Havoc12

Big mistake. Damage absorption is not healing. 1) No overheal, 2) damage is never applied. The fact that healing comes after the damage is applied makes all the difference in the world, because if the tank drops below zero you cant heal that back up. We all know this is why inspiration is powerfull. Healing damage instead of absorbing it produces larger variations in tank health than absorbing damage in any way by default. Just how things go.

Removing 20% of aegis efficiency is obscenely wrong. The likelihood of you getting back to back crits without the tank getting hit even with 25% crit rate and 50% dodge/parry is something like 3%.

The tank having mitigation does not mean the value of healing or absorbing damage increases. It does not. What matters is how the damage filtering through the mitigation is dealt with. 900 healing is not 900 healing multiplied by what is absorbed by mitigation its 900 healing. However its actually no healing at all. You forgot overheal With 30-40% overheal the extra healing power from holy is reduced in value greatly but PWS and divine aegis are not. On top of that you also forgot improved inner fire which probably stacks with enlightenment and twin faiths. That further reduces the difference between holy priests and disc priests and the fact that grace increases healing from other sources.

Also inspiration always counts. It does not matter whether other healers can add it. What matters is that the tank healer can keep it 90% of the time without help.

The damage absorbed matters only after mitigation. You cannot consider the effectiveness after damage mitigation from the tank works its magic. That happens whether you are there or not. What matters is how you affect the actual damage taken.

Lets say the tank is taking 2.5k DPS after inspiration. Add to that grace for 6% less and you get 2350. Add a 2.5k shield from aegis every 12.5 seconds --> -200 DPS. Add a 3k shield every 15 seconds --> -200 DPS. Total of 1950 DPS on the tank. 1950/2500 = 78%. Tank damage reduced by 22%.

What disc priests bring to RST healing that holy priests don't is an instant 1sec 3k absorb which actually returns mana to him and pain suppression in case shit hits the fan. That is not to say that disc priests are gods at healing RST and holy priests are bad. Holy priests would certainly be very powerful.

Having a healer spec ImpDS/Holy would be a terrible waste. Without the full complement of deep holy talents a priest is a true gimp spec, while deep disc is not gimped at all. The same is true with grace/holy build. Also you dont really want more than one disc priest in the raid.

Full disc is equivalent to full holy on tank healing and healing RST abilities. Although holy has much less damage reduction it has more HPS, more heals per second and can smooth out spikes nearly as well as disc can and in some situations better by being capable of maintaining massive overheal. One healer will certainly be specing disc for a few select encounters but otherwise disc would be non-essential but still fully raid viable. Mixed spec wont be. Its not possible to even get mental agility now, without being gimped. Not getting 2+ ranks of divine providence and not maxing, test of faith, serendipity and IHC is now a huge loss. Even lightwell and healing prayers are probably very hard to skip now.

I envision disc with a different healing sequence than what priests are used to. Also a large part of it is not immediately visible, since it involves damage that never happens. You need a controlled experiment to fully gouge its value and have every talent working. It will probably take some time before ppl figure that out. Until then they are bound to try gimp half baked specs which are just as bad as the 20/40 spec for holy priests (no CoH, no impDS) is now.

 

Plitschplatsch

I read recently that PoH will not have smart targetting but will instead target the 5 people closest to you. Does anyone know if that is true or just a rumor?

 

Kortar

Greater Heal (Rank 9) heals for 3950 to 4590 (4270 average).

Discipline Priests get Twin Disciplines (5%) and Enlightenment (5%), so they'll heal 4708 average in 2.5s (Divine Fury). This is 1883 hps.

Holy Priests get Twin Disciplines (5%), and Spiritual Healing (10%), so they'll heal 4932 average in 2.5s (Divine Fury). This is 1973 hps.

Holy Priests then also get Improved Holy Concentration. The chance that at least one of the three previous Flash/Greater Heals have proc'd clearcasting is 40.7% meaning you have the equivalent of 60% * 40.7% = 24.4% haste over time, giving you 2454 hps.

Holy Priests are almost certain to get more bonus spellpower from Spiritual Guidance than Discipline Priests get from Improved Inner Fire.

With equal gear, Disc and Holy will have equal critical. Divine Aegis provides a buff of ((critical rate * 0.95) + 1) compared to the normal advantage of ((critical rate * 0.5) + 1):
10% critical: 9.5% vs. 7.5% (2062 hps vs. 2638 hps)
20% critical: 19% vs. 10% (2241 hps vs. 2699 hps)
30% critical: 28.5% vs. 15% (2420 hps vs. 2822 hps)

We'll disregard Test of Faith since it's difficult to model and just emphasizes the Holy advantage.

In terms of scaling, we'll assume that current coefficients double. That gives Discipline Greater Heal a (3 / 3.5) * 1.05 * 1.05 * 2 = 189% coefficient, while Holy Greater Heal gets ((3 / 3.5 ) + 0.2) * 1.05 * 1.1 * 1.24 * 2 = 244% coefficient. In terms of coefficient/second, Discipline has 75.6%/sec while Holy has 121.0%/sec.
It should be noted that under virtually any interpretation of spellpower changes, spell critical is a waste for either healer since spell haste outperforms it in all respects except for mana consumption at any level of +spellpower. But we'll assume that there's some actual reason to take spell critical. Under the 30% spell critical assumption, the coefficient/sec disparity shrinks to 97% vs. 139%.

So if we've got 2000 spellpower @ 30% critical, our Discipline Priest is mustering 4320 hps. Our Holy Priest with the same stats is mustering 5602 hps - a 30% advantage in throughput disregarding Test of Faith.

Since Grace confers a total benefit of around 12.4% to the tank, it should be obvious that a single Holy Priest will outperform a single Discipline Priest in single target throughput. What's less obvious is that to make up this gap in performance, you need about 11k hps directed on your tank. With a healing crew of 4-5 (as indicated by the developers), this means that over half your healers are doing nothing but spamming high throughput heals on the tank.

I'm just not seeing much change in role for Discipline Priests in WotLK. Grace will help them heal 5-mans, but it will be almost worthless in 10-mans I imagine. In 25-mans, it's more of a coin toss but it definitely seems like the coin is landing on "don't bring a Discipline Priest". In PvP, the improvements to PW:S will make Discipline Priests incredibly tough to defeat, though.

 

Ana

This was a request that a few people made in alpha, but it's not really under consideration according to blizz. Best we can hope for is that they make poh centered around the priest but not limited to group. No word on if they actually intend to implement any change though.

 

Crosshairs

The improve PW:S should reflect damage back to the boss. I would assume it is minor but during a 5-8 minute fight how much improved raid dps do you get from throwing imp PW:S around (assuming you are using it as a primary source of healing prevention)?

 

Alici

There already is a talent for that (Reflective Shield). Unless you mean consolidating talents, but I would think that there are some priests who would rather have improved shields only without the reflect.

 

Bjork

Strange approach you have to the new talent trees. This is the second time you defend lots of mediocre talents and poor scaling because we get a buff at the bottom of the tree (seriously, your attack on me needing to top meters is not even funny, please just stop for your own sake). Yes, Grace is good, but it doesn't mean that we should be happy about terrible scaling. Just look at other healing trees and you know what I mean (or read Kortar's post, numbers look good to me).

They need to revamp disc further to make it a good spec for PvE or it will stay as an excellent PvP tree. Less points wasted on boosting +healing and more abilities/synergies would be a good start.

 

• Playered

Sorry to derail, but could you clarify this statement please?

 

crimsonsentinel

The idea is that if you extrapolate from a normal 5 man group of 1 tank, 1 healer, 3 dps into 25 man content, you get 5 tanks, 5 healers, 15 dps. Right now you usually have 3-4 tanks and 7-8 healers though.

 

Iluminati

I'm not attacking you at all, I'm saying that you are ignoring the greater picture of the raid when you say that Disc is a gimp spec, and by "you" I mean yourself and others with the same position.

Here's some math for you:

Two situations, both using Using Kortar's math (thanks for that it's very helpful : ) ).

1. Healing one tank with 1 disc priest + 2 holy priests + 1 set of druid hots. I think that is a reasonable assumption for a healing setup, given what is known about current raid design and the goal of future raid design.

The disc priest doing 4579.2 hp/s + 2 holy priests doing 5938 hp/s each + 1272 hps from druid hots (1200 hp/s is a rather conservative estimate on the strength of 3x life bloom at level 80) that is a total of 17727 hp/s. Those numbers are factoring in grace, a 6% healing increase.


2. 3 holy priests instead of a disc priest (I realize any raid with 3 holy priests is EXCEPTIONALLY rare/unlikely, but holy paladins are very likely to remain at least very close to holy priests in terms of output) + 1 set of druid hots:

5602 * 3 + 1200 = 18006

You are undoubtedly correct that a disc priest provides less hp/s overall, HOWEVER, that is not taking into account the 6% damage reduction. With that taken into account, the disc priest is strictly superior.

Now if you see a flaw in that math or you think the scenarios are unrealistic, feel free to discuss that (isn't that the point of this thread?), but please can you stop saying that Disc is gimp without any basis? The reality is that Grace scales incredibly well, and even with the "mediocre" talents you need to spend to get there, it is well worth it.

In addition, I contend that the early points in Discipline are not mediocre at all. Ignoring the first 20 (as the majority of those would be taken by a holy priest as well, providing no advantage to discipline) you have:

Mental Strength - 15% intellect - a significant increase to both your mana pool and mana regen.
(Improved) Divine spirit - an incredibly powerful buff to your raid. Basically all casters are gaining large amounts of spirit regen, and many are getting improved +dmg/crit scaling to math their spirit.
Enlightenment - 5% int + 5% +healing [5% spirit = SOR, no advantage]. Again, a small boost to mana and your mana regen, with a moderate +heal increase.
Power Infusion - a short term buff that can be used to increase hp/s of a healer, increase regen, or to boost dps at any time.
Rapture - personal mana regen.
Pain Suppression - a powerful counter to RST abilities, a threat dump (massive changes to threat mechanics abound in WOTLK), or buffering your tank. Any response like "well you might not hit it in time" is bullshit. We are all good players here, if you cant time your abilities right, press your damn buttons harder. "I was too slow" is not a valid excuse for why an ability is bad.
Divine Aegis / Borrowed Time - unique abilities that provide the priest with some mana regen and also the ability to straight up prevent damage to a target. This is just as good / better than a heal because it prevents gibs. You cant heal up your target if they are dead.

Again, they are not mediocre at all, they just dont improve your HP/s greatly. In my eyes that is a worthy trade off.

 

constantius

OK, look ...

Do you really want to be a one-trick healer? Someone who is only brought to a raid because of your ability to keep a buff up on a tank? The first healer to sit when a fight is on farm, or when the boss doesn't really hit hard?

If you're doing a fight in Naxx v2.0 where the tank is only taking moderate damage, and most of the damage is AE, do you really think there is a place for a Discipline priest? That's what we're asking. And most of us are concluding no.

As much as some people are trying to make Grace out to be the be-all and end-all ... the new Affliction tree for warlocks is quite strong. I would not be surprised if a warlock with a phase-shifted imp because standard in WotLK raids. They bring 5% reduction to the table. Why would you bring a gimp healer (and yes, the healing is gimp, stop assuming we're too dumb to see that it is) to a raid to provide an extra *1%* reduction in damage and +6% healing, when you could just bring a healer who does 25% more healing on a single target? The 6% only scales to beat the 20-25-30% when there's a lot of healers taking advantage of the buff.

I'd love nothing more than for Discipline to be raid-viable. But crit absorption shields and improved PW:S and Grace are all the same pony -- extremely hard-hitting bosses that swing slow. You get Grace up, and reduce all hits by 6%. You put a PW:S up before each spike, to lessen the nastiness. And you get crits, which increase your personal healing and reduce incoming damage again.

On any fight that isn't (basically) Patchwerk v1.0 or Brutallus, there just isn't enough incoming damage to justify it. You pay a very hefty price to pickup Grace and Divine Aegis, not to mention Borrowed Time. Most of us are looking at the talents, looking at the flexibility you lose, and putting Discipline in the role of "I'll respec if I have to for a hard-hitting boss, otherwise, deep Holy ftw".

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

 

Iluminati

Well that is the glaring flaw with my scenario, and I tried to admit as much by saying the Disc priest is going to bring strictly worse overall healing and much, much, less flexibility (not in that post, but previously). Alot of this discussion is pure speculation since we have no idea what the encounters will be like, but to be clear I agree: If you don't need Grace, then Discipline is worthless.

 

Kaerellen

Strange how a reduction of 3% can swing a tree so wildly from good to bad, isn't it? When Grace stacked up to 9%, there seemed to be much more of a consensus that the first priest in any given raid would be Disc, but when it drops to 6%, Holy becomes much more comparatively appealing (and note that I agree with the swing back to Holy). Nidaba's emphasis on the loss of flexibility in switching from Holy to Disc is notable, but if Grace were restored to the 9% damage reduction, would it become viable again? Are 3 percentage points really that vital, or has perception changed on the concept of Grace as a whole?

 

constantius

It wasn't just 9% damage reduction (which yes, in and of itself is OMG ... it's a full 4% better than anything else available) -- it was the fact that you also got 9% increased healing. That's strong enough that when you combine it with the new Treeform Aura from resto druids, you could conceivably have 2 resto druids and a disc priest healing a tank. Period. As in, that's it. Can you imagine the scaling from a full load of resto druid HoTs (x2) with an extra 800 spellpower *and* an extra 9% scaling, in treeform for 20% scaling? We're talking 5-6k HpS *each* just from HoTs, plus the PW:S/Divine Aegis/GH spam from the Disc priest to deal with spikes.

That combo was actually semi-interesting. 6% just isn't strong enough to have the same oomph, esp when it's a dual nerf: 3% to healing, 3% to reduction.

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

 

Iluminati

At 9% in scenario 1 that I posted, the disc priest would actually give more total hp/s and 9% damage reduction.

In scenario 2, the disc priest would give slightly less total hp/s, but when you factor in the 9% reduction it is still strictly better. So yes, that 3% (to each end of the buff) makes quite a difference.

 

Kaerellen

Well, given that we're actually producing some solid number crunching on Disc vs Holy, would a revert back to 9% be enough in the face of everything this community has decided you'd lose in the switch (the throughput, the mana regen, the flexibility, etc.)? We'd be back to the discussion of Disc priests grabbing some terrible filler talents for one amazing higher tier talent, but I wonder if it's still as intriguing given all the theorycrafting the 3% reduction has catalyzed.

The 1 Disc priest/2x Resto druid scenario you put forth is "semi-interesting," but the point about what is needed for a tank healing core now still stands: only Brut and Patchwerk v1.0 put out enough damage to make Grace absolutely indispensable. Even if Grace is at 9%, isn't that still true?

 

Incoherence

It's a bit more than 3 percentage points. If the tank were taking 1000 DPS, you would need to heal 1000 HPS to keep him steady. With Grace at 9%, you need only 835 HPS. With Grace at 6%, that becomes 887 HPS.

The "first priest in a raid will be discipline" thing was always somewhat specious. Even with the 9% Grace, you'd need ~2 other healers on the tank to break even (assuming that a discipline priest is 70% of another healer). And a lot of the same concerns about reliance on a single buff, low throughput, and questionably useful talents applied then.

I'm also slightly concerned by the tree's reliance on PW:S, given that there's still a stigma against it (which is overblown but has a little bit of truth to it in 5 man situations).

 

Brinas

The main problem with people talking about how disc isn't as raid viable is that everyone seems to be focusing tank healing arguments on Greater Heal. Holy has 5 talents that affect Greater Heal specifically, and Disc has 2. People are also saying that any disc spec will be required to take 18 points in holy. I see 13-14 at best that will be required. What about a spec something like this?
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Yeah I know it's not perfect, but the idea being that you focus on instant casts with the occasional flash heal, and in emergencies you PI GHeal.
The other problem is that people are arguing either solo main tank healing or only raid healing. Why can't someone do both? Druids roll lifeblooms on 4 tanks at once. I see Disc priests being closer to tree druids than they are to holy priests.
Why not have a rotation on multiple tanks like druids do? They could easily stack grace on on multiple tanks if they wanted to. Druids do it in 7 seconds with a 1.5 LB why not the same with priests? I know flash heal is more expensive, so maybe they only have a 2 tank rotaion.
Penance tank 1, shield tank 1, flash heal tank 2, shield tank 2, PoM tank 1, Renew tank 1, Renew tank 2, etc.
Most of the arguments on this thread seem to be centered around healing one tank, but seeing as every class is getting aoe abilities, and the fact that they are adding another tank class. I see there being many more fights with either lots of adds or multiple bosses. So mitigating damage across multiple tanks and raid members will be pretty useful.
I see it this way...
Back before TBC who would have though that Shamans would be using nothing but chain heal? Who would have thought that druids would have been using HT about 2% of the time?

On a side note, the usefulness of GS was equated to Lay on hands. Lay on hands has an hour cooldown and drains all of your mana... Hardly a comparison. Priests just aren't use to having an "oh crap" button like paladins, druids, and shamans have. I imagine once people get used to it 51 point Holy will be pretty common.

 

Ellyh

Given that out main tank regularly get 6-7 seconds avoidance streaks and Grace can crit every second I think that a 20% reduction in shield efficiency is not that unreasonable. PWS is bad for massive RSTS damage as a lot of RSTS is a single big blat of damage that is not followed up for 10-30 or more seconds giving a very high likelihood of getting no or limited mana return for a lot of mana invested. There is a reason that most people don't use it much.

As for the reducing incoming dps with shields argument, good luck on selling that to raids with gimp personal throughput, remember how much grief Ret Pallies suffered trying to justify their inclusion. Constantius is right about the build being a one trick pony and it's blatantly crap for small scale (5-10 man) content where power and throughput rules. The nurfs from alpha - beta were killer and the spec didn't gain anything of power comparable to what was lost and 1/2 of what was gained was also gained for holy. Basically in Alpha people thought a combo of 9% grace and party wide rapture was a combo that made you raid viable. in exchange for a 3% grace nurf and the loss of party mana regen the spec gains 25% mana return on PWS absorption via rapture and the dubious utility of Borrowed time which is a damned poor PvE talent for so deep in the tree. it must be said that it looks fairly strong for PvP where shields are strong.

The reason we aren't discussing healing more than one tank is that to keep 2 stacks up without instants that stack grace is much harder as your stationary while doing so compared to druid mobility. Also priest spells are relatively expensive and will overheal a lot with no way to get mana back. If maintaining the grace stack on 2 tanks was key I would expect a massively down ranked flash heal spamathon interwoven with GH if the tank is taking more damage. Also don't forget that druids get powerful anti spike tools in tree that they can use at need, Disc priests would have a shield and flash spam isn't as efficient as lifebloom at smoothing out damage.

 

constantius

Ya, completely ignoring the raid viability, I'm extremely pumped about trying out full-fledged Disc in arenas. However ... I am slightly concerned about our continued vulnerability to purges. Divine Aegis and Borrowed Time do nothing to help us if they get purged off the instant they land. They need to make PW:S be like Lifebloom -- you purge it, I get healed. Maybe not a full heal, but a partial heal even would help.

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

 

grayrest

I play an Arc Mage, Ret Pally, and Resto Shaman, so I'll refrain from doing Priest theorycrafting and resort to handwaving and speculation.
Both of these situations avoid what I see as the main benefit of the Disc priest: protecting the spirit link. Spirit Link is the largest change in the healing metagame for the talents and abilities as they are currently. In addition to the obvious allowing for aoe heals to be used on tank fights, the dps reduction on a per-target basis allows for much heavier HoT use. Maintaining a link on the tank allows for 3 lifebloom rolls/flourishes from a druid, beacons/sheath of light ticks* from a holy pally, continuous chain heal off the main tank, etc. In any case, the overall HPS of the heal group in this situation shouldn't be the problem. The problem is that if you're relying on it and it goe