MoP beta discussion - Page 3

Szeretlek · 04/25/12, 5:34 PM

All your theorycraft based around tank-healing. >>Nobody<< need tank-healing spec really =)
Although disc can be powerful tank-healer now, but mostly we do PoH-spam. I dont think something will change in raid design.

And btw we get Rupture back - its scale with spirit so it suck hard. PWS cost 6200 (w/o IW), lets assume you have 3000 spirit in t13 gear (yes, you reforged all stats to spirit in MoP), so this is 4500mana return each 12 sec (if you have godly skill) = 1875mp5. You should re-enchant some stuff, like weapon (Heartsong) and bracers (+50spirit instead +50int) and you should use +300spirit flask and +90spirit food in beta now, because you will go OOM pretty fast even in full heroic gear.
And Blizzard thinks, that Rupture is OP, so they cut Disc Meditation to 25% Spirit regen. Its like fighting Vezax, you throw heals, manabar goes down and never goes up =)
Right now you HAVE TO be godly player and somehow trigger Rupture every 12sec just to be like others healing spec in terms of regen. Its a bullshit im my opinion. Why I should overbear that when I can switch to holy and have double regen w/o doing nothing?

And moreover, SpS and Penance cant stack Heart of Unliving, which pretty bad.

Penance glyph doesnt work, Disc part of Divine Insight doesnt work either.

P.S. Until they fix disc mana regen Holy much more viable to play. More hps, 50% spirit regen without Rupture mechanic.
P.P.S. Disc has 3 heal options w/o cd - FHeal, SpShell and Smite. None of them suits filler role. Smite spam left you w/o mana damn fast, because Smite base cast time reduced to 1.5sec and it cost 4000 mana. You just dont have low cost heal w/o cooldown right now.

Havoc12 · 04/26/12, 7:34 AM

Lets look at this rationally:

@ lvl87 with 7473 int (not sure if it affects it now), 794 spirit is worth 704 mp5 or ~1.128mp5 per spirit point.

Rapture returns 1.5 mana per 12 seconds per spirit point or 0.625 mp5 per spirit point.

Meditation from holy is worth 50% of mana regeneration in combat or 0.564mp5.

I.e. if you get a perfect return from rapture you will get more than meditation is worth alone.

Even accounting for the difference in mana efficiency between holy and disc, it is clear that rapture is MORE than worth having 25% meditation instead of 50% meditation.

Someone might argue that I would not be using PWS if it wasn't for rapture. Sure but what would I be using? PWS is actually CHEAPER than spirit shell and flash heal if I am in inner will (@87 PWS: 8432 / Flash & SpS:9600). Heal costs 3200 mana and heals for 20k and atm its bugged so its not affected by grace. PWS in inner will heals for 50k, so I would need 2.5*3.2 = 8k mana. Inner fire costs pretty much the same as heal. In other words you would spend exactly the same amount of mana to heal the damage prevented by PWS.

So the saving from rapture is a real saving and does not really need to be adjusted for increased spell cost usage. If you can use just heal to heal, penance and holy fire in inner fire to heal the tank then yes you would make less of a saving by using PWS, but.... the slightly lower gains are countered by drastically lower mana consumption. You don't really need tons of mana if you are spamming heal/penance and holy fire.

In any case when you actually have to do some more serious healing, you need to be in inner will and use PWS every 12s or as close as that as you can. In inner will Renew and pom(glyphed) with fully stacked grace are also worth using, especially if you get bounces from PoM.

With the DS 4 set PWS also has a 10% chance to double up the absorb and the return from rapture too.

The main problem I have in dungeons atm is that I have no bloody tools to heal ppl up! If someone has a 120k deficit, I have to wait for 10.3s (2.3 cast and 8s proc) for them to be healed for 48k, during those 8s they have a health deficit of 60k, so they are still quite low. Worse of all is that if the heal from spirit shell proc its mana efficiency is complete rubbish, so I might as well have flashed them. I try to use renew and heal as much as possible to boost mana efficiency and if I suspect someone will take damage soon I SpS them, but the 8s buff duration in SpS makes this very difficult.

The 2nd problem I have is the 15s duration on PWS. Especially with the DS 4 set bonus I sometimes get a humongous 110k PWS on that just won't get absorbed, so no mana return from rapture and I don't dare use PWS on someone at low health because if the PWS does not get used up, I will have just dropped 10k mana for nothing.

I am wondering whether to glyph PWS, but that will completely change the returns from rapture. I now need to make sure that the tank has enough deficit otherwise I won't be doing the full amount of healing from the PWS so the mana saving is reduced.

Hopefully blizzard will realise that we can't live without greater heal and they will bring it back.

Hamsda · 04/26/12, 8:01 AM

I also would like to see disc getting GH back, simply because we are not able to heal people back up to a decent amount of hp without using flash or having to wait.
In my opinion there would be 2 relatively easy ways to fix this problem:
a) Making SpS not stack.
That may sound a bit strange but if an existing SpS would automatically expire once a new SpS is cast on the same target, the scenario havoc described could be solved: you heal the person once -> gets the SpS and cast it again -> it expires, heals and together with the new SpS the person is practivally at 100% hp and will be there once the 2nd SpS expires.
Tank healing may be a bit different, especially if the boss does not hit hard enough to consume a complete SpS before one can cast another, but if that is the case we won't be healing the tank full time anyways and if there is nothing else to do we would still be able to use heal to get his hp higher before the SpS is consumed.
b) GH back in our arsenal and SpS taking a midway role between heal and its current implementation.
Tank healing or getting people back up to full hp can be done like we do now with greater heal. On live I think nearly no disc ever uses heal but with a tighter mana situation we will probably need a tool like heal.
I wasn't able to test disc on the beta with SpS old implementation but I guess it was scrapped because it was too weak? Could someone who used it say/guess if a stronger version (although not as strong as it currently is but with appropiate mana costs) would be able to serve as a triage tool?

With the current implementations I think I would rather want to play Holy for dungeon/raiding purposes because SpS just seems too "clunky", even though I really like discs role as a damage preventer rather than a full time healer...

Barlow · 04/26/12, 9:58 AM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

Lets look at this rationally:

@ lvl87 with 7473 int (not sure if it affects it now), 794 spirit is worth 704 mp5 or ~1.128mp5 per spirit point.

Rapture returns 1.5 mana per 12 seconds per spirit point or 0.625 mp5 per spirit point.

Meditation from holy is worth 50% of mana regeneration in combat or 0.564mp5.

I.e. if you get a perfect return from rapture you will get more than meditation is worth alone.

Even accounting for the difference in mana efficiency between holy and disc, it is clear that rapture is MORE than worth having 25% meditation instead of 50% meditation.

When I checked the last time (during FL HC progress) the top disc priests had a rupture delay of 15-18 secs. Some of the overall top ranked even in the low and mid 20s. Back then you could reduce Weakened Soul debuff via direct Heals AND PW:S had no Cooldown. So I would say it's fairly safe to assume an average Rupture Delay of 18 Secs will be a fairly good value. If I calculated correctly the break even point of Rupture returns compared to the 50% Meditation would be 26.5957 seconds. So now the biggest question is the Absorb Priority. We have Aegis, SpS and PW:S - but which of those will have priority?

Szeretlek · 04/26/12, 11:55 AM

If I calculated correctly the break even point of Rupture returns compared to the 50% Meditation would be 26.5957 seconds. So now the biggest question is the Absorb Priority. We have Aegis, SpS and PW:S - but which of those will have priority?

Can you describe your calculations? Its interesting.

@ lvl87 with 7473 int (not sure if it affects it now), 794 spirit is worth 704 mp5 or ~1.128mp5 per spirit point.

Int does nothing with regen. Only Spirit.

Barlow · 04/26/12, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by Szeretlek

Can you describe your calculations? Its interesting.

Well base regen is the same so it leaves us with 50% Spirit Combat Regen vs. Rapture + 25%)

So we Compare 25% Regen with Rapture

So

Spirit*0.282=Spirit*1.5*5/x where x is the delay between Rapture procs.
> 0.282=7.5/x
> 0.282x=7.5
> x=26.5957

If I didn't make any mistakes

Havoc12 · 04/26/12, 2:25 PM

Originally Posted by Barlow

When I checked the last time (during FL HC progress) the top disc priests had a rupture delay of 15-18 secs. Some of the overall top ranked even in the low and mid 20s. Back then you could reduce Weakened Soul debuff via direct Heals AND PW:S had no Cooldown. So I would say it's fairly safe to assume an average Rupture Delay of 18 Secs will be a fairly good value. If I calculated correctly the break even point of Rupture returns compared to the 50% Meditation would be 26.5957 seconds. So now the biggest question is the Absorb Priority. We have Aegis, SpS and PW:S - but which of those will have priority?

It is strongly dependent on the encounter

In our latest run, I have 1 rapture every 20.8s on morchok on average, 1 rapture every 15.9s on warlord, 1 rapture every 21.2s on warmaster and 1 rapture every 13s on ultraxion. I dont really cast single target heals in these encounters.

On ultraxion you have one big raid wide hit every 6 seconds roughly and I always have a PWS absorbed on every one so rapture is practically procd on CD, but on morchok damage waves come in longer intervals.

Barlow · 04/26/12, 2:57 PM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

It is strongly dependent on the encounters.

No I meant: Which absorb has priority. Could anyone test that? If Aegis is absorbed before SpS and then PW:S this would be rather bad for Rapture...

Barlow · 04/26/12, 3:18 PM

Some info from PTR: Psyfiend has no Cooldown at the moment (bug) it should have 45 secs and last time I checked it shared a CD with Psychic Scream. Good news though: The Glyph of Psychic Scream works on Psyfiend, making it a really useful CC at least in 5 Mans atm.

Barlow · 04/26/12, 4:25 PM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

Someone might argue that I would not be using PWS if it wasn't for rapture. Sure but what would I be using? PWS is actually CHEAPER than spirit shell and flash heal if I am in inner will (@87 PWS: 8432 / Flash & SpS:9600). Heal costs 3200 mana and heals for 20k and atm its bugged so its not affected by grace. PWS in inner will heals for 50k, so I would need 2.5*3.2 = 8k mana. Inner fire costs pretty much the same as heal. In other words you would spend exactly the same amount of mana to heal the damage prevented by PWS.

Didn't quite get this Calculation. So far I assume that our PW:S target will be the tank, so he will be affected by grace fairly sure. The most expensive heal other than PW:S would be Flash Heal. In my gear (L86) at the moment PW_S absorbs 44.749 for 7400 Mana. Flash Heal heals 41214 noncrit. 11.43 Crit unbuffed. Including the aegis this already adds up to 52048. Plus it can proc SoL (and SoL can proc Sol and so on...). So to make it simple let's say we only reduce the cost of Flash Heal by 20% in our little example. So PW:S costs 7440, the Alternative Flash Heal (again the most expensive heal we've got) would cost 5760, net us a roughly the same throughput (considering BT), could profit from Inner Focus, thus further lowering the costs and keep up grace. So in my case - at level 86 this change nets me a loss of roughly 1680 Mana per cast plus a loss in Healing for the mana spent) even if I use the most expensive Heal as backup and do not consider Inner Focus. (Don't even get me started on the loss of GH/Serendipity for that matter

)

Hidden · 04/26/12, 5:30 PM

I think the main problem of balancing Disc regeneration around Rapture is that you have no real way of actually regenerating mana because the PW:S you have to use to proc Rapture already costs more mana than what you get. Thus Disc Priests won't really be able to regenerate mana in low damage phases like all other healers can. E.g. if there's just some low random damage going on, a Holy Priest can keep the group/raid alive with the occasional extremely efficient PoM. A Disc Priest will do the same and either regenerate only half the mana of the Holy, or additionally use PW:S to proc Rapture and waste most of the absorb.

Not to mention from what I recall, PW:S is fairly mana-inefficient on beta servers for my Priest right now. Spirit Shell absorbs/heals like 50% more for less mana. I think the problem is that PW:S heals the same as on live but all other heals/absorbs were buffed by roughly 45% a few beta patches ago.

saphiramoon · 04/26/12, 7:01 PM

Originally Posted by Barlow

No I meant: Which absorb has priority. Could anyone test that? If Aegis is absorbed before SpS and then PW:S this would be rather bad for Rapture...

Form what I could check between crashes, its Aegis>PWS>SpS.

Most of my concerns have been already been stated above.

1. Not sure about the new mana regen formula on beta, the tooltips atm are confusing, showing me the same regen in both holy and disc specc (and same on my paladin who happens to have similar spirit). Is there a new formula?

2. They seem to have balanced Rapture with half of our former passive regen: personally, I don't think it's realistic to assume a rapture proc every 12 seconds, unless you are tank healing and specced into DI. A talent should not become mandatory for our regen to be balanced with a passive regen. Further more, it puts serious issues with disc priests stacking: currently, I raid 25 mans and in my healing team there is another disc priest. We share shields on the tank and evidently, our Rapture uptime is not possible to be perfect. Even if I was the only disc priest in the raid, it would still mean I am forced to either forget about PWS as emergency tool for saving asses, and just have it always ready for rapture (given the new 6 sec cd) or loose regen. It's a choice that feels unfair and makes disc a lot less fluid. I enjoy the rapture mechanic on live, it feels rewarding to take advantage of it: on beta, it feels like a punishment to cast PWS on something else than the tank. I feel our regen becomes subject to some RNG:
- we could be already casting something else when rapture comes off cd
- we could have just used the cd on PWS to save somebody (and we have no other tool on the run)
- we could be running and nobody taking damage
- we could be cc-ed
- the tank could get a lucky streak of avoidance and shield wont break (or we get some lucky aegis)
- there could just be a period of low damage, when other healers regen in peace.
All in all, it sounds unrealistic that we will be able to balance 6 sec cd on PWS, 12 sec cd on Rapture and 15 sec cd on WS.

3. I'm playing disc for almost 2 expansions now, and loved it through good and bad times. One of the reasons I love it is the synergy between spells. Right now, on beta, it seems more like a collection of individual abilities that do not interact with each other, and sometimes they plainly come against each other:
- archangel doesn't work with absorbs, but most of our tank healing is supposed to come from absorbs
- SpS doesn't interact in any way with grace, so we're supposed to have it for Heal&Flash Heal? We moved away from Flash and Heal proved to not really survive past 5 mans in the current expansion.
- Aegis prevents PWS from being broken, and both PWS and Aegis prevent SpS from being used
- we have no real filler, since SpS just over-writes itself; SpS also cannot crit, and cannot proc aegis. Crit becomes a rather poor stat for disc tank healing.
- the whole model has a very poor support from the UI. Not only we are supposed to know how much of that shield is left on somebody but the other healers should too, so they don't heal a target because it will be healed in 8 seconds.
- smite has double the mana cost of heal for less healing from atonement. We're supposed to use penance on the enemy? Atonement doesn't stack grace.
- we lost inspiration.

4. Stacking. I can't tell if SpS from 2 different priests will stack or not. If they do, then bringing 2 disc priests to a brutal tank healing encounter could trivialise it by basically doubling the tank's health with SpS+PWS and eventual aegis. If they do not stack, than we are back in wrath, with one possible disc priest in the raid.

4. Disc aoe healing? We are the only healer in the game with a single aoe heal.: paladins have radiance+lod (am as cd and its been improved), druids have WG+Efflo+mushrooms (tranq as cd), holy priests have poh+coh+sanctuary (DH as cd) and shamans have chainheal+healing rain and they are getting some nice aoe healing cds - healing stream totem is reworked and there is also a healing tide totem(spirit link still a nice cd).

I'm not really worried about numbers atm - numbers can be easily tweaked. It's mechanics that feel not quite there.

Havoc12 · 04/26/12, 8:48 PM

As always the smallest absorb gets used up first. So Spirit shell comes last, unless you get a 4set bonus proc on PWS then PWS comes last. If aegis is fully stacked PWS goes first.

Originally Posted by Barlow

Didn't quite get this Calculation. So far I assume that our PW:S target will be the tank, so he will be affected by grace fairly sure. The most expensive heal other than PW:S would be Flash Heal. In my gear (L86) at the moment PW_S absorbs 44.749 for 7400 Mana. Flash Heal heals 41214 noncrit. 11.43 Crit unbuffed. Including the aegis this already adds up to 52048. Plus it can proc SoL (and SoL can proc Sol and so on...). So to make it simple let's say we only reduce the cost of Flash Heal by 20% in our little example. So PW:S costs 7440, the Alternative Flash Heal (again the most expensive heal we've got) would cost 5760, net us a roughly the same throughput (considering BT), could profit from Inner Focus, thus further lowering the costs and keep up grace. So in my case - at level 86 this change nets me a loss of roughly 1680 Mana per cast plus a loss in Healing for the mana spent) even if I use the most expensive Heal as backup and do not consider Inner Focus. (Don't even get me started on the loss of GH/Serendipity for that matter

)

FDCL is not free. To take it you have to lose mind bender, which doubles the return of shadowfiend. Mindbender returns an additional 36% of your mana pool per use, but that is modified by HoH and it improves with haste from borrowed time and gear. Overall the gain from the two talents is roughly similar. Obviously for a priest who already has FDCL the loss of a potential proc is an issue, but the 15% haste, reduces that by increasing the potential number of casts per minute. I have mind bender not FDCL so that is how I calculate everything.

You cannot include inner focus in your calculations. Using PWS does not remove your ability to use inner focus for a flash heal or any other spell, so you are getting the exact same benefit from inner focus by including PWS regularly in your rotation as you would if you didn't and again including it in the calculation is completely wrong. Grace is a non issue, you have plenty of time to keep it up with other spells.

PWS also gives you borrowed time which can easily give you a haste bonus for up to 3 spells. Penance-instant-channeled cast combos still allow all 3 spells to benefit from the haste bonus.

Then things become even more interesting when you add inner will, which reduces PWS mana cost by 15%, compared with inner fire which increases spell power by 10%. 10% more spell power is quite significantly less than 10% throughput for both PWS and Flash heal and at the same time lowers the cost of renew and PoM, two spells that you certainly want to use on a target with 3 grace stacks. (renew has pretty good HPM on a graced target). Inner tips the balance towards PWS even more.

To deliver the coup de grace there is now a pretty hefty mastery buff. PWS benefits both from that and from the spellpower bonus, so it kinda double dips when it comes to buffs compared to your flash heal and on top of that PWS has less potential for "overheal"

With everything (buffs, aegis and crit) and obviously ignoring overheal for flash. PWS and flash both heal roughly 55k @87, but PWS costs 1200 less mana and gives me borrowed time. Even without considering rapture using PWS on CD on the tank with inner will gives me a boost in both HPS and HPM compared to flash heal and big increase in HPS, for roughly the same HPM compared with spirit shell.

Flash heal also costs exactly the same amount of mana (ignoring inner will) as SpS and PWS (6% of base mana for all 3)

Basically even if you didnt have rupture it would make sense HPM wise to be in inner will and use PWS on the tank frequently

Szeretlek · 04/27/12, 1:43 AM

After some calculation regen formula definitely looks like

CombatRegen=1248.8+M*Spirit,
where
1248.8 - base regen. Cant be affeceted by anything.
M - is meditation coefficient, and Spirit is your total amount of Spirit (base+gear)
M50=0.56(46) - 50% spirit regen
M25=0,28(23) - 25% spirit regen

Well base regen is the same so it leaves us with 50% Spirit Combat Regen vs. Rapture + 25%)

So we Compare 25% Regen with Rapture

So

Spirit*0.282=Spirit*1.5*5/x where x is the delay between Rapture procs.
> 0.282=7.5/x
> 0.282x=7.5
> x=26.5957
If I didn't make any mistakes

Seems right.
But actual numbers say, that Rupture in MoP may make your PWS >cheaper< every 12sec.
At live servers Rupture may make your PWS free and give you shitload of mana to you to spend on others healing spells of your choice every 12sec.
Thats a tremendous difference.

Guys, you really think if prepatch hits live tomorrow you will heal Zonoz or Madness or _type here any boss you want_ with FlashHeal and SpiritShell?..
Maybe you think in MoP raid design will change for single target healing? NO WAY. Baleroc maybe, but thats one example =)
It will ALWAYS be an AoE fest.

If prepatch hits live tomorrow we, Disc Priest will be in shit very deep compared to others healers =)
If someone of you played with HPaly in MoP...

Havoc12 · 04/27/12, 3:34 AM

It will make PWS free eventually. This is at the start of tte expansion iwth 410 gear and without reforging spirit. Rapture did not make PWS free at the start of cata. Right now healing hc madness would be difficult, but its not about that anymore. Its all about lvl 90.

Disc has a lot of problems, but mana regen ain't it.

Yes the regen formula is now

OOC regen = base + spirit*k,

where base and k are constants affected by level. @87 base = 2000 and k ~0.12872