PSGarak

Well, the spell description says it breaks on attack but not on movement, and actually on dealing of damage instead of initiation of attack or performing non-damaging hostile action.. What's more interesting to me is that it's a level 68 ability. I don't exactly know what to make of it, but I'm pretty skeptical at this point.
Also of note: There are two such Camouflage spells: 51753 whose buff text is "Blending into the surroundings" and 51755 with "Invisible," both having the same main spell description.

http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...erks/Garak.png

 

Anaram

The main problem generally is not tank death during silence but the fact that lifebloom drops during it. If you lose lifebloom during a silence you must use at least 3 global cooldowns to get it rolling again, a time which could otherwise be spent healing raid, throwing rejuvenation back up etc. Haste also does not help with latency, forcing a rotation to eventually hit the point where latency makes it impossible maintain - of course this would mainly be a problem for people who are already very close to the border.

The entire mechanic of hasting lifebloom in particular and several other druid hots would be very inconvenient. Firstly, there's the issue of silences, los issues, moving around etc. I feel like I'm starting to repeat myself when I say this, but tank "buffering" with hots is just a very minor part of where druid hots get used. While in the specific case of tank healing, a faster ticking hot is generally preferable to a slower one, this isn't necessarily the case in the individual scenarios.

Looking at felmyst, a faster hot mostly translates to not only being unable to keep 5 targets bloomed up but also those 4 which you can currently do sucking more mana. When the hot is higher than the damage it doesn't help. It would be better to slow down the hot than speed it up. A surprising amount of damage you take in wow encounters lines up quite well with a triple stacked lifebloom aka ~900 DPS. 6 stacks of flametouched is 900 dps, fire blooms are around 900 dps. Felmyst aura is 500 dps plus the occasional 3000 burst. Two full stacks of lifebloom + rejuvenation for last ticks is enough at fire at Brutallus. Lifebloom without haste is sufficient at RoS.

Then problem to me isn't that haste might "generally" be better for hots with the change. I don't feel it's necessary and I definitely hate the notion that in very real situations it would be downright detrimental. If it were universally detrimental that would be somewhat acceptable, at least you could then afford to avoid it and could reasonably expect itemization to work around it. A situationally detrimental stat would merely demand one to find gearing options without it even if those options have otherwise worse or equal stats.

Then there's still the issue of swiftmendability. Haste would make it increasingly more expensive to maintain rejuvenation on a target you wish to swiftmend. Regrowth would situationally also suffer from haste - it's often used as a raid heal to top people up - 21 second duration means there's at least some chance it might tick after someone takes damage.

The way haste currently works is pretty straightforward: it almost never hurts you except in extremely situational cases most people would probably have a hard time coming up with. If haste currently does have some negative implications, that's almost never fight-dependant but rather a constant factor with the stat, allowing for those specs to simply gear with the sweet spot in mind. Even when you got haste you can also choose to wait longer between casts efficiently eliminating it thereby meaning that you generally didn't lose anything in the exchange. The same does NOT apply to hots. If you must keep hots up on certain people, making those hots faster means you must cast more and therefore burn more mana. Would lifebloom be better in PvE if Blizzard tripled the mana cost and the healing done? Mostly yes but not always.

EDIT:
If a druid came to you and said: "Haste sucks, it forces me to cast more and burn more mana to accomplish the same result" would you still say: "that's the point?"

 

Shriveled

Stupid post at 1 in the morning.

 

Anedris

As far as I understand it Penance is an arcane missiles-like effect, so I would expect it to be affected by haste under presently existing mechanics (just like AM and all other channeled spells are).

 

Chul

Any word on what the coefficients of healing spells are now (esp that of Penance)? Have they even been updated yet?

 

Vihermaali

Looks like the spell is channeled, and not an actual HoT. If penance is hot then mind flay is a dot

I think faster ticks is only a good thing on a channelled healing spell. Can't spend too much time channelling it, ya? Plus, if every tick can crit then it's a wonderful inspiration/grace-upkeep spell?

I think it's safe to compare Penance's coefficiency to Mind Flay's coefficiency, because both are 3 second channelled spells. Just keep in mind the difference of healing & spelldmg.

 

Division

It has been speculated that Mind Sear will be the new spam spell for shadow priests when DoTs are up and MB/SW-D are on CD, using only MF to refresh SW-P. If Mind Sear can crit, it should greatly increase the value of crit rating for Shadow Priests along with the new crit coefficient and the new Spirit tap.

 

Anedris

I would be surprised if an AoE spell became our new filler, though it has happened before (whirlwind, multishot). And yes, if it can crit that would make a major difference.

I will still maintain the basic point that all this hooplah over making haste work on DoTs is misplaced, since haste is already an okay stat for DoTs, while crit is completely worthless for them.

 

Chul

I was thinking that, but since Mind Flay only put 1 stack of Shadow Weaving up on the mob, I assume that Penance would only give one stack too. Although since it is the 51pt talent and on a 10s cooldown, Blizzard may make each "healing missile" give a stack.

Which brings me to another disc priest question: What's the uptime of Grace? This may be the priest equivalent of LB, where a single disc priest can keep up Grace on several tanks at once.

 

Vain

I wonder what the intended purpose of Penance is; as a healing spell, Greater Heal with the -0.5s cast time and -15% cost talents is superior hps and hpm; 2.5s cast and 701 mana for 2590 healed (greater heal) vs 3.0s channeled and 715 mana for 2139 healed for Penance. Penance starts healing a little earlier, but unless every tick can proc the various talents, I'm not sure that its healing aspect is that great. Perhaps it exists so provide an alternative (albeit on a 10 second cooldown) for PvP discipline priests who don't want to spend 10 talent points improving Greater Heal?

 

Vihermaali

In alpha-talent trees i've seen, Inspiration description says that it's applied from crits of penance, so I assume it's "healing missiles" style spell instead of "healing flay".

And about purpose of Penance: the biggest flaw I see in Greater heal is that it takes so long time to heal. On Penance, in addition to possible talent procs, the healing is spread out evenly for every second, which is vastly superior to Greater Heal style "big punch" healing. Unless you can time the greater heal right of course, but majority of the time you can't. In 90% of tank death cases, the killing burst is delivered in a window of few seconds when no-one had heals hitting (thanks to lag, reactions and different spellhaste amounts).

 

What Do I Type Here?

Penance does seem to just be entirely based on pvp. As said above, it frees up 5-13 nearly useless talent points in the holy tree, lets you heal your pillar humping partner (assuming it's like mind flay/drains), and actually looks pretty mana/hps efficient compared to gheal (will have to see the coefficients of course).

It will certainly become a staple ability as long as it is indeed not broken by line of sight.

edit: I wonder if it auto-3 stacks grace? Arcane missile mechanics almost suggest yes.

 

François

If Penance suffers the same scaling penalty as Mind Flay (57% instead of 0.95x3/3.5), it will compete in the challenge of "most useless 51 point spell".

I see several interesting aspects in a "arcane missiles like" healing spell
- on-crit proc on each tick (Inspiration, etc)
- alternance of canalisation/incantation to play on five second regen rule
- the first tick is almost as interesting as an instant healing spell

I don't think Penance will have tremendous success in pvp, even if it may ignore obstacles, it's as likely as arcane missiles as a pvp tool (counterspell vulnerability). However I am no specialist there.

 

Prinsesa

I doubt Penance will suffer the same scaling penalty as Mind Flay, given that it doesn't snare.

"We do want Sanctuary to be the tanking seal"

- Ghostcrawler

 

rhea

I would imagine penance being the "spam heal". Eg. Your tank needs to be topped of constantly to not get 2shot. Casting greater heals and letting them land is less mana efficient and also a lot more over healing. Penance just ticks constantly where other healers can have the timeframe of topping the tank when he gets almost gibbed. Serves same purpose as hots but is more efficient there also. Thought they are doing something about crushing too...

 

Ellyh

Thinking of the changes to healing/spellpower how will this affect "Dual purpose" spells that can damage or heal? Currently we have holy shock, holy nova and coming in Wrath I believe penance will also be damage or healing depending on the target.

Will these spells have 2 spellpower coefficients? One for damage targets and one for healingtargets. If they don't then the spells will be either horribly underpowered for healing or massively overpowered for damage depending on which end of the spectrum the coefficient falls.

 

Désespoir

spamming a spell with a 10s cooldown is quite difficult those days

 

Malleus

Might as well ask why Holy Shock is less mana efficient than Flash of Light. Both spells can deal damage or heal, and they can do it faster than equivalent spells of each type (Penance can damage faster than Smite). Speed and multitasking will and should always detract from mana efficiency.

 

Désespoir

the main point would be to have penance putting 3 stacks of grace in a 3s cast.

Paradoxically, Penance interacts poorly with divine aegis because it is hardly believable to have the value of the shield increasing with successive criticals.

 

tedv

It really seems like you're complaining about a non-issue. Here's the math to back it up. First you claim that it's really bad for Lifebloom stacks to wear off during a 5 second silence, and then you say a major strength is the ability to keep 5 targets bloomed. To bloom 5 targets, you need a GCD of around 1.3 seconds (if you only have 100ms of lag). That's around 240 haste rating, certainly achievable if you gear for it. Now if you're juggling 5 blooms, each 1.4 seconds apart, and in the best case you get silenced right after casting a bloom, you lose one bloom every 1.4 seconds that you fail to refresh. So you lose 3 lifeblooms.

With that same amount of haste rating (15%), if haste affected HoTs, Lifebloom would only last 6 seconds. You could only bloom 4 targets, but each target would get 15% more healing. During a 5 second silence, you'd still lose the same 3 lifeblooms, so the number of extra GCDs you must spend to refresh the blooms is the same.

Also, the argument that "when the HoT is higher than the damage, it doesn't help" isn't a good argument, because if you are healing fewer targets, you will presumably stack your heals on the four targets most likely to receive extra damage. In the case of Felmyst, that would be the tank and Warlocks and/or shadow priests. Surely you have at least 3 total warlocks and shadow priests.

I'm sorry, but your post really comes off as a tunnel visioned whine about how one spell used by one spec of one class will be nerfed by this change, when the math still says it's roughly breaking even (and it's a benefit for multiple spells of many other classes, druids included). The sky would not fall if Haste affected Dots. You would not be casting more to accomplish the same result-- mathematically you would be casting more to accomplish a greater result.

 

Vodrin

Do you realise how boring it is to press 4 macros one after each other for an entire fight. I personally don't want to have all my time outside of refreshing hots dissapearing because I have some haste. I want to be able to use my new spells such as nourish and flourish. If a boss swings at 2s intervals the chance of getting 3 ticks of lifebloom in instead of two before his next swing, which is the real positive of lifebloom the guranteed healing between swings, would take an incredible amount of haste for something which won't happen a lot and costing a lot more gcd's.

I can see why a warlock may want his dots hastened so that an affliction warlock has less time spamming a lower dpsc filler, shadowbolt, and increasing the dpsc of his dots vastly. It just doesn't pass along to hots and for a class revolving around them would be better off taking gear without it.

Theres been blue posts saying that they have looked at haste affecting dots but found it too overpowering. I feel the 1s gcd attainable from haste is suitable for both dots and hots.

 

Cube

You're confusing two different issues. There aren't any bosses that silence that require 5 lifebloom stacks at all times. However, there are encounters where keeping 5 stacks up is extremely beneficial.

Haste currently increases the number of heals we can get off in a certain span of time. That means that we can get off heals to MORE people, because overwriting HoTs is useless(unless it's lifebloom). Hasting HoTs removes that primary benefit of haste. In addition, it doesn't mathematically improve our output by hasting HoTs.

From your example: Going from 4 stacks to 5 stacks increases our actual output by 20%, assuming the 5 targets are consistently taking damage. However, keeping the 4-stacks, but having them tick 15% faster only improves our theoretical output(not real!)-it may not improve our real output because the 15% may be pure overheal. And that still leaves the 5th person, who is taking damage without any heals from the druid.

So, mathematically, it doesn't increase our output more than haste currently does.

Also, what other class uses HoTs as much as resto druids? Renew the only other HoT placed on people, and it's not a spammed spell.

I think that there's some confusion over the purpose of HoTs in a raid healing environment.

HoTs aren't meant to top off the tank after they take damage. They work as, essentially, life-bar extenders. The larger spam healers will top off the tank. When the tank is topped off, they do nothing. They only tick when the tank is actually damaged. So, when a tank is kept at 100%, HoT ticks are essentially wasted. Given that, for most encounters, keeping the tanks topped-off is key, having faster HoTs won't necessarily help keep the tank up. They don't heal for enough.

EDIT:
To be absolutely fair, all you would need is 1 point of haste to do this with a hasted lifebloom. The tick would have to go off basically instantly after the damage, but it's possible to fit 3 ticks in 2 seconds with 1 point of haste.

 

Vodrin

Yes its possible to fit in 3 ticks in 2 seconds with 1 point every so often.

10% haste - 0.90 Second Tick

0.0s - Damage
0.1s - Tick
1.0s - Tick
1.9s - Tick
2.0s - Damage
2.8s - Tick
3.7s - Tick
4.0s - Damage
4.6s - Tick
5.5s - Tick
6.0s - Damage

And so on, with 10% haste you would get an extra tick in at every 10 seconds while casting 10% more often. Nothing incredible at all for the cost of time invested in keeping the hots up. Crippling in fact.

 

Nezralix

I'd like to know about level-based scaling mechanics. That is, things like Blood Fury, Predatory Strikes, hunter pet training points (and possibly overall pet health too?), etc., that all function as multipliers of your level.

This notion worked reasonably well from 1 to 60, as gear improved at a roughly linear rate through these levels. It stopped working as well from 60 to 70, a 17% increase in level that was accompanied by an average gear level improvement of roughly 75%. Assuming that we see the same sort of progression in WotLK (and I think it's a fair assumption that it will be *at least* that pronounced), then the 60 to 80 delta could well be a 33% increase in level that is accompanied by a 200% increase in average gear level.

So, has anyone observed changes to any of these level-based scaling mechanics?

 

Cranberry

Blood Fury is still pretty useful currently. If used every cooldown it's 35.25AP or 17.8 spell damage. That said, this is a good point - it will only increase to 20.375 spell or 40.25 AP. That said, they made some drastic changes to old abilities when TBC came out (Blood Fury, for example, was AP only pre-TBC), and I'm sure they'll take that into account.