It doesn't matter, random HoT's every few minutes are not an effective method of dealing with raid damage. You still need enough healing to keep those rogues alive when lightwell isn't up. If ultimately the main purpose of lightwell is to save mana, wouldn't it be far better to give us a talent that restored mana?

No matter how I turn things, Lightwell is never a satisfying spell.

Just wait and see what happens when people start getting real PvE gear for their Naxx runs and mana stops being a huge concern. People won't be in love with the new lightwell anymore.

Well, my biggest problem with raid healing in Sunwell has been the amount of targets that take damage at same time. I see lightwell as a tool to ease problems of multi-targetting. Well, in order to use it efficiently I'd propably have to stuck it in guildies faces until they use it when they see it.

The mechanics themselves for efficient use are available in the 3.x version.

-No need to stop dps. You have all the important spells keybound anyway. Just click the well with mouse between spells A and B. Time lost is determined by your own clicking/pushing speed. You do know the concept, right? Just like using a potion between spell chaincasting.
-Lightwell has a 40 yard cast range. You will position the lightwell so that dps don't need to move in order to use it.
-Thrown up and forgotten is exacly the point. Well like I said, I'd propably have to bash into their heads that when I cast it next to them I intend them to use it. "Use it or don't get healed". Of course you have to use careful consideration there and make sure you ARE there to heal them if they get hit for more than 30% hp in one hit.
-Movement and precise positioning? Well, often the "careful positioning" doesn't mean running in random places. You know where they are going to go, just cast the lightwell there. It's not created where you stand.

Majority of the thinking is on priests shoulders. Only thing other people have to do is go "ooh, shiny golden thingy. I'll click it (when the green bar goes down/gets smaller)!"

This is the most interesting change for holy priests, I think (whee I can see the charges left on Lightwell, that was really up there with my top concerns for the class! /end sarcasm)

I imagine the talents will be reworded as:

Holy Concentration: You have a 20/40/60% chance on casting a critical heal (possibly non-AoE heals only) to enter a clear-casting state reducing the cost of your next Greater Heal, Flash Heal or Binding Heal by 100%
Improved Holy Concentration: Upon entering Holy Concentration increases the spell haste by X/Y/Z% for your next N (hopefully N > 1!) Greater Heal, Flash Heal, or Binding Heal spells.

If true, this means that crit rating will now indirectly boost regen and haste. Obviously its efficacy in doing so will depend on the exact percentages used; I'm guesstimating 60% as that is the flat bonus that paladins receive from Illumination (ours could well be less as paladins do not benefit from O5SR time).

I did some testing to Rapture on the Test Realm.
You gain Mana dependend on the effective healing. Here are some values I took at Level 74 for 13517 mana:
Flash Heal:
180 --> 6
245 --> 9
542 --> 20
616 --> 22
791 --> 29
894 --> 32
1892 --> 69
2681 --> 97
2802 --> 102

Power Word: Shield:
97 --> 3
103 --> 4
115 --> 5
119 --> 5
(121 --> 4 - don't know why it is only 4)
131 --> 5
262 --> 9
270 --> 10
284 --> 10
306 --> 11
557 --> 20
617 --> 23



With 12557 Mana (Kings faded):
Flash Heal:
260 --> 9
514 --> 8 (?)
734 --> 25
921 --> 31
1358 --> 46
1614 --> 54
2038 --> 68
2613 --> 88
2895 --> 97

Greater Heal (seems to be the same formula as for Flash Heal):
2259 --> 76
3075 --> 103
3821 --> 128
4845 --> 163
5953 --> 200
6230 --> 199 (?)
6451 --> 216
8771 --> 295
9255 --> 311

Power Word: Shield:
99 --> 3
103 --> 3
132 --> 4
232 --> 7
252 --> 9
292 --> 10
305 --> 10
566 --> 19
1077 --> 37



With 5747 Mana:
Flash Heal/ Greater Heal:
243 --> 4
714 --> 11
1290 --> 19
2038 --> 32
4029 --> 62

Power Word: Shield:
259 --> 4
352 --> 5
747 --> 12




For the second input (12557 Mana) 2.5% would be 314 Mana. With my test I got very near to the max value of Rapture, so it should do it for the

beginning.. Now let's have a look at the 2 Graphs for these values (I left out those marked with an '?'):



It's quite linear.
Now let's look at the Mana restored values dependend on Max Mana:



As I expected, the Graphs are all the same for the different amounts of Max Mana.

With the few Data I gained, the cap should be reached at approximately 9332 Effective Healing (Note: This is NO exact value! There are still far

too few numbers!)

So the Formula for Mana gained by Rapture for Flash Heal and Greater Heal is:
R(H) = H/X * 0.025 * M
H is the effective healing done by Flash Heal/Greater Heal
R(h) is the Mana gained by Rapture for h
X is the value of effective healing, for which the "cap" 2.5% is reached, ~9332
M is the Maximum Mana.

So there's the approximation:
R(H) = H/X * 0.025 * M ~ H/9332 * 0.025 * M = 1/373280 * H * M ~ 2.68e-6 * H * M



The same algorithm also works for Power Word: Shield, but it's too late for me now to analyse those values now.

Great work on testing rapture--I had assumed that you would gain "2.5% mana + healing" PER CAST not "2.5% if you heal for 9k"



Obviously this talent is fucking terrible. Literally an order of magnitude worse than it was 48 hours ago. This completely ruins Discipline, in my opinion.


If we assume, however, that it's bugged right now, and that it should be "2.5% mana + healing", instead of "x*healing up to 2.5%", than we're looking at mana returns of 500-600 for decent greater heals, and about 500 for PW:S--that makes it a tolerable talent.

I'm heartbroken though.


Edit: The 9332 Effective healing 'cap' is odd. Is 9332 your maximum health, by chance?

My jaw literally just dropped reading that. I'm also praying that there is a typo or variable flipped somewhere, but I can't put my finger on what it could be that made this version 'accidentally' come out. 25% rather than 2.5% can't be the mistake, could it, considering the other change?

Tier 8 talents for pretty much every tree of every class are the delicious meat of the spec (which rapture pretty much was prior to this). This version is... I don't know. Not that this board doesn't have influence, but people should really bring this up on the beta board or somewhere that it can gain attention, because most of the people on there don't even seem to acknowledge or understand how rapture was even changed as far as I can tell from today.

I know we have alot of problems to think about now. Rapture, Test of faith, IHC well you name it.

But lets not forget what we asked for before the huge nerf. Could the people able to post on the beta forum, not let them get away with this:

Q u o t e:
- Holy Nova: Now practically useless with the downranking change; not enough healing, not enough damage, party-limited. Needs focus or a unique mechanic. This ability will virtually disappear from priest specs in Wrath if it isn't addressed.

B l u e A n s w e r:
Agreed, could improve this spell somewhat. Not an easy one.

Please dont let them forget Holy Nova and keep it a crap spell for another 2 years.

Hell i would be glad if we got something that looked cool and did some decent amount of healing, but with a cooldown. Anything .. anything but a poor version of CoH that also breaks CC.

To me the problem has always been that it's simply too much mana to use. Enough mana that on the rare times i've considered using in (say when a rogue just cheated death in front of me and SW was on cooldown. It happened once, I swear!) i've burned Inner Fire just to do so.

What if Holy Nova was given the Holy Fire treatment? Half the mana cost, moderate cooldown?

Re: Lightwell

and we're back to what I said initially,

Here are some results from my Rapture tests. Level 80 Priest, 17863 mana pool.

Healing - Mana Returned
7270 - 284
6851 - 267
6749 - 264
6099 - 238
5064 - 198
4620 - 180
4209 - 164
3429 - 134
3277 - 128
2049 - 80
1645 - 64

I have a lot more logged but these are some data points for others. The type and rank of the spell doesn't seem to matter.

With some quick analysis this seems to be on average a 64% gain over the old Rapture with my mana pool. It's actually a gain for anyone with a mana pool over 11400ish and scales upwards with that.

So from the point of view of FH/GH/Penance it's actually a buff, the huge nerf is the mana returned from PWS and DA, as soon as I find a decent way of getting a good amount of samples from PWS mana gain I'll test those too. I'm getting 170ish mana on average on a full shield though which is 15%ish of what I used to get.

New Holy Concentration makes our sets from Naxx (and looks like every set above) a bit sense with that crit ratings, if numbere are correct it will be outstanding

Perhaps we can agree that they aren't "nerfing" anything? They are testing the impact of changing the numbers and effects of the various talents. The change of something on the PTR or in Beta is neither a "nerf" nor a "buff". It's the evaluation of a potential change which could then end up being a "nerf" or a "buff" on Live. But until they publish the "final" PTR build speaking of "nerfs" and "buffs" is a bit premature.

Yes, we've all noticed that the penultimate batch of changes has weakened the beta Disc build significantly, but how are they supposed to find the sweet point (of balance) without trying a few?

This does not really make sense. There are already strict rules on this board that define it the way it is and exclude nearly any pointless discussion. But starting a row over words half the world uses is a bit of nit-picking. Moreover, it does not matter whether you call it nerf or buff, or (like you for example do) "weaken" or maybe "strengthen". The argument behind does not change if you use synonyms of a word.

Well, I guess this goes down to personal opinions. Can't argue against those! Anyway, my teammates always complain how easy everything is, so casting them something extra to play around with is acceptable to me.

This is a very flexbile spell now that it's effective. You could just drop it near you and use it for yourself. With the inherent restrictions of the spell of course. Now you will probably recieve direct healing from another healer during the 6 seconds duration, but that's another problem.

Plus : Nice idea in order to make us scale with crit.
Minus : The numbers can make or break the talent, since it is the only one in holy tree to make us really go for crit. And also, from wich of our spells' crit does it work. Besides, it looks too similar to a known paladin talent >.>

Crunching numbers is fun, but it seems pointless currently . They keep changing talents and spells.
Blizzard says they are adjusting things in a talent's budget way. Min-max rading and Arena feedbacks will enforce even more changes.

They can make Holy Concentration proc on crits, or make it procs on spell cast with a chance equal to (fraction of) crit chance. Depending on this choice, HC procs will be synchronized with Inspiration armor bonus, or not.

It's not about trying out new changes. It's about those changes making sense. Changes should not be random or haphazard -- they should be moving towards some goal. Yet, the changes we've seen to discipline are moving away from their stated design goals for the tree.

Also, it is a pretty clear trend going back several weeks now. The general sentiment here after the last few patches has been that discipline is clearly in need of help. Then new changes come out, and the new changes weaken it further. At some point, optimism that things will suddenly reverse course and get better is really just wishful thinking.

Now, don't get me wrong: I very much want them to make discipline viable for raiding. It would be good for everyone, I think.

However, I am disturbed by what the designers have been doing with discipline lately because it indicates the designers are seriously "out of touch" with the key issues. Players will not play discipline priests in raids if they can't sell the utility of the build to their raid leaders. We all know that, but the designers don't seem to be thinking in those terms. Raid leaders need to be telling each other, "You may want to bring a discipline priest because of X, Y, and Z." If that doesn't happen, the designers have missed the boat.

While this is basically true you should not forget the case that a spell like lightwell needs time for all players to get used to it. I see it as a nice gimmick that probably will not make-or-break your raid/a fight but offers a highly efficient heal that can be timed by the player who needs it.

Whether this is good or not depends on the encounter as well as on the capability of players that click it. But in its current state lightwell definitely is not utterly bad anymore (like it has been up to now) and it has its uses. Compare it e.g. to PoM (although the comparison is not really valid since PoM is no talent). PoM is not really controlable enough to use it in a totally precise manner, but nonetheless it contributes greatly to total healing done. Same could be true for Lightwell once people get used to it. No totally crucial ability but still a nice complement and very fine aid in the great healing-picture of a raid. Not that bad for a 1-pointer in my opinion.

Well I sincerely doubt that Blizzard sees the spell as gimmick now, and I presume that we will be balanced around having and using Lightwell. This is the major complaint.

Please everyone stop trying to make it sounds like Lightwell's problems only come from idiotic raid members that don't know how it works. Please don't insult me or my raid mates. Thank you.
There are actual and real issues, some of which I listed which have nothing to do with the users themselves.

Lightwell's usability is poor to a point where I would prefer not having to use it, but I probably won't be able to do my expected job without it since holy priests will be balanced around it. Nothing is free, Lightwell's new usefulness will come at a price.

Since I do not see any reason whatsoever why we couldn't have a talent without those useability issues, I'm bringing this up again. With druids being brought up to our level in there is no reason why we should still have active talents that are inferior or subpar in some way.

There used to be a reason why these talents were so lackluster, not anymore. I know we all got used to them and many are happy with the new usefulness of Lightwell but it's still a lackluster spell from an useability point of view.

The class can use some real innovation, not a polishment of a spell that was never good and never supposed to be good.

We tried to use it from Gruul up to SSC/TK. After that CoH became a viable thing and everybody started to specc out of lightwell for better range and stuff. But lately I saw a lightwell in MH placed by an alt. At the time we used lightwell our raid did use it. Yes it was less helpfull then at it will be in WotLK. But nearly nobody specced out of it only because it had to less effect. The bigger problem was the lack of opportunities to use it. It could be as great as it could possibly get (unending charges which do not break whatsoever or being instant...) if you can only use it in one third of the boss-fights and none of the final encounters of an instance it simply is not usefull enough.

It would be ok if it would be a 1-pointer in the upper tiers of our tree. But down there where it is placed you simply need all the points for the relevant stuff. Especialy if you will have to specc all the crit you can get.

The other thing is that it does not stack with anything else we do or can do. Worse - most of what we do "overwrites" the effect. What does it help that somebody took a lightwell-buff if you PoH anyway? Or if you gave him a shield/hot? CoH and PoM will land on him, too, before the effect of the lightwell will be finished.

The new lightwell is a worthwhile talent. With a 3 min, 10 charges and on break on damage, its a great tool. It just takes a little imagination to use well.

The best part of lightwell is that its fire and forget, you put it down, it helps with raid healing and you dont have to do anything except reacast it once every 3 mins.

Examples of encounter where lightwell would be a great asset is terron gorefiend, supremus, anathereon, azgalor, bloodboil and RoS. It would be moderately useful for most encounters in SSC/TK. It would be excellent for some of the ZA encounters and decently useful for almost all karazhan bosses. The new lightwell would also be super handy in all heroics.

People who do not like the new lightwell, because the old lightwell was unusuable, that is your own failure. Because of the gimmicky form of the talent, it can pack and incredibly big punch. Currenty you are looking at well over 50k healing for neglible mana with 0.5sec cast time every 3 minutes. There is no flaw with the design of lightwell, it always was a good idea, which is unpopular to those who are unable to think outside the box. This talent exist for those of us who can.

The logistics right now are very clear. Lightwell is well worth a point. If you dont wanna spend it there its your own bussiness, but all complaints are unjustified.


Test of faith

15% more healing 10% more crit --> 6% healing crit.


With the old test of faith a test of faith heal would be: 1.15*(1+0.5*0.25)*NonCritHeal = 1.29*NonCritHeal at 15% crit. A non test of faith heal is heal is 1.075*NonCritHeal, so test of faith increased sub50% heals by ~21.9%

Sub50% heals are likely to have little or no overheal, so that was a very heavy boost to your effective healing.

The new test of faith increases sub50% heals by just 9.6% at 50% crit. This however does not mean its value is cut by half. Its actually more than that.

The value of test of faith in healing depends on the % of sub50% heals (lets call it s)

A simple formula for calculating the addition from test of faith assuming that without test of faith sub50% have 0 overheal is

(a(1-s)+b*T*s)/(a(1-s)+s), where a is (1-overheal) for non test of faith heals, b is (1-overheal) for test of faith heals and T is the boost to sub50% heals by test of faith. This formula can be rearranged to give 1+(b*T-1)s/(a*(1-s)+s), which means that test of faith boosts effective healing by (b*T-1)s/(a*(1-s)+s)

From this we can calculate what the contribution total effective healing is by using some sample values.

Lets say b=95% a=70% s=20%

With the old talent this would be ~4.15%
With the new talent its ~1.1%

A 3.77-fold reduction

With more advantageous numbers of b=0.95 a=60%, s=30%

Old talent 6.6%
New talent 1.7%

A 3.88-fold reduction.

This is a realistic senario for something like CoH or flash heal, but its not a very realistic senario for gheal on a tank. For that senario

a=50% b=100% s=30%

Old talent 10.1%
New talent 4.43%

A 2.34 fold reduction.

Basically if test of faith heals overheal even slightly the b*T-1 factor drops very fast for smaller T values.

The utility of test of faith is to provide a good boost to your throughput when you need it the most, but a 9.6% boost compared to a 21.9% boost is really a very steep drop. The effect of test of faith on effective healing depends on several variables. Depending on the percentage of heals. I would say we can comfortably look at something like 5% boost in effective healing with the old talent and 2% with the new talent.

This nerf in my view makes test of faith an expendable talent. I would rather get healing prayers and lightwell instead of maxing test of faith.

The new serendipity change is good on its own, but I think it removes the ability to use gheal itself as a mid sized heal. I think it will prove to be detrimental too.

The nerf to IHC makes it questionable right now. 30% haste for a single heal on 9% of heals is just 2.7% haste. I am not sure IHC is worth the point anymore. I think it might be worthwhile spending some more points in discipline.

Overall the new changes have pretty much ruined the synergy between the deep holy talents. I hope they reconsider them

With the new Holy Concentration scaling with spell crit are priests going to need like two sets of gear?

One set crit heavy for Greater Heal tank spamming. Stacking crit would imply better regen, more haste, more HPS. While spamming Greater Heal, crit looks a lot better then haste. Not to mention Inspiration up a lot more of the time

Another set haste heavy for Circle of Healing. While critting with CoH improves HPS you don't get any of the good stuff from Imp Conc. And both sets stacking spirit, none of that silly MP5