Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion. - Page 33

Starfire · 08/24/08, 7:54 PM

Why must it change? I personally think it adds flavor for some to be pure resistances and others to be reductions. Maybe its the fact its a tier 1 talent. Yes, its a bit of a gamble, I'll give you that, but so many other things are dice rolls too.

I would rather be able to resist a 12 second fear, fully, rather than having it lowered to 10 seconds or some such. I think with the change of fear breaking after a percentage damage, in most cases than not, a full resist would be superior to lowering fear to 10s duration. (The assumption would be at level 80, the fear will break earlier anyways because of damage taken -- this mostly holds true at 70, so).

It's a 15% to not have to use a trinket. There are perks to it.

I am, however, willing to cede that I've never, ever, played an arena game above 1950, so. As for as the rammifications for high-end pvp go, I am unqualified.

Supermerkicus · 08/24/08, 9:54 PM

Why must it change? I personally think it adds flavor for some to be pure resistances and others to be reductions. Maybe its the fact its a tier 1 talent. Yes, its a bit of a gamble, I'll give you that, but so many other things are dice rolls too.

I would rather be able to resist a 12 second fear, fully, rather than having it lowered to 10 seconds or some such. I think with the change of fear breaking after a percentage damage, in most cases than not, a full resist would be superior to lowering fear to 10s duration. (The assumption would be at level 80, the fear will break earlier anyways because of damage taken -- this mostly holds true at 70, so).

I'm not going to argue with you on the benefits of whether it's a reduction resistance or a chance to resist fully, but I will point out that all of the other talents had their resistance chance doubled as the reduction percentage.

By that I mean - Iron Will was reduced to 3 points, now reduces the duration of effects by 30%, rather than increase chance to resist by 15%.

All of these talents were changed in this manner - Nerves of Steel, Stoicism, Surefooting, Iron Will, etc.

I'd much rather have a guaranteed 30% reduction in effects rather than an occasional, and unreliable, chance to resist those effects. You're free to your own opinion.

It's really a matter of consistency, and there's simply no way it's just 'intended' when they've gone in and changed this mechanic for every other similar talent, it's really a matter of it simply being overlooked.

Tainter · 08/25/08, 5:55 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

Um, No it doesn't. Divine fury is a 1/6 haste effect for Greater heal. DF is a 1/8 increase for PWS, you have to apply the .5 second reduction over at least the minimum cooldown (4 seconds) of PWS. I can think of no situation where given the various class abilities a disc priest will be casting more than 3 max, realistically 2, shields in a 15 second time frame. Remember that disc priests will be tank healing, no ifs buts or maybes and will have to keep grace stacked on the tank(s).

No. This has nothing to do with PW:S cooldown. Nothing. You don't stand around doing nothing for 4 seconds do you? I certainly don't. And as an aside: Have you seen many Wrath raid encounters? How do you know it's going to be like SWP?

Where's Borrowed Time? Tier 10. Comparing the two is silly -- Tier 10 talents should do significantly more for us than Tier 2, or they're weak. And Borrowed Time is weak. Given that we're trying desperately to come up with situations where it is useful, that's an indication it needs to be improved. We shouldn't have to wrack our brains to come up with a reason to take a talent.

Well, it does seem to be good for PvP. But I guess the discussion here has been (and probably will be) fairly raid-centric.

I don't particularly like Borrowed Time myself, but some people here make it sound a lot worse than it actually is.

Kamakaze · 08/25/08, 9:34 AM

I would much prefer 30% reduced duration on those effects than a chance to resist it.

So I hope this is just an oversight, our healing pushback spells still need to be changed to the new concept and things like Empowered Healing still need to be fixed so they havent really paid any attention to priests just yet. Still a long while in beta yet for things to get sorted.

Supermerkicus · 08/25/08, 12:05 PM

So I hope this is just an oversight, our healing pushback spells still need to be changed to the new concept and things like Empowered Healing still need to be fixed so they havent really paid any attention to priests just yet. Still a long while in beta yet for things to get sorted.

True, but quite a while ago blue stated that they felt Priests were the most 'far along' in development, which doesn't really bode well for things like UW, Empowered Healing, and the Disc tree bloat unless they decide to take another look at Priests.

Kamakaze · 08/25/08, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by Supermerkicus

True, but quite a while ago blue stated that they felt Priests were the most 'far along' in development, which doesn't really bode well for things like UW, Empowered Healing, and the Disc tree bloat unless they decide to take another look at Priests.

they also said druids were farthest along aswell. Yet they are doing a balance pass soon and even supposedly looking at shadow.
I think we can still expect to see numbers change quite a bit, which could easily fix Borrowed Time, Penance, EH etc..

ofc, they still need to fix inner fire, which they apparantly refuse to do, they have even failed to make inner fire give +spellpower and give penance more ranks, despite actually saying this would be in the next build................. (several builds ago)

Havoc12 · 08/25/08, 12:43 PM

Originally Posted by Kamakaze

Have you tried these talents in the beta? I am theorycrafting but I have also tested these talents and my output is so much higher with SG than with BT, and the maths backs that up.

PS is a PvP talent, cooldown is too long for sensible PvE use and Aspiration does not do a lot to help that given that the cooldown was bumped up so that it is longer than it was in TBC even with Aspiration.

Taking SG over BT will provide more healing output. It might take time to people to realise this but unless something is done this is where "discipline" priests are going to end up.

I find PS very useful in PvE, when healing 5-mans in my PvP spec. Everything there is a problem, such as coming under attack and having to save myself or when cc failure results in too many mobs on the tank, I can PS the tank and buy myself time to pop fade and power infusion and take the appropriate evasive maneuvres. PS and PI combinations have allowed me to heal situations that I would have no chance of healing through in a discipline spec. Many oh shit moments in raids to could have been recovered by PS. Its like saying that a paladins divine shield is in reality only a PvP talent. A lot of paladins would strongly disagree.

I am confused as to how the maths support this and how you come up with a much higher healing output for DG compared to borrowed time.

According to your numbers we are talking about a 2.3% increase in FH and GH at the lost of ~250 points and 0.5 seconds of casting time per shield. Losing 0.5 seconds is the equivalent of 20% of a gheal + an extra 200 from the shield. You would have to cast 8 gheals per PWS with 2% improvement to justify taking DG over borrowed time, which is not possible. If you are looking at 2 PWS per 15 seconds you need 16 gheals per PWS to break even.

Sorry but it seems to me your view of a greater healing output with DG is mostly subjective.

If you are willing to test it properly, then I would suggest doing the following experiments

1) Spam gheal for 45 seconds with DG

2) Spam PWS and gheal for 45 seconds, with DG

Repeat 1 and 2 with borrowed time.

Repeat the whole thing again this time keeping PWS up on a second target.

Report the total amount of healing generated by gheal and the number of shields cast.

My prediction is that borrowed time will come ahead by a small but significant margin. Of course you are also leaving penance out of the game, whose final form we really don't know atm, but I have no doubt that it will be very strong.

Borrowed time will surely lose to DG if you are not contrained by time, but if that is the case then your gheal+FH to PWS ratio will drop sharply especially if keeping 2 PWS up.

The benefit to PoM is likely to be completely counteracted by the bonus to PWS.

In my oppinion the 3 extra points in disc, which will be invariably spend either in aspiration/penance or in aspiration/penance/PS will make ppl skip divine guidance even if it turns out that DG and borrowed time are very close.

The 0.5 sec reduction on PWS when tank healing is functionally (but obviously not fully) equivalent to this: Everytime you cast PWS the cast time of your next gheal/fheal/penance is reduced by 0.5 seconds.

=====================================================

To constantius

No one is arguing that borrowed time is rather underpowered for a tier 10 talent. However it is (a) essential for PWS spam on the tank (b) better than your other options.

The question is not whether borrowed time is better than the corresponding talents in other trees but whether it is a good addition to a disc priest.

I have no doubt that borrowed time makes the difference between being bleeding HPS to keep PWS up and gaining HPS while keeping HPS up.

I certainly agree that borrowed time has a lot of room to be buffed but that does not automatically make it a bad talent.

Side note
I feel that a reduction cooldown is appropriate but one needs to be careful, because you must not understimate the power of rolling 1 sec PWS on multiple targets.

Think of a senario similar to bloodboil (think level 70 values). When the first group takes the bloodboil a disc priest rolls 5x PWS on the 2nd group. This will absorb 6 ticks of the bloodboil, so the disc priest can pom the target with the most time to go on weakened soul, wait until the shields expire, then roll 5 x more PWS. This will leave the bloodboil group at effectively full health, with 12 out of the 20 ticks gone and the disc priest having gained 800 mana from the shields and having spent mana on a single pom. All that is left is to cast a single pom, a PoH and a couple of renews. During these 20 seconds the disc priest will have generated more mana than he lost, through rapture and meditation. I use it this way to show an analogy to what a holy priest would do with a bb group, but in reality this is not what a disc priest would do at all. He would start rolling PWS on all 3bb groups, ahead of time and repeat every 15 seconds, then he would PI himself, PS the felraged target (PI every fel rage and PS every 2nd fel rate) and start spamming gheal.

In any senario where any number of people take > 5k damage every 15 seconds, with no CD on PWS a disc priest would generate massive HPS and mana return by rolling PWS. With no CD on PWS and with significant raid wide damage the disc priest would best serve his raid, by spamming nothing but PWS on every one on the raid and penance on the tank.

People often understimate the power of PWS because they dont realise that PWS stays on for 30 seconds.

I dont think PWS bot is what blizzard has in mind for disc.

Tainter · 08/25/08, 1:27 PM

I have a question about how Rapture works with Divine Aegis and PW:S. Does it give mana immediately when the shield is created or only when it actually absorbs damage?

• constantius · 08/25/08, 1:56 PM

However it is (a) essential for PWS spam on the tank (b) better than your other options.

No. And no.

If you are spamming PW:S on the tank, you gain 0.5 seconds every 15. And gain ~ 400 healing from the spellpower.

Alternatively, you gain (I'm assuming a 51/20/0 talent build here; Penance non-optional) 3/3 Improved Inner Fire and 2/2 Aspiration. Aspiration really doesn't gain you that much: mostly just the cooldown on Power Infusion being useful for increasing HpS and efficiency.

Borrowed Time
Let's assume you use your highest HpS for the saved 0.5 seconds, just to make a point. That'd be GH:9; gaining half a second means adding 1600 healing (20% of a 8000 point heal, just ballparking). Additionally, gain 400 healing from the PW:S boost. Net gain over 15 seconds: 133 HpS.

Aspiration + Imp IF
Gain 36 spellpower + 24 second reduction in cooldown on Power Infusion. Ignore the mana savings from PI; just look at healing increase.

Ballpark healing done at 3000 HpS; a 20% gain to that for 15 seconds is 600 HpS. Total amount gained: 9000 extra healing every 96 seconds.

On top of that, 36 spellpower, while small, adds 17 HpS to every GH:9; 2.4 HpS to every Renew, and various amounts to all the other abilities you use. Let's assume it's 15 HpS on average to every spell, just to make a point. To really model this, we'd need a spreadsheet with a cast sequence, which is why it's so hard to get a handle on it.

Total overall: 15 HpS + 94 HpS = 109 HpS.

Conclusion: if you actually gain a full half second of cast time on your max HpS spell (GH:9) on top of everything else you normally would have done in that 15 second span of tank-healing (unlikely, but worst-case), then in that case you barely edge out the advantage from two secondary filler talents (Aspiration, Imp IF).

Moral of the Story: Tier 10 is supposed to be good. This is not. It really really isn't. You guys keep coming up with things that you think justify why it's good. Until you can build a full-fledged model showing the differences between 51/20/0 with 5/5 BT and 51/20/0 with 3/3 Imp IF and 2/2 Aspiration and prove that it's significantly better over multiple iterations ... I'm going to keep believing it sucks. Because back-of-the-envelope says it does. Maybe specific models will show something better. I just have my doubts.

So, Project: build a full-fledged priest simulator involving cast sequences that use spells that we know we have. Once we get all our level 80 ranks, fill those in. Compare the advantage over a 5 minute sequence of non-stop healing of saving 0.5 seconds every 15 (and the associated healing boost to PW:S) to the advantage of 36 more spellpower and the reduced cooldowns on PI and Inner Focus. Ignore Pain Suppression, as you won't be using it on a tank.

Until someone completes the above, we're just going to go in circles. If I get really bored this week, I might take a crack at it; if you love spreadsheets and want to beat me to it, please feel free.

Btw: spec is this for a 51/20/0 build without 5/5 Borrowed Time. I'm assuming Improved Healing will still be useful: I don't imagine even Disc priests are going to be able to skip on casting GH.

Tainter · 08/25/08, 2:25 PM

So you're saying that Borrowed Time is better than Aspiration + Imp IF? But you're not satisfied with the power difference between the two options? If you have shields on two tanks the advantage of Borrowed Time shows more clearly I guess. Multiple tank fights are not exactly uncommon either.

I haven't done any math to support my coming argument, but I believe it to be true nonetheless: Most talent points (except 11, 21, etc) are about equal in power. I believe that to be a design decision to not force people into certain choices. For example a Rogue gets about 1% damage from a talent point,
over quite a large variety of talents.

On the Priest side: Divine Providence is worse than Spiritual Healing as it does the same but affects less spells. Would that be a reason for you to complain?
Twisted Faith would need quite a lot of Spirit to get anywhere near Darkness.

About the spreadsheet, I expect that there isn't one optimal cast sequence, but more something like a priority list (like Shadow Priests have) for heals. So that Penance, Shield, Renew and PoM get used whenever they are cooled down and the targets are ready and the rest would be filled up with Greater Heals or Prayers of Healing.

Supermerkicus · 08/25/08, 3:25 PM

I think we can all agree that some of the ideas in the new Disc tree are solid, like Borrowed Time, but that the implementation is very poor right now.

I think Borrowed Time should give PW:S 100% dispel resistance, for one, and removing it off the GCD completely would be nice too - for a tree so reliant on one spell, it's awfully restricted.

Unfortunately, arena representation sends a message of 'Priests r fine noobs l2play' when there's too many variables to judge balance off arena representation alone.

Furthermore, the fact that we have two healing trees means that solid healing talents are spread between both trees and filled out with 'filler' crap like Searing Light, Surge of Light, etc. - contrast that with the very streamlined single healing trees for Shamans/Paladins/Druids.

It doesn't affect overall balance but it gives us a lot less 'bang' for our buck, so to speak, and is a personal pet peeve.

Lastly, with the removal of Mark of Divinity, I'm not very excited about the base spell lineup for Priests right now - it seems all the cool stuff gets scrapped (like the champion spells in TBC alpha).

cruumash · 08/25/08, 3:49 PM

contrast that with the very streamlined single healing trees for Shamans/Paladins/Druids.

Shamans/Paladins/Druids also have 3 viable specs with 3 different foci. There are only 2 basic roles for a priest: healing and damage. 2 roles, 3 trees. It's not rocket science.

I keep telling Blizzard to implement Melee Priests (aka Monks) to give Discipline its own distinct focus, but they haven't returned my calls.

frotty · 08/25/08, 4:10 PM

Originally Posted by cruumash

Shamans/Paladins/Druids also have 3 viable specs with 3 different foci. There are only 2 basic roles for a priest: healing and damage. 2 roles, 3 trees. It's not rocket science.

I keep telling Blizzard to implement Melee Priests (aka Monks) to give Discipline its own distinct focus, but they haven't returned my calls.

Paladins: tank / heal / dps

Druids: heal / damage / damage
Shaman: heal / damage / damage

If you clarify this more, the disc focus is on preventative healing where holy is reactive. Both are muddied, holy has various dps talents mixed in and disc has dispell/manaburn and all-purpose pool increases / haste. Force of will being the reactive boost in disc blessed res being preventative in holy.

That's where the WOTLK talents are baffling, they further muddy the split of preventative / reactive healing in an attempt to make all 3 trees singularly viable in raid situations. They feel like "well, your tree is really lacking in react/prevent style abilities, so here is a 51 that fills that hole" more than abilities that are the pinnacle of that style.

As said before, the cornerstone of prevention is PWS and borrowed time is hardly an "oh my god that makes the holy priests jealous" ability. Where on the holy side of things they can, and do, constantly have mediocre end talents because the raw throughput of holy clearly makes going full disc questionable in pve.

Preventative disc tree is king in PVP due to the CCs and burst. If you're not rarely in a situation to do more than instants, you're winning. Buffing healing throughput is silly in that case.

Melee priests would be interesting - just tailor the prevention towards helping the group out when facing the inevitable cc/dps train.

cruumash · 08/25/08, 4:27 PM

Originally Posted by frotty

Paladins: tank / heal / dps

Druids: heal / damage / damage
Shaman: heal / damage / damage

Druids: heal / spell damage / melee damage
Shaman: heal / spell damage / melee damage

The difference between speccing for spell damage and melee damage is non trivial, even in WotLK with combined item stats.

Priests only have heal and spell damage. True the current WotLK trees have different flavors of healing, but those flavors don't even come close to the differences in play between an Enhancement Shaman and an Elemental Shaman.

Melee priests would be interesting - just tailor the prevention towards helping the group out when facing the inevitable cc/dps train.

And the Chuck Norris references would be epic.

Supermerkicus · 08/25/08, 5:04 PM

Priests only have heal and spell damage. True the current WotLK trees have different flavors of healing, but those flavors don't even come close to the differences in play between an Enhancement Shaman and an Elemental Shaman.

You pretty much summed up what I was going to say in response to the above post.

Furthermore, while mages are pure DPS all the way through, all three trees have a distinct flavor and variety.

Currently Disc and Holy aren't even remotely as defined from eachother as say Arcane/Frost/Fire.

It's certainly doable, it just isn't there yet.

Tainter · 08/26/08, 4:50 AM

Some classes are more versatile than others. That's nothing new really. Most damage classes only have damage and that in all three trees. Compared to that Priests at least have one choice to make: heal or damage. If we were in the same position as Rogues than we had three healing trees with slight flavour differences. Luckily it isn't like that.

Sure everybody would love three completely different trees for three completely different play-styles, me included. But we all pretty much knew that Priests had 2 healing trees and 1 damage tree before we signed up, didn't we? Besides that Priests are unique in the sense that they have two healing trees. They are the only class that can have different flavours of healing. Granted it's not all that distinctive at the moment, but it looks like that's being worked on.

And a side-note: Druids don't only get melee dps from Feral. They tank too.

Edit:
Could someone please clarify wether Priests can remove Poisons in Beta?

Shan · 08/26/08, 5:29 AM

Some changes to Penance are incoming:

- The first tick will be virtually instant (so overall the channel is now 2 seconds, not 3)
- The mana cost has been cut roughly in half.
- There's a new Discipline talent that will make it more interesting

Originally posted by Koraa. Looks like they are turning Penance into an efficient reactive healing spell on a short cooldown... with an instant healing effect and (presumably) incredible efficiency the spell is starting to look good now. Can't wait to see what else they have in mind with it.

KnThrak · 08/26/08, 7:41 AM

A sadly dropped "flavour" was the old Rapture, regenerating the group mana from healing.

Ultimately becoming a "secondary" healing spec which drops part of the straight healing power for powerful supportive functions, primarily damage prevention and mana regeneration, but also buffing.

I never quite understood why the concept was dropped. It was a single talent, it needed to be expanded. There needed to be a certain baseline capability for Disc spells, too. Something to help out the group while healing, but without it being healing.
And Rapture was a very nice example of how to do that. :S

Plea · 08/26/08, 8:22 AM

Penance change is nice, but I still don't see where to use that spell. It will either be spammed on cooldown, every second Penance will follow a PWS, and the remaining time will be filled with other heals, which pretty much mimics a MB-SWD-MF-MF rotation; or it will be nigh useless, like mind flay is now, and be cast as a semi-instant heal on the move. Right now I can't think of any situational use.

Either way it's the age old shadow priest problem, now in discipline. We really don't want another mind flay, one way or another. Thus I think the cooldown should be removed entirely, so that we get our "dirt cheap" heal; our flash of light, lifebloom, you name it.

Ellyh · 08/26/08, 8:45 AM

These changes make penance sound like a much much more desirable talent. The impact of condensed healing and near instant healing on the first tick will be huge. The shorter overall cast time will also make it better for PvP and highly mobile fights. On the downside it's coefficient is almost certainly going to be reduced. I will be interested to see what talent is removed/modified/added to also effect penance. Given that it is the 51 pointer we have either have something earlier in the tree, which seems odd given that you wouldn't have the talent if levelling Disc or it may be something in early holy with dual utility to make the required 18 points in holy less painful. It will also be interesting to see if healing priests get some sort of raid utility as is suggested by dev comments that all specs currently short of utility will get some. They were talking mages and rogues but the same applies to healing priests, especially holy spec.

Shan · 08/26/08, 9:00 AM

Thus I think the cooldown should be removed entirely, so that we get our "dirt cheap" heal; our flash of light, lifebloom, you name it.

I'd also prefer to see the cooldown removed and Penance to be rebalanced accordingly. Mostly because I don't like watching cooldowns as healer since there's already health bars and whatever is happening in the world to watch.

Havoc12 · 08/26/08, 10:14 AM

Originally Posted by constantius

bored this week, I might take a crack at it; if you love spreadsheets and want to beat me to it, please feel free.

Btw: spec is this for a 51/20/0 build without 5/5 Borrowed Time. I'm assuming Improved Healing will still be useful: I don't imagine even Disc priests are going to be able to skip on casting GH.

Hmmm I dont agree with this spec. Renew gains no benefit at all from the higher tier disc talents, so its really not a very good spell to spend talent points on for disc. Imp renew 2/3 is only filler if you are interested in a divine guidance build. I feel that a 53/18 build is the most likely senario with and without pain suppression.

Pain suppression disc

2/2 aspiration build

The best thing you could do by skipping borrowed time is to max pain suppression+aspiration, get 2 more rank of inner fire and 2/3 imp renew. That of course is assuming penance is still in the game.

The timers on both penance and dual PWS cooldowns are really very inconvenient when trying to fit everything in a spell sequence.

The new 2 sec penance channel time however changes things a little. I will post a few sequences later on.

-----> elyh

The benefit of having penance for grace stacking is not maintaining it, because after the buff is stacked it only takes 1 spell every 8 seconds to maintain it. The problem is recovering after a stack drops off for various reasons. It is actually possible to maintain the stack+PWS on 3 tanks, you stack grace first using penance on tank 1, gh/fh on tank 2 and penance on tank 3, then add PWS with a PWS penance PWS gh fh PWS penance sequence.

Isin · 08/26/08, 10:54 AM

So, with the announcement yesterday that the wotlk talents and skill changes will come before the expansion ("in the next few weeks", supposedly), have any of you planned a level 70 raiding spec?

I was playing around with the calculator, and I realized that I may not like Improved Holy Concentration as much as I thought, particularly with the downranking nerf. Particularly because it just reduces the cast time of the spells, and doesn't give you spell haste, if you cast a flash heal or binding heal, you're still going to hit the same GCD wall.

Anyway this is probably the level 70 build I will be raiding with, although it may be because I'm curious to try out the new lightwell and the serendipity talent.

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

Vitalay · 08/26/08, 2:27 PM

Originally Posted by gia

Divine Aegis and Grace (which you are mistaking with Rapture) aren't very good for pvp I agree. Anything that buffs PW:S is very good though, as it's the most efficient "heal" when your target has a healing debuff like MS. Rapture makes PW:S give you back a ton of mana so that is definitely quite good.

The spell power change is also pretty nice for pvp, holy fire + SW

packs quite a punch even with "healing" gear, although this does nothing to help us keep people alive it's still worth mentioning.

Chimera shot is going to be awful if it goes live as it is, permanent viper sting is death for a priest if he doesn't have someone else on the team that can dispel poisons. Rogues with deadly brew are going to be pretty ugly as well.

Borrowed time might be decent in pvp even in its current form, it needs much better scaling and the cooldown on PW:S needs to be removed to make it worthwhile I think. I'm not really sure if that is enough on the pve side but for pvp I would be happy.

edit:
Another problem is that for a possible pvp build I would need about 15 extra talent points to get all the stuff like Imp. Mana Burn, Absolution, Unbreakable Will, Focused Will, Focused Power, Silent Resolve, possibly Reflective Shield. And besides Grace/Divine Aegis/Aspiration I can't exactly take the points from the other throughput/efficiency talents as they are badly needed.

I really hate the new Twin Disciplines and Enlightenment from this point of view, they are awesome talents but I have to spend 10 more points for them and a pvp build really has to give up too much to get them. Reflective Shield badly needs to be a 2-3 point talent, so does Unbreakable Will and possibly also either Mental Strength or Mental Agility.

edit#2:
I've been thinking this over some more and I think the main reason Grace (which is the cornerstone of Discipline in wrath) is a bad pvp talent is because Penance is a bad pvp spell. If Penance were good then Grace would be good too because then I would be able to quickly stack Grace on whoever the focus target was and reduce their damage by 6%.

There are a lot of problems with Penance: first, it is a 3 second channeled spell which is likely to be counterspelled; second, if I do get interrupted I still pay 1k+ mana for no healing done since the mana cost is payed up front; third, I cannot fake a Penance cast at all, if I start the spell and cancel it I still pay full mana cost and the 10 second cooldown kicks in; fourth, if I get any pushback at all while casting I lose the third tick which is a fairly substantial efficiency nerf and I also don't get the third Grace proc which is a good part of the reason I'm casting Penance in the first place.

Based on the Beta information we possess to date it appears that all of the following talents, from a PvP Disc Priest perspective, hinge on Penance being good enough to overcome its susceptibility to Kick, Pummel, Counter Spell, and Spell Lock:

Divine Aegis
Grace
Martyrdom
Healing Focus
Aspiration

Meanwhile, a PvP "Disc" Priest could eschew those talents, if they eschew Penance, and go down the holy tree and get SoR (which with the new Glyph appears substantially worthwhile in Arena).

So the question becomes: is Penance worth Spirit of Redemption in Arena environments? Specifically, 2s and 3s, where more attention is payed to individual actions?

Havoc12 · 08/26/08, 2:57 PM

I think the PvP value of penance comes from the fact that (a) interupts have a CD (b) martyredom procs eliminate pushback and give interupt resistance.

Penance is not likely to be very good when you are healing yourself (I am not even sure its possible to heal yourself with it), but when you are healing another person it can make a big difference.