Disc Priests in 10man post 5.2 nerfs

[Macanam]

Ah yeah, I play MW.

My bad, didn't notice you were the MW that posted further up. I tend to blank poster names and roll with the flow of conversation :P

I think we will still be good, just not sure how good. Particularly compared to Holy, since that will be a decider on whether I get to play Holy more often since I enjoy it more. Currently I'm forced to play Disc just for Atonement to carry the scrub DPS :P It's good for the raid, but I don't find it overly interesting (except on gimmicky damage fights like elegon, where you can easily get over triple the normal throughput on Atonement heals, and over double the dps).

[Darkener]

Ah yeah, I play MW. On Horridon we 2 healed and I was about 5-10% ahead of the Priest (I was allowed to melee all fight which increases the healing of a MW by 15-20%~) and on Iron Qon (a fight where I was unable to melee ...) I was 2-3% below. As I said though, I think MWs will be the strongest healer (with Resto Druids) for raw HPS throughput in 5.2. I think a good Disc will be able to top meters though. Spirit Shell really is so godly and provides so much HPS it's unreal. Every time you use SS your healing jumps by 2-4~ million. It's insane.

Your Disc Priest is probably forced to prioritize tank healing since MWs aren't good tank healers. In a fight with more tank healing and less raid damage Disc (or raid damage that is predictable and spikey) then yes, Disc is fine. But currently Disc benefits as a very strong single target and raid healer, but that will change. Disc will lose strength in the raid healing department, not completely, but enough that you will probably not want more than 1 Disc Priest in your raid again, particularly if our raid healing now requires more PWS. This will hurt all 10-man teams that are trying to 2-heal through progression fights. It will also make Holy Pallies necessary in a 2-heal 10 man instead of Disc, and they will be at the top of the 10man logs.

So long as Mistweaver healing remains so RNG with lackluster raid cooldowns no 10man is going to want one. In 10man there are no "roles" you have to be good at raid healing and tank healing. Mistweavers just don't cut it. Many 10man teams have made their progression using the strengths of their Disc Priest, and because some QQers who can only raid heal in 25mans (MW) complain that they have no damage to heal that will hurt a lot of 10man teams. in 10mans you basically can't lose a player, period. You need to be able to mitigate incoming damage, particularly when you have players hanging on to life by a thread. If you lose one of your two healers towards the end, your lone healer has to be strong enough to see it through. Will the nerfs to Disc Priests suddenly make MWs any better in 10man? No. Its just going to make things harder for existing teams.

[HPLathus]

Your Disc Priest is probably forced to prioritize tank healing since MWs aren't good tank healers. In a fight with more tank healing and less raid damage Disc (or raid damage that is predictable and spikey) then yes, Disc is fine. But currently Disc benefits as a very strong single target and raid healer, but that will change. Disc will lose strength in the raid healing department, not completely, but enough that you will probably not want more than 1 Disc Priest in your raid again, particularly if our raid healing now requires more PWS. This will hurt all 10-man teams that are trying to 2-heal through progression fights. It will also make Holy Pallies necessary in a 2-heal 10 man instead of Disc, and they will be at the top of the 10man logs.

So long as Mistweaver healing remains so RNG with lackluster raid cooldowns no 10man is going to want one. In 10man there are no "roles" you have to be good at raid healing and tank healing. Mistweavers just don't cut it. Many 10man teams have made their progression using the strengths of their Disc Priest, and because some QQers who can only raid heal in 25mans (MW) complain that they have no damage to heal that will hurt a lot of 10man teams. in 10mans you basically can't lose a player, period. You need to be able to mitigate incoming damage, particularly when you have players hanging on to life by a thread. If you lose one of your two healers towards the end, your lone healer has to be strong enough to see it through. Will the nerfs to Disc Priests suddenly make MWs any better in 10man? No. Its just going to make things harder for existing teams.

If your healers are relying on a disc priest as much as you say then they are not good healers and should be replaced

---------- Post added 2013-01-21 at 04:36 PM ----------

Are you trying to use sha of fear to illustrate that discs throughput is above other healers? You're either dumb or joking. You can PW:S the huddle, and if you feel like it even pre-shield the entire raid before watersprouts (hardly effective though). Hell, during the majority of the encounter there's not a lot of healing required, obviously favoring disc on the meter since our absorbs (even just DA) and atonement (excellent spot healing) will take care of most of it before the other healers have a chance to.




Do you live in the illusion that consistent 100k hps (assuming zero overhealing, which is retarded with a non-smart, group-bound, cast-time heal) is good? Every single healing spec is capable of doing way more than that right now. Holy is a competitive spec because you say so? Holy has mediocre output, artificial constraints (chakra) and basically no utility. Disc being dominant wouldn't stop guilds from using hpriests as well if the spec was good, it isn't.

If you actually played holy, which at this point I wouldn't believe you did even if you showed me logs... You wouldn't say holy has bad throughput. You can EASILY achieve 100k HPS sustained as holy if you do it right.

[Deleted]

If you actually played holy, which at this point I wouldn't believe you did even if you showed me logs... You wouldn't say holy has bad throughput. You can EASILY achieve 100k HPS sustained as holy if you do it right.

I haven't played a lot of holy (I prefer disc and it's stronger atm), but at least I know that I'm far superior to you (you have a stream proving that you are horrible:P). I wrote mediocre output, 100k sustained HPS is bad when every healing spec can do more than that, holy has decent burst aoe (still below mwers though) and basically no other strenght.

[Rorschachs]

I believe that holy priests with a good amount of spirit should do ok. But I really hate holy priests in 10m. In 25m I could just use the aoe chakra and be fine but thats not the case for 10m where you can't just be a raid healer (and we all know that holy is not a good single target healer.)

The thing is.. if you want to aoe heal, you go holy.

We can't pretend to do everyting as disc, a healing priest SHOULD be holy/disc and switch as needed. I'm happy if disc can't aoe heal tbh.

I don't think that we should be forced to change specs for every fight. I like focusing on one spec and gearing accordingly.

[Deleted]

I haven't played a lot of holy (I prefer disc and it's stronger atm), but at least I know that I'm far superior to you (you have a stream proving that you are horrible:P). I wrote mediocre output, 100k sustained HPS is bad when every healing spec can do more than that, holy has decent burst aoe (still below mwers though) and basically no other strenght.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...t_of_Fear/hps/

Holy Priest #1 on Garalon. Ahead of pre-nerf MWs too. Holy is quite evidently competitive.

[HPLathus]

http://www.worldoflogs.com/rankings/...t_of_Fear/hps/

Holy Priest #1 on Garalon. Ahead of pre-nerf MWs too. Holy is quite evidently competitive.

Again, he doesn't know how to play holy. No point in arguing with him.

@cookie. Can I see some of your logs?

Ill admit my normal mode tsulong wasn't my best performance as holy but saying bad because of the one time you saw me -_-


I out perform both the resto shaman and mistweavers. In our guild as holy on any progression fight and always end with mana to spare.

[Deleted]

^I haven't done competitive raiding for about a month and my previous guilds logs are private, however I didn't do any progression content as holy apart from tsulong either way. I don't claim to be an excellent holy priest (compared to disc I'm really bad at the spec), just better than you.

I saw you playing holy on Tsulong. I saw you playing disc on Lei-shi. I don't find it anything but laughable that you are trying to use skill as an argument:P.

Holy Priest #1 on Garalon. Ahead of pre-nerf MWs too. Holy is quite evidently competitive.

We have one holy priest topping the logs for one fight while mistweavers (yes post 5.1 as well) and hpalas are all over the top 50, obviously means that holy is competitive. You've already been banned from the forum twice (I wonder why...), stop creating new accounts?

[Yetiman]

Guys, we're deviating from the thread again (as a poster mentioned earlier): this is a disc-oriented thread; let's try to keep it that way.

Even though I haven't played holy in a LONG while, and probably won't either, since I'm disc, shadow off-spec and the other 2 healers in my 10-man are druids (you don't have to tell me how many things are wrong with THAT sentence, I KNOW xD ), I still prefer disc ATM, at least for 10-mans, because I try to even out the use of my abilities. In fact, like I mentioned in another thread, in high movement fights, PoM, Atonement, PW:Shield, Cascade, SS and DA (,are all split pretty evenly (Atonement pulling ahead in general). On the other hand, in more static fights, DA, SS and Atonement are pretty much kings of the meter.

Currently, shielding anybody else apart from the MT hurts like hell (not really, it just feels that way). With this buff to PW:Shield it won't hurt so bad to have 2 or 3 of them up at a time when people dip dangerously low without costing us a healthy amount of our mana-pool.

However, the indecision revolving around the rapture mana return is puzzling. I believed that temporal buff removal fix was going to be the end of it, but they just keep tinkering with it, eventually I fear they'll end up bringing it down to 100% :P .

[Deleted]

They should really just (if they don't want us to spam PW:S) make our PW:S free every 12 (or other number) seconds or (since they seem to want us to spam it in 5.2) just lower the mana cost for PW:S very significantly and remove rapture. Hell, if they want to keep the current design they could just exchange X% of your spirit with a set mana amount. With the current design rapture will just have to be nerfed every time we get new gear since disc scales significantly better with spirit than other healers.

[HPLathus]

@cookie

If they went back to rapture being a % of mana it would defeat the purpous of them avoiding healers not wearing as much spirit gear. The changes made to abilities like that was to avoid it. With rapture as it is. You are already seeing disc priests wearing dps gear without spirit because of how high the return is.

The reduction on rapture will 1) prevent that and 2) make disc less spam feeling and more smart casting like holy is.

[h3lladvocate]

One piece of logic I am not following from this thread...

PW:S being "cheap" now. Wouldn't in technically be more expensive? 25% nerf to Rapture (more including temp spirit buffs) and 25% nerf to PW:S cost means that Rapture offsets the exact same percentage of the PW:S cost, but you get 25% less mana back over the PW:S cost than you did before, right?

Old: PW:S costs 20k, rapture gives 30k, net +10k
New: PW:S costs 15k, rapture gives 22.5k, net +7.5k

Isn't that the case?

[HPLathus]

Idk what shield you are casting right now that costs 20k >.>

I think the change was more targeted at making shields more reasonable to cast vs other things. I don't think rapture should be directly related to pw:s when looking at the changes.

Plus, you could still inner will or shields if you wanted a greater return.

---------- Post added 2013-01-21 at 06:49 PM ----------

The changes are more to create variety in casting not so muh to nerf the spec to oblivion. Although a nerf was needed

[blargh312]

One piece of logic I am not following from this thread...

PW:S being "cheap" now. Wouldn't in technically be more expensive? 25% nerf to Rapture (more including temp spirit buffs) and 25% nerf to PW:S cost means that Rapture offsets the exact same percentage of the PW:S cost, but you get 25% less mana back over the PW:S cost than you did before, right?

Old: PW:S costs 20k, rapture gives 30k, net +10k
New: PW:S costs 15k, rapture gives 22.5k, net +7.5k

Isn't that the case?

It depends on how much spirit you have, but yes, with decent gear PW:S will cost more in 5.2 when Rapture gains are taken into account. The crossover point is somewhere around 9k spirit.

Honestly, I think it's fine, because it nerfs Rapture a bit (something that would be needed anyway considering how well it scaled with spirit), but still allows you to use PW:S a little more freely than before.

[Deleted]

Holy having more HPS than Disc (on both single target + AoE) should be the norm. All non-absorb throughput classes (MW, Resto Druids, Resto Shaman and Holy Priests) should have more throughput HPS than Discs. Why? Absorbs are better than raw throughput on a majority of encounters and cases, to have a class which is so far ahead of everyone else on throughput HPS as well as having absorbs is just flat out broken.

Disc will still be strong after the patch; you just wont be able to do 50% more healing than every other healer with your eyes shut while swimming in a pool of mana that you can't deplete.

This is what people think, but its pattently stupid. We had lots of absorbs when mogushan vaults came out and yet disc was barely viable. Blizzard says ooh absorbs are awesome and everyone who does not really know what it is going on think they must be awesome. They are just a sniping tool.

Disc with eyes shut = still last on meters. Unless you synch all your abilities properly disc sucks despite the fact that its OP in capable hands. As for infinite mana, that is also not true. Disc has enough mana to chain cast the spells it wants to cast but it does not have infinite mana. I can deplete my mana easily if I need to squeeze the absolute max HPS and I have15k spirit. Most disc priests customise their spirit to a level where they can strike a nice balance between high HPS and enough mana to last to the end comfortably.

Everything that you just said is a complete flight of fancy and has no relevance whatsoever to reality.

Absorbs or not disc needs to be very close in HPS to other healers (but not more), or its just not viable and it won't be viable for any fight that is challenging. No one cares if disc can snipe heals from other healers. If the throughput requirement is low absorbs have no value and you might as well bring less healers with a higher HPS capacity or have the disc priest atonement heal.

That is what ppl who don't play disc can't understand. They cry because disc snipes their heals, but a few months ago disc could snipe and absorb much more than it will be able to in 5.2, but no one thought it was OP, because actual throughput was just too low. This is what will happen yet again in 5.2 and all the arguments that you bring have been tested and proven wrong in practice.

We are effectively back to the start of MoP in terms of throughput with much less absorbs. If we were barely viable then, only an idiot would think that somehow magically we will be ok in 5.2. Nerfing absorbs is fine if blizzard wants them out of the table, but nerfing actual throughput so massively because "we have absorbs" is just completely stupid.

As shown on all encounters with a high sustained HPS requirement, Monks are the highest HPS class still.

[Deleted]

Great post Havoc! Arguing with Mana/Ham is just a lesson in futility though.

[Deleted]

Paragon, method and blood legion all took at least 1 (2 on 25) disc priests to their first kills due to the immense utility a disc priest brings.

[laplacedemon]

That's a very broad claim.

Jhazrun was holy when Paragon killed WotE the first time. Method had one disc priest on their first Sha kill and one holy priest in their first WotE kill. I believe that was the case for Blood Legion too, 1 disc on Sha and one holy priest on WotE. Both Method and BL also had one MW present in most if not all of their kills, but it wouldn't mean that they have immense utility...

[Deleted]

I just believe too many Priests are calling doom when that's simply not happening. Blizzard dislike it when any class can blanket an entire raid in a spell which is efficient. They've nerfed every play style that plays like this since forever, PoH is simply being put to what it was intended to be, an AoE heal. Blanketing a raid in 15-20k DAs is completely broken.

[laplacedemon]

That really doesn't have to do anything with what you said though. Right now you sound like you believe that discs should be nerfed, therefore just assume every top guild had at least 2 disc priests on their progress fights and present it as fact. Shame on you I guess... Anyways...

Going with WotE, if disc's numbers are brought down like this, some guilds might end up using disc only on fights where SS will make a big difference. Even in the nerfed state, SS will be good for some fights, but if your "normal AoE" hps is cut down by ~25%, you might end up as being useless. I can remember holy paladins having problems with pre-nerf Vizier hc on 10s for example.

It might be doom or not, but they are practically changing how disc works and has been working since FL. Really though, DA-stacking was a thing for 1.5 years, suddenly it's deemed as something not to be desired and some vocal response to that seems very normal to me. I don't understand GC's obsession with not adding another heal for disc in the middle of the expansion, but yet changing the idea about how disc should play right now. I'm all for disc nerfs, it is too good in most of the fights on this tier, but I don't think they will manage balancing it for 10s and 25s at the same time.

Speaking of blanketing the raid, 10man holy paladins and their Eternal Flame blanketing isn't exactly less braindead either.