TL;DR: 74% nerf to Empowered Healing in the latest push. 2600 healing, Greater Heal 7 hits for 442 less per cast.
Massive, huge, insane, nutso nerf. They're on crack if they think this is balanced.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
Note that the highest scroll in the expansion so far is for 25 Spirit, Divine Spirit is currently 50. The scrolls are intended as a compromise if you don't have the buff from the Priest, not a replacement/complete alternative.
This is the kind of stupidity Koraa is capable of. Orly ... the highest scroll in expansion is 25 ... you mean rank V, that's available in LIVE for +30? Good game.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
What is even more frustrating was that they said in alpha that scrolls were intended to be the same rank as the unimproved spell. Specifically to make it easier for 10 man raids who wouldn't necessarily have all classes available for "basic" class buffs like int, spirit, stam. It's another reason they decided to give inscription the ability to craft these scrolls rather then rely upon drops. The fact that he doesn't even know what level of scroll is available in game is staggering enough. To compound that with moronic statements about a tradeskill they haven't even implemented puts his post on par with posts from players in the wow general forums.
I really wonder if it would be possible to email blizzard customer support or something.
Bjork: if you can repeat tests I'm doing on the US Beta realms and post reasonable (similar) criticisms of the same talents, it might help. The EU customer response types tend to listen a lot better than morons like Koraa.
For example, I just ran a test on level 70 Greater Heal with/without Empowered Healing, and posted the numbers. Anyone who has the least clue about math can see there's a problem. Koraa: "working as intended" (my assumption, he hasn't responded yet).
We've got to get SOMEONE listening so they don't just release this mishmash. We're not close to being done, and we do need a polish pass. Once we get that, I think we'll be solid. The ideas are there; the implementation is just crap.
[e] Ana, find that blue post if you can, and post a link to it in the thread. If another blue stated that scrolls are intended as untalented replacements, we can make Koraa look like even more of a moron. And getting him out and getting someone else in = A+ in my book.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
Alpha forums got completely wiped, but I found a website that posted the original alpha patch notes. I posted the quoted section of the notes in my post on that thread. I can't believe this guy.
From a PvP point of view I'd appreciate a trainable DS. I'm 40+ Disc, but never take IDS simply because nobody in PvP gear has any noteworthy amount of Spirit. Having DS however does give mana regen, because PvP gear has so little the increase is rather dramatic, and limited dispel protection. I would like it if I could use scrolls in the arena to replace DS, but we probably won't be able to.
I'm somewhat irked by Blizzard talking about making class picking easier for raids, while at the same time doing nothing for PvP. So I'll end up spending a point on something for arena that I then won't need outside of the arena because there are scrolls. And of course IDS is likely to end up being mediocre for PvP at best. And here I was looking forward to a bit of PvE fun with a PvP Disc build. I guess my hopes now rest on Grace and Penance.
On a side note, a lot of the other classes seem to be getting more awesome talents stuff than we do. Is this my flawed perception? Or do Penance and Borrowed Time seem mediocre to others too? And why are the Holy talents so boring? A bit of free mana here, bigger heals there and a situational 3 minute cooldown.
Please forgive my whinging. I'm sure everything will be great in Wrath.
Not particularly important, but where does the range 2414-2803 come from? Live Gheal 7 is 2396-2784, has it just been tweaked slightly on beta or something?
Also, does Flash Heal now scale exactly as you would expect based on the formula? And do Spiritual Guidance and Healing kick in the way they should as per the tooltips?
Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:
Originally Posted by Malleus
Unless there's a reason to save it for a specific point in the fight, someone should be getting laid every single time it's up.
Please tell me that other developers read the forums, and not just some guy who not only has NO clue about the current game (and can't be bothered to research to make a valid argument) but also gets so caught up in his side that he can't see another?
Doesn't sound like a very good person to trust if you ask me. So yeah, more people read it right? Other, more skilled individuals will see our points and perhaps put them into action?
I'm not holding my breath for a trainable DS, no matter how much sense it makes, but some of these other things (Inner Fire) need to be looked at and fixed asap, and there's no good reason not to.
Not particularly important, but where does the range 2414-2803 come from? Live Gheal 7 is 2396-2784, has it just been tweaked slightly on beta or something?
Also, does Flash Heal now scale exactly as you would expect based on the formula? And do Spiritual Guidance and Healing kick in the way they should as per the tooltips?
Greater Heal actually scales very slightly as you level; if you look at your base range for GH in your spellbook, it does *not* match what you can find on WoWHead. Mine happened to be the numbers I listed.
I haven't tested Flash Heal: I'll do that tonight or tomorrow and add it to the post.
Spiritual Guidance and Healing have been unaffected in any way; they remain the same.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
I actually have a few nitpicky things regarding spiritual guidance that I brought up in alpha, but haven't had the emotional fortitude to revisit since Koraa "blizzard employee of the year" discounted all of our posts in alpha. It is still listed as converting 25% of our spirit in to damage/healing and so far all the other similar talents for paladins/shaman/warlocks are 30% of stat xx to dmg/healing. It's only 5%, but at the same time it's small things like this that I think need to be fixed. This seems to me like an oversight on their part, unless there is an argument for why we should get 5% less dmg/healing from spirit then warlocks.
The coefficient gain has gone from Healing * 0.2 * 1.05 * 1.1 to Spellpower * 0.1 * 1.05 * 1.1, a change from 23.1% down to 6.1%, where the percentage is of your effective healing (i.e. Spellpower*1.88, or Healing).
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
What if you were told that talented AI is the reason to spec Arcane? Or the reason to bring an Arcane mage? That'd be silly, right?
Since I got (rightly) dinged for the half-assed edit, I'll explain.
If AI was in the Arcane tree (which it would be) and deeper than 11 talent points (e.g. at 21), you would not see the buff at all in raids through the majority of BC. The Arc tree in BC was never designed as a raid tree, it was designed as a utility tree that was made raid viable through exploiting a variety of mechanics and it's rarely been the preferred tree for min/maxing. Losing enough points out of the other trees to pick up something at 21 would lose (guesstimating) 8-12% of total dps at minimum which should be quite a bit more than the extra int would make up in rDPS through the gain in caster crit. As such, the tradeoff isn't justified since the non-trash raid contribution of the purer dps classes is their dps and nobody would spec it unless Arc itself was viable (i.e. with 2t5 at t5 or with 2t5 after 2.4). You'd be told to go buy scrolls if you want an int buff.
With priests, Imp. DS is seemingly worth the tradeoff in healing ability for one priest in a raid and that tradeoff will be re-evaluated when the expansion hits. I wouldn't mind seeing DS baseline since none of our priests spec for it and it does help me considerably, but I don't see how that makes Koraa an incompetent for saying that (imp) DS is part of the appeal of having a disc priest in a raid and presenting an alternative option in the form of consumables where that is unacceptable.
The mana cost of new ranks is not just an issue for Hunters. We're looking at lowering the mana cost of all new ranks among all classes. We also intend to do some improvements to Aspect of the Viper. Not to mention mana return mechanics in each of the tree's (Invigoration, Rapid Recuperation, Hunting Party etc.)
Until that happens, should we assume current manacosts are useless for any efficiency theorycrafting? It has the mysterious "are looking at" ring Blizzard posting usually has, never confirming anything.
but I don't see how that makes Koraa an incompetent for saying that (imp) DS is part of the appeal of having a disc priest in a raid and presenting an alternative option in the form of consumables where that is unacceptable.
You need to pay more attention. No one said that Imp DS should be trainable. No one here or in the wow forum thread. Koraa is an idiot because he a) thinks that a spell that can be replaced by a scroll is a compelling reason for a tree to exist and b) because he doesn't even bother to do the research to discover what level scrolls are even available or what other blues have already posted. Both of which demonstrates that neither of you are paying enough attention to the issues priests are actually arguing for.
You need to pay more attention. No one said that Imp DS should be trainable. No one here or in the wow forum thread. Koraa is an idiot because he a) thinks that a spell that can be replaced by a scroll is a compelling reason for a tree to exist and b) because he doesn't even bother to do the research to discover what level scrolls are even available or what other blues have already posted. Both of which demonstrates that neither of you are paying enough attention to the issues priests are actually arguing for.
You seem to be missing what we're both saying. Nobody is saying that imp. DS should be trainable. I tend to write Imp. DS because there's no reason to NOT spend the two extra points if you're getting DS either live or with the beta talents. The point I'm making is that it either will be worth speccing or it will not be worth speccing. That scrolls are half the value of DS isn't really the main point of the argument. I believe, looking at the wording, that Disc is implied as a whole to be a viable raid spec and that DS is a perk for bringing that spec. Expanding that to "compelling reason for a tree to exist" is a bit extreme. In any case, I'm not going to convince anybody so I'll stop posting on the topic.
Edit: I would like to say, however, that I'd like a glyph that returns 5% damage of Smite as mana so I could dps guilt free on farm runs. That should be fairly close to mana neutral in a raid environmenr if you have Searing Light and raid debuffs on the mob. That way I'd do fairly low but mana-free damage and still have mana to heal when required.
The EU beta forums don't even get developer posts, just a single overworked blue poster to try and handle everything.
The so-called Disc tree revamp talked about before Wrath seems to not have gone anywhere, Disc is almost the same just with some new talents at the bottom. The new level 80 spell is incredibly situational with a punishing cooldown. All the new talents seem to just shore up existing problems instead of adding cool new stuff. It's starting to feel like the end of the BC beta, where priests ended up at the bottom of the ladder for the next year (except this time Shadow is lackluster too). Or maybe the priest "polish" pass is yet to come together with the priest glyphs?
There is. It's sort of there.
Per another Blue Poster 2-3 days ago. Disc priests are intended to be the highest HPS healers, right up there with Paladins. That's the focus.
Heh. Maybe that's why they nerfed Empowered Healing... /snicker, ZOMG! Empowered Healing made Holy priests have better Greater Heals! (Of course, this is a change from Eyonix's age old post saying Holy was thoroughput and Discipline was staying-power).
Having Divine spirit as "incentive" (note: not "compelling reason") to take Disc spirit is ok. Having consumables for replacing that buff is ok: let's face it, how many people can be assed to bring 30 spirit scrolls for each and every mana user in raid? Not actually replacing since if extra spirit is that important to have anyway (to a point that you farm countless of hours to get it) why bring a nerfed version?
Real problem with Divine Spirit being "incentive" is that you can simply spec 1 priest alt 23 points into disc and get same result as any disc priest could have. Then have prot warrior logoff while alt logs on to buff raid the raid with spirit.
I remember a blue post in beta forums (Ghostcrawler?) saying that they don't want the buffs class brings to be the reason why they are brought into the raid, so I wouldn't put too much meaning into Koraa's words. They are not stating DS as being purpose of Disc trees existance. More like a bonus that they do not intend to take away.
I see main problem most priests have being that at the moment they have to sacrifice important points in holy tree (read: lose CoH) to get Imp. DS. One another big problem with DS being talent spec is the overall feeling of priests lacking raid synergy, something almost every other class has.
What I'm trying to say is, priests bring little buffs to raid because of our amount of "oh shit" prevention abilities we have. But oh shit doesn't happen if everyone plays like they should, huh? Paladins, druids and shamans can heal any situation imaginable, right? It's far easier to see benefits of blessing of Salvation/Kings than benefits of a holy priest. I'm ok with it tho, since I know I can heal better than any other class in game
But requiring someone to be excellent at his class in order to be valuable to raid may be too much for general raid community. Maybe thats why people want DS as a core ability so much? Bit like chain heal, major reason for it being "superior" is that even idiots can be effective with it.
I talked to the designer who does Inscription and was told that if we do a "spirit scroll" it won't exceed ~75% of what Divine Spirit would be.
Regarding scrolls similar to other abilities (mark of the wild, arcane intellect, etc.) those are still in design
This makes things somewhat more explicable, still not wildly happy and i don't imagine the pallies will be any happier if you can buy a scroll of 7% buff to all stats either.
This makes things somewhat more explicable, still not wildly happy and i don't imagine the pallies will be any happier if you can buy a scroll of 7% buff to all stats either.
I think I understand the basic idea- namely, affording 10-mans the buffs they can't always get due to not having Class XYZ present, thus making sure you're not obliged to gimp a group just to get specific buffs. But I think all it does is underscore the fact that we've come to rely on talented buffs, and I really can't see why they shouldn't be made baseline, with talents only to improve them. (Note- I am talking about DS and Kings here. No one gives a crap about Blessing of Sanctuary anyway.)
As a Paladin, I don't care if people can buy scrolls of 7% stats, or even 10% stats. I'm still going to spend the damn talent point to get the buff, even if I wish I didn't have to. I want the damn thing baselined already.
EDIT: Just throwing this in here rather than making another post. Constantius, I messed around with the numbers you posted and I agree with your conclusion as much as I can given the data you provided (ie, I cannot go test this myself and compare due to lack of beta key ). What Moogle is proposing (the old 20% talent coefficient multiplied by spellpower without the healing coefficient) would actually be a slightly higher heal total than the number you were expecting to see. Either way it needs looking at by the devs though. Interested to see how the Flash Heal data looks.
Last edited by Aeverius : 08/05/08 at 10:25 PM.
Improved Lay on Hands is really fucking good:
Originally Posted by Malleus
Unless there's a reason to save it for a specific point in the fight, someone should be getting laid every single time it's up.
Could anyone perhaps test for other classes who have similar "gains an additional x% of healing power" talents? Also, is borrowed time perhaps also broken? If they forgot to convert Spell Power to Healing Power once chance is they forgot it multiple times.
And a final question, does "Healing Power" show in the interface as a number or is only "Spell Power" shown?
Could anyone perhaps test for other classes who have similar "gains an additional x% of healing power" talents? Also, is borrowed time perhaps also broken? If they forgot to convert Spell Power to Healing Power once chance is they forgot it multiple times.
And a final question, does "Healing Power" show in the interface as a number or is only "Spell Power" shown?
The similar druid talent for healing touch got doubled atleast. 20% on live and 40% in the beta.
There is no "Healing Power" anywhere in the interface. Essentially, it's just Blizzard going back on their stated position of "spellpower only !" in some weird way.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
I pointed the situation with Empowered Healing on the Alpha forums. I think that all of us can safely expect it to be corrected, given the change to Empowered Healing Touch.
What is of more interest to me, is that the talent was changed from 20/10% to 10/5%. There are a few possibilities here, as far as I can see.
First, the developers adjusted this talent for an earlier version of the spellpower change, and intended it to provide the same benefit. (Is this even mathematically possible? Perhaps with a completely new formula with multiple doubling?)
Second, the developers decided this talent was too powerful and halved its effectiveness, but did not adjust it for the spellpower change.
I am quite inclined to think that the second possibility is the most likely, though I very much hope that the first is the case. This is likely the wrong place to ask, but does anyone think that a 50% nerf to the talent is merited, given the changes deeper in the tree? Of course none of us want to see it happen, but all things considered, is this something that a reasonable human being, i.e. a developer, could feel is justified? If the answer is yes, or maybe, then the second possibility becomes even more likely.
08/05/08, 6:49 PM
It has the mysterious "are looking at" ring Blizzard posting usually has, never confirming anything.
