Cataclysm Holy Priest Compendium - Page 19

Havoc12 · 01/27/11, 1:35 AM

Originally Posted by Arrelliana

On flash freeze, yes you can delay breaking the block till the person is topped up, in this case though speed is > efficiency. Take another example, if an arcane storm is missed and not interrupted..in that case if you don't top everyone up over 80-90k then flash freeze 1 shots the person. 1 shot mechanics was probably a misnomer to use as a term. I should say massive damage spike that if not healed..the next incoming damage will kill the person.

Please take my comment in context. On maloriak hard mode you have 3-4 seconds to top the person over 10k. If you are the only healer assigned to 5 people and 3 people including yourself take damage you have 2 options. POH or flash heal and binding heal. If 2 people take damage it is very efficient to merely flash heal the players. In that situation, haste > mastery as mastery doesn't have time to effectively tick to assist the "emergency" that is being healed. On Heroic Conclave of wind, east platform, if the shield ticks drop dps dangerously low and they take a slicing gail hit..it is usually a death. In those situations, a fast heal to target that person in that 1 second may be outweighed vs. mastery hot.

Hmmm lets say you replace 10% mastery with 10% haste you can get enough haste to knock off 0.2-0.3 sec off PoH and 0.1-0.2s off flash and BH. That means you can cast 2 PoH 0.4-0.6 sec faster. With flash and BH you save just 0.2-0.4s. Are your margins really that small?
On blocks, you can use GH followed by HW-serenity. Is an extra 0.2 seconds really going to make a difference when you can control when shatter occurs?

A crucial feature of haste is that its benefits manifest themselves after a bit of chain casting. When you are looking at 1-2 casts the benefits of haste are not really so noticeable. If for example you need to fit a string of say 10 casts in a short window, it may not be doable without enough haste, but then you have to look at the effect of mastery on throughput as well, since you might need less spellcasts with mastery.

Intuitively I can see that the HPS value of mastery is constant, while haste becomes better and better the more mastery you have. There should definately be a mastery break point, where you get better HPS from haste than from extra mastery, but I guess I need to prove that.

Arrelliana · 01/27/11, 3:16 AM

One of the arguments of haste is reaction time. The extra .1-.2 seconds allows faster response to different situations. Haste is also negatively affected by server latency where mastery is not. I definately think mastery is excellent for holy priests atm. There are some situations and healing scenarios where mastery does not benefit. I find mastery very nice tank healing also. Most of the scenarios I posted actually would neither be greatly affected by haste or mastery. But given the circumstances, haste is by far the most beneficial in quick reaction type scenarios where landing the heal > the 6 seconds after the heal.

The one thing about this conversation that also has to be kept in context is role. Each priest may be assigned to different tasks which would yield slightly different priorities.

The thing with mastery is that it also scales off of our total gear scaling. Since mastery is a % of the amount of the spell as the spell scales with gear also the mastery hot will scale. Also our mastery will scale based on it's own stat inflation. So going from 19-24% mastery is an overall throughput increase and then coupling that with say a Greater Heal going from an avg of 26k healed to 30k heal. The 19% mastery hot would be 823 per tick and the 24% mastery hot would be 1200 per tick. I think that (rough math) is about a 46% increase to the mastery hot. So we should see some nice scaling with mastery. So I would ask the question if HPS value of Mastery will truly be constant considering it modifies and increasing value?

Ayreon · 01/27/11, 4:50 AM

Guardian Spirit: The absorb/heal from this ability can now never exceed 200% of the maximum health of the target.

If I understand this change correctly, GS will no longer prevent death if the target takes more than twice it's HP amount of damage (so around ~260k with current health pools), is that right?

Elerion · 01/27/11, 8:11 AM

That is the natural interpretation.

It seems to be in preparation for potential future exploits, like cheesing some intended instakill mechanic.

Jonny_Monroe · 01/27/11, 10:27 AM

Originally Posted by Ayreon

If I understand this change correctly, GS will no longer prevent death if the target takes more than twice it's HP amount of damage (so around ~260k with current health pools), is that right?

Indeed. I would imagine there may be similar mechanics to Chimearon phase 3 down the line, where the concern would be stacking Holy Priests to circumvent a difficult soft enrage timer.

Arrelliana · 01/27/11, 11:49 AM

GS on Chimaeron wasn't the issue. GS was used to negate the flame breath stack up mechanic on maloriak during red phase hard mode as well as blackout on twin dragons. I do not like the change as it really goes against the uniqueness of the CD. But it doesn't diminish it being a great CD none the less.

Playered · 01/29/11, 10:25 AM

It was used on Maloriak HC to absorb one of the breaths during the red phase, saving the need to heal around 2 million damage done to the raid for the sake of it. 2-3 Priests being Holy for that encounter enabled you to turn the other main mana-draining phases into a simple regeneration one - making it more significant than Barrier.

Hamsda · 01/30/11, 6:37 AM

Originally Posted by Playered

It was used on Maloriak HC to absorb one of the breaths during the red phase, saving the need to heal around 2 million damage done to the raid for the sake of it. 2-3 Priests being Holy for that encounter enabled you to turn the other main mana-draining phases into a simple regeneration one - making it more significant than Barrier.

I agree with you. With a paladin tank and 2 holy priests in 10 man, maloriak heroic was more a fight against some bugs during green phase than a mana heavy fight

I have to say that this change is much needed because it can trivialize certain abilities and therefore make a fight way too easy.

Crow · 02/01/11, 11:49 AM

There were guaranteed-kill abilities in the past, like Archimonde in Mount Hyjal or Teron Gorefiend in BT and Guardian Spirit never worked on them.

Starfire · 02/01/11, 12:45 PM

Originally Posted by Crow

There were guaranteed-kill abilities in the past, like Archimonde in Mount Hyjal or Teron Gorefiend in BT and Guardian Spirit never worked on them.

But there weren't many damage-split abilities. Only one I can think of would be Meteor on 4-horseman in Naxxramas-25.

Guardian Spirit cheeses parts of Maloriak and Valiona & Theralion because it allows players to ignore group-up mechanics and ignore the significant healing required after/during those.

Sgat8516 · 02/03/11, 10:54 PM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

Strictly speaking Maloriak has no kill mechanics. Freeze does 50-70k dmg and you get another 50k when the ice breaks so you can just delay breaking the ice. There should be no other dmg flying around during blue vial. Perhaps its diff on hc.

On Heroic (25), Flash Freeze hits for over 100k unresisted, and so does the shatter. If 2 players are caught together (even a tank) and topped off, both are guaranteed dead due to the double shattering.
Side Note, 1 tick of Arcane storm (hits for like 5k on normal, 20-30k on heroic) + Flash Freeze = kills most players with a bad resist.

I dont understand why you think mastery is useless for emergency heals. You typically have a 4-6s window to land heals and the end result is someone who is seriously injured so mastery ticks during the window and ticks after the window very useful for topping them up.

Another side note about Holy Mastery, is that it bypasses most -% healing effects. Very useful for encounters like Maloriak, where you have 2.5sec to heal a MT from 10% hp to 100% due to the 99% healing debuff thats channeled on him.

Jonny_Monroe · 02/05/11, 3:36 PM

On the subject of the PvP trinkets - if you use it to remove the Ice on Maloriak does the ice still shatter and damage you?

teiglin · 02/05/11, 10:40 PM

Originally Posted by Jonny_Monroe

On the subject of the PvP trinkets - if you use it to remove the Ice on Maloriak does the ice still shatter and damage you?

Last I tried, human racial (and I assume pvp trinkets) don't remove Maloriak's ice block. It's been a couple weeks since it hit me, though.

agent8261 · 02/06/11, 10:58 AM

I am receiving negative stat values for haste.
I put 100 points for each stat (one at a time) and copy the values (HPS & total) into weighting Additional stat columns, yet I continue to get negative sustained values for haste. Am I doing something wrong?

Carnathagia · 02/07/11, 9:16 AM

Originally Posted by agent8261

I am receiving negative stat values for haste.

You will have a lower Time To Heal with increased Haste because you are spending your mana faster, which will cause you to run out of mana and lower your sustained throughput. The argument has been made that you could stand idly and regenerate enough mana to cast another heal (negating any negative effect), but since the spreadsheet formulates instead of simulates, it will show negative sustained values for Haste. I believe the current one posted has the sustained haste value removed (as well as the burst spirit value) since it doesn't really exist.