Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion. - Page 3

PSGarak · 07/08/08, 12:46 AM

On the other hand, if the 10-man instances are balanced around a healing requirement resembling 2.5 more than a solid 2 or 3, Discipline priests are probably your best bet for getting the most raid usefulness out of that third "healer" slot, probably even more so than a half-breed spec like dreamstate resto or a 40/31 holy-tankadin.

Chul · 07/08/08, 1:28 AM

If Penance works like Arcane Missiles, would it get similar scaling of 142% of "spell power" ?

Anedris · 07/08/08, 1:35 AM

Arcane missiles has a 5 second channel time. Penance has a 3 second channel time.

Slyness · 07/08/08, 2:12 AM

Originally Posted by PsyBomb

Yes, I skipped Silent Resolve. This is from a more-or-less pure raider POV, though, and when is the last time you had problems with healing aggro in anything over a 5-man?.

I can see Silent Resolve being situationally important in 25-man scenarios especially if you're holy spec and you have Mark of Divinity placed on the MT. If encounters have raid wide damage occuring early on in the fight and you have a decent amount of people grouped within 15 yrds of each other, that's a ton of healing and threat right there. There's just no point in taking anything else. I consider Imp PW:S a pvp talent. 15% increase for 3 talent points is really weak and just insignificant in my opinion in a raiding scenario. I also don't use PW:S except for maybe some pulls in 5 mans but then I generally only pvp with my priest so perhaps other priests could share their opinion on this?

Disc priests could shine as spot healers in raids with an occasional penance on the tank. I assume you don't need as much healing on the raid as you would for MT healing, sothe difference in healing power between a holy priest and disc priest in that scenario would be nil. That coupled with Disc priest's superior mana regen compared to Holy priests with Enlightenment/Mental Strength could make them more suited for that role when it comes up.

As for a viable healer in .5 healer in 10 mans, a smite priest fills that role nicely. On demand dps or healing without having to switch gear anymore(with the introduction of spellpower) will make them able to do either role depending on the fight or switch to a healing role in the case a healer goes down during an encounter. Who knows what encounters will be like within an instance in WOTLK but at the moment, a raid instance has fights that seem to be easier to accomplish with varying numbers of healers. Instead of switching people in and out, which some guilds such as my own aren't able to coordinate due to circumstances, having a regular smite priest could be a viable option.
It's looking like all casters will generally value spirit and with the homogenization of gear coupled with Enlightenment/Mental Agility changes, it doesn't look like Smite priests will be struggling for mana as much as they used to.

Slyness · 07/08/08, 2:16 AM

On another note, penance is lookiing to be really nice for arenas. A decent heal when your partner gets LOS while chasing someone or trying to get a kill on someone going around a pillar/a druid running away is going to be very valuable. It seems that there's just going to be no end to pillars with the new arenas coming out. Our only viable instant "heal" when our partner is low on health is PW:S and Vial of the Sunwell. Penance could help with that issue as well.

Ellyh · 07/08/08, 3:29 AM

While it would be nice to think that Discipline will have better regen than holy I have a nasty suspiscion that holy may in fact have just as good a regen as Disc.

Disc gets Divine spirit, Enlightenment and Rapture.

Holy gets Improved death, Improved holy concentration and serendipity.

Improved death and Enlightenment basically cancel each other out with a slight advantage to Disc because of the extra Int boosting regen a bit.

Divine spirit is only a boost to Discipline priests when no holy priests are present in the group otherwise it is of equal value to both specs.

This leaves the bulk of the difference in Rapture vs Improved holy concentration and serendipity.

Personally I suspect that 100% refund of mana if you overheal by more than 50% and 16% clearcasting proc are going to be better for endurance.

lets look at Rapture vs Holy Concentration and assume we are spamming the new top rank of greater heal.

Mana cost is 1290 X .85 for the cost reduction talent and base is 3950 which assuming the equivalent of 3000 healing power under the current system will land for 6693 for a discipline priest. This is 167.3 mana regen per cast or 334 mana/5

For the same spell for the holy priest we get 1290 x .85 x .16 for the average mana reduction from Imp Holy concentration gives us 175.4 mana/5 + if 1 in 5 overheals for more than 50% we get a full refund of 1290 x .85 every 15 seconds or so.

so for max rank spam healing your get better regen equivalency from Holy but for lower ranks you will probably see the discipline priest making greater gains as generally for lower ranks the heals/mana are better so it favours a refund based on output rather than a refund based on base cost model.

Tainter · 07/08/08, 4:38 AM

You also get 10s of OO5SR regen every time holy concentration procs. But since I have no idea how much regen a level 80 raid buffed Priest is going to have I can't tell you how much mana that would be. Does anyone have a numbers to pluck in?

Tainter · 07/08/08, 4:42 AM

Originally Posted by Chul

If Penance works like Arcane Missiles, would it get similar scaling of 142% of "spell power" ?

It's probably going to be 85.7% over the full time, or 28.6% per tick. At least I see no reason why it should work any different.

• Chicken · 07/08/08, 5:14 AM

Originally Posted by Tainter

It's probably going to be 85.7% over the full time, or 28.6% per tick. At least I see no reason why it should work any different.

It might end up getting somewhat more due to it's cooldown. The 51-point talent for Arcane Mages Arcane Barrage has the coefficient of a 3 second cast time spell despite being instant for example.

Havoc12 · 07/08/08, 7:10 AM

Originally Posted by Kortar

1. So you've just healed someone for 9k. And put a 25% armor buff on them. It seems layering on a bonus PW:S is gilding the lily at this point.

2. Critical based healing has always been terrible for raiding because it's not about raw throughput - it's about precision. Healing for 9k when you're throwing a 6k heal tends to just mean 3k overheal. With this talent, it really just means 6k overheal - except that 3k of that overheal is a shield that is covering damage Lifeblooms would have healed anyway.

3. Both Shaman and Druids get a version of this talent - and their versions are a lot better. Druids get a 30% reactive heal - but they also have +50% critical with Regrowth, so their talent is fairly reliable. Shaman get a 60% chain heal-type jump, and have more critical from talents.

Depending on the exact workings of the spell its possible that divine aegis might absorb more damage ON TOP of inspiration.

The shaman talent directs the healing to the lowest health target. It could be the tank, but then again it might not. The druid buff is heal after you take damage, very nice but then again half or regrowth is a HoT and lets face it how often do druids use healing touch.

The shield from divine aegis takes off a certain amount of damage from the next hit. Everytime you get a crit a shield goes on which will reduce the next hit. This means less spiky damage on the tank.

If you have encounters with extremely spiky damage (e.g. something like windfury or thrash) divine aegis may reduce your wipe chance quite significantly.

People are very distrustful of "critical healing" as they should be, but divine aegis is not critical healing. The real problem with critical healing is that you are not sure it will be there when you need it, so its often wasted. Divine aegis stays on the target until used.

The idea that the damage from divine aegis "would be healed by lifeblooms anyway" is completely invalid. Divine aegis STACKS with inspiration, grace, druid hots, with PWS, with PoM and with the new druid crit buff. All these things combine together to reduce the damage the tank takes.

People need to dispense with the idea that critical based = bad. Damage absorption is *always* valueable even if its crit based. The real question people should be asking is how much damage absorption.

This yet another CoH thing. People were crying about how CoH is useless because its group limited and its range is too small. They never bother to determine just how much it can heal for.

600 effective hps is about the maximum anyone can sustain with single target heals in BC raiding right now.

800 effective HPS is the maximum.

Originally Posted by Ellyh

AI totally disagree. If test of faith has kicked in your target is in major major trouble as they have less than 50% health. Currently this means that they will either be a tank and have 3 heals about to land or if another raid member is "PROBABLY" not going to take much more damage immediately or will die before you can land any significant heals

Test of Faith makes flash heal worth using in emergencies. IHC haste and the boost from test of faith make it an extremely fast and actually fairly large heal.

Think of this encounter: You have a boss that selects a random target every 5 seconds and hits them for a very large amount of damage. Something like claw charge on zul'jin or the ice bolt on rage winterchill. A priest healing that will have test of faith active on most heals.

Think of a boss that damages the entire raid for 70% of their HP every 20 seconds or so. Test of faith will return a massive amount of healing.

In fact its more than common for many targets to be below 50% heals in todays raids. A lot of the raid healing that needs to be done involves saving DPS from a high DPS ability. In spiky fights the tank also spends a good deal of time below 50% HP. Test of faith will probably not require that you begin your heal when the target is at 50% HP, only that the heal lands when the target is at 50% HP. Even with the encounters we know right now, this is quite a massive boost to effective healing and +crit.

As for the regeneration of disc priests vs holy priests, I should remind everyone that rapture returns mana to the entire party. So its quite conceivable that holy priests will enjoy the immense power of 16% clearcasting (which with the haste buff from IHC) and rapture.

Pitbuller · 07/08/08, 7:42 AM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

800 effective HPS is the maximum.

From WWSscoreboard: Sk-gaming fastest kill. 4:27
Top healer Mackelina, paladin 2957hps, 52% overhealing. So 1420hps.

Iliyan · 07/08/08, 9:54 AM

Originally Posted by Tainter

You also get 10s of OO5SR regen every time holy concentration procs. But since I have no idea how much regen a level 80 raid buffed Priest is going to have I can't tell you how much mana that would be. Does anyone have a numbers to pluck in?

Wrong, Improved Holy Concentration has been changed to 20% haste after you gain Holy Concentration for 20sec.

There is a malfunction on the Talent Calculator here

Yarr! Tools :: Priest 8472

and ranks 2/3 and 3/3 of Imp holy concentration show the "old" version of the talent.

Btw, I've thought up a Holy CoH spam build, don't know if it is any good, but I would like your opinion. Maybe I should sack mental agility, but it is very powerful for CoH raid healing.

Yarr! Tools :: Priest 8472

Also, there is this little possibility that should CoH target a target with above 50% HP, serendipity could proc, however this is unlikely due to the "smart targeting" system I hear they are implementing in CoH which targets people with lowest Hp in raid in range. However, this could make "top up the raid" healing easier should serendipity proc.

Any thoughts?

Havoc12 · 07/08/08, 9:58 AM

Originally Posted by Pitbuller

From WWSscoreboard: Sk-gaming fastest kill. 4:27
Top healer Mackelina, paladin 2957hps, 52% overhealing. So 1420hps.

Maintain is the key word. 4' fights are anyone's guess.

Slyness · 07/08/08, 2:53 PM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

Disc gets Divine spirit, Enlightenment and Rapture.

Holy gets Improved death, Improved holy concentration and serendipity.

Imp death vs Enlightenment is a difference of 5% intellect in Enlightenment's favor. Not counting Rapture or Divine spirit, the difference in mana regen for disc vs holy is:

15% int (mental strength)
5% int (enlightenment)
vs
Holy concentration
Serendipity

On a side note, I have a question about Serendipity that maybe you guys can help me out with. There wasn't a holy WOTLK discussion thread so I thought I would just ask it here. Is there any mortal strike affect in the game currently that reduces healing by more than 50%? Unless there's new reduced healing factors in the next expansion it doesn't look like this talent does anything at all. Maybe the wording is wrong in the talent tree...

Incoherence · 07/08/08, 3:01 PM

Originally Posted by Slyness

On a side note, I have a question about Serendipity that maybe you guys can help me out with. There wasn't a holy WOTLK discussion thread so I thought I would just ask it here. Is there any mortal strike affect in the game currently that reduces healing by more than 50%? Unless there's new reduced healing factors in the next expansion it doesn't look like this talent does anything at all. Maybe the wording is wrong in the talent tree...

I think the general consensus is that it's Blizzard's roundabout way of saying "if the heal is more than 50% overheal" without actually using the word "overheal", which makes it just another version of the 2 piece T5 bonus.