Discipline jumping ship to Holy - Dawn of the new Bubble Bots

[[-Spiritus-]]

Holy's raw throughput is still way higher using actual healing spells vs mitigation spells.

I don't have any numbers that can prove which playstyle has greater throughput, however, in the end it is irrelevant.

Having 1 healer spam shields of at least moderate value on the raid, every raid wide hit, is worth far, far more than any increased raw throughput that can be provided via healing in most circumstances. What it does is essentially "under-tune" the encounter because of the actions of one player pressing one button repeatedly.

For example, the developers say [numbers made up for demonstrative purposes]: "OK, here is the challenge. non-tanks have 100k health. We are going to have a boss ability that drops everyone for 40k, which at current gear levels will leave them at about 60k. Two seconds later, three random, unidentified people will get hit for 70k, effectively killing them without healing. The challenge is for the raid healers to heal everyone in the raid for 10,001hp in two seconds or risk a death."

Enter the bubblebot who has 35seconds to prepare for this mechanic. He places a 20k shield on everyone in the raid. Now, instead of everyone dropping for 40k, they only drop for 20k, meaning they are sitting at 80k health. Two seconds later, the three random people get hit for 70k, but instead of killing them, drops them to 10k. The broad healing challenge, "heal everyone up 10,001hp in 2sec," has been circumvented by one player spamming one spell. "Spamming" [due to out of control sustainability inflation via poor tier planning with the introduction of "hard mode" loot in Ulduar], in general, was such an issue in ICC that they had to design nearly all incounters around the idea that all healers would spam their highest HPS spell, which included Disc priests spamming their bubbles. The LK's Infest mechanic, in fact, was specifically introduced to challenge the bubblebot. "You must have shields on all raiders before X happens or someone gets Y." Anyone who attempted to heal infest [on heroic mode especially, when the content was relevant] without a Disc priest can attest to how gruesome it is.

Now, is it possible for a Holy priest playing "normally" to have a higher raw HPS by using all his or her spells? Sure. However, spamming bubbles can completely unbalance an encounter, removing the need to even worry about a key component that had been a part of the challenge in the intended design.

Getting back to the example, the developers say: "Spamming bubbles just broke that mechanic. Well, we have three options. (1) We can increase the damage of either boss ability by 20k to compensate for shield spam so the original challenge is intact and make the assumption that every guild will bring a bubblebot to the raid [The WotLK Model]. (2) We can limit the viability of preshielding the entire raid by either redesigning[pre-alpha Cataclysm model] or nerfing Disc [4.0.6 hotfix model]. (3) Or, we can design the vast majority of encounters so that shield spamming cannot affect intended design [i.e.- all fights like Chimaeron]."

So, in short, it isn't that Disc HPS was too high, Holy specifically shouldn't be spamming bubbles, or a poster of your liking or disliking says this or that. The point is that the ability to pre-shield an entire raid, regardless of spec, [or, essentially boost the EH of the entire raid] for every raid wide hit completely changes the dynamic of a designer's encounter. In a world where bubblebots are viable, he must either design encounters that are either (1) easier than intended with a bubblebot in the raid or (2) more difficult than intended without a bubblebot in the raid.

[Aliahna]

Very well said Spiritus.

[KaPe]

Which is why I always wondered, what exactly will they do with Discipline in Cataclysm. Shields are too unique for their own good. We had Saurfang, where it completely bypassed key mechanic, until it got fixed. We had Lich King Heroic, which was completely impossible without mass shielding. I assumed devs learned something from this and Cataclysm would somehow change shields... Well, it didn't. The only reason they didn't get spammed before 4.0.6 was that they barely scaled compared to WotLK. Seeing how this got changed, it was back to "good" old days - though still being somewhat limited by gear (not that this problem would last long). That, and Disc didn't really get anything new and comparable with PW:S. Sure, their tank healing is much better than it used to be, but current content is hardly about tank healing. And then there's Barrier, which guarantees that even subpar perfomance will be justified by powerful raid cooldown.
Discipline needs way more work than that lazy hotfix it got. Either that, or boss abilities will have to bypass shields, Chimaeron style, but then again, that's balancing entire content around single class. It was a mess since WotLK and nothing changed. Holy bubbleboting is not some magical solution.

[rapsidy]

I have played a disc priest in wrath and i play one now in cata. i was really excited about the 4.0.6 changes and i do agree that the shields were to powerful when the patch came and i think the simpler fix would have been to just reduce the amount that a shield absorbs, and letting the disc mastery make up for the difference (aka we lose other stats to go for mastery)

anyone who thought disc turned into straight bubble bots isnt very smart at least on a 25 man scale. at best before the mana uppage i could keep 10-15 shields out, and the only time i ever did that was on fights like magmaw or atremedes where i knew everyone in the raid would take damage. even with the shields i would throw out penances pom and poh after the damage would go out (dps who got hit by a flame pillar or had their sound to high) otherwise i wasnt spamming shields and using them only for dps who took stupid damage or always having one on the tanks (make more powerful by sos)

any disc priest who was just bubble botting becuz they can is bad becuz a shield not absorbed is a wasted heal and mana. now after tryign to raid disc wtih the change i can keep maybe 3-6 shields up at most (being genereous) and end up at the end of the fight with almost no mana.

maybe thats what they want but take priests who maybe are fresh 85's or not geared, and want to play disc. might as well take the new holy bubble spam spec becuz until u get the gear to outlast the mana uppage your only hurting people who wanted to try a different style of healing. and just telling them its ok to bubble spam in holy becuz *that is what disc used to do*

[ZippyDoodle]

I don't have any numbers that can prove which playstyle has greater throughput, however, in the end it is irrelevant.

Having 1 healer spam shields of at least moderate value on the raid, every raid wide hit, is worth far, far more than any increased raw throughput that can be provided via healing in most circumstances. What it does is essentially "under-tune" the encounter because of the actions of one player pressing one button repeatedly.

For example, the developers say [numbers made up for demonstrative purposes]: "OK, here is the challenge. non-tanks have 100k health. We are going to have a boss ability that drops everyone for 40k, which at current gear levels will leave them at about 60k. Two seconds later, three random, unidentified people will get hit for 70k, effectively killing them without healing. The challenge is for the raid healers to heal everyone in the raid for 10,001hp in two seconds or risk a death."

Enter the bubblebot who has 35seconds to prepare for this mechanic. He places a 20k shield on everyone in the raid. Now, instead of everyone dropping for 40k, they only drop for 20k, meaning they are sitting at 80k health. Two seconds later, the three random people get hit for 70k, but instead of killing them, drops them to 10k. The broad healing challenge, "heal everyone up 10,001hp in 2sec," has been circumvented by one player spamming one spell. "Spamming" [due to out of control sustainability inflation via poor tier planning with the introduction of "hard mode" loot in Ulduar], in general, was such an issue in ICC that they had to design nearly all incounters around the idea that all healers would spam their highest HPS spell, which included Disc priests spamming their bubbles. The LK's Infest mechanic, in fact, was specifically introduced to challenge the bubblebot. "You must have shields on all raiders before X happens or someone gets Y." Anyone who attempted to heal infest [on heroic mode especially, when the content was relevant] without a Disc priest can attest to how gruesome it is.

Now, is it possible for a Holy priest playing "normally" to have a higher raw HPS by using all his or her spells? Sure. However, spamming bubbles can completely unbalance an encounter, removing the need to even worry about a key component that had been a part of the challenge in the intended design.

Getting back to the example, the developers say: "Spamming bubbles just broke that mechanic. Well, we have three options. (1) We can increase the damage of either boss ability by 20k to compensate for shield spam so the original challenge is intact and make the assumption that every guild will bring a bubblebot to the raid [The WotLK Model]. (2) We can limit the viability of preshielding the entire raid by either redesigning[pre-alpha Cataclysm model] or nerfing Disc [4.0.6 hotfix model]. (3) Or, we can design the vast majority of encounters so that shield spamming cannot affect intended design [i.e.- all fights like Chimaeron]."

So, in short, it isn't that Disc HPS was too high, Holy specifically shouldn't be spamming bubbles, or a poster of your liking or disliking says this or that. The point is that the ability to pre-shield an entire raid, regardless of spec, [or, essentially boost the EH of the entire raid] for every raid wide hit completely changes the dynamic of a designer's encounter. In a world where bubblebots are viable, he must either design encounters that are either (1) easier than intended with a bubblebot in the raid or (2) more difficult than intended without a bubblebot in the raid.

It's a known fact that holy has higher raw healing HPS then disc does.

It's part of the mechanics of the spec..

[Ultima]

I don't see this being viable for holy honestly.


Holy's raw throughput is still way higher using actual healing spells vs mitigation spells.

You have clearly read this thread.

[ZippyDoodle]

I don't need to read the thread >.>


I have been playing holy for a long time, I understand how it works. Bubble spam would not be viable for it.


Edit: On a side note, Ultima. Why are you breaking the forum posting guidelines as a mod? Just wondering.

[Deleted]

For example, the developers say [numbers made up for demonstrative purposes]: "OK, here is the challenge. non-tanks have 100k health. We are going to have a boss ability that drops everyone for 40k, which at current gear levels will leave them at about 60k. Two seconds later, three random, unidentified people will get hit for 70k, effectively killing them without healing. The challenge is for the raid healers to heal everyone in the raid for 10,001hp in two seconds or risk a death."

Enter the bubblebot who has 35seconds to prepare for this mechanic. He places a 20k shield on everyone in the raid. Now, instead of everyone dropping for 40k, they only drop for 20k, meaning they are sitting at 80k health. Two seconds later, the three random people get hit for 70k, but instead of killing them, drops them to 10k. The broad healing challenge, "heal everyone up 10,001hp in 2sec," has been circumvented by one player spamming one spell.

This is not a good argument.
First you can never design an encounter like that since gear scaling would break it the same way that say PW:S will.
If you want an encounter like this you do something like Chimaeron.

Second PW:S has a 30s duration so your shields will vanish before you are done shielding the raid. And also you would need a lot of haste to do it in the 35 seconds you mention.

There are also tons of other thing that breaks your example. What if you have PW:B up?
Or some other damage reduction.

In short, stop posting nonsense. Preventing damage instead of restoring health is a playstyle that many of us like.
If you don't like it then fine, but using an effective healing rotation is no more challenging than shield heavy disc style.

[cmagrad]

I still say make shields only useable on people in your own group. In a 10 man group you could shield half the raid but with the reduced mana recovery available it can't be sustained. In the 25man setting it would not break encounters to pre shield 4 key members. Using the Spiritus example you could pre shield 4 vital people to assure they will be protected by the 70k mechanic but the Disc Priest would then return to healing the rest of the raid the "normal" way.

[Bluey111]

I really hope that PWS doesn't become too expensive for Holy because of this... Body & Soul is very valuable to me as a Holy Priest and to not be able to use it because of the PWS mana cost would really be detrimental to my playstyle (and many others I assume).

I think you're right about putting Soul Warding further down in the Disc tree. Assuming that Holy shield spamming becomes a problem, I think that's probably the best solution. It would prevent Holy from being able to get the talent without taking away from the use of B&S shields.

As for fixing Disc, the only thing I can suggest is to boost their healing to make them not so reliant on shields? I don't really play Disc a lot, so please excuse me if I'm incorrect, but it's always seemed to me like Disc just doesn't have the healing throughput to support a non-shield spamming playstyle.

hope you know that if you spec into body and soul the mana cost of PWS will be reduced

[TiduZ]

I don't need to read the thread >.>


I have been playing holy for a long time, I understand how it works. Bubble spam would not be viable for it.


Edit: On a side note, Ultima. Why are you breaking the forum posting guidelines as a mod? Just wondering.

Why are you being ignorant?

I quit playing holy spec in ulduar, a month after I hit 80, and didn't play it again until a few days ago. I had to read the tooltips to figure out what spells activate chakra. I got summoned into magmaw and people had already been waiting for me to reforge so I didnt have time before the pull to setup a ui for chakra or even put all of my spells on my bar, and using holy w/ 4 pc and 40-50% pws I got #1 parse on that fight. While magmaw's head was down I was opening my spellbook to put the healing circle ability on my bar. I have hardly any experience playing holy and I think my chakra uptime was about 80%. Given a week of practice and an hour to work on my UI, I can easily go into next week and get much higher parses with this spec and its a whole lot easier to play than disc was in 4.0.3.

Also I'm too tired to go into a big debate about why spiritus is wrong, but suffice to say he pretty much has no idea what he's talking about and 99% of what he posts on these forums is completely wrong and dumb. Sorry but that's the tldr version.

[GeaMyaLor]

When I switched from disc to holy it wasn't bc of the shielding it was because the heals are so much greater in holy. I used Heal and P.o.M all the time in Disc but they didn't hardly heal for anything. Switching to holy was like an epiphany. I was so surprised by how much more healing my Heal was doing. I would agree with all those that for people to enjoy/utilize disc, other spells must be buffed such as Heal.

[PlatedPriest]

tidus i might not agree about bubbleboting as holy. but i cant wait to see you numbers for next weeks raid!!!

[ZippyDoodle]

Why are you being ignorant?

I quit playing holy spec in ulduar, a month after I hit 80, and didn't play it again until a few days ago. I had to read the tooltips to figure out what spells activate chakra. I got summoned into magmaw and people had already been waiting for me to reforge so I didnt have time before the pull to setup a ui for chakra or even put all of my spells on my bar, and using holy w/ 4 pc and 40-50% pws I got #1 parse on that fight. While magmaw's head was down I was opening my spellbook to put the healing circle ability on my bar. I have hardly any experience playing holy and I think my chakra uptime was about 80%. Given a week of practice and an hour to work on my UI, I can easily go into next week and get much higher parses with this spec and its a whole lot easier to play than disc was in 4.0.3.

Also I'm too tired to go into a big debate about why spiritus is wrong, but suffice to say he pretty much has no idea what he's talking about and 99% of what he posts on these forums is completely wrong and dumb. Sorry but that's the tldr version.

Completley agree with you Tiduz. He posts here a lot claiming his "theories" and "Strategies" are well versed but truthfully are not.

Disc if played properly, gets extremley complicated. However, once you find the niche of discs abilities it becomes incredibly powerful without shield spamming.

Yes, PW:S will still most likely by your #1 spell depending on the fight. However, your other spells should not be far behind.

I am in almost the opposite situation as you Tiduz, i quit playing disc mid ulduar. Switched to holy. And now that cata requires multiple disc I have been re learning the playstyle of it. Which is far different then it used to be.

Valiona and theralion I finally felt solid on prioritizing my heals and cooldowns properly and now am back into the swing of disc. Even without full bubble spamming, I was still getting 14-15k HPS as disc. As holy, my throughput skyrockets though.


Also.

And I am not being ignorant. I am tired of mods on the forums attacking people and breaking the rules of the forums that they say they "enforce".

[[-Spiritus-]]

This is not a good argument.
First you can never design an encounter like that since gear scaling would break it the same way that say PW:S will.

You design an encounter so it is challenging at a specific iLvL. Of course gear scaling breaks encounters; you don't design encounters so they are tuned for overgeared players.

Second PW:S has a 30s duration so your shields will vanish before you are done shielding the raid. And also you would need a lot of haste to do it in the 35 seconds you mention.

With only 13% haste from gear, no borrowed time, 3/3 darkness and raid haste buff, you will be unable to shield 1 player before a raidwide hit. Heal 25 people 10,001hp in 2sec is a far cry from heal 1 known player 10,001hp in 2sec.

There are also tons of other thing that breaks your example. What if you have PW:B up?
Or some other damage reduction.

It is usually not feasible to have PW:B up for all raidwide hits, nor are all encounters designed to allow the raid to be grouped. PW:S on all but one raider in 25man, however, isn't positionally dependent, nor on a 2min CD.
Other DRs also have CDs. They are powerful, hence the CD.

In short, stop posting nonsense. Preventing damage instead of restoring health is a playstyle that many of us like.
If you don't like it then fine, but using an effective healing rotation is no more challenging than shield heavy disc style.

Liking or disliking something is irrelevant. What is relevant is how a particular play-style or ability forces encounter designers to either up-tune an encounter so it is at the proper challenge level when a bubblebot is present, or keep the tuning the same so it is at the proper challenge level sans bubblebot, which effectively under-tunes an encounter when a bubblebot is present.

This is the reason for many different encounter changes over the years. For example, holy wrath on Anub'arak. The encounter became undertuned when a few paladins were introduced to the raid, but was at the proper tuning sans paladin. Their solution was to nerf holy wrath for that particular encounter so one particular ability did not skew the desired challenge level and to satisfy the design goal of "bring the player, not the class." The problem with bubblebotting is it is relevant to nearly all encounters with predictable or regular raid wide single hit or short channel AoE. The only way to effectively to do the same thing here is to make single hit or short channel raidwide AoE bypass absorbs, which wouldn't exactly be an elegant, nor desirable, fix.

It is flatly more challenging to heal an encounter without a bubblebot as opposed to an encounter with one. The example I provided shows exactly why.

[Samurai]

Every time Disc priest bubbleboting gets mention the priest mods forget the forum rules. It happened in Wrath and it is happening in Cata

[Necrologic]

They will let it slide because it will be better to cast heals....

[gotpriest]

And I am not being ignorant. I am tired of mods on the forums attacking people and breaking the rules of the forums that they say they "enforce".

Every time Disc priest bubbleboting gets mention the priest mods forget the forum rules. It happened in Wrath and it is happening in Cata

Promotions come with Privileges.

Case in Point: Since when has God obeyed the laws of Physics?

TLDR: It's good to be the king.

If you don't like what the mods have to say about you, then don't be mad when they deadpan your ill-informed response to a thread they themselves created to inspire meaningful debate but has since been filled with vitriolic hate-mongering.

[phyx]

by reading this thread i realized Spiritus is a dreamer and Tiduz is a chart topper. Disc spec is now broken, one cannot argue with that. I like that spec too much and i wont go holy, ever. But they have to give us something back. Right now its a bunch of nerfs. Blizzard in their intention to nerf us (we were OP in 4.0.6, thats a fact), they screwed us over big time. PoH heal even with crits and glyps is rediculous. 7k heal + 3k DA? on ppl with 140k hp?
God forbid we bubble 10 ppl when we see inc massive dmg because we will go oom asap. Its not a fun spec to play anymore. I only hope blizzard is reading what theyve done and will fix it soon. Keep the pws nerf but revert PoH nerf and reduce rupture CD to 9-10 sec. that shouldnt be game breaking but we could do our role (mitigating) without going oom asap.

[ZippyDoodle]

It is usually not feasible to have PW:B up for all raidwide hits, nor are all encounters designed to allow the raid to be grouped. PW:S on all but one raider in 25man, however, isn't positionally dependent, nor on a 2min CD.
Other DRs also have CDs. They are powerful, hence the CD.

You have little to no heroic experience.

So you hardly have any room to sit here and say guilds don't "feasably" chain raid cooldowns. Bubbles/sacs/tranqs/aura mastery ect.


Because they in fact, do.

My guild runs 2 disc priests at LEAST depending on the fight. Sometimes 3. They do not enforce bubble spamming, and don't care if you do or not. We still beat encounters just fine without it.

Magmaw/Omnitron/Maloriak/Chimearon/Atremedes/Valiona+Theralion....

Those are all examples of fights where guilds chain raid cooldowns to mitigate as much damage as possible.



Don't sit here and make things up Spiritus. You have seen how many heroic bosses? TWO gimik heroic bosses. You know NOTHING about heroic content.