[Priest] State of Discipline - 4.2.0

[Kelesti]

Tada, so I've been trying to figure out how to word some of these while I was at work today. Came up with a grand total of nothing. So here we go:
==Old thread here==

Hokay, so what changed for Discipline this time around?
Innervate and Mana Tide were both nerfed pretty hardcore. Well... Feral Innervate went up, a little bit (woohoo an extra 300 mana!), but Resto/Balance (the ones that matter) have been changed to really only benefit the caster. WHAT DO THESE MEAN?! It means, to an extent, Blizzard is going out of their way to kill bubblebots... again. The mana cost wasn't enough, 15 second duration wasn't enough. So limiting external regen may have a stronger impact.

Right, moving on. What else?

200% crit heals! Huzzah. For a raid healer, this is meaningless. But for a tank healer, it suddenly makes each and every Aegis more effective. Given crit is one of the stats you stack as a tank healer, this is really quite nice. However, we aren't better enough to be sitting the Paladins (and they still aren't raid healers) so that said, take it with a grain of salt.

I still get the feeling I'm missing some things here... was this really all that happened to healing Priests in 4.2?

[Deleted]

Well i would say that Aegis has just got alittle bit better in arena, and might save my partners once in a while.
Its actually being nearly as good as power word: shield, thinking of how many times you can keep it up.
And going into the greater heal talent tree way for arena (as well as general pve, pvp) has just got meaning, it might have an effect in 2v2 and 3v3 now.

[NoHealsForYou]

I'm just waiting for the inevitable nerfs to come roughly 2 weeks into firelands. Why? 200% crits = fast/high DA stacking on tanks which, in combination with higher health pools (higher DA potential) generally improving throughput and higher PW:S's, I see tank healing becoming somewhat easier. Yes, the incoming damage will increase, but Blizz don't want to go back to wrath 2 shot levels, so unless mechanics are carefully considered, I can see DA being nerfed to 20% (from 30%) of a critical heal and maybe to a maximum of 30% (down from 40%). We'll see, but I see disc's being too strong next tier for tank healing.

Next issue is regen. Two weeks into Cata raiding and most people were already fine on regen with 359 gear levels. I myself drop a fair bit of spirit in favour of haste+mastery and no spirit items, including for my holy spec. Heroic gear made regen even simpler to manage so god-knows what it'll be like in firelands. I don't forsee them forcing us to gear pieces which have zero spirit on them, and damge can only increase so much...so regen will probably be nerfed again. Mana tide and innervate nerfed, of course, but there's plenty of priests who don't have access to those and do fine. I don't see that making much difference.

Shield cost increased again? Replen nerfed? Rapture I'm certain will be dropped back to 5% in due time to compensate a little. Blizz, in my opinion, really haven't got the state of regen fixed at all and despite their cata model of mana management being tougher, lets be honest, it's not hard at all. And this is the first tier only.

[babylon]

its not only disc priests getting bonus heal-like-thing worth of 30% of every crit

if they nerf da cause of 200% crit changes, they will also have to nerf ancestral awakening (shamans) and living seed (druids)

[[-Spiritus-]]

its not only disc priests getting bonus heal-like-thing worth of 30% of every crit

if they nerf da cause of 200% crit changes, they will also have to nerf ancestral awakening (shamans) and living seed (druids)

Except when DA is on the tank, it hardly ever is wasted and it can stack, at current STA levels, to ~52-54k. For specifically tank healing, DA is the tops for crit based passives.

However, I seriously doubt that Disc gets a nerf over this. In fact, I bet the developers would be happy to see more tank healing Disc priests.

Yes, the incoming damage will increase, but Blizz don't want to go back to wrath 2 shot levels, so unless mechanics are carefully considered, I can see DA being nerfed to 20% (from 30%) of a critical heal and maybe to a maximum of 30% (down from 40%).

I don't see this happening. If they drop it to 30% of health, it'll have less of a maximum pool than the new Paladin MST, and nerfing it to 20% means that all a Paladin needs is ~5.33MST points from gear to reach the same absorption percentage on every heal that DA does on just crits as a base.

Yes, Disc MST also affects DA, but only increases absorption by .75% per point of MST, which means at ~10.33 MST from gear, Paladin MST will overtake DA in every way for tank healing [even though it was far more useful even before that point since it does not require CRT to be effective].

So, no. I don't think Disc will see a DA nerf. If it happens like you describe, there will be little left for the Disc priest to hang their hat on other than PW:B, Penance, & Pain Sup.

[Kelesti]

Blizz, in my opinion, really haven't got the state of regen fixed at all and despite their cata model of mana management being tougher, lets be honest, it's not hard at all. And this is the first tier only.

Thanks to the December 14th hotfixes which killed the game of healing mana management.

"Priests are the only healers that have regen where we want it to be" turned into "how the hell can we nerf Druids and Shaman that much? Oh crap, we can't. So let's buff Priests."

People didn't really understand why I was so mad, that I'd been busting my ass off on beta to get things to be "the way they need to", and accepting that everyone else is broken because we're playing like we should (Triage with heal, reminded me of 2.3). Because with regen "capping" happening in the first tier of (non-heroic) gear, the game could only lead into Wrath style healing again, simply because mana won't matter.



That said... back on topic. Priests aren't getting direct nerfs like Paladins are (which coinciding with the manatide/innervate nerfs hurts them harder than Discipline, and if they weren't running with one already, they're still hit by the bat)... so I could see a regen "tweak" if you will, once we start moving into 391 gear. Rapture dropping to 6% maybe? Increased costs on Renew, Greater/Flash/Heal, Shield and Prayer?

Aegis won't be touched.

[Kelesti]

HPS meters are unintuitive. A Druid can use Wild Growth and toss a Rejuv on someone else randomly when they can spare the GCD while "tank healing" but it doesn't mean the tank's any more likely to survive, yet their "HPS" goes up.

Unless you're talking Raid healing, in which case.... buff crit = lol? Crit's still not a stat worth enjoying in a role that requires reliability, and Discipline is all about controlled HPS (sometimes lower while you charge up Archangel), something that a raw meter topper (see: Druid) can't compete with.

HPS as a number is meaningless. Discipline's more than fine.

The crit buff's deliciously awesome for tank healing, "Meh" for raid healing, and won't change a thing in that role. If you're getting replaced now, this patch won't fix it. If you're not getting replaced, you still have nothing to worry about.

[Deleted]

Whilst the crit buff benefits divine aegis, it also benefits other healing specs ie illuminated healing, echo of light etc. I doubt you are going to notice and gains in terms of hps over your fellow healers.

But as Kel said, looking at it from a pure hps standpoint is silly.

[falafel]

How about it's status in arena?

[Ebbikenezer]

I'm mostly confused by the "catch up" part. How far behind the other classes/specs are you OP? Also, HPS is.. meh it's a number used on trial runs to get some sort of feel for new recruits. Otherwise, it's a really bad number to go by. HPS will never tell you how much of a "clutch" healer someone is.

Also: I can stand in a fire and heal the piss out of myself, if I get over 18k HPS do I win?

I am specced as Disc/Holy I swap them depending on the fight, as some fights are friendlier to reactive, and some more suited to proactive healing. I also have almost every class leveled to 85, but spend most of my time healing, so I can say for myself that I feel most of the classes are pretty even right now as far as end-game raiding and throughput. It really just depends on how well you heal.

And, as someone else stated: The crit buff will be.. great for tank healing.. better for raid healing but not astounding... and it's going to buff every class' mastery throughput via larger heals, so thinking about it in terms of just Divine Aegis is a very narrow mindset.

[Kelesti]

How about it's status in arena?

Couldn't tell you, seeing as I'm probably one of the worst PvP Priests of all time.

---------- Post added 2011-06-14 at 01:36 AM ----------

And, as someone else stated:

I love how I can be here for 2 1/2 years (started out as that annoying poster that had everything color-coded to teal), be a moderator for 1 1/2 of those, and still just be "someone else"

-_-"

[Milkshake86]

The healing tier 2pc is seriously amazing for disc, quite a bit better than current 4pc. Holy 4pc atm better than 2pc t12 tho >.> have yet to see 4pc proc at all tho

[Demetrion]

It's pretty good, although I didn't heal any raids yet (except for new BH boss, where yet again atonement shined).

I just adore the Cuterizing Flames (or w/e it's called) in addition to atonement effect.


On side question: Will you be using new trinkets or will you stick to the current ones (H:Jar of the ancient Remedies, H: Fall of Mortality in my case)? I noticed pretty huge drop in my regen when using the new trinkets on premade characters (then again, premade characters gear isn't well optimized).

[Ultima]

I love how I can be here for 2 1/2 years (started out as that annoying poster that had everything color-coded to teal), be a moderator for 1 1/2 of those, and still just be "someone else"

-_-"

That colour text really annoyed me. I would have banned you if we hadn't both made Mod at the same time.

[OverClokx]

I still ultimately think that with the firelands bosses/raid gear, we're going to continue to fall behind in regards to other healers, especially in 25man raid environments. Regardless of people saying that we're gaining due to the buff to an increased crit-heal, it still won't keep up with other classes that have a high passive hit and higher general cumulative healing, IE Druids.

PW:S will be totally and completely unaffected by this change, and that means that there's STILL more incentive to NOT use PW:S, which pretty much means we'll be back to POH/POM spam, and inefficient single-target heals. Penance currently is so poor that on most heroic 25 encounters, it's not worth using, strictly because of the fact that with the proper healing composition, it's mostly unneeded, strictly because PW:S has a cumulative higher throughput without sacrificing all stats for haste to accomodate gettting GH and POH's going faster. For what it's worth, mana/function-wise, it'd be more logical to switch to holy to benefit from the 4pc T11 bonus going into firelands than with the standard 4pc for disc, strictly because holy is going to have cumulatively better regen, and less gimmicky abilities that actually cut down on mana costs, and increase throughput, being that currently, penance is a horrible skill bar very few situations, especially being that POH does a better job at group healing, FH does better for single-target, and with bosses hitting for 50-100k in later-tier heroic encounters, penance just will fall behind.

Once again, I stand behind the idea that with firelands, and endgame gear available for this next tier, we're going to see disc fall behind significantly, as compared to any other primary healers, just as our absorbs are going to scale poorly with the lack of changes to our spec, and the further diminished encouragement for PW:S. Sooner or later, Blizzard will see this and once again 'patch' us and ignore the ultimate fact that our spec is STILL built around the WOTLK mentality, and until we gain direct benefits of Grace to POH healing targets, or SOMETHING that gives us some level of boost to our AoE and single-target heals, we're just going to fall behind as gear gets better and better, until the class becomes unplayed, similar to how it was in early/mid WOTLK.

You can only use a spare tire for so long, imho.

[Deleted]

Are you saying Discipline is a worse raid healer than Holy and other classes?
Because I don't think you'll find many people to disagree with you.

We're perfectly fine as single target (and raid support) heals.

[Milkshake86]

The crit heal buff is nice but in pvp druids are invincible bloom is just to much to dps through atm. The crit buff tho means more dmg in pve basically so lets wait n see!

[Tehterokkar]

The crit heal buff is nice but in pvp druids are invincible bloom is just to much to dps through atm. The crit buff tho means more dmg in pve basically so lets wait n see!

Druids invincible in PvP? Since when? From what I last checked, There were 45 Shamans, 3 Priests and 2 Druids in the top 50 Arena teams.

[Deleted]

HPS meters are unintuitive. A Druid can use Wild Growth and toss a Rejuv on someone else randomly when they can spare the GCD while "tank healing" but it doesn't mean the tank's any more likely to survive, yet their "HPS" goes up.
[...] Discipline is all about controlled HPS (sometimes lower while you charge up Archangel), something that a raw meter topper (see: Druid) can't compete with.

Guess I'll just quote it the next time somebody writes something about being a better tank healer because he is the better raid healer. (:
And don't worry I'll refer to you as Kelesti. Scout's honor!

[Nyne]

The healing tier 2pc is seriously amazing for disc, quite a bit better than current 4pc. Holy 4pc atm better than 2pc t12 tho >.> have yet to see 4pc proc at all tho

why pv 2 is amazing for disc? is base mana so it regen the same for both