Disc Priests, what spec?

[openair]

Sorry, random attempting to be condescending person, but maybe you should actually analyze your abilities first.

Yes, Smite is .5 faster than Heal and does +20% damage with Evangelism, but its HPS is still lower than your lowest HPS heal. I know that might be hard for you to grasp, but let's try to clarify a bit. Smite's base damage is 620 average and it gets a 5% and 20% modifier as well as ~72.5% scaling. So at 4k SP you'll hit for ~4.4k and GCD capped this will be ~3.3k HPS. Heal on the other hand has a base healing of 2,529 average, and a 5%, 10% and 12% modifier from Grace that I'll leave out for now. However, it only has a 30.2% scaling. So at 4k SP it *gasp* heals for the same as Smite.

Sure if you pick 4k sp, the exact point heal and smite are about equal, heal might seem equal. But if you compare them at my actual raid buffed sp of 5070 smite pulls ahead by about 14% (solely because of the double coefficient).

Also heal costs mana where as smite (+archangel) returns at least equal mana to the cost, and provides bonus healing afterwards.

[MFDOOM]

I do both, actually. I just try to keep up the Evangelism stacks with Smite and grow wings when necessary. When I don't need to keep up Evangelism, I just FH/PW:S/PoM/GH/Penance in no order, using http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRcdcoMoMZh:0qmdzsVzm .

[openair]

I do both, actually. I just try to keep up the Evangelism stacks with Smite and grow wings when necessary. When I don't need to keep up Evangelism, I just FH/PW:S/PoM/GH/Penance in no order, using http://www.wowhead.com/talent#bfGorRcdcoMoMZh:0qmdzsVzm .

Yea, i dont see anyone suggesting full time smite spam. I generally throw about 5 smites per 30 seconds (arch cd) or when i have nothing better to do (breaks of incoming dmg).

[harky]

I picked 4k SP as a general average as I didn't expect people in better gear to be giving it any second thought, guess I should have noted that. Either way, I was comparing to Heal as Heal is a spell you shouldn't be using at 80 because of how poorly it heals in relation to the complete lack of mana problems. As mentioned while Heal is comparable, all other healing spells completely destroy Smite's healing through Atonement. Being 16% better than total crap is still total crap.

Smite at 5070 SP = 4k HPS @ 5, 3.86k @ 4, 3.7k @ 3, 3.57k @ 2, 3.44k @ 1, 3.33k w/o
Average if casting 5 per 30 and Arch on CD: 3.58k HPS

Heal at 5070 SP = 3k HPS, 3.36k w/ Grace

But again, this is comparing to the lowest HPS spell you have.

Flash Heal at 5070 SP = 9.4k HPS, 10.5k HPS w/ Grace
Greater Heal at 5070 SP = 7.5k HPS, 8.4k w/ Grace

Flash triples the HPS, GH more than doubles it. I could include Renew if you like, that also triples it. So does a glyphed PW:S assuming you have sufficient Mastery. Etc, etc. So again, we're still talking about healing at 40% or less 20% of the time in exchange for healing 15% more 60% of the time. At best you could break even while doing insignificant damage. It's not worth doing.

[openair]

And again, no one is suggesting full time smite spam. So comparing it to other heals is pointless and the smite heal can benefit from grace too (if you aren't only spamming smite >,>).

[harky]

Neither am I, so perhaps rather than skimming you should read the argument. This comparison is being done for people who are casting Smite only to stack Evangelism to use Archangel as a healing buff, which represents a net loss in healing.

[Oneirophobia]

A lot of these responses worry me. Net healing loss AND its useless as a mana regen at 85?
I read a blue post somewhere that said "we dont' want near-oom healers to just stand around and wait for mana to return, thats not fun. We will be implementing mechanics that allow healers to regenerate mana."
I figured the smite + archangel was one of those mechanics, apparently not.
And I was having such fun with it too.
I'm so glad I'm giving up healing for shadow. Way too much to worry about.

[openair]

Neither am I, so perhaps rather than skimming you should read the argument. This comparison is being done for people who are casting Smite only to stack Evangelism to use Archangel as a healing buff, which represents a net loss in healing.

Except you ignore the fact that most fights dont have constant dmg and the archangel buff can be used during bursts. Bonus healing during burst > overhealing all the time.

[Surea]

Flash triples the HPS, GH more than doubles it. I could include Renew if you like, that also triples it. So does a glyphed PW:S assuming you have sufficient Mastery. Etc, etc. So again, we're still talking about healing at 40% or less 20% of the time in exchange for healing 15% more 60% of the time. At best you could break even while doing insignificant damage. It's not worth doing.

Flash heal sure does, but I feel it's important to try the cata side of healing already, so I don't use flash very often, as it will get me oom very fast anyways and it will count for overhealing mostly as well. PWS is still awesome with decent mastery yeah. I don't understand why you bring this up though since everyone will still be using it.

If our combination of smite/pom/shield/maybe renew if you want, and penance is enough to keep a tank up, then why are you complaining about more HPS? I have time to still shield the raid while tank healing and I'm still topping the meter. (or right below our druid sometimes), so why are you stigmatising this spec?

And @ Oneirophobia: try and think for yourself If you think everything you read is true, then please go ahead and believe in santa claus for this matter, but go on and just test it on live.

[Raesa]

I've been a Disc priest since before LK, but when I renew my sub for Cata I've just gotta try Chakra. It looks fun :]

[harky]

Flash heal sure does, but I feel it's important to try the cata side of healing already, so I don't use flash very often, as it will get me oom very fast anyways and it will count for overhealing mostly as well. PWS is still awesome with decent mastery yeah. I don't understand why you bring this up though since everyone will still be using it.

If our combination of smite/pom/shield/maybe renew if you want, and penance is enough to keep a tank up, then why are you complaining about more HPS? I have time to still shield the raid while tank healing and I'm still topping the meter. (or right below our druid sometimes), so why are you stigmatising this spec?

Stigmatizing it? Huh? It's great for what it is. It's great for leveling, it's great for 5 mans, it's even pretty decent in BGs. I'm not stigmatizing anything. If you have a problem with the drastic drop in HPS, or for some reason still think HPS doesn't matter... that's a different issue. When you go from being mildly competitive with healers to being beaten by Shadow at healing and don't see that as a problem it leads me to believe you have a very different raid environment than I run with. There aren't lulls in healing in our raids because we 2/3 heal everything in ICC. Lulls in healing mean deaths.

As far as it just being Flash Heal, you should reread the last few posts. It isn't just Flash Heal. It's everything except Heal. And Heal beats it at certain points. If you're in a very casual guild I'm sure that's fine, but when you have actual responsibility for lives in a raid it just isn't. It's the same type of problem that Paladins who wanted to use Flash of Light had in Wrath. They would claim it worked fine in their raids and tanks didn't die, so we'd kick them from raid and replace them. Why? Well, using something that dramatically low on HPS in comparison to normal play was causing the raid to lose stability.

Like I said the main thing I can see Atonement based specs doing is being brought not as healers, but as wild-cards. You bring them as your 5th healer on something you can 4 heal. If something goes wrong they switch to healing full-time. Beyond that I don't see where they'd have a place in raids. Damage is too low compared to Shadow while DPSing and healing is hindered overall by the playstyle. That's my objection.

[Surea]

Stigmatizing it? Huh? It's great for what it is. It's great for leveling, it's great for 5 mans, it's even pretty decent in BGs. I'm not stigmatizing anything. If you have a problem with the drastic drop in HPS, or for some reason still think HPS doesn't matter... that's a different issue. When you go from being mildly competitive with healers to being beaten by Shadow at healing and don't see that as a problem it leads me to believe you have a very different raid environment than I run with. There aren't lulls in healing in our raids because we 2/3 heal everything in ICC. Lulls in healing mean deaths.

for the 15248541645132 time. If you only smite then yes, you will be very low on HPS. If you use all tools at hand you won't be. And please, there is no need to go and say I'm too casual and all that. How the hell would you know?

Could we please not get this to a personal level? Let's just agree on disagreeing then.

[harky]

for the 15248541645132 time. If you only smite then yes, you will be very low on HPS. If you use all tools at hand you won't be. And please, there is no need to go and say I'm too casual and all that. How the hell would you know?

This is the problem. If you use all tools at hand you'll be using several tools which are not suited to raiding and you will be lower on HPS than if you limited yourself slightly. That may sound odd, but it's the truth. There is no gain in output if you are using Smite. Never have I made any claim that any of this comparison is based on 'spamming Smite'. Nor did I accuse anyone of being 'too casual'. Play the game as you feel fit. It's a game.

The objection here is not at all personal. It's purely that using Smite at all is a HPS decrease. There's no manner in which to use it that results in a HPS gain. The best you can ever do is break even by using it when incoming DPS is so low that any additional HPS results in over-healing. If you find yourself in this situation often you are either in a casual atmosphere, have too many healers, or both. It's not a problem that will be faced by progression guilds.

[Aliahna]

HPS will not be the only concern at level 85 raiding. Yes, it will be something that gets looked at, and hopefully even Blizzard looks at it so things get properly balanced between the specs, but it is not the end all sign of a good healer. We will be moving to an environment where there will be less free for all healing, and more assignment/coordination type healing. In an environment like that, maintaining throughput (lasting the entire fight), and keeping your assignment alive, is just as important as your HPS.

I know the point you are trying to make and that is, if every other healing class and spec and do what we do and do it better, why would they bring an under performing (based on HPS) disc priest instead of any other healer. We can only hope that Blizzard is listening to our complaints that our shields are too weak, barrier is PW: Where-did-it-go on a long cooldown, and we have no real raid healing tools beside PoH which is much more expensive at 85 and heals for what it does on live now.

If we don't use the tools the tree has been given to maximize our mana conservation so we have mana to spend on Holy Nova, Flash, Penance, and PoH when we need it, then we might as well all just give up and switch to holy or shadow.

Here's a Beta raid video from a disc priest PoV. He obviously is assigned to tank heal. Guess what spell he uses most of the time to heal the tank. He does some raid healing with renews and shields, and holy nova when the raid is grouped up, but there's a lot of Atonement healing being done.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUpH5umyaUU

Oh, and I love how he casts HoH, not because he is low on mana, but because the druid and paladins are.

[harky]

I don't see where you got the idea that the Priest in that video is assigned to tank healing at all. I saw around 15 spells cast that healed the tank, not including a couple Smite heals (4-5 did hit the tank). They were very clearly assigned to raid heal. Might wait til we see that live as we also don't know why exactly they were using 8 healers. From watching it also appears that the Priests top heal was Holy Nova by far. But again this is the Smite-spam model. Archangel is great if you are spamming Smite full time. No question about it.

[DarkFerret]

Surea, the point is that Archangel's mana return at 85 is about the same, or slightly less than the cost of the Smite's needed to activate it. Keep in mind that Smite at 85 costs ~4k mana, while each stack returns 3% mana. It takes just over 70% of your base mana to get it fully stacked, which is right around 14.4k mana. A 5 stack of Evangelism with 100k mana returns 15k mana, so at 100k mana you'd gain 600 mana. Shadowfiend is actually many times better.

Point being unless you're using Smite for some other purpose it's completely pointless to be using Archangel to help stabilize your mana. If you're going to be casting Smite as a heal you get 'free' mana returns, but you should also keep in mind that you're getting more mana from Evangelism than from Archangel. In the above example of 100k mana you'd find that it's more expensive to use Archangel than it is to not use it. Archangel gives you a gain of 600 mana, right? However, after using it you lose Evangelism and your Smite cost is reset. So instead of 3.4k cost Smites you have 4/3.88/3.76/3.64/3.52. The difference works out to 1,800 mana. So even at 100k mana you're losing a net of 1.2k mana if you were already spamming Smite.

Archangel really is not meant to be used for regen at all. It's a complete and total waste. Archangel is meant to supplement Smite based play, nothing more. If you don't use Smite, you should not use Smite solely to activate Archangel under any circumstance. It is a mana loss, not a mana gain in most cases. If you are already using Smite for some other reason you should use Archangel, it's great. Otherwise not so much. It sucks.

An untalented Smite at 85 costs 3088 mana. It will cost 13585 mana to build a 5 stack. Pull the correct numbers if you're going to pull them.

Buffed in BoT and BWD 10man, my Smite hits for 7-8k on average, and determines who to heal when it lands, not when I start casting as Heal would. It allows me to heal while not having to worry about another healer picking up the target before my traditional healing spell would. Unless all the players in range are topped off, Smite produces very little overheal vs. what it's healing for. Heal is generally 8-10k, and most raids it accounts for roughly 50% of my overhealing and only 15-20% of my healing done.

[Boomkindance]

An untalented Smite at 85 costs 3088 mana. It will cost 13585 mana to build a 5 stack. Pull the correct numbers if you're going to pull them.

Buffed in BoT and BWD 10man, my Smite hits for 7-8k on average, and determines who to heal when it lands, not when I start casting as Heal would. It allows me to heal while not having to worry about another healer picking up the target before my traditional healing spell would. Unless all the players in range are topped off, Smite produces very little overheal vs. what it's healing for. Heal is generally 8-10k, and most raids it accounts for roughly 50% of my overhealing and only 15-20% of my healing done.

This is a valid point, that smart heals are (imo) more useful than directed heals for the most part. The fact that smite will heal whichever target is lowest at a specific instance of time means that it will more than likely be more effective than a regular heal for spontaneous damage. when healing with a a "heal" spell it will take lets say 0.5 seconds to see the spontaneous damage occur, then 2-2.5 seconds to cast the heal (less for flash heal, but in cata it wont be worth casting for light raid damage) so it will be 2.5-3.5 seconds before the person is healed, whereas if your smite healing it takes max 2 seconds (assuming the person takes damage at the start of your cast rather than at the end). But yes, smite has its purpose, just make sure that you balance smite healing with shielding, penancing (20% more powerful) etc. 15% on demand healing bonus is nice

[harky]

The 4k number was actually a typo, thank you for pointing that out.

The 14.4 on the other hand was not. It costs 3,088 + 2,995 + 2,902 + 2,810 + 2,717 = 14,518. I should have said 14.5k, so I was actually being generous. Your 13,585 number is actually based on the 4 stack cost of Smite, not the actual cost. But again, thanks for pointing out the typo. It is in fact ~3k, not ~4k.

[DarkFerret]

The 4k number was actually a typo, thank you for pointing that out.

The 14.4 on the other hand was not. It costs 3,088 + 2,995 + 2,902 + 2,810 + 2,717 = 14,518. I should have said 14.5k, so I was actually being generous. Your 13,585 number is actually based on the 4 stack cost of Smite, not the actual cost. But again, thanks for pointing out the typo. It is in fact ~3k, not ~4k.

No. Put two points in Evangelism or don't take it at all. No wonder you see it as gimped. Naked 85 priest with 2/2 Improved PWS, 3/3 Twin Disciplines, and 2/2 Evangelism. Smite costs 3088, 2902, 2717, 2532, 2346. This stacks Evangelism to 5, and Smite will then be spammable with a cost of 2161.

[harky]

You're right again, I seem to be using older numbers. That still means you need 90.5k mana before you break even and around 190k mana to get a similar return to live. It still suffers the same massive throughput problems and it still suffers from not being a worthwhile mana regen talent unless you are spamming Smite for some other reason. Tweaking the numbers by 6% don't really change that.