[Priest] Holy WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 2

kalbear · 07/15/08, 1:54 PM

I have used lightwell in every instance from the sunken temple to the first couple of bosses in karazhan and I know from practice just how nonsensical people's objection to lighwell are.

Are you seriously rating how good lightwell is by its effectiveness in Attumen and Moroes? I don't want to sound condescending, but until you've done some healing in larger raids I'm not sure that you can make reasonable, informed comparisons.

Lightwell is at best situationally useful. While DPS doesn't have to stop DPSing, they do have to go get to that lightwell. They have to not be taking any damage during the heal. They have to already have been damaged. It is basically a very limited, static healthstone with the biggest problem being that other healers will react to people being that far down and heal anyway.

Celillenna · 07/15/08, 2:14 PM

Originally Posted by kalbear

Are you seriously rating how good lightwell is by its effectiveness in Attumen and Moroes? I don't want to sound condescending, but until you've done some healing in larger raids I'm not sure that you can make reasonable, informed comparisons.

Lightwell is at best situationally useful. While DPS doesn't have to stop DPSing, they do have to go get to that lightwell. They have to not be taking any damage during the heal. They have to already have been damaged. It is basically a very limited, static healthstone with the biggest problem being that other healers will react to people being that far down and heal anyway.

Yeah, it's not terribly effective in a lot of the larger raids, which have "RSTS says heal or die!" mechanics. On say Gorefiend the other healers aren't going to exactly wait to heal you up, since you might get blasted down.

When I had it it was mostly just dropped by the warlocks to power lifetap. Sometimes I used it to heal myself.

Ellyh · 07/15/08, 3:01 PM

Havoc, If you found lightwell useful that's great. However you must be blessed with the most amazing dps players on earth. I had it for over 2 months once and Despite being in vent with players that don't suck it was totally wasted In 5 mans, guild battlegrounds, Kara and SSC. I don't believe that a talent that requires hours of training other people to use and which they don't use even while yelling at them is a good talent. It is a classic example of "good on paper, bad in practice" that just won't work in a live situation.

In those 2+ months it made a difference a grand total of once. That was on shade of aran where he was down to 3% when he drank and blew up the raid killing me and the other healers, but the warrior/druid/rogues were able to use it to burn down the last 3% and kill him. but that was only possible because of the unique design of the fight, a more regular boss would have wiped them out or been killed under shield wall.

The fact that you have not used it beyond the first 2 bosses in Kara sadly does count as one of those, come back once you've been there situations. Holy nova is more useful (and fun) than lightwell in these raids and in almost every 5 man I've been on. One reason its such a bad 5man talent is that priests already have awesome group healing spells so why the hell do we need a static uncontrollable bandage dispenser, a pally might find it a useful addition to his 5 man arsenal but for priests why bother.

Iluminati · 07/15/08, 4:24 PM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

I hear these arguments a lot not *one* of them is valid is any way whatsoever.

*lightwell stuff*

Gonna have to agree 100% here. Since it only breaks on direct damage only it's incredibly powerful. Imagine it on Felmyst or Twins? No movement required, instant application, MASSIVE heal. If you and your raid cant figure out how to appropriately use lightwell, you're doing it wrong.

minorthreat · 07/15/08, 4:31 PM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

As for the 51 talent, I think rather than being purely an oh shit button, its going to be a counter for mobs with one-shot abilities.

I could see using this in New Naxx during the Razuvious encounter if there are any bad Mind Control breaks.

MavSteele · 07/15/08, 4:54 PM

Since Havoc12 is wearing the Tidewalker ring in his PvP set, the "LOLKARA" comments are probably misguided.

Either way, since this is a WotLK preview thread, I think it's more important to look at Lightwell in the context of the listed changes, rather than point out its failings as currently formulated. For my raids, the breaks on damage component has always been the limiting factor. In T5 content, when AoE was more predictable or avoidable, I actually found Lightwell to be much more useful. In T6/SWP, though, the random and frequent raid damage has made Lightwell all but unusable.

The three biggest complaints I see about Lightwell is that some raid healer would heal that damage anyway, it requires DPS to think about healing themselves which shouldn't be their job, and that it breaks on damage. Frankly, I would love to be a part of a T6/SWP progression raid where there was so much healing going around that there is no way an extra source of healing would ever be useful. I'm thinking of learning Bloodboil and throwing down a Lightwell for a group that got hit by a Fel Geyser, so that I can focus on the Fel Rage tank, etc. Another more recent example would be to drop a lightwell for the melee on Kalecgos right before I jump down for a portal phase.

As far as DPS not being willing or capable of healing themselves, I just can't agree. Already we expect DPS to healthstone and bandage; unless your Lightwell placement is really terrible, it would be less of a DPS loss to grab the Lightwell than it would be to stop and bandage yourself. If the choice is between dying to unavoidable raid AoE damage or grabbing a HoT from the Lightwell, I'd imagine most DPS would choose the latter.

Of course all of this assumes that "breaks on direct damage" really means a targeted hit from a mob/boss; if it really just means periodic effects (i.e. DoTs and bleeds) then it's still only marginally useful in heavy AoE encounters.

Beyond the changes to Lightwell, I think the changes to the holy tree seem to fit with Blizzard's overall goal of increasing the decision making that players need to make. A lot of the talents that Blizzad is adding with WotLK seem to favor a much more reactive style of play with lots more proc effects that will require the player to focus on effects much more than DPS cycles. For example the moonkin and destro lock talents that have a chance to increase damage from the opposite school for a short time, or the warrior talent that has a chance to proc a free shield slam on devastate and shield slam hits. The cooldown on CoH, combined with the increased clearcasting seem to indicate that Blizzard wants raid healing to be more interactive for us; PoM, Renew, Flash Heal, PW:S, PoH are all things that can be done while CoH is on CD. Combined with druid's Flourish spell which will provide a stabilizing effect while CoH is on CD, there should be plenty of raid healing power that requires a more interactive style of play.

Roywyn · 07/15/08, 6:18 PM

Stuff about Lightwell

As a caster, I use health stones/potions (not used one for a long while for obvious reasons) when I:
1) drop low from several spikes or
2) have DoTs ticking on me
so that if I get unlucky with another 1-2 random hits I'm likely to die.

In case 1) I get healed in a few seconds, I pot/stone to survive if I get hit again in 2-3 seconds.
(Running to and) clicking the Lightwell wouldn't help my survival in the immediate 2-3 seconds, which is pretty much my only concern. After 4-5 seconds, I expect to get topped up and wait for the next spike.

In case 2) Lightwell can become useful when it won't break on DoTs. Bloodboil, perhaps Doomfire and Agonising Flames and maybe Burn healing with good positioning.
Due to how important mobility, positioning and spreading out is in many fights, I can only see a good use on Bloodboil.
And since everyone takes slow damage there, death to spikes is not really issue.

What I'd like to see as experiment is making Lightwell like a Soulwell. Click it for a [Goblet of Light] that you can use to HoT yourself.

I don't know if people would use them more often, but it gives them the option to always use it right when they want to, without running and losing time.
That could get people get used to the spell and like, or show that it's not very useful.

Edit: Illidan's Burst+Demon=>Human-shifts are not bad for lightwell. I just bandage up there, a burst is 3.3k or so - it's the only fight I've done in a long time where bandages are kind of useful. Melee usually can badage as well since they have to stand of range during his phase transition speech.
Lightwell is certainly nice there, but just saves a bandage. There is also is no danger for the raid, no spikes, no damage at all, so nobody would have died it would have been healed easily.

I'm not trying to bash Lightwell, but I can't see it prevent deaths, and it's not useful for 11/14 BT/HS bosses (and 5/6 SP bosses?).

Sinndir · 07/15/08, 6:50 PM

I disagree with Lightwell being conceptually flawed.

I think it is a great idea with, currently, poor limitations. The changes proposed so far in WotLK are awesome. You cannot tell me that if a lightwell is on top of your melee DPS or near a few caster DPS/Huntards that they would not spend the fraction of brain power to click it, it interrupts nothing. If they wouldn't, then I'm afraid they are just silly.

You want a very good use for lightwell, how about when Illidan is ending demon phase and starting to come back to the other phase. Your DPS has to run to him to attack right, well if a lightwell (positioned wisely) is between Illidan and them they can click it on the run and heal up before going back in. It's a stronger bandage on the run that is instant cast, and if you tell me your DPS has never bandaged, fire them now.

Ellyh · 07/15/08, 8:51 PM

Even with the new changes there are some major issues with lightwell as I see it.

1. Low availability, 10 charges every 5 minutes with max 3 mins uptime = 60% availability at best. Much less if people are using it. Unlike bandages/pots/stones the dps don't know if it's there unless you have parked it directly in thier field of view. On busy fights the last thing you are looking at is the floor to see if a small glowing bandage dispensor is there.

2. Unreliability: if it's not reliably there people are reluctant to use it won't remember to use it, can't rely on it when needed.

3. positioning is far far harder than it sounds. People say it should be good for illidan but the whole point of that fight is that people are spread the hell out so do you want people running accross your raid to get a bandage level heal?

Finally there is a gameplay aesthetic problem with the talent. X1 talents are designed to do somthing active. You turn into a tree, surround someone with a globe of energy that prevents much of the damage they would take or hit them upside the head so hard that healing becomes innefective. In each of these cases using your X1 ability produces some immediate and profound effect to yourself or others. Lightwell simply drops a glowing blob on the ground that "May" do somthing if another player can be bothered to play well. This is not exactly stimulating from the priests point of view. Think about it, if you swapped lightwell and Prayer of Mending people wouldn't complain nearly as much and just write lightwell of as an underpowerd gimic spell. By making it an X1 talent people gain heightened expectations of it.

Iluminati · 07/15/08, 8:55 PM

(Running to and)

What is this running to crap? Are your priests that terrible that they drop lightwells randomly? No, you drop it right in the middle of everybody. And bandage level? It's 2x as strong as a bandage and you dont have to channel it.

To be clear: Lightwell is basically useless right now, but with the proposed changes it becomes very powerful.

Anyway: I really like all the changes. my one concern is that there are so many good talents at the bottom of both trees. Ideally I'd like to get mental agility in any holy build and that'd very hard/impossible with all the "good" stuff at the bottom of holy. With level 70 spell costs but the projected cooldown on coh, if you cast pom/coh on every cooldown, cast at least 1 renew every 15 seconds, it's about 15 mp/5. Adding in a few more renews every once in a while (2nd tank, "burn" / raid healing), any shields, dispels...it gets better but not by much. So if it came down to it I think I could live without it.

Pyros · 07/15/08, 10:03 PM

Even if you drop it in the "middle" of everyone, people will still have to run to it, barring very specific fights, such as reliquary and so on. Most bosses have mechanics that prevent players from staying all together. Either it's a 2group fight, with melee near the boss and everyone else far from the boss, or it's a spread out fight with everyone at least 5y away from each other, with the melees stacked, or it's a move around a lot fight with multiple phases. While there's some optimum placement for a lightwell, in the end, unless you drop it on the boss and the boss isn't moving, so melees are always in range of it, there will be running, and by the time you reach the lightwell, you'll be lucky if a random heal didn't hit you. Even if it didn't, then you have to wait for lightwell to tick, which accentuates the time where you will not be at max hp, which will usually get healers to target you.

It's a good idea on paper, but really not practical. On a lot of fights you can't even have your people bandaging, because you lose too much DPS for enrage timers when they exist, and the mana healers save from that lifebloom is easily lost by the additional time it will take for the boss to die. Let alone run around to pickup a bandage effect, unless the lightwell is right on top of them. Again, placement issues and so on, only work on very few fights.

One good change would be to make lightwell healing instant. You hit the sunwell, you get an instant heal, you can't interact with it for 30s-1min anymore. At least that should prevent people from healing you even though you have the sunwell effect on(without having to config grid to display it and hope a random spell effect won't break it). Maybe have the lightwell leave an AE healing effect once it's been consumed.

Definitely better than what it is now, but still not quite there.

Bjork · 07/15/08, 10:37 PM

They (finally!) make Lightwell a viable talent when it only breaks on direct damage. In Sunwell it's totally useless (guess you can heal the AoE on Kalec with Lightwell, but that's about it?) because of constant damage going on. As someone already mentioned, Lightwell can now counter predictable dot-dmg ("everyone who gets curse use a Lightwell charge") and become a useful tool in raiding. Only use I've had from Lightwell in TBC was when doing 5 man content. Then I could use the Lightwell myself and knowing that I would be healed up while focusing on the tank, saving a GCD or mana during the boss fight.

My first impression of all the new stuff is that deep disc will become mandatory in raids, which makes me a bit sad. If I understand it correctly Grace will buff the target (tank, I guess) with 9% less damage taken and 9% more healing taken when fully stacked. If we (again) are forced into a "gimp" spec to provide a needed buff instead of going full out in Holy I will be very disappointed.

Deep holy looks too good to be true. Hard to say anything without seeing any content, but it looks like mana management will be a joke compared to what it is today (it's already easy after 2.4). I don't like it if they make us into spambots that don't need to worry about mana, it will trivialize the class. After seeing new skills and talents it should be safe to say that priests stay king of 5 man healing at least. Question is how this will play out in raids where synergy and buffs play a larger role.

Anedris · 07/15/08, 10:41 PM

Serendipity is amazing. It will put you in the FSR if the spell you cast cost you mana (because you spend the mana and then it is refunded to you), but if the spell was free (due to clearcasting or IF) it will not put you in FSR (but you will almost certainly still get mana back).

Improved holy concentration is amazing. This is not "unreliable haste" - look at the uptime estimates above. This one has to be nerfed, probably both the haste portion and the proc chance. Due to the way our mechanics work (FSR), a 16% chance to proc a free heal, even without the haste, is going to make it really hard to run out of mana when healing intelligently with gheal, flash heal, and binding heal.

Mark of divinity is amazing. You can't say "you overheal 50% so it's only a 15% increase" - if I overheal 50%, then 15% is 30% of my total effective healing. The only situation where this is less than a 30% throughput increase is where you are forced to heal other targets when the marked target is topped off - which will happen, but even as *only* a 15% increase... we get a 15% throughput increase trainable.

My overwhelming impression of the deep holy tree is brokenly powerful. Especially given that the 51-point talent is actually kind of weak (it's okay, functions kind of like NS in that it saves one 8-10k hit on a hard-hitting boss, so it's effectively a panic heal for 8-10k in such a situation), I would expect holy concentration to see tuning. Mark of divinity, though not holy-specific, is also in its presently understood format way out of line unless they intend to return us to our pre-BC position as healing gods (well, we *are* priests, but still...).

Lightwell - making it not break on direct damage is a good step. Giving it more charges is a good step (although I would really prefer they either make it unlimited charges or remove the cooldown on the spell... it's dumb that I have an extremely situational spell and I can't even use it more than once or twice per fight). Making it be unable to overwrite itself would be good. The big problem though is that it's a HoT. I get that they don't want tanks using it, but as long as it remains a HoT, unless they make it absurdly powerful, it's always going to be marginal because 99% of the healing it does is going to be healing that someone else could have done.

For example on Bloodboil, it can heal one entire bloodboil DoT... but someone else has to heal the next 24, so your raid has to be capable of healing a bloodboil without it. If there was an encounter where healer mana was actually a factor it might be different, but as it is long cooldown heals are only really useful when they have some benefit when things go wrong - a HoT that people have to think in order to use is not going to be what you need in such a situation.

I can think of one encounter where it would be pretty nice, though - Loetheb. (Assuming you had at least one extra healer not needed for keeping the tank up.)

Havoc12 · 07/15/08, 10:48 PM

This is not a thread about LW alone so I will be brief

@kalwell: L2 use armoury mate. I dropped LW after the first two bosses in kara, which was back in patch 2.1. Its too underpowerd to raid with. Lightwell needs 2 things to become a worthy 31 pointer either (A) remove the break on damage mechanic or (B) completely remove CD. Blizzard has opted with a version of (A)

@ellyh: In 5mans lightwell is well worth the talent point even now, especially at low gear levels, because fights are v short compared to CD and you are the only healer so you can minimise overheal. It does save you a lot of mana. True you might not need it past a certain gear level, but it does make some encounters much easier e.g. 2nd boss in Sh Labs, 1st boss in SV, Serpenthea in Mecha. In raids its not worth it because in long fights with more healers and more unpredictable damage, it just heals too little due to the CD. One of our priests did spec into it just as we started MH against my advice, so we have seen LW in use at the endgame content. The stats say LW is worth 10-12k healing on average every 6 minutes. Compare it with inner focus a tier 3 talent (2x free spells in the same time).

@Mavsteele: All it takes is a little preparation and forward thinking. A perfect example using the current lightwell is FLK Caribdis. You can have the ranged interrupt heal themselves via lightwell and make this completely trivial to heal (No it was not my lightwell, I have not had it since patch 2.1).

The WotLK changes assuming it means the HoT wont break on dot/aoe damage will certainly result in *much* greater returns from LW. This should make the talent worthwhile, but I suppose it remains to be seen.

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

@ Kortar, although the new holy priests talents are also good for raid healing, they are even better for MT healing. Priests in the new expansion will be more proficient in MT healing than they are now (and that says a lot).

IHC currently gives you 20% haste for 20 seconds. 16% is on average 1 in 5 spells. With 20% haste from gear and 20% haste from IHC you are looking at 1.79 second gheals. That is at least 10 gheals per IHC. A priest MT healer will spam downrank gheal coupled with a max rank every 10 seconds to proc serendipity and is certain to keep the buff up at least 82% of the time.

I am pretty sure that serendipity will refund the cost of the spell regardless of mana cost reduction items/abilities. A current example is illumination. It returns 60% of the unmodified cost even when the paladin uses their 50% mana cost talent, so that crits actually give the pally mana back.

The idea that low overheal is the mark of a good healer is foolish. Serendipity does not reward bad play, it rewards only very skilled healers, who can juggle the cooldown without wasting their mana.

I dont understand how people can underestimate guardian spirit so much. Your tank has heals channelled on him pretty much at all times and healers ready to react with instants in case he drops low. Its practically guaranteed that if your tank survives a killing blow due to GS he will have heals landing on him before the mob can land another hit. Yet GS is even more important for saving DPS from being one shot or from deadly RST abilities. Also remember that if the killing blow is absorbed then the target will take no damage. If your target took a 10k hit and has 8k HP he will have 8k HP after the hit. Better GS also has a healing component. IF you have the equivalent of 2k healing and it scales 100% than you are looking at 1k ticks every 2 secfonds. That is a pretty powerfull HoT. So the fact that you take a GCD to land cost you a effectively nothing in HPS terms. Even better you can follow GS up real quick with PWS/PoM, to give other healers even more time to land big heals. GS is the imba long CD Oh Shit button priests were missing.

If there are fights like Kael in TK, then GS is brokenly imba. It can completely negate a 50k pyro. Also think of a fight where the boss uses a very high damamge ability on a short timer. Such an encounter would require that your tank HP be kept high at all times. GS reduces gib chance because even if the tank gets low enough to be in gib range once, you can save it with GS.

I think GS would greatly simplify some fights. A simple example from the current content is the big bad wolf. GS would guarantee that the first red riding hood survives, which reduces your wipe chance quite drastically, by guaranteeing a certain amount of free DPS time before you actually start losing people. Less time spent learning, more time spent looting. Also think of fights like gruul or maiden, where there is a period of predictable silence. GS can easily buy your raid a good chunk of extra DPS time. Think of a fight with a short enrage timer. GS can buy your raid precious few seconds after you hit the enrage timer.

You can't put a price tag on an ability like that.

Originally Posted by Bjork

My first impression of all the new stuff is that deep disc will become mandatory in raids, which makes me a bit sad. If I understand it correctly Grace will buff the target (tank, I guess) with 9% less damage taken and 9% more healing taken when fully stacked. If we (again) are forced into a "gimp" spec to provide a needed buff instead of going full out in Holy I will be very disappointed.

I think you will find that a lot of ppl will be ecstatic to take the "gimp" spec spot due to the improved PvP performance of disc.

Originally Posted by Pyros

Even if you drop it in the "middle" of everyone, people will still have to run to it, barring very specific fights, such as reliquary and so on. Most bosses have mechanics that prevent players from staying all together. Either it's a 2group fight, with melee near the boss and everyone else far from the boss, or it's a spread out fight with everyone at least 5y away from each other, with the melees stacked, or it's a move around a lot fight with multiple phases. While there's some optimum placement for a lightwell, in the end, unless you drop it on the boss and the boss isn't moving, so melees are always in range of it, there will be running, and by the time you reach the lightwell, you'll be lucky if a random heal didn't hit you. Even if it didn't, then you have to wait for lightwell to tick, which accentuates the time where you will not be at max hp, which will usually get healers to target you.

It's a good idea on paper, but really not practical. On a lot of fights you can't even have your people bandaging, because you lose too much DPS for enrage timers when they exist, and the mana healers save from that lifebloom is easily lost by the additional time it will take for the boss to die. Let alone run around to pickup a bandage effect, unless the lightwell is right on top of them. Again, placement issues and so on, only work on very few fights.

One good change would be to make lightwell healing instant. You hit the sunwell, you get an instant heal, you can't interact with it for 30s-1min anymore. At least that should prevent people from healing you even though you have the sunwell effect on(without having to config grid to display it and hope a random spell effect won't break it). Maybe have the lightwell leave an AE healing effect once it's been consumed.

Definitely better than what it is now, but still not quite there.

Your objections have already been addressed and for the last time no, DPS dont have to move to use lightwell. Its not rocket science. If they are close enough to use it without moving they use it. If they are not close enough they *just dont* use it. Lightwell is there to save you some mana, not replace you as a healer

Shan · 07/16/08, 8:21 AM

Personally I can only agree with what has been said about lightwell being flawed at concept level. I just don't see it fitting in. It's possible to get some use out of it but it feels awkward and doesn't make any tangible difference in practice.