Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion. - Page 8

uh...ok · 07/21/08, 6:27 PM

Originally Posted by 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.

I really don't see what about our new talents makes the new Disc any better at Arena than it currently is. It seems to not really have changed at all (from a PvP perspective), at least not compared to the strong PvP-related buffs that many other specs and classes have been receiving.

Edit: To clarify, while the new PWS-related talents are great, the usefulness of PWS in PvP is greatly limited by the Weakened Soul effect, which makes most of the talent boosts we're getting situational at best. It's not clear to me that the intent was to buff the Disc tree for PvP at all.

Nogun · 07/21/08, 6:55 PM

Originally Posted by constantius

Also note that the original version of Emp Heal was 20% to your *healing* -- we actually gain benefit from this talent now that we're dealing with spellpower, since 1.1*1.88 > 1.2.

Heh, I assume the novelty of the "new" stat is getting the worst out me but I can't wrap my head around this statement.
100 Spell power in beta = 188 Healing on live right,
Why would you then say: 1.1*1.88*100 > 1.2*188?
To clarify, you say the changes to Empowered Healing and Spell power/Healing result in an overall improvement to their current situation?

Originally Posted by constantius

GH r9 with 5/5 Spiritual Healing and 5/5 Twin Disciplines:
(4270+(2394*1.05)*1.88*(3/3.5))*1.1= 9152.7

add 5/5 Empowered healing:
(4270+(2394*1.05*1.1)*1.88*(3/3.5))*1.1= 9598.3 (increase of 4.9%)

[e] In your numbers above, you forgot to apply the 86% modifier to your Empowered Healing gains (3/3.5).

If your calculation is correct Empowered healing turns out even worse than what I made it out to be? (last time I looked into it I was pretty sure that 3/3.5 Spell coefficient or down rank tax did not apply to the additional healing gained from Empowered Healing tho).

---------------------------------

Update: Looks like this talent is getting changed again.
Wow-europe.com released WotLK talent trees, I can only assume that these are from a later build than current beta:
World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator
WoW -> Info -> Classes -> Talent Calculators

Empowered Healing is back to 20% GH and 10% FH additional healing gained, Identical to how it's now on live.
Lightwell cooldown also changed back to 6min from 3min in current beta, the duration remains 3min.
I haven't found any other differences with the current Beta talent tree.

On a more in depth review I have to change my mind that this of a newer build than current beta. Improved Shadow Form still gives 100% pushback resistance on the wow-europe.com tree. So either there is a lot of flip-flopping going on with talent changes or these are trees from an old build.

The US version states where differences with beta may originate from:
Talent calculator stats may differ from those seen in the Wrath of the Lich King beta, as they may reflect more current information.

Kaerellen · 07/21/08, 7:46 PM

Originally Posted by Nogun

Update: Looks like this talent is getting changed again.
Wow-europe.com released WotLK talent trees, I can only assume that these are from a later build than current beta:
World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator

Empowered Healing is back to 20% GH and 10% FH additional healing gained, Identical to how it's now on life.
Lightwell cooldown also changed back to 6min from 3min in current beta, the duration remains 3min.
I haven't found any other differences with the current Beta talent tree.

If that's correct, they also took off the +healing aspect of Imp Inner Fire.

Incoherence · 07/21/08, 8:19 PM

Originally Posted by constantius

Empowered Healing : 10% spellpower gain (take your HSE number and multiply by 1.1) only for Greater Heal

Except that's not how Empowered Healing works. Empowered Healing is currently an additive 20% to your GH7 coefficient (not sure how it interacts with the downranking penalty, but for GH7 this is extremely easy to test). From that perspective, even 20% represents a nerf; you'd need it to be roughly 20% * 1.88, or Blizzard would have to define the healing coefficients in some strange way so that the additive effect applies before the healing multiplier.

TheBlindOne · 07/22/08, 1:28 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

Well PSW on the tank is going to be really interesting from a numbers perspective. Depending on the coefficient and base value of the top rank shield you may find that the spell is totally self funding from the 25% absorbed refunded as mana clause in rapture. This is going to be necessary for PWS to be viable as it is currently horribly inefficient to cast pws.

The problem is that I can't see the reflective component being maxed out given that a discipline healer is going to be forced 18 points into holy to maximise gh efficiency and to pick up other essentials such as inspiration. I would assume this build. At this stage I can't see how GH can be left out of any serious Disc healing skill rotation.

Given the various cooldowns on penance 10 secs and the weakened soul debuff 15 secs and not forgetting PoM cooldowns you will need to be casting on a single tank...

Penance. 0 secs - 3 secs
PWS 3 secs - 4 secs (reduce gcd from borrowed time)
Greater heal 4 secs - 6.5 secs
PoM 6.5 secs - 8 secs.
renew. 8 secs- 9.5 secs
random haste gear means that even with latency we still have 1 sec before Penance is up and we need to pad out to the PWS cooldown
Greater heal 9 secs - 11.5 seconds.
Penance 11.5 secs-14.5 seconds
PWS comes off cooldown .5 secs later cast it again... repeat cycle ad nausium.

This gives you a nice rotation of heals that keep grace up and maximises the opportunity for PWS on the tank and also refreshes renew just as it's falling off. I have no idea if this is a viable rotation from the point of view of mana expenditure but it keeps all the essentials on cooldown and maximises the available buffs, PWS, PoM etc.

edit

Damn, grace applying before the armour buff is exactly analogous to the effect of maladiction. This makes the damage reduction part of grace rather bleah as proved by the maladiction experience where it is not really required for most fights.

If the damage reduction is applied before armor then isn't it reducing more? (although either way you cut it it's the same)

Penance alone can keep grace up on a single tank since the cooldown starts at the beginning meaning there are only 7 secs between penance. The 5sr counter also starts at the begining so you can effectively have 5 secs of iFSR and 5 secs oFSR while purely keeping grace up.

I have been attempting to find a nice rotation for keeping grace on 2 tanks 100% but the odd cooldowns of Penance and PWS is making it complex and will prevent good regen.

The current Cooldowns of Shield and Penance makes an awkward rotation especially considering you have to keep grace up which isn't refreshed by the shield.

IMO Grace needs to be 15 secs and be applied using Shield. Using just shield and penance you can keep 100% uptime on 2 tanks who will always be under the effect of weaken soul and have plenty of room for renew/PoM.

edit: spelling.

Havoc12 · 07/22/08, 1:59 AM

Originally Posted by Kortar

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.

I am sorry but the numbers posted in no way justify your conclusions. Maximum HP is not necessarily the most important quality in a tank healer.

I am really curious as to what this 1.24 scaling factor is in your calculations for holy, but I will let it stand for now.

Your calculations fail to integrate overheal, which changes the picture completely. A closer to reality value of crit for holy priests is 0.3% per point. For disc priests is 0.73%, which is more than double. Also you have forgotten PWS.

While overheal of 30% + results in a direct 30% loss from heals, divine aegis, PWS and grace do not overheal.

Read the discussion already posted and you will find that what the discipline priest lacks in raw HPS he more than makes up for it by reducing tank damage by ~20% excluding inspiration.

Taking all that into account you will find that discipline has nothing to be jealous of from holy when it comes to single target HPS. Holy still wins over due to test of faith, and has better mana efficiency, but for healing the tank disc is very competitive.

Disc will be a great spec to have in a few select encounters, where the boss hits just about as hard as he can. The hit timer is immaterial. If a boss hits for truckloads every 2.5 seconds or hits 3 times for the same amount in 2.5 seconds is immaterial.

Even outside those encounters disc is a perfectly viable healer. Not as good as holy but compared with today's disc, which is outperformed by holy in practically everything. Its ofcourse best to wait until bugs are ironed out in the beta and disc priests are actually put to the test, but I have little doubt this will be the case.

If raids want improved spirit, they will eventually figure out that a deep disc priest is actually better than a disc/holy priest, as borrowed time and rapture is the only thing that can outweigh the loss in deep holy talents. At the very least rapture at 1k effective HPS (which is box standard) is 125mp5.

==============================

Originally Posted by TheBlindOne

If the damage reduction is applied before armor then isn't it reducing more? (although either way you cut it it's the same)

Penance alone can keep grace up on a single tank since the cooldown starts at the beginning meaning there are only 7 secs between penance. The 5sr counter also starts at the begining so you can effectively have 5 secs of iFSR and 5 secs oFSR while purely keeping grace up.

I have been attempting to find a nice rotation for keeping grace on 2 tanks 100% but the odd cooldowns of Penance and PWS is making it complex and will prevent good regen.

The current Cooldowns of Shield and Penance makes an awkward rotation especially considering you have to keep grace up which isn't refreshed by the shield.

IMO Grace needs to be 15 secs and be applied using Shield. Using just shield and penance you can keep 100% uptime on 2 tanks who will always be under the effect of weaken soul and have plenty of room for renew/PoM.

edit: spelling.

It makes no difference because its %. Putting first or second gives you exactly the same value. The important bit is that its two separate effects.

Yes the current cooldowns make things a little awkward, but remember that grace has a 8 second duration. Since penance is a 3 second cast and assuming that the current behaviour of the spell is a bug then the cooldown starts ticking while you are casting the spell. That means at the end of the spell with 8 seconds of grace you have 7 seconds left on your penance CD.

Spell rotations including PWS currently mean you get 1 PWS off eery 16 seconds and 1 grace off every 11 seconds. That makes it impossible to maintain grace just by using penance. However you will certainly have to use gheal, so that is not an issue. If penance applies a 3 stack buff, then it wont he a problem to keep grace up on two tanks.

constantius · 07/22/08, 2:01 AM

Oddity: Wowhead reports average GH:7 as 2590. My Spellbook reports it as 2609. It changes as you level, which isn't reported on WoWhead or WoWwiki.

Test: GH7 (no downranking penalty). 5/5 Emp Healing, 5/5 Spiritual Healing, 4-piece T6 bonus on. 2522 HSE.

84 casts, average heal of 6053.

(2609+ 2522*1.2*3/3.5)*1.1*1.05 = 6009
(2609 + 2522*3/3.5 + 2522*0.2)*1.1*1.05 = 6093

Test: GH6 (no downranking penalty). 5/5 Emp Healing, 5/5 Spiritual Healing, 4-piece T6 bonus on. 2522 HSE.

160 casts, average heal of 5714.

(2276 + 2522*1.2*3/3.5)*1.1*1.05 = 5625
(2276 + 2522*3/3.5 + 2522*0.2)*1.1*1.05 = 5708

[e] As a note: don't try to test this crap in Shattrah when the A'dal buff is up. It scales your healing without changing your spellbook or character screen, and really can make you doubt your sanity. Thanks to Kalman for helping me stay sane.

So formal calculation for a Greater Heal is:

[ Base_Level + HSE * Downranking * 3.0 / 3.5 + HSE * 0.2 ] * Spiritual_Coefficient * T6_Coefficient

which is actually something new to me. I haven't seriously looked at Empowered Healing for about a year; when I last did the numbers on it, I think I was running 1800 HSE, and in the testing I did, came to the conclusion that it was

[ Base_Level + HSE * Downranking * 3.0 / 3.5 * 1.2 ] * Spiritual_Coefficient * T6_Coefficient

Good to know.

My comment above that showed an increase was presuming a multiplicative model, which was incorrect.

Conclusion: if the latest Beta push changed the label back to "20%" it's because people are too dumb to realize it's the same as it always was, and complained.

TheBlindOne · 07/22/08, 2:26 AM

Originally Posted by constantius

Good to know.

My point about the spellpower and the 10% number remains, however. Consider this (1300 spell power, 4-piece T6, Emp Healing, and Spiritual Healing):

[ Base_Level + 1300 * 1.88 * 1.0 * 3.0 / 3.5 + 1300 * 0.1 * 1.88 ] * 1.1 * 1.05

Take your spellpower, add 10% of it and make it coefficient free. You end up getting ~ 19% as compared to our present 20%. Hardly a nerf.

My comment above that showed an increase was presuming a multiplicative model, which was incorrect.

Conclusion: if the latest Beta push changed the label back to "20%" it's because people are too dumb to realize it's the same as it always was, and complained. If it's actually 20% of your Spellpower, then there's no 1.88 coefficient being added to the linearly additive portion of the formula. Either way, it's the same thing, +/- 10 HSE.

O_o
ignore the downranking modifier
(Base Heal +(Spellpower*(3/3.5+.1)*1.88*1.05))*1.1
.1*1.88*1.05*1.1
Empowered Healing Contributes .217 Damage per Spellpower

Or if they changed it back to 20%...
(Base +(Spellpower*(3/3.5*1.88+.2)*1.05))*1.1
.2*1.05*1.1
Empowered Healing Contributes .231 Damage per Spellpower

Old way Healing = spellpower *1.88
(base+(Spellpower*1.88)*(3/3.5+.2)*1.05)*1.1
1.88*.2*1.05*1.1
Empowered Healing Contributes .3948 Damage per Spellpower

Thats a nerf. And they would need to increase the talent to get it back to the old way.

Now if the revert back to .2 also included the change in formula then it would be identical to the old empowered healing. (base+(Spellpower)*(3/3.5+.2)1.88*1.05)*1.1

edit: because representing Damage/Attribute as a percent is dumb and confusing I fixed it.

edit2: clarified again.

Ellyh · 07/22/08, 3:13 AM

You can calculate the shields as a incoming dps reduction if you like but I dislike smoothing it out as it it is highly erratic, especially at lower crit values. Short version: you can count grace as consistent damage reduction as it applies to each swing but you will frequently get extended periods 10-15 seconds of constant healing where you get NO crits at all and so you get no Aegis. In this situation you can't calculate Aegis as equivalent to consistent damage reduction because you can't rely on it being there. Instead all you can do is credit it as healing equivalent.

Allow me to explain using the example of boss thrash. This is what kills tanks most of the time.

Assume we have a 22k tank who takes, after armour mitigation, a boss thrash moment of 7000, 10,000 and 7000. This is 24000 damage over less than one second and currently the tank is pushing up daisies.

Grace reduces this to 22560 which is still a dead tank. Under Havocs proposed modelling of Aegis as consistent damage reduction the tank would have lived as on average the shields should have reduced the damage below 22k. However the disc priest cast PWS on the tank 10 seconds ago and hasn't had a crit since then so our poor tank is still smeared over the floor. Do you want the RNG on crit heals to decide if the tank lives?

This is why I don't think it is appropriate to model Aegis/PWS as damage reduction but instead model it as healing done.

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%.

Also the model used supposes that the tank is taking 2.5k dps which even by current standards isn't very high. For a typical endgame tank with 22k life it will take the boss approximately 9 seconds to kill the tank without heals. lets ramp this incoming dps up a bit and see how the damage mitigation model fares there and how much the Aegis and Shield are lowering incoming dps.

Assume the boss has 4.5k incoming dps, add grace, 4230 dps. lets say that you have a 3k shield every 10 seconds for 300 dps reduction to take us to 3930 dps and the 3k PWS every 15 seconds taking us to 3730 incoming dps. 3730/4500 = 82% this is in fact only a 18% damage reduction and I have greatly boosted the assumed efficacy of Aegis to hold the difference down. Using the original numbers it would be 15% damage reduction.

Now lets model patch2.0 for 25 mans and assume the tanks have 30k hp and they are getting smacked down for 6000 incoming dps. Running through the maths we get 87% or a 13% damage reduction. But as shown above your tanks are at grave danger of not getting an Aegis for an extended period and they get maimed.

What we see from this is that the damage mitigation effect of PWS/Aegis/Grace gets smaller and smaller as we ramp up the incoming dps. Thus we can't use damage reduction calculations to justify the power loss as it depends on the situation, the correct way to model it is to call it equivalent healing and compare the throughput.

TheBlindOne · 07/22/08, 3:31 AM

WOTLK TALENT REGEN MECHANICS

Mental Strength/Enlightenment

MS+Enlighten give 1.2075% int and 1.05% Spirit

When plugged into the regen formula sqrt(1.2075)*1.05=1.153%

You will see a 15.3% increase in your regen although this drops down to 9.88% if you are trading SoR for enlightenment.

New Shield Mechanic

This is based on the formula:

MP5=(((BASE+SPELLPOWER(0.3+0.2)*1.88*1.05*1.05)*1.3*1.06*.25-COST*0.9)-BASE)/3

if this is wrong I apologize.

Using the level 70 Shield as a base-

Shield becomes free after 291.8 Spellpower and quickly rises.

1000 - 84.2 MP5
1500 - 143.77 MP5
2000- 203.27 MP5
2500 - 262.7 MP5

Assuming 1500 Spellpower you are gaining 143.77 MP5 per tank since you can cast it on multiple tanks with it's 4 sec cooldown.

1 Tank 143
2 Tanks 287
3 Tanks 431
4 Tanks 575 MP5

This means you are throwing out 4k Absorbs on several tanks each of them giving you a decent chunk of mana back.

Healed:3885
Net Cost: -431 or 143 MP5 Gained
HPM: infinite
HPS:259

Serendipity

Effective Healing=(BASE+SPELLPOWER*(3/3.5+.1)*1.88*1.05)*1.1*0.5
Refund = 0.6*0.85*COST

Using lvl 70 GHeal

2590 Base
825 Cost
1500 Spellpower

Refund=420 every 2.5 Secs 840 MP5
Heal=2928.2
Net Mana Spent=280.5 every 2.5 or 561 MP5
HPM=10.4
HPS=1131.28

Improved Holy Concentration

16% of all Gheals are free ~16% reduction in cost

60% haste on next 3 Gheals=1.5625 sec Heal
Assume 80% uptime Average Cast Time~ 1.75sec

825*.16*.85=112.2 Mana

MP5=70/1.75*5=320.54 MP5

*More to be added later but I'm tired.

Starfire · 07/22/08, 3:32 AM

You know, I feel that anyone going Discipline is just being selfish and wanting an "All in one" sort of heal, pvp/farming spec.

That said, as I was having a discussion with my guildies today... is it really fair to be discussing all this without seeing the encounters?

I mean, think about this... would you ever use CoH on an encounter like Prince? I mean like, ever? Or Chain Heal? Gurgthog said it best... the only reason people think Chain Heal and Circle of Heal are so powerful is because of the encounters.

What if we had more fights like Leothras? Then perhaps Discipline would be the best priest spec possible, with its ability to do damage. Or what about Reliquary of Souls, but with a tighter enrage timer forcing healers to dps for an entire phase.

Maybe this doesn't belong on this thread, but I just think people are getting to worked up without seeing the encounters at hand.

On a side note, am I the only one bothered that Circle of Healing now has a targetting circle =( This sort of disappoints me. I am sure some people might think its cool and nifty... (-peers at some Spirit Whore)... but I rarely even look at the screen to begin with -- I mean to things more than 10 yards away from me.

TheBlindOne · 07/22/08, 3:47 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

You can calculate the shields as a incoming dps reduction if you like but I dislike smoothing it out as it it is highly erratic, especially at lower crit values. Short version: you can count grace as consistent damage reduction as it applies to each swing but you will frequently get extended periods 10-15 seconds of constant healing where you get NO crits at all and so you get no Aegis. In this situation you can't calculate Aegis as equivalent to consistent damage reduction because you can't rely on it being there. Instead all you can do is credit it as healing equivalent.

Allow me to explain using the example of boss thrash. This is what kills tanks most of the time.

Assume we have a 22k tank who takes, after armour mitigation, a boss thrash moment of 7000, 10,000 and 7000. This is 24000 damage over less than one second and currently the tank is pushing up daisies.

Grace reduces this to 22560 which is still a dead tank. Under Havocs proposed modelling of Aegis as consistent damage reduction the tank would have lived as on average the shields should have reduced the damage below 22k. However the disc priest cast PWS on the tank 10 seconds ago and hasn't had a crit since then so our poor tank is still smeared over the floor. Do you want the RNG on crit heals to decide if the tank lives?

This is why I don't think it is appropriate to model Aegis/PWS as damage reduction but instead model it as healing done.

Also the model used supposes that the tank is taking 2.5k dps which even by current standards isn't very high. For a typical endgame tank with 22k life it will take the boss approximately 9 seconds to kill the tank without heals. lets ramp this incoming dps up a bit and see how the damage mitigation model fares there and how much the Aegis and Shield are lowering incoming dps.

Assume the boss has 4.5k incoming dps, add grace, 4230 dps. lets say that you have a 3k shield every 10 seconds for 300 dps reduction to take us to 3930 dps and the 3k PWS every 15 seconds taking us to 3730 incoming dps. 3730/4500 = 82% this is in fact only a 18% damage reduction and I have greatly boosted the assumed efficacy of Aegis to hold the difference down. Using the original numbers it would be 15% damage reduction.

Now lets model patch2.0 for 25 mans and assume the tanks have 30k hp and they are getting smacked down for 6000 incoming dps. Running through the maths we get 87% or a 13% damage reduction. But as shown above your tanks are at grave danger of not getting an Aegis for an extended period and they get maimed.

What we see from this is that the damage mitigation effect of PWS/Aegis/Grace gets smaller and smaller as we ramp up the incoming dps. Thus we can't use damage reduction calculations to justify the power loss as it depends on the situation, the correct way to model it is to call it equivalent healing and compare the throughput.

this may be true but there isn't much a holy priest can do in the same situation unless the priest knows ahead of time when the boss is going to thrash but then the disc priest could throw out a 5k shield or a PS while the Holy priest can use GS. Using the extreme weakness of an ability to prove a the point doesn't show much if holy also cannot thrive under such conditions.

We consider it Mitigation the same way Spell Resist is. Even at Max spell resist you have a chance that the spell will not resist at all in fact you can have a long string of zero resist or low resist. Stoneshield potions are only up a fraction of the time and they are mitigation, as is inspiration. If Aegis was like the druid's Living Seed then it would be a heal. Inconsistent Mitigation is still mitigation.

I would assume as the dps of bosses increase so does the disc priest's crit/Spellpower.

constantius · 07/22/08, 3:54 AM

Originally Posted by TheBlindOne

O_o
ignore the downranking modifier
(Base Heal +(Spellpower*(3/3.5+.1)*1.88*1.05))*1.1
21.7%

Or if they changed it back to 20%...
(Base +(Spellpower*(3/3.5*1.88+.2)*1.05))*1.1
23.1%

Old way Healing = spellpower *1.88
(base+(Spellpower*1.88)*(3/3.5+.2)*1.05)*1.1
39.48%

Thats a nerf. And they would need to increase the talent to get it back to the old way.

You're basing an incredible amount ("a nerf") off of some labeling. They're not going to massively nerf Empowered Healing. In fact, they haven't ... so far. Until we get in and test it, I'm assuming that at the end of the day, no matter what the label reads on the talent (10%, 20%, etc), the end result is that we get ~ HSE*0.2. Whether that means Spellpower*0.38 or Spellpower*1.88*0.2 or whatever you want, it's not going to be a huge nerf.

Also, your numbers aren't particularly clear. Where did you get 39.48% from?

Ellyh · 07/22/08, 4:06 AM

No there isn't anything that the holy priest can do to prevent it. However it does speak directly to the argument that Disc is providing great utility by reducing incoming boss dps. I don't call it utility if it only helps in a bad situation if your are lucky enough to get a big crit just before the bad situation occurs. It also undermines the argument that encounters are based about the presence of this big damage mitigation ability. People would rightly complain if boss burst was designed about a best case mitigation scenario.

On a different note if the new talent calculators are true they have reverted all the decent changes to lightwell and it is back to break on direct damage and 6 mins cooldown so It gets added back to the meh pile.

Finkum · 07/22/08, 4:16 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

On a different note if the new talent calculators are true they have reverted all the decent changes to lightwell and it is back to break on direct damage and 6 mins cooldown so It gets added back to the meh pile.

I'm 95% certain that they have just forgotten to update some of the existing talents (see: VT still returning 5% of your dps as mana, for example).

Edit:

Originally Posted by Starfire

On a side note, am I the only one bothered that Circle of Healing now has a targetting circle =( This sort of disappoints me. I am sure some people might think its cool and nifty... (-peers at some Spirit Whore)... but I rarely even look at the screen to begin with -- I mean to things more than 10 yards away from me.

This is news to me. If true, this certainly does make CoH slightly more cumbersome to use (like Mass Dispel right now). It also means that you can't use CoH with Grid/Clique, as I do currently. In its favor it does mean that you can position it more effectively (if that's an issue what with smart targeting and whatnot).

Palendior · 07/22/08, 4:26 AM

One minor note on Disc: If Disc will be highly dependent on PW:S for it's rotations, it means that it will scale badly with crit.

Due to the gear homogenization that will take place, Blizzard have been working to make all specs and all classes have use for stats such as crit. Hence itemization will make these stats appear more frequently on gear intended for priests.

Thus, if Disc scales badly with crit, it will mean Disc will have a scaling problem (similar to Aff locks and shadow priests in TBC) as we progress through the tiers. Won't be class breaking, but might mean that Disc priests will less viable towards Arthas after being invaluable at Patchwerk.

If CoH will require a targetting circle that will definitely be the nail in the coffin for that spell as it means it will not, in effect, be "instant" (in a meaningful way). (Healers really need to be able to heal in a 360 degrees around them, not just the area their GUI is facing, aside from the problem with not being able to use Grid/Clique). I'd rather not panic about this until I see it confirmed though

Ellyh · 07/22/08, 4:35 AM

A targeting circle is totally redundant, you just pick someone in the middle of the pack and fire it off, I guess they are coding it to literally target the 5 eligible players with the greatest HP deficit but they should have continued on the CH model and had an initial target +4 others at lowest health. A targeting circle easily double the effective GCD of the spell as it is so freaking unwieldy.

Havoc12 · 07/22/08, 4:44 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

You can calculate the shields as a incoming dps reduction if you like but I dislike smoothing it out as it it is highly erratic, especially at lower crit values. Short version: you can count grace as consistent damage reduction as it applies to each swing but you will frequently get extended periods 10-15 seconds of constant healing where you get NO crits at all and so you get no Aegis. In this situation you can't calculate Aegis as equivalent to consistent damage reduction because you can't rely on it being there. Instead all you can do is credit it as healing equivalent.

Allow me to explain using the example of boss thrash. This is what kills tanks most of the time.

Assume we have a 22k tank who takes, after armour mitigation, a boss thrash moment of 7000, 10,000 and 7000. This is 24000 damage over less than one second and currently the tank is pushing up daisies.

Grace reduces this to 22560 which is still a dead tank. Under Havocs proposed modelling of Aegis as consistent damage reduction the tank would have lived as on average the shields should have reduced the damage below 22k. However the disc priest cast PWS on the tank 10 seconds ago and hasn't had a crit since then so our poor tank is still smeared over the floor. Do you want the RNG on crit heals to decide if the tank lives?

This is why I don't think it is appropriate to model Aegis/PWS as damage reduction but instead model it as healing done.

Also the model used supposes that the tank is taking 2.5k dps which even by current standards isn't very high. For a typical endgame tank with 22k life it will take the boss approximately 9 seconds to kill the tank without heals. lets ramp this incoming dps up a bit and see how the damage mitigation model fares there and how much the Aegis and Shield are lowering incoming dps.

Assume the boss has 4.5k incoming dps, add grace, 4230 dps. lets say that you have a 3k shield every 10 seconds for 300 dps reduction to take us to 3930 dps and the 3k PWS every 15 seconds taking us to 3730 incoming dps. 3730/4500 = 82% this is in fact only a 18% damage reduction and I have greatly boosted the assumed efficacy of Aegis to hold the difference down. Using the original numbers it would be 15% damage reduction.

Now lets model patch2.0 for 25 mans and assume the tanks have 30k hp and they are getting smacked down for 6000 incoming dps. Running through the maths we get 87% or a 13% damage reduction. But as shown above your tanks are at grave