Brinas

This is pretty much what I was trying to say. It's not by any means certain where the disc tree stands right now. I think the Disc tree has changed so much that we can't say it's not a competitive healing spec for 25-man raids based on throughtput alone.

I agree that as it stands disc is in a tight spot that depends completely on raid encounters. If every fight is a tank and spank then disc is going to be pvp only. If every fight has a large aoe on a predictable timer, then disc might be OP. I'd argue that as things stand it will fall somewhere in between and be almost required in certain fights. Shields that return mana with a 1 sec GCD will be very useful when you get a raidwide aoe every 30 seconds or so. Timed properly a disc priest could shield 7 squishy people and gain mana in doing so, with possible flash heal>aegis on others. This of course would be best case for a disc priest.

 

constantius

See ... you've completely reversed the conventional thinking there. A fight with consistent AoE damage, assuming it's not life-threatening levels (i.e. it hits you for a percentage, not 110%) is picture-perfect for CoH healing. Take the damage, heal the damage.

On the other hand, a pure tank and spank fight means that 1-3 people are taking *all* the raid damage (i.e. Patchwerk v1.0). In that case, a Disc priest is arguably stronger, because they bring so many single-target tricks to the table. Yes, their healing throughput is possibly lower but they have the burst coverage of PW:S and Divine Aegis to possibly smooth the spikes. Maybe IHC is better for the burst haste healing, maybe not.

But I would never try to make an argument that a disc priest is a stronger healer in a burst AoE situation ... even if you do assume that you spam PW:S on the entire raid (with the reduced cooldown, you could shield every single person in between the 30 seconds of the explosion, for no mana cost). It'd have to be a very gimmicky fight to justify that.

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. - R.A. Heinlein

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Ellyh

PWS is a poor raid heal because it:

a) expires after 30 seconds.
b) can only be cast once every 4 seconds.
c) can only be cast on any given target once every 15 seconds.
d) is not actually a heal!

This combined means that compared to PoH, CH, CoH and all the new druid and pally tricks it is a poor raid heal. The only situation it is going to be useful is if you know in advance that the target will be taking basically the full value of the shield in the next 30 seconds. Otherwise your spending a lot of mana and have a high risk of generating zero equivalent healing.

So it's okish for the following, constant aoe damage like Netherspite, Gorefiend and Kalecogos.
sustained secondry target system damage that are debuffs not AoE's you can run out of.
Oh shit stuff like just like now. e.g. mage low on hp as you break the bubble of doom.

Currently for 25 man raids I can't see how will put your disc priests on raid healing duty unless you have no holy priests, resto shammies or druids.

 

Sinndir

Moderators, would it be possible for us to get my original post from this thread moved to be the Original post in this thread?

The current original poster has not updated after being asked to. Perhaps they are no longer active?

Thank you

PS: The OP is not even a priest and was last edited nearly a month ago (Last edited by Iliyan : 07/05/08 at 7:05 AM.)

 

Vihermaali

When comparing benefits of disc priest to other healers you must not look at troughoutput alone. The whole point of a disc healer is that his healing is not based on pure healing. Pure healing stacks very, very badly. Already with 2 healers only tanks hp will jump up and down so fast that over 50% of heals become pure and wasted overhealing. Disc healing however stacks very well with other healing.

Grace -6% dmg taken
+25% armor (every 8 seconds 3 chances to proc inspiration, 25% crit rate will award quite nice inspiration uptime)
Divine aegis shields (that stack, recharge and return mana now)
Power word: shield triggering 1sec global cooldown
Pain suppression

*edit* Not forgetting the nature of Penance spell: instead of being "slow big hitter" like majority of spells used, Penance ticks every 1 second (or more often), which is a lot better for tank healing than earlier-mentioned "slow big hitter" style (slow being 2 seconds or higher). Healing every 0,9-1 seconds provide steadier stream of healing and have very, very high chance to get in before mob swings his fist/sword next time to kill the tank. "2x0,9sec ticks + PW:S instantly after" is plenty of healing. And of course, compared to a 2,5-3second healing spell, Penance has triple chance of proccing inspiration and divine aegis in same time used.*/edit*

Main problem with a disc priest seems to be that he has to have very good "future telling" abilities. He can't rely on reactive healing no matter how fast he is, a disc healer can't blindly spam his abilities. He must see it coming to be able to effectively heal it. Personally it won't be a problem, of course.

 

constantius

Ilyan just got back from vacation apparently (got a PM from him); he's fine with us moving it to another primary post. Not sure if the forums support this: report your post above and ask the mods to see what they can do.

To the above poster: in its current iteration, Penance is a 3-second HoT. Given that mechanic (and that HoTs can't crit), it's functionally useless. It can't proc inspiration, and it just ... ticks. Wee. We really don't need a 3-second high-burst HoT.

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. - R.A. Heinlein

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Zaroua

Just to expend on that, any fight where someone who isn't a tank takes consistent/predictable damage, PW:S will be very viable. Just to list a few: Netherspite blue beam, Illhoof AoErs, Tidewalker AoErs, Warlock tank on Leo (and every other fight where a Warlock tanks including Kael and Illidan), Mage tank on Council/HKM, etc. The list goes on and on. And the HPS of a fully talented PW:S is quite impressive too: over 3500HPS at lvl80. And it certainly is mana efficient because of Rapture.


Regarding Disc Priest utility in raids, I see no reason why at least 1 wouldn't be brought in for 25 mans, nor do I see a reason why they wouldn't be able to kill in as powerful single-target healers in 10 mans. Put it this way: if Discipline Priests brought nothing else to a raid except PI, PS, IDS and Grace through Gheal spam, they'd still be amazing.

I'm not sure Priests are understanding how ridiculous 6%dmg reduction and 6%HPS is. I've never healed Burn on Brutallus, but as I understand it the last 6 ticks hit for 3200 a second, requiring 3200HPS and a total of 19200 healing done on the target. That's not counting the other Burn targets. With Grace active, it'll hit for 3008 a second, requiring 2827.5 HPS for a total of 16965 healing done on the target. That's 11.6ish% less healing needed to keep a Burn target up. Then you apply Grace to the tanks, which reduces burst damage during Stomps and smooths out tank transitions. No matter how the numbers look on paper, you always have to translate them to a potential raid situation. It doesn't matter if the Discipline Priest does 20-30% less HPS with his Gheal compared to a Holy Priest.


What matters is Grace reducing burst on tanks and making healing tanks easier, Divine Aegis reducing burst on tanks and making great use of crit and the higher uptime of Inspiration on tanks which again reduces burst. I don't think any self respecting tank in a raiding guild would allow a raid leader to sit out a Discipline Priest if it means it makes healing the tanks 11.6% easier - even if the Discipline Priest does nothing except using rank 1 Flash Heal to keep Grace and Inspiration active. If a fight is so biased against a Discipline Priest then he can just respec Holy. At least Discipline Priest will have the option to respec to a different healing style, something Holy Paladins currently can't do and are very bitter about.



The other thing I'd like to point out is that currently, Arcane Mages get Incanter's Absorption - Spell - World of Warcraft as a talent and all evidence seems to point that it'll work with PW:S. I'll go poke the Mages in their own thread about the potential of this talent on a fight where the PW:S could be eaten up fairly consistently. I'll try to update this post or make a new one to hopefully give some insight on this new synergy.

Edit: Numbers from the Mage thread
[Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion
[Mage] WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion

If a Druid specs Moonkin in Darnassus, do the trainers still laugh at him?

 

Kopalec

Personally what I would like to see now for Discipline, is one more round of tuning for Penance.

1) Change it back to a channel with pulses that can crit.
2) Remove the damage component completely, then raise the base healing amount appropriately.
3) Remove the cooldown, or at the very least reduce the cooldown to a point where some form of rotation of PW:S + Renew could be used in conjunction to maintain a Grace stack on 3 targets.

Bam!, you now have perfect synergy with Shaman Spirit Link.

What about the mana amount used for maintaining such a rotation? Rapture kicks in here fulfilling it's role as a mana battery from DA proc's + PW:S. The shields get you a solid return on mana hopefully from the steady damage through Spirit Link, and the link subsequently lasts much longer for the Shaman.

This would be a mana regen system much closer to a shadow priest, than the current toying with the 5sr like a holy priest.

 

cruumash

As of July 30, 11:28 PM on the beta servers, Penance is still channelled and it can crit (I don't have Inspiration at the moment but the tooltip for Inspiration claims it will proc from Penance).

 

Ellyh

Zaroua I have to disagree with a lot of that.

PWS has amazing burst healing true, 3500 hps is fairly solid and it's all front loaded. The problem is that it stinks in non burst situations, i.e. anything taking more than 1-2 seconds. The sustained raid hps of PWS is a paltry 875 if and only if you cast it metronomically every 4 seconds exactly as it comes of cooldown, this 3 second window after the PWS GCD is exactly the wrong length for any of the spells you want to cast except for the new unimproved penance. PWS has a sustained hps on a single target of 233 heals per second. However you want to cast it for the mana regen purposes.

In the situations listed ignore the warlock tanks, healing a warlock tank is still tank healing. Netherspite blue beam it's ok but the 15 second reapplication cooldown hurts here. As for healing AoE people on tidewalkers murlock waves, this is a classic example of AoE healing. Assuming the murlocks go down fast in 8 seconds the disc priest gets of, at best, 2 pws and 3 flash heals. Max of 5 targets and assuming flash is approx the same as pws 17500 healing. Compare to a CoH priest and that looks lame, in the same time frame the coh priest has cast 5 COH this smart targets the 5 people needing it most and lands for say 1100 each. This is 27500 healing output targeted where it is needed most. Meanwhile Tidewalker is hitting the tank like a truck.

If you bring a disc priest to a raid, which personally I remain unconvinced of, they will be healing the tank, the whole tank and nothing but the tank. The whole thrust of Disc is that it stacks up really well on tanks who are getting the shit kicked out of them by a hard hitting boss. Brut is a classic example of a fight where Disc shines but it won't be as a burn healer. She will be stuck spamming greater heal (now the penance doesn't crit) on the tanks to keep inspiration and the 8 second duration grace 3 stack up. You will not under any circumstances switch off to heal the burn victims, even if you can keep the 3 stack up on them as well you are loosing Aegis shields on the tank. If the disc priest was solo healing the burns he would be doing worse than a druid or holy priest would because of his loss of power. 10% or so throughput reduction compared to the other classes even after accounting for the grace stack.

As for incanters absorption can someone on the test realm go bother a mage to actually test this?

edit, good to see penance still critting.

 

Zaroua

I'm fairly certain I wasn't clear in my previous post (English is a second language and I use Firefox' built in spell check, otherwise my posts would be riddled with typos and such, the bad syntax is still present however) and so I'll try to be more in depth as to what the role of a Disc Priest is shaping up to be. Keep in mind, that this is rather speculative and based on both what the Discipline tree is like on the beta right now and based on the changes Blizzard has done to both the Disc tree, the Priest class and the other classes.


Simply by looking at the other 9 classes' trees, even the unfinished classes like Warriors and Death Knights, it's fairly easy to surmise that Blizzard is trying to change the way raids work through both hybrids and by making multiple specs for each class bring some important synergy to the raid. The best classes to look at to see it at this point are Shamans and Druids: three vastly different specs with different abilities, abilities and talents good enough to justify bringing at least one of each spec for both classes.

On to the healers - 6 healing specs spread over 4 classes: Disc/Holy Priest, Sheath/BoL Paladin and Resto Druid/Shaman. Looking at 7 healers and a healing "core" consisting of 1 of each Holy Priest/BoL Paladin/Resto Shaman/Resto Druid, that'd leave 3 healing spots open for your raid. Discipline Priest and Sheath Paladins are both "forced" into healing only one or two targets at a time, against the other 4 specs I just listed not being as limited to a single target healing style. Now both Sheath and Disc are shaping up to be somewhat viable and they both bring viable additions to your healing core - rolling Sheath crits and Divine Aegis/Grace. So this is what it comes down to - do you bring three more Holy Priest/BoL Paladin/Resto Shaman/Resto Druid to fill up your raid or do you bring one or two and pick up a Sheath Paladin and/or a Disc Priest.
This is the point I'm trying to get across: bringing the Discipline Priest for his unique tools and abilities certainly seems worth it over bringing a second or third of the "core" healing classes. With Grace being as powerful as it is right now and with Divine Aegis/Penance looking pretty good, a Discipline Priest would be a fine addition to most fights. A vastly different style of healing compared to Holy, but a style that's still shaping up to be very useful and powerful.


We'll have to wait to see just how useful and powerful it'll turn out to be, but I'm more than willing to bet on Blizzard making Discipline Priest viable in a raid. My advice is to keep an open mind on Discipline, and try see how it could potentially be incorporated into a raid set-up. If anything, those who are lucky enough to be playing on beta should try their hand at healing the same instances are both Holy and Discipline and provide Blizzard feedback on how it plays out.

If a Druid specs Moonkin in Darnassus, do the trainers still laugh at him?

 

Iliyan

I've slightly updated the main post, however should anyone have interest to compile the whole thread please do so, and If you want I can make it the primary post, or simply make a deal with the mods to push it to the OP, or create a new post, any of these work.

Personally I have not expected the thread to grow so vastly, nor have I expected the Beta to come out so fast.

Have fun theorycrafting!

 

Incoherence

As previously mentioned, in many of these situations, you're talking about healing the effective tank of the encounter. The blue beam taker on Netherspite is effectively the tank (if you have to heal the red beam tank he/she is doing it wrong). Warlock tanks and mage tanks are still tanks. AoE (Hyjal, Tidewalker) doesn't take predictable damage at all; they randomly pull aggro and need 5k healing immediately to not die. (PW:S is exceptionally good for that if you have sufficient reaction time to hit them with it before they either die or drop aggro.) Tidewalker's Earthquake is the example you're looking for, or any of a whole lot of raidwide AoE spells in BT and Sunwell. Even then, in all of those situations CoH will be just as viable, if not more: it has a higher HPS, it has no cooldown (right now, at least, and PW:S is still burdened with a 4 second cooldown on top of Weakened Soul), and it stabilizes more people at a time.

No, we understand exactly. In a 7 healer raid, each healer should be expected to pull 14.3% of the healing on average. A discipline priest mitigates 11.6% of damage on the tank (or even 2 or 3 tanks, although this will significantly hamper their ability to do anything else). Sounds good, right? Well, except that very few raid fights are entirely tank damage. Around halfway through BT, for example, Blizzard runs out of ways to challenge the healers beyond raid damage spam (and/or "hit the tank ridiculously hard", as in Brutallus and occasionally Illidan, but that's two fights among about a dozen raid damage spam fights). If raid damage comprises 70% of the damage taken over a fight, that 11.6% is actually 3.48% of your 14.3% "quota", which means you'd better be doing some serious tank healing while you're keeping Grace up.

 

gia

I don't see disc as just a tank healer, spamming greater heal on a tank isn't taking advantage of a lot of stuff disc has going for it. I see a disc priest as healing support, if say you currently need 3 healers for a particular tank then you might be able to get by with 2 tank healers and a disc priest just keeping up PWS/grace/inspiration/renew. He only has to use 4 gcds every 15 sec to do that and the rest of his time is free so he can also help out on all the other assignments. He can watch out for RSTS abilities and shield before they hit, he can pain suppression, he can toss a PoM every 10 sec to help out raid healers, he can PWS/renew people that are taking steady damage, he can cast-cancel greater heal on the tank, etc.

It's a whole different mindset that reminds me of Guild Wars. Monks (the main healer class) can be specced Healing or Protection, while healing monks have the standard play style where you heal back any damage, protection monks can be played very differently, they try to focus on anticipating and preventing the damage before it happens. This translates to less focusing on just health bars and more on what the enemy is doing.

If you limit a disc priest to a single assignment like just tank healing or just raid healing then I do agree that he isn't really the best choice.

 

Ellyh

Is a sheath pally really viable? *edit* taking a closer look at the pally trees a would any non sheath pallies exist?

Please explain what "tricks" Disc brings to non tank healing that are not better filled by other healing specs? If a tank needs 3 healers it may be that 2 generic healers and a disc priest are better than three generic healers. However the 18% swing (6% less damage and 2 x 6% more healing) generated by Grace does not in any way shape or form allow the disc priest to focus someplace else. The only place this works is a 2 tank fight if the 2 generic healers are marginally undergeared for the fight or the tank is undergeared.

Never played guild wars but I'm assuming that preventative healing was considerably more powerful than 4k every 15 seconds. It sounds like a system more for PvP healing than raid healing. If you can really tell who is on the wrong end or RSTS and shield them before they hit your doing better than I can, also to pull this stunt off you need to be doing nothing that would catch your mid cast or stuck in GCD.

further edit as I had not expressed myself well

 

gia

It's an 18% swing plus the effective healing of your 4 spells (which being shields/hots have a low chance of overhealing) plus you being there as backup when the situation demands it.

Protection spells in Guild Wars are quite good, as an example a common strategy for a team is to "spike" a player trying to kill them close to instantly, with say: 4 casters tossing a 160 pt nuke at the same time (players have around 600 hp). A monk casting Protective Spirit right before this happens will save the target and give the other healing monk enough time to react.

As for catching RSTS abilities, it's just a matter of keeping an eye on the boss target and reacting as soon as you see him switch. They usually have predictable cooldowns so once you get the feel for a specific fight they aren't impossible to anticipate.

 

Ellyh

Your still loosing the Aegis on the tank, that damage smoothing combined with grace is what makes the spec work. If you are not spamming critable spells on the tank you are missing the point of bringing that spec. This is what makes the spec a unique snowflake, all those raid healing things are done way better by a healer who brings more power and flexibility to the table, yes this is a holy priest.

Please note that grace is only stacked by flash heal, greater heal and penance. Now flash is going to give you the quickest refresh on grace leaving you with 13 seconds where you can attempt to use single target heals on raid targets. Not only that but they heal for less than the dedicated raid healers. As you focus away from tank healing you are loosing ground compared to your holy comrades as your healing away from your strengths and aren't benefiting from the grace stack you sacrificed so much power for.

Finally inspiration mandates heal spam as well, for a 15% crit rate and spamming Gheal you only manage ~80% uptime as it is and your model of healing would drop that way down to something like 30% or less, care to explain that to the tanks?

As for the guild wars example the relative power of shields to direct heals is much closer and must represent a much higher fraction of player health. Also it's clearly a PvP situation.

My experience of trying to catch RSTS effects is that you need close to 0 latency and the reflexes of a mongoose to be able to do this. Yes some people can do it but it's hard even when you are watching for it. The classic example of this is the robot trash heading to council that does a 100% hp lightning hit. Even our best priest only manages to prevent ~50% of these deaths. My latency and reactions mean I never get the shield off in time.

*edited in inspiration comment

 

james

I find it a bit concerning that so many damage reduction talents now exist. It will certainly be worrying if they all stack.

Before our MTs got full Sunwell gear, I can only think back to how painful Brutallus was. We didn't use a Shadow Embrace warlock but I'm sure it would have helped a lot. You could argue that Brutallus's damage output is balanced against the possibility that he's debuffed in this way. Would the Patchwerk of WotLK be weighted on your tanks having Grace?

Consider a MT with Spirit Link, Hand of Sacrifice*, Divine Guardian*, Pain Suppression*, Grace and a boss debuffed with Shadow Embrace. I wonder how that would even work.

* cooldown based.

 

gia

I would refresh grace with penance not flash heal. It lasts 8 seconds and talented penance has an 8 second CD, so you would just keep recasting it as soon as the CD is up and half of them you follow up with shield/renew. It's also great for keeping up inspiration which also happens to last 15 seconds. I hope someone better at math than I am can calculate the odds of not proccing inspiration with 2 casts of penance every 16 seconds. I'm guessing they are quite low.

The GW examples are not meant to be direct comparisons, I'm just trying to show how a playstyle that attempts to prevent damage is different from one that simply tries to heal it. I think/hope this is what the developers are trying to accomplish with discipline, perhaps they are not quite there yet but I can't really say without getting firsthand experience playing it.

 

Ellyh

Again I would like to know what advantage or synergy a disc priest brings to the raid by raid healing. If they are not healing the tank you loose:

a) Most of your aegis shields on the tank.
b) any chance to benefit from your own grace stack.

you gain... ?? I cannot think of anything a disc priest brings to the raid healing role that is not done better by someone else or could not be done by an on the ball disc priest tank healing. The various PWS options are still hamstrung by the 4 second and 15 second cooldowns. And honestly the difference in power between holy and disc shields is unlikely to be make or break on a dps/healer targeted by the RSTS.

Depending on your crit rating you get the following chance of not replacing the Inspiration during your proposed rotation
25% crit 17%
20% crit 26%
15% crit 37%

If instead you cast penance, gh, gh, penance, gh, shield (~15 sec rotation) your chances change to
25% crit 7.5%
20% crit 13%
15% cirt 23%

these are major differences, also in the second rotation you have good Aegis shielding on the tank reducing spikes, aiding survivability and getting the best mana efficiency from rapture. Crit is going to be very expensive budget wise at 80. The number in in the ratings thread is 45 rating = 1 crit which is basically 50 spellpower per crit. This means that if your stacking crit you must get the max out of it and this means inspiration uptime and maximising Aegis use AKA tank heal spam.

Your proposed rotation is very susceptible to interruption allowing Grace to fall off. Any sort of silence or enforced movement (don't stand in the fire) will allow the grace stack to drop and this is a "bad thing".

Finally while all such things are to be taken with a grain of salt those that were on the alpha forums say that the devs explicitly stated that Disc was designed to be a single target tank healing thread and holy was for AoE healing. This is certainly supported by the design of the bulk of the talents in the disc tree and how they are evolving, allowing stacking Aegis is clearly a buff for tank healing over anything else.

 

Brinas

G Heal spam as a disc priest is just a bad idead. You don't get the free casts like holy does to keep you OOFSR. I would say it would be more mana efficient to flash heal spam because you're getting more crits to proc aegis and inspiration, and you're more likely to see