[Holy] Playstyle chance with 6.1?

[Deleted]

So the Patch hits live this week.
Is there anything that changes for holypriest that is important? Maybe Mindbender>Solace or sth?

[Danner]

Not really many changes. The big change is that if two prayer of mendings jump to the same person they merge into a single buff with the sum of charges. Or something like that.

They also buffed clarity of purpose (not convinced it is good yet) and made saving grace half as bad (still definitively sucks).

Divine star does 20% more damage, which means it does about 2 more damage. And cascade can now jump back to players it already hit but now heals for much much much less, which i consider an overall nerf. Gonna have to try it out i guess.

All in all, the biggest change is probably the blood elf models. A significant amout of holypriests are blood elves.

[Soiprax]

So the Patch hits live this week.
Is there anything that changes for holypriest that is important? Maybe Mindbender>Solace or sth?

Mindbender just becomes stronger than solace baseline, which, with enough haste (20%?), it already was..

[Danner]

Mindbender just becomes stronger than solace baseline, which, with enough haste (20%?), it already was..

How did I miss that!? O.o

[KaPe]

No more Solace for me in Holy, that's for sure. Little bit of extra damage and it doesn't have to be used every 10 seconds for largely irrelevant healing. I keep forgeting about that damn thing all the time. Always preferred that little squid... well, except for some annoying phases which drop target and confuse it.

Still not sure about Clarity of Purpose, even with 4pc bonus. Cheaper, affects more targets and not group bound - all good and well, but if I wanted %Hp scaling heal, I'd be playing a Shaman. Especially with Mending change that will lead to less "wasted" procs from WoM. Might be something to think about on fight per fight basis.

[Isheria]

The cascade change is actually a buff to smaller groups because now you can utilize all the heals produced from all 4 bounces and a nerf to bigger groups, on a mythic group (20 ppl) it actually does more total healing than before.

[Danner]

Isheria:

I see the devs say that, and I get their math, but I kinda disagree on the effect of it. I also play 25mans a lot, so I am obviously biased, because in a 25man this will be a major nerf no matter what.
That said - I really need to test this out in practice before saying anything decisive on it. But, here's my argument anyway:

Today, Cascade hits up to 1+2+4+8+16 = 31 targets.
Assume each hit on average hits for X (this depends on spread range, and is hard to accurately model). The total potential healing per cast is 31 * X.
Of course, since the spell can only hit X players, the output is capped to [raidsize] * X.

At a 35% throughput reduction, and assuming that X doesn't change notably, the output is now 0.65 * 31 * X = 20.15X.
Meaning, in a raidsize of 20 or below, the healing is increased from [raidsize] * X to 20.15 * X, while in a raidsize of 21 or up, the healing is reduced from [raidsize] * X to 20.15 * X.
The spell now more consistent in output regardless of raidsize, for better or worse. This is obviously what the devs had in mind with their change in the first place. But I think this is overlooking why we use this spell in the first place.

Today, Cascade acts as a blanket raidwide heal with a mediocre time delay on it. Everyone is healed for a X-ish amount of healing eventually, not unlike Halo. Unlike Halo, the HPS done is somewhat more even, and the cost is smaller and the HPS/HPM ratio is thus favourable. There are certainly situations where Halo is better, but I like Cascade more for these reasons.

With this change, you break the promise that you will heal everyone. Cascade is no longer guaranteed to heal everyone. In fact, if your raid consists of the "standard raid position" with

- Two tanks in front, tanking a boss facing away from the raid
- Dps'ers in a disorganized cluster at various ranges behind the boss
- Healers in the far back, where we have full overview of what is going on.

Then Cascade may just end up bouncing between the tanks and the healers, ignoring the DPSers completely. I don't really know how this will jump, and I need to test it out. I'm just worried that it will heal the tanks and healers a lot, and skip many of the people in the middle. This I consider a nerf to the spell, and removes a large part of it's usefulness. I may end up going back to Halo as a result.

I guess I'll find out when the patch hits!

[bonzo27]

The big change is that if two prayer of mendings jump to the same person they merge into a single buff with the sum of charges. Or something like that.

Is this actually happening? I saw something about it but I thought it got scrapped. How many stacks does it go up to?

[Overdispersion]

Is this actually happening? I saw something about it but I thought it got scrapped. How many stacks does it go up to?

It stacks up to 10.

[Thirteen]

Divine star does 20% more damage, which means it does about 2 more damage. And cascade can now jump back to players it already hit but now heals for much much much less, which i consider an overall nerf. Gonna have to try it out i guess.

Did anyone actually use Star for something other than SoL procs?

<insert Cascade math>

I was under the impression that it only made Cascade able to hit people twice, not an infinite amount?

[Danner]

Did anyone actually use Star for something other than SoL procs?
I was under the impression that it only made Cascade able to hit people twice, not an infinite amount?

Quite possible!

I haven't been on the PTR and tried it. Gonna have to test it when the patch comes out tomorrow

[Deleted]

Yup cascade is now limited to 2 hits per person instead of 1, it seems to be mostly balanced in a 20man raid (like a 1% increase), should be stronger on raid sizes smaller than that (since you're effectively doubling the healing by hitting people twice but only losing 35% from the 'nerf'. Weaker on raids larger than 20.
I think for most scenarios it should end up healing more than it did previously

[Danner]

Thanks for the confirmation!

Lowers my worries a bit then.

[VelvetRealm]

Mindbender just becomes stronger than solace baseline, which, with enough haste (20%?), it already was..

Wait..so Mindbender is the choice now over Solace??

[Deleted]

Wait..so Mindbender is the choice now over Solace??

Posted this earlier in the disc equivalent thread;

Solace offers 1680mp5 if used exactly on CD

Mindbender;

haste%	#attacks	mp5
0	14	1505
5	15	1575
12.5	16	1680
20	17	1785
27.5	18	1890
35	19	1995
42.5	20	2100
50	21	2205

Some other notes;
If solace is replacing holy fire you also save 1.6k mana per use which increases the mp5 to 2480mp5 if used exactly on CD.
If solace is delayed 1 GCD each use (with 0 haste) then it's mp5 drops to 1461mp5, or 2156mp5 if replacing holy fire.
Mindbender mp5 increases with haste but this also includes buffs. On use trinkets / heroism / power infusion.
For example if you used mindbender 3 times in a 3min fight with 5% haste you'd have 1575mp5. However if one of those uses was during heroism then you'd have 1715mp5 averaged.

I've heard reports of people saying they 'feel' solace gives more mana back. This could largely be due to the extra GCDs available to spend mana with mindbender, just something to be aware of.

[Thirteen]

Did you factor in mana you'll be using to cast Holy Fire (I'm assuming disc will be doing this?) as part of the Mindbender mp5? Holy will likely be sticking to SoL anyway.

[KaPe]

With 2pc, you don't have to HF on cooldown to keep up Archangel stacks, so you won't be saving 100% of that mana. Holy Fire isn't that great spell on its own.

[wombats23]

Another thing people sometimes forget about solace is that you still have good ole shadowfiend. (I'm still probably going MB though. Hate solace.)

[ashleyriott]

Another thing people sometimes forget about solace is that you still have good ole shadowfiend. (I'm still probably going MB though. Hate solace.)

Shadowfiend doesn't give mana any longer.

[Deleted]

This thread is about Holy, so holy fire doesn't really factor in, there is a disc version of this thread if you wish to discuss that there. Regardless, I did add a note to the post about holy fire increasing the value of solace.

I was doing some thinking about mindbender vs SoL. I only got my 4pc for the end of last lockout but it felt to me like a lot of those SoL procs weren't giving me the full benefit that they were before, quite often I'd be overlapping serendipity from the 4pc with the serendipity gained by the SoL proc. It doesn't take many lose for SoL to fall behind mindbender. Even pre mindbender buff you needed about 3 procs a minute of SoL to have equal raw mana gains to mindbender when using all the serendipity procs on heal. With bender being buffed that requirement will be increased, you'd almost certainly need to make effective use of PoH from the serendipity procs to save an equal amount of mana. And it still relies on you getting the procs, which limits its usefulness to fights with no downtime.