i have a question though. will darkmoon card: blue dragon scale well when level 80? Will it still be decent to put on this trinket in raids? Just a curious question. Thank you
When I wrote a ticket, saying that Divine Aegisis is not stacking, the answer from Blizzard was (translated):
"We looked at the problem you described concerning Divine Aegis und could not find anything that's wrong. We don't want it to be possible to build up a huge shield before a fights starts."
When I wrote a ticket, saying that Divine Aegisis is not stacking, the answer from Blizzard was (translated):
"We looked at the problem you described concerning Divine Aegis und could not find anything that's wrong. We don't want it to be possible to build up a huge shield before a fights starts."
I... I really want to hear blue confirmation/denial of this. Because the last thing we were told was that it was absolutely supposed to stack, and, realistically, it's not as though you could build up a significant shield before a fight started anyway without the priest beginning the fight OOM, and even then it would be torn through in moments. Maybe the concern is during prep time in an arena match? Surely there'd be other ways to deal with that.
Seems silly. Plus it makes penance less attractive in a way, because any crits beyond one bolt are redundant and pointless, whereas a GH would deliver a nice healthy Aegis.
Maybe the concern is during prep time in an arena match?
"Arenas: Buffs that have 30 seconds or less remaining will be removed once the game starts. However, the mage spell Invisibility is not affected by this change."
From the 3.0.2 patch notes, arenas certainly are not the issue.
The obvious thing would just be to have each crit create a separate Aegis with a separate 12-second duration. That would get us the functionality we want (and that DA is supposed to have) with no risk of creating an übershield.
But I can't think of an example where player X buffs player Y with multiple copies of the same buff (rather than stacking), so perhaps that is not possible to code currently.
...it shouldn't be too hard to fake it, though. It's not like it'd ever be possible to get more than, oh, say, 20 aegises on a player from a given priest at once. I can't imagine it causing that many problems to code.
After trying some battlegrounds with both Holy and Discipline, my biggest issue is the very nature of many of the high-tier talents. Namely that several key talents in holy only activates half the times on a crit, and it's not like crits happen every time in the first place.
The talents I'm thinking of are Surge of Light and (Improved) Holy Concentration.
Granted, we'll see more crit on WotLK gear, crits can be "forced" with Holy Nova/Circle of Healing/Inner Focus, but it's not something you can really rely on when you need it.
Compare that to the some high-tier talents in Discipline: Borrowed Time always gives a haste buff after casting PW:S, Penance provides reliable high-hps output (well, as reliable as it can get, you can still be counterspelled/kicked and stuff), Power Infusion provides reliable haste, Grace always procs on a heal and so on. Divine Aegis is the only semi-randomly talent, requiring a crit. But at least it activates with every crit.
In PVP, it's nice to crit and have abilities proc, but it's better to have completely reliable abilities... or at least, very close to 100% reliable.
With that said, despite any theorycrafting, I had an easier time surviving bursts as holy than discipline. I "only" pack 350 resilience, but I felt discipline survivability dropped significantly with 3.0, and I know many other priests agree with me. Speccing holy, on the other hand, really improved my survivability. I mean, it's been a long time since rogues could reliable kill me from full health and fully buffed during just the initial CS+KS, while trinket was on cooldown. As holy I could at least regain control of my character before I died, giving me time to toss up shield, PoM, Psychic Scream and preferably Guardian Spirit. Pain Suppression helps very little when you're locked out during most of your health loss.
A question, though. I read somewhere that Twin Disciplines affects PW:S. I haven't tested this myself, but if it does, shouldn't Spiritual Healing and Focused Power also affect PW:S?
I... I really want to hear blue confirmation/denial of this. Because the last thing we were told was that it was absolutely supposed to stack, and, realistically, it's not as though you could build up a significant shield before a fight started anyway without the priest beginning the fight OOM, and even then it would be torn through in moments. Maybe the concern is during prep time in an arena match? Surely there'd be other ways to deal with that.
Seems silly. Plus it makes penance less attractive in a way, because any crits beyond one bolt are redundant and pointless, whereas a GH would deliver a nice healthy Aegis.
Stick on some heavier +crit/int gear and then start spamming big heals on the tank until you have enough of a deficit to use a mana pot. Since you can only use 1 mana pot per combat you dont lose anything. Lets say you have 30% crit and you fire 10 gheals, that would be something like 3 gheal crits for maybe a 12-15k shield. I dont think its a real issue tbh, as the 12 second timer is a big hindrance.
i have a question though. will darkmoon card: blue dragon scale well when level 80? Will it still be decent to put on this trinket in raids? Just a curious question. Thank you
For level 80 content it will scale decently well for holy priests. However, with the changes to raidwide buffing and replenishment, base mana regen should account for less of your total mana regen in a raid encounter than it used to, meaning that the darkmoon card no longer has as great a synergy with holy playstyle as it used to. I would think it may be usable until you hit 80, but I'd expect to replace it pretty quick with some of the wotlk trinkets that constantius linked in the holy raiding compendium thread.
Obviously, as with any of these trinkets that scale with level- I wouldn't shard it, just in case. Other examples would be the [Scarab Brooch] from AQ40 and maybe the [Bangle of Endless Blessings] from Botanica.
Obviously, as with any of these trinkets that scale with level- I wouldn't shard it, just in case. Other examples would be the [Scarab Brooch] from AQ40 and maybe the [Bangle of Endless Blessings] from Botanica.
The Bangle will lose some effectiveness as you level to 80 due to the formula blizzard has on it. It should be 10% at 80 instead of 15% if my math is correct which is still decent. The [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] will not lose anything as you level.
The Bangle will lose some effectiveness as you level to 80 due to the formula blizzard has on it. It should be 10% at 80 instead of 15% if my math is correct which is still decent. The [Darkmoon Card: Blue Dragon] will not lose anything as you level.
Oh you're right. I think I read that wrong. So just the Blue Dragon and the Scarab Brooch scale, as far as I'm aware, and like I said, the Blue Dragon card is less appealing with the new raid mana regen mechanics.
What does everyone think about the spellsurge enchant for either healing/dps casters?
It's arguable as a swap enchant, although most people don't bother (and weapon swapping is a pain anyway).
It has a 50s internal cooldown and a 15% proc rate. So you expect an average of 6.67 casts before it goes off, or very roughly 15 seconds with GHeal spam. So it's 100 mana every 65 seconds, or 7.7 mp5 to your group. 7.7 mp5 is really, really small compared to virtually every other group mana regen effect in the game, so you're not going to be keeping any mages afloat with it, but at 70 you can argue the tradeoff against spell power (especially as a swap weapon; see below). At 80, that argument becomes extremely hard to make, and if it starts to go in favor of Spellsurge you can probably expect Blizzard to nerf it (see: [Nightfall]).
Mostly, you see it used as a swap enchant: you somehow acquire two weapons, put spell power on one and Spellsurge on the other, and swap to the Spellsurge weapon only when the proc cooldown is up. This is harder now than it used to be, as swapping weapons interrupts cast-time spells and starts a GCD (so you have to either eat the GCD or swap on an instant spell). So you get the full 7.7 mp5, but you only lose the spell power enchant for 20-30% of the fight.
Hi guys, I've been testing the scaling of PW:S using the glyph.
Untalented (0/0/0) I got following results:
SP
Glyph
946
406
861
392
824
386
757
376
683
363
These match neatly with the formula:
Which is as expected, no surprise there. The problem came when I talented Improved PW:S, and got the following values:
SP
Glyph
946
444
861
430
824
423
757
413
683
401
Now, the talent reads that the whole absorb value is increased by 1.15, however the values don't scale that way. The closest formula I've found is:
That means, the only thing scaling by 1.15 is the base value, not the whole shield (for glyph healing purposes).
Going deeper, I found out that Focused Power increases the value healed by the glyph twice, to around 1.08 (once for the shield, once for the healing), but *only* when used on yourself .
Full talented shield (Twin Disciplines, Improved PW:S, Focused Power, Borrowed Time) should give the following formula:
Which fits nicely with the values I got in live:
SP
Glyph
934
585
852
563
788
546
Therefore, the formula for PW:S scaling is about [corrected]:
Divide by 1.04 if you used the shield on yourself.
Last edited by aurelito : 11/07/08 at 3:47 AM.
Reason: Formatting, Corrections
It's arguable as a swap enchant, although most people don't bother (and weapon swapping is a pain anyway).
It has a 50s internal cooldown and a 15% proc rate. So you expect an average of 6.67 casts before it goes off, or very roughly 15 seconds with GHeal spam. So it's 100 mana every 65 seconds, or 7.7 mp5 to your group. 7.7 mp5 is really, really small compared to virtually every other group mana regen effect in the game, so you're not going to be keeping any mages afloat with it, but at 70 you can argue the tradeoff against spell power (especially as a swap weapon; see below). At 80, that argument becomes extremely hard to make, and if it starts to go in favor of Spellsurge you can probably expect Blizzard to nerf it (see: [Nightfall]).
Mostly, you see it used as a swap enchant: you somehow acquire two weapons, put spell power on one and Spellsurge on the other, and swap to the Spellsurge weapon only when the proc cooldown is up. This is harder now than it used to be, as swapping weapons interrupts cast-time spells and starts a GCD (so you have to either eat the GCD or swap on an instant spell). So you get the full 7.7 mp5, but you only lose the spell power enchant for 20-30% of the fight.
I haven't tried it since 3.0.2, but CasterWeaponSwapper does exactly this. It would queue your weapons for swapping for maximum mana regen, and only swap them when you cast an instant spell. From my past experience with this mod, you will be using the spellsurge weapon for far less than 30% of a fight if you are circle spamming. I think I would have my spellsurge equipped for maybe 15% of the fight back when I ran with it.
Hi guys, I've been testing the scaling of PW:S using the glyph.
Conclusion. Improved Power Word: Shield is only scaling the base value by 1.15, not the whole shield. In the end it's a loss of about 6% absorption.
Your conclusion is only valid for the Glyph. In order to test actual amount absorbed, you'd have to get hit until the Shield is broken. Then you would get (As I posted earlier):
Base Absorb (BA) = 1265
Improved PW: Shield (IP)
Spell Power (SP)
Borrowed Time (BT)
Focused Power (FP)
Twin Disciplines (TD)
* Unless something changed since 3.0.3 PTR.
Rawr - Coder of HolyPriest (Healer) and ShadowPriest (DPS) Modules. Get Your Rawr 2.3.x!
I haven't tried it since 3.0.2, but CasterWeaponSwapper does exactly this. It would queue your weapons for swapping for maximum mana regen, and only swap them when you cast an instant spell. From my past experience with this mod, you will be using the spellsurge weapon for far less than 30% of a fight if you are circle spamming. I think I would have my spellsurge equipped for maybe 15% of the fight back when I ran with it.
Still works fine post 3.0.3. Belenos (iirc) has done a fine job with it.
My inner focus is not being consumed on using penance at all, can cast infinite(?) penances at 0 mana cost until you cast something else, but it doesn't look like the +25% crit is being factored in.
I ran some tests long after 2.0 came out that showed the 25% critical bonus wasn't being applied at all.
I believe it stopped working when they converted to crit rating.
My inner focus is not being consumed on using penance at all, can cast infinite(?) penances at 0 mana cost until you cast something else, but it doesn't look like the +25% crit is being factored in. Obviously not that big of a deal since I think mana would regen to full in that downtime anyways for most gear levels. Maybe useful to exploit at very low mana.
Penance still has facing requirements.
Divine Aegis still not stacking, still applies to last crit.
Add to that a couple significant bugs to Rapture that I just reported yesterday:
1. On absorbed damage, rapture returns mana based on the maximum mana of the target, not the casting priest. So a target with no mana (like a warrior) returns nothing when a PW:S or DA shield is hit. This is a huge bug in my opinion. I can't believe it hasn't been reported before (as near as I can tell).
2. On partially absorbed hits, the amount returned by rapture is based on not only the amount absorbed but also the amount of "breakthrough" damage on the target. For instance, it will return large amounts of mana if you absorb one point of damage when taking a huge hit.
Indeed. Both the absorbed sum in the combat log as the Rapture mana return show that the 1.15 is there as scaling factor. I thought it unlikely, but the glyph is scaling in a different way as the shield itself. I corrected my post.
EDIT: Additionaly, I found the glyph heals differently if you use the shield in yourself. The heal on yourself is 1.04 times stronger than if you cast it on others.
Add to that a couple significant bugs to Rapture that I just reported yesterday:
1. On absorbed damage, rapture returns mana based on the maximum mana of the target, not the casting priest. So a target with no mana (like a warrior) returns nothing when a PW:S or DA shield is hit. This is a huge bug in my opinion. I can't believe it hasn't been reported before (as near as I can tell).
2. On partially absorbed hits, the amount returned by rapture is based on not only the amount absorbed but also the amount of "breakthrough" damage on the target. For instance, it will return large amounts of mana if you absorb one point of damage when taking a huge hit.
Excellent with the number 1. This explains the problems I've been having with mana going down surprisingly fast at times when I've been focusing on shielding rogues & other melee. The question now is, what happens with feral druids? They do have mana, except it doesnt show when they are in bear form. This bug could end up being really annoying if not fixed. Good catch.
And the second bug is also interesting. Not sure how critical that bug is, as the mana return will max out at (if bug 1 is fixed) 2.5x your max mana. As long as bug 1 remains unfixed bug 2 may be making up for it.
Rawr - Coder of HolyPriest (Healer) and ShadowPriest (DPS) Modules. Get Your Rawr 2.3.x!
Ghostcrawler:
Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.
We're less concerned about Chain Heal, in part because it's not instant, prevents movement, falls off with multiple targets, and is the spell that shamans are supposed to be hitting, while priests and druids have many other spells.
Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Examination on CoH's overuse
I haven't been able to play this days (since 3.0 came out), is CoH so OP that it needs 6 sec cd? Especially since many people (including devs.) say in WotLK the raid damage is much lower than in BC. Or are they "fixing" CoH for lvl 70 instances?...1 week to release...
The subject of Holy Nova Glyph was brought up on this forums a couple of pages ago, but wasn't really focused on. Some of you might however find the following post I came across today interesting. The basic conclusion is similar to what was claimed on this forums - glyphed Holy Nova has better HPS than CoH while having comparable HPM. It is actually supposedly on par with PoH while being instant.
While most likely this still doesn't make Holy Nova useful, who knows what we will see in further content. Especially with CoH nerf it might prove useful to remember those calculations.
PS. I have read through forum rules and I didn't find any restriction on posting links to other forums. If I am violating some rules or an unwritten law by doing so - please kindly be lenient.
Ghostcrawler:
Based on feedback from this forum, elsewhere and our own brainstorming, what we are thinking about right now is something like a 6 sec cooldown for Circle of Healing and Wild Growth.
We're less concerned about Chain Heal, in part because it's not instant, prevents movement, falls off with multiple targets, and is the spell that shamans are supposed to be hitting, while priests and druids have many other spells.
Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Examination on CoH's overuse
I haven't been able to play this days (since 3.0 came out), is CoH so OP that it needs 6 sec cd? Especially since many people (including devs.) say in WotLK the raid damage is much lower than in BC. Or are they "fixing" CoH for lvl 70 instances?...1 week to release...
A 6 second cooldown would be much more devastating for CoH than it would be for wild growth by the very nature of the spells. Doesn't sound like a very well thoughtout solution to the problem if there is one at 80, why they just started thinking of this problem now is a bit fishy. Yea, for plenty of fights in sunwell that only lasts 1.5-3 mins CoH was overpowered, no doubt about it. When you need to think about your mana consumption and overhealing isn't as rampant it loses it's power though. The whole point of CoH has been that it's spamable, the heal is really too small to have much of an impact on its own. Giving CoH the same cooldown as wild growth would be idotic, it heals so much less.
If you ask me, a 3 second cooldown would be perfect. At least half of you heals would have to be something else and it wouldn't feel at all as limiting. CoH and wild growth (if it was put on a 6 second timer) would produce similar HP/s, CoH having the advantage of being instant healing while wild growth would have far better mana efficency and allowing the druid to spend more time on other tasks.
CoH heals for ~6k-10k depending on crits, while Wild Growth heals for approx 11k without being able to crit (with comparable spellpower), and with the drawback of potentially being overhealed due to it being a HoT. They both cost approximately the same base mana cost, with Wild Growth being modified by tree form (and able to both proc and use clearcasting) and CoH having the benefits of SoL (and Inspiration, although a very minor benefit). Circle of Healing also benefits from Holy Reach, while resto druids don't have a comparable talent. Having played as a holy priest and a resto druid recently in T6+ content,, CoH > Wild Growth in my opinion. Consider also that priests have both Holy Nova, Prayer of Healing and Prayer of Mending to back up their AoE healing, while druids have only Tranquility, which is on a considerable cooldown even if talented.
11/04/08, 11:57 PM
