[Priest] Holy WotLK Talent Preview / Discussion - Page 4

Thorongil · 07/17/08, 10:18 AM

Havoc, concerning balancing encounters around skills of specific classes: You missed to see the important distinction Ellyh is making. There is a difference between balancing the encounters around abilities of certain classes and balancing them around high-tier skills. Many encounters are balanced around specific abilities (Illidan + shield block, RoS + Spellreflect, etc...). If Blizzard wouldn´t balance specific encounters around specific classes/abilities they would hardly be able to come up with more than, say 10 encounters that differ significantly from each other.

On the other hand I can not think of an encounter that is balanced around 31 or 41-point talents of a specific class. Of course, the skills make encounters easier, but it is not mandatory to bring the one specific talent without which you could not beat the encounter. You have to differ between skills like GS, Pain Suppression or upcoming Grace and abilities like Blessings, Bubble, Ice Block etc...

From what we know until now it seems Blizzard aims to drastically reduce stacking of equally talented players in 25-mans by giving many speccs very viable utilities deep down in the tree. At least, great diversity in speccs seems to get rewarded much stronger than stacking.

Brinas · 07/17/08, 11:16 AM

Lightwell:
The only reason pugs don't know how to use it is because they never SEE it. In its current implementation, it sucks, but saying something sucks cause people don't use it, imo, is a bad argument. Do healthstones suck because people forget to click it? I think that with any new ability like that, there is a time frame that people have to learn to use it properly, but once they do, it becomes valuable. Healthstones aren't useful in every situation, only ones where you have time to react to the damage. If you pull aggro in a 5 man a healthstone won't always save you, and neither will lightwell. I really think that currently lightwell is caught in a rut because it's an ability that people have to be used to thinking about. The way it's currently implemented, it could only be useful in certain situations. People don't use it in those situations because they're not used to thinking about it. Lightwell's viability will be totally dependent on whether or not is is helpful in enough fights that people will remember that it's an option.
As far as wording, I see "direct damage" as meaning anything that would kill a totem, so dots and aoe's won't break it.

Guardian Spirit:
This is basically the priest Nature's swiftness. They're both on a 3 minute cooldown. GS is hard to time just right, and so is NS. Just because the "cheat death" didn't proc doesn't mean the ability is wasted though. You still get 6420 base healing. My guess is there will be higher ranks as well. 6420 healing over 10 seconds at lvl 60 is more than a priest's full health bar (and probably a lvl 60's tank's hps when you include the +healing bonus). And since you will be using it when the tank (or anyone for that matter) gets low, after GCD you will get the Test of Faith bonus to help get that person back up in health. One question would be if Test of Faith affects healing done by the GS. I would guess not, but would be cool if it did.

Mark of Divinity:
My belief is that the concept behind this ability is meant to be "healing done to anyone other than the target of mark of divinity" and I'm guessing it will be reworded to that sometime during beta. I see it as basically a way of not falling behind on tank healing when you have to spot heal someone, or help on tank healing when you're assigned to raid heals. Although, imagine MoD on a BE ret paladin or a warlock.

Iluminati · 07/17/08, 12:24 PM

Originally Posted by Thorongil

Illuminati, how do you come to the conclusion of 36 mp5? To me, this sounds like a very conservative estimation.

I´ll try to math out the most extreme example:

GH9:
Heals for 3950 to 4590 (average of 4270)
Assuming 2.200 +heal (easily obtainable raid-buffed, even now) would equate to: 4.270 + (2.200/3,5*3) = 6.155

6.155 * 2,5 % = 153 mana per cast (every 2,5 seconds) equating to roughly 300 mp5 when spamming GH9.

Note that this assumption is based on untalented spells and does not take spell crit into consideration. Also, the value of 2.200 +heal will be easily obtained at lvl80 thus values of 350 - 400 mp5 return from Rapture in a raid-buffed environment should be possible when spamming GH9. Of course, you won´t want to spam max-heal GHs most of the time, I simply tried to show the theoretical potential of Rapture, which is quite high in my opinion.

As I said, I was using level 70 +healing values (I spammed some Gheal 3 on myself at a 2.2 second cast for about 3000 per cast). Thank you for that math though, I have very little knowledge of the new ranks, etc. of spells in WOTLK.

Crosshairs · 07/17/08, 4:36 PM

I have Lightwell as an option in my healing toolbox.

I have found it is most helpful to use on myself. I know when to use it, and when I want to use it. Once in awhile other people will use it. Sometimes I put it in front of warlocks who use it after life tapping in 10 mans.

The biggest problem I had was that the aoe damage can be dot side affects. So I still need to go around and top people off as the lightwell is useless in that situation. However, now when I get a poiston dot, I can use light well and continue on.

I give it 2 thumbs up on the changes.

Sinndir · 07/18/08, 1:57 AM

Even more changes for us:

Circle of Healing (Holy): Now works on any targets in the caster's raid, and is now a "smart" heal and chooses the lowest health targets to heal first within it's range. Also now has a 6 second cooldown. Also no longer will heal summoned Snakes from Hunter's Snake Trap.

Lightwell (Holy): Cast time reduced to .5 sec, down from 1.5 sec. Charges increased to 10, up from 5. Now breaks from any attack that hits you for 30% or more of your total health. Cooldown reduced to 3 minutes, down from 5.

Ellyh · 07/18/08, 3:12 AM

I still don't like the mechanic from an aesthetic point of view but the new lightwell does now look worth investing one point into. Requiring a 30% total life hit to break it makes it good for tanks in a lot of situations as well now.

Vihermaali · 07/18/08, 3:40 AM

30% of 23k hp (tank) = 6900hp
30% of 10k hp (normal raid member) = 3000hp.

Places where a random raid member gets hit by over 3k dmg in SINGLE hit are quite limited. The 30% hp change should make lightwell quite usable, including the more damage heavy raid encounters. Even tanks should be able to use it, up to a point. The whole "here, heal yourself" -concept of lightwell is quite fun (remember all those random people at official forums claiming "no skill is required"? Well, then you have no excuse for not using this)! At level 70, Lightwell would heal almost 5000hp with single hot, which is quite nice amount.

"Why use over normal heals?"
-People who you are moving away from (heal yourself with this while I'm away)
-Too many targets to heal by yourself (pre-emptively cast this)
-Cheating 5-second rule
-Lifetap warlocks
-Order target to click it when <thing x> happens, for Yet Another Hot

First ones that come to my mind.

Main problem with this heal is that most people don't know how it works, but at least in guilds it will get fixed over time.

Finkum · 07/18/08, 4:06 AM

Originally Posted by Vihermaali

Places where a random raid member gets hit by over 3k dmg in SINGLE hit are quite limited.

While the 30% change is an improvement I think you underestimate the magnitude of many endgame RSTS/environmental AoE effects (e.g. Najentus' Needle Spine is ~3.5k, Supremus volcanoes is ~4.5k per tick, IC flamestrike/blizzard are ~5k). Those that are less than 3k are, funnily enough, typically DoT type mechanics (Impaling Spines, Incinerates, Bloodboil etc).

It's clear that Blizzard are trying to increase the effectiveness of Lightwell without entirely removing the breaks-on-damage limitation, but they aren't quite there yet.

On a different note, the shaman totem WoA change (10% constant haste) sounds somewhat overpowered - imagine a 10% raid-wide crit buff - and it will in turn boost IHC uptime even more than previously estimated.

Havoc12 · 07/18/08, 6:58 AM

GS - GS healing should certainly be affected by test of faith. I was including that in my calculations. That is why I said before even if the proc is not used up, the spell is still very powerfull because its instant meaning you will often catch it on test of faith, giving you an even larger return. Especially if the tank has grace or tree aura on, its going to be a great deal of healing. If mark of divinity works even if the person buffed is the person healed, then GS will return a very large amount of healing.

As for not balancing encounters around high tier talents, there are plenty of encounters out there balanced around CoH and improved chain heal. Also how about leotheras. Certainly balanced around having an SL/SL warlock. How about kael, although the fight is doable without shield wall, a high tier warrior talent makes a huge difference in that fight. Each class is given unique abilities that can in turn be used to balance encounters around them. Its silly ofc to balance something around that only a very specific spec can provide and indeed there are many ways in which a fight tuned to be used with GS can be done using other things. Pain suppresion, grace, PWS and spirit link, can easily turn damage that would kill the strongest tank into something healable. I am 100% certain that we will see a lot of fights balanced around high damage reduction abilities and GS is one of the best of them.

Originally Posted by Finkum

On a different note, the shaman totem WoA change (10% constant haste) sounds somewhat overpowered - imagine a 10% raid-wide crit buff - and it will in turn boost IHC uptime even more than previously estimated.

Currently haste buffs like PI and Icy veins dont stack. I wonder what this haste totem will stack with.

==============================================
Lightwell

The new change to lightwell is an interesting one.

Lets say you only get a single tick from each click: That is about 1800 healing. All 10 clicks give you 18000 healing for 400 mana every 3 minutes. This is very large return, now the question remains where shall that point come from. 3 min CD alone and 10 charges results in good return. With the improved break on damage component you will probably get an even greater return. I would be interested to see if lightwell benefits from spiritual healing and test of faith.

The new changes to lightwell means it can work really well for healing incidental raid damage.

Finkum · 07/18/08, 7:17 AM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

Currently haste buffs like PI and Icy veins dont stack. I wonder what this haste totem will stack with.

While this is true, they are both short-term active buffs rather than passive aura buffs. Moonkin aura and ToW are probably better used for comparison purposes, and they stack with each other afaik, as well as any short-term crit buffs (combustion?). If the haste effect doesn't stack, bringing a shaman to your raid basically halves the benefit of PI and IV, and reduces the power of heroism by 1/3 (which seems silly).

Still with the number of haste aura buffs now floating around (Shaman totem, Moonkin buff) and various self-buffs (IHC, the new deep holy Paladin talent which is basically 10% perma-haste) Blizzard may well revise the stacking status quo.

inzanor · 07/18/08, 8:08 AM

Improved Innerfire:
Increases the armor bonus and bonus healing of your Inner Fire spell by 10%/20%/30%.

Does this mean Inner Fire will increase (damage and) healing?

Havoc12 · 07/18/08, 8:09 AM

Wow head has updated the talent trees for priest. Some Big changes.

Holy

- Serendipity: No CD 60% cost refunded. ---> Probably a buff.

- IHC: 20/40/60% haste for the next 3 GH, FH, BH. Lasts 20 secs --> A nerf

- Guardian spirit: No HoT, boosts healing done by 40%, prevents target from dying by sacrificing itself and if it does it also heals the target for 10% of their maximum HP.

The new serendipity will probably return a lot more mana, priests can now maintain very high overheal with exceptional efficiency. The new IHC changes things quite a bit. I presume that when you gain it, you will try to mix in as many other spells as possible with your three GH/BH/FH to take full advantage of the buff. The new GS talent is very interesting. The cheat death mechanic is certainly much improved. The 40% more healing can be very powerfull, but also less reliable.

Plitschplatsch · 07/18/08, 8:09 AM

I'm really glad about the lightwell changes. It will still be situational, but so are most priest abilities and our strong point is having a nice tool for every situation.

Lightwell will be very strong on predictable damage in pve. Ad hoc I'd say it would be strong on Najentus and Morogrim like encounters, Morogrim includes both watergrave like effects and the quake.

Does the newest change in lightwell mean it does only break if there's an attack that takes away 30% of your health in one hit? Because that would make it grossly overpowered in pvp.
10 charges which cannot be interrupted or silenced for a lot of healing and almost mana free. Right now i have about 13k health on my priest pvp gear and it's just s1 and s2. There's hardly any way to take away 30% of that with one hit.

I'm not very fond of the CoH changes. If those rumored PoH changes, smart targeting raid wide, go live i can't imagine even speccing for it, because what can CoH do what PoH cannot?
Plus PoH has the advantage of the higher reach.
So it would save the points in CoH and holy reach. The few situations, I'm hard pressed to think of any, where CoH might be more useful wouldn't justify all those points.

Divine Hymn seems to be one of those abilities which shouldn't be needed but will be needed.
I'm thinking of trash pulls gone wrong. 20 seconds for people to apply cc and tanks to pick up targets. This will save a lot of corpse runs.

Divine Mark seems so overpowered to me that I just can't imagine it going live like that.

Edit: Guardian Spirit seems quite worthless to me as well, aside from Kael like encounters.
If the tank takes slow steady damage and it's not possible to keep him up it will just delay the inevitable for a few more seconds.
If the damage is too spiky it can't be predicted properly.
The duration is too low to be cast preemptively either.
I don't like that one at all.

Brinas · 07/18/08, 8:49 AM

Originally Posted by Plitschplatsch

I'm not very fond of the CoH changes. If those rumored PoH changes, smart targeting raid wide, go live i can't imagine even speccing for it, because what can CoH do what PoH cannot?
Plus PoH has the advantage of the higher reach.
So it would save the points in CoH and holy reach. The few situations, I'm hard pressed to think of any, where CoH might be more useful wouldn't justify all those points.

That's like a druid saying that NS+HT is worthless when you can just regrowth just because NS has a cooldown...
First of all, it's still instant cast. Second, why not do even more healing with a PoH then CoH? They gave PoM a 10 second cooldown because it was overpowered. It's still useful though. Sorry, but when raids bring a class to continuously spam one spell, it probably needs a nerf. Any idiot can stand there and spam CoH, but it takes a good healer to use all of his tools and manage cooldowns properly. 6 seconds is not exactly a huge nerf either. I think the smart heal, raid-wide ability more than makes up for the 6 second cooldown.

As for the GS argument, people need to quit focusing on the "cheat death" component. It's a 3 part ability. If nothing else you click it and all healing to that target gets increased by 40% for 10 seconds. Just off hand I can say this would be great for any fights with aoe silence, frenzy abilities, basically any time the tank takes spike damage. The "cheat death" and "heals the target for 10% of their health" are just gravy.

Crosshairs · 07/18/08, 10:00 AM

+ All items and effects which grant bonuses to spell damage and spell healing are being consolidated into a single stat, Spellpower. This stat will appear with the same values found on items which grant “increased spell damage and healing” such as on typical Mage and Warlock itemization.
+ For classes which do not heal, they should see no change in the character sheet other than new tooltip wording.
+ Healing characters will see their bonus healing numbers on the character sheet decrease, however, all healing spells have been modified to receive more benefit from spellpower than they received from bonus healing, with a net effect of no change to the amount healed by their spells. Some talents have had to be rebalanced to accommodate this change, but the amount healed will remain roughly the same. In addition, some talents will provide only healing spell power.

I wonder if it will take longer for our current gear to be replaced. It seems the idea is that one robe could be used for all cloth types but Priests would get more healing out of it by going deep into Holy.

My thought is that my current gear would provide more healing then the spellpower item, and then the deep holy talents would make my gear pretty over powered.