Jab Nerfed Again :D

[Totaltotemic]

I'm going to leave the glyph of Uplift math spat to rest in its grave now. That's over, further arguing and blaming won't help anyone. We have a correct answer now on that issue (unless someone finds something else I've missed, in which case I will edit once again) so that people can know the conclusion without having to do the math themselves. That's all that really matters. Instead, I'd like to switch gears to something else, which also might be something people have strong feelings about, but I'll try to make my point as clear as possible.

The issue is that a lot of people like to heal through Jab-Jab-Uplift. Blizzard is making that a bit harder.

I've been seeing that bolded phrase (or something similar) a lot lately surrounding numerous topics like Fists of Fury, Spirit levels, Rushing Jade Wind, and Fistweaving/not Fistweaving. In terms of switching around entire mechanics to balance around, what people like and find fun is pretty important. However, when we're talking about percentages, nerfs, buffs, mana costs, things of that nature, it's very important to remember that everything in this game is based on numbers. Whether people like using Jab/Jab/Uplift (which Blizzard has decided that a lot of people don't or that it's not fun somehow... no idea how they got that) or not is irrelevant in the balancing decisions surrounding what is optimal, in which Jab/Jab/Uplift is by far the best and sometimes only way to effectively heal in certain general situations. On Garalon, whether you like using Jab or not, Jab/Jab/Uplift throughout the entire fight is by far the most effective way to heal, but if it wasn't then the people that didn't like doing it would simply do something else. The problem that they're trying ti fix right now is that it's so good that people are forced to use it whether they like to or not.

When nerfs/buffs happen in terms of purely numerical increases or decreases, they only ever happen for one of two reasons. Either it's a balancing effort with other classes and power just needs to be toned down, or it's trying to affect the balance within our individual spells so that we will (hopefully) end up doing something more fun. The Jab nerf is part of the latter.

Where the math on this stuff really matters is in trying to promote awareness of how the game actually works so that more informed feedback can be given. If it turns out that, despite this nerf, we'll just drop our Crit/Int and stack more Spirit just so we can Jab more because it's still the most efficient way to heal, then all that nerf will have done is lower the power of the spec as a whole while still keeping the same play style. When changes aimed at altering our play style end up instead keeping it the same way but just nerfing us, it's an overall bad experience for everyone. That's why it's so important for us to get things like this right, because as Ghostcrawler has proven numerous times, Blizzard's numerical analysis isn't perfect and sometimes they make decisions based on bad data, which then turns them into bad decisions. It also makes me a very sad panda when I meet another Monk in-game that's doing something wrong because they read a bad analysis somewhere and trusted it.

Getting things right like how good Jab really is, how Ascension and Chi Brew differ in power, how the Glyph of Uplift compares to the non-glyphed Uplift + Jab, when and how Fists of Fury is a DPS increase, whether Rushing Jade Wind is even usable or not, they're all very important because it helps us learn more about how Monks function in the game, which allows us to give more informed feedback, which can hopefully lead to more informed decisions and a better game for all of us. I know this got really off-topic, but it's something that I feel needs to be said because a lot of people underestimate just how much "being right" (in the sense of the community having the right information, not individuals being right) matters in the overall scheme of the game.

[Astraios]

If you're going to talk about "the community being right" it should then be noted that SCK should be superior to jab in a garalon-esque scenario while TFT is down.

[Teriz]

On PTR at level 90, Jab costs 13.5k mana and Uplift costs 19.8k mana. That's whether you have 345k mana with ascension or 300k mana without it.

Hope that helps.

[Totaltotemic]

If you're going to talk about "the community being right" it should then be noted that SCK should be superior to jab in a garalon-esque scenario while TFT is down.

Exactly the kind of thing I'm talking about. World of Logs seems to suggest otherwise, maybe SCK is better at higher Pheromones stacks, no TFT, and provided your melee aren't running around like chickens with their heads cut off and actually staying with each other. Maybe. But just strolling in, dropping a fact with no support that doesn't seem to even be supported by World of Logs, and has no math on it is a hard pill to swallow. Are we expected to just believe you? I could make a new account and start posting things like "Rushing Jade Wind is better than Chi Torpedo", "Surging Mist is better than Jab", or my personal favorite: "food/flask for Spirit until you hit 12k on gear" with absolutely nothing to back it up, and I'd probably lose all faith in this forum if people didn't tell me to stop saying things like that with no evidence.

I'm all for learning new things. If you've got support for something that challenges a generally accepted idea, go ahead and bust it out, but don't just stroll in and say that you think something with no reasoning at all to back it up, all you'll do is confuse people.

@Teriz


There's a lot of confusion right now surrounding which of GC's changes are things on the PTR right now and which are things on an internal build. Jab went up from 11,700 to 13,500, but that's not a 33% increase like he said, so we don't know if it's going up more or what. On top of that, Uplift is supposed to go up by 21%, but again this is some phantom internal build that we've not yet seen.

[Felade]

I've been seeing that bolded phrase (or something similar) a lot lately surrounding numerous topics like Fists of Fury, Spirit levels, Rushing Jade Wind, and Fistweaving/not Fistweaving. In terms of switching around entire mechanics to balance around, what people like and find fun is pretty important. However, when we're talking about percentages, nerfs, buffs, mana costs, things of that nature, it's very important to remember that everything in this game is based on numbers. Whether people like using Jab/Jab/Uplift (which Blizzard has decided that a lot of people don't or that it's not fun somehow... no idea how they got that) or not is irrelevant in the balancing decisions surrounding what is optimal, in which Jab/Jab/Uplift is by far the best and sometimes only way to effectively heal in certain general situations. On Garalon, whether you like using Jab or not, Jab/Jab/Uplift throughout the entire fight is by far the most effective way to heal, but if it wasn't then the people that didn't like doing it would simply do something else. The problem that they're trying ti fix right now is that it's so good that people are forced to use it whether they like to or not.

I dispute the assertion that Jab-Jab-Uplift is the most efficient way to heal. ReM (and Soothing Mists) are more efficient Chi generators, at least how I read Valen's spreadsheet (feel free to correct me). Therefore, the best way to heal is to heal using ReM, the level 45 talents as your main source of Chi. Next, comes Soothing Mist, but as is often pointed out, that is a pretty unreliable source of Chi. I'm going to refer to the Chi you get from the level 45 talents and from ReM as "baseline" Chi - pretty much everyone is going to be getting this Chi no matter what (because if you aren't making use of your level 45 talents or casting ReM on CD you aren't doing it right).

I try to get as much healing as I possibly can from this baseline Chi generation by gearing for Intellect. I find that I don't have to Jab as often as a consequence, so I'm not dreading this Jab nerf quite as much. That's not to say that I don't Jab on things like heroic Garalon, but often I only start Jabbing when it is really necessary, such as when our pheromone stacks are high or a crush is about to occur. Revival and other healer cooldowns also cover a lot of that, so I just end up not Jabbing so much except to keep up fistweaving.

Another way to put it, maybe:

ReM/Chi Brew-->Uplift = cooldown heals, like CoH, Wild Growth, etc.
Jab-Jab-->Uplift = Rejuv or POH spam.

Basically, they just nerfed our POH/Rejuv.

Perhaps instead of continuing to Jab-Jab-->Uplift, perhaps we can weave in more RJW/SCK? RJW looks ridiculously efficient on its own. Uplift's efficiency actually goes up when you swap to SCK instead of Jab for your generator (again, based on Valen's spreadsheet). Perhaps that's what this boils down to, they want us to SCK more when AOE healing? Of course that doesn't help when the raid is spread out, but we wouldn't be the first healer with that issue.

[Puupi]

I did some LFR's on the PTR today and I had no mana issues whatsoever. I think my spirit was scaled down to about 8,5k .I was fistweaving+rem+chi wave+surging mist procs. HPS was good (the same output as other healers in the raid) and in dps I was ranking 8-11. With 502 ilvl gear my raid dummy dps was 75k and infinite mana (10,5k spirit).

[Totaltotemic]

Basically, they just nerfed our POH/Rejuv.

Perhaps instead of continuing to Jab-Jab-->Uplift, perhaps we can weave in more RJW/SCK? RJW looks ridiculously efficient on its own. Uplift's efficiency actually goes up when you swap to SCK instead of Jab for your generator (again, based on Valen's spreadsheet). Perhaps that's what this boils down to, they want us to SCK more when AOE healing? Of course that doesn't help when the raid is spread out, but we wouldn't be the first healer with that issue.

I'll be honest, I was mostly just illustrating a point, Garalon is a lot more complex than Jab/Jab/Uplift as even my own logs can show. I was more referring to "using actual heals" as opposed to Jab ike our crab overlord wants us to do. Obviously the RMs needed to actually use Uplift, Expel Harm, and the level 45 talents (and Chi Torpedo) make it a lot more complex.


On the actual topic of the Jab nerf, yeah I think it'll have the side effect of making SCK more attractive once again. RJW is a very, very complex discussion because it depends on your SCK usage, but more importantly because it competes with a free healing spell. How exactly do you compare HPM when the other two talents have no cost? The fact that RJW is tied to using 2 Chi plus a lot of mana from SCK makes it kind of a nightmare because you end up with a choice between free burst aoe HPS and quite a bit more burst aoe HPS that also costs a ton of resources.

On SCK, something that I'm not sure has been explored yet is the possibly overpowered potential of a SCK/TP/SCK/TP rotation that abuses the Ember Primal meta gem and Ascendance. If you add in all of the returns, it could be very cheap (don't really feel like doing that right now, if anyone wants to sort out the math for that it would be cool).

On Uplift..... the problem with SCK/SCK/Uplift is that SCK has a rather long duration (at least compared to other spells we have) which spreads out the Uplifts. The problem once again rests on the spread out raid scenario where SCK's healing isn't actually needed, but Uplift's is simply because it can reach targets that SCK can't. On a fight like Empress where the spread out ranged take considerably more damage than the stacked up melee, how exactly are we supposed to heal those ranged except by using a no-CD guaranteed Chi generator? Whether Jab or SCK is more efficient, a nerf to either is an indirect nerf to Uplift in that scenario, which we're already only average at (compared to Prayer of Healing or Light of Dawn). I just don't follow the dev's logic there, there doesn't seem to be an option in our spellbook for that besides Jab.

[Astraios]

The top few logs of MW on H25m garalon are a mix of using SCK vs jab. So I'm really not sure what you're posting.
But really, logs are irrelevant, it all depends on the healing situation, it calls for different things. But the "strongest HPS" involves SCK with uplift, until you reach a magic number where jabbing is basically better.
Hitting 10-15 targets with SCK (most of the melee and ranged are stacked near you while legs are down):
SCK does 129.7k HPS. We'll use 25% overheal, similar to my recent kill on him, this puts SCK at 97.3k HPS or 197.5k healing.
Uplift on 7 targets averages 350k healing, and I'll use an average of 30% overhealing, which is lower than my kill on him, or 245k healing(ps).
Jab adds around 12k healing/chi. We'll assume jab has no overhealing and that someone is in range of you and your statue.
SCKx2/uplift is 5s, jabx2/uplift is 3s.
SCK HPS rotation: 2 SCk's, 1 uplift: (197.5k*2 + 245k)/5 = 128k HPS
Jab HPS rotation: 2 jabs, 1 uplift: (12k*2 + 245k)/3 = 89.7k HPS

Even without overhealing:
SCK HPS rotation: 2 SCk's, 1 uplift: (263*2 + 350k)/5 = 175k HPS
Jab HPS rotation: 2 jabs, 1 uplift: (12k*2 + 350k)/3 = 124.7k HPS


Pretty easy to see, jab has significantly lower HPS than SCK when uplift healing is low (ala low ReM). It's really only when you reach up to the higher # of ReM where Jab > SCK.

The log which I used my numbers for overhealing from:
http://worldoflogs.com/reports/l54kg...=10179&e=10567
That was a farm kill (its been that way for awhile) so I didn't exactly optimize my performance. It's significantly easier to jabx2/uplift and deal with ReM/EH CD's, which is why I used jab a majority of the time. But there are times where SCK is better, which is exactly what I was pointing out earlier.

PS: This also isn't a new account, I used to be plenty active here.

[Felade]

On the actual topic of the Jab nerf, yeah I think it'll have the side effect of making SCK more attractive once again. RJW is a very, very complex discussion because it depends on your SCK usage, but more importantly because it competes with a free healing spell. How exactly do you compare HPM when the other two talents have no cost? The fact that RJW is tied to using 2 Chi plus a lot of mana from SCK makes it kind of a nightmare because you end up with a choice between free burst aoe HPS and quite a bit more burst aoe HPS that also costs a ton of resources.

On RJW having a cost - sort of the same argument as the Uplift glyph. If you really need that sustained burst of healing, RJW is there for you, but it isn't free like the others, so its a tradeoff. RJW (just the spell, not the buff to SCK) is a pretty efficient replacement for Uplift on CD as long as it hits a lot of targets.

I just don't follow the dev's logic there, there doesn't seem to be an option in our spellbook for that besides Jab.

I haven't done the fight on heroic, but is in simply not possible to single target heal those ranged? Too much damage going out, I suppose, to swap to single target healing. Perhaps this is why they've waited to monkey with Jab until 5.2 so that fights like Empress aren't a problem.

[Deleted]

Have they changed RJW? Why is everyone all of a sudden contemplating how good it is? It's a terrible talent unless there are long term adds in a fight*, the SCK portion is inconsequential as the majority of SCK will overheal anyway unless you're in a scenario like last phase empress or garalon where everyone is guaranteed to be at a HP deficit.

On the other hand, the fact RJW is tied to a mana consuming spell isn't of consequence considering the scenario you would talent into it and use it in is when you will be using SCK anyway. Oh and spending the 2 chi on Uplift is better if you'll use less than 2 (fully healing) SCKs in the duration of that buff, otherwise the 2 chi on RJW is better not including eminence healing.

*and even that's changing in 5.2 as it only benefits from 60% of eminence as opposed to 120% like Xuen.

[Totaltotemic]

On the other hand, the fact RJW is tied to a mana consuming spell isn't of consequence considering the scenario you would talent into it and use it in is when you will be using SCK anyway. Oh and spending the 2 chi on Uplift is better if you'll use less than 2 (fully healing) SCKs in the duration of that buff, otherwise the 2 chi on RJW is better not including eminence healing.

That's more of a symptom of a completely different problem, which is that a lot of people prefer to ignore HPM and just stack Spirit until they can use whatever gives the most HPS. When you have way more Spirit than you need, HPM stops mattering at all. It's been generally accepted among all healers since Cata that if you can afford to run with less Spirit and more throughput stats, but heal smarter so that you don't actually use as much mana, you'll probably do better. However, it's so much easier to just stack Spirit and use whatever you want that a lot of people have gravitated towards that because it removes a lot of the potential to screw up or not play optimally.

I haven't done the fight on heroic, but is in simply not possible to single target heal those ranged? Too much damage going out, I suppose, to swap to single target healing. Perhaps this is why they've waited to monkey with Jab until 5.2 so that fights like Empress aren't a problem.

To put it in perspective, every 25 man guild 8 or 9 heals that fight and most 10 man guilds use 4 healers because there's so much damage going out. If you single-target heal, you will keep up exactly one person and that's it, there's too much sustained damage going out to single target heal people. This isn't really a new situation either, Heroic Warlord in DS and heroic Madness also had people spread out and all taking quite a bit of damage at the same time, it's not something that we can just hope doesn't happen. This is exactly the reason why Shamans got Glyph of Chain Heal and Glyph of Riptide, their kits were just awful when the raid was spread out.

[Luqt]

Meh, top logs on garalon hc suck since they were pre-nerf where you could just SCK all night loooooooong and have 18 ReMs running with TfT. Oh and they didn't have damn discipline priests to absorb basically all the damage D:

But your maths is correct, increasing your haste value i.e to 16.67% which is currently the breakpoint all of us aim for gets SCK at 1.93 sec (you probably just rounded this to 2 sec to make it simple, slack :P) whereas the jab rotation won't benefit at all from haste.

Btw, the "magical number" you refer to where a jab rotation will be superior to SCK in that particular situation will be 10 players with ReM.

Also, you can find somewhere in the middle of the guide thread some simple math to show that even in optimal conditions RJW will on average yield less HPS than chi torpedo :P

[Mithfin]

That's more of a symptom of a completely different problem, which is that a lot of people prefer to ignore HPM and just stack Spirit until they can use whatever gives the most HPS. When you have way more Spirit than you need, HPM stops mattering at all. It's been generally accepted among all healers since Cata that if you can afford to run with less Spirit and more throughput stats, but heal smarter so that you don't actually use as much mana, you'll probably do better. However, it's so much easier to just stack Spirit and use whatever you want that a lot of people have gravitated towards that because it removes a lot of the potential to screw up or not play optimally.

Yea. So, every 10m Mistweaver should say to his RL: "Screw you, I will play optimally from now on and will not SM/EM spam dying tank or wind step target or wharever, 'cause I'll run with 6k spirit like a pimp and will be the most efficient healer in the world".

[Deleted]

Does anyone know whether or not the % increase to ReM from t15 is multiplicative (100, 115, 132.15) or additive (100, 115, 130)? Need to reinstall the PTR and can't test for myself it would be greatly appreciated!

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 09:23 PM ----------

Yea. So, every 10m Mistweaver should say to his RL: "Screw you, I will play optimally from now on and will not SM/EM spam dying tank or wind step target or wharever, 'cause I'll run with 6k spirit like a pimp and will be the most efficient healer in the world".

If your tanks are taking such unmanageable damage this tier that you need to spam Surging them more than once for stabilization that's a tank problem.

[Luqt]

Does anyone know whether or not the % increase to ReM from t15 is multiplicative (100, 115, 132.15) or additive (100, 115, 130)? Need to reinstall the PTR and can't test for myself it would be greatly appreciated!

---------- Post added 2013-02-16 at 09:23 PM ----------



If your tanks are taking such unmanageable damage this tier that you need to spam Surging them more than once for stabilization that's a tank problem.

It's multiplicative, confirmed by a dev :-)

[Felade]

That's more of a symptom of a completely different problem, which is that a lot of people prefer to ignore HPM and just stack Spirit until they can use whatever gives the most HPS. When you have way more Spirit than you need, HPM stops mattering at all. It's been generally accepted among all healers since Cata that if you can afford to run with less Spirit and more throughput stats, but heal smarter so that you don't actually use as much mana, you'll probably do better. However, it's so much easier to just stack Spirit and use whatever you want that a lot of people have gravitated towards that because it removes a lot of the potential to screw up or not play optimally.

A very insightful post, and a discussion I wish we saw more of in all healer forums.

Yea. So, every 10m Mistweaver should say to his RL: "Screw you, I will play optimally from now on and will not SM/EM spam dying tank or wind step target or wharever, 'cause I'll run with 6k spirit like a pimp and will be the most efficient healer in the world".

Not exactly. See, when you stack things other than Spirit, those efficient heals heal for more, so you have to use Surging Mist (or Jab) less to get enough healing to beat the encounter. The question is, and one that healers rarely actually ask:

Mathematically, do I get more out of stacking Spirit and spamming smaller heals, or stacking throughput and using fewer, but larger and more efficient heals? That's definitely a math question, and I haven't seen anyone give a definitive answer...but if the DPS theorycrafting community is any guide, the answer is probably more on the throughput side, if for no other reason than primary stats are worth more than secondaries on a 1:1 comparison (read: not necessarily when gemming).

And even a *more* interesting question - should you heal that damage at all (read: the target is not in danger of dying), or let other healers on your team mop it up with *their* efficient heals. Or in other words - perhaps we should care less about padding meters and more about working as a *team*? ermaghd! Perhaps a meter that has 1 healer pwning and 2 others low isn't as successful as a meter where all 3 (or 6) are at about the same amount? hmmmm......

To put it in perspective, every 25 man guild 8 or 9 heals that fight and most 10 man guilds use 4 healers because there's so much damage going out. If you single-target heal, you will keep up exactly one person and that's it, there's too much sustained damage going out to single target heal people. This isn't really a new situation either, Heroic Warlord in DS and heroic Madness also had people spread out and all taking quite a bit of damage at the same time, it's not something that we can just hope doesn't happen. This is exactly the reason why Shamans got Glyph of Chain Heal and Glyph of Riptide, their kits were just awful when the raid was spread out.

Perhaps Empress is example A of why they didn't nerf Jab until 5.2. They figured it would be too big of a hit to MW. Perhaps what is going on here since we've been handing Druids their heads on spread out healing all expansion long perhaps this nerf (coupled with Druid buffs) is supposed to bring Druids and Monks more in line with each other.

[Totaltotemic]

Btw, the "magical number" you refer to where a jab rotation will be superior to SCK in that particular situation will be 10 players with ReM.

I'm curious about this because it's not something I've seen a whole lot of math or discussion on (most Uplift compared to targets analyses were between Chi Burst and Uplift, not Jab and SCK). Is this assuming that SCK isn't overhealing, is Serpent's Zeal up in the Jab case, does this take into account less frequent Mana Tea consumption due to slower Chi gen, is this just straight HPS or does this take into account HPM? I'm just not sure what exactly "will be superior", and "Jab rotation" entail. If you did the math yourself somewhere or found someone else's work I'd love to take a look at it because I figure it would take me several hours to construct all of the different scenarios, stats, and just the pure math behind that.

[Teriz]

@Teriz


There's a lot of confusion right now surrounding which of GC's changes are things on the PTR right now and which are things on an internal build. Jab went up from 11,700 to 13,500, but that's not a 33% increase like he said, so we don't know if it's going up more or what. On top of that, Uplift is supposed to go up by 21%, but again this is some phantom internal build that we've not yet seen.

That's fine. I'm thinking of dropping my MW and just going BrM/WW for the next patch. Sucks, but I just can't get a handle on the new healing style. It just feels all over the place. It helps that I'm in love with SEF.

[Courierrawr]

That's fine. I'm thinking of dropping my MW and just going BrM/WW for the next patch. Sucks, but I just can't get a handle on the new healing style. It just feels all over the place. It helps that I'm in love with SEF.

Blizzard has screwed something up with MW in every patch & hotfix since 5.1, don't be surprised if we receive some more bone crushing nerfs in a random hotfix a week into 5.2.

[Deleted]

Bones have been well and truly crushed for hard 10 man progression personally, especially with shaman buffs and paladin tier 15, oh and resto buffs across the board