Patch 5.3 PTR. Attonement Nerf

[Kelesti]

It always makes me wonder, like, why shouldn't warriors run out of rage in the middle of a fight and have to drink a rage potion or ask for hymn of rage?

Or rogues, quaff a combo potion or else be stuck with autoattack until combat ends.

This thing where it seems like people want healers to be both short of mana and have a complicated rotation, but blame them whenever a group wipes, what exactly is that?

DPS used to actually have to manage a lot of auto-attacks when threat was limited. And then you'd get tanks that would drop survivability for said threat, taxing healers harder but still not a full-burn rotation on either accord.

The fact of the matter is, healing (and DPS) having a lot more to go back to, with restraints, is actually a good fun design. Simplicity and the idea of an "all-in" like it is seems okay but really isn't.

[Wuga]

Atonement at 80% is still going to be leaps and bounds ahead of Eminence. Seriously, give me AA, Solace, and Atonement and you can have Xuen, Jade Serpent Statue, TP, Jab, SCK, BoK and Eminence. Deal?!

You monks comparing atonement and eminence make me laugh... yes, atonement is better (and easier) than eminence. And ReM/uplift is better (and easier) than poh. Want to trade those too? I noticed you left them off your list

It always makes me wonder, like, why shouldn't warriors run out of rage in the middle of a fight and have to drink a rage potion or ask for hymn of rage?

Or rogues, quaff a combo potion or else be stuck with autoattack until combat ends.

This thing where it seems like people want healers to be both short of mana and have a complicated rotation, but blame them whenever a group wipes, what exactly is that?

They tried the resourceless healer thing in wrath (so it's just a hps spamfest, although the "rotations" certainly weren't complicated)... I actually didn't mind it and it probably would have been more interesting than the current model if you had to press more than 1-2 buttons for said hps spamfest.

[wrynil]

First Gooffy thoughts!:

Nerf it 50% and make it cost no mana we cant use it during times with high end dmg anyway if we really wanna see our team go past those times or having the other healers doing so much more than they should. Make it a weak non mana consuming heal which makes us specielt even with no mana as the only healer.

Or nerf it to 20% of dmg with no mana cost, have it stack some kind of stack to like 10 stacks and when this number is reached you can use a spell activated only by 10 stacks buffing the heal up to 200%(instead of the 20%) of attonement dmg done as healing for 18 sec or so: this spell should have a 3 min. cooldown or maybe be activated with more stacks in order to make it our big hps output heal 'equal' to tranq and all that good stuff, while still being a different mechanic(still smart heal as all big healing cds are atm really, but being actived offensive like our beloved atonement actually is ) Stacks shouldn't drop, maybe only from leaving fights for more than 30sec-2min. Making arch angel stack from heal/flash heal, greater heal and poh/pom, while letting the evangelism stacks last for 30-45 sec or so and not affect atonement.

This way we wont be far ahead or spamming atonement mindlessly, we can use it when it counts, through the cd, and for extra dmg on the boss without sniping all the heals from the other healers. We would also be weaving in non smart heals alot more in order to stack evangelisme as early as possible to keep it ready when needed.(just some gooffy thoughts )

Now thoughts from all this whining from discs and other healers whining towards disc in this thread <_<:

It's a nice needed nerf anyway - hate seeing how i top all other healers while looking the other way cause i just gotta hit those 3 spells, at least with the nerf we might only see this on bosses like horridon(where i think its cool we get ahead as a niche) - We are good at useing atonement on fights with low constant dmg on unpredictable targets together with predictable tank dmg + predictable high raid dmg(ss) where the raid is stacked more or less or atleast you know players in each group who are in range of rest of their group (priceless on tortos, megs rampage and such) - we are so bad at high raid dmg where people are spread out (SS/barrier/IF'ed poh) like megs normal phases.

I have settled with that i might not be able to produce as much max. hps as other classes, and i think this is an ok nerf.. but .. but blizz dont touch my power word:shield ! <_<

Also ruin attonement much more - then give me a healing tide totem instead....

'SS is sooo op' ... SS have to be cast before high dmg occours often .. with a cost of 5-8 gcds standing still. If used during aoe dmg phase where people are not getting topped due to alot of dmg SS only buffs our heal with the absorb component of mastery - Nooot really op on a low aoe slow casted group based aoe heal.

Edit: anyway - like alot of you people say: you only use 1-3 buttons to heal like the rest of us - well then you suck or your disc priest suck cause thats not how you produce high hps as disc - thats how you produce easy healing where there are little to nothing to heal. So stop your whining and get better yourself - we are getting nerfed accordingly.

We all have strength and weakness's as we should have, and we work differently in many ways which makes it fun and uniq to heal in different speccs and as different classes. So stop whining too much about other classes - disc healing opens up for more burst healing for the other classes as you could if you choose to, not heal during those boring, hardly healing needed phases keeping the mana till the point where it is needed, where you produce insane hps over disc just saying.

Edit2: Sorry for all my missspellings - it's the middle of the night so off to bed now! Hope its readable .

[Deleted]

Out of pure curiosity, say they nerfed atonement to the ground (really not talking about the current nerf which will affect atonement next to not at all) in a way that it becomes an actual filler for periods when no one is taking any dmg.

Could someone enlighten me what we have left for actual healing (read: not absorbs) outside PoH (Im going to flat out count SS with PoH as honestly, it's all you do with SS anyway). You've got Cascade/DS on a fairly long cd, can't really count that as a "normal" heal, you've got Penance once a blue moon without the set bonus. And then? PoM doesn't feel massively tempting as disc presently, even with the 2 set, and it's still not a "reliable" on demand heal without holy DI's instant jumps.

PoH is the only spell that requires any thought from your assistants in the raids with how to form groups. No other healer gives a rotten crap about who's in which group, as all their heals heal outside the group it's being cast on, purely limited by range. If it wasn't for priests, discs in particular with SS being so strong now, there'd be a hell of a lot less fuzz around group arrangements particularly around group positioning.

I'm all up for nerfing atonement's damage portion as it's simply too high, but before you're so keen on "making less of our healing come from atonement" could some of you take a deep breath and think about what you'd like to replace it with without a full re-design of the disc class, which, let's face it, wont happen in the near future.
Without atonement there will be a hell of a lot of PoH spamming, and whoever tells me THAT is more rewarding than atonement (3 spells or not) is baffling me.

I'm also not certain about the playing style of the people talking about this "nonstop smite spamming" they apparently have to go through for each and every boss. Looking at ydays 25 hc Jin'Rokh atonement accounted for a whooping 18% of my healing done. That's quite a lot of other spell spamming outside atonement. Those spells being perfectly viable (ranked 17th, nothing mindblowing but nevertheless viable), and if one wanted to rank higher one would use even more SS. And that's true for most bosses assuming WoL ranking is the basis of "rightful healing output", which I'm not claiming it is, but for the sake of arguement let's say it's what most here base these spells usability by. Horridon is one of the only one where atonement is truly great, and even so the people ranking have SS doing round 40% of their healing, PW's a great junk of it as well.

Starting to get a feel people are so tuned in on the "we all have to use atonement to be viable thus I don't like my class" -argument that it's become this big bad monster for many of you lurking around the corner waiting to be whined at. Yes, atonement is a very simple mechanic that doesn't require a whole lot of thinking (jesus christ as if other healers have higher brainusage) but no, you do not have to use it more than a fifth of your time healing and still do well. After 14k spirit I find myself quite freely whacking pre-PW's on people I know will take dmg in the near future (you know you all have those people in your guilds), so just swap it around, pre-shield over smartheal when you know where the dmg will land, you'd be surprised how often its predictable if you stop the atonement mentality and actually use the brain capacity you are so eager to make use of.

[Vilbu]

(Im going to flat out count SS with PoH as honestly, it's all you do with SS anyway).

Good points Tenaru, though I would disagree that PoH is the only viable way to make use of SS. For instance it is a viable way to reduce tank damage or even build it with single target heals (would really like to see binding heal added to SS), if you cant use PoH because of range requirements or positioning. Of course it is not how you rank in WoL, but I don't think that is something that matters to the most of players anyway.

As a disc it is so easy to make other healers look "bad" if you just want to rank. Just spam shields and SS as long as your mana allows you to, but I am not so sure if that is really the best way to contribute to your raid.

Really looking forward to what they have in mind, in case this nerf is not satisfying to them.

[Deleted]

Good points Tenaru, though I would disagree that PoH is the only viable way to make use of SS.

Not going to argue with you there, it certainly isn't the only viable way, but I dare to say it's what most people use it with
I haven't ran into many fights where I would've used SS paired with single target heals on tanks since Empress in HoF, doesn't seem tanks take too much of a beating, then again I've personally only downed 1 heroic boss on 25 so that might as well change on further heroics, I wouldn't know any better.

[Deleted]

It is broken, i went into a 10 man heroic, I asked the priest if he was gonna focus on tanks or raid, he told me to shut up because he was doing more heals with his attonment spam and yet people still died then he left becuase people died... needs a fix.

[Deleted]

And by "it" I assume the priest was

[Vilbu]

Not going to argue with you there, it certainly isn't the only viable way, but I dare to say it's what most people use it with

Indeed it is. especially in 25 mans with well organized groups. I've paired SS with single target heals at lei shen intermission soaks or in any situation when the s**t hits the fan and I know tanks (or someone else) is gonna take too much damage.

Also I am trying to be aware of not to use SS when its not needed, you can contribute so much to dps.

[Noradin]

It is broken, i went into a 10 man heroic, I asked the priest if he was gonna focus on tanks or raid, he told me to shut up because he was doing more heals with his attonment spam and yet people still died then he left becuase people died... needs a fix.

Obviously a single anecdote about what someone playing the spec reportedly said without any background whatsoever should be the base of balancing that spec!
Maybe he just dind't want you to of the responsibility for half the healing needed? Because on almost all 10 man encounters a healer just for the thanks is a waste, he could easily do the tanks (and would not use atonement at all), but he would be much more useful on the raid - where the tools he has at his disposal wouldn't allow him to leave the tanks to you. Almost everything he does would have to hit the tanks as well. Atonement, obviously; Spirit Shell with PoH, too; PW:S, of course, he needs a reliable source for rapture after all; Binding Heal, if you slack on the tanks and he has the Glyph it would hit the tanks most likely; PoM, same here; GH with IF, only vialbe target is the tank in most encounters. Going with your proposal he would have either been bored to death or heal your targets anyway. If he was in a bad mood or got asked this a lot, I can understand why he would answere with something you would then report to us the way you did. Even if he wasn't acutally 'spamming atonement'.

I frequently make the same mistake, telling my raid 'atonement will heal you unless you are unworthy' whenever they have concerns about if they will get healed after taking damage from some encounter ability they just noticed. It doesn't mean anything really, because in most of those cases I won't really use atonement to deal with what they are asking about, it basically only means 'I'll try as always; be assured that you will get healed unless something else happens that I have no controll over'.

[seijo]

What do you guys think of the latest potential Atonement nerf.

Glyph of Smite no longer allows for the additional damage to be transferred by Atonement.

Kind of wondering how much of an effect this will have. At first I was like omgwtf.. since I always have this glyph in and I cast Solace on CD, but I don't know about the actual numbers... 20% sounds like a lot definitely... coupled with previous nerf to atonement really seems like they are trying hard to push Atonement down hard. They seemed to bring Atonement back up to 90%, maybe to compensate for this latest additional nerf, but just seems to bring us to the same exact place though, without something new or different to replace it, it still seems like the go-to filler.

[Kelesti]

Realistically, not much has changed at all for Atonement from live. Really. The biggest thing is that Penance nerf (which hurts Disc in PvP more than it does in PvE), both in damage, and in stealing but still leaving the Haste from borrowed time. The Glyph? Meh, it didn't really account for all that much. If Atonement is one of your top heals (#3?) it'll probably still hold that exact place.


Realistically speaking, I could see removal of the glyph leading to eventual removal of all +damage bonus modifiers. Atonement heals for base damage + spellpower coefficient, eventually. Similar to how Rift turned Chloromancer into that, but based off of cast-time instead.

[Deleted]

nah it aint that much.

take 60k smite and add 20%, 12k damage and this converted to heal is about 5-8k~ heal.

now you can use actual heal glyphs instead of an dps glyph.


Smite will still be the best filler spell, like Holy Light for Paladins. It just does damage, and ever class needs their specials.

[isuridedes]

What do you guys think of the latest potential Atonement nerf. Kind of wondering how much of an effect this will have. At first I was like omgwtf.. since I always have this glyph in and I cast Solace on CD, but I don't know about the actual numbers... 20% sounds like a lot definitely... coupled with previous nerf to atonement really seems like they are trying hard to push Atonement down hard. They seemed to bring Atonement back up to 90%, maybe to compensate for this latest additional nerf, but just seems to bring us to the same exact place though, without something new or different to replace it, it still seems like the go-to filler.

When you consider that the benefit is only active for 7 seconds I don't think you're going to notice a significant drop in your Atonement-based healing.

I cannot argue that Atonement has been a sort of easy style of healing. Coupled with your average Atonement Priest probably being the equivalent of about 1/3 to 1/2 of a DPS and I can see why Blizzard wants to adjust them. That being said, it really seems like they took some odd paths toward that adjustment. We're not really losing any of our DPS with the exception that Penance is probably now mathematically stronger as a direct heal than as an Atonement heal.

Atonement overall will dip ever so slightly; but as others have said it's a dip that will be negligible with a few minor gear upgrades.

Which makes me just scratch my head and wonder why Blizzard is changing it in the first place.

[ramennoodleking]

It's fairly obvious Blizzard isn't sure what exactly to do with Attonement. They know there's a problem, but I think they aren't sure how to go about fixing it.

[blargh312]

It's fairly obvious Blizzard isn't sure what exactly to do with Attonement. They know there's a problem, but I think they aren't sure how to go about fixing it.

Replace Atonement with Disc in general and you've summed up the entire expansion so far.

[Kelesti]

The 80% nerf was better than nerfing Penance's damage from a PvP point of view.

Taking out the haste stealing, and offensive penance use, Disc's offense is going to hurt next season.

[Chimaera]

Offensive Penance for atonement healing is what is breaking the paradigm of being a partial healer and partial damage dealer with atonement. But having opened that door, the question is how to close it again without breaking the entire concept. The only way forward I see other than reverting that change entirely is to specifically reduce the % atonement heals for Penance so that offensive Penance on cd is not the go to raid heal.

[rmlunsford]

Offensive Penance for atonement healing is what is breaking the paradigm of being a partial healer and partial damage dealer with atonement. But having opened that door, the question is how to close it again without breaking the entire concept. The only way forward I see other than reverting that change entirely is to specifically reduce the % atonement heals for Penance so that offensive Penance on cd is not the go to raid heal.

What would take its place if you couldn't atonement heal? How will we proc divine aegis? Why does everyone view it as a problem in the first place? Finally, why couldn't they just decrease damage of smite, holy fire and pennace by say 50%, and increase the healing done by atonement to 200% of the damage dealt?

[seijo]

I suppose it could be worse. They could give us a bubble chakra *shudders*