Patch 5.3 PTR. Attonement Nerf

[Chimaera]

I keep reading different variations of the range, can someone confirm if it's actually 80yrds from the boss, or from the boss hitbox?
As if it's from the boss hitbox 100yrds sounds about right at some bosses, but if it's strictly from the boss than it's surely 80. But which one is it?

Atonement has a 40 yard range from the target's hitbox (the bigger the hitbox the more real area). The notion of 80 yards comes from the priest possibly being on one side while the recipient of the heal is on the complete other side.

[wrynil]

Now the 100y is my bad, really! I can't believe I did it again, I actually made the same mistake twice. Wonder why I got it printed so hard into my mind it's 100y, it's only maximum 80y then *starting to get very senile*. Still, this is a lot further than you can reach with regular ST heals, so still a big advantage with the range especially on spread fights like Animus with lots of random dmg. And no, I don't play Disc since MoP, thank God, only when it's absolutly needed (only Horridon progress, wich was very mindless yes! and now Animus, not as mindless no) I said so, I am pretty lame at it since 5.0 since I only did Horridon before...! I did my first full run as Disc this week...:P With Holy gear reforged for crit & critgems on haste/mastery gear, it looks pretty shit.

The point was not that, it was; Disc can heal just fine, even without using Attonment as a replacement of healing. Now, imagine a more skilled Disc who actually heals instead of Attonment, if I could do it (even worthless me), their numbers should be awsome! This is what you should look at <---- Because there are many Disc out there who claims their healing would suck if they nerfed Atonment! That they can not produce numbers with their healingspells/absorbs. And that is bull!

And let me also put it this way; Atonment spam only, with the regular 1 GCD fillers (Cascade, PoM and PWS, not even touching SS) puts Disc above all the other healerclasses on that fight. How do you defend that? (directed to all who think a nerf to Attonment is not justified) 120k hps+ and 50k+ dps in this case/fight. Not at all saying this is true for ALL fights, but many for sure.

The BT nerf was also pretty needed imo. Being able to have 15% haste up for a majority of your time (if you want) and since 5.2 being able to abuse a lot more PW:S is too powerful.

No, the nerf to Attonment was absolutly needed, and I believe still too small.

Discs, you should really go play Holy and other classes to come down to earth.

Sound more like you running too many healers.. Try run fewer and the discs wont be able to just use atonement cause it wont cut it. It will also leave everyone much closer. Disc are good at stealing heals - that is not equal opness.

80k healing as atonement spamming through megaera normal - 120k using full kit. (and im even a fairly new disc and know there is alot of stuff i can improve at, not including atonement so much, so with more practise i can pull more than 120k on that fight using full kit, while it wont do nothing to atonement spammning (done it to help our lazy dpss)).

[Kalmah]

Optimal disc play is to smite as much as possible without letting anyone die. Optimal disc play isn't about topping the healing meter.

[Noradin]

[...]
The BT nerf was also pretty needed imo. Being able to have 15% haste up for a majority of your time (if you want) and since 5.2 being able to abuse a lot more PW:S is too powerful.
[...]
Discs, you should really go play Holy and other classes to come down to earth.

1. The majority of our time? How would that go together with the mindless atonement spamming you assume every other post?

And you realize disc has less spells that would not consume BT than holy does?

Also, didn't you campain for making the spec more involved and complicated? How is dumbing down yet another mechanik going to further that goal?

Maybe your aim has nothing to do with the spec itself but just that it competes with your choosen one and you have problems with you raid trying to make you change it?

2. On what basis do you assume anyone who playes a disc priest never does anything else? I for one happen to play all healing specs aside from monk from time to time and spend quite a bit as holy priests.
I do not think atonement should be all a disc priest ever uses, but mindlessly nerfing all interactions between spells disc has will only force the the use of mostly one spell for everything. It happened before several times with several classes.

The throughtless nerf of IF via that crit change was bad for spell diversity, the change to BT will further reduce the incentive to plan and pay attention to which and in which order spells are used.
Just because BT has no static hard-coded CD per se (like the spells the holy spec uses do) doesn't mean you can affordlessly keep it active all the time like some kind of Chakra or Inner Fire buff.

[nobodysbaby]

Yes, ofc you can. Why not? Just toss out a PWS between casts. Is not always a smart move but it's doable atm. Try it. Very nice with all that extra haste.

[Noradin]

So after every smite you exspect a PW:S? how does that work if they reforge out of all their spirit? Or is it that you want them to abandon PW:S in favor of smiting only so they need less spirit?

I mean, yes I can do it (tossing a shield everytime BT is consumed) with the stats I have for the way I heal if I switch in some of my regen pieces, but what is your problem with that?
If I do so it is either a great waste of mana and time (and a dps loss), or just a more involved (and costy) healing style. In the end it would only make sense together with penance and PoH.
The only real gain you can get from BT now and won't after the change is by using a combination of PW:S followed by penance or instants before a non-instant cast. How many instants are those (because you will still combine PW:S and Penance)? Do you think PoM is too good for disc? Renew or the Holy Fire dot? Maybe the lvl90 talents?
Or is it that thinking is involved?

If you are concerned about chaining PW:S, isn't that just a different way to do the same as the GCD reduction on Renew for Holy? And it only gives 15% 'castspeed' on the GCD instead of 50% and comes with increased costs as well if you take the opportunity.

If you cast PW:S just to get the haste buff, it won't even make your 10s rezz finish faster than if you'd just cast it without but right away with what remains of that buff after all those nerfs it has already recieved.

[nobodysbaby]

No, not every Smite. BT lasts much longer than that and you can fit in a Penance/long cast spell right at the last second to if you are skilled.

Erh, it's easy to keep it up. On my Animus fight I used a lot of PW:S mostly on Matter Swapped ppl, PW:S aren't so heavy on mana at all imo. I had 36% uptime on Borrowed Time, that's more than 1/3 of the fight with 15% extra Haste. What if I actually tracked the buff properly and tried to cast so I had more uptime? I promise it's very possible to reach nearly full uptime (if you really, really wanted to, not the most practical if it's going to be overheals etc). Why do you find that so hard to believe?

It's quite OP atm if you know how to use it.

You will still want the BT buff after the nerf, though it will only give Haste to 1 spell if I understood it correctly, not 6s (or even up to 9 sec if you abuse the Penance on <1s left of BT style).

[Noradin]

The way I understand it from your previous posts on this forum you cast a lot of PW:S on that fight, obviously you will have a lot of BT uptime, and the change wont change that at all.
In fact, that change will only make atonement a stronger choice for disc by nerfing intelligent play with direct heals. But that was exatly what you where after, wasn't it?
After all everyone always complains about the PW:S, Penance, GH cast sequence being too strong, don't they? Obviously it is overpowered and needs to get nerfed since all disc priests ever use is that combination of three spells.

[Fullmetal89]

What I don't understand is why they do these kinds of nerfs in the first place. If Disc is too competitive with other healing classes/specs then why not buff those classes/specs. I personally love Disc and atonement, Disc priests and Resto druids are my favorite healing classes in the game by far. Mostly because they are more active than most other specs and Disc has the benefit of doing a little dps while healing which helps during several fights. So again, the problem shouldn't be solved by punishing those players that enjoy healing a certain way to the benefit of those that like a different healing style. If they where to buff the other specs to be on-par with disc it would be a much better solution. I haven't played holy pally in years, so I don't know if they have something like this already, but I think seal of insight for holy pallies should work like atonement and hit for much harder without the requirement of being in melee range, remove the CD on judgement give it a cast. They are already homogenizing all classes anyways it wouldn't be something that would piss off players to the point where they would stop playing.

[nobodysbaby]

The fact if they buff healers the need to bring them will decrease and fewer will be brought to raids. With the VP upgrades tomorrow, and also the buff to raid CD's from dps I feel this will already be the case.

---------- Post added 2013-05-19 at 08:15 PM ----------

The way I understand it from your previous posts on this forum you cast a lot of PW:S on that fight, obviously you will have a lot of BT uptime, and the change wont change that at all.
In fact, that change will only make atonement a stronger choice for disc by nerfing intelligent play with direct heals. But that was exatly what you where after, wasn't it?
After all everyone always complains about the PW:S, Penance, GH cast sequence being too strong, don't they? Obviously it is overpowered and needs to get nerfed since all disc priests ever use is that combination of three spells.

Nah, BT is awsome for Attonment aswell. It's possible to fire away a good amount of Attonment spells during 1 BT.

[Deleted]

Nah, BT is awsome for Attonment aswell. It's possible to fire away a good amount of Attonment spells during 1 BT.

Trying to weave PW:S into your atonement rotation is not a DPS/HPS increase over pure atonement rotation.
Just smoothens the transitions to PW:Sing for Rapture and your healing/atonement rotation. (Although with atonement being too mana efficient, rapture is no longer that crucial on most fights)

[nobodysbaby]

In those cases PWS is absorbed, I do think it could be. 15% haste is nothing to sneeze at. Are there mathematical to support it?

[Noradin]

Nah, BT is awsome for Attonment aswell. It's possible to fire away a good amount of Attonment spells during 1 BT.

Yes, two, most of the time and three whenever those CDs happen to line up once or twice a fight, two of those have cast times (GCD) of <1.5s anyway. Using '(good) amount' makes it sound like you can fit dozens.

Again I have to ask if you wish to reduce the use of PW:S when using atonement? Is your goal to take even the targeting required by PW:S away? Because you you could use a macro to cast PW:S on the tank for Rapture, no targeting needed.
You want to kill that spec by abolishing anything that might make it interesting, don't you?
Let's make AA only affect atonement next, shall we? And PI could be limited to damageing spells? After all everything that might make you spend time on anything but smite is bad.

[ramennoodleking]

The goal should be to kill atonement healing (relatively, by giving only a 50% heals per dps) and buff single target healing for disc. Absorbs I can live with if I absolutely have to--atonement makes the spec near-mandatory on many progression fights.

[Deleted]

The goal should be to kill atonement healing (relatively, by giving only a 50% heals per dps) and buff single target healing for disc. Absorbs I can live with if I absolutely have to--atonement makes the spec near-mandatory on many progression fights.

I'm actually agreeing with Ramen, the horror!

[Yuma8244]

The goal should be to kill atonement healing (relatively, by giving only a 50% heals per dps) and buff single target healing for disc. Absorbs I can live with if I absolutely have to--atonement makes the spec near-mandatory on many progression fights.

I would prefer going back to the Cata range on atonement, basically so it only heals melee and people closer to the boss and can't snipe the entire raid at all times

[nobodysbaby]

Yes, two, most of the time and three whenever those CDs happen to line up once or twice a fight, two of those have cast times (GCD) of <1.5s anyway. Using '(good) amount' makes it sound like you can fit dozens.

Again I have to ask if you wish to reduce the use of PW:S when using atonement? Is your goal to take even the targeting required by PW:S away? Because you you could use a macro to cast PW:S on the tank for Rapture, no targeting needed.
You want to kill that spec by abolishing anything that might make it interesting, don't you?
Let's make AA only affect atonement next, shall we? And PI could be limited to damageing spells? After all everything that might make you spend time on anything but smite is bad.

Woot? No, I just think to be able to have that kind of uptime on 15% haste is a bit too good. "For the next spell" isnt catshit either. How do you read my posts, I wonder?

---------- Post added 2013-05-20 at 07:56 AM ----------

The goal should be to kill atonement healing (relatively, by giving only a 50% heals per dps) and buff single target healing for disc. Absorbs I can live with if I absolutely have to--atonement makes the spec near-mandatory on many progression fights.

I think it defenitly should be a viable way to play, BUT.... Not top meters at the same time. If you dps-heal mostly=dead last on healing. Why? Because you freacking dps!

And btw, I was going nuts yday on 25 hc Lei Shen. I was 100% sure Holy would be great for that fight; lots of dmg, lots of movement. So I convinced my team Holys going to be awsome, regemmed my gear and reforged it back to Spirit (actually reforged off 5k for Disc and change to a output trinket) Mastery+Haste and went Holy. But dead last on healing, and yes, Disc first with ATTONMENT as fucking usual. So I got told (and honestly felt I had to myself) to regem tonight and respecc back to Disc, since also Lei requires pretty tight dps...

This is just silly.

[Deleted]

No, not every Smite. BT lasts much longer than that and you can fit in a Penance/long cast spell right at the last second to if you are skilled.

Errr, do you even understand how BT works? It gets consumed by any cast spell. The only spell that actually benefits from haste and is not cast is penance, and that has a 9 seconds cd, you can hardly cast it after each shield. Instants dont consume BT, that is true, but all it does is lower the gcd slightly really. A PoM with BT wont heal for any more, it will just allow you to cast something else like 0.2 seconds faster. So you have to choose - either you cast smite or a that long cast spell you talk about, but you cant spam atonement like a moron and have BT up all the time like you pretend. For an atonement spammer, PWS is a loss of dps. As for shields, we dont use them for getting BT only, we use them when they are needed. Some fights warrant more PWS use - like dark animus, where you know the debuff person will take dmg, that doesnt usually happen on most other fights. Unless you absolutely know that a certain person will take dmg in the next 15 seconds, that PWS is a waste of mana and time. As holy, do you flash heal just so you get Serendipity up? No, well, neither do we cast PWs just for BT.

So make up your mind: are disc priests spamming atonement only or are they spamming shields to get that amazing BT up, or are they "being skilled" and fitting long single target heals in that BT timer?

Erh, it's easy to keep it up. On my Animus fight I used a lot of PW:S mostly on Matter Swapped ppl, PW:S aren't so heavy on mana at all imo. I had 36% uptime on Borrowed Time, that's more than 1/3 of the fight with 15% extra Haste. What if I actually tracked the buff properly and tried to cast so I had more uptime? I promise it's very possible to reach nearly full uptime (if you really, really wanted to, not the most practical if it's going to be overheals etc). Why do you find that so hard to believe?

You promise to get full uptime? How about actually doing it? I can promise too to cast 1000 shields with none of them being wasted, doesn't mean its actually happening. Ofc you will have a high uptime of BT on a fight yourself say you use a lot of PWS, but doesnt that mean that you didn't really have the time to be that mindless atonement disc spammer?

It sounds to me you have a very basic grasp of the spec, and are fumbling at poor hearsay arguments for the sake of getting a nerf no matter how.

[Noradin]

The goal should be to kill atonement healing (relatively, by giving only a 50% heals per dps) and buff single target healing for disc. Absorbs I can live with if I absolutely have to--atonement makes the spec near-mandatory on many progression fights.

Why would you then remove incentives to cast non-atonement spells?

[nobodysbaby]

1. I never promised or said it is optimal to try to have BT full uptime, that would req Shield/HF/PoM/Penance/90t etc only besides those hasted casts that consumes BT.
2. I shielded 44 times during hc 25 Animus and had 36% uptime without even aiming for BT uptime. My co-Disc had 32% uptime and he was only Atonment healing with occasional fillers. I said it's very well possible to have a much bigger uptime (you CAN have 100%, but that would be FAR from great play, right? But it's not impossible) if you track BT, not that it's anything you want, I never claimed that...!
3. It is possible if you are skilled and have it as a goal to fit say HF, Penance, and a PoH at the very last s within one single BT and extend it to 8s or so.
4. It is possible to use PW:S+PoH rotation to have a 100% uptime during AoE IF you want to. Is it higher HPS? I don't know!


I'm not for Shield spamming. I'm not for mindless Atonment spamming. It's good you have incentive to cast an occasional PW:S for BT/Rapture or w/e. But I do think it's too strong now where you can have such big uptime on it and "cheat" it by extending it by casting instant heals or Penance and the hasted cast at the last second.