Atonement in 4.1?

[Gungara]

Anybody playing with atonement. I was really hyped about it when I first saw it in 4.0, when it turned out to be crap my priest ended up as my alts alt.

Viable for Heroics?
Viable for Rading?
Viable for PvP?

By viable I mean close enough to optimal that it will be the difference between winning and losing less than .1% of the time.

[Dharmabhum]

It was viable before and its viable now. Arguably, it was improved with the inclusion of a higher damage spell in Holy Fire, which also allows you to use the glyph for an extra 20% when you damage a HF-afflicted target.

Also, your number is pretty odd and hardly measurable. There's still some RNG to where the Atonement heals go, but that hasn't changed since before.

[wtfpwndd]

Its viable but situational. With that said I don't really miss SoS.

Doing nothing but smites and holy fires on a raid dummy, self buffed without food and flask, I can do ~7.5k DPS. That doesn't factor in having to throw out emergency heals or movement but since it also doesn't factor in raid buffs I think it would probably be just under 7k DPS.

That's not bad for downtime moments, adds additional healing for "Oh crap" moments, and adding a chunk of DPS is always nice.

Full-time smite healing isn't realistic and would hurt your overall HPS since 7k DPS would be 7k HPS and it would be all smart heals. If your guild doesn't worry about numbers, however, you could still get away with it. For instance, I typically smite heal Cho'Gall when he is in Flame's Orders and it works well plus we get him to 25% more quickly. Once Cho'gall does Shadow's Orders I need to stop smiting and help heal.

[CaseyTheRetard]

This is like asking if Binding Heal is viable. Atonement is just another tool in our toolbox, its utility varies with the situation. If you really mean "can I heal XXX content with only Holy Fire and Smite?" then the answer is no, unless you somehow outgear XXX content by a tier or two.

[Gungara]

This is like asking if Binding Heal is viable. Atonement is just another tool in our toolbox, its utility varies with the situation. If you really mean "can I heal XXX content with only Holy Fire and Smite?" then the answer is no, unless you somehow outgear XXX content by a tier or two.

No, I don't agree that atonement as just another tool int the box, if you take Atonement you must spec for it and glyph for it. Anybody trying to heal with just holy fire and smite is a tool.

I haven't played it in 4.1, but I suspect the priority to be:

1. PoM up all the time.
2. GH or PoH when inner focus is up.
then the mini rotation:
3. Shield (for the haste buff)
4. Holy Fire
5. Smite, Smite

The niche I would like to see the atonement spec is the best spec for running 5 man heroics as quickly as possible. I don't expect it to be a raid spec or pvp spec, but I'm curious how it fairs.

[Verth Aeyta]

I used this last night for Nef 10 (I'm on the Nef tank) and my rotation was Shield, renew, PoM, wait for Nef to do his breath attack then get tank back close to full, Holy fire and smite till I got 5 stacks then pop Archangel. Another trick I learned from someone here was a Rapture CD counter and I use that to offset some DMG while Smiting and Holy Firing.

All in all it's great to use in raid, I came out of P1 with 70% mana, P2 I was down to about 30% and P3 I got back to full by using all my CD's Oh and this was all while I kept forgetting to use IF and PI

[shiryo]

I often run ZA/ZG as a palytank with my dicspriest friend and I must say that attonement is very viable in those instances.

For example the second boss in ZG (the dude with the raptor) he keeps me up with only holyfire/smite and casts regular heals on the other members.
First boss in ZA aswell. POH and Attonement keeps everybody alive.

And keep in mind he has an ilvl of 350ish. Mostly blues and some repepix.

[Deleted]

I can keep the nef tank up in 10 man with just atonement and shield/penance. It's very viable.

[Gungara]

I'm at i340 and I respecced,reforged,reglyphyed and gave it a try. It's great with a good group, it works wonderful if only the tank is taking damage. I did Heroic Grim Batol and Shadowfang without any wipes as I learned how to play it. Ideally I just keep PoM up and throw the occasional shield. IF + Archangel + PoH is a great saver, then throw a renew or two, a shield and it's back to smiting. I specced and glyphed for renew with the idea that I want to avoid the cast times on heals as much as possible. I found that PoM/Renew/shield to be my most common healing rotation. I took Heal off my cast bar completely, I found I would never favor it over a smite.

Then I got in a Lost City group with 2 DK's a warrior and a lock. Zero CC, the dps DK was doing 17k and pull agro all the time, the warrior dps and lock were doing like 6k dps, same as the tank, so the trash groups were taking forever to go down. We managed to down the croc, but after our 3rd wipe on trash I gave up on them.

The atonement spec obviously does not maximize HPS throughput, but with a bad group having an optimal healing spec is probably only prolonging the agony, and not the difference between winning and losing.

[wtfpwndd]

Doing Cho'gall I was only using Attonement for heals and was at 8k HPS. While that isn't amazing, it certainly isn't terrible considering it was enough to keep the Cho'gall tank up during Flame Orders with the help of a penance and bubble.