Disc Priest - Mists of Pandaria - Page 27

Havoc12 · 02/26/13, 7:40 AM

I found the error I made in the formulas before I was assuming that dCR/dSP = dMR/dSP but this is not true if you are maintain balanced crit/mastery. Starting from the begining.

dH/dSP = pH/pSP + pH/pMR*dMR/dSP + pH/pCR*dCR/dSP

SP = SPint+SPweapon. The amount of spellpower excluding buffs to int and sp is SPint/1.33 +SPweap/1.21

int/1.33+SPweap/1.21 = SP/1.33 - (1/1.33-1/1.21)SPweap = SP/1.33 + 0.12*SPweap/1.6093

SP/1.33 = (const - 0.12*SPweap/1.6093) - MR - CR

Const - 0.12*SPweap/1.6093 can be treated on the whole as a constant, which depends on gear level. Since the optimisation of crit/int/mastery can always be done with the gear level fixed, we can safely treat the whole thing as a constant.

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

since pH/pMR = pH/pCR due to the optimization
dH/dSP = pH/pSP+pH/pMR(dMR/dSP+dCR/dSP) = 0 --> pH/pSP = -pH/pMR(dMR/dSP+dCR/dSP)

if 1.6*dC/dM = B then dSP/dMR = -1.33*(1+B) and dSP/dMR = (1+1/B)

dMR/dSP + dCR/dSP = -1/1.33*(1/(1+B) + B/(1+B)) = -1/1.33

pH/pSP = 1/1.33*pH/pMR --> 1.33*pH/pSP = pH/pMR = (1+kSP)(0.5+C*(1.5+M))*1.6*z

SP = 1.33/1.6/z*(1+0.5*M)*(1+C*(1+M))/(0.5+C*(1.5+M)) - 1/k

This gives the correct spellpower of ~71k. From this we can also calculate the breakpoint for gems. This is not 100% accurate because it does not include gems which actually reduce the scaling of SP relative to secondary stats.

So the final formulas are:

C = (0.4+M*(3+M))/(4.8+3.2*M)

SP = 1.33/1.6/z*(1+0.5*M)*(1+C*(1+M))/(0.5+C*(1.5+M)) - 1/k

Neckface · 02/26/13, 11:52 AM

I've been looking through this thread for information on how to play Atonement (as opposed to how to reforge/gem for it), but haven't found a good analysis. (Apologies if I skimmed past it; please link if I did.)

The thing I like most about Atonement is that, in practical as opposed to theoretical terms, it lets you just blast away at a single target and let smart healing do most of the rest. It seems that some of the theorycraft around healing output ignores targeting. E.g., healing somebody at 40% might avoid overhealing, but that doesn't mean much if somebody else at 5% dies. So effective healing is a bit more complex than just throughput, and Atonement makes that easier.

(As an aside, re: the argument about whether Atonement dps "matters", for a while there my dps was the difference between a Garalon kill and a wipe to the enrage timer. I showed up Holy once and we wiped 3 times to the timer; each time his health was less than the damage I do as Disc. My damage is typically in the range of our tanks.)

While trying to figure out optimal Atonement rotations I put all my heal spells into a spreadsheet and calculated healing/mana, including whether or not Archangel was up, Evangelism was stacked, etc. Penance and Holy fire ROCK for that small second window when they benefit from both Archangel and Evangelism. Unfortunately, you also want to use Cascade and PoM while Archangel is up, at the same time you want to be restacking Evanglism. So many buttons, so few GCDs. Honestly I've found it harder to figure out optimal rotations than for any dps class I've played.

Here are some of the tactics I'm using with Atonement. Would love to have some input from others on how to optimize the Atonement playstyle. (And just FYI, I played rogue Vanilla through Cataclysm, so I'm still sort of a nub healer.)
- In general it's easiest when I'm taking constant damage. That way I can cast both PW:S and PoM on myself without having to switch targets. As soon as I'm not taking damage it gets dramatically more complicated because I have to switch to somebody who is taking damage, every 12 seconds for PW:S and every 10 seconds for PoM.
- I just shield myself whenever it's up. With a Weakened Soul duration of 15 seconds and Rapture ICD of 12 seconds, that means each one of these PW:S's is free, but every minute I'm only getting 4 of them rather than the 5 that Rapture allows. (With the incoming changes I can drop Holy Fire glyph and add glyph to reduce Weakened Soul by 2 seconds, making this rotation dramatically more efficient although not perfect.)
- I also macro Cascade to cast on myself (if I just press the button it will do damage to my target, not heal anybody, and in many cases make zero jumps because there's only one hostile target). Optimally this would be cast on a friendly between 30 and 40 yards, but currently I'm sacrificing the optimal first hop for simplicity. I guess I could focus target the tank (or just target of target, if target is hostile). Thoughts?
- Although Smite does some damage and healing, if I just spam it constantly as filler I go OOM. I try to only use it when Holy Fire is up, to get the 20% boost from the glyph. I sometimes back off from Smite spam when the following conditions are true:

Mana is or soon will be an issue

Raid health is relatively stable (i.e. between periods of heavy raid damage)

Evangelism is already at 5 stacks.

- When Spirit Shell is up I combine it with PoH and blanket the raid, then go back to DPS'ing.
- During really heavy raid damage I burn mana on PoH spam, but still weave in PoM.
- When healing is really stable and the other healers don't seem taxed, I stop using Archangel (and just leave it stacked until the next healing crisis) in order to maximize damage. Not sure that makes sense since it's only 5 casts to restack Evangelism.
- One of the things I'm unsure of is when it's worth interrupting Smite spam, during the window when Holy Fire debuff is on target, in order to cast "higher priority" spell, particularly if Evangelism isn't stacked My rational for not doing so is that all the "better" spells will be just as effective, or even more so, if I wait a few seconds, whereas Smite drops by 20% as soon as that debuff drops off. But as a result, some of the better spells sit there, off cooldown for a few seconds. But let's say penance and PoM both come off cooldown and I use 2 GCDs for them. Now when Holy Fire drops off I sort of have nothing to do until Holy Fire's GCD is up. What's optimal?

Perkeyone · 02/26/13, 2:38 PM

For a given fight length, there is only a certain maximum possible times you can use those short cooldown spells. So by delaying their use you will have fewer total casts for the encounter (while gaining a few casts of the buffed smites, ie its a trade off). I have not crunched out the numbers for an exact answer but I suspect it is best to use them as close to cooldown as possible. PoM and Penance both have higher hpet than smite, even with the holy fire buff. If for example you delay your penance or pom by 1 second, that essentially becomes a 10% increase in cooldown, meaning about 9% fewer casts. In order to find out which is better you'd have to compare the potential healing of the PoMs and penances you lose to the number of extra 20% healing the smites get.

Assuming you would follow up with a smite it might be something like this...
Value of penance + value of smite {vs} value of buffed smite + value of penance * (1 - seconds of delay / cooldown on penance)

The same should also work with using PW:s close to rapture CD.

• Hamlet · 02/26/13, 2:55 PM

Smite's healing is so small that not worth weighing at all in that calculus of casting decisions. If if you have something better to cast, cast that instead. I analogized it to Heal earlier, which is probably the most informative way of thinking about (similar HPET to Heal, similar efficiency--better due to smartness, evangelism stacking, and doing a little damage). Use it to bide time between good spells, and if mana is at all a concern, it should be one of the first things to go.

The much bigger question is really why Glyph of Smite would see much use other than pure DPS builds. It was questionable even before, but generally popular from a sort of "nothing better" perspective. Now there's Weakened Soul and Binding Heal to add to the already strong Inner Sanctum. Also Penance might get more prominent whenever you need it since you never want to stop casting Penance (also Holy Fire if needed, since you never want to stop casting Solace).

I don't want to sound too vague about numbers, but just pull up my spreadsheet in the other thread and look at the individual spell table for relative HPS/HPET values.

e: that said, to be a more precise, I'll jerryrig the sheet soon to show some info on pure Atonement rotations. It's basically a very simple DPS rotation, none of the usual confusion about heal spell usage and whatnot--will be easy to show scaling with haste/glyphs.

Perkeyone · 02/26/13, 3:17 PM

Hamlet, could you also include halo and divine star (and maybe holy nova) in that dps work up? They are not strictly atonement, but like atonement they do damage and healing simultaneously. If often wondered if they are worth using in single target dps situations such as soloing content or when my group over gears an encounter.

Also I know this is not the place for wishlists or suggestions but I've been thinking alot on a few issues that disc priests have and I came up with an idea. What if holy nova was reworked to refresh DA? Maybe the spell could be made baseline and the glyph would reduce healing by around half but make it guaranteed critical. Would that be enough to alleviate the issue of DA expiring early?

Szeretlek · 02/27/13, 3:43 AM

I thougth about racials today for horde:

Blood Elf - 2% mana per 2 min. 250 mp5. Boring.

Troll - 20% haste for 10sec per 3 min. Cool.
Each 3rd Mindbender can gain buff from bers.

From 0 to 1818 haste MB with bers gains 1 additional attack compared to MB w/o bers. Which is 1.46% mana per 3 min. Which is 122 mp5.
From 1819 to 3863 MB with bers gains 2 additional attack compared to MB w/o bers. Which is 2.92% mana per 3 min. Which is 243 mp5.
From 3864 to 5227 MB again gains 1 add attacks with bers vs MB w/o bers.
From 5228 to 7727 again 2 add attacks.

From 0 to 965 SF with bers gain 2 additional attack compared to SF w/o bers. Which is 6% mana per 3 min. Which is 500 mp5
From 966 3035 SF with bers gain only 1 addition attack compared to SF w/o bers. Which is 3% mana per 3 min. 250 mp5. Hello, Blood Elfs!
From 3036 to 5795 SF again 2 additional attacks
And from 5796 to 7175 SF gains only 1 additional attacks.

Berserks buffs melee haste as you know. So to buff your pet for full Berserk duration just push your bers AFTER you summon him. Then he gains full bers uptime.

How I calculated number of attacks:
For MB:
5 sec with (Haste+MeleeHasteBuff) and 10sec with (Haste+MeleeHasteBuff+Berserk). Summarize and round it down.
Compared to
15sec with (Haste+MeleeHasteBuff). Rounded down.

For SF:
2 sec with (Haste+MeleeHasteBuff) and 10sec with (Haste+MeleeHasteBuff+Berserk). Summarize and round it down.
Compared to
12sec with (Haste+MeleeHasteBuff). Rounded down.

I dont count 1st "free" pet attack.

Conclusion: why BE Priests are exists? =)

ADDED: http://i.imgur.com/M2NcqBh.png
Green - more regen then BE racial. Yellow - nearly same. Red - worse mana regen then BE racial.
In 5.2 Disc will take Solace + Shadowfiend, so that information will be very helpful for trolls who want to get 500mp5 from their Racial bonus (twice as much then BE racial).
And of course you should macro SF+Berserk. 3 min CD both which is nice.

Havoc12 · 03/02/13, 6:17 PM

I was actually wrong about haste and the 9sec penance CD it did change things a lot.

penance+HF+3smites = 8s without haste or 7.6s with just the haste buff. Since three smites reduce penance CD to 7.5s the raid buff alone is enough.

However things do change a lot with borrowed time

Let us calculate how much HPS you gain from 10% haste with and without the HF glyph.

10% haste * the 5% raid buff is 15.5% total haste.

With 15.5% haste you have to use a 8.26s sequence with 4 smites instead of a 7.62s, 3 smite sequence

In 5.2, an unglyphed smite is 0.734397537059 of a penance tick. A glyphed smite is 0.881277044471 of a penance tick. HF is 1.075142722083 of a penance tick.

Thus with just the raid buff you can get the equvalent of 3+1.075142722083+0.734397537059*3 = 6.28 penance ticks (6.72 with the glyph) in 7.62s.

With the extra 10% haste you can get 7.01 (7.60 with the glyph) penance ticks in 8.26s

so without the glyph the benefit is (using the non rounded-up value for higher accuracy) 1.030428143662

With the glyph the benefit is 1.043517897985

Not a great return.

A full sequence includes a sequence without HF one third of the time. In that case 10% haste has a full return of 10% since you can fit exactly 4 smites into the 7s penance CD.

So 2/3*4.4+1/3*10 = 6.27% benefit from 10% extra haste. It is not looking so good for pure DPS, like it was with the 10s CD.

However haste has better than 100% return (11% without the glyph and 12.5% with the glyph) if you use PWS before your penance-HF-smitex4 sequence. Since you can fit 1 extra smite without losing any time at all. Basically means for DPS you will have a massive advantage if you take reflective shield and 9% haste from gear, since you will get 1 extra smite and the damage from the reflective shield in.

So haste is still better than crit for pure DPS but it will require a rather different playstyle, but haste ends up having more than 100% return due to borrowed time and PWS.

Szeretlek · 03/03/13, 2:16 AM

Btw, Havoc12, there is a bug with Penance.

If you do Smite->Penance in row, then Penance CD will be lowered by previous Smite.
So after you cast Penance its CD will be already lower by 0.5sec.

Szeretlek · 03/04/13, 4:28 AM

I made a spreadsheet for myself:
Download DiscDPSRotation.xlsx from Sendspace.com - send big files the easy way

Green - input, Red - output.

It includes: CD reduction from Smite, CD reduction bug, Smite Glyph and HF DoT duration (but HF casts as 2nd spell hardcoded...).

Rotation looks like: P - HF - S ... S - P - S ... S - repeat (and yes it mostly fits for 4t14)
It divided in two parts. P-HF-S ...
and P - S ...

Howto:
Input:
1) Your haste rating
2) Desirable haste buffs
3) Switch some green fields from S (Smite) to N (None)
4) Look at your DPS

After some iterations you`ll see what your rotation should be.

For example:

For 4T14, 2100haste, raidbuff, BL and LeiShi buff:
P - HF - Sx3 - P - Sx4 no idle time
For 4T14, 2100haste, raidbuff, BL:
P - HF - Sx3 - P - Sx3 no idle time
For 4T14, 2100haste, raidbuff:
P - HF - Sx2 - P - Sx2 + 0.46sec idle time

I hope it helps someone.

Jeges · 03/04/13, 8:30 AM

Originally Posted by Szeretlek

Btw, Havoc12, there is a bug with Penance.

If you do Smite->Penance in row, then Penance CD will be lowered by previous Smite.
So after you cast Penance its CD will be already lower by 0.5sec.

This is the same latency bug seen with casting Renew right after a single-target heal with a cast time as Holy in single-target Chakra. The upshot for that, as a smiting Disc. priest, is that the CD reduction on Penance isn't very useful on the last Smite before a Penance - by the time the CD reduction registers, Penance is usually off or nearly off CD anyway.

My sense is that the spell queuing system does not allow you to queue up a Penance when it's on CD, but I could be wrong about that. If you can, it makes the latency bug much less of an issue. Can anyone speak with certainty about this?

Szeretlek · 03/04/13, 9:04 AM

Originally Posted by Jeges

This is the same latency bug seen with casting Renew right after a single-target heal with a cast time as Holy in single-target Chakra. The upshot for that, as a smiting Disc. priest, is that the CD reduction on Penance isn't very useful on the last Smite before a Penance - by the time the CD reduction registers, Penance is usually off or nearly off CD anyway.

My sense is that the spell queuing system does not allow you to queue up a Penance when it's on CD, but I could be wrong about that. If you can, it makes the latency bug much less of an issue. Can anyone speak with certainty about this?

Im very hard smiter, so I have experience in this =) You can queue spells wnen they are on CD if that CD is lower then your queue setting. 500ms for example.

Thats how it works (and that bug really imroves your dps):

Start cast 1st Penance, Penance CD starts, 2 sec cast time -> queue 1st smite
Start cast 1st Smite, 1.5 sec cast time -> queue 2nd smite
Start cast 2nd Smite, 1.5sec -> after small latency Penance CD lowered by 0.5 from 1st Smite -> Penance CD remains 0.5sec, so queue 3rd smite
Start cast 3rd Smite, 1.5sec -> after small latency Penance CD lowered by 0.5 from 2nd Smite (useless) Penance off CD -> queue 2nd Penance
Start cast 2nd penance (6 sec CD starts) 2 sec cast time -> after small latency 2nd Penance CD lowered by 0.5 from 3rd Smite -> queue 4th Smite
Start cast 4th Smite, 1.5sec -> queue 5th smite
Start cast 5nd Smite, 1.5sec -> after small latency Penance CD lowered by 0.5 from 4th Smite -> Penance off CD so queue 3rd Penance

So first 6 sec of Penance CD was filled by:
2sec penance cast time, 3 sec of 2 smites and addition 0.5 effective cd reduction.
So we have 5 sec of pure cast within 5.5 penance CD. So we waste 2nd CD reduction and delay Penance by 1 sec.

BUT.
2nd Penance has 5.5sec of base CD because of bug. So it was filled by:
2sec penance cast time, 3 sec for 2 smites and addition 0.5 effective cd reduction.
So cast time of 1 penance and 2 smites somehow (with bug help) perfectly fits within 5 sec.
You can cast without delay (Penance-Smite x2). And all Smites will reduce Penance CD. But one of them will reduce current penance CD and other will reduce future penance CD.

In world w/o bug we have to cast (Penance-Smite x3) or idle 0.5 sec after second smite.
But we dont need to. WoW engine loves Discs =)

Its a Smite-magic =)

Udain · 03/11/13, 11:47 AM

Gone very quiet in here post 5.2!

If you check the global logs (and I am talking 25man) looks like the biggest numbers are coming from an "atonement" spec, with the player reforging to either haste or crit from mastery and spirit

Using smite/solace (holy fire) with penance and pom on CD as needed and spirit shell when useful for the fight

PoH seems to be used a lot less

I tried haste vs the spec above (but not reforging spirit as most in above spec have) and I could do reasonable numbers against someone using crit in atonement
Healing done - 07-03 21:04 - Starlight - World of Logs

Skurge ran a crit spec and used mainly atonement (dont believe he reforged spirit though) - I was using haste and mainly PoH

Anyone else getting a feeling yet for how this is working out?

I am going to try atonement next with a reforge of spirit as well relying on solace to get me out of regen problems
Spot healing with penance to tank for buff, PoM on CD, and SS on required from RL. PwS for oh shit moments and on tank.

Totsie · 03/23/13, 7:29 AM

As someone that has just started playing Disc again for this patch while one of our normal healers is on holiday for a month, I've been playing an Atonement based spec and loving it. While checking out logs of a lot of the top rankings I'm seeing that most people are playing with Power Infusion for every fight. While I certainly see it's power on fights like Jin'rokh. For fights with more adds or spikes in individuals health, would Twist of Fate not prove even more effective? For our last Horridon kill I had a 55.5% uptime on it over a 10:45min fight (yeah we suck, shush). Compare this to the 10-11% (up to ~15%) that most people have with Power Infusion, how does this work out?

Gloryrider · 03/23/13, 11:30 AM

55% uptime seems plausible on horridon if you focus on hitting adds on low HP, there is another fight mechanic that works against this though.
It seems to be way more effective just nuking the boss like a maniac the whole fight - your extra dps on the adds is negligible anyway, but as the fight progresses you deal more and more damage to the boss due to the stacking debuff. This makes atonement so powerful that after the first gate, it's the only thing you'll need along with PWS for emergencies and to help tanks deal with the triple puncture.
You can of course, if you're quick enough on switching, hit a low-hp add and then the boss for 20ish seconds, just for the buff. I'm sure ToF is a strong choice if you play around it. I just always felt as if it is a lot of hassle and random vs. an on-demand 20% free haste.
The extra bonus of you hitting the boss all the time is the added DPS... I ended our first kill with 89k DPS average, combined with the tanks' damage we get horridon down to about half his health before the 2nd phase even starts, making it such a joke on normal.

As I haven't done Heroic yet I'm not sure if the increased throughput is worth it from ToF, it might definitely be worth it! It's a good tip that I will try out too when we get there.

As for stats from a 10m point of view, I've played around with prioritizing crit over mastery and the other way around and both seem really strong, I personally prefer crit somewhat more since mastery depends on getting crits except for PW:S (and spirit shell, but that scales with crit just as good).
For haste I try to stay around 12% raidbuffed or slightly higher. I tried going with the lowest possible haste (I was at 8% raid buffed) and the casts felt so slow and unresponsive - on top of that I did horrible healing. With 12% raid buffed haste and 11k spirit I just feel comfortable with my cast speed and regen, enough so to run with intellect flask, food and lightweave proc from tailoring.

Totsie · 03/24/13, 3:57 AM

Let me clarify my position. My guild does not do heroics and only cleared all the content on normal before the next patch for the first time last tier. Having 60k dps on adds with 2-6mil is much more helpful for my own raids than having 90k on a boss that will probably end up being healed anyway.
The tanks are never in any real danger, what my guild personally lacks is dps and raid awareness so my damage is certainly helpful on the adds, especially on something like a Venomancer that could get that extra cast off (that won't be interrupted) without my damage. I know from a pure numbers standpoint it isn't as effective but if all the dps took that point of view then suddenly we don't get past gate 1

While I realise that this site mainly caters for the theory of high end raiding, the situation can be applied to progress on most bosses.

As for stats, I run with around 10k spirit but minimal haste. This isn't out of choice and it feels really sluggish. How much of each do most people feel comfortable with?

@Udain. Tell Skurge I said hi