Abraham

You barely use direct heals in Arena as a Disc Priest, and Crit doesn't affect Renew, PW:S and PoM. Additionally, Penance has a 10 second (8 second with 2/2 Aspiration) Cooldown, so every calculation based on Penance spam is just nonsense.

 

Vitalay

Well, you can do the same calculation with Gheal spam or not, and you still come out ahead by about 40mp5 over OFSR.

The point is the comparison between spi and crit.

 

Kortar

1. No one is arguing that spellpower is bad for a Priest. My point is that we're making a comparison, running down two lists of "spellpower provides X" and "haste provides Y". Your argument then added "...and haste deprives you all benefits X". You were counting the value of spellpower twice compared to the value of haste once.

2. I had to look up the conversion rate for spellpower:haste %, and it's apparently 72.13797 spellpower = 1% haste (at level 70 it's 34.54). Presuming that the itemization budget remains the same from 70 -> 80. This would place the breakpoints at approximately (ignore the numbers in parentheses for now):
Circle of Healing = 5500 (1800)
Holy Nova = 5400 (1650)
Renew* = 5600 (1800)
Flash Heal = 5300 (1500)
Binding Heal = 5100 (1350)
Greater Heal = 5200 (1400)
Prayer of Healing = 4700 (950)
* Renew only has a 'breakpoint' in the sense that you can theoretically be healing 10 different targets at once. If you're merely interleaving it with other heals, it's 'breakpoint' is really a matter of the other spells you're casting (just like a cooldown heal).

I hadn't run the numbers before and these results stunned me. The implications are staggering if people are making legitimate assumptions about gearing in WotLK. Keep in mind that Holy Priests are the class that generally gets the best return from spell haste - other classes have higher breakpoints for comparable spells. Frostbolt, for example, has a breakpoint of 6347 for spell haste. Frostbolt has a 4900 breakpoint for spell hit.

If we're correct in our assumption that spellpower will range in the 2k-3k span, this means that no spec/class of caster (whether healer or dps) wants to gear for spell hit, spell critical or spell haste at all - they're all underpowered compared to spellpower in the ranges we're talking about. While there are issues of specialized uses for spell critical (such as Illumination and Rapture/DA).

To put this in perspective, look at the numbers in parentheses above. Those are the approximate breakpoints using level 70 itemization costs (and level 80 everything else).

3. While WotLK will bring a bit more constriction to mana, any given fight tends to be either 'not limited', 'mana limited' or 'throughput limited'.

Obviously, we don't care if the fight isn't limited. It's a fight we could win in our PvP gear.

In a 'mana limited' fight, adding more healers scales your mana regen exponentially due to the FSR rule, not spending mana and base regen rates.

In a 'throughput limited' fight, adding more healers scales your throughput logarithmically due to coordination difficulties.

Which is precisely why all raids since the very early days have been dps-limited rather than mana-limited. In a mana-limited raid, you end up stacking a very narrow selection of specs/classes - Holy Priests, Frost Mages, Rogues, etc. - at the expense of every other class because no one else can last the duration while sustaining decent output. In a throughput-limited raid, you end up with a broad diversity of classes because you've got all those classes with buffs/debuffs you want to stack.

This doesn't mean that the individual player can't run out of mana in a dps-limited raid. But it does mean that the impact of them doing so is trivial enough that the raid leader doesn't have to bother addressing the issue of mana.

 

Incoherence

GHeal spam isn't an accurate depiction of discipline arena, either. Instant spam is more typical, and with the exception of throwing in Penance on cooldown I don't see how that would change. Because PW:S/PoM/Renew cannot crit, I suspect that drastically reduces the value of crit.

 

Tan

They just updated the patch notes and PoM can crit now. Also improved Inner Fire increases the spell power and the number of charges of the base spell. 32 charges now if my math is correct.

MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Wrath of the Lich King: Beta Patch Notes08/01

 

gia

While on the subject of PoM: the healing numbers now also show up over people's heads just like other heals, also both the threat and the healing credit is no longer given to the target but to the priest. It also procs Divine Aegis which is awesome.

 

Vitalay

Delete.

 

Kortar

These changes also make it a much more specialized heal. Currently, Priests regularly use it as a single target heal. With these changes, it really becomes only worthwhile when you can manage it well (such as 5-mans) or against pulsed AEs.

 

Vihermaali

How can a spell not be worthwile if you have mana to safely cast it?

Of course you use flash heal or renew to heal the damage after it hits, but you can still use prayer of mending to prevent damage on a single target that has is coming. It's the only spell in addition to pw:s that heals future damage. Chance of it proccing multiple times is only a bonus. In case of high frequent damage envirioment using prom is almost essential.

How can it "not be worth it"? I thought threath wasn't a problem for priests?

 

Vitalay

I can only imagine he's speaking from a TPS perspective.

 

Vihermaali

The extrea threath added was a bonus but not really a spell defining property.

I mean yeah, sure it could give extra 1k threath to tank. But on other hand it may bounce to melee group between 2 rogues and give both extra 2k threath that they could have used to do some extra damage. Besides, unless I'm wrong, healing threath is divided equally between all mobs in combat. Is prom threath REALLY effective enough to call anything other than added bonus?

 

Uote

I note that in the linked patch notes, Circle of Healing has a 6 second cooldown again. Has it been added back, or were these notes never updated for the cooldown's removal?

 

Incoherence

Threat is a problem in the first few seconds of a pull, absolutely. Basically, PoM is no longer useful for pre-casting on pulls, because unless the tank lands a hit before the mob does, you'll pull aggro from it. We're back to PW:S if we want to pre-cast; while a discipline priest's PW:S is going to be quite powerful, the beginning of a fight is also the point where warrior/druid tanks will least want a shield on them.

 

Kortar

Renew also heals future damage. As does Earth Shield, and all HoT spells.

And while healing future damage is certainly useful, it's only useful if you need to be doing something else at that time.

Prayer of Mending heals 70 hppm untalented. Flash Heal heals 110 hppm untalented. Both have the same coefficient and casting time (Flash Heal is actually less due to IHC), and Flash Heal has over double the real throughput even disregarding the cooldown.

That's a pretty big discrepancy to overcome to justify that you might potentially want to do something else when the heal procs.

To really understand this, look at PW:S in current play. You pre-buff tanks with it and maybe use it as a truly emergency instaheal. Otherwise, it's a solo/PvP spell.

The reason you cast it every cooldown in a raid is the threat, not the healing. There are very rarely situations where it works well - multi-tanking and pulsed AEs. But in most situations, the logic on Prayer of Mending bounces along with its non-stackability cripples it - every ProM bounces tends to the same target within a given range (meaning multiples immediately cancel one another), and they do so after the damage that would have triggered it off them has already occurred.

 

The Not So Evil

It is still possible to PoM and fade before the pull, in addition to the shield. But in general I agree, I loved putting PoM on tank to give him a nice aoe threat start.

Agree entirely, the non-stackability cripples PoM similarly to pre-2.0 renew non-stackability. Can someone ask on the US Beta forums for them to reconsider this.

 

Ellyh

The reasons you cast it every cooldown is twofold.

1. It's useful in any situation where the tank is currently at full health.

2. Even 1 extra bounce makes it more valuable than a flash heal.

Throughput on PoM is currently much lower than flash heal and no we aren't really casting it for the threat on most fights. (at least I,m not but our MT is a threat machine) In addition it's another instant cast spell we can toss out while moving which is never a bad thing.

 

Shan

Well, I'm not in the beta but... there's been no new build today, just updated patch notes. Since I haven't seen any outcries from priests CoH is probably unchanged with no cooldown.

Frankly at this point adding a cooldown to it would be silly as the druid aoe heal beats CoH hollow and Blizzard has stated they want holy priests to be the best aoe healers.

 

nau

As of yesterday there is no cooldown on CoH on the test realms.

 

Kortar

1. So is Renew. And so is PW:S. Do you cast PW:S every cooldown on your tank in a raid setting? Of course not. It's ridiculously inefficient. Just like Prayer of Mending when it doesn't bounce beyond the single healing on the tank.

2. Except you very, very rarely get that 1 extra bounce except in specialized situations. In situations where you don't have multiple tanks taking regular damage or pulsed AEs, the average number of bounces beyond the first is probably around 0.1.

Check over your own parses if you don't believe me. The logic on Prayer of Mending is almost custom-designed to minimize the number of potential bounces in most cases.

 

Vihermaali

Renew heals every 3 seconds. You use renew instead of ProM if raid damage is slow. Otherwise it's way too slow. You use Power Word: Shield when there is only single target OR he's so low that he may die from next hit. You use Prayer of Mending if there is even a slightest chance it will proc more than 1 time.

Look, I know Prayer of Mending gets its true potential out only in heavy aoe dmg fights. But look at Sunwell, how many fights have uses for ProM? Kalecgos, Brutallus, Felmyst, Eredar Twins, M'uru and KJ. In other words, every single fight. When I was the only holy priest in raid, I managed to get up to 20-25% of my total healing done by Prayer of Mending alone, according to recount. I find it hard to swalllow it's usable "only in specialized situations". It's only usable when there is aoe dmg more often than once in 30 seconds, but how often does that happen really in SSC/TK/Hyjal/BT/SWP? Pretty often.

I mean, you see the damage coming. Why wouldn't you cast prayer of mending? Yeah sure, PW:S is the other option you have, but it doesn't give a chance to bounce and proc another time. My DrDmg addon shows 6,3 hp/m for Flash heal and 7,06 hp/m for Prayer of Mending (1 proc) and 3,8 hp/m for Power Word: Shield. It's actually cheaper to cast a ProM single proc than Flash Heal or PW:S.

 

uh...ok

Multiple PoMs do not (cannot?) bounce to the same target as of a patch from a long time ago.

What's wrong with the logic of PoM bounces? It goes to the target with the lowest total health, which means that it's guaranteed to be on the person who needs it the most. Of course, this assumes that there are people besides the tank taking damage, but if they aren't, then where the PoM bounces is pretty irrelevant anyway.

If Naxx is going to be anything like Sunwell, PoM will still very much be worth casting on every single cooldown.

 

Dekkar

My own parses say otherwise. What you're saying sounds more like a whine to me. Even at exactly a single proc, Prayer of Mending is higher HPM than Flash Heal. I would hardly call that inefficient. I tend to get multiple bounces out of it even on tank & spank fights, as I frequently see my own mending get bounced back to me while I'm healing if I'm close enough (note that shadow priests are almost always close enough due to Mind Flay's awful range). This will be even more true in the expansion when Alliance ret paladins will be able to damage themselves.

It seems like you're just throwing around a number (0.1) with no evidence to back it up.

 

Supermerkicus

I think this argument is flawed.

If you're running out of time instead of charges, then you're not even getting the benefit of the spell's primary effect, and it's only when you actually gain the benefit of the spell's primary effect that it goes away quickly because of the stupid charges mechanic and thus the mana cost is extremely high.

 

uh...ok

Well, assuming that the context is now WotLK, you will be benefiting from IF regardless of whether you're getting hit.

 

Plea

First of all, are we really sure that pom goes to the one with lowest hp? It really looks like it bounces randomly. I usually cast swd when it bounces to me and it doesn't always go back to the tank, who I'm sure isn't full at all times and the group almost always is full. If you mean absolute total with total health, it doesn't always bounce back to me either, being the one with 7k hp; I think I'd notice if it did. I didn't test it thoroughly however, and I might be wrong.

What's wrong with the logic of pom bounces is what's been pointed in your quote. It heals after the damage is taken, not before. To point out an extreme case, you cannot pom the guy at 10% hp, or the mage with 8k hp at Naj'entus; they will die before pom gets an opportunity to heal. The guy with lowest health isn't the one we want to heal with pom, he's the one we want to shield. Actually total hp is completely independant of who we want to heal with pom. We want pom to go to the person who will take damage next, so that it can in fact heal a bit before every other raid healer targets that person. It's very good if it follows a pws but those situations aren't much controllable. They may allow stacking pom, change burrowed time to add another pom to your pws, and now we're talking.

Right now you cast pom on the tank to heal future damage, that's good, but the next 4 bounces don't work like that. If n people are abount to take damage in the raid, pom has n/24 chance to find the correct target to heal for a second time, another n/24 chance to find the third target given the second heal landed, and it goes down exponentially. For a long time I haven't looked at statistics and it's 6 am here, but n should be around 7-10 to get an average of 1 bounce, assuming damage pulses every 3 seconds and the raid is in 30 yards of each other, which I think is the pom bounce range. If you're casting it every 10 seconds it almost never bounces to a third target. In our Teron parses with 1 healing priest, our tank has 70% of all pom healing. The way I read it, it should have bounced once 30% of the time, have not bounced 70% of the time, double bounces are few enough to be ignored. I spam pom on cooldown.

I'm not claiming that pom is bad, it has its uses, but it's not a godly heal either. We have several tools to use in different situations, some more commonly used and some less, and that's a good thing. I just think that, although it's a good spell, pom is mostly overrated as a healing ability. It's not a powerful healing ability on its own. The power of pom was the threat part and if that's gone I'm afraid it will end up rotting. It was one of the little niches priest had and I won't like it if it's gone. I hope it's just the wording.