Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion. - Page 12

Kaerellen · 07/21/08, 3:30 PM

Well, given that we're actually producing some solid number crunching on Disc vs Holy, would a revert back to 9% be enough in the face of everything this community has decided you'd lose in the switch (the throughput, the mana regen, the flexibility, etc.)? We'd be back to the discussion of Disc priests grabbing some terrible filler talents for one amazing higher tier talent, but I wonder if it's still as intriguing given all the theorycrafting the 3% reduction has catalyzed.

The 1 Disc priest/2x Resto druid scenario you put forth is "semi-interesting," but the point about what is needed for a tank healing core now still stands: only Brut and Patchwerk v1.0 put out enough damage to make Grace absolutely indispensable. Even if Grace is at 9%, isn't that still true?

Incoherence · 07/21/08, 3:34 PM

Originally Posted by Kaerellen

Strange how a reduction of 3% can swing a tree so wildly from good to bad, isn't it? When Grace stacked up to 9%, there seemed to be much more of a consensus that the first priest in any given raid would be Disc, but when it drops to 6%, Holy becomes much more comparatively appealing (and note that I agree with the swing back to Holy). Nidaba's emphasis on the loss of flexibility in switching from Holy to Disc is notable, but if Grace were restored to the 9% damage reduction, would it become viable again? Are 3 percentage points really that vital, or has perception changed on the concept of Grace as a whole?

It's a bit more than 3 percentage points. If the tank were taking 1000 DPS, you would need to heal 1000 HPS to keep him steady. With Grace at 9%, you need only 835 HPS. With Grace at 6%, that becomes 887 HPS.

The "first priest in a raid will be discipline" thing was always somewhat specious. Even with the 9% Grace, you'd need ~2 other healers on the tank to break even (assuming that a discipline priest is 70% of another healer). And a lot of the same concerns about reliance on a single buff, low throughput, and questionably useful talents applied then.

I'm also slightly concerned by the tree's reliance on PW:S, given that there's still a stigma against it (which is overblown but has a little bit of truth to it in 5 man situations).

Brinas · 07/21/08, 3:49 PM

The main problem with people talking about how disc isn't as raid viable is that everyone seems to be focusing tank healing arguments on Greater Heal. Holy has 5 talents that affect Greater Heal specifically, and Disc has 2. People are also saying that any disc spec will be required to take 18 points in holy. I see 13-14 at best that will be required. What about a spec something like this?
Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
Yeah I know it's not perfect, but the idea being that you focus on instant casts with the occasional flash heal, and in emergencies you PI GHeal.
The other problem is that people are arguing either solo main tank healing or only raid healing. Why can't someone do both? Druids roll lifeblooms on 4 tanks at once. I see Disc priests being closer to tree druids than they are to holy priests.
Why not have a rotation on multiple tanks like druids do? They could easily stack grace on on multiple tanks if they wanted to. Druids do it in 7 seconds with a 1.5 LB why not the same with priests? I know flash heal is more expensive, so maybe they only have a 2 tank rotaion.
Penance tank 1, shield tank 1, flash heal tank 2, shield tank 2, PoM tank 1, Renew tank 1, Renew tank 2, etc.
Most of the arguments on this thread seem to be centered around healing one tank, but seeing as every class is getting aoe abilities, and the fact that they are adding another tank class. I see there being many more fights with either lots of adds or multiple bosses. So mitigating damage across multiple tanks and raid members will be pretty useful.
I see it this way...
Back before TBC who would have though that Shamans would be using nothing but chain heal? Who would have thought that druids would have been using HT about 2% of the time?

On a side note, the usefulness of GS was equated to Lay on hands. Lay on hands has an hour cooldown and drains all of your mana... Hardly a comparison. Priests just aren't use to having an "oh crap" button like paladins, druids, and shamans have. I imagine once people get used to it 51 point Holy will be pretty common.

Ellyh · 07/21/08, 4:07 PM

Given that out main tank regularly get 6-7 seconds avoidance streaks and Grace can crit every second I think that a 20% reduction in shield efficiency is not that unreasonable. PWS is bad for massive RSTS damage as a lot of RSTS is a single big blat of damage that is not followed up for 10-30 or more seconds giving a very high likelihood of getting no or limited mana return for a lot of mana invested. There is a reason that most people don't use it much.

As for the reducing incoming dps with shields argument, good luck on selling that to raids with gimp personal throughput, remember how much grief Ret Pallies suffered trying to justify their inclusion. Constantius is right about the build being a one trick pony and it's blatantly crap for small scale (5-10 man) content where power and throughput rules. The nurfs from alpha - beta were killer and the spec didn't gain anything of power comparable to what was lost and 1/2 of what was gained was also gained for holy. Basically in Alpha people thought a combo of 9% grace and party wide rapture was a combo that made you raid viable. in exchange for a 3% grace nurf and the loss of party mana regen the spec gains 25% mana return on PWS absorption via rapture and the dubious utility of Borrowed time which is a damned poor PvE talent for so deep in the tree. it must be said that it looks fairly strong for PvP where shields are strong.

The reason we aren't discussing healing more than one tank is that to keep 2 stacks up without instants that stack grace is much harder as your stationary while doing so compared to druid mobility. Also priest spells are relatively expensive and will overheal a lot with no way to get mana back. If maintaining the grace stack on 2 tanks was key I would expect a massively down ranked flash heal spamathon interwoven with GH if the tank is taking more damage. Also don't forget that druids get powerful anti spike tools in tree that they can use at need, Disc priests would have a shield and flash spam isn't as efficient as lifebloom at smoothing out damage.

constantius · 07/21/08, 4:15 PM

Ya, completely ignoring the raid viability, I'm extremely pumped about trying out full-fledged Disc in arenas. However ... I am slightly concerned about our continued vulnerability to purges. Divine Aegis and Borrowed Time do nothing to help us if they get purged off the instant they land. They need to make PW:S be like Lifebloom -- you purge it, I get healed. Maybe not a full heal, but a partial heal even would help.

grayrest · 07/21/08, 4:28 PM

I play an Arc Mage, Ret Pally, and Resto Shaman, so I'll refrain from doing Priest theorycrafting and resort to handwaving and speculation.

Originally Posted by Iluminati

Two situations, both using Using Kortar's math (thanks for that it's very helpful : ) ).

Both of these situations avoid what I see as the main benefit of the Disc priest: protecting the spirit link. Spirit Link is the largest change in the healing metagame for the talents and abilities as they are currently. In addition to the obvious allowing for aoe heals to be used on tank fights, the dps reduction on a per-target basis allows for much heavier HoT use. Maintaining a link on the tank allows for 3 lifebloom rolls/flourishes from a druid, beacons/sheath of light ticks* from a holy pally, continuous chain heal off the main tank, etc. In any case, the overall HPS of the heal group in this situation shouldn't be the problem. The problem is that if you're relying on it and it goes down, your tank will probably die. That's where the Disc role comes in.

* A holy pally with spamming a single target will have sheath ticks overwritten more often than not since it's a 3 second tick.

The incoming damage reduction and absorb significantly increases the size of the hit needed to crack the link, allowing it to be safely used on more fights since there will be fights designed to crack it if the talent goes live as is. In addition, Pain Suppression provides the potential for recovery if the link does go down. One benefit to the disc priest is that 3 targets reliably taking damage sets up a fairly stable PW:S cooldown rotation if PW:S is a net mana gain. The spec is both a martyr spec like today's affliction, survival, and shadow and a setup dependent spec like arcane and ret. The value depends on whether you structure your raid to take advantage of it or not.

As for Penance, I saw a comment that it's currently underwhelming and would like to say that its 'value' is likely to be in procs like Arcane Missiles. I quote value because AM is the worst nuke in the mage arsenal, so historic precedence outside the the 2.3 Mystical Skyfire isn't good. Alas, I don't know the healing trinkets as well as I should, so I'm not sure if there's anything beyond Inspiration uptime and a small-but-more-reliable Divine Aegis. Here's hoping you get a good coefficient on it since it has a rather hefty cooldown.

Brinas · 07/21/08, 4:40 PM

I see borrowed time as less useful in pvp than pve. If they wanted to make it useful in pvp reduce the weakened soul. In pvp usually 1 person gets FF maybe 2. 15 seconds is still 15 seconds. You're going to get more usefulness out of Borrowed Time if you have 25 targets than if you have 2-5.
PW: S on a tank has 100% efficiency. Even if the tank dodges, misses, and parries for 7 seconds, that's still 23 seconds of shield. It has better efficiency than lifebloom rotations because it heals before any other spell.
As far as druid mobility goes, that was exactly my point. Disc priests (with the series of spells I suggested) have 1 spell that they need to stop and cast, flash heal. Getting off a 1.3 ish cast in a span of 8 seconds usually isn't too hard. It's much harder for a Holy priest canceling G Heal to be mobile.

Anyways my point was that people think Disc is gimped holy because they are looking at how they would play it with the exact spell rotations, and in the exact same roles as a holy priest. That's like a paladin trying to raid heal. You're gimping yourself from the start. Holy has talents that focus on big group heals and mana efficiency on big heals. Disc focuses on instant casts and taking little bits of mana efficiency here and there. I only equated it to druids because I think it will be closest to a tree druid, but still very different.

Kortar · 07/21/08, 4:49 PM

The main problem with people talking about how disc isn't as raid viable is that everyone seems to be focusing tank healing arguments on Greater Heal. Holy has 5 talents that affect Greater Heal specifically, and Disc has 2. People are also saying that any disc spec will be required to take 18 points in holy. I see 13-14 at best that will be required. What about a spec something like this?

The reason I - and I suspect many others - based comparisons on Greater Heal is because it precludes a rather involved argument spanning two different threads about post-WotLK healing styles.

In terms of your Discipline build, think about what you'd be doing. To keep up Grace on 3 tanks requires 4.5s every 8s (~60% of your casting time). So with the remaining 40% you've got to somehow justify someone bringing you along over someone else. The only things you do that aren't inferior to what a Holy (or Shadow) Priest could do are PW:S, dispelling, tanking (not that it's really "tanking" so much as "dying a fraction of a second later"), and mana burn.

And, frankly, none of those tasks are particularly good reasons to bring a Priest along in the first place. Especially given that you're only spending 40% of your available time doing them.

This really gets back to our Affliction Warlocks. It's perhaps a 20% dps cutdown to bring an Affliction Warlock over a Destro Warlock right now, and you get mitigation performance in the vicinity of Grace. Yet people routinely don't take them along. You're suggesting a build/playstyle which is around a 70% cutdown from a Holy Priest would be viable. I don't see it.

Nogun · 07/21/08, 4:56 PM

I'm either making a mistake on the numbers or missing something major but if I'm not,
the decrease on Empowered Healing makes this talent extremely underpowered and overpriced.

Originally Posted by 1st version Beta

Empowered Healing Rank 5
Your Greater Heal spell gains an additional 10% and your Flash Heal and Binding Heal gain an additional 5% of your bonus healing effects.

Let's assume a best case scenario for Empowered healing and most logic where 'bonus healing effects' in the talent currently refers to 'Spell power * 1.88'

example:
last trainable, Greater Heal r9, 3950 to 4590 (~4270)

It's very early to estimate how much Spell power Holy Priests will have at 80 after T7/8 but to continue following a best case scenario for Empowered healing lets just double T6 to say 4500 Healing or 2394 Spell Power.

GH r9 with 5/5 Spiritual Healing and 5/5 Twin Disciplines:
(4270+2394*1.88*(3/3.5))*1.1*1.05= 9387.56
add 5/5 Empowered healing:
9387.56+(2394*1.88*0.1*1.1*1.05)=9907.4 (an increase of 519,83 or 5.54%)

Same for:
Flash Healr11, 1887 to 2193 (~2040)
FH r9 with 5/5 Spiritual Healing and 5/5 Twin Disciplines:
(2040+2394*1.88*(1.5/3.5))*1.1*1.05=4584,06
add 5/5 Empowered healing:
4584,06+(2394*1.88*0.05*1.1*1.05)=4843,97 (an increase of 259,92 or 5.67%)

As conclusion, 5/5 Empowered Healing that requires 35 points in Holy to reach only affecting Greater Heal and Flash Heal is about on par with 5/5 Twin Disciplines a Tier1 Discipline talent that affects all healing spells on top of also increasing all spell damage by 5%.

I considered the "Empowered" mechanic found in many talent trees changed and was reason for the decrease but only Empowered Healing had this decrease. Druid's Empowered Touch was even increased to 40% for 2 points in a talent requiring 25 points in Resto.

This together with the 6sec CoH CD, unchanged PoH or Holy Nova (hey, we can all hope and why should an 11 point AE be limited to stealth breaking or snake killing?) and Guardian Spirit a 10sec Healing Pain Suppression on a 3min cooldown, makes me really confused.

Of course this is not final, but if this is direction they are going to take, Holy Priests must currently on Live be considered way overpowered to deserve this treatment. Did somebody forget that Holy Priests, don't have auras, don't have rebirth, reincarnation, divine intervention, don't have totems, blessings, judgments, innervate?

I'm not comparing priests directly to the talents and spells of other classes in Lich King here because I'm well aware it's easier to add and fix issues by making them overpowered and toning it down to reach a balance but doing the exact reverse to Holy Priests is beyond my understanding. It all looks strange when IMO Holy Priest never got off the ground in PvP once Season1 was complete and thanks to poorly tuned mana requirements in every PvE Tier, got outnumbered by Shadow Priests (who sadly have to take hits for that situation too with 2% VT).

constantius · 07/21/08, 5:11 PM

Twin Disciplines: 5% spellpower gain (take your HSE number and multiply by 1.05)
Empowered Healing : 10% spellpower gain (take your HSE number and multiply by 1.1) only for Greater Heal
Spiritual Healing : 1.1 multiplier for the overall value of the healing spell.

Also note that the original version of Emp Heal was 20% to your *healing* -- we actually gain benefit from this talent now that we're dealing with spellpower, since 1.1*1.88 > 1.2.

last trainable, Greater Heal r9, 3950 to 4590 (~4270) with 2394 spellpower

GH r9 with 5/5 Spiritual Healing and 5/5 Twin Disciplines:
(4270+(2394*1.05)*1.88*(3/3.5))*1.1= 9152.7

add 5/5 Empowered healing:
(4270+(2394*1.05*1.1)*1.88*(3/3.5))*1.1= 9598.3 (increase of 4.9%)

[e] In your numbers above, you forgot to apply the 86% modifier to your Empowered Healing gains (3/3.5).

uh...ok · 07/21/08, 5:27 PM

Originally Posted by constantius

Ya, completely ignoring the raid viability, I'm extremely pumped about trying out full-fledged Disc in arenas. However ... I am slightly concerned about our continued vulnerability to purges. Divine Aegis and Borrowed Time do nothing to help us if they get purged off the instant they land. They need to make PW:S be like Lifebloom -- you purge it, I get healed. Maybe not a full heal, but a partial heal even would help.

I really don't see what about our new talents makes the new Disc any better at Arena than it currently is. It seems to not really have changed at all (from a PvP perspective), at least not compared to the strong PvP-related buffs that many other specs and classes have been receiving.

Edit: To clarify, while the new PWS-related talents are great, the usefulness of PWS in PvP is greatly limited by the Weakened Soul effect, which makes most of the talent boosts we're getting situational at best. It's not clear to me that the intent was to buff the Disc tree for PvP at all.

Nogun · 07/21/08, 5:55 PM

Originally Posted by constantius

Also note that the original version of Emp Heal was 20% to your *healing* -- we actually gain benefit from this talent now that we're dealing with spellpower, since 1.1*1.88 > 1.2.

Heh, I assume the novelty of the "new" stat is getting the worst out me but I can't wrap my head around this statement.
100 Spell power in beta = 188 Healing on live right,
Why would you then say: 1.1*1.88*100 > 1.2*188?
To clarify, you say the changes to Empowered Healing and Spell power/Healing result in an overall improvement to their current situation?

Originally Posted by constantius

GH r9 with 5/5 Spiritual Healing and 5/5 Twin Disciplines:
(4270+(2394*1.05)*1.88*(3/3.5))*1.1= 9152.7

add 5/5 Empowered healing:
(4270+(2394*1.05*1.1)*1.88*(3/3.5))*1.1= 9598.3 (increase of 4.9%)

[e] In your numbers above, you forgot to apply the 86% modifier to your Empowered Healing gains (3/3.5).

If your calculation is correct Empowered healing turns out even worse than what I made it out to be? (last time I looked into it I was pretty sure that 3/3.5 Spell coefficient or down rank tax did not apply to the additional healing gained from Empowered Healing tho).

---------------------------------

Update: Looks like this talent is getting changed again.
Wow-europe.com released WotLK talent trees, I can only assume that these are from a later build than current beta:
World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator
WoW -> Info -> Classes -> Talent Calculators

Empowered Healing is back to 20% GH and 10% FH additional healing gained, Identical to how it's now on live.
Lightwell cooldown also changed back to 6min from 3min in current beta, the duration remains 3min.
I haven't found any other differences with the current Beta talent tree.

On a more in depth review I have to change my mind that this of a newer build than current beta. Improved Shadow Form still gives 100% pushback resistance on the wow-europe.com tree. So either there is a lot of flip-flopping going on with talent changes or these are trees from an old build.

The US version states where differences with beta may originate from:
Talent calculator stats may differ from those seen in the Wrath of the Lich King beta, as they may reflect more current information.

Kaerellen · 07/21/08, 6:46 PM

Originally Posted by Nogun

Update: Looks like this talent is getting changed again.
Wow-europe.com released WotLK talent trees, I can only assume that these are from a later build than current beta:
World of Warcraft Europe -> Info -> Classes -> Priest -> Wrath of the Lich King Beta Talent Calculator

Empowered Healing is back to 20% GH and 10% FH additional healing gained, Identical to how it's now on life.
Lightwell cooldown also changed back to 6min from 3min in current beta, the duration remains 3min.
I haven't found any other differences with the current Beta talent tree.

If that's correct, they also took off the +healing aspect of Imp Inner Fire.

Incoherence · 07/21/08, 7:19 PM

Originally Posted by constantius

Empowered Healing : 10% spellpower gain (take your HSE number and multiply by 1.1) only for Greater Heal

Except that's not how Empowered Healing works. Empowered Healing is currently an additive 20% to your GH7 coefficient (not sure how it interacts with the downranking penalty, but for GH7 this is extremely easy to test). From that perspective, even 20% represents a nerf; you'd need it to be roughly 20% * 1.88, or Blizzard would have to define the healing coefficients in some strange way so that the additive effect applies before the healing multiplier.

TheBlindOne · 07/22/08, 12:28 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

Well PSW on the tank is going to be really interesting from a numbers perspective. Depending on the coefficient and base value of the top rank shield you may find that the spell is totally self funding from the 25% absorbed refunded as mana clause in rapture. This is going to be necessary for PWS to be viable as it is currently horribly inefficient to cast pws.

The problem is that I can't see the reflective component being maxed out given that a discipline healer is going to be forced 18 points into holy to maximise gh efficiency and to pick up other essentials such as inspiration. I would assume this build. At this stage I can't see how GH can be left out of any serious Disc healing skill rotation.

Given the various cooldowns on penance 10 secs and the weakened soul debuff 15 secs and not forgetting PoM cooldowns you will need to be casting on a single tank...

Penance. 0 secs - 3 secs
PWS 3 secs - 4 secs (reduce gcd from borrowed time)
Greater heal 4 secs - 6.5 secs
PoM 6.5 secs - 8 secs.
renew. 8 secs- 9.5 secs
random haste gear means that even with latency we still have 1 sec before Penance is up and we need to pad out to the PWS cooldown
Greater heal 9 secs - 11.5 seconds.
Penance 11.5 secs-14.5 seconds
PWS comes off cooldown .5 secs later cast it again... repeat cycle ad nausium.

This gives you a nice rotation of heals that keep grace up and maximises the opportunity for PWS on the tank and also refreshes renew just as it's falling off. I have no idea if this is a viable rotation from the point of view of mana expenditure but it keeps all the essentials on cooldown and maximises the available buffs, PWS, PoM etc.

edit

Damn, grace applying before the armour buff is exactly analogous to the effect of maladiction. This makes the damage reduction part of grace rather bleah as proved by the maladiction experience where it is not really required for most fights.

If the damage reduction is applied before armor then isn't it reducing more? (although either way you cut it it's the same)

Penance alone can keep grace up on a single tank since the cooldown starts at the beginning meaning there are only 7 secs between penance. The 5sr counter also starts at the begining so you can effectively have 5 secs of iFSR and 5 secs oFSR while purely keeping grace up.

I have been attempting to find a nice rotation for keeping grace on 2 tanks 100% but the odd cooldowns of Penance and PWS is making it complex and will prevent good regen.

The current Cooldowns of Shield and Penance makes an awkward rotation especially considering you have to keep grace up which isn't refreshed by the shield.

IMO Grace needs to be 15 secs and be applied using Shield. Using just shield and penance you can keep 100% uptime on 2 tanks who will always be under the effect of weaken soul and have plenty of room for renew/PoM.

edit: spelling.