Promethia

I've checked versus multiple armory entries, and the above formulas are correct and current. There are a number of ways one can simplify those expressions, however. If you reduce the (467.5 * AttackerLevel - 22167.5) term to an appropriate constant, C, you have:

Damage Reduction % = Armor / (Armor + C).


This function is hyperbolic, not linear. It is zero when Armor=0, 50% when Armor=C, and it asymptotically approaches 100% as Armor gets very high. I've heard that it's artificially capped at 75%, however. If so, armor is capped at 3*C.

You can simplify the damage reduction formula even more using a linear scaling factor: Armor = A * C. Basically, you can think of "A" as an armor index (relative to C) that may be simpler to deal with than the actual armor value. Then you have:

Armor / (Armor + C) = A*C / (A*C + C) = A*C / (A + 1)*C = A / (A + 1), so

Damage Reduction % = A / (A + 1).

The effect of inspiration is just to increase A by 25%, so damage reduction with inspiration is 1.25*A / (1.25*A + 1). For reference, I've tabulated the damage reduction effect of inspiration across a range of high armor values:

As you can see, inspiration adds roughly 5% to the damage reduction across a pretty wide range of tanking armor values. There are diminishing returns as you increase armor on the target, but it doesn't amount to much unless you run into a cap.

However, the story is somewhat different if you look at "how long" an effect (such as divine aegis) lasts with and without the inspiration effect. Instead of diminishing returns, the percentage increase in time that a DA shield lasts actually increases as the target's armor increases.

Using the same armor index, A, as we used above, the "effective time to live" then becomes very simple since it is just the reciprocal of 1 - DR%, and 1 - DR% = 1 - A / (A + 1) = (A + 1)/(A + 1) - A/(A + 1) = 1 / (A + 1), so

Effective time to live = A + 1.

The relative increase in time with / without inspiration is then (1.25*A + 1) / (A + 1) - 1 or 0.25*A / (A + 1), but that's just 1/4th of the base DR% from the above table. Just to save you the trouble of dividing by 4:

_A___% increase in DA time
1.00 | 12.50%
1.25 | 13.89%
1.50 | 15.00%
1.75 | 15.91%
2.00 | 16.67%
2.25 | 17.31%
2.50 | 17.86%
2.75 | 18.33%
3.00 | 18.75%

In other words, a divine aegis shield will last 12.5% longer if inspiration is up on a tank with an armor index of 1.00 (16635 armor vs a level 83 mob). It will last 16.67% longer on a tank with an armor index of 2.00 (33270 armor vs a level 83 mob), etc. Note that armor caps could interfere at the high end, but in general inspiration increases the duration of divine aegis by roughly 15% on a well-armored tank, give or take a few percent.

 

Starfire

What? Name one Sunwell fight where you won't get multiple bounces?

 

Shatter Combo w/ Fries

While we are discussing armor, here is a simple graph I made for a blog recently, just showing when it is and is not practical to cast inner fire (in any situation where you are able to later top yourself off)



This is based on the slightly different mana values of patch 3.0

edit: based on Imp IF having 20 charges, I heard a rumor today that it now increases the charges as well, will rework the graph if confirmed.

 

Tainter

The charges don't run out because I use PW:S, not because I don't get hit. In Wrath this will be even more pronounced because every Disc Priest will use PW:S whenever it's available.

If you can't join them?
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Thorongil

First of all, I think you´re - at least to some extent - wrong concerning the "flawed" bouncing mechanics. You have to consider that its range is limited to 20 yards. Also, the case that it doesn´t stack can produce bounces to other targets, thus seemingly odd or illogical bounces may occur. Otherwise (at least as far as I am informed) it is quite generally agreed that the bounces do some serious thinking on their own (just like Shamans Chain Heal).

The point I would argue against your kind of mediocering PoM is the following: Yes, PoM does not really help if people are already low. Shield+FH will most times do the job PoM does not do in this case (which is, of course, preventing the player´s death). So, as can be seen, we already have tools for such situations (the mentioned ones). We don´t really need more. PoM is completely different, it´s just one GCD and you have a heal that is incredibly efficient if there is any AoE involved, heals for enough to matter and produces - due to its reactive nature - insanely little overheal.

The added threat for the tank is nice, but far from imperative. In a situation with many targets (and thus low single-target threat) PoM generates negligible amounts on each single target, in a one target situation the tank should be in the status to hold aggro without additional 2k every 10 seconds.

Concerning your Teron fight: If you cast PoM every 10 seconds it´s not that uncommon in such a fight to get few bounces. Teron is mainly Tank'n'spank with heavy single target damage incoming. Yes, there´s the AoE component, but it´s no constant AoE-damage on specific targets (or the whole raid) but random single target damage mostly. Thus jumps to low targets will oftenly fail to produce consecutive jumps (since a random period of time passes until the next damage occurs) thus at least partly explaining your result.

Nevertheless I truly recognize PoM as a godly heal. It is moderately powerful (concerning HPS) and insanely efficient in nearly any situation that involves damage on more than one target (I can´t think of a whole boss fight any in BC that does not, only very specific situations might be able to completely eliminate the bouncing-component). It is godly in 5-mans. I do not say it substitutes any of our other spells but PoM is simply a perfect complementary spell to our repertoire and definitely worth the GCD.

Especially comparing it to renew I can not see the big pluses of our HoT. Most times in a raid renew is wasted on any other people than the tank, simply due to fast heals or faster ticking HoTs of other classes. It´s nice to smooth damage on tanks but it´s highly susceptible to overheal (though the overheal is not accounted for many times in wws/recount). I can not really understand the comparison that has already been made between those two. Renew does - at least in some way - heal future damage, that´s true, but there´s no way comparing a HoT that ticks every 3 seconds with a buff that heals exactly when damage occurs. The comparison would be valid if renew also was healing in a reactive manner, but it doesn´t.

Note that I made the comparison in a raid environment. You are of course able to heal extremely efficient with Renew in a 5-man as single healer.

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Promethia

Yes, I've been doing the same thing for years now whenever I farm/solo. It works very well. When the shield is up, hits on you don't use up charges but you still get the added benefit of the armor from inner fire. I tried various combinations of healing, shielding, and leaving inner fire up or not, and it just worked out that shield + inner fire is often more efficient (at least time-wise) than healing with renew or other heals. The non-believers should really try using shield more before they summarily discount it as hopelessly inefficient.

One key benefit is that because PW: shield stops pushback, mobs die faster and so you end up with less damage taken. That's important. Claims that renew and other heals are massively more efficient than shield generally assume you'll take the same damage with renew as with shield. That's definitely an untrue assumption. How much less damage you take by eliminating casting pushback is hard to say, but it is definitely more than zero.

Generally I've found getting rid of pushback saves me taking at least one hit per mob. If I'm only getting hit a few times per mob, eliminating one hit is a significant decrease in damage taken.

 

Havoc12

I am very happy about the first part of the changes to PoM tbh. Being able to crit adds yet another stacking 5-8% factor to one of our most powerfull spells. If I switch to the WotLK talents right now, my pom will go from 2000 to 2000*1.1*1.05*1.06 = 2448. This is a 22% increase in total, adding test of faith, which due to pom smart targeting will proc fairly frequently, we are looking at an even larger increase probably in the range of 30%.

To those saying that PoM is random, you are 100% wrong. PoM has smart targeting. This is not the place to discuss it though.

PoM is one of those spells that is not straightforward to use well and most people get little healing from it, because they use it badly. Using PoM for the sole purpose of giving extra TPS to the tank is like using a bazooka to kill a beaver. Massive waste of potential.

However I am very unsatisfied with the threat coming to the casting priest. PoM can produce massive burst. I have often seen it heal for 7-8k in under 3 seconds, only now it will be a lot larger. Worst of all the unpredictability of pom bouncing on threat dump encounters is really going to hurt PoM usage. Just consider the comon usage of PoM as a buffer for the first hit on the tank. You can't really do that if you are going to be credited 1.5k threat the instant the boss hits the tank.

The + crit change is great and I wellcome it, however the threat change is really a very serious issue. I dont care if it gives threat to the tank, that is just a very minor bonus. I don't want it giving threat to me, or I will be very skeptical about using it.

No one with half a brain will argue against that fact that PoM is extremely powerful and the non stacking/cooldown limiters are required to stop it from being downright overpowered, but making it credit unpredictable and potentially large burst TPS to the priest is just stupid. If blizzard wants to remove the threat generating component of PoM, I dont have a problem with that, but this is not the right way. Either make PoM give just buff threat when cast and remove the healing threat from the pom procs, or remove its threat generation completely.

===> Plea

You are using PoM badly, on terron. PoM is a good spell to use on terron and godly on many other encounters.

 

Brinas

30% would still be useless. A warrior or rogue getting feared/stunned isn't as bad as a caster getting feared/stunned/silenced.

Once the spell is interrupted, it's interrupted. Getting silenced with .1 seconds left on flash heal means you wasted 1.4 seconds trying to cast it, so the reduced duration means nothing. 8 second fear -15% =6.8 second fear + the 1.4 seconds you lost trying to cast flash heal = may as well have been an 8.2 second fear. This doesn't even include pushback.

The only reason priests get 3 effects and warriors/rogues don't is cause silence is basically useless on a warrior/rogue. So really it's the same talent as far as I'm concerned.

The great thing about unbreakable will was that the spell never got interrupted. Now it's next to useless because all it does is let you play catch up a little sooner. It needs to be 2 points for 15/30% to even be considered a possibility.

 

Thorongil

I already argued against such fears, but I´ll try to do it more elaborately. I simply don´t see such massive problems. If you have fears about getting aggro after the first hit then simply be ready to fade directly after the pull. Generally, the situation must be an unlucky one if the tank can not generate 2k+ aggro quickly (keep in mind that if there are more than mob you also do not get 2k aggro on each of them).

The next point is the following: Simply stop using PoM pre-pull. The only situation when PoM draws good use of generating aggro for other people is pre-pull and that´s why we love to use it. But you can´t argue that it´s necessary to use it in terms of healing. Simply pipe a GH during the pull and let your first PoM off when the tank has generated some aggro.

Lastly, up to 10k burst aggro is possible (yet not very probable), yes. But that is also possible with a GH Crit. I want to say that some amount of burst heal aggro is nothing new. Simply never forget that we are Priests. Fade still exists for exactly such situations.

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Havoc12

Sorry but you dont undestand the importance of this talent. Unbreakable will is completely useless as it is now. 15% chance means its not reliable. If you can't survive without this resist, you are going to lose 85% of the time. Worst of all most DPS classes also have a certain measure of hit rating or chance to hit from talents, which reduces your resist chance, so its not even 15%. The resist chance helps somewhat in the very small minority of games, where it takes a large number of CC events for the other team to manage a kill. In games where the other team uses a relatively short CC-chain with a long duration CC to kill off your partner (i.e. the vast majority of games) its patently useless. Reduced CC duration however, not only makes chain CC much harder to pull off, it also means that the available DPS time is reduced by more than 15% because the loss of DPS time needed to establish chain CC, is constant.

Also you are forgetting other important factors. An 8 second fear makes it easy for a rogue to sap you afterwards. A 6.8 second fear makes it very hard to land a sap as it decreases the time you spend helpless out of combat to a fraction of a second.

 

Tainter

I wouldn't go so far as to say it's completely useless. It does win the odd fight for me. Mostly I'd say people don't even notice when it procs. Resisting a Kidney Shot during a Rogue/Mage shatter combo is pretty powerful. With the reduced duration I'd take the same massive damage as if I didn't resist, so the resist chance is actually better in that case.

While getting chain CCed can be problematic I don't think that this talent is goint to help much in its current form. Reduction in stun time is not going to be very noticeable. The silence thing will be nice, but except for the shadow priest silence there'll always also be in interrupt effect which isn't mitigated by the talent at all.

And finally the main CC problem for me as a Priest is probably getting sheeped and the talent does nothing against that. It does nothing against sap or blind either. As an Undead Priest I'm not particularly vulnerable against fear anyway. So for my taste the gain is far, far too small for 5 points.

I'll be with Twin Faiths which will always help in all situations.


Edit:
Crit is really being to look appealing for Disc now. More Reflective Shield crits too I guess. So we're at every heal critting except Renew and Shield now. That seems very reasonable.

So max rank PoM costs 576 with Mental Agility and heals for 1043 with an 80% (?) coefficient. At 2000 spell power we're looking at:

2643 healing per bounce
3964.5 per crit bounce
1189.35 DA shield per crit bounce
297.3375 mana per crit bounce

So at 1.94 crit bounces PoM becomes free.

So 1% crit provides 2.97 mana per bounce.
At 20% crit and 5 bounces we're looking at 297.3375: free PoM on average.

I'm open for corrections.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

Supermerkicus

As I stated, the spell's primary effect is the armor bonus, which is completely worthless unless you're getting hit - at which point the charges mechanic means it dissipates very quickly and ultimately has a very high mana cost. It's safe to assume that if the only benefit was the spellpower boost, that the buff wouldn't be laden with other restrictions, so even with a passive boost for PVE you're still paying for the high armor buff with some dumb duration/charge mechanics.

So we should spend the mana on PW:S to make up for the stupid charges mechanic?

Ok, fine, but again that blows a big gaping hole in the 'Inner Fire is dirt cheap' argument that Koraa threw out.

I disagree. 15% is definitely useless because it doesn't make a significant impact on the duration of most effects, but 30% will shave 2 seconds off a 6 second stun, and that's extremely useful to me.

Basically we'll get interrupted by spells and effects 15% more often than we do now - I sure won't notice that, because it was already happening 85% of the time anyway.

I will, however, notice the crap out of various stuns/silences/fears lasting 2 seconds shorter. This is all assuming they actually double the 15% chance to 30% chance, like they did with every other class. I think it's a safe assumption but I can't help but chuckle that when they finally went in and updated the overlooked talent, they forgot to double the effect.

 

Havoc12

That does not answer any of the concerns. A very nice usage of PoM/PWS was to mitigate the first hit without generating any threat of you. Adding fade in the equation means that (a) you dont have it for the first 30 seconds of the fight when fade is most critical (b) you can't use it to deliver a larger burst of HPS if its required. (c) Mitigating the first hit does not only happen on the begining of the pull, it often happens during phase swiches and you might have had to use fade before. The fade+prechannel gheal argument can in no way substitute the power of a 0 threat PWS/PoM combo.

Comparing PoM to gheal crits is even sillier! A gheal crit (a) often has a lot of overheal (b) comes from a spell under your direct control. PoM is not under your control and its active while you are doing other things. So PoM bounces can happen on top of CoH/PoH spam, or after a gheal crit. It can happen during a threat reset period, when the tank is trying to re-establish aggro.

Fade is a spell that you already has uses for. Simple example morogrim. A priest can already use fade to allow PoH+CoH spam on EQ damage, but on top of that you can heal for bucketloads with PoM threat free (at least for you)

PoM generating threat for the priest means burst threat generated ON TOP of whatever you are currently doing. Most PoM jumps happen when you are doing something else!! Spaming CoH for example you could generate 1-1.5k TPS very easily, but now there is also the option of adding an extra 1k TPS burst for a couple of seconds.

The best example of this is nightbane's flight phase. PoM is just a superb spell to use here, precicely because you dont get credited with the threat so it greatly delays the onset of smoking blasts not only on you but also the other healers. You can precast it when bane flies and squeeze two PoMs in a very short period of time without getting any threat. Doing so if PoM generates threat means you will get smoking blasts right off the bat and every skeleton gunning for your arse.

There is many other cases where this is really important, particularly in fights with aggro reset and threat dump abilities. Thing of leo right after the WW. Your PoMs will be ticking on the melee that have a bleed. PoM is my second or 3rd biggest heal here.

Sorry but your arguments do nothing to alley my fears. Adding yet MORE unpredictability to your threat generation from PoM (especially considering that PoM is now a LOT LOT bigger because of crits DP, Twin Faiths and Test of faith) is a very important limiter to the power of PoM and a very big nerf, no matter how you look at it. What was the point of letting PoM crit and buffing it so much if you are going to make it generate threat. You make it useless in so many threat sensitive situations where PoM was godly before.

 

Tainter

Only that Disc PW:S doesn't cost any mana. And with better PW:S and DA Inner Fire will last longer in PvP too.

For PvE Inner Fire currently is only limited by duration for me. I have to rebuff it once every 10 minutes. In Wrath, when I'm casting PW:S to get mana, the charges will be even better protected.

In some situations IF gets used up reasonably quickly in PvP. In those situations a Priest can usually not safely cast spells and therefore any form of mitigation helps. Sometimes it gets dispelled too and the mana cost needs to stay where it us so that I can rebuff myself.

Charges disappearing is fine with me.
Making it cost more mana is not fine with me, unless it becomes a physical buff.

There is no problem in serious PvE. In any sort of raid situation when you get hit once every 30 seconds by something you're likely in too much trouble to worry about Inner Fire.

The only place where it might seem a tad suboptimal is if you're a holy specced healer who doesn't like using PW:S for grinding. But then again, not every spell is useful in every situation now is it?

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

Brinas

I never said I can't survive without this talent. I just said it was more useful in it's current form. I have been on the losing end of this talent several time when the dps is about to die, I hit silence or fear, see resist, and the priest get's the heal off. I've also been on the winning side where I resist one of these effects and my spell goes off. The way the talent is now, the person CCing the priest is 100% guaranteed to interrupt their spell.

My point was basically that when people CC you with a stun, fear, or silence, they try to land it just before your cast completes, so the time you gain in this talent is lost in the wasted cast time.

The only time I have ever been sapped by a rogue in the middle of the fight is after a blind with trinket on cooldown. Even with a full 8 second fear, you should be spamming an instant cast to stay in combat against a rogue.

I agree with your argument of reduced CC chain, but it isn't as amazing as you're making it out to be. This talent doesn't effect every CC chain, only ones that include stun, fear, and silence. Which would be about half of the chains out there. So reducing DPS time by approximately 7.5% for 5 talent points? No thanks.

The real power in this talent was that your spell on occasion didn't get interrupted. Nothing to count on, but nice when it happened. Much like wind fury totem/mace specialize combo.

So like I said make it 2 points for 30% and it might be worth taking. 5 points for 15% is a waste of talent points when you consider the other options.

 

Plea

Thanks for your explanation, but what you concluded is the reason we think the logic behind pom bounces is flawed. If pom bounces to a low health target (randomly or by definition, I'm not sold on that yet, it doesn't matter anyway.) it will often fail to produce consecutive jumps.

I chose Teron because it's a fight the raid takes 3/4 of total damage, and it's not a periodic aoe. You may think it's mainly a tank&spank, I believe it's a heavy random raid damage fight with a hard hitting boss. There's a raid damage concept, it's fairly random, and it's where pom fails to operate. That's the kind of fight where I would expect a traveling heal shine, it would travel around the raid and heal if necessary; mimicing chain heal, sort of. I mean, raid is taking 3x the damage tank is taking, it should heal someone, doesnt it? It doesn't. I spam pom because it helps our dps, and it's good to have a frontloaded heal on the tank when I'm stopcasting, efficiend or inefficient it may be. Pom does a great job healing the tank and giving threat, but the rest of the bounces are not reliable. Yes it does shine when there's periodic raidwide damage, but those are not common in the game, before sunwell that is.

I have never been in Sunwell, but in the rest of the game I can name only a few fights where you would regularly get multiple bounces. If in Sunwell there's much heavier raid damage than other instances, apparently there is, then pom is great there, have fun utilizing it. Where I live it's not that great, and without the threat part its value is halved for me, basically.

I may very well be expecting too much, as the spell was advertised to be so great that it should be spammed on cooldown, regardless of the situation. I always thought the main reason behind this is the threat it gives to the tank, that's it.

[e]

Oh please, feel free to pm your style, I'll be much surprised if it turns out we're not doing literally the same thing. I took a parse in which I spammed pom, because fit the discussion here. I'm very well aware that when we say "spam on cooldown", we don't literally mean every 10 seconds.

 

Plea

Nobody likes it when the opposing team wins by pure luck. Either you or your opponent will be pissed when it happens, it's a loss either way for the designers. Now you will be 100% sure that your fear will land when you cast it, and you won't have to worry about the silly resist rates on occassion. If you're on the other side, you will have to choose between showing yourself for a silence or keeping behind the pillar; it will be 100% reliable as long as your opponent doesn't outplay you. Well, that's how the game should go, really.

 

The Not So Evil

To quote Vihermaali

Perhaps one of the Holy Priest strengths. There is no exact science (shaman: Chain Heal spam, Druid: Lifebloom stack, Paladin: Holy Light spam) way to heal. Priests should try to adapt and fill in the current weakness in raid healing setup. Thus you will probably very rarely see 2 Holy Priests heal the same way.

 

Kortar

There is, however, an inexact science. You pull large amounts of raw data from WWS and analyze it - building graphs of tank damage/healing patterns, figuring out how many times Prayer of Mending bounces, and so forth. This then allows you to make conclusions about the value of certain playstyles. However, the bar of knowledge/effort on doing so is so high that it rarely becomes popularized information. People go with their 'gut feelings' rather than the 'science' because they have no real way to verify that the science is conducted properly.

 

Starfire

When I first wrote my earlier post, I took the time to make examples, but then decided against it. However, I think I'll point it out now. Mostly for a FYI, not to be an asshole or anything of the sort.

Kalecgos -> Raid-wide area of effect damage every 8 seconds. Raid damage from a bouncing curse that cannot permanently be removed. Additionally there is portal splash damage that can be avoid (and should). There's also shadowbolt volley. -> All 5 charges should be consumed like clock-work.

Brutallus -> Meteor slashes that can be avoided by some people, but you always need x amount of people to eat it. There is also Burn which is a DoT similar to agonizing flame. -> Assuming you Prayer of Mend the tank, 4 charges should be consumed with a decent possibility of all 5 being consumed.

Felmyst -> Periodic aura every 3 seconds. Easily all 5 charges consumed disregarding everything else.

Eredar Twins -> There is a raid-wide aoe blast on a cooldown. There's also several dots and massive raid damage, however the raid damage is akin to Teron's shadow damage. The number of charges consumed will be streaky because of the random targetting, but at least 1 extra charge should be consumed if used on the tank or on Conflagurate.

M'uru -> All 5 charges would be consumed bouncing from Void Sentinel tank to Void Spawn tank. M'uru also does a raid aoe damage similar to Chain Lightning. Very often all 5 charges will be consumed.

Kil'Jaeden -> Raid wide damage to everyone on a cooldown. Several targetted raid damage spells. In earlier phases, its possible only a handful of charges will be consumed. But in later phases all 5 charges will normally be consumed due to the raid damage. However, even in earlier phases, using Prayer of Mending to heal two nearby targets with Firebloom is highly efficient.

 

Supermerkicus

I'm pretty sure random resists will still happen, but they're doing away with the resistance talents in favor of more reliable reductions in duration.

Personally, I couldn't care less about an occasional resist on a silence or interrupt because it's unreliable, but I'm giddy over the prospect of a flat 30% reduction in the duration of fear/stun/silence.

Furthermore, getting a heal off because I resisted a counterspell doesn't make me happy, because it had nothing to do with my own skill.

 

Havoc12

Bounce PoM off the raid, especially the RSTS. It will usually bounce back on the tank early on. If ppl are slow with dispel it bounces back and forth more than once too. Refreshing frequently on the tank results in a lot of wasted bounces. Later on when there are a lot of clouds, it does not go on the tank as frequently, but I just leave it there and it gets used up pretty quick. You dont get as much healing as in other fights, but its very helpful with keeping ppl alive and it improves mana efficiency. You get more healing out of pom by spamming it on the tank, but its not really efficient use of your time and mana.

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

On the unbreakable will talent

15% resist chance, is actually a lot less than 15% resist. The games that are saved by resisting a fear or a kidney shot are very few and far between, but its simply not something you can base your start on. However rogues do a lot of damage during a cheap shot/kidney shot combo. The 15% reduced duration means 15% less damage during every kidney shot and every cheap shot. Especially if the rogue catches you in a blind and regens energy before opening on you with 5cp combo the 15% reduced duration can easily make the difference between life and death. The 15% resist chance which is actually barely 5% due to the rogue itemization/talents will not help you at all 85% of the time.

A lock who chain fears --> pet silence, can keep you out of the fight for a long time and take a huge chunk of your HP, The resist chance dont help much, because he has talents/items to reduce the resist chance and even without them he will still pull it off with no resist breaks 50% of the time. The reduced duration not only reduces the duration of the overall chain fear/silence effect, it also means the lock has to recast fear more frequently. Because casting fear takes always the same amount of time, the lock's DPS time is reduced by significantly more than 15%.

The old unbreakable will talent, was only there as filler, it did not make hard fights any easier and it did not help you win fights you could not consistently win without it. It just added an unpredictable factor that screwed up some of your wins and prevented some unexpected losses in matches you would ordinarily win, but bad luck has screwed up.

The new unbreakable will however is a certainly a factor in any match where silence and fear are a problem. If your team has problems against locks of spriest/rogue combos, then taking unbreakable will, will help you every time and make a difference you can count on every time.

@ Brinas, sorry to disappoint you but a single 8 second fear can put you out of combat. If the rogue has the time and the vanish cooldown they have the option of sapping you, which can be devastating in some cases. With a 6.8 second fear, there is no chance of getting you out of combat.

Sometimes it will let you live through a situation you would lose otherwise, but those games are few and far between.

 

uh...ok

IMO refreshing PoM on the tank on cooldown is always a good idea unless you're mana-limited, if only for the reason that it's a constant source of added threat for your tank every 10 seconds (yes, I am aware that other bounces will negate the benefit of the tank's increased threat, but a random distribution of bounces over the raid makes the average threat gained by the raid to be much lower than the avg threat gained by the tank). You may be "wasting bounces" but I would assert that the converse is also true: by not refreshing PoM diligently you are wasting cooldowns.

I may be misinterpreting your post since I don't know what RSTS means, but casting PoM directly on the raid is a worse idea than putting it on the tank except for Incinerate targets who aren't getting dispelled quickly enough. If you put it on the tank, you're pretty much guaranteed the first bounce within a few seconds unless your tank gets a really good avoidance streak. What's more, the smart targeting will pick the person who has the largest health deficit which maximizes the probability that your next bounce will heal for a non-trivial amount. Putting it on a random raid target means that you won't get a bounce until that person gets hit with the random AoE.

Of course, with the threat change in 3.0, this will no longer be true. There will be pretty much no reason to be refreshing PoM on cooldown unless your charges are being eaten up within the first 10 seconds of its duration.

 

Stolidus

RSTS= Random Secondary Targeting System. Basically, he means you throw the PoM on (in Sunwell) curse targets, burn targets, encapsulate/beam, flame sear/conflag, Entropius wherever, KJ fire bloom. A lot of those effects are periodic damage on a target with a debuff, meaning if you target them they're guaranteed to get an effective bounce.

 

Havoc12

That is a misconception. Casting PoM on CD and getting a single bounce reduces your HPS is really counter productiveIf pom bounces frequently enough on its own, refreshing it is utterly pointless, as you already have one running and healing. You are just wasting mana and casting time to unnecessarily redirect that healing to the tank, when you could generate it with another spell on top of the healing pom does.

On terron using PoM intelligently on the raid really helps reduce the raid healing burden. On the tank it just adds threat the tank does not need.

PoM will nearly always heal for a non trivial amount REGARDLESS of health status, because it heals after damage is taken.

This idea that its good to cast pom on the tank every CD is actually rarely true. Its almost always best to reserve PoM for use on predictable damage on the raid, since in 90% of cases the PoM will bounce to the tank. Tons of examples of this out there from karazhan all the way to BT.

One of the best uses of PoM was in healing threat sensitive situations, but this looks like its going to get a hard nerf and will without question add yet another limiting factor to pom usage.