I honestly believe disc is hurt a lot less by the downranking nerf because disc priest will often trade a lot of spellpower for a decent crit rate to take full advantage of absorption. This means the disc priest will have a lot less overheal issue. Also, crits and PWS actually regen mana for the disc priest (so long as your +spellpower isn't in the gutter). Holy may have 16% all his heals for free but the disc will probably get 30% free. And a lot more of them cheap.

Using Gheal 7 with the BC static Mana cost, so long as you have 2000 +healing your crits would be free (assuming improved healing). This is because Crits generate 10% of the amount healed back in mana. +Beyond that you gain mana
Also, disc is gonna have a HUGE int pool beyond the base mana so gheal is gonna cost a significant less amount of their total mana.

The downranking nerf also leads to more emphasis on haste to boost HPS rather than more +healing. Unless you are counting on getting exactly 50-60% overheal all the time.

I believe it takes the thinking out of the game because it allows for spamming of heals. Spamming of anything is not skill based. It can be done with a mousewheel scroll or a G15 set to auto. You snipped out the context of my post. Sure, there are amazing healers that already use every spell they have to it's maximum potential on every fight. I find those healers to be few and far between. Down ranking promotes brainless activity, even if you use it as a cheap Flash Heal with a longer cast time. This creates another problem in that they have to balance mana regen and gear around that unintended use of the spells. Any way you look at it, the way WoW is designed down ranking heals isn't good for the game.

As for having to take points in the Holy tree as Disc. Blues have publicly stated that this is intended. They want every class to have a good reason to dabble in multiple trees rather than putting every single point they have into one. There isn't a class or spec in the game that is absolved of this.

Rapture as a group mana return would be overpowered without nerfing the bonus that it gives to PWS. If in it's current state it's making PWS free, plus additional mana back, imagine how ridiculous it could be with someone spamming it on the raid. The mana return would be literally infinite. It wont go back to a group buff unless that is changed, and if the % coefficient on PWS for that talent is reduced, it will no longer make PWS free. As the poster above me said, you can (and will as Disc) cast PWS more often than once every 15 seconds, even if the amount absorbed is only ~5k (we'll say around half the average Greater Heal), you gain mana back, for a single GCD. I'm not sure why everyone says this is lackluster. Maybe they should give PWS some sparklies?

This just reminded me of the massive cost reduction a crit PoH would get during AOE fights. With a decent amount of spellpower you would be up there with a holy priests for AOE efficiency (assuming the raid wide thing goes live). Adding Aegis to rapture was probably the best thing that has happened to disc priests so far.

Wasting mana on POH? POH is more efficient and does more HPs than COH by a long shot. You can easily heal twins without ever casting circle of healing. In fact COH is such a crutch for so many priests. The only fight where it truly shines is felmyst because it's instant and you can heal outside of your group. With good healing setups on twins coh is completely superfluous.

Down ranking was used and was an efficiency gain long before Naxx. Patchwerk just made it clear exactly how good down ranking was.

I would really not want to try to heal Twins with PoH. It has nothing to do with the mana cost or the HPS - it's simply slow. I would not want to leave someone sub-80% life for the 3 second cast time of the spell. (Obviously it could handle the shadow novas, since you know when those are coming, but I would likely end up just using flash spam on the flame sear damage.)

So you promote the even more brainless system of spamming the max rank heal through a combination of tweaked mana costs and talents that provide insane mana returns?

This isn't very fair. New ranks of Heal and/or Lesser Heal can easily be added (GC has mentioned not being afraid to add spells to fill gaps) to account for your midrange heals. Provided the new midrange heal implemented doesn't make GHeal worthless (and it shouldn't), you get the selection of healing spells without the gaminess of downranking. Whatever happens, it's not good form to complain about us just spamming maxrank GH before the new spells or tweaks even get added.

Having seen several people claiming that rapture makes a crit a positive mana event I worked out some maths for the situation. As everything now relates to base mana and none of us know what the base mana of a L80 priest is going to be I have worked out the fundamentals of how large a base heal needs to be for a given mana cost.

If we have a heal that costs Y mana and lands for X we can generate the following equations.

Best case assuming all healing is applied and rapture gives maximum regen.
Heal * crit modifier * rapture return + heal * Crit mod * Aegis % * rapture shield return = mana
X * 1.50 * 0.025 + X * 1.5 * 0.3 * 0.25 = Y
X * 0.0375 + X * 0.1125 = Y
X * 0.15 = Y

If we solve this for given mana costs Y we can work out the Theoretical minimum standard heal needed to generate a free heal for GH flash heal and penance. Do heals other than these (BH or PoH) generate Aeigis shields? Modelling these will be harder. Equations for other situations can be worked out as well.

Case 2 All crit is overheal that doesn't count but all base heal generates Rapture returns.
X * 0.025 + X * 1.5 * 0.3 * 0.25 = Y
X * 0.1375 = Y

Case 3 all crit is overheal and 50% of the base heal is overheal.
X * 0.025 * 0.5 + X * 1.5 * 0.3 * 0.25 = Y
X * 0.125 = Y

Case 4 100% overheal
X * 0.1125 = Y

So for every 100 mana in the cost of the spell you need to be generating the following ammount of healing to break even.
Best case 666.66 heal (6.6 HPM)
Crits overheal 727.27 heal (7.3HPM)
50% overhea 800 heal (8 HPM)
100% overheal 888.88 heal (8.8 HPM

In real life I would expect a discipline priest to fall somewhere in between the crits overheal and 50% overheal option so if your level 80 Gheal costs 1000 mana you will need it to land for somewhere between 7270 and 8000 non crit just to recover the cost of the heal. Can those in beta give me their Level, mana cost and average heal to determine if they are gaining or loosing mana on crits? Given these numbers would it be better for a disc priest to sacrifice regen or +healing for Crit value? My instinct is that given the PWS situation you should be sacrificing regen.

In TBC terms, a maxrank Gheal with my gear is about 6k healing (as holy even), that would return 150 of the 701 mana spent.

A I see, it's divine aegis that makes all the difference. A crit brings that to 9k which is 225 mana returned, but most importantly a point 2700 divine aegis which gives back 675 mana when absorbed. That's pretty impressive.

Now the thing is, overhealing could severely cut the efficieny of all this, depending on whether or not DA only works on the actual health restored. If overhealing doesn't diminish DA in anyway, disc priests will be stacking crit like crazy.

Yep at 2k spell power its an extra 370 points imp PWS adds just about double that. Borrowed time increases absorption by something like 8% at 2k spell power, however it also means you save a second everytime you cast it. 0.5 secs every 15 secs is 3.3% of your casting time. If you are in a situation where you need to spam as much as you can to keep the tank alive, (which is when you need absorption the most), casting PWS without borrowed time will reduce your HPS, so you are better off not casting it. The 0.5 second GCD reduction is really quite important in allowing you to maximise use of PWS in a tank healing sequence. More than that its crucial if you need to keep multiple ppl shielded. If you are keeping two shields up, the effect of borrowed time gets doubled.

Its true that the increased absoprtion is a bit underwhelming.

I personally would be quite happy to see a 0.5 sec reduction in PWS cooldown per point as well as the reduced GCD. Lowering the CD would really make a big difference both in PvP and PvE.

A reduction in weakened soul cooldown would also be interesting, but it would also be a pretty hefty buff to mana efficiency and HPS for disc.

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[edit] had to redo calculations because I forgot to add the 25% factor for the shield to mana conversion. Thanks to Kortar for poiting it out.

As for the aegis mana efficiency issue is all depends on whether DA works on overheals. If it does not then overheal has a significant effect on the mana return from aegis.

Aegis returns mana at a rate of 0.25*(crit rate)*(0.3*crit value)*(effective HPS) per second depending on overheal.

This is not too easy to model as crit does not lose value linearly with overheal.

If you assume a distribution like this: 5%, 10%, 20%, 30%, 20%, 10%, 5% referring to the proportion of heals that overheal by 0, 15, 30, 45, 60, 75, and 90%, then
average overheal = 42.75%.

If a crit overheals by x% then the gain over a non crit is (0.5 - 1.5*x) to a minimum of zero.

The value of overheal is thus 6.25%

[Incidentally, this is why a talent like test of faith is is nice. It channels more healing to the low overheal brackets]

Changing the overheal values to 0, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60% average overheal is 30%

Value of crit rises to 11.5%


Realistically depending on the conditions I would say that crit rate for a disc priest would be between 20-25%, while the aegis shield conversion factor would be 0.32-0.4 of effective HPS.

At the worst case senario 0.32*0.2*0.25*1500 = 24mps. With a 2.5 second casting time this is 60 mana per gheal on average. 1500 HPS also means 37.5mps from rapture or ~94 mana for a total of 154 mana off gheal.

At the best case senario 0.4*0.25*0.25*3000 = 75mps or 188 per gheal and another 188 mana from rapture to a total of 396 off the cost of a gheal.

At the worst case senario a disc priest is shaving off 154 mana per gheal. At the best case senario a disc priest is gaining ~400 mana per greater heal.

Basically if you are outputting 3k effective HPS, which means you are effectively spamming max rank gheal you are shaving off 400 mana per greater heal, bringing the cost down to ~600. When you also add PWS, which you can also add in between to get a little more mana back, shadowfiend, and possibly totem buffs, its looks perfectly feasible to spam max rank for a fairly long time.

Yes PWS applies the "healing" much quicker than any other spell but that only really matters on mages AoEing or reacting to big damage spikes, or even in PvP. Most of the time you want a steady HPS with decent mana efficiency.

Discipline priests spend tons of points improving PWS yet will spend most of their time casting FH or GH as these are needed to actually do some HEALING and to keep grace up. But Discipline priests have very little to increase the effectiveness of their main spells, DA is nice but relies on crit which does not always happen when you need it.

The talents druids have that reduce the GCD, reduces it on spells used constantly, and also returns mana to the druid when they use direct heals on targets with HoTs. I would imagine the lifebloom change is pretty useful ignoring the rest as lifebloom is spammable and with this they could keep it up on even more targets.

Imagine if there was a shadow priest 5 point talent which reduced the GCD of SWD by 0.5 seconds and increased the amount of +spellpower it recieved by 20%. Would a shadowpriest really take that??

Borrowed Time affects one spell and since that one spell has a cooldown its effect is diluted over 15 seconds making it much less effective than it appears.

Taking a leaf from the druids talents, if Borrowed Time did the following:
"Reduces the global cooldown of PW:S, Dispel, Mass Dispel and Abolish Disease by 0.5 seconds and increases the amount absorbed by PW:S by 30% of your spellpower"

It not only helps PWS, but also affects spells we can and often need to spam. It would help define a Discipline priest, because the extra scaling of PW:S is barely noticable and the 0.5 GCD on a spell which has a cooldown which can even be shared between priests. Borrowed Time is BAD. Divine Aegis, grace, Rapture are all nice talents that have potential depending on gear, but Borrowed Time simply does so very little for 5 talent points in its position so high in the Discipline Tree.

One of the major difficulties with Discipline as a tree is that all of it's core abilities - PW:S, Mana Burn, Dispels/Abolishes - have a rather severe PvP/PvE imbalance. If you push these abilities up to the point where they're truly strong PvE abilities, you've almost certainly pushed the beyond the point where they're overpowered in PvP.

You only get 25% of the mana back, not 100%.

In practical terms, Divine Aegis returns 11.25% of the healing in mana (150% critical * 30% Divine Aegis * 25% mana return) when you crit, presuming the shield is fully consumed. A level 80 Discipline Priest with +2k spellpower will likely be healing for around 8500 with Greater Heal (Rank 9), at a mana cost of around 1000 after Improved Healing. This means a Divine Aegis proc is in the same neighborhood as simply casting the spell for free.

So at 16% crit, you'd be matching the performance of Improved Holy Concentration. In this sort of spamming scenario, you'd need about 45% crit to match IHC + Serendipity.

Flash Heal has about a 30% lower hpm than Greater Heal, so it's cost reduction gains would be about 75% of your spell critical. However, Serendipity also procs on fewer casts, so the total Holy reduction in cost would only be around 33%. The combination ends up being about the same 45% crit to match IHC + Serendipity.

Note that I'm disregarding the greater out-of-FSR regen due to IHC.

PWS does not have a cooldown, you can use it every GCD if you wish. We really need to stop saying it has one, because you have to take into account that the spell is basically spammable. Frankly, as a Shadow Priest, I'd love to have Borrowed Time as a talent. On fights with a lot of random burst damage (Kil'jaeden, Twins) I shield a lot. Any time I'm forced to move for one reason or another on KJ, I'm looking to shield someone. This spell is not simply a "cast it once every 15s on the tank" thing. Until you stop thinking that it is, you will find Borrowed Time to be a horrible talent. Once you start thinking about the multitude of uses for PWS, raid healing, burst reducing, mana return, etc. The talent becomes more and more attractive.

Perhaps I'm just too used to playing a spec where PWS is effectively my only heal.

edit: This was in response to Kamakaze.

edit2: Ok it was early and before I had my coffee and I forgot PWS has a 4s cooldown. The point still stands that it's not a once-every-15s thing.

PW:S has a 4 second cooldown. It has a 15 second cooldown on a single target.

Either way you cut it, it is not spammable in any situation, the GCD change lets you cast another spell 0.5 seconds sooner than someone without borrowed time, which is only ever useful as an emergency heal followed slightly quicker by a flash heal or something.

Maybe if Borrowed Time reduced the CD on PWS as well? Maybe by .2s per point? I can make that suggestion on the beta forums.

Oh don't get me wrong, I was not complaining in my last post. It was more of a rebuttal, albeit brutish. I will admit I am worried for the future though.

As for Caligula's post, I have found long ago, that even if you spam the lowest rank of gheal as a filler, timing and rhythm is required to do anything useful. So perhaps I should have asked what you consider to be skill?

Also, I think the addition of more reactive heals or stacking reactive HoT's would be interesting concepts to play around with for Disc. I don't find shields to be that appealing, but perhaps I am old fashioned.

If it is the US forums then please do! I am in the EU beta but not much point posting in those forums :P I just stick to in game reports.

I would personally prefer PW:S simply had the 4 second cooldown removed, then Borrowed Time is seriously good for covering AoE damage on multiple targets.

Well if you simply chain casted GH instead, you would get 2.5k hps. If a holy priest did the same their hps would skyrocket above a discipline priests. Actually I also think a holy priest using PW:S then casting GH, would easily exceed a discipline priest doing the same.

A holy PW:S ignoring the change to the GCD, is about 3% weaker than a Discipline priests PW:S (spiritual guidance affects PW:S, and holy can still take Imp:PWS). The difference being that a Discipline priests PW:S is free (or even gains mana) and a holy priest gets no mana from it, but instead gets all the spells they cast inbetween PW:S improved.

Discipline is still forced to cast the spells which barely get improved, and 13 talent points are invested into ONE SINGLE SPELL and not one lowers its actual cooldown.

I still haven't seen anyone show that crit rating is an obviously superior option to spell power. It's a reasonable option (a compromise between spell power and regen, since disc priests are going to need a lot more regen from gear), but where are you getting the idea that people are going to go up to 30% crit rates?

Ok I started a Suggestion thread on the Beta forums regarding Borrowed Time. If anyone else has any reasonable opinions they want me to add to it I'd be glad to.

Actually, the Holy Priest wouldn't intermix PW:S because their PW:S would be too weak. For a Discipline Priest, it's almost certain that a fully spec'd PW:S would be significantly higher throughput than Greater Heal - on the order of 50% greater throughput. The numbers I used were merely a demonstration of the mathematical principles involved, not representative of actual game design.

Spiritual Guidance has never - and does not currently in Live - affect Power Word: Shield. Did a recent beta change I missed occur?

And while a Holy Priest can certainly muster greater throughput, that's not the point. The point is that for a Discipline Priest, interleaving PW:S with conventional heals ramps up their throughput more than not interleaving it.

You're also missing the fact that while a Holy Priest will generate greater single target throughput, they won't do so predictably. This is a rather significant element in multi-healer environments for a tank healer.

Did you mean to say Spiritual Healing?