Disc Priest - Mists of Pandaria - Page 25

Havoc12 · 02/22/13, 8:23 AM

I checked the calculation I did because I did all the derivatives in my head rather than properly writing them on paper and it definately looks right:

1.33dSP/dMR = -(1+dCR/dMR) = -(1+dCR/dC*dC/dM*dM/dMR) = -(1+1.6*dC/dM)

where C = (0.4+M*(3+M))/(1.6*(3+2M))

dC/dM = 1/1.6*(1-(0.8+2M(3+M)/(3+2M)^2), which leads to

1.33dSP/dMR = -(2-(0.8+2M*(3+M))/(3+2M)^2),

before I calculated it as 1.33*dSP/dMR = -(1+0.5*(2 - (0.4+M*(3+M))/((1.5+M)^2) ), which is the same as before.

I will check to see if maybe I screwed up transferring the formula to excel.

Udain · 02/22/13, 8:36 AM

Can I make a more "general comment"

Pages back this debate seemed to revolve around whether haste would be a better stat in 5.2

We now see the endgame in 5.2 changes with the changes to DA, Crit, mastery PwS etc

Not wanting to criticise you all too much I want to point out that all this math is very admirable but frankly you are all lacking bigtime in a coherrant conclusion...

Could someone lay out in summary

- Haste issue - is this resolved - should we stack it?
- Crit/Mastery whats the optimum blend in 5.2

To me reading the comments so far and other sources we seem to be saying that the conversion of DA and PwS means a move away from PoH spam into using other spells - like PwS for incoming damage/SS.

tib · 02/22/13, 2:55 PM

Originally Posted by Udain

Can I make a more "general comment"

Pages back this debate seemed to revolve around whether haste would be a better stat in 5.2

We now see the endgame in 5.2 changes with the changes to DA, Crit, mastery PwS etc

Not wanting to criticise you all too much I want to point out that all this math is very admirable but frankly you are all lacking bigtime in a coherrant conclusion...

Could someone lay out in summary

- Haste issue - is this resolved - should we stack it?
- Crit/Mastery whats the optimum blend in 5.2

To me reading the comments so far and other sources we seem to be saying that the conversion of DA and PwS means a move away from PoH spam into using other spells - like PwS for incoming damage/SS.

The reason this is lacking at the moment is frankly due to the fact that its not that easy to give 1 answer that covers all your situations. With that said, below is my 2 cents and not really founded on any math.

1) Mastery and crit are unrelated to haste. They scale so obscenely close that for all practical matters the answer to the question "Do i go mastery heavy, crit heavy or do i blend them for another 1-2% theoretical more healing done" is gonna be answered by fight mechanics, 10 or 25man raiding and low healer count vs high healer count in the raid.

Speaking from a 10man pov I will likely try and push as much crit as possible, in general, for 3heal progression as I believe the randomness of more crit might be less of a problem with 3 healers and the additional DA's giving more stability then more steady hps would. For 2heal fights I'm not sure, if you ever have to soloheal parts of a fight I'd be inclined to lean towards mastery. From a 25man pov I'd be suprised if more DA isnt beneficial. However, if we on some fights return to a more shield spammy playstyle then obviously mastery is the goto stat.

For certain is atleast that crit increases raid dps while mastery does not if you can atonoment a bit which on some progression fights 10man pov is not insignificant.

2) Haste. Disc doesnt really have any proper haste breakpoints (I doubt I'll go for haste stacking to the point where I reach another PoH during SS anytime soon). As such haste basically has only 2 real benefits - if you never lack mana then its the best sustained hps stat between then 3 discussed, and it has to be as the others have no mana cost.

The more subtle benefit is the fact that in the hands of a good player haste helps with handling "ohshit" moments, this is not really something others can quantify for you that easily. I'll atleast start out with reforging haste to crit or mastery while still taking haste gear if its an ilvl upgrade and as a baseline approach I'd advice others to do the same.

Havoc12 · 02/22/13, 4:58 PM

Disc most certainly has breakpoints and main one being spirit shell.

Haste is the best stat for disc and it is significantly better than both haste and mastery, so if you can afford it stack it up to 16% raid buffed haste. You don't want anymore after that. That is pretty hard to sustain though.

The main benefit of haste is being able to squeeze more casts into a burst phase and that makes a very big difference in healing.

I already posted a formula for crit mastery optimization its in big bold typeface a few posts ago. If you can't find you will have to wait until we are done figuring out the int/crit/mastery formulas, then a summary post can be made. Balanced mastery/crit is the best solution for any conceivable senario, both in 10man and in 25man. You don't want to be stacking either, you want a mix of both. The difference is small on paper, but in reality it is large. You want your heals to be larger, but you also want overheal resistance. Crit from random aegis is just overheal resistance and not a consistent damage reduction for your raid.

PoH spam is dead for disc in both 25mans and 10mans, it is now a filler for when your more powerfull spells are not available. This has been discussed previously.

• Hamlet · 02/22/13, 5:31 PM

In order for haste to be anything other than a complete dump stat (let alone "the best stat") you have to take the position that mana is a complete irrelevancy. Haste lets you turn mana into healing faster. Int, crit, and mastery let you turn mana into more healing. In the end they all produce the same healing in X time (but see below), with only one costing mana.

But even more importantly, it is almost completely inconsistent to say that you think heavy PoH use is over, yet haste is still strong. Since haste does not reduce spell cooldowns, virtually all of its benefit comes in the form of being able to spam non-cooldown spells more often. Cooldown spells feel next to no benefit. In fact, as I pointed out in the blog post I linked earlier, the only effect haste has on cooldown spells is to eat into the available mana you have for casting them as often as possible. If you gear haste, it can only be for the purpose of heavy PoH chaincasting (while still having to contend with the above point).

There are 3 very strong spells on a short cooldown: Penance, PWS, and Solace (ugh, just realized Penance going down to 9 seconds is really messy). You'll use them a lot. You'll basically always want to use them on cooldown because they're strong, efficient, and smart (maybe this shouldn't be the case, but not our topic for today). Those 3 can easily amount to 50% of your healing in 5.2, and the amount why which they will be improved by haste over the course of an encounter is close to 0. There is a very colorable argument that if you're playing perfectly it's actually 0.

Haste has too much working against it to be worth taking over any other stat in any situation I can think of.

tib · 02/22/13, 6:00 PM

A halfdecent argument for haste/crit stacking along with dps trinkets from 10man pov would be real progression fights for beating dps requirements(in some specific part of the fight). But thats so specialised I honestly didnt want to mention it in a general post about gearing for healing, and frankly anyone in a position where this is relevant would likely either know about it or have it brought to their attention.

Polopretress · 02/22/13, 7:10 PM

OK, i see that haste comes again in the discussion and i am happy

Frankly speaking, i think that use derivability formula do not make a better understanding of stats priorities.

It is not necessary to use this method to see immediatly with standard method that critical and mastery are quite the same and conclude that mastery is better than critical because on 5.2, OverAbsorb will be higher than on 5.1.
As Mastery has an effect on non critical spell , it is better.

And if calculation proves that there are areas where critical is better than mastery, you win nothing wich is really significatif for the HpS improvement.

To choose mastery v/s critical is also the best choice if you want to switch on holy spec and this is very important since Disc spec will not be so OP on 5.2.

Also mastery will have a better scaling on PWS than Critical, then if you consider the global gameplay of the disc there is no match that mastery will be better than critical even if the difference is tight.

There are numbers and numbers of evidence wich lead to the conclusion that mastery will be always better than Critical.

To come back on haste behavior...
Haste is good for additionnal PoH under SS but it is also better than critical and mastery in burst mode.
Regen capability is the weak point of haste priority and i do not see any comment about it (maybe , i have missed some information ...)

I would prefer for Disc :
spi> int > haste (until 4721) > mastery > critical > haste (above 4721)
or
spi> int > haste (no limit) > mastery > critical

Breakpoint at 4721 is not a real breakpoint because Borrowed Time helps to reduce this breakpoint but it is still usefull for Holy spec if a player switch in this spec time to time.
(lets say that 4721 under Borrowed Time is a safe value of haste)

The real question is the regen behavior to choose haste priority and apply it on gems.(also better than int whatever the int value on gear)

Comment : sorry for my poor English

• Hamlet · 02/23/13, 12:57 AM

Originally Posted by tib

A halfdecent argument for haste/crit stacking along with dps trinkets from 10man pov would be real progression fights for beating dps requirements(in some specific part of the fight). But thats so specialised I honestly didnt want to mention it in a general post about gearing for healing, and frankly anyone in a position where this is relevant would likely either know about it or have it brought to their attention.

That's kind of interesting. I'm not sure you're likely to be so invested in Atonement in a fight that's actually hard that you'd gear for it. Also, similar argument applies--you don't get much out of Penance/Solace from the added haste. Just Smite, and Smite is such a small amount of damage/healing (it's basically the Atonement version of Heal). So I mean yes, mastery and spirit do nothing for your DPS, and haste does a little. But this only matters if you're absolutely trying to be a pure DPS class, which shouldn't be happening at real content. Even the healing you do while full-time Atoning will be much higher with mastery.

tib · 02/23/13, 5:19 AM

Originally Posted by Hamlet

That's kind of interesting. I'm not sure you're likely to be so invested in Atonement in a fight that's actually hard that you'd gear for it. Also, similar argument applies--you don't get much out of Penance/Solace from the added haste. Just Smite, and Smite is such a small amount of damage/healing (it's basically the Atonement version of Heal). So I mean yes, mastery and spirit do nothing for your DPS, and haste does a little. But this only matters if you're absolutely trying to be a pure DPS class, which shouldn't be happening at real content. Even the healing you do while full-time Atoning will be much higher with mastery.

"But this only matters if you're absolutely trying to be a pure DPS class, which shouldn't be happening at real content."

This is simply not true for early progression kills in a 10man environment. If you have very good players, the variance in dps over many attempts is very small. As such you can literally get to a point where you need another 3% dps period to reach breakpoints in the fight - be it add waves or stacking debufs or whatever. World top 500+(this number is actually alot lower, but rather not have a discussion about that :P) kills dont experience this, cause frankly their players have alot more variance in their execution and just pulling another 10 times usually fixes it.
A typical recent example would be garajal hc the first weeks. Paragon 3healed it but also did massive class stacking on the dps side (which is hard to do for a 10man guild), the much more common approach for guilds was to have a disc priest go full time dps. Another example from my own guild would be protectors elite hc, we do that with 3 healers and me doing dps rotation 90% of the time to reach the enrage timer and with that setup its not my healing thats important its the dps.

Havoc12 · 02/23/13, 6:18 AM

Stacking mastery is going to be bad, because it increases overheal sensitivity. For example during the adds on horridon, any crits you get will pretty much get all the absorb used up, even if the heal itself is 100% overheal. On the other hand for healing static damage after a burst crit is useless because you can't keep aegis alive.

Stacking mastery is now definitely a poor strategy. The best strategy is balanced crit and mastery, because you get the best of both worlds. You get increased healing from mastery and you get better overheal resistance with aegis. The combination is good no matter what the senario. If the fight is very bursty with hard hits every few seconds. Mastery stacking is bad, if the damage pattern is long periods of low damage with big hits once in a while, then crit is bad. Crit+mastery, works no matter what happens and it is best on paper too.

If you a have a fight with mixed behaviour then crit+mastery is better no matter what. Thus crit+mastery is now the best and only way to go and will produce better results under any circumstances. This is what blizzard intended and they succeeded.

For haste: smites decrease penance cooldown, so haste does benefit penance. Casting an extra smite decreases the cooldown on penance by 5%, but more importantly if you are solace/smite/penance spamming you can't use penance on cooldown, so there is a haste value that allows for a perfect, solace,smite,penance sequence with no lost time and achieving that is definately the best HPS.

I have explained this before. Haste can easily have up to 100% value even if you are not chain casting.

The main value of haste is being able to squeeze an extra spell into a short window. IF you have to get x heals per person in in y seconds or they will die, then crit is bad, mastery is ok, but haste is invaluable. That half a seconds you can gain throughout the sequence can literally make the difference between keeping everyone up every time or losing someone consistently.

Also cooldowns are very vulnerable to timing. If you miss the timing on cascade/star or PoM, you can lose heals of HPS. For example if you are 0.1s late in getting the PoM out, you might miss the 5th bounce, which is a dramatic loss in HPS. The idea that cooldowns do not benefit from haste is wrong. They most certainly do, especially cooldowns like ours, which are so sensitive to timing. When the cooldowns are stronger than the fillers, then that definitely reduces haste value, but it does not eliminate it.

This is why I am not saying that haste is your first priority. You need a certain amount of haste, which is dependent on what you are doing and the fights that you are facing and most importantly on how much mana you have available.

Haste is also important if you have a holy spec, which less face it is going to be an essential thing to have on 25man.

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Tib, simple numbers tell us that optimising DPS for you is a complete and utter waste of time, even if you are smiting 99% of the time.

You are doing maximum 3-4% of total DPS, a 10% increase is 0.3-0.4% of the total DPS. This is less than the normal variation in the DPS output (No DPS produces exactly the same value each fight it is always +/- 1% or so). That means it is completely unnoticeable.

What is noticeable however is failing to keep someone up, because that 1% of the time you heal you didn't have the right set up. e.g. if you are stacking crit and you didnt get any crits.

Otherwise haste is definitely the best stat because you should be keeping SW:Pain up and you should take nothing but mindbender and star/halo and spot DPS gear and trinkets, but no one is doing that.

I don't see the point of bring a disc priest just to smite, unless the fight has a couple of moments where you can't survive without 3 main spec healers. You can have a hybrid off healing or drop off-spec CDs if necessary. PvE dedicated players just forget how good hybrids are at healing at least in 5.1, especially druids and shamans. They are sick.

tib · 02/23/13, 7:12 AM

Damage Done - 21-02 20:32 - Not So Serious - World of Logs

Thats me doing 7.6% of the dmg done without any haste, dps trinkets, swd'ing or multidotting and in general just mindlesslying farming MV for the too many'ith time, properly attempting it would probably land it around 9-10%ish. Regardless if you want to believe it or not, 10% dps matters a fuckton for real progression in some cases. The difference in raid dps at that point between "heal" reforge and heavily dps oriented reforge + trinketing is easily 1% raid dps - if progression raiders dont need the extra healing but can use that 1% more dps then yes, it will be done, regardless if you think its reasonable. With that said, this is a sidetrack and its something thats really only relevant a fight per tier at best.

On another note, here's a general comment on your posting style.

It'd be nice if you could try and seperate the math from your posts from the not so math based opinions, a perfect example would be your opinion on how balanced mastery/crit is _always_ gonna be the best, with a large difference, no matter what. There's zero math presented to support that and your going to have a real hard time doing so as its obviously much more dependant on the actual fight - if you want to i can supply a graph with the y-axis ranging from 100 to 170% showing what at that scale will look like a straight line for the heal scaling between crit and mastery. Just to chime in further, as I've been reading this thread for a while its pretty obvious that your swing towards balanced crit/mastery is heavily influenced by the fact that there's a global maxima there and the notions of overheal resistance and balance are somewhat of an afterthought. Just a week ago you had no problems proclaiming you should stack one stat over the other for a 1-2% theoretical hps increase. With that said, there's absolutely nothing wrong to recommend as a general approach to gearing to balance them out.

A similar pov could be taken for your idea of haste being "the best stat" - perhaps this is slightly influenced by doing content in 10-15 higher ilvls of gear then progression is done at.. because lets be honest, if we are mixing math and opinions in the same sentences and later on refering to the topic as somethings thats been previously discussed (..and topic closed..) its actually relevant to know where those opinions have been formed.

With that said, if you been wiping for hours because you cant heal a burst phase then sure, go reforge haste (thats assuming you shouldnt just play better, as the entire tier is utterly doable without any haste stacking to help heal bursts)

kouby · 02/23/13, 10:15 AM

Originally Posted by tib

Damage Done - 21-02 20:32 - Not So Serious - World of Logs

Thats me doing 7.6% of the dmg done without any haste, dps trinkets, swd'ing or multidotting and in general just mindlesslying farming MV for the too many'ith time, properly attempting it would probably land it around 9-10%ish.

Yeah, this is a good example of how 100% atonement is not a dps gain. You're 2 healing it, the fight can be solo healed.
DPS gain is simply not comparable, bring less healers, bring more real DPS.
Even solo healing, your dps difference on that fight would be something like 10% less, but with 2 extra real DPS, fight length would be simply incomparable.

Now I'm not saying that that exact same choice will present itself in 5.2, but most likely the choice will be between bringing 3 healers, or 2. I think it's pretty clear that the best bet dps-wise will always be taking 2 healers and one extra dps, even if the fight "requires" 3 healers at some key points, it's most likely that a few good raid CDs will be a good countermeasure to having a third healer, and the less time is spent in combat, the less you have to worry about regen, which is always nice on progression.

ps: don't get me wrong, I love the atonement play style and I abuse it more than most probably, but a smiting disc will simply never have comparable DPS to a pure DPS character who knows what he's doing, if you can heal the fight by only atoning, you don't need to be a healer.

Perkeyone · 02/23/13, 11:01 AM

Yeah, this is a good example of how 100% atonement is not a dps gain. You're 2 healing it, the fight can be solo healed.

I couldnt find a log for that fight being solohealed. You sure? That'd be around 240k hps sustained between the tanks and 1 healer. I guess maybe if you really really out gear it, and your raid paints tiles really fast after power downs to keep your spirit high.

Szeretlek · 02/23/13, 11:19 AM

I couldnt find a log for that fight being solohealed. You sure? That'd be around 240k hps sustained between the tanks and 1 healer. I guess maybe if you really really out gear it, and your raid paints tiles really fast after power downs to keep your spirit high.

I even make a video =) Ok. there was a holy pal who backed me up (but it wasnt necessary) and he did one good LoH. But he can do it as ret anyway. So it was solo healed.
Stone Guard10 HM Solo Heal (Disc PoV, Russian TS) - YouTube

tib · 02/23/13, 11:31 AM

Ehm, the log wasnt to make a point about that fight in particular, it was to make a point about how 3-4% raid dps in a 10man setting from a fulltime atonoment priest with dps trinkets and spirit reforged into dps stats is utter bs. Believe it or not its a bit late to brag about stone guards anything... :s

The rare case of using full time atonoment during progression is obviously the case where you currently cant muster enough dps to 3 heal it, but you fail at 2healing it. In that specific situation you either wait a week to get more gear or you sort something that does some dps and some healing and if the solution attempted to that situation is an atonoment priest you will not be trying to optimise the healing he does but rather the dps.