1. #1

    Is anyone actually using Solace anymore?

    I haven't really seen anything about it since the nerf. I know that it had potential initially but then they decided to slam it into the ground and make it more of a waste of time. It was a good talent when it gave us 2% mana back but now that it gives .7%, do you consider it fairly useless? Personally, I enjoyed it until I realized how much hps I was losing by choosing it. I can see that it's useful on some fights but in general, I think it's agreed that mindbender is better. Does blizzard anticipate making it a more worthwhile ability again or are we all just going to go about our days with miniature squids?

  2. #2
    An ability doesn't have to be "ZOMG OP" to be a good, decent ability. Solace can be nice on fights that have strong mega-burst demands and then periods of quite managable small damage, even at 0.7%.

    It's not really a waste of time, they just didn't want it to be the best/only option (or what's holding up Priest mana regen by itself, at 2% it was). I consider it decently balanced. And as a Holy Priest who goes between 10 and 25 depending on the tier, From Darkness Comes Light is also a valuable option at times, hardly just miniature-squid time. Mindbender is useful, and very handy, but it's not the only option for healers.
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  3. #3
    0.7 is a bit low..... 1% ought to be the right spot.

    But yeah at the moment not really... the mana gain isn't worth giving up over mind bender or FDCL

  4. #4
    One of the benefits of Solace is you cast it instead of a heal. You actually get more regen from the 1.5s you spend not casting a mana consuming spell than you get from the 0.7% mana return. Of course, you could just take Mindbender and not cast for a few seconds on occasion, too. For most fights, it isn't a great choice because of the time it takes, but it does have more regen potential than any other talent on that tier.

    It's situational; Mindbender is probably a better choice, though FDCL is also useful if you're spending much time tank healing, Atoning, or triaging.

  5. #5
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    The real benefit of solace is that it allows you to support higher mana drain combinations. I think a lot of ppl think solace is only useful if you don't have to heal, but conventional wisdom is wrong.

    There are no fights where you there are periods of time with nothing to heal. There is always healing to be done. Fights with a lot of downtime you can support adequately with mindbender and get no benefit from solace. However fights with near-constant heavy healing requirement like ambershaper are actually better done with solace.

    Fights like the 2nd boss in the dread approach, which has ton of down time are actually much better with mindbender.

    You are not restricted to casting solace only when there is no healing to be done. Its just best to cram all the solaces you plan to cast in the lowest possible damage points. These could still be hectic heavy healing moments, as long as the extra mana can be used to generate more HPS later on.

    Solace trades away casting time for mana, so its only worth it if in the remaining casting time you can produce enough healing with the extra mana to make a positive gain

    There is a optimal number of solaces that you can cast, which maximises the number of extra heals. Casting more or less than that results in less spell casts and less healing

    In general its the mana drain vs your mana regen that matters:
    -Fights with very heavy healing requirement and high mana drain compared to your regen are best with solace
    -Fights with lots of downtime and lower mana drain compared to your regen are better done with mindbender and pacing yourself during the downtime.

    Lets say a fight has a heavy healing period alternating with a super heavy healing period. You can potentially do better by spamming some solace during the heavy healing periods and then going flat out max HPS with the extra mana during the super heavy healing period. Even if the damage is scary as long as the other healers can handle it, its better for your raid to have the super burst available during the very heavy healing periods, where people are most likely to die. It will probably also be better for your healing.

    You must always be careful to not overcast solace too much or undercast it too much. (yes both are possible)
    Last edited by mmoc58baca37e6; 2012-09-17 at 09:00 AM.

  6. #6
    The Lightbringer Daws001's Avatar
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    I use Solace as Holy and prefer it over Mind bender. Mainly because, as Disc and Resto Shammy, I'm used to using a dps ability in periods of low healing so Solace fills the Telluric Current/Atonement role that I'm used to (and have come to prefer in a healer).

  7. #7
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    Quote Originally Posted by Havoc12 View Post
    The real benefit of solace is that it allows you to support higher mana drain combinations. I think a lot of ppl think solace is only useful if you don't have to heal, but conventional wisdom is wrong.

    There are no fights where you there are periods of time with nothing to heal. There is always healing to be done. Fights with a lot of downtime you can support adequately with mindbender and get no benefit from solace. However fights with near-constant heavy healing requirement like ambershaper are actually better done with solace.

    Fights like the 2nd boss in the dread approach, which has ton of down time are actually much better with mindbender.

    You are not restricted to casting solace only when there is no healing to be done. Its just best to cram all the solaces you plan to cast in the lowest possible damage points. These could still be hectic heavy healing moments, as long as the extra mana can be used to generate more HPS later on.

    Solace trades away casting time for mana, so its only worth it if in the remaining casting time you can produce enough healing with the extra mana to make a positive gain

    There is a optimal number of solaces that you can cast, which maximises the number of extra heals. Casting more or less than that results in less spell casts and less healing

    In general its the mana drain vs your mana regen that matters:
    -Fights with very heavy healing requirement and high mana drain compared to your regen are best with solace
    -Fights with lots of downtime and lower mana drain compared to your regen are better done with mindbender and pacing yourself during the downtime.

    Lets say a fight has a heavy healing period alternating with a super heavy healing period. You can potentially do better by spamming some solace during the heavy healing periods and then going flat out max HPS with the extra mana during the super heavy healing period. Even if the damage is scary as long as the other healers can handle it, its better for your raid to have the super burst available during the very heavy healing periods, where people are most likely to die. It will probably also be better for your healing.

    You must always be careful to not overcast solace too much or undercast it too much. (yes both are possible)
    You're assuming people already know dmg patterns. The biggest part of healing progression fights is that you simply don't know the pattern going into the fight. After you've killed bosses a few times they take almost no time to rekill, because you know the damage pattern. I don't see solace being viable for any fight outside of gimmicks fights or fights with obvious spike dmg.

  8. #8
    I used Solace in a few LFR runs and was pleasantly surprised. I don't think it was really the mana regen that I liked, so much that I felt I had something to do that was actually mana positive while I was NOT triaging as Holy, and the Mastery procs from my COH and POM did the rest, except obviously in heavy healing periods.

    I don't know how much that'll apply in real content, though.

    Beats standing around or trying to tie myself in knots around Chakra trying to triage, and leaves me with more mana for the intensive healing situations in the fight.

  9. #9
    Pandaren Monk Freia's Avatar
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    I use mindbender right now. I don't have mana issues that go beyond what mindbender fixes. Come MoP that will probably change.

  10. #10
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    Quote Originally Posted by Yilar View Post
    You're assuming people already know dmg patterns. The biggest part of healing progression fights is that you simply don't know the pattern going into the fight. After you've killed bosses a few times they take almost no time to rekill, because you know the damage pattern. I don't see solace being viable for any fight outside of gimmicks fights or fights with obvious spike dmg.
    Fair assessment, but I think you can make a reasonable estimate and revise it as the fight goes on. Remember you can change a talent on the fly now.

    In many cases you can tell the damage pattern from a few tries and it is mostly mastering the mechanics or indeed finding enough juice to hit the HPS/DPS target is what remains.

    I can tell you right now that solace is viable in a number of fights, but its not the ones with the obvious spike damage. Its the ones with the constant heavy damage.

    there are couple of fights though which despite having lots of downtime are beyond terrible for solace even if it was double the return it is now. Lei Shi is one of them.

  11. #11
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    I wrote a big guide for my guild on whether to go for Mindbender or Power Word: Solace for mana regen (FDCL is obviously restricted to a certain heal style & assignment). Essentially, what everyone has said already hits the nail on the head.

    You have to pack in a certain amount of Solace's per minute (depending on the length of the fight) to match Mindbender's mana returns. For me, unless there is period in the fight where there is no/low healing to be done (think Yorsahj), I'd much rather take Mindbender. If I'm using a GCD for something which isn't one of my main heals, I'm using smite/holyfire.

    But I'm fine with Power Word: Solace being situational.

  12. #12
    Out of the jar . . . Allatar's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Freia View Post
    I use mindbender right now. I don't have mana issues that go beyond what mindbender fixes. Come MoP that will probably change.
    I'm with you on this one: having played with both a little bit in FL and DS, I couldn't see a major reason to choose Solace over Mindbender: it just wasn't returning enough mana to be worth the trade off.
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  13. #13
    As holy, I'm mostly sticking to FDCL + Chastise Chakra + Divine Insight these days.
    My HPS is down by doing this for sure, but since my guild decided to take a raiding break until MoP, it doesn't really matter.

    Basically, I smite my eyes out, my manabar never drops below 98% full, and I get a stupendous amount of free flash heals / instant ProMs, that combined is more than enough for PUG heroics. And should it not be, there is nothing preventing me from throwing out a random heal as well.

    Really wondering how long this will last though; I expect that the efficiency of this will go down dramatically when starting on the Pandaria dungeons. And of course, for raiding I don't expect this to be effective at all. But I really want to try it at some point :P
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  14. #14
    I much prefer Mindbender. Solace +Sfiend requires over 15% of your time to be spent casting it to make it equal to just using Mindbender on CD. That's a LOT of time just to make it as good as 1 button every minute. Takes even more to make it noticeably better.

  15. #15
    Solace is better for dragon soul because there are massive downtime where no healing is required in pretty much every encounter, with most obvious being madness. For level 90 stuff though it ain't so good since downtime is much less and mindbender becomes better in most cases.

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