearers + DoTs allow us to be mobile + Passive healing. If this nerf impacts your raid viability I would say bigger issues are at hand.

[Deleted]

If I am not mistaken the healing you do to your party hasn't changed and has been 3% for quite a while so it is only a nerf to self-healing, which tbh

As for standing up many people have said YES. We already have the mitigation of dps plate wearers + DoTs allow us to be mobile + Passive healing. If this nerf impacts your raid viability I would say bigger issues are at hand.

Is the first constructive input so far.
I agree that the group healing hasn't been game breaking for a while but when you look at the viability of other caster specs, all bringing 5% crit/haste or 3% damage from arcane, all of which will also be able to bring vital raid buffs in combat resurrection or heroism, those are absolutely deciding factors in 10 man raids.

We can match other specs on throughput aura but our secondary utility is definately lackluster by comparison.

[Thrayne]

Here is a quick simple comparsion at the big view on VE (from a self healign standpoint, as group heals remain the same)

So with simple numbers, say we are doing 10k dps and DP+IDP were 8.6% of my DPS (Numbers I got from logs):

10000* 0.06 = 600 HPS Self VE
10000* 0.03 = 300 HPS Self VE
(10000* 0.086)*0.15 = 129 HPS 15% Healing from DP + IDP

Total HPS = 1029

This isn't bad, 1/10th of your DPS heals you in a raid envrioment so assuming the rotation stays roughly the same on beta in fresh 85 gear you have about 85k health and from raid streams spriests can do up to about 15k dps which equates to about 1543 HPS.

That is 1.8% of your health per second, so also assuming you are dpsing this whole time you gain your entire health back in little less than a minute.

It doesn't seem too bad, but compared to live with 15% VE you get 5.5% of your health bar (35k health/10kdps) per second, which is roughly a 2.7% @ 85K health/15k dps. Which would make it a 30% nerf at 85.

This is very quick napkin math to compare but these are my 2 cents, ultimately we will have to see how it works in a raid scenario to make a final judgement.

[Deleted]

You know Shadow priests have a 5% haste buff aura too, right?

---------- Post added 2010-11-04 at 02:48 AM ----------

Yes, infact you're quoting me saying so.

In comparison to casting classes, Priest have our casted buff (Fortitude) in line with Arcane intellect, Mark of The Wild, Flametongue Totem and a Blessing.
Throughput Aura (5%), brought by all casting dps in the form of spellcast speed, crit chance or hostile crit, and finally replenishment.

Mages/Shaman bring Magelust and heroism, Warlocks/Druids bring one combat resurrection each- in addition to their afformentioned utility.

I do agree that Vampiric embrace is useful, and it's a spell I really love. In regards to your math, it's looking significant on paper but still, rebirth makes and breaks raids, replenishing 100% of your hp over a minute hardly compares (I'd assume if you're in a place where this can happen freely then the raid is already in good standing).

It does worry me that shadow is quickly becoming gimmicky but ultimately forgettable.

[Direshadow]

The nerf to VE is kind of annoying, but it needed to be done.

To be honest, I don't understand why they don't just get rid of the spell outright or at least re-design it so that it's actually useful to us, and won't need to be nerfed into oblivion every single expansion.

[Thrayne]

The things people aren't realizing is, cata will be a whole different ball game. Healing won't be instantly topping people off, mana will be an issue for healers, so the healing from VE will be much more effiecient in than in WotLK.

Again with math, a 5 minute fight doing ~15k dps you will heal your party for 135k health, which is huge in longer fights when healer mana is tested, I think it will be a very viable utility if triage healing is implemented like they have gone on about.

[Deleted]

The things people aren't realizing is, cata will be a whole different ball game. Healing won't be instantly topping people off, mana will be an issue for healers, so the healing from VE will be much more effiecient in than in WotLK.

Again with math, a 5 minute fight doing ~15k dps you will heal your party for 135k health, which is huge in longer fights when healer mana is tested, I think it will be a very viable utility if triage healing is implemented like they have gone on about.

I've considered the impact on healer mana but I'm still coming up bemused.

The entire philosophy behind triage healing is that it absolutely wont be about topping people up to full health immediately because there should rarely be occasions when you would need to. The benefit to healer mana gained form vampiric embrace would only come into effect if the amount of mana a healer would use to produce 135k healing outweighs mana potentially spent covering for another healer who died mid fight and couldn't be rebirthed.

It seems to be constantly turning back into 'Yeah free extra healing is nice, and free, but we can live without it'.
Sidenote: from the small amount of grouping I've managed on beta, mana still appears infinite for Shaman & Paladin atleast.

[icecreamtruck]

Yes 6% is just utterly pathetic... They should just remove it as it is now. Or make it something else. Class homogenization has gone waaaaaay too far. Classes used to be unique with different stuff. Some had self healing, some had pets, some had MS... Now you have no reason to roll a different class if you want something new. Just play 1 class and get everything.

[Kilee25]

I think the best way to fix VE is to make it raid-wide, but perhaps lower the amount healed to 1%, then make it stack, so that bringing multiple shadow priests would add more healing ...

Ok maybe that would be OP.

Then how about healing the lowest 10 targets for 1%, just like Replenishment works. Turn it into a VT-like spell and call it something like Replenishment.

[AetherMcLoud]

"Your shadow damage spells have a chance to heal you for 8% of your maximum health. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds."

There, I fixed VE by copying leader of the pack from druids. Not really unique but probably more balanced than a VE that is tied to damage (and scales like hell with multiple targets) could ever be.

They removed the party-healing from leader of the pack, they removed paladins judgement healing attackers, I don't know why shadowpriest still have the (now really aweful) vampiric embrace party-wide.

[Kelesti]

They removed the party-healing from leader of the pack, they removed paladins judgement healing attackers, I don't know why shadowpriest still have the (now really aweful) vampiric embrace party-wide.

Healing Stream is still around (and party based) that's why.

[Owltoid]

...
They removed the party-healing from leader of the pack, they removed paladins judgement healing attackers, I don't know why shadowpriest still have the (now really aweful) vampiric embrace party-wide.

It's also stackable. If it wasn't party wide then you would possibly see lots of shadow priests in 25 man raids.

[JDPickle]

"Your shadow damage spells have a chance to heal you for 8% of your maximum health. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds."

There, I fixed VE by copying leader of the pack from druids. Not really unique but probably more balanced than a VE that is tied to damage (and scales like hell with multiple targets) could ever be.

They removed the party-healing from leader of the pack, they removed paladins judgement healing attackers, I don't know why shadowpriest still have the (now really aweful) vampiric embrace party-wide.

That is a great suggestion! Thats using your noggin! Yes not very unique, but how everything seems to be going, seems like the most viable option. Although, is leader of the pack still crit based?

[Deleted]

"Your shadow damage spells have a chance to heal you for 8% of your maximum health. This effect cannot occur more than once every 6 seconds."

There, I fixed VE by copying leader of the pack from druids. Not really unique but probably more balanced than a VE that is tied to damage (and scales like hell with multiple targets) could ever be.

They removed the party-healing from leader of the pack, they removed paladins judgement healing attackers, I don't know why shadowpriest still have the (now really aweful) vampiric embrace party-wide.

That's a much better incarnation that current.

Don't instantly hate this but you could (possibly) tie VE to shadow orbs, allowing you to heal up to 25%/5% group-wide at full stacks, healing only 5/1% with one orb, 15/3% at two.

Not 100% uptime, and would be reset by MB, but how orbs are currently looking, waiting for 3 orbs is more beneficial than casting MB on cooldown, allowing your VE level to fluctuate up and down nicely. This would move VE from a static forgettable heal taking up space on a spreadsheet, to an interactive decision model- choosing to either max your dps by consuming orbs -or- providing extra passive heal at clutch moments by keeping them.

[AetherMcLoud]

Healing Stream is still around (and party based) that's why.

Good point, I didn't think of that. Is that still partywide or raidwide now?

[icecreamtruck]

Don't get you hopes up for more self healing via VE no matter how it will work... They nerfed self healing for everyone. (except rogues and warriors, witch doesn't really make sense.. warriors can heal 34% of their hp each time they get a killing blow) And i think its gonna take longer before u go oom as a SP in cata then in wotlk, so they had o nerf VE to not make us op.

Imo they should just remove the VE. Because you barely get any healing at all, and useless numbers floating across the screen is just annoying. Either that or make it something else.

[Kilee25]

I don't want them to remove VE, I just want them to make it more interesting, and afect the raid instead of the party. I think that VE can still be a useful and unique raid tool that is not overpowered if bliz will just put some thought and attention into it.

My desire is that it becomes a raid-wide buff that works like Replenishment. The buff would be called something like "Restoration", and takes the form of a hot that gets applied to the 10 lowest targets in raid for X% of Mind Blast damage. If you had multiple shadow priests, the hot would become refreshed rather than stacked, so that bringing more than 1 would not do anything other than make the hot have better "up time".

But really, the thing I have disliked about VE since the start is that it is party wide. Bliz has a chance right now before Cata hits to finally do something interesting with the spell - it could even be incorporated into mastery in some way. And really they just chose to ignore it, and then try to reduce it as much as possible without completely deleting it. It's obvious they just don't even want to have to deal with it, which is sad to me.

I also question the balance of VE in 10s vs 25s. In 10s, a single shadow priest is healing 50% of the raid, but in 25s only 20%. The favor seems to be stacked greatly towards 10s. I'm curious as to whether shadow priests will become an integral part of the heroic 10-group strategy, but not so much in 25s due to the lessened value of utility.