Devs you didn't think through the disc changes did you?

[Noradin]

This would actually make absorbs stronger, not weaker, which is the last thing the game needs.

How so, please elaborate...

It would force healing spells since absorb-only healing would mean eventually dying anyway.

Edit: Or did you mistake if to mean percentage based absorbs? That is not what I meant at all, more like someone with 20k shields gets hit by 10k damage would take, say, 4k damage and have a remaining shield of 14k.

[Deleted]

Don't be cryptic - what do you mean?

PosPosPos is correct. The idea of absorbs letting damage through is a terrible idea as it further values absorbs relative to standard healing and makes them easier to maintain. By opting for a model such as that, you ensure that a Discipline priest is basically mandatory for what amounts to passive damage reduction.

yes, and grace got buffed to 30% after the fix so it's basically a wash.

unless you did mythic testing just don't try to justify disc basically counting for 2 healers. a disc basically lets you 3-4 heal any encounter you want simply because the shields are so strong. grace needs to be nerfed from 30% to probably 10% for disc to be in a fair spot tbh.

I'm not trying to justify anything. You do seem to suggest that Discipline is too powerful and the people playing it are okay with that. We aren't. At the very least, I'm not. If you have issues with other healers being weak relative to Discipline, champion improving them. Simply reducing Grace to 10, 20 or whatever % doesn't fix the issue with Discipline being too reliant on spammable AoE heals and shields either.

I'd also still love to see some linked logs as I can't find any myself on warcraft logs

I might also be totally wrong but isn't 30 % Grace from the old Grace having the "Discipline" perk integrated into it? I'm also not certain that a 10% increase in healing offsets double dipping on stats.

[PosPosPos]

How so, please elaborate...

It would force healing spells since absorb-only healing would mean eventually dying anyway.

Edit: Or did you mistake if to mean percentage based absorbs? That is not what I meant at all, more like someone with 20k shields gets hit by 10k damage would take, say, 4k damage and have a remaining shield of 14k.

Don't be cryptic - what do you mean?

Exactly what Aimeez said.

An example would be:
A rather damaging mechanic is about to hit a player for 50k per second for 5 seconds.

As a disc priest, you decide to shield said player as per your job, and decide on a PW:S cast which shields for, say 100k on average.

In the current absorb model where absorbs block 100% of all incoming damage up to the limit, said player would take 0 damage for 2 seconds, and start to spike for the last 3 seconds of the debuff.

In your proposed absorb model where absorbs block a less-than-hundred % of all incoming damage up to the limit(say 50% for the sake of this discussion), said player would take 25k damage for 4 seconds and 50k damage for the last second.

From any reasonable healer's perspective, you would rather have the latter scenario where the damage is setting in smoother and slower than the former scenario - would you have someone taking smaller or bigger chunks of damage within a set amount of time?

We may as well remake disc and hpallies to become walking players which do nothing but reduce all incoming raid damage by x% as long as they are alive in the raid and remove all their healing entirely.

[Basmothh]

As a disc priest, you decide to shield said player as per your job, and decide on a PW:S cast which shields for, say 100k on average.

In the current absorb model where absorbs block 100% of all incoming damage up to the limit, said player would take 0 damage for 2 seconds, and start to spike for the last 3 seconds of the debuff.

In your proposed absorb model where absorbs block a less-than-hundred % of all incoming damage up to the limit(say 50% for the sake of this discussion), said player would take 25k damage for 4 seconds and 50k damage for the last second.

Uh, won't the reverse be true though? If absorbs only block a % of damage, then they would be much weaker at dealing with any one-off damaging mechanic like Swelling Pride or any type of raid damage that would be fatal to the player. That's the main reason you bring Discs - to provide an EHP buffer that prevents one-shots - and changing absorbs to only prevent a % of each instance of damage would drastically reduce that utility.

In your scenario, the only negative to keeping shields as is will be to slightly delay the need for healing from the other specs. It still doesn't change the fact that the fully front-loaded absorb has already prevented a portion of the damage, which drastically reduces the lethality the damaging ability.

[Deleted]

The problem is more in switching absorbs from front-loaded healing as they are now to a persistent damage reduction aura.

Simplified scenario here with idealized lovely and well behaving damage patterns. This requires damage being more gradual and a proper synergistic relationship between heals and absorbs. Obviously, SoO doesn't have this.

If you have a group with two healers, once damage hits both will negate the health loss using direct healing.
In a group with an absorb healer and a standard healer, the absorb healer needs to build shields, which are then consumed and the throughput healer heals those without shields or, if the entire raid is shielded, those with empty health pools.
In a group of a damage-reduction healer things are slightly different. The "shields" are pre-built, but now the ebb and flow of damage is reduced and as the shields are not consumed as abruptly, both the shield healer and throughput healer can more easily deal with the damage that could have been lethal but has been nullified by the longer lasting shields.

The disparity of these groups is also increased. So long as throughput healing and absorbs are well balanced, the first two groups can be killed by the same amount of damage. The third group though would need heavier raid damage to fully strip off the damage reduction shields and then to overcome whatever HPS is brought by the group.

The proposal of partial absorbs has been noted by the devs and there was a blue tweet or post about it months ago where they basically said it was unworkable.

Slightly related and rambling but I do hope damage patterns move away from shields being so strong at providing effective health. I'd rather seem them as an alternative health pool that occasionally increases EHP. Difficult to make happen though but I can dream.

That's the main reason you bring Discs - to provide an EHP buffer that prevents one-shots - and changing absorbs to only prevent a % of each instance of damage would drastically reduce that utility.

Yup, at the moment that is the case. Kind of a relic from how terribly bursty SoO has been with its damage. % based absorbs remove this issue with huge EHP buffers but this can also be addressed by changing damage patterns, increasing health pools relative to healing and toning down shield generation. They do add a different issue though, one which is possibly more severe in that you introduce two healers which are effectively constant power word barriers.

[PosPosPos]

Uh, won't the reverse be true though? If absorbs only block a % of damage, then they would be much weaker at dealing with any one-off damaging mechanic like Swelling Pride or any type of raid damage that would be fatal to the player. That's the main reason you bring Discs - to provide an EHP buffer that prevents one-shots - and changing absorbs to only prevent a % of each instance of damage would drastically reduce that utility.

Most, if not all, "one-off" damaging mechanics are actually misnomers. There are currently absolutely no fight in SoO or WoD that does not feature follow-up damage after a major spike(save for maybe Siegecrafter overloads in between Magnet phases).

So while you may be true describing a vacuum-only situation where % absorbs are weaker, in practical settings it simply does not apply.

In your scenario, the only negative to keeping shields as is will be to slightly delay the need for healing from the other specs. It still doesn't change the fact that the fully front-loaded absorb has already prevented a portion of the damage, which drastically reduces the lethality the damaging ability.

Again, that assumes there is any fight at all in upcoming content which feature a burst of damage, then absolutely nothing for the next 30 seconds or so. Which via raid testing and blizzard current raid design philosophy of higher sustained raid damage, lower burst raid damage, this is highly impractical to even consider.

[Basmothh]

Most, if not all, "one-off" damaging mechanics are actually misnomers. There are currently absolutely no fight in SoO or WoD that does not feature follow-up damage after a major spike(save for maybe Siegecrafter overloads in between Magnet phases).

So while you may be true describing a vacuum-only situation where % absorbs are weaker, in practical settings it simply does not apply.

And what of situations whereby someone is about to die? A PW:S that absorbs all damage has a MUCH higher potential to save the person than an absorb that only shields partially. The current utility of absorbs providing an EHP buffer that saves lives is its most important aspect. There have been so many mechanics that are simply trivialized due to Disc and absorb stacking - most notable of which are Shek'zeer and Dark Animus.

Also, there will always be the same amount of damage taken regardless of how absorbs function. If a mechanic does 500k total over 5 seconds, a 100k pre-shield will still provide the same level of damage reduction regardless of how it works (100k/500k). The only difference is whether it is front loaded or not.

Further, keep in mind that with the way absorbs work right now, any additional absorbs placed during the damage interval will most likely be consumed due to absorbs having priority. If absorbs only get partially consumed, it will result in less of the incoming being negated by such absorbs. This skews the EHP utility even further in favour of front-loaded absorbs.

Really, the only difference is in how it affects the other healers. An argument can be made to change absorbs to only partially shield each tick of damage because it spreads the amount of healing available to the others more evenly.

[PosPosPos]

And what of situations whereby someone is about to die? A PW:S that absorbs all damage has a MUCH higher potential to save the person than an absorb that only shields partially. The current utility of absorbs providing an EHP buffer that saves lives is its most important aspect. There have been so many mechanics that are simply trivialized due to Disc and absorb stacking - most notable of which are Shek'zeer and Dark Animus.

Also, there will always be the same amount of damage taken regardless of how absorbs function. If a mechanic does 500k total over 5 seconds, a 100k pre-shield will still provide the same level of damage reduction regardless of how it works (100k/500k). The only difference is whether it is front loaded or not.

Further, keep in mind that with the way absorbs work right now, any additional absorbs placed during the damage interval will most likely be consumed due to absorbs having priority. If absorbs only get partially consumed, it will result in less of the incoming being negated by such absorbs. This skews the EHP utility even further in favour of front-loaded absorbs.

Really, the only difference is in how it affects the other healers. An argument can be made to change absorbs to only partially shield each tick of damage because it spreads the amount of healing available to the others more evenly.

If you let someone die with something akin to Pain Suppression on, there's something wrong somewhere that isn't to do with the way absorbs work in general.

Also, it has nothing to do with how much damage is absorbed, but how the damage is absorbed matters.

Finally, the only argument that can be made for such a proposed partial absorb mechanic is in a setting where you take 1 burst of lethal damage every 30 seconds and nothing else. In every other situation, such a change will only vastly increase the value of absorbs in general, which is unhealthy for the game.

[muto]

Honestly after running some mythic with Holy Nova i find people really don't have to stack too much for it to be effective. As ridiculous as this sounds i found if i ran around in circles through everyone i was getting almost always five people and they were fairly spread out. Its hard to explain without showing what i was doing but i was basically doing holy nova laps on several fights and would stop to spirit shell. other than that penance, holy fire, pw:shield i could use while doing my laps haha. It was really fun actually creating a path i would run through while spamming HN, especially with everyones healthbars up so you can just run through damaged people!

Side Note: I keybound HN to my scroll wheel which i found made it a very cool playstyle imo. I run around scrolling my butt off while using all my other abilities simultaneously.

Need someone to a make a wheel Priest video, like the wheel Mage video with Holy Nova bound to every slot.

[Basmothh]

If you let someone die with something akin to Pain Suppression on, there's something wrong somewhere that isn't to do with the way absorbs work in general.

Also, it has nothing to do with how much damage is absorbed, but how the damage is absorbed matters.

Finally, the only argument that can be made for such a proposed partial absorb mechanic is in a setting where you take 1 burst of lethal damage every 30 seconds and nothing else. In every other situation, such a change will only vastly increase the value of absorbs in general, which is unhealthy for the game.

If you cast a Pain Suppression on someone low, then yes, the person will probably still die. Do you actually disagree that absorbs the way they are now have a much higher potential to save people from burst or lethal damage than if absorbs were changed to only shield partially per application of damage?

The one factor you've failed to account for is the duration of the absorb. Changing it so that absorbs only do so partially actually results in less effective pre-shielding as the Disc Priest will have to account for the fact that the absorbs will not get consumed immediately (i.e. thus delaying the duration for pre-shielding). This would help off-set the increased effectiveness (in terms of mitigation) of changing absorbs to shield partially.

Allowing absorbs to shield partially would mean that the absorbs gets used up more smoothly. That's an advantage yes, but it's also offset by the fact that absorbs cast by the Disc Priest when there's raid damage won't be as effective, considering the fact that it won't be immediately consumed and has a higher chance for overhealing.

However, absorbs as they are allow raids to stack Disc Priests to simply trivialize burst mechanics like those of Shek'zeer or Dark Animus'. This doesn't happen every fight, but I can't think of anything more unhealthy to the game than that when it does occur.

[Deleted]

Absorbs that let damage through are not absorbs. They are absorbs that don't work sometimes.

That being said your sub discussion is interesting but it doesn't seem clear cut.

e.g. absorbs can fall or you may have really dying people needing absorbs.




e.g. It would be absolutely horrendous on pw:s on progression difficulty.

[Noradin]

Absorbs that let damage through are not absorbs. They are absorbs that don't work sometimes.

That being said your sub discussion is interesting but it doesn't seem clear cut.

e.g. absorbs can fall or you may have really dying people needing absorbs.




e.g. It would be absolutely horrendous on pw:s on progression difficulty.

You make it sound like something based on chance, but it would not.

Yes it would make absorbs stronger (smoother) in many situations and thus could require other numbers to be balanced (oh thats a new one, who would have thought a change in mechanics would have to come with a change in numbers?), but ther would also be some situatuions where it would be weaker.

First and foremost, however, it would make blocking other healers by blanketing with absorbs impossible. It would improve synergies between healers, because lets face it, absorbs improve the performance of non-instant direct heals an hots especially as long as there is some damage for them to heal. One of the problems of hots is that sometimes they are too slow to get the target above some threshold before the next hit.

So yes, this would make absorbs stronger (more effective while reducing the aps), but it would work best coupled with other healing specs and improve their effectiveness.
Like a block tank is nicer to heal for druids than avoid tanks.

Might be interresting to leave PW:S out of this though.

[PosPosPos]

If you cast a Pain Suppression on someone low, then yes, the person will probably still die. Do you actually disagree that absorbs the way they are now have a much higher potential to save people from burst or lethal damage than if absorbs were changed to only shield partially per application of damage?

Do you realize how asinine your remark is AFTER I have repeatedly addressed the burst damage argument? How many times do I need to repeat that there are no fights now nor in the future which feature one burst of damage and nothing else for a long period of time?

The one factor you've failed to account for is the duration of the absorb. Changing it so that absorbs only do so partially actually results in less effective pre-shielding as the Disc Priest will have to account for the fact that the absorbs will not get consumed immediately (i.e. thus delaying the duration for pre-shielding). This would help off-set the increased effectiveness (in terms of mitigation) of changing absorbs to shield partially.

Why does the duration matter when you can instant cast PW:S on demand?

Allowing absorbs to shield partially would mean that the absorbs gets used up more smoothly. That's an advantage yes, but it's also offset by the fact that absorbs cast by the Disc Priest when there's raid damage won't be as effective, considering the fact that it won't be immediately consumed and has a higher chance for overhealing.

It's actually going to be more effective in both current and future raids due to having more windows of sustained raid damage. Can you stop regressing over addressed points of argument?

However, absorbs as they are allow raids to stack Disc Priests to simply trivialize burst mechanics like those of Shek'zeer or Dark Animus'. This doesn't happen every fight, but I can't think of anything more unhealthy to the game than that when it does occur.

Stacked disc priests would be stronger with the partial absorb mechanic, but it's also obvious you have no acumen for game design.

[Basmothh]

Do you realize how asinine your remark is AFTER I have repeatedly addressed the burst damage argument? How many times do I need to repeat that there are no fights now nor in the future which feature one burst of damage and nothing else for a long period of time?

Why ignore the portion where I bring up lethal damage? With the way absorbs work right now, PW:S is the best spot heal by far. No other ability comes close to the EHP buffer that it provides.

Let's also cleanly ignore the fact that CoW can be abused on several Mythic bosses to trivialize certain mechanics.

Why does the duration matter when you can instant cast PW:S on demand?

What does the instant cast have anything to do with it? If your PW:S is front-loaded and gets used up in 1 second, and if you know that there is upcoming damage in 15s, you get to start pre-shielding at 14s. However, if it takes partial ticks and gets used up in 4 seconds instead, you can only start pre-shielding at 11s. When it comes to pre-shielding, changing it so that absorbs shield partially reduces the amount of pre-shields you can place, which essentially offsets the fact that the absorbs now function more smoothly over the course of damage.

It's actually going to be more effective in both current and future raids due to having more windows of sustained raid damage. Can you stop regressing over addressed points of argument?

While most fights don't have instant burst damage but have mechanics that do damage over a short interval, most of them still feature lulls in damage. Pre-shielding can and will still be a thing on quite a few fights.

Further, you've completely missed the point. Say there's a mechanic that does damage every second. As above, let's say front-loaded absorbs get consumed within 1 second while partial absorbs get used up in 4 seconds. This means that front-loaded absorbs applied during the mechanic are fully effective right till the end of it, whereas partial absorbs don't have the same effectiveness. Quite clearly absorbs that partially shield damage are also less effective at dealing with short damage intervals.

Also, for fights with constant damage, front-loaded or partial absorbs essentially end up having the same function as the fight progresses when health bars start dipping below 100%.

Stacked disc priests would be stronger with the partial absorb mechanic, but it's also obvious you have no acumen for game design.

You're going to have to qualify this rather than expecting me to accept such an asinine claim.

[PosPosPos]

Why ignore the portion where I bring up lethal damage? With the way absorbs work right now, PW:S is the best spot heal by far. No other ability comes close to the EHP buffer that it provides.

Let's also cleanly ignore the fact that CoW can be abused on several Mythic bosses to trivialize certain mechanics.



What does the instant cast have anything to do with it? If your PW:S is front-loaded and gets used up in 1 second, and if you know that there is upcoming damage in 15s, you get to start pre-shielding at 14s. However, if it takes partial ticks and gets used up in 4 seconds instead, you can only start pre-shielding at 11s. When it comes to pre-shielding, changing it so that absorbs shield partially reduces the amount of pre-shields you can place, which essentially offsets the fact that the absorbs now function more smoothly over the course of damage.



While most fights don't have instant burst damage but have mechanics that do damage over a short interval, most of them still feature lulls in damage. Pre-shielding can and will still be a thing on quite a few fights.

Further, you've completely missed the point. Say there's a mechanic that does damage every second. As above, let's say front-loaded absorbs get consumed within 1 second while partial absorbs get used up in 4 seconds. This means that front-loaded absorbs applied during the mechanic are fully effective right till the end of it, whereas partial absorbs don't have the same effectiveness. Quite clearly absorbs that partially shield damage are also less effective at dealing with short damage intervals.

Also, for fights with constant damage, front-loaded or partial absorbs essentially end up having the same function as the fight progresses when health bars start dipping below 100%.



You're going to have to qualify this rather than expecting me to accept such an asinine claim.

It's very simple: there's no hope for enlightenment for someone who doesn't see the problem in PW:B and Pain Suppression having no cooldown. That said someone just simply is hopeless when it comes to game design.

It would also be ideal if said someone realizes he is so far behind and is digging the hole deeper with every ignorant attempt at continuing the circular argument of a mechanic that only exists in a vacuum and not in reality.

Hint: more stacked disc priests = better blanketing of Pain Suppression on the raid. It should be painfully obvious to anyone with even a shred of intelligence, but apparently that's not the case.

[Deleted]

I don't normally agree with PosPosPos but they are correct with this. That isn't to say that current shields don't have scenarios in which they are too strong or prove to be problematic but the alternative is much worse in terms of design for healing compositions and raid encounters. EHP is very different from what amounts to passive damage reduction. Healing balance is such that the absorb healers have a lower maximum HPS to account for their perceived HPS gain awarded by EHP. However, the same encounter, even in SoO which grossly favoured absorbs, could be healed by a healing composition totally devoid of an absorb healer, excluding one or two gimmicky moments.

If shields were structured such that they acted as a passive Pain Suppression, then either you need to greatly limit the ability to generate such shields and thereby artificially limiting group composition via a "fourth" role or you allow for such shields to be stacked and thereby making your best healing composition the maximum number of absorb healers to mitigate all damage sources near continuously plus one throughput healer to mop up the residual damage. At the moment, at least shields compete with each other and will hopefully be smaller come WoD.

There are other considerations to be made. A partial absorb healer means that damage over a period of time is smoothed out. Other healers can use mana efficient spells more often relative to a group that does not have such passive damage reduction or could even drop the total number of healers in a group, purely by the virtue of a different type of healer being present. People don't like that situation, even in farm content and a partial absorb healer would only exacerbate the issues we saw with well geared Discipline priests in 5.4.

Let's also cleanly ignore the fact that CoW can be abused on several Mythic bosses to trivialize certain mechanics.

One bad design does not excuse another. It is also easier to fix full shields than it is to throw everything out and try and redesign around what amounts to a fourth role in the game.

Say there's a mechanic that does damage every second. As above, let's say front-loaded absorbs get consumed within 1 second while partial absorbs get used up in 4 seconds. This means that front-loaded absorbs applied during the mechanic are fully effective right till the end of it, whereas partial absorbs don't have the same effectiveness. Quite clearly absorbs that partially shield damage are also less effective at dealing with short damage intervals.

Using an example here of Empowered Whirling. Front loaded absorbs are consumed quickly and health deficits rapidly become apparent, requiring (in theory!) high throughput spells to deal with such damage. If I pop Power Word:Barrier, then that damage which was previously verging on lethal becomes much more manageable and there is a greater chance of surviving the mechanic, even with the other healers using lower throughput spells. This smoothing of damage is only conferred by partial absorbs. One of the things that made Divine Star so strong at dealing with Empowered Whirlings was that it could act in a somewhat similar manner by reapplying smaller shields. For the same reason, it is now almost better to ignore any other choice of healing and just keep casting Holy Nova. Since it can pump out so many smaller shields so rapidly, it is basically acting like a partial absorb model shield.

Another issue with a partial absorb shield model is how one deals with multiple shield sources. This isn't too much of a concern currently, at least not in content that matters since shields either tick off or are consumed. Under a partial absorb model, the total absorption by a shield would need to remain similar for things to be "balanced". However, due to a longer lasting shield, how do you treat other shield sources? Do you continue with the idea of smaller shield consumed first, thereby negating any possibility of multiple absorb healers? Do you compensate by making damage hit harder, thereby requiring throughput healers to have an even higher HPS ceiling? Or do you allow multiple shields to stack such that all shields contribute to the % reduction, making partial absorb healers much more desirable?

It is an interesting thing that would need to be considered for partial absorbs to be viable.

[PosPosPos]

Or do you allow multiple shields to stack such that all shields contribute to the % reduction, making partial absorb healers much more desirable?

All % damage reduction mechanics(same or different name) stack multiplicatively with each other, so this is exactly why partial absorb shields(which also come with a low or zero effective CD) will promote stacking of disc priests.

Unless of course, Blizzard makes a special exception, but they are also known for keeping things as constant as they can for fundamental mechanics.

Edit: Oh, and exactly what happens when absorb healers have multiple absorb buffs? 50% reduction with Divine Aegis, then 50% with PW:S, then 50% with Spirit Shell for a total of 87.5% damage reduction(let's not even go into cross class interaction with holy paladins with IH and Sacred Shield)

[Deleted]

True! The other option is to leave them as "shields" and always allow for the smaller partial absorb to be consumed first. That then limits the number of absorb healers you want to bring or requires much heavier damage as I rambled about briefly before.

[Basmothh]

It's very simple: there's no hope for enlightenment for someone who doesn't see the problem in PW:B and Pain Suppression having no cooldown. That said someone just simply is hopeless when it comes to game design.

It would also be ideal if said someone realizes he is so far behind and is digging the hole deeper with every ignorant attempt at continuing the circular argument of a mechanic that only exists in a vacuum and not in reality.

Hint: more stacked disc priests = better blanketing of Pain Suppression on the raid. It should be painfully obvious to anyone with even a shred of intelligence, but apparently that's not the case.

Goodness, your hyperbole is so ridiculous that it borders on idiocy. 'Constant PW:B and Pain Suppression' on the raid would require Disc Priests to put out much more healing than they're capable of.

Let's look at every fight this tier - most of them simply feature spikes in damage (be it in the for of one-off burst damage or over a short interval) followed by lulls. Tell me then - what exactly is the difference in DR between a front-loaded 100k shield and one that shields for 20k per tick for 5 ticks of damage? You could argue that it would give the other healers more time to react, but then I have already countered with the fact that absorbs that only shield partially means a reduced amount of pre-shielding and a diminished effectiveness of absorbs put out during the damage interval. These two things would essentially off-set each other.

Also, the one huge, unique advantage that front-loaded absorbs have is the utility from the EHP buffer. PW:S functions a lot better as a spot shield (and certainly when it comes to saving lives) if absorbs are front-loaded. This is a simple fact. The same goes for CoW, and it is a problem because there are a couple of fights next tier where it can be abused to trivialize certain tank mechanics.

Of course, the one thing that you've yet to acknowledge is that allow for partial absorbing shields would make healing a lot smoother for the other specs. But hey, who cares about them, right?

Here's a hint too: more stacked Disc Priests with front loaded shields = complete negation of damage from many mechanics. I'd sooner take immunity from damage over blanketing of PS.

Stop dodging the points raised, it only serves to highlight your ignorance.

[PosPosPos]

Goodness, your hyperbole is so ridiculous that it borders on idiocy. 'Constant PW:B and Pain Suppression' on the raid would require Disc Priests to put out much more healing than they're capable of.

Let's look at every fight this tier - most of them simply feature spikes in damage (be it in the for of one-off burst damage or over a short interval) followed by lulls. Tell me then - what exactly is the difference in DR between a front-loaded 100k shield and one that shields for 20k per tick for 5 ticks of damage? You could argue that it would give the other healers more time to react, but then I have already countered with the fact that absorbs that only shield partially means a reduced amount of pre-shielding and a diminished effectiveness of absorbs put out during the damage interval. These two things would essentially off-set each other.

Also, the one huge, unique advantage that front-loaded absorbs have is the utility from the EHP buffer. PW:S functions a lot better as a spot shield (and certainly when it comes to saving lives) if absorbs are front-loaded. This is a simple fact. The same goes for CoW, and it is a problem because there are a couple of fights next tier where it can be abused to trivialize certain tank mechanics.

Of course, the one thing that you've yet to acknowledge is that allow for partial absorbing shields would make healing a lot smoother for the other specs. But hey, who cares about them, right?

Here's a hint too: more stacked Disc Priests with front loaded shields = complete negation of damage from many mechanics. I'd sooner take immunity from damage over blanketing of PS.

Stop dodging the points raised, it only serves to highlight your ignorance.

It's obvious you aren't playing the same game as us then.

"Let's look at every fight this tier - most of them simply feature spikes in damage (be it in the for of one-off burst damage or over a short interval) followed by lulls."

Yeahhh....no. But keep digging that hole.