Cataclysm Discipline Priest Compendium - Page 29

TheDoctor · 02/17/11, 8:11 AM

If 10/31 build is really raid viable it belongs in the Holy thread primarily, because it isn't truly a Discipline build. There are a lot of claims of it being the "Best" spec but I just don't see it in the numbers so if your going to make those claims please support it with some solid math not conjecture.

The 'nerf' to Discipline is really being blown out of proportion. Claiming that the core builds aren't viable at the moment is ludicrous. PoH is a very strong group heal and you can still do a significant amount of healing through PW:S you just can't use it as your only cast. In fact depending on how you manage your mana, CDs, and your gear level you can still do a significant amount of pre-shielding just not as sustainably (~30% less). Discipline is STILL in an improved state compared to pre-4.0.6.

Another point is that Disc has always been in Blizzards comments been the 'tank' healing spec for priests. We aren't intended to be OP raid healers like what occurred during WotLK and just happened post the PW:S buff. The focus has been streamlining all of healers capabilities so the margins and niches aren't as large, but they are part of the design.

Numbers
Rapture Indirect nerf is ~210mp5 (3/3MA Inner Fire vs. 3/3MA Inner Will). Basically if you want to do a lot of shielding running Inner Will. It wasn't that necessary before but now it helps to balance the nerf some, especially where Rapture is concenred. The equivalent of ~17640 mana over 7min which is 2-3 shields.

PW:S Cost Increase
3/3MA Inner Fire: ~1525mpC
3/3MA Inner Will: ~1275mpC
3/3MA Inner Fire -> Inner Will: ~502mpC

Stejo · 02/17/11, 9:43 AM

OK, math it is then. Numbers below are generated for BiS 359 gear, standard AA spec.

After the hotfix, PW:S is sitting at 5.53 HPM /w IF and 6,42 HPM /w IW (glyphed)
Spamming it would net roughly 24.5k hps /w IF. Time to Heal ~55 sec.
Using IW you are at 23.9k hps. Time to Heal ~59 sec.

PoH (glyphed) after 4.0.6 provides 10.76 HPM, generating 25.2k hps. Time to Heal ~149 sec.

In other words, shielding as of today, provides less throughput than PoH, while costing almost double the HPM.

Take a typical scenario of heavy raid damage, like Nef's crackle. A group of 5 would take about 400k total damage from the crackle every 30 sec more or less in phase 3. To heal this up you need to provide maximum throughput for ~70% of the time spent in p3. A typical phase 3, will have 5 to 6 crackles and last ~3 mins. Starting at 100% mana, with all cooldowns available and using PoH exclusively will barely get you through 5 crackles and most likely fail on the 6th. Pre-shielding even once, will lead to OOM much earlier, and that's assuming that you did start p3 at 100% mana which is highly unlikely.

I could describe how the same scenario would play out for Holy, but that would be derailing. Bottom line is that PoH is once again the only efficient raid healing tool for disc. So all that 4.0.6 accomplished for disc was to make PoH 15% less effective and reduce the mana gain from rapture. Feel free to correct me with your own calculations if you spot something wrong.

• Snowy · 02/17/11, 10:16 AM

I am honestly puzzled if most of you have seriously raided progression content, because you're throwing away the most powerful raid cooldown there is on most fights: Power Word Barrier.

Sustained healing very rarely wipes raids. It's short periods where you need burst healing or ways to mitigate that damage. (Chimaeron Feuds, Nezir Ultimate on Conclave, Red phase breaths on Maloriak, and so on.) Note that I'm talking about heroics. You can spec either way on normal and it probably doesn't matter at all.

So you can't spam shields, but it's still a powerful tool. It can be used on select people as a bad burst is coming up, to help mitigate the damage that needs to be healed afterwards -- raise your hand the number of times where the damage has gone horribly wrong, Grid is full of people sitting at 10% and then the tank dies because it got lost in the shuffle.

I think Disc still plays out to be an adequate AoE healer. It's certainly not as good as Holy -- that would be silly, since that is Holy's niche -- but you'll still stack right up well with the other healers, and even though I prefer Holy, I'm pretty sure most progression raid leaders would have a serious problem with losing PWB on many fights. (Magmaw would be an exception for example, since most the raid has to be spread on Heroic)

And honestly, talk of a 10/31 spec should belong in a Holy thread. You're a Holy priest at this point, you are not a Disc priest.

tedv · 02/17/11, 10:27 AM

To dovetail on what Snowy said, here's how we decide the mix of discipline to holy priests.

How many Power Word: Barriers does the raid need? Bring that many discipline priests. The rest of the healing priests are holy.

I think we're making a mountain out of the molehill of Power Word: Shield. Yes, this nerf is stupid because the real issue is the insane HPCT of the spell, and once we have sufficient mana regen, we'll go back to spamming it more. But the motivation for Discipline priests was always Power Word: Barrier.

• Snowy · 02/17/11, 10:37 AM

Originally Posted by tedv

I think we're making a mountain out of the molehill of Power Word: Shield. Yes, this nerf is stupid because the real issue is the insane HPCT of the spell, and once we have sufficient mana regen, we'll go back to spamming it more. But the motivation for Discipline priests was always Power Word: Barrier.

Yeah, I made this point in the Benefactor's Bar. The correct way to approach the problem is probably just to get rid of Soul Warding or change it to something completely different. Conceptually, a playstyle which involves you pressing one button the majority of the fight is boring. Just ask a druid how they felt about Rejuvenation blanketing -- they were in the same boat as Disc priests.

Feralminded · 02/17/11, 11:11 AM

Well raided last night as Disco and all I can say is it's not even funny how OP I currently am. OP and more importantly: Boring. The only fight I went holy for was Cho'gal as holy has decidedly higher HPS during P2 when it matters most. I pretty much pre-bubble spammed predictable damage and when damage was heavy did bubble->PoH->bubble->PoH rotations. I tried to sneak in penance when I had a chance on the MT to keep up inspiration but my shaman usually had it covered anyhow and honestly it was better for spot healing non-tanks. I tried to toss around a PoM when I thought of it too but I was by no means perfect here. Power Infusion went mostly untouched in these fights as I'm just not that good at disco yet ... but as the logs show ... it doesn't matter.

The obviously stupid ones:
Maloriak
Conclave
Omnitron
Argaloth

The ones I did a bit more fair on (lol fair, I hit 2 buttons all fight)
Magmaw
Council

And here's cho'gal just to see how my holy performed.
Cho'gal

Now this was my first night raiding disco so I had some learning to do. I also don't have my 4 piece just yet so I don't quite have the mana to support full on bubble spam post-nerf ... but clearly Blizzard did NOT fix the spec. Yeah Disco has lower theoretical throughput than holy but bubbles can be cast while running, can be cast predictably, and never overheal. Plus you never have to worry about your chakra falling off or about a million other things holy needs to.

The nerf won't work because our mana regen can only get better and we will just continue to super-stack mastery and ignore everything else (my gear isn't really optimized, still have a lot of haste for holy).

CaseyTheRetard · 02/17/11, 11:34 AM

Originally Posted by Feralminded

Well raided last night as Disco and all I can say is it's not even funny how OP I currently am.

10k effective HPS is far from OP. If you had 5 healers for those fights instead of 7, I daresay the other healers would be higher on meters. When you have an excess of healing in a raid, Disc can always inflate its meter position since PW:S is the ultimate heal-sniping tool.

Alv!ra · 02/17/11, 12:47 PM

There's more than a few things that puzzle me with this change:
Firsly, it seems to be directed more or less solely at 25m raid disc priests, as the problem never really seemed to occur in 10m as there's both less external mana regen available, and fewer targets off WS to pre-shield. Increasing the mana cost on PW:S will however have a large impact both on 25m but indeed also 10m priests.

Secondly, it makes Mastery an odd stat for us again. Either we can sustain semi-frequent periods of shield spam (likely mostly in 25m where more MTs and Innervates may be available), or we can't, in which case mastery drops significantly in stat value, which will only further decrease the viability of using shields outside rapture procs. So either stack mastery to some extent, or avoid it completely.

As has been pointed out, Disc still brings PS and PW:B, and along with relatively strong single target healing capability I'm confident there'll still be room for a disc priest in both 10 and 25m, although their roles and healing styles may vary greatly. I don't suppose there's much doubt that some fundamental changes to PW:S and Mastery will have to be implemented at some point; this nerf most likely will just postpone it till the next major content patch. Till then, for 10m healing, I predict disc will first and foremost be a tank healer, offering damage mitigation as well as on-demand burst spot- or raidhealing.

Psilux · 02/17/11, 1:01 PM

Originally Posted by Snowy

I am honestly puzzled if most of you have seriously raided progression content, because you're throwing away the most powerful raid cooldown there is on most fights: Power Word Barrier.

Sustained healing very rarely wipes raids. It's short periods where you need burst healing or ways to mitigate that damage. (Chimaeron Feuds, Nezir Ultimate on Conclave, Red phase breaths on Maloriak, and so on.) Note that I'm talking about heroics. You can spec either way on normal and it probably doesn't matter at all.

This is so important and overlooked that I glyph PW:B simply for the immense amount of healing throughput it provides. It reduces damage for all standing in it by 30%. In effect, it's a raid wide shield wall. Then when it is glyphed, the entire raid receives 10% extra healing during a time when they specifically require the healing. While I lose a GBD using the spell (which affects my personal HPS), the raid benefits are so substantial that you cannot down play, so talks of a 10/31/0 spec being the best disc spec are not realistic.

The following heroic fights using PW:B at crucial times ensures kills:
H.Halfus (sub 50%, after tank CDs and healer 3 minute CDs used, during Roar)
H.Chimaeron (during the huge raid damage of massacre), also at the end during AOE mortality
H.Maloriak (makes red phase a joke)
H.Conclave (Nezir - frost ultimate)

Then not taking into account Pain Suppression as another form of damage mitigation, when you know someone is about to bite the bullet. All these powers don't show up on healing meters in an effective way (where as holy's guardian spirit does), but I assure you that disc brings some very important tools to the raid that used effectively and efficiently, more than make up for "big numbers" on healing meters or the hit to PW:S raid spamming.

Stejo · 02/17/11, 1:09 PM

Originally Posted by Psilux

This is so important and overlooked that I glyph PW:B simply for the immense amount of healing throughput it provides. It reduces damage for all standing in it by 30%. In effect, it's a raid wide shield wall. Then when it is glyphed, the entire raid receives 10% extra healing during a time when they specifically require the healing. While I lose a GBD using the spell (which affects my personal HPS), the raid benefits are so substantial that you cannot down play, so talks of a 10/31/0 spec being the best disc spec are not realistic.

The following heroic fights using PW:B at crucial times ensures kills:
H.Halfus (sub 50%, after tank CDs and healer 3 minute CDs used, during Roar)
H.Chimaeron (during the huge raid damage of massacre), also at the end during AOE mortality
H.Maloriak (makes red phase a joke)
H.Conclave (Nezir - frost ultimate)

Then not taking into account Pain Suppression as another form of damage mitigation, when you know someone is about to bite the bullet. All these powers don't show up on healing meters in an effective way (where as holy's guardian spirit does), but I assure you that disc brings some very important tools to the raid that used effectively and efficiently, more than make up for "big numbers" on healing meters or the hit to PW:S raid spamming.

And once again, you *do* realize that the power of Barrier scales with the amount of players underneath it, right? Or that it's only useful when you can design healing around it being up every time a certain ability occurs? Discipline has a lot of niches in 25 man raiding and roughly zero left in 10 man.

Disc's problem was that the power of PW:S was being abused in 25 mans yet the hotfix made the entire spec almost useless for 10 mans instead.

Psilux · 02/17/11, 1:47 PM

Originally Posted by Stejo

And once again, you *do* realize that the power of Barrier scales with the amount of players underneath it, right? Or that it's only useful when you can design healing around it being up every time a certain ability occurs? Discipline has a lot of niches in 25 man raiding and roughly zero left in 10 man.

Disc's problem was that the power of PW:S was being abused in 25 mans yet the hotfix made the entire spec almost useless for 10 mans instead.

So, let's run numbers for 10 man quotes. Maybe you can only have 5 people in your PW:B (2 healers and 3 ranged dps). Each of them are subject to an attack that hits them all for 100k damage. Throwing down a PW:B just mitigated 30k damage off all of them, for a net of 150k health. My POH hits for about 8k/person in disc. Add in the additional 10% healing while they are under the affects and you can get off between two and three POH (5 people x 8k heal x 3 casts of POH x 10% heals = 12k additional healing done by merely standing in the glyphed bubble). So now your HPS is effectively 162k for 10 seconds (16.2k per sec). Granted this is only 5 people, we tend to have a much higher success of getting more people into bubbles when we know raid damage is incoming, also people just tend to run towards the shiny.

So you're going to argue that "healing" roughly 160k in 10 seconds is not useful in 10 man? I know that in holy, I cannot heal 160k in 10 seconds, no matter if it's 10 man or 25 man. Our highest healer (AOE holy priest) was only at 13k hps in H.Halfus 25 man, where aoe damage is rampant. I'd have to assume that her HPS would be considerably lower in a 10 man.

healing log for H.Halfus 25 man

rooj · 02/17/11, 3:02 PM

What are some thoughts on Glyphs?

Right after the patch, I went ahead and glyphed Barrier, PWS and PoH as my prime glyphs. This seemed like a no brainer, as Penance wasn't really being used every CD anyhow.

But now with the PWS nerf, I feel like Penance should in fact be used every CD. The most obvious choice is PWS, but the instant 5K or so heal is pretty attractive, and while I am no longer spamming PWS, the shields are strong enough that I still use them more than I did pre-patch. I am also finding that the PoH glyph usually overheals for an insane amount. Of course, I could conceivably switch depending on my healing role, though for many fights I am a bit of a hybrid tank/raid healer.

tedv · 02/17/11, 3:43 PM

I was crunching numbers on Power Word: Shield and I wonder if we should just use Inner Will for the 10% mana reduction and keep spamming shields. Here's some basic math using information in the root post:

Base Shield coefficient: 0.418
For modifiers, you get 20% from talent, 6% from Twin Disciplines, and a minimum 20% from mastery. That's 46%, plus whatever bonus you get from mastery. With epic raid gear, you're getting close to 30% additional shield power. That's an aggressive estimate, but lets go with that. A total of 76% bonus modifiers.

So that means the effective spell power coefficient of shield is 0.418 * 1.76 = 0.736

Now losing Inner Fire means we lose 531 spell power, or a total of 390 healing per shield. After factoring in 20% bonus from the glyph, the total loss is 469 per shield. Each shield is almost 30k healing, however, so losing Inner Fire reduces the healing output of shields by around 1.6%, but makes them cost 10% less mana. This seems really amazing.

If Blizzard wants to nerf discipline priests by attacking mana regeneration, that simply won't work. You might want to switch out of Inner Will right before a heavy healing phase of course. But in general I think we should keep doing what we're doing, but use Inner Will instead of Inner Fire. Note that this makes the Inner Sanctum talent more attractive.

Nurru · 02/17/11, 3:44 PM

Whether or not the PoH glyph causes overheal is largely dependent on your raid comp and healing strategies. Cho'gall is a good example of an encounter where the 20% hot will almost certainly be put to good use, especially if you're cycling groups in P3 or after worship. Regardless though, it's a large increase to the HPM of the spell.

Tedv: It's worth noting that when using Inner Will in that manner you also are also awarded a huge HPM boost to PoM which is quite strong with the newer glyph, especially with the variety of minor damage flying around in the current tier. Due to the scaling coefficients of the two you're losing very little by discarding Inner Fire.

Periad · 02/17/11, 4:03 PM

Originally Posted by Psilux

So, let's run numbers for 10 man quotes. Maybe you can only have 5 people in your PW:B (2 healers and 3 ranged dps). Each of them are subject to an attack that hits them all for 100k damage. Throwing down a PW:B just mitigated 30k damage off all of them, for a net of 150k health. My POH hits for about 8k/person in disc. Add in the additional 10% healing while they are under the affects and you can get off between two and three POH (5 people x 8k heal x 3 casts of POH x 10% heals = 12k additional healing done by merely standing in the glyphed bubble). So now your HPS is effectively 162k for 10 seconds (16.2k per sec). Granted this is only 5 people, we tend to have a much higher success of getting more people into bubbles when we know raid damage is incoming, also people just tend to run towards the shiny.

So you're going to argue that "healing" roughly 160k in 10 seconds is not useful in 10 man? I know that in holy, I cannot heal 160k in 10 seconds, no matter if it's 10 man or 25 man. Our highest healer (AOE holy priest) was only at 13k hps in H.Halfus 25 man, where aoe damage is rampant. I'd have to assume that her HPS would be considerably lower in a 10 man.

healing log for H.Halfus 25 man

Is that 13K HPS across the entire fight though? You're example is 16K for the 10 second period. From my own experience I've seen my burst HPS as holy top 30K and we run strict 10 man, admittedly it would be impossible to keep that up for an extended period of time but it's certainly possible.

Checking world of logs for some 25 man examples this is corroborated by any of the holy logs you can browse, the top parses have holy putting out 20-26K for the entire fight, delving into the detail you can see bursts up to 45K.

In regards to the shield cost increase I'd be inclined to disagree that it puts Disc into a niche. Cooldown co-ordination across your healing group should allow for the AoE phases to be handled. In a typical 3 healer scenario you can have aura mastery, divine guardian, PW:B, divine hymn, tranquility. Whilst you may not personally be putting out as much HPS as Disc compared to a Holy spec your PW:B and Hymn are more than enough to cope with the "large" AoE phases, with the nature of 10 mans meaning all 10 people are usually affected by it.