Cataclysm Discipline Priest Compendium - Page 20

Zarcath · 01/16/11, 8:50 PM

I disagree. Heroic Halfus does not require AA/A spec. I've done the fight both ways and PoH/DA spamming the tank group was much better than randomly healing one person.

On the tries where I was AA/A spec, I was about 4th on the heal meters and my top 3 healed was all over the place. aSometimes I'd only catch 1 tank. Where as with PoH/DA my top 3 healed were all tanks And I topped the heal meters.

Glowyrm · 01/17/11, 6:47 PM

Originally Posted by Zarcath

I disagree. Heroic Halfus does not require AA/A spec. I've done the fight both ways and PoH/DA spamming the tank group was much better than randomly healing one person.

On the tries where I was AA/A spec, I was about 4th on the heal meters and my top 3 healed was all over the place. aSometimes I'd only catch 1 tank. Where as with PoH/DA my top 3 healed were all tanks And I topped the heal meters.

That would be the fault of bad coordination with other healers and the raid. Will there be a little RNG? Yeah. Shouldn't be that much though.

My top 3 healed were all the tanks. With 2-3 AA Priests there should be a heal hitting the tanks EXTREMELY often with the proper coordination. The AA heal, even after the nerf, is faster and bigger than any other heal you could do. Twisted Faith was worth if before the nerf since 1 Priest's GCD to increase the other 2-3 Priest's healing/dmg by 20% was VERY worth it, but now we are AA capped without it.

I was #3 on heals this week, post nerf (top 4 was always the 4 AA Priests before the nerf), the #2 was a Shadow Priest that went AA spec so his gear was better suited for it (I was extremely close though), and #1 was a Holy Priest spamming PoH (also very close to him as well). I can guarantee you though that his healing did not save the tanks the way 45k heals hitting them every 1.5 seconds did. The added 20k DPS is also very handy. My healing would have been much higher if I had more Atonement time, I found my self moving a bit more than usual (damn dps standing on me) and also having to PW:S and GHeal more to save some people (which I still believe would have been non-existent if the other 2 Priests were AA like we did before nerf).

Is AA spec mandatory? I doubt it, but having at least 2 with you is going to ease the healing on the tanks and make the fight shorter when done right.

Zarcath · 01/18/11, 6:59 AM

Raid composition and player skill will vary of course. Just didn't want to impress upon people that if you weren't fielding a squad of AAing priests you're destined to fail the fight.

Starfire · 01/18/11, 2:33 PM

AA is NOT an alternative to shadow. The damage difference is nowhere close to being an alternative. I am not sure if everyone here who is reading about Halfus and hearing "18k dps" actually appreciate that full-specced DPSers are doing 50-60k dps on the same fight.

By the way, in terms of soloing, Holy Priests do more DPS using Smite-Chakra and Mind Spike than Discipline Priests do with Evangelism; however Atonement does cut downtime by quite a bit.

Ellyh · 01/19/11, 2:12 PM

Looking at the datamined patch notes it looks like the pennance buff is nowhere as good as I had initially hoped. The basic problem is that unlike other healers we have only the 6% status bonus of twin disciplines because we get bonus int rather than a healing boost like other healer specs.

This means that exclusive of grace and archangel we will be gaining 499 - 563 per tick going up to 619 - 699 if on a fully graced target. If your specced for it popping archangel will give you a best case boost of 711-803 per tick.

Genzen · 01/19/11, 3:58 PM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

Looking at the datamined patch notes it looks like the pennance buff is nowhere as good as I had initially hoped. The basic problem is that unlike other healers we have only the 6% status bonus of twin disciplines because we get bonus int rather than a healing boost like other healer specs.

This means that exclusive of grace and archangel we will be gaining 499 - 563 per tick going up to 619 - 699 if on a fully graced target. If your specced for it popping archangel will give you a best case boost of 711-803 per tick.

Does this mean that, due to the increase in mana cost, it'll actually be less efficient than it is now, or is it still a net buff, and just not as big as originally thought? Just making sure it's something we'll still want to keep on CD wherever possible.

Ellyh · 01/19/11, 4:35 PM

I havn't seen the numbers but for me an unbuffed tick is in the 4800 range now for a throughput of ~14500 total. After the buff this will become ~16000 for a % increase of ~10%. As mana is reported to increase by 7% this represents a very slight improvement in the HPM of the spell but is effectively neutral. I would say they were aiming to simply buff the HPS while holding HPM of the spell static. I would still use it on cooldown providing that all 3 ticks are needed if not go smite or cast heal or just stand there regenning mana.

Alv!ra · 01/19/11, 5:19 PM

Don't forget that presently Penance is often used to re-apply 3x Grace to a target after crosshealing; with multiple Grace's we're likely to see an increase in 3 tick penances on targets with fully stacked Grace. I do consider that a slight, indirect buff to all our spells, but in particular Penance.

This also goes for your previous comment on us not having any +heal modifiers through talents like the other healers. I know you said "not counting grace", but in effect, at least some of our heals will benefit from the graces that are sitting around on people.

kondec · 01/20/11, 5:18 AM

I don't know about you, but right now i find myself using penance exclusively on one of the tanks if i know he's gonna need a grace'd Gheal afterwards. In case of single target crosshealing penance is often sitting off CD because i really want to save it for the tanks.
When the patch hits, we're able to cast penance more liberally on non-tank targets because we don't have to worry about losing stacks. In fact, not casting penance on a tank might be preferable because it then has a fully-stacked grace which can be used to great effect if the targets needs further healing. If not, our heals still do very well on the tank.

I think that overall it's a huge improvement in HPS and HPM if we're able to use the upcoming changes wisely.

dobroezlo · 01/20/11, 7:51 AM

Originally Posted by Zarcath

I disagree. Heroic Halfus does not require AA/A spec. I've done the fight both ways and PoH/DA spamming the tank group was much better than randomly healing one person.

On the tries where I was AA/A spec, I was about 4th on the heal meters and my top 3 healed was all over the place. aSometimes I'd only catch 1 tank. Where as with PoH/DA my top 3 healed were all tanks And I topped the heal meters.

I've been to Halfus 25H yesterday and I must say that AA/A build is the best disc priest can come up with imo. We were two disc priests on melee + tanks. My friend was just spamming holy fire/smite and I was also throwing and occasional shield, pom with smiting and holy fire. As you can see in the log file, the priest who just spammed smites (Ayumix) has healed much more then me (Mefiras) with all my shields and poms.
Also if you go see the targets of heals you can notice that top 4 are the four tanks we had on this fight.

I also highly recommend a smite glyph on this fight, cause an additional holy fire makes a big difference. In this log there is a priest with smite glyph and holy fire casting and there is me without glyph and just smiting. The difference is almost 70%.

Alv!ra · 01/20/11, 8:50 AM

Dobroezlo, I think the difference between you and the other priest's DPS and HPS is mainly due to you having dps'd the adds for 23% of your total dmg (probably meaning about 50% of your time, you weren't smiting Halfus), rather than any Holy fire trick.

The other priest missed with his holy fire 22% of the time he cast it, and only had the dot up for 1/3 of the fight.

Agatha · 01/21/11, 9:37 AM

Since I haven't seen it posted anywhere, a few theorycrafting notes from the PTR.

1. Divine Aegis bonus crit amount on Prayer of Healing is 100%, yes you do double the divine aegis when you crit.
2. When Blizzard says Power Word: Shield increased by 208% they actually mean "Power Word: Shield increased to 208% of current amount." Increased by 208% means slightly over triple (which its not). It's slightly over double the current amount.
3. Unless my math is completly wrong, Improved Power Word Shield talent is giving +20% to shields on live. Wonder how long that bugs been around...since no one uses the shield except to proc rapture, I guess it hardly matters. It does make the "change" on the PTR not much of a change, lol. As a side note, the Glyph of Power Word: Shield on live seems to use what the shield would be with Improved Power Word Shield at its stated 10% instead of 20%, meaning it heals for slightly less than 20% of the shield amount. All these issues are fixed on the PTR.
4. The nerf to Prayer of Healing by 15% appears to include reducing the spell coefficient and base heal.
5. The buff to Pennance does not appear to include the coefficent, just the base heal.
6. Divine Aegis is not stacking on the PTR, which is obviously a bug. In fact any divine aegis that procs while you have divine aegis is completely lost (including the auto aegis from Prayer of Healing).

foxglove · 01/21/11, 11:22 AM

Originally Posted by Agatha

Since I haven't seen it posted anywhere, a few theorycrafting notes from the PTR.

1. Divine Aegis bonus crit amount on Prayer of Healing is 100%, yes you do double the divine aegis when you crit.
2. When Blizzard says Power Word: Shield increased by 208% they actually mean "Power Word: Shield increased to 208% of current amount." Increased by 208% means slightly over triple (which its not). It's slightly over double the current amount.
3. Unless my math is completly wrong, Improved Power Word Shield talent is giving +20% to shields on live. Wonder how long that bugs been around...since no one uses the shield except to proc rapture, I guess it hardly matters. It does make the "change" on the PTR not much of a change, lol. As a side note, the Glyph of Power Word: Shield on live seems to use what the shield would be with Improved Power Word Shield at its stated 10% instead of 20%, meaning it heals for slightly less than 20% of the shield amount. All these issues are fixed on the PTR.
4. The nerf to Prayer of Healing by 15% appears to include reducing the spell coefficient and base heal.
5. The buff to Pennance does not appear to include the coefficent, just the base heal.
6. Divine Aegis is not stacking on the PTR, which is obviously a bug. In fact any divine aegis that procs while you have divine aegis is completely lost (including the auto aegis from Prayer of Healing).

On live, the behavior is that you only ever have a single DA buff, but the absorption amount is increased and the duration is refreshed. Are you saying it's overwriting rather than adding to the absorption amount on the PTR?

Also, if the POH nerf is to the coefficient as well as the base heal then the DA buff does not nearly make up for it, unfortunately.

Barlow · 01/21/11, 11:29 AM

Originally Posted by Agatha

2. When Blizzard says Power Word: Shield increased by 208% they actually mean "Power Word: Shield increased to 208% of current amount." Increased by 208% means slightly over triple (which its not). It's slightly over double the current amount.

So roughly 208% of the absorb at 30% more mana? (can't find the latest comment on the mana). Crunching some unbuffed numbers this roughly translates to PW:S being at least in the 25K HPS Region @ around 8 HPM (inner Will up) if spammed through the raid. (At least with my current gear).

Agatha · 01/21/11, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by foxglove

On live, the behavior is that you only ever have a single DA buff, but the absorption amount is increased and the duration is refreshed. Are you saying it's overwriting rather than adding to the absorption amount on the PTR?

Also, if the POH nerf is to the coefficient as well as the base heal then the DA buff does not nearly make up for it, unfortunately.

On the PTR, if you have a Divine Aegis buff on you, you can't get anymore Divine Aegis period. The duration is not refreshed, and no more Divina Aegis is added. I wouldn't worry too much, it's obviously a bug. The previous build, Divine Aegis wasn't working at all, lol.