So 5.3 caused disc to be miles ahead again.

[ramennoodleking]

Yea havoc, you nailed it. I felt holy would play out alot better in 25s. Just a shame the difference disc can make in a ten man progression guild.

[Deleted]

People looking at logs need to remember that divine aegis should actually be rolled into your heals. With the exception of PoH everything else procs DA equally so if penance is 30% of your healing when divine aegis is excluded it should also theoretically be equal to 25-30% of your Divine aegis too depending on how you use inner focus.

Do ppl reporting that 25% of their healing was atonement and 20% of their healing was divine aegis are reporting a nonsensical value.

if 20% of your healing is aegis and 25% is atonement than in reality about 30% of your healing is atonement.

[Deleted]

if 20% of your healing is aegis and 25% is atonement than in reality about 30% of your healing is atonement.

Usually the majority of the non-atonement healing is PW:S and spirit shell, so in reality the majority of the divine aegis will be from atonement most of the time. I agree with the rest of your post(s).

[ramennoodleking]

I'm actually finding on average that Atonement accounts for approximately 60% (+/- 10%) on any given fight, DA and Solace included. Remember that Solace is also counted seperately from Atonement. And as Cookie said, the rest comes from PW:S (primarily for Rapture procs), SS, and PoM.

[Noradin]

Could you make that clearer please? 60% of what? (Percentages hold no meaning if you don't clearly state what 100% refer to, doing so is imprecise at best and intentional misleading at worst.)

Do you meant 60% of DA or do you mean to say 60% of all healing disc does can be traced back to damaging spells?

[ramennoodleking]

If you read the above comments you will see it was in reference to total healing done. Basically looking at my healing breakdown on a fight like heroic twins, I'm doing around 60% give or take 10% healing strictly via Atonement/Solace/DA (while also taking into account that not all DA is from Atonement).

[lockedout]

We were nerfed this patch to bring us more in line with other healers. I've raided just today and that seems to have worked out nicely (and was "needed". Disc was admittedly too strong). I was still ahead a little but it was much closer to the other healers than previously. That can be explained either with a class advantage, player skill or other factors such as bosses with +Damage modifiers (which still make disc the superior healer for these fights).

In case you missed the changes:

Also, I'm pretty sure you should want to post in the Blizzard forums rather than here if you want to report balance issues. MMO-Champion can't help you. Nobody here is a Blizzard developer or has any influence on class or game design.

Your dps was nerfed everything else is the same.
Blizzard regularly reads MMO Champ but posting in both forums is your best bet.

[ramennoodleking]

Your dps was nerfed everything else is the same.
Blizzard regularly reads MMO Champ but posting in both forums is your best bet.

Yea this is pretty inaccurate. Only dps nerf came in the form of offensive penance, which is only 10% to that one spell. The biggest changes came to Atonement healing (10% less healing from smite/solace/holy fire, about 20% total less from penance) as well as no longer allowing the 20% increased smite damage from the glyph to translate into additional healing, as well as the mechanics surrounding BT. In general though the nerfs admittedly didn't have much impact on discs value or the nature of Atonement healing, so the overall effect seems to be failure on the part of Blizzard.

[Nestar]

Yea this is pretty inaccurate. Only dps nerf came in the form of offensive penance, which is only 10% to that one spell. The biggest changes came to Atonement healing (10% less healing from smite/solace/holy fire, about 20% total less from penance) as well as no longer allowing the 20% increased smite damage from the glyph to translate into additional healing, as well as the mechanics surrounding BT. In general though the nerfs admittedly didn't have much impact on discs value or the nature of Atonement healing, so the overall effect seems to be failure on the part of Blizzard.

You may be overlooking the fact that they 'fixed' the issue with smart healing targeting pets, Which in all honesty probably did a lot more for our healing than any nerf would compensate for. The nerf did exactly how much they said it would, we're just not wasting healing the same way anymore.

[Basmothh]

So it looks like the situation has changed dramatically between the raid tiers. 25man Holy > disc, 10man Disc > Holy it seems.

Why would Holy be more favored? The damage from bosses hasn't changed, but the amount of healing from Tranq/Rev/DPS CDs like VE and Hotw+Tranq has increased drastically. This means that Holy's advantage of having higher throughput than Disc becomes nullified, especially if the higher output from Holy only translates to higher overhealing for the other healers due to aforementioned buffs.

In contrast, PW:S has become exceedingly strong and spammable, especially since its inherently low overhealing causes it to scale better with gear, and the reduced need of throughput from healers like Holy Priests only makes the EHP utility of Disc's absorbs relatively more useful.

[ramennoodleking]

You may be overlooking the fact that they 'fixed' the issue with smart healing targeting pets, Which in all honesty probably did a lot more for our healing than any nerf would compensate for. The nerf did exactly how much they said it would, we're just not wasting healing the same way anymore.

I'm not arguing anything at all, just pointing out the person I quoted was mistaken about the changes to disc. I am fully aware the "nerfs" amounted to hardly anything at all, and with the changes to smart healing more of that is getting where it needs to go. So again...Blizzard intended to fix a problem but for all intents and purposes sat squarely with their thumbs planted deep inside their asses.

---------- Post added 2013-05-24 at 09:55 PM ----------

Why would Holy be more favored? The damage from bosses hasn't changed, but the amount of healing from Tranq/Rev/DPS CDs like VE and Hotw+Tranq has increased drastically. This means that Holy's advantage of having higher throughput than Disc becomes nullified, especially if the higher output from Holy only translates to higher overhealing for the other healers due to aforementioned buffs.

In contrast, PW:S has become exceedingly strong and spammable, especially since its inherently low overhealing causes it to scale better with gear, and the reduced need of throughput from healers like Holy Priests only makes the EHP utility of Disc's absorbs relatively more useful.

Disc cannot compete with Holy's raw output, and you don't stack things like Tranq with Divine Hymn anyway.

[Basmothh]

Disc cannot compete with Holy's raw output, and you don't stack things like Tranq with Divine Hymn anyway.

The same was true in 5.2. The point isn't that you're stacking CDs, quite the opposite actually, as having most of the throughput CDs buffed means that you don't have to stack them anymore and can stagger their usage to cover a larger portion of the fight. This devalues Holy's advantage of having a higher peak sustained output. After all, with raid damage staying the same, and with healing contribution from off-spec DPS buffed together with the throughput CDs from Resto Druids/Monks, the raw healing needs of your raid are now more than adequately covered. This being the case, your raid is better served by a Disc Priest whose absorbs provide an EHP buffer, and even though they aren't technically required, the absorbs are still a bigger benefit to the raid than higher raw healing.

[Astraios]

The same was true in 5.2. The point isn't that you're stacking CDs, quite the opposite actually, as having most of the throughput CDs buffed means that you don't have to stack them anymore and can stagger their usage to cover a larger portion of the fight. This devalues Holy's advantage of having a higher peak sustained output. After all, with raid damage staying the same, and with healing contribution from off-spec DPS buffed together with the throughput CDs from Resto Druids/Monks, the raw healing needs of your raid are now more than adequately covered. This being the case, your raid is better served by a Disc Priest whose absorbs provide an EHP buffer, and even though they aren't technically required, the absorbs are still a bigger benefit to the raid than higher raw healing.

This one knows what it is talking about.

The throughput buffs means that bringing the raid to full is laughably easy with help from offspec healing such as boomkin/feral tranqs, my revival averaging 250k on everyone, etc. On the other hand, making sure we live through initial burst is very important, which is what disc is best at. Also disc's a better tank healer because of the absorb buffer, period.

[Noradin]

, period.

That last part basically devalued all your reasoning before. If you don't want to discuss things, don't post in a forum.

And while you are correct about the need to survive the initial burst, that has not been a problem before and is even less of a problem now and it most likely won't become a problem in the future. Blizzard should have learned that lesson by now and looking at current encounters they seem to have. Just look at Tortos heroic, it comes with it's own absorbs that interfere with disc and paladin absorbs somewhat.


Concering absorbs: They don't 'reduce' overheal as much as most people believe.
If you cast too much of them they will just exspire - which you can't see on the meters thus seeing no 'overheal' from absorbs.
Even if they don't exspire, if you cast them too offensively, you will either push your other healer's cast's at least partially into overheal (thus partially causing that overheal even if it is not attributed to you on the meters) or force them to step back, thereby negating their healing potential and reducing the combined healing potential and longlivety of your healing team.

Your argument is egoistic (as in centered on the disc priests and imprecise and incorrect on the other healers part), but healing encounters is a team efford.

Healing the way you propose effectively wastes part of the healing team's stat pool.
There was a nice example of a thread about a disc priests on magera a while back, who spammed PW:S at the beginning leaving the other healers with 100% mana and nothing to spend it on (thus reducing the healer team's total regen to just the disc priest's) and then shambling trying to keep the raid alive after he dropped out oom just when the healing requirements went up.
The consensus was that he was basically useless even with his impressive numbers, as those other healers could have healed the first part themselfes and with thier combined regen would have just as much mana left for the interesting part as they had with his 'help' - so he just sat on a raid spot pulling impressive (on first glance) numbers but not contributing anything to actually beating the encounter.

Casting more absorbs than needed can be bad even now if it blocks the rest of your healing team from bringing their part of the healer's stat pool to bear.
If you spend your healing potential relatively much faster than the others, then you should check that you aren't running into a trap.
If it happens time and again on the same encounter and works out fine, then you should check if you are bringing to much healing potential to begin with.

[Basmothh]

Your argument is egoistic (as in centered on the disc priests and imprecise and incorrect on the other healers part), but healing encounters is a team efford.

Healing the way you propose effectively wastes part of the healing team's stat pool.

Your arguments are based on poor Disc play, which isn't what the poster you quoted has said to do.

Disc has no issue keeping up with the other healers past its initial burst with SS, as Rampages don't last long enough for the throughput healers to pull ahead. This is especially true if you consider the fact that Disc's contribution via PW:B every third Rampage doesn't appear on the meters.

Regardless, I'm having a really hard time seeing how your reply actually relates to what he posted. What exactly is he incorrect about?

[Noradin]

The second part of my post (after the double space between lines) was mostly about this:

In contrast, PW:S has become exceedingly strong and spammable, especially since its inherently low overhealing causes it to scale better with gear, and the reduced need of throughput from healers like Holy Priests only makes the EHP utility of Disc's absorbs relatively more useful.

If it is spammed, i causes exacly what I described and the 'reduced need of throughput' can translate into wasting the part of the stats the other healers have.

Its 'reduced overhealing' is in part due to shifting the overhealing to the other direct heals. (Kind of like sniping, but less obviously.)

I'm not saying it is a problem for all players or saying it is a problem for him, I'm just pointing out that it is misleading when interpreted as 'spamming PW:S and other absorbs is good and efficient and has basically no downsides', when it can in fact reduce the absolute healing potential of the healing team over the course of an encounter when done wrong (excessively).

[Deleted]

PWS became spammable in 25 mans? How come? Gear upgrades might give you a boost in regen but not enough to make a spell spammable significantly more than it was.

And spamming a 15 sec duration absorb on 25 people is pretty strange anyway. At best you will cover 10 before shields start expiring? You'd get better results using spirit shell for pre-shielding. PWS has its place, but I'd hardly call it spammable while staying efficient in 25 mans.

Either way, surviving burst hasn't been a problem for a long time already, people arent running ToT undergeared anymore, and gear upgrades also made hp go up.

I think disc can still pull its own weight just fine in 25 mans, we'll most likely start seeing more holy ranks, but at this stage of the tier, neither disc absorbs or holy buffed output (even further more since gear upgrades will allow them more regen too) cant be called anymore "absolutely needed".

[Dracodraco]

PWS became spammable in 25 mans? How come? Gear upgrades might give you a boost in regen but not enough to make a spell spammable significantly more than it was.

And spamming a 15 sec duration absorb on 25 people is pretty strange anyway. At best you will cover 10 before shields start expiring? You'd get better results using spirit shell for pre-shielding. PWS has its place, but I'd hardly call it spammable while staying efficient in 25 mans.

Either way, surviving burst hasn't been a problem for a long time already, people arent running ToT undergeared anymore, and gear upgrades also made hp go up.

I think disc can still pull its own weight just fine in 25 mans, we'll most likely start seeing more holy ranks, but at this stage of the tier, neither disc absorbs or holy buffed output (even further more since gear upgrades will allow them more regen too) cant be called anymore "absolutely needed".

"spamming it" and "blanketing the raid" as a druid would with rejuv are two very different things. Some fights, like Animus, favors a very heavy usage of Shields to keep the raid alive, atleast in 25 man. The jolt won't interrupt you if you're casting instants, and a shield can be seen as a 120K "instant heal" in the case of animus, where you know jolt will shave the shield off before the duration ends. No other class has a "instant heal" they can cast, on the move, which heals for that much. Spending your time trying to PoH (outside of spirit shell) is just a waste if you're on progress - paladins, mistweavers, druids and even shamans all provide better raid AOE healing than discs does, but nothing compares to the snap-healing a disc provides. Using Penance, Solace, and PoM on CD along with filling up the rest with shields / smites if nothing is going on to build AA stacks, is by far the most effective way to heal - Spirit shell can be used, but atleast in our raid, people are usually too spread for the font to get any decent healing on more than 2 groups (not to mention that the shield is almost instantly removed due to the touch of animus debuff).

Is it the most effective for HPS? Probably not - you can achive greater output with PoH spam on groups that are set up well.
Is it the best way of keeping the raid alive? By far.

[ramennoodleking]

I'd have to disagree that PW:S is "by far the best way of keeping the raid alive." In fact that's a pretty damn big stretch. Maybe one or two people at a time but you will lose ground quickly by relying on it.

[Dracodraco]

I'd have to disagree that PW:S is "by far the best way of keeping the raid alive." In fact that's a pretty damn big stretch. Maybe one or two people at a time but you will lose ground quickly by relying on it.

You haven't done Animus25 heroic yet, have you <.<? Trust me - on that fight, all you want is snap healing to make sure no one gets oneshot by the heavy damage going out. AOE healing is better left to the classes that excells at it (monks, druids), but can't snap heal the same way.