[Priest] State of Holy - 4.2.0

[Deleted]

The trouble I see with not designing raids around having these cooldowns is where would they fit in otherwise?

Fair enough with more reactionary cooldowns like Tranc and *cough* Hymn they can be used at a healers discretion to compensate for a mistake to bring everyone back up, but what about the pre-emptive cooldowns?

Take away the predictable nature of damage spikes and where do we use Barrier?

Maybe it would allow guilds to develop their own strategies against certain mechanics, but soon enough everyone will be doing That One Strat Which Works and we're back to using cooldowns at predictable times like before.

[Danner]

I actually quite agree with that the cooldown race is getting out of hand.
The simple solution is to lower the cooldown efficiency. And I believe this will happen at some point. But probably not until the next expansion :/

Aura Mastery and Barrier: nerfed to 10% mitigation.
Tranquility: nerfed to Divine Hymn levels. Non-resto transquility nerfed to Hymn of Hope levels.
SLT: remove damage mitigation

Despite that, Divine Hymn is a HPS loss to cast unless the damage pattern is a complete mismatch from Prayer of Healing. I wouldn't mind buffing it 10%. Right now, it's sort of like a weak divine plea. You get a lot of mana from it by the virtue of not spending any for the next 8 seconds, but you also lose some HPS in the process.

[nevermore]

Despite that, Divine Hymn is a HPS loss to cast unless the damage pattern is a complete mismatch from Prayer of Healing. I wouldn't mind buffing it 10%. Right now, it's sort of like a weak divine plea. You get a lot of mana from it by the virtue of not spending any for the next 8 seconds, but you also lose some HPS in the process.

I'm so confused right now O_O

[Deleted]

I'm so confused right now O_O

It actually made sense tho O_O

[Mazi]

It actually made sense tho O_O

Yeah I really couldn't think of a better way to explain that either lol. Either you understand the concept or you don't :/

[Themos]

Despite that, Divine Hymn is a HPS loss to cast unless the damage pattern is a complete mismatch from Prayer of Healing. I wouldn't mind buffing it 10%. Right now, it's sort of like a weak divine plea. You get a lot of mana from it by the virtue of not spending any for the next 8 seconds, but you also lose some HPS in the process.

For 25 mans, this is quite true. However for 10 mans, it's very much worth using due to the %raid coverage.

[Wuga]

For 25 mans, this is quite true. However for 10 mans, it's very much worth using due to the %raid coverage.

It's still really not worth using on 10 man because even if you put the healing buff on the entire raid, you lose so much actual healing in the process by not using poh/coh that you end up falling behind (except maybe on Stag if your other healer is standing out). Keep in mind that on 10 man you are gimping 33-50% of your raid's healing by using hymn versus 15-25% in a 25 man.

[nevermore]

Jeeeeez that was worded in a really odd way.
I think the flu finally attacked my brain cells.

[Deleted]

Jeeeeez that was worded in a really odd way.
I think the flu finally attacked my brain cells.

Basically, if you can guarantee that your POH will hit and not overheal maybe 3+ people in a group (IDK the maths) then its better to do that + COH then cast DH if you want to output as much healing as possible.

[Danner]

/me has gained the achievement [Confusing the heck out of everyone]

Completely unintended, but I am willing to take the victories I can <3

[nevermore]

Basically, if you can guarantee that your POH will hit and not overheal maybe 3+ people in a group (IDK the maths) then its better to do that + COH then cast DH if you want to output as much healing as possible.

Yeah I got that, I just had to figure out how divine plea and gaining mana got into the argument about Divine Hymn

[Afflictid]

The trouble I see with not designing raids around having these cooldowns is where would they fit in otherwise?

Fair enough with more reactionary cooldowns like Tranc and *cough* Hymn they can be used at a healers discretion to compensate for a mistake to bring everyone back up, but what about the pre-emptive cooldowns?

Take away the predictable nature of damage spikes and where do we use Barrier?

Maybe it would allow guilds to develop their own strategies against certain mechanics, but soon enough everyone will be doing That One Strat Which Works and we're back to using cooldowns at predictable times like before.

I wouldn't mind the CD race if everyone had a worthwhile one, and currently the only SPEC that doesn't is Holy Priest.

[Themos]

It's still really not worth using on 10 man because even if you put the healing buff on the entire raid, you lose so much actual healing in the process by not using poh/coh that you end up falling behind (except maybe on Stag if your other healer is standing out). Keep in mind that on 10 man you are gimping 33-50% of your raid's healing by using hymn versus 15-25% in a 25 man.

It's a smart heal with minimal overheal that can save lives. And more importantly it buffs healing at a minimal mana cost.
On 10 man, your whole raid gets a %healing buff that you can then utilize with PoH/CoH after the hymn is over. Even your tank is pretty much guaranteed to get the buff.

Completely worth it if you time it right. A couple examples:

Domo scorpion phase about midway into the stacking cleaves.
Ragnaros if a son gets to a hammer.

And pretty much any fight where everyone isn't grouped up. DH will nail people your PoH/CoH may miss.
On a 25 man, the raid benefit drops like a rocket b/c only a fraction of the raid gets the buff and imo is less worth it.

What benefits the raid trumps personal HPS.

-T

[Deleted]

I think the way cooldowns are used is a definite change from how it used to be. In the past there were some fights were cooldowns were planned, but for a large part they were up to the discretion of the individual player. You'd use your Divine Hymn because it helped, not because it was super-needed. Now you plan, in advance, which raid cooldown to use when. Which changes the level of skill involved. It takes more overal planning, but the level of individual skill decreases because of it.

But doesn't this come from the fact that encounters are generally harder than they used to be? People understand damage patterns much better and there is almost always a time in a fight where people will take more damage than usual, thus using you cooldowns at that moment is the best. A skilled player would have used it at that moment. But when two others also do it, they overlap. So people have started to plan their CDs to not make them o verlap and get the best use of them?

Maybe it is because the fights nowadays (dunno how it was back then) are so predictable and that is why it is so easy to plan cooldowns. Damage patterns are easy to see and using your cooldowns reactionarily would only mean you didn't predict the damage. If damage was more RNG based, people would whine on that. Like Al'Akir HC. The fight where everyone blames on RNG when they wipe in phase 1.

[Arlee]

I don't know if I'd agree with encounters being harder than they used to be... Most of them are certainly more complex but I don't know that means they are harder really... just harder in a different way.

[Zarqa]

Considering Divine Hymn and that when the raid is grouped up PoH + CoH has higher HPS:
Is there an generally accepted approach of combining other cooldowns with Divine Hymn?
For example, would Divine Hymn in combination with Spirit Link totem be a good idea, or Divine Hymn with Glyphed Barrier etc?

I only raid 10mans, in case it changes for different raid sizes.

[Deleted]

Considering Divine Hymn and that when the raid is grouped up PoH + CoH has higher HPS:
Is there an generally accepted approach of combining other cooldowns with Divine Hymn?
For example, would Divine Hymn in combination with Spirit Link totem be a good idea, or Divine Hymn with Glyphed Barrier etc?

I only raid 10mans, in case it changes for different raid sizes.

Divine Hymn + Tranq is nice. I'm not sure about barrier. Does the glyph and the buff from divine hymn stack?

[nobodysbaby]

Some theories:

HP grew by 2-300%, healing did not. There is still huge damage happening (especially in hc ofc), therefore raid CD's became much too valuable. 20% damage reduction is worth a lot more now, compared to when we had 30k hp.

As I wrote on the official forums, Ithink Blizzard somehow painted themselves into a corner by giving out groundspells and other "small area effects" to all healing classes. Like you say, how else can they design a boss's damage atm? I don't think we will see a change in the upcoming Tier, but I hope for the next Xpack they will adjust some mechanics for suiting only grouped up raids.

Shamans: Healing Rain: Shamans depend on this WAY too much. I think they have to tone it down and buff other spells. This is usually nr1 healing spell when a Shaman does high healing on the meters. Riptide CD reduced, healing buffed and manacost increased, for better spread and on-the-move healing (ofc reworking Tidal Waves etc has to be done). SLT affecting a larger area.

Paladins: Radiance: Designers are most likely already working on making this a castable AoE spell. AM will still be AM, no changes there. Paladins still have a good "reach" with Beacon and heals.

Disc: PWB: 20% damage reduction is just too OP to be used on a whole stacked raid. Either change mechanics so AoE damage won't happen as groups are perfectly grouped (and it will still be worth using on for example tanks+melee or a ranged group) or change damage reduction %. If you add the +10% healing glyph, this has to be the most powerful CD atm with current mechanics. Besides PW:B I dont see a problem with having different boss mechanics than our "grouped up AoE" model.

Holy Priest: Divine Hymn: 3 min CD. reducing dmg taken or buff healing done for the all within 30 yards, while channeling by xx% (depending on how other raid CD's are changed, no need to buff this too much if we aim for less play of the CD game). Sanctuary are still fine as is (bugged version) to put on a stacked melee/ranged group, maybe increase it's area a lil, and make it work "as intended" with diminishing returns.

Druids: Nerf! Well, nerf WG and Tranq a bit, and increase manacost of WG. For spread out AoE they would become horribly powerful if we didn't. And Tranqs for Boomkins are rediculously powerful atm, should ofc not heal more than a Holy Priests Divine Hymn for example. Efflo would still "work" and be worth putting out there.

Ah, I'm getting a migraine... I better stop now.

Just some quick thoughts how to get away from Groped-Up-AoE-CD-Rotation game.

[Danner]

Two days ago we wiped on Ragnaros. Pretty pointless wiping, we kept on losing people in stackup phases (usually due to fire orbs spawning too close!), and lacked the DPS to down the boss in P3.

So our druid healer suggested to go boomkin. we probably were running with too many healers anyway.
I wasn't very happy about this prospect, because we were already struggling to outheal the stackup damage. But the healing otherwise was pretty lazy.
I would much rather replace one of our two holypriests for this, as Divine Hymn did nothing anyway.
But both of us were dual-disc specced (requirement in the firelands really), so that wasn't a possible deal.
As it turned out, letting our druid healer go boomkin was no problem. Boomkin tranquility is pretty darned OP, and did the job in the stackup, no problems.

It made me a bit sad. "That guy does my job better, in boomkin form" was the thought I was left with. :P

[nobodysbaby]

Yes, Danner. Seeing guilds (Paragon in this case, but I am sure many would embrace this) take 3x boomkins and 3x spriests, and then be able to go with 3 healers for Ragnaros is idd pretty MEH.