So as long as the damage does not exceed 30% of your own hp, the healing will be the expected ammount? Thats before healing mods, so Jinrokh's atonement cap would effectively be 48% of the priests hp for targets with fluidity (+60% healing recieved)?
Thank you for linking that Beffe.

11068+76124 = 87192.
Not to say that there isn't a cap, of course, but refute it with good math, please.

This is some data collected from horridon 10 man HC where +damage debuff on horridon is +200%.

Without Archangel:

With Archangel:

And here is a sample of Wind Lord 10 hc (5.1) with +600% damage taken debuff (no archangel).

My health is 441k unbuffed, 30% of that is 132k. Did something change in 5.2? Notice how crits does not seem to be capped on atonement heals. In 5.1 +347k heal, in 5.2 +146k and +186k DA.

I had a look at a random old log:

Expression Editor - 11-02 23:07 - After Hours - World of Logs

And it seems that I didn' pay attention properly before. It certainly looks as though the max atonement heals are all the same and capped in some way, while crit heals have double the cap. I will have to retract my previous statement.

This is how I am attempting to calculate atonement healing:

1) Start with the damage dealt. (factor our resilience in pvp)
2) Cap that damage at 30% of the priest's max hp, regardless of crit or noncrit (30.9% for crits with meta gem).
3) Multiply in mastery and any other buffs or debuffs to healing done or taken.

Can anyone confirm or correct this? I need to be sure for some testing and possibly a bug report.

I have 383k hp unbuffed. I think with raid buffs I have 407k. So I should not see my atonement healing hit the cap unless I deal more than 122k damage, right?

Check Horridon logs and you should see your atonement with 1 stack of Cracked Shell (50% damage per stack) equal to your atonement with 2-4 stacks. Compare this with Jin'rokh (40% damage buff + 60% healing buff) where you should be seeing full atonement healing in excess of 200k (much more than any sort of proposed 30% hp cap). This indicates a simple cap at +50% damage taken by the mob with no known cap on healing modifiers after that.

Also, I did a test run with t15 4pc and Golden Apparition is modified by Archangel and can crit (and does create DA when it crits). I have not been able to figure out how the spell power modification works. Without archangel up, the lowest heal I saw was ~93k and the highest around 142k. I *think* the maximum possible heal increases 1:1 with spell power, but the minimum heal stays the same... meaning the average heal increases 1:2 with your spellpower. This is just taken from logs, if someone has the time to gather better information from target dummy healing, you should be able to refute my hypothesis easily if it's incorrect.

So how is the nerf to atonement changing our playstyle in 5.3? On first sight it looks like a big nerf, but if we play around with using heal-penance more (which doesn't get nerfed and also benefits from evangelism) and realize that smite really only heals during low damage phases, I don't think it's too bad? I don't have the time to run any calculations on it though, but it's something to take note of since many players will still be progressing through HC ToT when the patch hits.

Discipline
Borrowed Time now reduces the cast time or channel time of your next Priest spell within 6 sec by 15%, rather than granting 15% haste for 6 sec.

I hate this change. Besides being a flat nerf for those using this mechanic correctly, it's removing an extra layer of depth to the class... very sad, very very sad...

I've been using askmrrobot for reforge, gem, enchant, etc. direction, with the spec based of Crit, which had served me well in the past. Since changing server/guild to a higher raid guild, my heals are no longer looking so good. Our 1st week as a raid team we are 8 bosses into ToT and almost had DA last night. Looking at the logs for Primordius (I forgot to turn log on for DA), I'm dead last healing. The top pally healer gear ilvl is well above mine, the other pally has better gear, but not a lot better (I got the hands off of Primo last night) but doing enchants/gems today. When I heal, I generally spam HF, smite, penance, use PW:S for Rapture or oh crap bubble, burn archangel and spam PoH and cascade for high damage periods, and use SF on CD.

Here's the log from last night Healing done - 21-04 20:44 - Pain's Log - World of Logs

The top Disc healer in guild (Golbar) is Haste based. His mana regen is 4k higher than mine. Some of his logs have SS as the top heal, other times he looks to atonement heal a lot. I'm in the process of trying haste based, but not sure if I'll be Oom with my gear Ohthepain @ Stormrage - Community - World of Warcraft . Any thoughts on haste vs. crit build. Am I just screwing something up, not using CDs correctly, or are pallys so OP as healers I need to chill about being last?

And a general question about spirit shell. Since it's a bubble and not a heal and in high damage periods the bubble doesn't seem to last long and when it breaks their health is no better than when it bubbled them, why am I not just healing them since the bubble is no stronger than the direct heal I would send them anyway? Or is it something I should only do to pre-bubble for damage and forget otherwise? It doesn't benefit from archangel, so should I burn my archangel spam PoH heals then SS or just use SS and potentially let archangel fall off? There seems to be enough movement it's hard to park my butt and just spam direct heals. It just doesn't seem like there is time to do everything, so I'm trying to rethink my strat for encounters.

@PainInTheSomething

Haste is your top throughput stat, but it requires more spirit to maintain. So in general the gain from just crit or just mastery will outweigh the gain of Haste+Spirit. Current information says that crit and mastery should be balanced up until you hit 20%. Then for every 1% crit you get, you want 2% mastery. This chart was taken from Havok on MMO-Champion, and illustrated the crit/mastery balance I mentioned.

I have only slightly better gear than you (505ilvl), and I am significantly higher than you on Primordius, and consistently rank top 5-10 on most fights. I heal with a far better geared paladin as well, and he never beats me, so it's not a matter of gear.

Comparing our logs on Primordius I see several things that stick out. First is that you didn't use Spirit Shell or Prayer of Mending at all. There are several lower damage parts of the encounter that you can use to stack Spirit Shell and apply a PoM on someone. I'll discuss further about Spirit Shell below. You also use a lot of Penance casts on players. Penance is your top atonement healing, and you're wasting 34% of it to overhealing on that pull. Penance will heal for more if used as a damaging ability, and it's a smart heal so overhealing will be reduced.

I would also highly recomment getting Solace & Insanity instead of Mindbender. In every fight this tier, Solace will provide more mana than Mindbender. Mindbender is good for Heroic Horridon, but that's because of the certain mechanic it has.

Regarding your thoughts on Spirit shell, you seem to be misinformed (either that, or I'm misinformed). During constant AoE periods, some people will be higher than other people. Your PoH will almost certainly overheal a couple people per cast. Spirit Shell ensures that none of the bubble is wasted to overhealing. Ideally you want to cast it before the big AoE damage comes out, but in most cases it is still better to use than PoH during constant ticking AoE damage like on Primordius. Spirit Shell also benefits from Archangel, so you should macro Archangel and Spirit Shell together. There is plenty of time on Primordius to park yourself in such a way that you can stop and cast for several seconds without getting hit by the purple pools and staying in range of the 25yard boss aoe thing.

I clearly misunderstood SS, I had thought I read somewhere that SS didn't benefit from archangel and that old bad information just stuck. I went back to crit build, did a macro to AA and SS and used it, tried to remember to keep PoM up (although sometimes it bounce 1 or 2 times and just fell off the 3rd). I worked on rotation changes in LFRs. Before I got the LFR tier chest yesterday I think the macro'd AA & SS were all above 250k bubbles (playing with dummy casting on self, unbuffed). I try to only use penance to damage the boss, but was finding I needed to sometimes give a direct heal to a player taking a lot of damage. We did the achievement kill with no one mutated, so I did what I could do with the incoming damage. Perhaps this week we'll do a normal kill, and get a chance to try something different. I wasn't using PoM on CD, but was waiting for it to bounce the 4th time or fall off a player. Should I really be using it on CD instead? I switched to Solace & Insanity, and yes, that was a nice improvement too. So, my healing has improved and you've been a great help.

edit: Should I macro in a Power Word: Shield to get barrowed time before AA and SS, so I get the first PoH off faster?


You are exactly correct. I wasn't mutated, which hurts my atonement healing. However, the kill was the achievement kill with no one mutated, and the healing was "interesting". I tried to atonement heal as much as I could, but there were some serious "oh crap" moments, hence penance on player direct heals. We wanted to do it before the next nerf. For our 1st run as a new raid team, I think we did pretty well.

Lots to learn. Thanks to all for feedback and help!