As a Troll I couldn't be more thrilled about the racial changes.
Hex of Weakness was never significant even with no healing debuffers present - healing 800 points for every 1000 points just doesn't make a difference in PVP, and was entirely irrelevant with a rogue/hunter/warrior in play.
Shadowguard was complete trash unless specced Shadow, where it was 'nifty'. Sure it triggered Blackout but meh, people exaggerate the significance of that.
I'm going to enjoy having DP (hope they rename this), Hymn of Hope and Desperate Prayer soooo much - not only will I have several useful abilities but I won't have to deal with the imbalance of not having useful racials while other Priests did.
I've been doing alot of research on the new talents/changes to priests coming in 3.0. I have read through much (but not all) of this thread. I'm our guild's token spirit priest, and was debating whether or not a full disc priest was really worth it or not. I'm completely on the fence, and the fact that on the PTR heals are screwed up (looks like the whole coefficient thing hasn't been worked out). I can't really compare throughput differences yet.
Pros:
-Buffed Shield: great for pre-pull coverage since prom is no longer an option.
-Power Infusion: Sexy
-Pain Suppression: Situationally useful... I wish they would remove the -threat on the ability to make it actually useful to save a tank (would be nice for a 41 point ability).
-Looks like strong tank healing
-Love the Penance Animation!
Cons
-Missing goodies like CoH, Guardian Spirit, Lightwell (wow, can't believe that last one)
-On paper, looks to be significantly less healing thoroughput
-Shielding reduces rage/mana generation
Can I get some opinions here, besides my own, as to if its worth going for my guild or not? We are in SWP on Brutallus for context purposes and that's all I'm really interested in at this point. Also, how well does the mana efficiency work with rapture, etc. in comparison to holy?
Please explain to me why you're not taking 2/2 imp DS? :o
Yep, as others said, Flametongue weapon. Im looking at a full on raiding build, we will have two resto shamans (maybe more) so it makes sense to use their buff.
@Havok been trying to test the mana regen, but EU beta server keeps dying... Pre-rap change the build worked fine.. post who knows
Please explain to me why you're not taking 2/2 imp DS? :o
Along with what everyone else has said in regards to Flametongue totem etc., disc is so bloated that I really need those 2 points elsewhere.
I think it serves as a great example that what should be a no-brainer talent improvement to a 21 point talent is skipped by Disc priests going deep in the tree because they want to spend points on other bloat
I also plan to change my character's name to 'Bloatmerkicus' if WoTLK goes live pretty much as is - he'll be a Disc Priest of course
Since everyone seems interested in commenting about how a free 2k heal is apparently mediocre in PvE, I'll comment about it in Arena.
My priest right now has the misfortune to be Human. Perception, I assure you, doesn't really win me any games. Desperate Prayer (on a TEN MINUTE COOLDOWN), however, does. Priests are among the least survivable classes in the game at this point, and nearly every other game vs. double dps (as Priest/Mage at the moment) I feel I survive only due to a combination of Vial of the Sunwell and Desperate Prayer. Making Desperate Prayer a 30 second cooldown also has huge implications for longer games, especially against teams that exert constant pressure (instead of burst).
A 30 second cooldown on Desperate Prayer is a significant, significant survivability buff, as well as a longevity buff. You will have Desperate Prayer up whenever a Rogue or Warrior blow their moderate cooldowns to try to kill you (I'm referring to Berserker Rage, Intercept, Kidney Shot, and Shadowstep), and especially in 3v3 Priests become a harder target to quick-swap to.
Furthermore, depending on how much mana it will cost, Devouring Plague is another buff to both Damage *and* Survivability in many team set-ups, as well as PvE shadow dps.
Here's my point--Desperate Prayer is an 11-point talent now. It's borderline overpowered for being an 11-point talent. Do not complain that it's a 'weak talent' or that it needs to remove curses or not be on the GCD. It *will* win you arena games. It may not be an all-purpose healing spell for PvE, but it doesn't need to be. It has a use in PvE too.
Here is my only concern with the new Desperate Prayer: It wrecks the Disc/Silence build I enjoy playing in 2s so much. Pain Suppression is a vastly overrated PvP talent compared to Silence (cast it nearly thrice as often, has offensive uses as well!). But the new Desperate Prayer becomes the single most "must-have" PvP talent (for Disc, anyway), and effectively pigeon-holes Disc priests into sub-specc'ing Holy for Arena.
It furthermore makes Penance unusable until 71--I rarely have a problem keeping other people alive such that I would sacrifice Penance for the self-survivability of Desperate Prayer.
Edit: There are very few 11-point talents that will make as large an impact in PvP as Desperate Prayer. Aimed Shot? Feral Charge will be a 21-pointer. Relentless Strikes will be a first-tier talent now. 11-point Soul Link is perhaps better, but that's the only one I can see.
'Bloat' has its upside. Personally, I prefer having more choices than whether to take Divine Spirit or Circle of Healing.
Can we come up with a euphemism to replace the pejorative 'bloat'?
In the case of the Druid balance and resto trees, they have a good 'bloat', with a bunch of great talents that make you want to dump all your points into that tree.
In the case of Disc, you're dumping a lot of talent points into very mediocre talents in an effort to synergize things, have you tried doing a PVP Disc build?It's a nightmare because if you're going deep Disc you either half-ass the end of the tree or ending up no different than you are pre-WoTLK - and that's while giving up some obvious PVE stuff like DS.
When I play with my Druid's calculator for balance and resto it's like "ooh that's good, ooh that's good too, oh and that one!".
When I play with my Priest's calculator for Disc it's like "uhh...I guess...but then I need this too..ugh wtf" and then I just quit and hope it will change before release.
Pain Suppression is a vastly overrated PvP talent compared to Silence
Maybe for 2's but I can assure you it's required to survive the rape trains in 3's, 5's, and BG's.
Desperate Prayer in its current form is borderline OP (for both PvP and PvE), and I'd be really surprised if it stayed around as is without taking a heavy nerf (i.e. mana cost). It definitely does not need a secondary effect to be useful.
Hopefully Blizz will think that it being an 11-point talent in the Holy Tree will justify its current OPness and leave it alone.
(Pain Suppression is overrated): Maybe for 2's but I can assure you it's required to survive the rape trains in 3's, 5's, and BG's.
I'll agree with you on 5's, but 3's it depends on Comp (BG's are not worth discussing). I run 3v3 as the Nihilum RHD comp, and felt almost as useful with Silence as I do with Pain Suppression. Sometimes moreso. In fact--I would say that, were it not for double melee teams being almost omnipresent on my Battlegroup (Shadowburn), Silence would be a better choice. It's certainly better vs. RMP in my experience, and better vs. WLD, as well (for my RHD comp, anyway). It is, of course, strictly inferior vs. melee train teams.
Regardless--my point is that Desperate Prayer will become completely mandatory in PvP. No longer will it be worth it to sub-spec in Shadow. Of the three main Disc spec choices for (smaller-scale) arena (which are, in my view, 41/18/0+2, 41/5/13+2, and 34/2/21+4), two sub-spec shadow, and those two are better choices depending on comp. Now--I doubt any sub-spec in shadow will beat DesPrayer.
It makes Priests specs less diverse--even if it makes priests better. I'm not complaining, mind you. Priests are not a great class in Arena and the racial changes will help a lot. I'm just pointing out that I will feel compelled to consider Desperate Prayer as a *required* talent, just as Rogues currently view Relentless Strikes as *required*
I'll agree with you on 5's, but 3's it depends on Comp (BG's are not worth discussing). I run 3v3 as the Nihilum RHD comp, and felt almost as useful with Silence as I do with Pain Suppression. Sometimes moreso. In fact--I would say that, were it not for double melee teams being almost omnipresent on my Battlegroup (Shadowburn), Silence would be a better choice. It's certainly better vs. RMP in my experience, and better vs. WLD, as well (for my RHD comp, anyway). It is, of course, strictly inferior vs. melee train teams.
Regardless--my point is that Desperate Prayer will become completely mandatory in PvP. No longer will it be worth it to sub-spec in Shadow. Of the three main Disc spec choices for (smaller-scale) arena (which are, in my view, 41/18/0+2, 41/5/13+2, and 34/2/21+4), two sub-spec shadow, and those two are better choices depending on comp. Now--I doubt any sub-spec in shadow will beat DesPrayer.
It makes Priests specs less diverse--even if it makes priests better. I'm not complaining, mind you. Priests are not a great class in Arena and the racial changes will help a lot. I'm just pointing out that I will feel compelled to consider Desperate Prayer as a *required* talent, just as Rogues currently view Relentless Strikes as *required*
I find it weird that people would spec PVP without points in Holy anyway - picking up DP will be no problem because I'm already picking up Spellwarding, Blessed Recovery and usually Divine Fury.
I wouldn't consider DP 'required' for Shadow PVP (lol) or PVE though. I mean I would probably pick it up but I wouldn't feel like I had to. But maybe that's because I've never had it.
Just for interest sake, I'm 79 now, and respec'd to deep holy (23/47). Self-buffed only, without BoK, GotW, FtT and AI, using old-world elixirs and no oil, my GH is hitting (non-crit) for just over 9200. Raid-buffed, it will be 10,000 +/- 100. Almost exactly what I predicted when the downranking nerf went live.
What on earth am I going to do with a 15,000 crit heal? Honestly. It makes Test of Faith almost meaningless -- I won't need to hit harder than normal on a sub-50% person, because even a tank with 30k HP is going to get a minimum of 33% of his life back from my GH.
It's just silly.
(btw, FH is hitting for around 4200, so maybe 4500 raid-buffed)
The major problem I see is that FH is 673 mana as I'm spec'd atm; if I overheal for 1 or more HP, GH is 762. If you don't think you're going to top the person up with Flash Heal, you might as well use Greater Heal and ensure it. Thus, FH is only useful for people down less than 4k HP; leaving a big gap between 4k and 10k.
The mana cost increase in CoH(Rk5) is also prohibitive, and will mean we really can't use it anywhere near as often as we're used to. Provided the encounters don't ask us to, that's fine .. but it still only heals for 1200 per person per cast. When everyone in the raid has 14k HP, that's a drop in the bucket. I'm curious what Rk6 will hit for; I'll test more when I hit 80 (tomorrow/tonight).
[e] If you spec 5/5 Divine Providence, that'd obviously bring up the healing on CoH by another 10%, which is ~ 120. Really not worth 5 talent points IMO, but I may change my mind when we see real raiding content in WotLK.
Last edited by constantius : 09/16/08 at 6:34 PM.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
I've done 10 man patchwerk as holy spec with 2 healers and my 15k greater heals were often necessary just to keep up with the damage (yay for hatefuls hitting the main tank), I even used guardian spirit a couple times when health dipped under 30%. Tanks were in a mix of SW and Nax gear and they did have 30k hp. All other bosses don't hit nearly as hard though, this was just an exception, so you might have a point.
Don't forget the flash heal glyph though, it's not very exciting but I think it does help the spell suck a bit less.
I just noticed that prayer of mending will proc on fully absorbed hits when you are shielded now. (Sorry if this is old news, not even sure when this change went it, just never saw it mentioned anywhere). Not sure if it's intentional, but I think I prefer the old mechanic.
I just noticed that prayer of mending will proc on fully absorbed hits when you are shielded now. (Sorry if this is old news, not even sure when this change went it, just never saw it mentioned anywhere). Not sure if it's intentional, but I think I prefer the old mechanic.
Interesting. I'm not sure how to think of that.
In Arena, it means you can't pre-stack both Prayer of Mending and PW:S and expect the former to do anything other than bounce to your teammate.
On the other hand--it removes the aggravation of having PW:S or Ice Barrier prevent Prayer of Mending from working--this is a situation that comes up a lot for me in Arena.
That said, I'm more concerned about getting splatted by a Mage/Rogue team before I even come out of a stun lock (old mechanic of Prayer of Mending helps here) than I am about a long game vs. Warlock/Healer or something (new mechanic helps here).
I just noticed that prayer of mending will proc on fully absorbed hits when you are shielded now. (Sorry if this is old news, not even sure when this change went it, just never saw it mentioned anywhere). Not sure if it's intentional, but I think I prefer the old mechanic.
What if the target is shielded AND at full health? If it just wastes itself doing nothing to full-health, shielded targets, that is stupid on its face. If it heals up DAMAGED shielded targets... that is not totally undesirable, though it is debatable which version is better in that situation.
Either way, I predict that it will be fixed. Probably around the time that Pandaria is being released as an expansion pack.
What if the target is shielded AND at full health? If it just wastes itself doing nothing to full-health, shielded targets, that is stupid on its face. If it heals up DAMAGED shielded targets... that is not totally undesirable, though it is debatable which version is better in that situation.
Either way, I predict that it will be fixed. Probably around the time that Pandaria is being released as an expansion pack.
Yep, procs on full health w/ shield.
Last edited by Shatter Combo w/ Fries : 09/16/08 at 11:15 PM.
What on earth am I going to do with a 15,000 crit heal? Honestly. It makes Test of Faith almost meaningless -- I won't need to hit harder than normal on a sub-50% person, because even a tank with 30k HP is going to get a minimum of 33% of his life back from my GH.
A 10k normal heal on a tank with 30k HP is proportionally the same as a 4k heal on a tank with 12k HP, which is about where we stood in Karazhan. I'm also loath to tempt fate with "when will we ever use this"; it strikes me that the raid designers could interpret that as a challenge.
Tanks don't have 30k ... yet. They will at the end of Naxx(25), at which point I'll be running another 300 spellpower, and be hitting proportionately harder.
It'll probably balance out around the middle of the next tier of raid zones. It's just really odd to be critting for 15k. It's not like your typical non-tank raider has more than that. Mostly, we'll be using Flash Heal as our non-tank-healing spell, especially with the increased cost of CoH.
[e] Also, comparing WotLK (Naxx) to Karazhan is misleading, since we didn't gain massive huge chunks of spellpower (healing) as we leveled in TBC. I went from ~ 1050 in Naxx (old-school, pre-TBC) to around 1350 starting Karazhan (PMC ftw), and then up over 2k at the end of T5.
In WotLK beta, I am gaining hundreds of spellpower just from self-buffs, and an equally large amount from the new raid-buff system. I'm going from 2815 healing pre-WotLK to well over 4400 *in the first raid zone in WotLK*. It's a very large dynamic shift.
Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein
This is why I'll be stacking 10haste/10spirit gems and 20haste gems, spellpower has been pretty bad for us priests a long time now. In WotLK it will be more prominent than ever that people die from not getting healed on time than the heals being too small.
Just for interest sake, I'm 79 now, and respec'd to deep holy (23/47). Self-buffed only, without BoK, GotW, FtT and AI, using old-world elixirs and no oil, my GH is hitting (non-crit) for just over 9200. Raid-buffed, it will be 10,000 +/- 100. Almost exactly what I predicted when the downranking nerf went live.
What on earth am I going to do with a 15,000 crit heal? Honestly. It makes Test of Faith almost meaningless -- I won't need to hit harder than normal on a sub-50% person, because even a tank with 30k HP is going to get a minimum of 33% of his life back from my GH.
It's just silly.
(btw, FH is hitting for around 4200, so maybe 4500 raid-buffed)
The major problem I see is that FH is 673 mana as I'm spec'd atm; if I overheal for 1 or more HP, GH is 762. If you don't think you're going to top the person up with Flash Heal, you might as well use Greater Heal and ensure it. Thus, FH is only useful for people down less than 4k HP; leaving a big gap between 4k and 10k.
The mana cost increase in CoH(Rk5) is also prohibitive, and will mean we really can't use it anywhere near as often as we're used to. Provided the encounters don't ask us to, that's fine .. but it still only heals for 1200 per person per cast. When everyone in the raid has 14k HP, that's a drop in the bucket. I'm curious what Rk6 will hit for; I'll test more when I hit 80 (tomorrow/tonight).
[e] If you spec 5/5 Divine Providence, that'd obviously bring up the healing on CoH by another 10%, which is ~ 120. Really not worth 5 talent points IMO, but I may change my mind when we see real raiding content in WotLK.
This what I calculated too check this calculation out.
Holy:
Gheal, for 2200 fully buffed spell power.
Base 4270
Bonus = 2200*(3/3.5*1.88+0.4)
Total: 8695
+10% healing = 9564
+15% crit = 9564*(1+0.5*0.15) = 10281
+test of faith = 9564*1.06*(1+0.5*0.21) = 11202 with max crit 15206.
Holy also gets 9%*30% = 2.7% haste from IHC
No heal can be big enough on a sub50% target and with the new serendipity the bigger the better since if you heal the target to full you can get mana back. Remember also that sub50% heals have a lot of room, so every point of that heal will likely be effective healing, not overheal thus raising your mana efficiency and effective healing and reducing overall overheal. This is a very big boost. The utility of test of faith is when your heal hits the tank at 20%. The nerf however has really put a damper on what was a great ability..
I disagree with DP not worth the points. 120 per person is another 80 HPS per target or 400 more HPS total (even more with haste) and 700 more healing per CoH. The numbers for CoH always look deceptive small when you view them on a per target basis by they add up real quick.
Also remember that CoH is instant so it now benefits from spiritual healing, divine providence and twin faiths for a total of 1.1*1.1*1.05 = 1.2705. That means 27% more than base healing. If you take out divine providence you are looking at 115.5%, so you are losing 11.5% scaling. Another thing to remember is crit and test of faith, which also add yet more scaling factors. When everything is taken into account that lowly 10% becomes more like 13%. Also lets not forget binding heal, PoH and PoM, who also benefit from DP.
What does worry me very much however is that according to your numbers CoH heals for just over 7k average when gheal heals for over 10k average but when you factor in serendipity and holy concentration Gheal is cheaper. These numbers make it clear that you can produce the same HPS as CoH by just spamming gheal. On live CoH has much much higher HPS than gheal. If you can use gheal its now better to use gheal.
On another level looking at discipline
Gheal, for 2040 fully buffed spell power (gain imp inner focus, but lose divine guidance).
Rapture has 150% scaling so at max rank it heals for 4740+2040*1.5 = 7800
Adding all modifiers
7800*1.04*1.06*(1+0.25/2+0.45*0.25) = 10640
Due to the 5% haste a disc priest can fit 2 FH, 1 pom, 2 PWS, 3penance and 8gheal in a 30 second cycle FH heals for 5270 with all modifiers, and PWS heals for 5393 so in total we are looking at
2*(5270+5393)+3*10640+8*10309 = 135718 or 4523 max HPS.
The max HPS for holy spamming gheal is 10281/2.5*1.027*1.02 = 4307, the two factors are from IHC and test of faith (yes the current test of faith should add something like 2% on your total healing, unless you have well over 30% sub50% heals)
HPS for CoH spam is like 7k/1.5*1.02 = 4760
The max HPS difference is not really an issue, but PWS and aegis are now much more effective than test of faith in reducing loss to overheal and with the huge nerf to holy concentration mana efficiency won't be that much different. So blizzard has put the single target priest healing where they wanted it. Disc is hands down better now.
Basically IMO 23/47 is a gimp build that has no purpose. ImpDS is now best skipped even in full builds and divine providence gives you a much better return overall than mental agility (which is now completely worthless for a holy priest, while healing prayers is really good), while losing critical talents for AoE healing. You also lose test of faith, which is your main overheal reducing mechanism. 23/47 is worth at tank healing than both full holy and full disc and its also worse at AoE healing due to loss of important talent. The only advantage is a buff that offers nothing whatsoever to the raid. There is only one hybrid build IMO that can be viable
No heal can be big enough on a sub50% target and with the new serendipity the bigger the better since if you heal the target to full you can get mana back. Remember also that sub50% heals have a lot of room, so every point of that heal will likely be effective healing, not overheal thus raising your mana efficiency and effective healing and reducing overall overheal. This is a very big boost.
All of this would be true if we had a resonable way to perform smaller heals as well, which we don't. With the current numbers on PTR, if you try it out in practice, you end up using significantly more mana. At the same time, you can no longer use more than one manapot in a fight.
De facto, at 70, we end up using lots of flash heal on PTR, just like I said in the Holy Raiding thread recently. It's just cheaper and faster at the same time for many level 70 healing situations. Unfortunately, it's only cheaper compared to GH7, NOT compared to GH1 that we would use now! The flash heal glyph seems like a necessity to me. Anyway, even if the numbers stay, it's just a temporary problem for a few weeks.
The numbers at 80 as posted by Constantius make me worry, however. Basically, the actual damage profile of an encounter will dictate whether we are able to heal efficiently or not. Not good.
I've done some Borrowed Time testing this morning, I'm really hoping it gets looked at because it's horribly broken in its current state.
First thing I checked was the GCD reduction, the first thing I discovered was that when you take the talent the GCD on shield suddenly ignores all haste.
With 192 haste on my gear and 5% from enlightenment my GCD is 1.349 seconds.
When taking Borrowed Time the shield GCD goes to:
1/5 - 1.455
2/5 - 1.41
3/5 - 1.365
4/5 - 1.32
5/5 - 1.275
All of this completely ignores all haste, so if I take 1-3 points in BT I'm actually casting shield slower than without the talent. With Power Infusion I got my GCD down to 1.124 and shield was still casting at 1.275 with 5/5 BT.
Then I checked the scaling. Twin Disciplines doesn't seem to affect it, and Focused Power has no effect on any spell currently.
Anyway, here are the numbers starting with no talents:
0 SP - 2230 absorbed (matches the tooltip)
1682 SP - 3587 absorbed - coefficient seems to be around 0.8068
Is this really how it's intended to work or is it bugged as well? The tooltip states: Borrowed Time - Spell - World of Warcraft , where is that 40% supposed to be added?
09/16/08, 1:37 PM
