You bring up Holy Nova, which I think isn't brought up often enough. It's the only garbage 11 point talent I've been able to find for any of my characters, with the next closest contender being Riposte for my Rogue, which was still really useful when leveling (especially in SM).
In the early alpha notes, Holy Nova was buffed significantly so that the healing portion had high efficiency when healing 2 or more targets and the damage portion was nerfed. For whatever reason, this was scrapped and the spell remains lumped back into the garbage bin, and the Glyph doesn't do much to change that - 40% of a small number is a small number.
It seems like they can't make up their mind on what they want the skill to be so it's just saddled with over-balancing to the point of uselessness - sad, because it's a neat skill.
In current BC, Holy Nova is roughly twice the cost of Circle of Healing for about 80% of the healing.
In WotLK (all numbers including Twin Disciplines if applicable):
CoH (no MA, no Glyph): 2520 + 1.5 hps, 180 + 0.1071 hppm
CoH (MA, no Glyph) : 2520 + 1.5 hps, 198 + 0.1179 hppm
CoH (no MA, Glyph): 3024 + 1.8 hps, 216 + 0.1286 hppm
CoH (MA, Glyph): 3024 + 1.8 hps, 238 + 0.1414 hppm
Holy Nova (no MA, Glyph): 3593 + 2.1 hps, 163 + 0.0954 hppm
Holy Nova (MA, Glyph): 3593 + 2.1 hps, 180 + 0.1050 hppm
Prayer of Healing (no HP, no Glyph): 3584 + 1.429 hps, 224 + 0.0893 hppm
Prayer of Healing (HP, no Glyph): 3584 + 1.429 hps, 269 + 0.1071 hppm
Prayer of Healing (no HP, Glyph): 4300 + 1.715 hps, 269 + 0.1071 hppm
Prayer of Healing (HP, Glyph): 4300 + 1.715 hps, 323 + 0.1286 hppm
So it's not quite as cut & dried as in BC. Holy Nova is your 'high throughput' group heal (at over ~1800 healing, it passes PoH for raw throughput especially considering the PoH glyph is a HoT) but the least efficient/shortest range. Circle of Healing has the best flexibility in raids, but is basically worthless in 5-mans. Prayer of Healing is the most efficient, but has a casting time.
Main problem of Holy Nova has never just been the raw numbers. It's that your role as holy priest is healing, not aoe'ing. As heal it's subpar to our other options, mostly due the limited range and that it doesn't heal raid members. The spell simply has little to no practical application in PvE unless you count things such as farming low levels mobs, helping your low level friend's characters.
The enlightenment nerf (removal of int) is MASSIVE to, thats crit loss, and replinshment/rap mana return nerfage...
I can live with the changes to enlightenment, to twin disciplines, renewed hope, borrowed time, innerf fire.
The 1 completely game altering change though is Rapture, 25% mana returned on absorbed damage was the best thing to ever happen to the tree, it brought a huge amount of synergy. You had a big incentive to use shields, the weakened soul effect gave you more crits, more crits gave you more shields, more shields gave you more mana. Not to whine, but whenever they take a look at the tree again, I'd really like some of that back, please.
The old Rapture must've been everyone's favorite new Disc talent. It was said on the official forums that the newest build isn't on the server and that some things got reverted. Let's hope.
I have been testing the new Rapture and came up with the following:
If a spell healed for 8600 then you would get 2.5% of mana.
This is about 3440 heal per 1% mana returned.
This obviously only applies to direct heals, returns from PW:S and Divine Aegis seem much lower than this and obviously much lower than the previous 25%, but havent figured out the return on absorption yet. (seems to give me 7-15 mana per hit to my shield from level 69 mobs)
Upcoming changes repost from beta forums (reposting is ok, yes? not sure if everyone can get to that forum):
Holy
- We're going to make Holy Concentration scale with spell crit instead of just a flat %
- Divine Hymn now does a short duration heal over time effect in addition to it's crowd-control capability, and is now baked into a lot of Holy talents (Holy Reach, Divine Providence etc.)
- We improved Blessed Recovery so that it now works like Ignite (Mage), where each crit gets added into the periodic heal over time and refreshes the duration.
- Lightwell - You can now see how many charges are left in the Lightwell by clicking on it.
Discipline
- Grace will now provide 2% healing for the Priest, stacks up 3 times. So 6% increased healing taken from that target who has Grace (but only by you, the Priest).
- Twin Disciplines will now work with Mind Flay.
Shadow
- Shadow Resilience re-designed. Now called Mind Melt - Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Flay, Mind Sear and Mind Blast spells by 2/4%.
- Shadow Power: Now 20/40/60/80/100% critical strike damage bonus, also works with Mind Flay.
- Improved Shadowform - The chance to remove all movement impairing effects when you Fade is now restored.
- Psychic Horror - Redesigned. Now reduces all damage done by targets when Psychic Scream ends by 15/30%. Lasts 6 sec.
- Dispersion - 90% damage reduction is restored.
Discipline - About damage mitigation, utility and single target HPS. It's intended to be a better tank healer.
Holy - Good single target healer, but more healing utility. Intended to be the AOE healer, or the healer than can react to any situation. Only spec of a class that has an on demand HoT, AOE, Lightwell which players can click to heal themselves, a flash heal, a large greater heal.
Shadow - Obviously a single target sustained DPS, with Mind Sear now should be one of the strongest AOE classes.
To me, the biggest flaw with both of these arguments is that you are assuming that the priest will be receiving the replenishment buff 100% of the time. If indeed it is restricted to the raid members with lowest mana, yes, this holds in a 10 man, but it's far from clear to me that in a 25 man, a priest can necessarily count on having the buff 100% of the time.
That's a fair criticism. It's easy enough to recompute the thresholds for any arbitrary up-time of Replenishment. The mp5 function changes to:
where p is the proportion of time with Replenishment. Following the same analysis steps (compare the partial derivatives with respect to i and s), the new condition for intellect to be better than spirit is:
Note that as , the above condition simplifies to the old .
Let's assume p > 0, though. So we have a new table of thresholds, for any given value of p. Choosing p = 1/2 (Replenishment up half the time):
Holy - Good single target healer, but more healing utility. Intended to be the AOE healer, or the healer than can react to any situation. Only spec of a class that has an on demand HoT, AOE, Lightwell which players can click to heal themselves, a flash heal, a large greater heal.
This is disingenuous... Resto Druids have:
- HoT(s) - Rejuvenation, Lifebloom
- AOE - Flourish
- small heal - Nourish, Regrowth
- large heal - Healing Touch
Umm, I guess Koraa's right, they don't have... lightwell...
Its a good start. But they still ahvea serious issue to get discipline back into shape. First up they need to examine the blaot faction. They then need to re-look at the synergy Rapture now has with the other abilities, notably PWS and DA. Finally they have to find a way of spellpowering up discipline, the removal of TD from non-instant heals is a massive blow to the tree, I would suggest its the other way round, TD affects all non-instant spells, would actually be an improvment to Disc, but would negatively hit shadow (and CoH), but at the end of the day, its in the disc tree.
Sorry I'm a couple days behind the discussion, but I need to comment on the Prayer of Mending threat controversy.
It has always bugged the crap out of me that waving your hands around and healing someone causes you threat, but shooting a happy little holy bolt at someone, which then heals them, doesn't cause you any threat. Where is the logic in that?
As regards Holy Nova, I vehemently disagree that it is a junky talent. With sufficient spell damage and mana pool, it is effective for AoE grinding, an option until WotLK was not otherwise available to priests. Indeed, I would argue that no other priest talent, besides CoH for raid healing, actually creates a new way for priests to play.
Well this is a blatant lie. Resto Druids have:
- HoT(s) - Rejuvenation, Lifebloom
- AOE - Flourish
- small heal - Nourish, Regrowth
- large heal - Healing Touch
Umm, I guess Koraa's right, they don't have... lightwell...
I'm starting to really dislike Koraa.
"Heals up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 15 yards of the target for 4410 over 7 sec. The amount healed is applied quickly at first, and slows down as the Flourish reaches its full duration."
Can you really call that thing proper AoE healing? 7 seconds seems very slow in AoE envirioment. Especially if you are stuck healing same targets over 7 seconds. You can't really compare druid aoe to priests Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing.
Other than that, yes. Druids have hots, small heal and large heal. Druids have combat resurrection, priests have guardian spirit. Druids have innervate, priests have divine hymn. Yeah, it depends a lot on how those 2 new spells will do.
What druids don't have however, are ProM + PW:S ("absorb"), binding heal and fade (that apparently drops 100% of threath now, temporarily of course). And pre-nerf priest talents made priest far superior simply due to insane multipliers. But now..yeah, priests and druids are beginning to be way too similiar. With druids having innervate and combat ress and priests not. I still believe priests beat druids in versatility since druids don't have capability to heal unpredictable damage efficiently, or while moving, or when there is a threath sensitive situation. Or, they can't heal proactively on moments notice. In moments notice meaning they can't heal the damage 0,2seconds before damage happens. What I'm trying to say is, while druids may have spells that feel similiar, priests still can react faster and better.
And then there's lightwell. After all this time, lightwell does feel like a real spell. Some math. I'm counting with lvl 70 values, since I expect them to scale up in around similiar fashion. 2361 base + 2541 healing = 4902. +20% to that from glyph (replace renew glyph with this one if you like) = 5882 dmg over 6 secs. With standard 10k hp you need to get hit for 3000dmg in a single hit to break effect. While raid damage like that exists,to make it break you have to actually time lightwell usage. 5882*10 charges = potential of 58 820 healing done for ~450 mana. Hp/m of 130, try to beat that.
Before you tell me "people won't click it" -argument, I throw the counter-argument of "Wasn't WoW too easy/casual for you? And now you can't manage to click one lightwell that sits right next to your character?"
Can you really call that thing proper AoE healing? 7 seconds seems very slow in AoE envirioment. Especially if you are stuck healing same targets over 7 seconds. You can't really compare druid aoe to priests Prayer of Mending, Circle of Healing and Prayer of Healing.
Other than that, yes. Druids have hots, small heal and large heal. Druids have combat resurrection, priests have guardian spirit. Druids have innervate, priests have divine hymn. Yeah, it depends a lot on how those 2 new spells will do.
What druids don't have however, are ProM + PW:S ("absorb"), binding heal and fade (that apparently drops 100% of threath now, temporarily of course). And pre-nerf priest talents made priest far superior simply due to insane multipliers. But now..yeah, priests and druids are beginning to be way too similiar. With druids having innervate and combat ress and priests not. I still believe priests beat druids in versatility since druids don't have capability to heal unpredictable damage efficiently, or while moving, or when there is a threath sensitive situation. Or, they can't heal proactively on moments notice. In moments notice meaning they can't heal the damage 0,2seconds before damage happens. What I'm trying to say is, while druids may have spells that feel similiar, priests still can react faster and better.
OK, I did not mean to bring up comparisons to druids. This is not a place for a Priests Versus Druids at the ultimate healers discussion.
I only brought that up in the context of Koraa's comments on the official wotlk forum, in which the holy priest nerfs and lack of direction were defended by the priest's apparent exclusive versatility, which I just pointed out were disingenuous.
Ok, won't go further. I just think people are taking Koraas words too literally. I think he's trying to say that hpriests are supposed to have most versatile healing toolkit.
Oddly enough I pointed out the same thing Isin. My point was for the "healer that can react to any situation" statement by koraa. I have a 70 holy priest and 70 resto druid and they both right now, qualify for that statement. The druid more so perhaps, post expansion, since healing touch can be cast in treeform.
I'm kind of exactly where you are. I actually just got my beta key last night, and started the transfer process on all my 70s (rogue, warlock, priest), and by the time I finished browsing the recent priest forums and patch notes, I really no longer have any desire to even play my priest in the beta. Compared to the big changes coming to the rogue and warlock trees, and how their gameplay and strategies will change in exciting ways, I'm just completely bored by both the shadow and holy changes, especially after the nerfs last night.
It just seems to me that both Shadow and Holy are going to play pretty much exactly like they do currently in live.
I just leveled my priest to 80 on the beta and after the changes last night I have no desire to play my priest on beta now. The thing I was really looking forward to as a healing priest was Improved Holy Concentration.
IHC was powerful, no doubt, but it honestly felt like a chance to play with the FSR more than overpowered healing throughput. I'd be glad to concede the 3 charges and get a single 60% spell haste spell for 1 cast after, that would still let you play the FSR as best you could. I'm not sure how I feel about the new changes with crit effecting the proc chance, it feels rather like an excuse for Blizzard to point at when people cry that it's been nerfed; "stop complaining, we let it scale based on crit!"
Even with the new changes it's still a lot of nerfs to talents that didn't really need to be nerfed. Test of Faith apparently isn't getting buffed back up, Divine Providence is still boring, Holy Nova is still terrible, and so on.
Holy needs something new, fun and generally usable like the haste on the old IHC.
I feel offended by hearing that Lightwell is suddenly our unique advantage, the spell is still terrible from a useability point of view... I was hoping it would finally get replaced by something with a more conventional and less frustrating mechanic.
What's even worse, I suppose that we will be balanced around Lightwell now since it's fairly powerful number-wise. I have simply no desire to play a holy priest anymore if it gets that far.
The idea of trading part of the power of my character for something I have no control over and relies on my teammates to take care of the very same thing that I'm supposed to be providing/doing do is completely unacceptable to me.
Just out of curiosity...
You find Lightwell frustrating because your team mates have to use it? Would you find Health Stones frustrating if you could hand them out?
I had Lightwell a few times and my only problem with it was the "breaks on damage" part, but luckily that's being addressed to some degree. People usually used it up quite quickly. Maybe too quickly, but I suppose that could be addressed by not letting it overwrite itself.
I can see it being very useful in the arena now. Put near a pillar and have your dps los stuff while getting health back during any sort of phases where you might be crowed controlled. Or for the moments when your casting stuff has been interrupted. In my opinion the changes to Lightwell add quite a lot of viability to holy PvP.
Healthstones can be hotkeyed, mean instant healing, do not require any positioning, moving, clicking and are fool/lag proof to use. Lightwell is none and has none of these things.
Opportunity cost is too high in almost all cases, who wants to stop dps and click the lightwell?
Who wants to position the boss so that the dps'ers do not have to move to click the lightwell?
What about raid healing, do you want to plan around lightwell and try to coordinate how people use it togheter with your healers? It just complicates things, so it's thrown up and forgotten.
What about fights that require movement and precise positioning, do you really want to plan around lightwell? It's not worth it.
..and other things which I can't be arsed to list because it's been done too many times.
Lightwell in a raid is a horrible failure, and a crux, not something that I'd want to use and could find exciting and enjoyable.
Even if Grace is now a reasonable (though still weak) talent, the massive destruction of Rapture makes deep discipline still sub-par for arena.
Unfortunately, most of the posters on the beta forums seem to have missed the Rapture change.
Edit: @Shan: I think you're making Lightwell sound much worse than it really is. There's a large number of fights where melee (for example) barely move at all. You're free to throw a lightwell literally 1 foot from a clump of rogues, and it costs them literally zero dps to click on it for a massive heal. You can throw lightwells down in Spirit of Redemption--continue healing minutes after you're dead. The thing most holding lightwells back is the 'break on trivial damage', and that's been fixed.
I think the adjustments to Disc were necessary. PW:S was too good not to cast it at every opportunity, which means healing someone other than the tank. When you factor in casting PoM every cooldown, how much of your throughput was actually on the tank?
Now I'll only be casting PW:S on the tank to keep up Weakened Soul.
09/11/08, 1:38 PM
