Beta - Build 13241

[raivyne]

Read it and weep Disc priests!

Discipline

* Rapture now cannot occur more than once every 12 sec, down from 6 sec.
* Atonement now heals for 50% of the damage dealt, down from 100%.
* Inner Focus no longer affects Heal. Now affects Binding Heal.


Holy

* Rapid Renewal has been removed as a talent and is now a passive skill.
* Tome of Light is now a Tier 4 talent, up from Tier 3.


Shadow

* Mastery: Shadow Orb has been renamed to Mastery: Shadow Orb Power - Increases the damage done by your Shadow Orbs. Each point of Mastery increases damage by an additional 1.25%
* Shadow Orbs *New* - You have a 10% chance for your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay spells to grant you a Shadow Orb each time they deal damage. Casting your Mind Blast or Mind Spike spell consumes all Shadow Orbs, increasing damage of that spell by 0% per Shadow Orb, and granting 0% increased damage on your periodic Shadow spells for until cancelled. You can have up to a maximum of 3 orbs.
* Mind Spike now stacks up to 3 times (Tooltip fix)

[harky]

Why would you be happy that a spec that was already suffering took unnecessary nerfs, but got none of the buffs it needed?

[Arthrix]

* Shadow Orbs *New* - You have a 10% chance for your Shadow Word: Pain and Mind Flay spells to grant you a Shadow Orb each time they deal damage. Casting your Mind Blast or Mind Spike spell consumes all Shadow Orbs, increasing damage of that spell by 0% per Shadow Orb, and granting 0% increased damage on your periodic Shadow spells for until cancelled. You can have up to a maximum of 3 orbs.

This looks like an insane buff to me, looks like it's supposed to increase the damage of your dots AFTER you use your orbs on Mind Blast/Mind Spike for a certain amount of time. (Probably 5 (1 orb)-10 (2 orb)-15 (3 orbs) seconds)

[raivyne]

Why would you be happy that a spec that was already suffering took unnecessary nerfs, but got none of the buffs it needed?

I'm not happy... Obviously I know this was a really bad patch for disc spec or I wouldn't have said disc priests would weep...

Exclamation points indicate strong feelings (significance or interest... etc.), but they don't automatically mean happiness.

[Thrayne]

From how I had read it, Shadow Orbs buff your DoT damage while they are active, then are consumed for your Mind Blast/Mind Spike for extra damage. They way they worded "increased damage on your periodic Shadow spells for until cancelled" makes me believe it works in that way, that is cancelled by using MB.

[raivyne]

maybe the damage increase is just re-calibrated with each new MB/MS?

[Danner]

Disc Regen down is good if you look at it from a balance-against-holypriest perspective. Disc and Holypriests are very close in regen now, given equal stats. That is a good thing. What remains is to make them close in throughput. That is not there yet.

Injection / updated opinion:
Looking at the druids closer, I think they too have been gutted in the regen department. Need more theorycrafting on this to be really sure, but I don't really know druids enough.


But I don't think this has been followed up for the other two healers. Shammies are still at near infinite mana. And paladins have if anything gotten MORE mana available to them with LoD now requiring holypower instead of mana, most sentiments I've seen so far are from overjoyed paladins. If this was a balance-healers-mana act, then it wasn't done properly. At all.

[Thrayne]

Well most of the changes for pallies were they were nerfed from god pvp status.

[raivyne]

Disc Regen down is good if you look at it from a balance-against-holypriest perspective. Disc and Holypriests are very close in regen now, given equal stats. That is a good thing. What remains is to make them close in throughput. That is not there yet.

That is a good point. The better mana regen really offset the low throughput... you were getting more mana, but you needed it to keep up with heals. Now disc priests are just left with no mana and low healing ability. Shield doesn't absorb enough to compensate in any way either.

Here's hoping this build was more about getting the mana regen where they wanted and future builds will address the low throughput/absorb issues.

[Etalia]

My beta client hasn't been updated in a few patches (and I really don't want to patch it in order to check :P), but could someone with a beta Disc Priest of at least lvl 80 please check their Atonement and confirm whether it's really been cut in half, or whether it's one of the 1-79 balancing changes that Blizz just did like with Rogues and Mangle?

See this front page Blue post if you don't know what I mean,

This is one of those moments where reading data-mined material can be sorely misleading. I talked a bit about these changes yesterday here: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...eNo=1&sid=1#14

Most of these abilities have not changed for level 80+, however, they've been changed to scale from 1-79. As an example, Ambush deals a flat 190% weapon damage on live realms. With these changes, it now deals 90% weapon damage when first learned, and increases up to 190% again by the time you hit level 80.

We made these adjustments because healing and damage-dealing at low levels has been way too powerful. These changes will make more sense when you get into the game and see for yourself.

[Deleted]

damn I was enjoying spamming smite in 5 mans.

[Kaesebrezen]

That's what i think is the shadow change:


1) Shadow Orbs is gained for speccing Shadow at level 10 and has a Base Value
2) The Mastery increases those base values further. (Due to the lvl 80 ability change)
3) Casting Mindblast/Mindspikes gives two Bonuses.
3-a) Increases the of MB/MSp based on number of active orbs, up to 3, increased by mastery.
3-b) After a Mindblast cast with at least 1 orb you gain a 15 sec buff for 20% increased DoT damage, increased by mastery. (http://db.mmo-champion.com/s/95799/empowered-shadow/)

#2 and #3 are set in stone following the data.

[Diber]

Even if Attonement wasn't cut in half (ref: front page blue post) it was still sorely lacking, especially if Archangel is only going to return 5% mana. Especially since in 25 mans, half the time it's healing a pet...

It seems like Blizz is trying to balance Disc at the END of Cata now, when the stats that will make it balanced, are over a year away... But Raivyne makes a valuable point. As a disc priest, you had lower throughput, which was fine, because you just cast more to make up for it... But now, you won't have the mana to cast more. Either way... One day, Blizz is going to wake up and look at Disc and go "oh what? What have we done?!"

[raivyne]

It seems like Blizz is trying to balance Disc at the END of Cata now, when the stats that will make it balanced, are over a year away...

this is what i am hoping anyway. at blizzcon (IIRC) they did say that holy is tuned just about they way they want healing to be. now that they are bringing disc regen in line with holy regen, i'm hoping throughput (or at least better absorb baselines) are to follow.

[Neichus]

I'm waiting until I have it confirmed they halved Atonement. The mouse-over link to their own database only shows Rank 1, not Rank 2, for 50% healing; seeing as the rest of the database is linking perfectly I'm skeptical it's a true nerf until we get true Beta confirmation.

[Ansa]

Attonement healing might be lacking this patch, but really...

But this patch is really a buff/balance patch excluding that, we got Binding Heal added to Inner Focus and silly Heal removed from it

[Ananan]

New shadow priest starting rotation:

Mind Flay rats and other critters until you get an orb.
Pull boss.
Start with Mind Blast.

Luckily orbs last rather long, so on trash pulls the new "start with Mind Blast" thing will generally work out quite well. Sadly, people tend to take long breaks before bosses.

If you can't get an orb before the pull I guess you'll do VT, SW:P and then Flay until Evangelism x5. After that it's Mind Blast and DP. VT will end soon enough anyway so you can recast it then.

[AetherMcLoud]

Even if Attonement wasn't cut in half (ref: front page blue post)

Maybe READ the front page blue post instead of just flying over it?

Atonement (Rank 1) now heals for 50% of the damage dealt, down from 100%. Rank 2 remains unchanged.

Rank 2 remains unchanged. Ergo, 1 point atonement = 50% heal, 2 points = 100% heal (of smite damage).

[Thrayne]

New shadow priest starting rotation:

Mind Flay rats and other critters until you get an orb.
Pull boss.
Start with Mind Blast.

Luckily orbs last rather long, so on trash pulls the new "start with Mind Blast" thing will generally work out quite well. Sadly, people tend to take long breaks before bosses.

If you can't get an orb before the pull I guess you'll do VT, SW:P and then Flay until Evangelism x5. After that it's Mind Blast and DP. VT will end soon enough anyway so you can recast it then.

The first 30seconds of a fight isn't the biggest deal, so openers aren't as important as everyone makes them out to be.

[Ansa]

Rank 2 remains unchanged. Ergo, 1 point atonement = 50% heal, 2 points = 100% heal (of smite damage).

My question is then, if so, what were rank 1 before? Since Im pretty sure it was 50/100% before aswell, but I may be mistaken :Z