If we find that any of the healers is now missing a critical tool from their toolbox (specifically an efficient heal that is good for e.g. topping of a rogue), then that is something we will definitely consider.
This quote is in response to a request for the return of Heal and/or Lesser Heal in a useful max-level form, as a replacement for non-viable downranked spells. I'm unsure how that would work out; if the end of downranking means Priests get another spell to compensate (an old spell at higher rank, maybe, but still), what does it mean for other classes? I'd love to see Heal come back, maybe even Lesser Heal, but I don't know how that would balance against the 2-3 base heals that Shamans and Paladins have, for instance.
Last edited by Aeverius : 08/15/08 at 6:53 PM.
Reason: minor wording changes
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.
As has already mentioned several times in this and other threads, if Blizzard gave priests a heal that fulfilled the role of GH1, a lot of us would be very happy with the downranking change. As it stands, however, we have no choice but to downrank, so it's natural to not want our "last resort" to be taken away.
You know, I was against the downranking thing for the reasons stated above, but I have to admit this is perfectly true. Giving classes a compensatory mid-range heal and filling in the gap would be an adequate compensation.
However - because of the way spell coefficients work, it would have to be between the fast, small heal and the slow, big heal. For instance:
Flash of Light - 1.5 sec - coefficient is 42.85%
Heal - 2.5 sec (talented to 2.0) - coefficient is 71.42%
Greater Heal - 3 sec (talented to 2.5) - coefficient is 85.71%
(currently Heal rank 4 and Greater Heal all ranks are 3.0 sec cast time, talented to 2.5, so this is a proposal that Heal be reduced to 2.5 cast time, talented to 2.0)
If you made it the same cast time, even if it took less mana, it would receive the same benefit from +healing that the big spell does.
Same would apply for paladins and shamans. Druids already have a midrange heal of this kind coming, Nourish.
Easier solution: leave it at 2.5 seconds, but don't give it any benefit from Empowered Healing. Bam, done. Less efficient than GHeal, but heals for a lot less, and costs a lot less mana.
The only reason GH:1 is even viable today is because of Empowered Healing. When you do the math, it's really not efficient until you add this magic non-cast-time-non-downranked additional healing amount of 600 (for 2600 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
I would indeed personally not mind the downranking change if we got one or two spells to fill the gap currently left open by the downranking nerf, but act as max rank spells for game mechanics. For me the annoyance at the change is mostly the loss of some tools (those to heal those moderate gaps efficiently without overhealing insanely) and fun (I find having to massively overheal for max efficiency idiotic). I don't overly care about this spell having an extreme efficiency beyond other max ranks; if it is a spell which would be at similar or maybe slightly lower efficiency than GHeal, I would be fine with that. As detailed my goal with downranking would be to fit smaller health deficits efficiently without wasting mana on overheals, not to achieve extreme and unintended efficiency compared to max rank spells or get a spell infinitely spammable to beat encounters. Just giving it a different Empowered Healing coefficient to maintain the relative efficiency should not be very hard either (it's already done with Flash Heal).
Serendipity is a definite problem for balance in this however, in my eyes. On the one hand, Blizzard will probably not want to give this new spell efficiency beyond the GHeal efficiency. If this were to happen, superior scaling might make spamming this spell non stop potentially viable, which I don't think is intended. On the other hand, if leaving the scaling and efficiency so that it is equal or slightly lower to max rank GHeal (let's say 90-100% of GHeal efficiency or so), another problem surfaces. Close to the threshold where Serendipity kicks in, you get roughly 50% of GHeal 9 power, at 40% of the cost, leading to an efficiency of 125% compared to casting a fully effective max rank GHeal (dropping down to 100% if 60% overhealing). If the new heal has 90% of the efficiency of GHeal, that means that with a Serendipity GHeal (40% mana cost), GHeal needs to be overhealing for more than 64% (36% effective healing,40% cost means 90% efficiency) for the new heal to be worthwile to use. Once GHeal does not have Serendipity proccing, the new heal (let's call it Lesser Heal for now) could be more efficient, yet again leading to a weird and counter intuitive situation in terms of which heal is good for which health range.
Of course part of this could be changed by adjusting some Serendipity numbers, but basically whatever you do it will end up a talent giving rise to weird and counter intuitive situations which do not promote 'good' healing. For this reason I personally think that as mentioned above, a change to a mechanic like the T5 set bonus would be better, where people receive a certain percentage of the mana cost back if they bring the target to full health. A percentage instead of fixed number like the T5 bonus, which influenced different spells in a different way, most notably GHeal 1 cost being reduced by about 30% - a percentage would maintain the efficiency balance. The exact percentage would have to be worked out, so that skillful use would give the same mana returns as Blizzard has in mind for Serendipity in its current incarnation. This way, what I think pretty much all of us consider 'good' healing would be promoted: The top efficiency is achieved by a spell which fills the target to full while minimizing overhealing. A talent most effectively used by good healers adept at choosing the right spell.
Can someone please post some comments on the beta forums about Serendipity and how it rewards "bad" healing, along with a suggestion to change it to a "refunds a percentage of mana back when a direct heal brings a player to full health" mechanic instead. Then, and only then it would make sense to give us a mid-sized heal.
Can someone please post some comments on the beta forums about Serendipity and how it rewards "bad" healing, along with a suggestion to change it to a "refunds a percentage of mana back when a direct heal brings a player to full health" mechanic instead. Then, and only then it would make sense to give us a mid-sized heal.
Thank you very much.
I could try and post a story on the EU beta forums when I get around to writing a post, I'm a bit dubious about the amount it's truly read. At times I get the idea there's a single totally overworked CM trying to hold things together on his own, whereas the US ones are a bit more frequented. Might pay off to have threads on either forum though.
Can someone please post some comments on the beta forums about Serendipity and how it rewards "bad" healing, along with a suggestion to change it to a "refunds a percentage of mana back when a direct heal brings a player to full health" mechanic instead. Then, and only then it would make sense to give us a mid-sized heal.
Thank you very much.
As far as I am aware, the idea that overhealing your target is bad was thrown out in the early days of TBC by most raid healers. In tank healing, specifically, a steady stream of overhealing, within mana limitations, is essential to prevent burst damage deaths. That, in fact, is the very reason that many priests in this thread would like to have downrank options - to allow them to provide a continuous stream of heals that they can sustain for the duration of a fight. Normally this kind of healing strategy generates a massive amount of overhealing.
The alternative to this kind of steady healing is Cast Canceling with HoT buffers to cover the smaller amounts. That seems like the place tank healing is headed. For Raid Healing, I can only expect the vast army of AoE and "proc" based heals to cover the slack that a downranked greater heal will leave.
While a holy priest can abuse serendipity we still need something for Discipline. As it stands grace on an 8 second timer means you HAVE to cast constantly on one target let alone on 2. Disc priests desperately need a spammable heal somewhere between GH and Flash as penance on a 10 sec cooldown is way to long. The whole point of a disc build is that you are constantly landing heals and without downranking that is going to be a real mana drain if the tank is taking erratic damage and your heals are not always generating heals for your rapture to kick in.
As far as I am aware, the idea that overhealing your target is bad was thrown out in the early days of TBC by most raid healers.
I can only speak for myself, but from my perspective the idea that 10% overheal was something to strive for died a very abrupt death when I was learning Malchezaar, a 10 man boss who (particularly 18 months ago) could thrash for large chunks of a tank's health, and suffered through one too many wipes to "if I'd only let that heal land...".
10% overheal is overrated when we also have spells that are efficient even when they overheal. I mean, specifically, look at CoH. It usually hits 5 targets, but it can hit up to 10 targets counting pets. It's efficient when it heals 3 targets. 2/5 ~ 40% to 7/10 ~ 70% overheal.
I'd like to know what Blizzard was thinking with Prince though, while he suffers from the dual wield penalty, the dual wielding and thrash just makes him attack far to fast to heal reactively, especially in phase 2.
The irony is, there seems to be some sort of conception that hard hitting bosses require reactive healing, but you know, Patchwerks was a good boss in which you could reactively heal. At least, that's how my guild did it. We realized we always had time to top tanks off after they've been hit. That made the fight a breeze. Yet somehow we went from that to Brutallus -- and lets not even talk about Stomps.
While a holy priest can abuse serendipity we still need something for Discipline. As it stands grace on an 8 second timer means you HAVE to cast constantly on one target let alone on 2. Disc priests desperately need a spammable heal somewhere between GH and Flash as penance on a 10 sec cooldown is way to long. The whole point of a disc build is that you are constantly landing heals and without downranking that is going to be a real mana drain if the tank is taking erratic damage and your heals are not always generating heals for your rapture to kick in.
According to wowhead they are making fheal a bit more efficient. (it appears to be a boost to shadow's healing ability)
Fheal will always heal for exactly half that of Gheal at max rank since the base heal is half (basically gheal is slightly more than double) and the benefit from healing is half.
The prices for Fheal are 20 and 18% above 70, Gheal is 36 and 32%. So ignoring improved Healing, Fheal is about 55% of the cost which isn't much difference. This difference jumps to 66% after improved healing. Improved healing is really where most of fheal's inefficiency lies because it doesn't effect it so if they changed improved healing to include fheal so that fheal really is the half sized heal it would eliminate the need for another heal.
Here I graphed the HPM of the spells (using lvl 80 versions) versus various health deficits on the tank. I graphed it with zero spellpower since all the spells will scale the same. The two lines with nodes are each way of improving the lack of downranking. The purple line with dots would be a heal thats the same efficiency as a imp Gheal but only heal 75%. The blue triangle line is one is the Fheal line if improved Healing effects it. As you can see the improved FHeal does a much better job filling in the worst area for Gheal, right before the 50% OH mark (where the HPM jumps). The mid range heal actually drops below the original fheal efficiency line.
Good point on improved healing, however if they wanted to go down that route they really should make improved healing an easier talent to get. As it is it looks like discipline is locked into 18 points of holy for things essential to the spec. This isn't just improved healing but pushback, holy crit and inspiration. Currently both trees lead to cookie cutter specs with almost no variation. 14/57 for holy and 53/18 for disc. If they really want there to be choices in the trees they will have to rearrange the talents as there really are no options here. There is a 3rd alternative which is a hybrid spec going to grace in Disc and then grabbing a few more holy talents as currently borrowed time is rather week. GCD's don't look to be a major issue with disc healing and it costs 5 talents to get 25% more than a 3 point talent at the start of the tree and is not multiplicative with it. I've also seen reports that because of the way healing is calculated it is in fact only about 1/2 as effective as you would expect. The same maths error as they made with Empowered healing.
While a holy priest can abuse serendipity we still need something for Discipline. As it stands grace on an 8 second timer means you HAVE to cast constantly on one target let alone on 2.
I don't have a beta account to test it, but does Grace actually work this way? Every other stackable buff/debuff in game refreshes its duration whenever its trigger condition is met. So once you stacked, you should only need a single heal to maintain on any given target. With 1.5s Flash Heals, this means you could keep the buff up on 5 players at once (presuming no lag/movement).
I don't have a beta account to test it, but does Grace actually work this way? Every other stackable buff/debuff in game refreshes its duration whenever its trigger condition is met. So once you stacked, you should only need a single heal to maintain on any given target. With 1.5s Flash Heals, this means you could keep the buff up on 5 players at once (presuming no lag/movement).
You're not going to be able to support this for the whole fight.
Here I graphed the HPM of the spells (using lvl 80 versions) versus various health deficits on the tank. I graphed it with zero spellpower since all the spells will scale the same. The two lines with nodes are each way of improving the lack of downranking. The purple line with dots would be a heal thats the same efficiency as a imp Gheal but only heal 75%. The blue triangle line is one is the Fheal line if improved Healing effects it. As you can see the improved FHeal does a much better job filling in the worst area for Gheal, right before the 50% OH mark (where the HPM jumps). The mid range heal actually drops below the original fheal efficiency line.
I think you made a slight mistake in your assumption here, as Flash Heal and Greater Heal do not scale equally with spellpower:
-In magnitude, they scale proportionally with 2:1 for GHeal:Flash Heal. Since the original pre-talent and pre-gear magnitudes are 4290 and 2040, which is fairly close to 2:1, not much will change here, with Flash actually becoming a slightly bigger fraction of GHeal as gear improves.
-When it comes to HPM, GHeal scales superiorly. Umodified by talents, GHeal costs 32% of base mana, Flash Heal 18%. GHeal costs less than twice the mana Flash Heal costs, yet scales twice as fast. In other words, as gear is applied, the HPM of GHeal will improve relatively compared to Flash Heal. An effect which is strengthened even more by Improved Healing obviously, which means that GHeal costs 50% more but scales twice as fast. (Part of that obviously is point of your posts, but without, it's still roughly 1.78:1 in costs and 2:1 in magnitude scaling)
-In HPS, GHeal similarly scales better. Due to the cast time reduction of Divine Fury, it is treated as 3.0second spell yet delivers in 2.5 seconds. It scales twice as fast, with a cast time which is 66.7% higher, meaning its HPS scaling is better.
Your point is an interesting one though, even if I'd personally prefer a situation in which an additional heal is added. Making Flash Heal more efficient might lead to some balancing issues if it scales to be a lot more efficient. It might become a bit more of a spammable, fast yet efficient heal than Blizzard wants (my suspicion on what they intend Flash Heal for), meaning mana cost would either be increased again, or HPS reduced (to reduce the efficiency down again, which would hurt emergency potential). As a result, assuming Flash Heal as it currently is, is as Blizzard intends it, I'd rather have a new heal to fill the gap than see Flash Heal adjusted. (This might sound slightly confusing, but what I'm trying to say is that fast heals are typically less efficient to balance them as emergency tools versus slower more efficient heals, and changing Flash Heal to fill two roles might disrupt this balance.)
Isn't that boring? If they made Flash Heal efficient, then why on earth would we ever use Greater Heal, except for when we knew Serendipity would proc -- which requires 50% overhealing?
Making Flash Heal efficient seems awfully inelegant. The inefficiency gives us a reason to use Greater Heal.
[e]
Of course, a point is to be made... if we suddenly have an efficient Flash Heal, then what are Paladins doing?
I think you made a slight mistake in your assumption here, as Flash Heal and Greater Heal do not scale equally with spellpower:
-In magnitude, they scale proportionally with 2:1 for GHeal:Flash Heal. Since the original pre-talent and pre-gear magnitudes are 4290 and 2040, which is fairly close to 2:1, not much will change here, with Flash actually becoming a slightly bigger fraction of GHeal as gear improves.
-When it comes to HPM, GHeal scales superiorly. Umodified by talents, GHeal costs 32% of base mana, Flash Heal 18%. GHeal costs less than twice the mana Flash Heal costs, yet scales twice as fast. In other words, as gear is applied, the HPM of GHeal will improve relatively compared to Flash Heal. An effect which is strengthened even more by Improved Healing obviously, which means that GHeal costs 50% more but scales twice as fast. (Part of that obviously is point of your posts, but without, it's still roughly 1.78:1 in costs and 2:1 in magnitude scaling)
You just agreed with me by trying to disagree -.-
GHeal will always be about twice the strength of FHeal and cost "about" 55% (ignoring improved healing). This ends up making the lines intercept at the same OH % for the gheal (I tested values of spellpower up to 30000). Increasing spellpower only serves to move the graph to the right although the HPM values go steadily up. The graph I showed used exact values.
And yes the 20% haste only being added to GHeal and not Fheal does grant GHeal superior HPS.
edit: Starfire it will be efficient but still lag behind in HPS which limits it's use in raids. Also the slight difference from 50% to 55% cost creates a gap between the efficiencies so even with improved healing fheal won't be as good as gheal.
Isn't that boring? If they made Flash Heal efficient, then why on earth would we ever use Greater Heal, except for when we knew Serendipity would proc -- which requires 50% overhealing?
Making Flash Heal efficient seems awfully inelegant. The inefficiency gives us a reason to use Greater Heal.
[e]
Of course, a point is to be made... if we suddenly have an efficient Flash Heal, then what are Paladins doing?
There was a post by a paladin right before the Illumination nerf, asking for it. He claimed that, in full t3, he would go oom in 8 minutes by chain casting holy lights; and refill that mana from zero in 11 minutes by chain casting flash of lights. If a paladin wants cheap heals he uses flash of light, but it's not powerful enough to keep up against high dps. This is part of the problem paladins are having in arena; they must cast holy light to keep up with dps, which can be interrupted more easily.
I actually like the idea of cheap but weak heals. Renew, pom, coh are great; but they're not lifebloom/fol. A similar thing is true for druids now; in full t6, keeping all 3 hots on 2 tanks, they go oom in; well, do they? I know for a fact that a druid in arena can keep a full stack lifebloom infinitely and I have to mana burn him if I want to keep him dry. Lifebloom might be an extreme and isn't an example of "cheap but weak", but it should hold a point. I want to be able to sustain some minimal healing even when I'm oom too. Druids and paladins can do it, but not priests or shamans.
However, if a heal is going to be like that, I hope it won't be flash heal; the mid range heal we've been asking for is a good candidate for that. Simply a new Gheal1, so to speak.
I feel like commenting on Penance and how it doesn't fit in with Disc.
When I was thinking about what the Discipline spells and talents are really all about it I realised that it's all to do with Magic Buffs and Mana. Granted, Shackle Undead doesn't quite fit, but ALL the rest does. The vast majority of spells are magic buffs, from Fortitude over Shield to Inner Fire. Magic buffs. A lot of talents are magic buff related too: Inner Focus, Power Infusion, Pain Suppression, Divine Spirit. Then there are our buff management abilities Dispel Magic and Mass Dispel. And finally a lot of mana stuff is happening with Disc in Mana Burn, Mental Agility, Mental Strength and so on.
Now mostly Blizzard has stuck to these with Wrath. Talents like Divine Aegis and Grace fit in well with the buff part and Rapture is in the Mana direction. Granted the dispel part is lacking somewhat, which is a shame.
And then comes Penance. What? What the hell does it do there on top of the Disc tree? Disc traditionally doesn't have any healing spells. It does nothing with Mana or Dispels and it's not really a magic buff. It does stack up Grace supposedly and has a chance to give Aegis, but otherwise it just doesn't fit.
Do you guys think there's even a faint chance of us getting something else? Like a new Power Word of some sort? If you feel like I do and have access to the beta forum, would you mind making a post? Maybe just to ask how Penance is supposed to fit in?
Edit:
I have nothing against Penance as such. It seems reasonably interesting and I'm sure it can be tweaked for usefulness. However it fits the Holy spell line much better.
I feel commenting and Penance and how it doesn't fit in with Disc.
Do you guys think there's even a faint chance of us getting something else? Like a new Power Word of some sort? If you feel like I do and have access to the beta forum, would you mind making a post? Maybe just to ask how Penance is supposed to fit in?
I agree. I can post on the EU forums and have made a few posts about Penance being worthless as it stands. Sadly posting on the EU beta forums feels more like banging your head against a brick wall :P
I think we are probably stuck with Penance, hopefully they can improve it to make it worth while casting, because right now it is not worth casting it over greater heal. For damage it is utterly worthless, they might aswell remove that part if they aren't going to improve it.
I dont like the removal of downranking either, as it does dumb down priest healing a little, but I think we should not lose focus.
The removal of crushing blows and the renew regen mechanisms given to both disc and holy priests, seems to support the new change.
No crushing blows means cast cancelling is probably going to be a safe option.
Holy: With IHC and serendipity we are made for spamming high rank gheal. Even now it is possible to heal effectively in nearly all encounters by just cast cancelling max rank. Its simply not as efficient or safe as spamming the right rank. The new changes completely reverse this.
Disc: Disc should have a pretty constant cycle, filled in with PWS, penance and gheal/flash. The new aegis + rapture combo combined with relatively high crit and the extra HPS generated for free by PWS, pretty much make both flash heal and gheal relatively efficient. A disc priest will respond to low damage with penance, pom, PWS and renew, to medium damage with flash heal and to high damage with gheal.
Originally Posted by Kortar
However, it's almost certain that PW:S won't scale at nearly the rate Greater Heal does, or either heal once WotLK Holy talents are incorporated.
For a Discipline Priest, interweaving PW:S makes sense. But that doesn't make Discipline Priests worthwhile healers in comparison to other healers.
@80, 1% spell crit is about 29 spell critical rating. 1 spell critical rating has an itemization budget equivalent to 1.16 spellpower. So +15% spell critical from gear is equivalent to +505 spellpower.
Alright. You've got a spec where you have one spell - PW:S - that is better than Holy. Every other healing spell you can possibly cast varies from slightly worse to enormously worse. Your argument is that somehow a spell you can only use 25% of the time, and only repeat on the same target every 15s overwhelms the value of every other healing spell Priests receive?
With the current modifiers PWS scales about as good as gheal factoring in IHC, as it slightly more than 50% of fully talented gheal but has a 1 sec GCD.
15%??!?! Start at base 10% add 5/5 divine spec, add 15% more int and factor in raid wide totem of wrath. Then you can begin to get a clear idea of how much spell power you need to lose for 25% crit. It aint much, especially if gear consolidation means that some of the best in class gear comes with spell crit.
As I said before you obviously have not healed much as disc. You also forgot PI, rapture, aegis and penance and in a bind PS. When the raid damage is focused and not AoE, disc can do about as good a job as holy. Holy priests are still going to be better at pretty much every healing job, but the difference (xpt aoe healing), as things stand is relatively small.
Also impDS is now going to be a disc priest buff only. Unless a holy priest fills up the bottom end of the holy tree he is going to have no advantage over a disc priest. Overall the raid won't lose anything critical if one priest goes disc.
Rapture only really helps if you have a spell to heal the amount of damage the person has taken. With the removal of downranking, we no longer have that spell and overheal is totally wasted unlike a holy priest with serendipity who gets most of the mana back.
PW:S scales by 96% from talents and an extra 15% added to the total.
GH scales 190% from talents and also scales from Spiritual healing and Twin Disciplines meaning an extra 15% is added to the total.
PW:S 110% total, and GH 218% total.
This doesnt take into account that Empowered healing is most likely to be "fixed" as it was incorrectly lowered instead of being raised in the switch over to spell power.
PW:S for a discipline priest will actually scale slightly better than a flash heal for a holy priest at the moment but also only because of the problem with Empowered healing.
Given that you can cast at least 5 greater heals in the space of 1 PW:S on a single target, there really isn't any comparison and PW:S isn't significantly better as a Discipline priest as it is to a holy priest. Most of what you notice about PW:S in the beta is due to the fact that it now scales the same by default as flash heal.
Deep Discipline talents simply make PW:S free, rather than improve its effectiveness. Which does nothing to increase a Discipline priests output, and Serendipity puts Rapture to shame.
More needs to be done to increase a Discipline priests tools, when there are so many talents that simply affect 1 spell only, it simply isn't worth while investing in it, especially when that spell has a serious cooldown on it and even conflicts with other priests in the raid (curse that holy priest for casting PW:S)
No crushing blows means cast cancelling is probably going to be a safe option
No boss in sunwell plateau crushes I'm i'm not mistaken. No crushings doesn't mean easier or safer, in fact they can probably tune things to be even harder since the damage of the boss variance lessens and is more controlled.
No boss in sunwell plateau crushes I'm i'm not mistaken. No crushings doesn't mean easier or safer, in fact they can probably tune things to be even harder since the damage of the boss variance lessens and is more controlled.
Twins can crush, don't belive any other boss do though.
You know, removing the cooldown from Penance would be a viable option for Discipline. Seems like a perfectly viable mid-range heal so far.
Let's look at the three direct heals (with no talents except Divine Fury):
Flash Heal (18% base mana, 1.5s casting) heals for 2040 with half the coefficient of Penance/Greater Heal.
Greater Heal (32% base mana, 2.5s casting) heals for 4270 with the same coefficient as Penance.
Penance (33% base mana, 3.0s casting) heals for 2139 with the same coefficient as Greater Heal.
Assuming +2000 spellpower and 1.9x current coefficients, you end up with:
Flash Heal 2445 hps, 204 heal/% mana.
Greater Heal 3011 hps, 235 heal/% mana.
Penance 1799 hps, 164 heal/% mana.
I'm honestly not sure what they were thinking with Penance.
08/15/08, 5:29 PM
