Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion. - Page 34

cruumash · 08/26/08, 3:12 PM

You can't heal yourself with penance. You can heal around corners/through walls if your target starts in LOS. The target needs to start in front of you.

Vitalay · 08/26/08, 3:22 PM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

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.

However, there's no possibility to fake cast Penance, and Kick, Pummel, Counterspell, and Spell Lock all lock you out of that school for X seconds. The high CD won't even matter--not to mention the fact that Penance has its own cool down.

According to Caligula, you can not currently heal yourself on Beta.

cruumash · 08/26/08, 3:45 PM

Originally Posted by Vitalay

However, there's no possibility to fake cast Penance, and Kick, Pummel, Counterspell, and Spell Lock all lock you out of that school for X seconds. The high CD won't even matter--not to mention the fact that Penance has its own cool down.

My guess would be the preferred tactic with Penance, when the heal becomes instantaneous, might be to simply fire a pulse and then break the channel for an instant, crittable heal with a grace. Assuming the mana cost is worth it.

Supermerkicus · 08/26/08, 3:49 PM

I think Disc needs more than just some tweaks to Penance to make it solid for PVP - there's still too much bloat and reliance on PW:S which just isn't very effective in PVP with it's current limitations.

1) If Penance has a cooldown I don't see the problem with making it uninterruptable - it's a 51 point talent and won't be enough to cause you to win if you're already losing. As it stands teams will simply adapt and lock you out of your entire healing school whenever you attempt to use it. It seems lame to have something uninterruptable but I think penance is weak enough to deserve it and retain balance.

2) PW:S needs 100% dispel protection if nothing else if you're going 51 deep into disc.

Vitalay · 08/26/08, 4:05 PM

Originally Posted by Supermerkicus

I think Disc needs more than just some tweaks to Penance to make it solid for PVP - there's still too much bloat and reliance on PW:S which just isn't very effective in PVP with it's current limitations.

1) If Penance has a cooldown I don't see the problem with making it uninterruptable - it's a 51 point talent and won't be enough to cause you to win if you're already losing. As it stands teams will simply adapt and lock you out of your entire healing school whenever you attempt to use it. It seems lame to have something uninterruptable but I think penance is weak enough to deserve it and retain balance.

2) PW:S needs 100% dispel protection if nothing else if you're going 51 deep into disc.

I don't think this is accurate. Granted, Penance needs work if Blizzard wants us to cast it, but even without Penance, Disc is looking good. Further, assuming you don't take Penance, it doesn't take much tweaking to fit in SoR, which is a great talent in 2s anyway.

Supermerkicus · 08/26/08, 4:24 PM

I don't think this is accurate. Granted, Penance needs work if Blizzard wants us to cast it, but even without Penance, Disc is looking good. Further, assuming you don't take Penance, it doesn't take much tweaking to fit in SoR, which is a great talent in 2s anyway.

Is your assessment based on the current balance or including all of the new toys other classes are getting in WoTLK?
I'm not trying to blast you, I just think it's odd that you would find the current PW:S centric Disc ok for PVP when the spell has such a lengthy cooldown and is easily dispelled.

Of course I'm referring to a fully Disc spec with the new toys included, and not so much a hybrid Disc spec based off the current PS makeup. I am, however, not convinced that Disc is going to stand up to some of the nastiness coming from DPS classes in the expansion.

Vitalay · 08/26/08, 4:30 PM

I'm not in the beta, so I can not say with any absolute guarantee that we'll be fine post-expansion, however:

We're not seeing anything "new" in the way of dispells aside from the HoT removal component of Plague Strike, so the main functionality of Disc should be essentially preserved.

As far as scaling goes, some of the numbers some Blues posted indicate that rogue dps currently exceeds 3k or so, which should be mitigatable based on the currently disseminated spell data. It looks, at least initially, as though priests stand in a good position to continue the role they currently hold in arenas, with Rapture possibly helping to equalize the difference between Druid and Priest ratios.

The above is all speculation, however. What are your thoughts?

GIJebus · 08/26/08, 4:43 PM

Disc healing is going to be similar to Pally-Druid in that they will be spamming a lot of heals while trying to keep grace stacks on multiple tanks. Haste or haste/spell power gems will likely be king (penance channel time is reduced with haste). The only real issue will again be mana. Rapture only working with effective healing is problematic, granted though that tanks have huge amounts of health making gheal a much more viable tool. The return will be about 20% mana only if it heals for full. With no downranking priest will eat through tons of mana.

Penance is a great pvp or pve skill. Being able to put it on someone when they pop in and out of line of sight is very valuable for pvp. For pve it will be the fastest way to apply grace on any one target. The problem I have with it is having to go through some less than ideal talents to get to it.

Aeverius · 08/26/08, 5:01 PM

Originally Posted by Supermerkicus

I think Disc needs more than just some tweaks to Penance to make it solid for PVP - there's still too much bloat and reliance on PW:S which just isn't very effective in PVP with it's current limitations.

1) If Penance has a cooldown I don't see the problem with making it uninterruptable - it's a 51 point talent and won't be enough to cause you to win if you're already losing. As it stands teams will simply adapt and lock you out of your entire healing school whenever you attempt to use it. It seems lame to have something uninterruptable but I think penance is weak enough to deserve it and retain balance.

2) PW:S needs 100% dispel protection if nothing else if you're going 51 deep into disc.

1) I think you're looking at this wrong. Why wouldn't you just fake cast something else to bait the interrupt, and then use Penance as needed? Or if your opponent is waiting for you to cast Penance to the extent that he's saving his interrupt for it, you benefit as well.

2) This sounds highly overpowered to me, but it's difficult to theorycraft Arena with math. If a Priest can shield their entire 5v5 team such that only a Mass Dispel can reasonably be expected to remove it, that's probably excessive.

All that said, we really have no idea what Arena will look like at 80- what specs will other classes be using, what will the best team comps be, etc. Also, minor changes to one class can change the metagame drastically, and we're looking at all kinds of major changes. Another point is that Pain Suppression didn't start out as an Arena must-have either, and builds that went deeper in Holy than 19 points used to be common. The specific usefulness of Penance isn't what makes or breaks Disc. So I wouldn't start panicking just yet, especially since I don't see anything that would indicate to me that Disc can't be a viable Arena healer.

Vitalay · 08/26/08, 5:15 PM

I think you're looking at this wrong. Why wouldn't you just fake cast something else to bait the interrupt, and then use Penance as needed? Or if your opponent is waiting for you to cast Penance to the extent that he's saving his interrupt for it, you benefit as well.

I guess my point was merely that Penance is the worst spell in PvP compared to all our other spells with cast times in relation to its interaction with interrupts.

Sinndir · 08/26/08, 5:37 PM

Has anyone heard anything about/confirmed with what Koraa posted seen here:

Upcoming Penance Changes
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 (Source)

Having the first tick instant and having Penance a 2 second cast time (a tick at 0.0 sec., 1.0 sec., and 2.0, sec) could allow for some big HPS numbers. Halving the mana cost reduces the need to go to improved healing in the holy tree, as well as the new disc talent could allow us to spec along the lines of 5x/15 (with 5/5 holy spec, 5/5 Divine Fury, 3/3 Insp, 2/2 healing focus.)

Supermerkicus · 08/26/08, 6:01 PM

1) I think you're looking at this wrong. Why wouldn't you just fake cast something else to bait the interrupt, and then use Penance as needed? Or if your opponent is waiting for you to cast Penance to the extent that he's saving his interrupt for it, you benefit as well.

2) This sounds highly overpowered to me, but it's difficult to theorycraft Arena with math. If a Priest can shield their entire 5v5 team such that only a Mass Dispel can reasonably be expected to remove it, that's probably excessive.

All that said, we really have no idea what Arena will look like at 80- what specs will other classes be using, what will the best team comps be, etc. Also, minor changes to one class can change the metagame drastically, and we're looking at all kinds of major changes. Another point is that Pain Suppression didn't start out as an Arena must-have either, and builds that went deeper in Holy than 19 points used to be common. The specific usefulness of Penance isn't what makes or breaks Disc. So I wouldn't start panicking just yet, especially since I don't see anything that would indicate to me that Disc can't be a viable Arena healer.

1) Let me get this strait, and I'm not trying to attack you here so bear with me - I want to cast penance in PVP, so I attempt a fake cast to get a rogue/warrior/mage/shaman to blow their interrupt, and then cast penance which will be interrupted by melee damage from 3 of those 4 classes? That doesn't sound practical to me, nor does being required to fake-cast in order to use a 51 point talent which has a cooldown in PVP.

2) Can you explain in a little more detail why PW:S having 100% dispel resistance sounds overpowered? It's on a 4 second cooldown, with a cooldown of 15 seconds on one target. It never has, and won't in WoTLK, absorb enough damage to buy the target more than a few seconds - if that - when under a DPS train.

The thing is, if you're speccing deep discipline, you're likely going to be spending around 13 talent points on that single spell - if you consider the fact that it's dispellable, doesn't absorb that much damage, and has such a lengthy cooldown on an individual, then it just isn't worth the talent point investment.

3) You are correct, although keep in mind that PS wasn't an arena must-have because it was self-only and had no dispel protection, and focused will hadn't been added either - BR in holy was the only way to go.

I'm not in the beta, so I can not say with any absolute guarantee that we'll be fine post-expansion, however:

We're not seeing anything "new" in the way of dispells aside from the HoT removal component of Plague Strike, so the main functionality of Disc should be essentially preserved.

As far as scaling goes, some of the numbers some Blues posted indicate that rogue dps currently exceeds 3k or so, which should be mitigatable based on the currently disseminated spell data. It looks, at least initially, as though priests stand in a good position to continue the role they currently hold in arenas, with Rapture possibly helping to equalize the difference between Druid and Priest ratios.

The above is all speculation, however. What are your thoughts?

I'm just concerned that we're not going to be able to hold up against some of the new abilities the DPS classes are getting, combined with their increases in raw damage ouput, when the two key survivability things Priests have been asking for are deep shadow only - a fear that allows us to escape and something to get out of movement impairing effects.

Like you said, it's all speculation, but we can look at the current numbers, talents, and skills and make some estimations.

Lastly, keep in mind our physical mitigation from armor is likely to take another nosedive on the trip from 70 to 80, unless they're changing the armor scaling mechanic specifically for us (which I do not believe they are).

Tainter · 08/26/08, 7:10 PM

Originally Posted by Supermerkicus

1) Let me get this strait, and I'm not trying to attack you here so bear with me - I want to cast penance in PVP, so I attempt a fake cast to get a rogue/warrior/mage/shaman to blow their interrupt, and then cast penance which will be interrupted by melee damage from 3 of those 4 classes? That doesn't sound practical to me, nor does being required to fake-cast in order to use a 51 point talent which has a cooldown in PVP.

It is feasible. In fact it's so feasible that the good Priests do it now. Fake cast something to eat an interrupt then cast the real spell. Works great. And the damage push-back is being changed so that you can cast stuff no matter much damage you're taking. That's a great change for Priests by the way because we have only very few ways of causing push-back and we suffer from other classes doing it.

Supermerkicus · 08/26/08, 7:46 PM

It is feasible. In fact it's so feasible that the good Priests do it now. Fake cast something to eat an interrupt then cast the real spell. Works great. And the damage push-back is being changed so that you can cast stuff no matter much damage you're taking. That's a great change for Priests by the way because we have only very few ways of causing push-back and we suffer from other classes doing it.

Won't penance lose at least one tick from damage pushback alone?

Fake-casting is effective but also very tricky to do well - you're completely reliant on your opponents reaction time and server lag - I've been locked out many times while fake casting even though the spell was stopped due to latency. It's an advanced tactic but do you really feel that it's an appropriate requirement for making Penance usable in PVP?

Aeverius · 08/26/08, 7:55 PM

Originally Posted by Supermerkicus

1) Let me get this strait, and I'm not trying to attack you here so bear with me - I want to cast penance in PVP, so I attempt a fake cast to get a rogue/warrior/mage/shaman to blow their interrupt, and then cast penance which will be interrupted by melee damage from 3 of those 4 classes? That doesn't sound practical to me, nor does being required to fake-cast in order to use a 51 point talent which has a cooldown in PVP.

2) Can you explain in a little more detail why PW:S having 100% dispel resistance sounds overpowered? It's on a 4 second cooldown, with a cooldown of 15 seconds on one target. It never has, and won't in WoTLK, absorb enough damage to buy the target more than a few seconds - if that - when under a DPS train.

The thing is, if you're speccing deep discipline, you're likely going to be spending around 13 talent points on that single spell - if you consider the fact that it's dispellable, doesn't absorb that much damage, and has such a lengthy cooldown on an individual, then it just isn't worth the talent point investment.

3) You are correct, although keep in mind that PS wasn't an arena must-have because it was self-only and had no dispel protection, and focused will hadn't been added either - BR in holy was the only way to go.

1) I kinda see your point, and I kinda don't. With the spell pushback changes, even a rogue beating on you isn't going to make it impossible to heal with Penance as long as he can't Kick. It won't be as effective as if he's not, obviously, but the same goes for cast-time-based heals as well. Even if you never use Penance, you still have to work around opponent interrupts, and getting your opponent to blow them is the best way to do that. The alleged changes that have been mentioned (including another talent that may affect Penance) make me not want to spend a whole lot of time debating this, since the spell may change quite a bit more before it goes live. My basic point, however, is that if you're trying to heal with any spell (other than Renew) while your opponents have available interrupts, you're running the risk of getting locked out; on the other hand, a Penance that gets Kicked mid-heal has at least gotten some healing done, while a Flash Heal hasn't. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I think it might be a very interesting spell in PvP, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

2) As I said, this is an impression and not something I can demonstrate mathematically. There aren't a lot of non-dispellable abilities in the game, and the ones that exist both are self-use only, and have longer cooldowns and related debuffs that prevent repeated use. Granted, PW:S doesn't provide the complete immunity that those abilities do, but it also: doesn't expire as quickly when not taking damage; can be talented to damage the attacker; can be re-used much more often on the same player. I hate to discuss how I think abilities should be changed, but improving PW:S's base abilities (make it prevent more damage, reduce the Weakened Soul duration, reduce the cooldown) would be a more desirable way to go for me than just making it undispellable.

I agree that spending as many talent points as there are on PW:S is a bit much, and frankly I don't think Borrowed Time is worth the investment in a PvP build right now. So it looks like we're in agreement there, with the difference being just how big a deal this is and what should be done about it.

3) Exactly, that's pretty much my point: it's hard to balance PvP without letting people spend some time with it at max level and see what abilities they use and don't use, and why. Pain Suppression sucked, no one used it for anything, so it was buffed enough to be useful. I expect the same approach with Penance and Borrowed Time.

tl;dr: It's too early to effectively evaluate the top-tier Disc abilities for PvP. I think Borrowed Time is underpowered, and I think Penance doesn't look great, but may in fact be quite a bit better than it looks to me right now. The worst-case scenario is that ~53 points in Disc isn't the best PvP spec at 80, and then after a Season or two Blizzard makes changes. I have confidence that Priests will still be excellent Arena healers, regardless of exactly which talents they end up taking to do it.

[e] I had this post halfway written up and wandered off, so I missed a couple of posts; some of what I wrote is now redundant. C'est la vie.

Plea · 08/27/08, 1:19 AM

Originally Posted by Supermerkicus

Won't penance lose at least one tick from damage pushback alone?

Fake-casting is effective but also very tricky to do well - you're completely reliant on your opponents reaction time and server lag - I've been locked out many times while fake casting even though the spell was stopped due to latency. It's an advanced tactic but do you really feel that it's an appropriate requirement for making Penance usable in PVP?

As I understand it, if the opposing dual wielder is attacking you he will eat both your penance ticks. Penance isn't worth fake casting, mana is used at the beginning, and it's on a cooldown to begin with. You can't fake another spell for the sake of Penance either, as it will be intterrupted by pushback easily, and you cannot cast it on yourself.

If priests get 50% more damage reduction and become virtually unkillable (did someone talk about monks?), so that nobody attacks a priest and the only thing we have to worry about is counterspell, then penance might have some burst healing. Assuming it's not on cooldown when you need it, of course. Considering the class is already a harder one to play(at least compared to warrior and druid, these are what I played), I doubt adding another cooldown to be managed is a great idea.

Kopalec · 08/27/08, 7:07 AM

Spirit Link being active in the scenario below. (vacuum, no movement, lag, haste)

PW:S = 4sec c/d, 15 sec debuff c/d, instant(1 sec gcd) talented
Penance = 8 sec c/d, 2 sec cast talented
PoM = 10 sec c/d, instant
Renew = 12 sec duration(glyph), instant
Flash Heal = 1.5 cast
Greater Heal = 2.5 cast talented

So, what would the best "rotation or priority list" be to maintain Grace on 3 targets + get maximum mana return from Rapture be? I'm definitely leaning towards a priority list unless someone can show a rotation that works.

Begin: Prior to pull cast PW:S(12 sec) on all 3 tanks, followed Immediately with PoM(1.5) and then Penance(2 sec) to stack Grace on T1. 11.5 seconds have elapsed on T1's weakened soul, so we have 3.5 sec to kill before we can refresh PW:S on T1.

0.0 > T1 Renew
1.5 > T2 Renew
3.0 > T3 Renew
4.5 > T1 FH + Inner Focus (refresh Grace early to save Penance for T2, IF for mana, Inspiration, DA)
6.0 > T1 PW:S
7.0 > T2 Penance (grace stacked)
9.0 > T1 PoM
10.5 > T2 PW:S (T3 WS not expired yet)
11.5 > T1 FH (grace)
13.0 > T1 Renew (1.0 w/o active)
14.5 > T2 FH (grace)
16.0 > T3 Penance (grace stacked)
18.0 > T3 PW:S
19.0 > T1 FH (grace)
20.5 > T2 PoM
22.0 > T2 FH (grace)
23.5 > T1 PW:S
24.5 > T3 Penance

I stopped there on this first attempt through. I'm finding it difficult to keep renew up on all 3 tanks. Not to mention I haven't had the opportunity to cast a GH yet. The more I look at it, Renew may not be usable in this scenario, in order to make best use of PW:S + PoM and maintaining Grace. Even then, I'm not certain how many GH's I'll be able get off. For that matter I wonder if GH will be usable unless I simply discount stopcasting all together and disregard overheal in the hopes of a DA proc. How useful Penance will be after initial stacking of Grace in this scheme remains to be seen with the upcoming changes.

If Renew and GH are used sparingly only when feasible, is maintaining Grace + PW:S on 3 tanks(1 tank + damage soaks) enough to warrant being in the raid?

Some other questions that have an impact on this potentially...

1) Spirit Link says "up to two nearby friendly targets". Does this mean you could still make use of Spirit Link with only 1 additional tank/soak? That could lessen the burden and increase the actual healing being done by the Disc priest.

2) Do you suppose that Spirit Link's interaction with Grace would effectively cause it to "double dip"? In other words, having 2-3 tanks with Grace stacked, splitting the damage, and allowing the additional tanks to receive 12% more healing/less damage? (zomg!)

It's late and I'm tired, so if I have made any mistakes, forgive me.

Havoc12 · 08/27/08, 7:42 AM

Originally Posted by Vitalay

However, there's no possibility to fake cast Penance, and Kick, Pummel, Counterspell, and Spell Lock all lock you out of that school for X seconds. The high CD won't even matter--not to mention the fact that Penance has its own cool down.

According to Caligula, you can not currently heal yourself on Beta.

You dont want to fake cast penance. You fake cast Flash until you get him to kick and then you cast penance. More importantly penance is not for healing yourself.

Interupts are not a constant threat, especially when you are positioned well, but having another spell to heal your partner while he is pursuing a pillar humping druid with a war on his arse makes a very big difference especially when it stacks grace on.

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

PvP viability of disc. Its hard to say until we see the new talents in action, but the extra 10% scaling factor, the extra power on PWS and ofc rapture + aspiration solve most of the vulnerabilities of disc in the current setting. The biggest problem of disc right now, is that you can't heal for very long. Most classes will drive you oom very quickly if they focus DPS on either you or your partner. Having PI every 96 seconds, is also a big plus for those hairy moments when you need HPS.

Also when you need to penance is there to deliver some damage.

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

Kopalec. Stack grace on all 3 targets first then maintain PWS and grace. Renew is not worth mantaining on 3 targets or even 1 target tbh. Its just a mana drain and not worth the cast time. On 3 tanks you stack grace first then go

	tank1	tank2	tank3
1	PWS		
2			
3	pen		
4			
4.5		fh	
5			
6		PWS	
7			
7.5			fh
8			
9			
10	gh		
11			PWS
12			
13		pen	
14			
14.5			fh
15			
16	PWS		
17			
17.5	fh		
18			
19			
20		gh	
21		PWS	
22			
23			pen
24			
14.5	fh		
25			
26			PWS
27			
27.5		fh	
28			
29			
30			gh

The basic sequence is

PWS, pen, fh, 0.5sec delay, PWS, FH, GH

You can renew one tank if you like at the cost of letting grace drop on one tank for 1 sec and then restacking it immediately with penance.

Ellyh · 08/27/08, 7:44 AM

If your trying to maintain grace/shield on 3 targets you need to be considering a sub rotations of 12 and 15 seconds respectively because of the interacting cooldowns on PWS and weakened soul. Assuming you use pennance/flash to get the grace stacks up fast and ignore pws until then you could look at a rotation something like this.

0.00 PWS T1
1.00 Flash T1
3.5 Flash Tank 2
5.00 PWS tank 2
6.00 Flash Tank3
7.5 Penance tank 1
9.5 PWS tank 3
10.5 Flash tank 2
12.0 Flash tank 3
13.5 Flash tank 1
15.0 PWS tank 1
16.0 Flash tank 2 and repeat as if you just repeated steps 1 and 2 but with the tanks stepped round in the rotation.

This entire cycle will take 45 seconds to go through a full cycle and is a fiendishly complicated rotation style to maintain and as soon as "anything untowards" occurs you will start loosing grace stacks because of cast time issues/immobility issues. If you want to do more than 1 penance per cycle you need to have at least a 16 second rotation which increases the chance of Grace falling off. It should be pointed out that the 8 second Penance cooldown and the 15 sec weakened soul debuf will never sych up for a maximum usage rotation.

If you really wanted to be able to do this you could by ignoring the cost reduction in holy as your hardly casting any penance's and no greater heals. However I feel that it is a fools bargin to use such a spec as it disadvantages you in the majority of fights for a very rare situation where you are trying to keep effects up on 3 different targets. The number of fights with 3 simultaneous tanks is very limited in BC or Classic and I can't see it becoming much more prevalent in Wrath. Although it is tempting to treat a disc priest as another resto druid there are significant differences between Grace/PWS and lifebloom mechanics that make it far less desirable starting with the fact that lifebloom is designed as a cheep stabilisation effect with it's 1 sec ticks so is wonderful if you keep it up on multiple targets. PWS/Grace is mitigation rather than stabilisation and the throughput on the various tanks is much much more spikey and we don't have the "Oh Crap" tools for tank spike that a resto druid brings to the table as we have incorporated the shield into the base rotation.

to keep grace up on 3 targets you need 4.5 seconds of your 8 seconds of grace just keeping grace running. Thus in a 15 second weakened soul cooldown you need 9 seconds minimum keeping grace up which leaves you with only 6 seconds for PWS and anything else you may want to do. Even with haste, latency and raid bullshit will leave you with maybe 4 seconds left to do 3 PWS and your shaving damned close (0.5 seconds) of letting a grace stack drop as it is.

Kopalec · 08/27/08, 8:01 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

for a very rare situation where you are trying to keep effects up on 3 different targets.

Well with Spirit Link, I'm somewhat proposing that every fight would have 3 tanks, or at least 1 tank with 1-2 damage soaks. If you can effectively reduce the incoming dps on the tank by 50%, why not do it whenever possible?

Also any thoughts on my other questions?

edit: To expand upon "why not do it whenever possible?", I'm asking again is the hassle worth it to a raid? By your responce, I'm guessing you don't think so. However any personal bias aside, what do you or others think? Would Spirit Link "double dipping" with Grace change your mind?

I ask, because I wonder if this could be a new play style by which a "healer" doesn't so much heal as help mitigate damage. As you stated it's a very involved process and could potentially be interesting to play in various different encounters.

Ellyh · 08/27/08, 8:14 AM

Well your proposed rotation or whatever it is is fundamentally flawed as T3 is not receiving a grace stacking heal until 16.5 seconds in!

As I said if your serious about keeping grace and PWS (for rapture) up on all targets then you need to be spending 9 seconds of every 15 casting flash heal and 3 seconds casting PWS. This leaves you with a whapping 3 seconds for replacing a flash heal with penance or casting something else such as PoM or renew.

As to the spirit link scenario it all depends on how hard the boss hits and the relative hp pools between the tank and the soaks. Assuming that it doesn't break too often it would be "Interesting" to see how it works but any movement will break the cycle and let grace drop on at last one target.

As to the spirit link questions you will need to mug a shammy on that one as my knowledge of shammy spells can be inscribed onto a postage stamp.

Kopalec · 08/27/08, 8:15 AM

Heh, the more I think on Spirit Link + Grace interaction, I have to wonder about possible abuse. Having more than one Spirit Link from multiple Shaman up on the same 3 targets for example.

Three Resto Shaman cast their link on 1 of the designated tanks/soaks. If Grace indeed benefited from stacking through the links, you could trivialize a lot of content from a healing perspective.

edit: No, your right about my attempted rotation. I was far from happy with it. More or less threw it together to try and take a look at it outside of my head. Also to get input from others.

Kopalec · 08/27/08, 8:17 AM

delete post please

Havoc12 · 08/27/08, 8:33 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

Well your proposed rotation or whatever it is is fundamentally flawed as T3 is not receiving a grace stacking heal until 16.5 seconds in!

As I said if your serious about keeping grace and PWS (for rapture) up on all targets then you need to be spending 9 seconds of every 15 casting flash heal and 3 seconds casting PWS. This leaves you with a whapping 3 seconds for replacing a flash heal with penance or casting something else such as PoM or renew.

As to the spirit link scenario it all depends on how hard the boss hits and the relative hp pools between the tank and the soaks. Assuming that it doesn't break too often it would be "Interesting" to see how it works but any movement will break the cycle and let grace drop on at last one target.

As to the spirit link questions you will need to mug a shammy on that one as my knowledge of shammy spells can be inscribed onto a postage stamp.

Check my post above. Penance every 10 seconds following a PWS cast every 5 seconds with 2x FH and 1xGH every 10 seconds works fairly well. Penance means you can afford to let grace drop if shit happens occasionally as you can restack it quickly.

With penance you can stack grace on all 3 tanks in about 12 seconds with the following sequence

penance tank 1, FHx3 tank 2, GH tank 1, penance tank 3, Then GH on each tank and you can enter the basic sequence. Even if a stack drops penance will bring it back up within a fairly short period

Keeping grace up to mitigate damage from spirit link, is not really very effective. You are better off maintaining shield+PoM on the SL targets and stacking grace on the tank only. Particularly since we dont know if grace is applied before spirit link.

Most theory crafting of this sort, forgets the value of PI. You can potentially spend 20 seconds out of 100 with PI on and you can certainly count on some raid haste buffs + some haste from gear.

Shan · 08/27/08, 8:50 AM

I don't think Grace is powerful enough to warrant a rotation built for the sole purpose of keeping it up on several targets and that the conditions where it could potentially be required/useful are rare to nonexistant. For light to moderate damage on multiple tanks, resto druids will be far superior, and I doubt that we're going to see situations where three tanks will be taking enough damage to make Grace truly good.