Liriel

While I agree that 23/47 is not worth it anymore, I'm interested why you think mental agility should be "completely worthless for a holy priest". Holys have the following mana-costing instants which can be relevant while healing: PoM, HoT, Shield, CoH, Dispell, Abolish Disease, Guardian Spirit [buffs, new racial(if it gets some manacosts applied), Holy Nova]. Given that not everything is used on CD but the costs add up.

I'm not saying, that Mental Agility is more worth than Healing Prayers, I think that depends on your setup, your healing rotation and the encounter you face. And even if I'm not taking it, because I think other things in Holy are more important, I would love to have Mental Agility if I could reach it.

 

Kamakaze

Twin Disciplines and Focused Power (only rank 1 works, rank 2 gives nothing) do not and will not affect PW:S. Talents which modifiy damage and healing done by spells never affect PW:S, as it is neither damage nor healing. It is unfortunate but I think any changes would potentially make PW:S be affected by mortal strike aswell, so I think it is a fair trade off.

As for Borrowed Time, I believe it is still stuck in its 20% state. Even though it may not be obvious from those numbers, Borrowed Time in its 20% state, added 16% scaling to PW:S. PW:S got 80% base, and Borrowed Time added 20% of 80% onto the spell instead of 20% of your spellpower. This meant a 16% scaling, which matches the numbers you got.

So the talent is bugged to only apply 20%, and also to modify the spellpower already applied to PW:S, instead of adding it to the spellpower applied.

 

The Not So Evil

Mathematically, the coefficient of PW:Shield should be:

1.5 (instant) / 3.5 * 0.855 (spell power itemization cost) / 0.455 (healing power itemization cost) = 0.8053

0.855/0.455 is commonly shortened to 1.88.

0.9679/0.8068 ~= 1.2, Indicating its receiving an additional 20% of spell power on the coefficient, instead of on the spell power directly. (which would be ~1.0057)

This makes PW:Shield scale as (Base + 1.5/3.5*1.88*(1+5%*borrowed time)*spell power)*(1+5%*imp. pw:shield)

The haste issue is more of a worry however.

 

Kortar

Renew has fallen pretty far behind the curve in terms of effectiveness since it receives virtually no benefits from WotLK while other spells around it gain significant benefits. More importantly, the spells it normally competes against in other classes have gotten enormous boosts.

Power Word: Shield is extremely nice - if you're a Discipline Priest. But if you've got a Discipline Priest around, it's a really bad idea for your Holy Priest to cast PW:S since he'll be blocking the far superior PW:S your Disc. Priest could cast. Couple this with fewer points to throw around in Discipline as a Holy Priest and the special-use nature of PW:S, Mental Agility has a somewhat minimal impact.

Prayer of Mending doesn't really justify MA either. Once you've spent 2 points in Healing Prayers, you can start to think about a talent that's 1/4 the power.

Dispels and Abolishes are a rather silly reason, since Priests are by far the worst healer for debuff removal unless you need Mass Dispel (which isn't affected by MA).

Guardian Spirit is on such a long cooldown its mana cost doesn't really matter. It could cost 100% base mana and no one would care.

That leaves Holy Nova and Circle of Healing. Both of which are also buffed by the talent you're skipping to take Mental Agility - and buffed better (+% healing improves both throughput and efficiency).

Obviously, people would like to take Mental Agility. But the only top talent in Holy you're likely willing to skip would be Guardian Spirit - and that one point isn't even going to get you out of tier 3, much less into Mental Agility.

 

Paracelsus

WotLK's Twin Disciplines and Glyph of Renew increase the HPS of Renew by 47% - that seems significant to me and that's before you count the other scaling factors like Focused Power/Grace/Mental Agility in Disc and Spiritual Healing in Holy. Plus - is Renew one of the abilities that can now crit? I don't remember reading anything on that but they seem to have made everything else that ticks able to crit....

 

Liriel

As I said - it depends on your setup and role. If you think about 25mans I would not take Mental Agility. But there will be also the 5mans and 10mans. There may be no Disc-Priest around to cast a shield if a holy is there. There may be no other person who can dispell. Maybe there is no Druid to throw hots around. (And even if other hots are better, applying yours does not hurt anybody, if you can afford it.) Maybe there is not that much AoE-dmg. Maybe you know your guys and know that nobody would use lightwell.

I dont want to say that every holy priest should take it. I most likely will not take it myself. But I dont think Mental Agility cannot be usefull for any holy priest. Not every holy priest goes 25mans. Mental Agility is not a crap talent. It simply is at a crap position. I would prefere it over the decision between Imp PW:S and Silent Resolve.

 

Shan

With 1500 spellpower and assuming that half of Lightwell's healing is wasted either due to overhealing or overlapping heals (frankly I think this is generous towards lightwell in a raid setting), it can heal up to 40000.

Presuming a hpm of 6 on average on our healing (low because I'm accounting for 50% overhealing which, once again is on the generous side. in reality if your conventional heals overheal that much lightwell should be even less efficient, but let's just go with it)

40000/6= 6666 mana saved

That's 2222 mana per minute.

Comparing this to some other similar talents:

- Omen of Clarity: 2 ppm, saves roughly 2150 mana per minute if used on 1x HT and 1x Regrowth
- Mana Tide: presuming a 16.5k mana pool, this is 3960 mana per minute over the entire party.
- Tree of Life HoT cost reduction: reduces HoT cost by 35%. Numbers depends a lot on what spells are cast, but even if just Rejuv, Regrowth and Lifebloom are kept up on a single target, the mana saved is already more than Lightwell.


This is in response to the statement that Lightwell is an excellent mana saving talent. It's a lot of trouble for not that much gain in the end though.

 

Havoc12

Specing mental agility also prevents you from taking guardian spirit, which is an on demand 40% increase on the tank for several seconds and abilities like that really make a difference for predictable dangerous situations.

Yes its true that it depends on role, but realistically there are only 3 spells that you can cast frequently enough to justify mental agi for: PoM, CoH, Renew. PoM is very cheap already, renew has a low mana cost and in the vast majority of encounters especially in 5-10 mans it represents a relatively low mana drain. The only spell worth taking mental agi for is CoH. In TBC mental agi was a great talent because in nearly all highly challenging encounters you could use CoH, pom and renew quite heavility and due to downranking your channeled spells represented a much smaller mana drain. Effectively mental agi represented 5-8% more mana in the encounters where mana mattered in TBC. This is no longer the case. Channeled spells are going to make up most of your mana cost for the max improvement to CoH/PoM you are better off staying in the holy tree because buffs to channeled spells are equally important now. Mental agility will have no where near the return it had in TBC.

The only hybrid which IMO is viable is going up to 5/5 mental strength. If you have serious mana issues, mental strength is the only talent that can make a difference. IMO however 51+ builds are going to be better.

============================================
2000 spell power is really the standard for raids so each lightwell hot would heal for (4620+2000*1.88)*1.1 = 9218 and each tick would be 3072. Assuming 50% usage you are looking at 46k max healing. You can cast lightwell before the encounter begins and use it again before the 3 min duration so you can squeeze more than 1 lw per 3 mins, but I will leave it at 1 lw per 3 mins.

Still I will accept your calculations that LW saves you 2000 mana per minute and that its underpowered compared to the mana tide totem and omen of clarity. What I would like to know is what other spell in the holy tree saves you 1500 mana per minute for 1 point (i.e. 25 mana per second). Only two talents return comparable amounts of mana to lightwell, healing prayers and lightwell, but lightwell can also increase HPS and buys you healing time. Neither mana tide nor omen of clarity save you casting time or increase HPS. Remember that lightwell is free healing. That means both mana and casting time. Lightwell is an exellent talent choice for the point.

Think of an encounter like illhoof. The warlock seeding the imps won't need a heal for effectively 70% of the fight. For a single point you can save a healer 20-30% of his casting time along with a massive amount of mana. Having lightwell in the fight massively lowers the healer gear requirement.

Comparing talents accross different classes and using that as an argument is silly. Point of point lightwell is worth it. Yes its annoying and troublesome to use, but its good. It can even be used for tank healing in a few senarios. Most of the limitations people attach to the lightwell are imaginary. The only real limitation of lightwell is that it is not straightforward to use and it requires a lot of carefull planning.

I am pretty sure that people will quickly learn to use lightwell and once they do they will love it.

 

Liriel

Nobody said that you have to put 5 points in MA for MA beeing useable. (So you can take the guardian, too).

I have not been on the ptr (since my char has not arived there). But I thought that the downranking nerf would make the instants more preferable since you would have used the highest rank most times anyway.

 

Havoc12

A max rank gheal due to serendipity and clearcasting is more mana efficient and has nearly the same HPS as CoH, I am sorry to say. The days of one trick horses are over and so are the days where MA was awesome. Currently our best HPS spells are PoH and binding heal. Binding heal is bloody massive HPS actually.

I think you need to redo your research. 40% buff but 1 less tick. Also using a glyph for renew means one less spot for another spell. HoTs cannot crit. Renew is not really worth casting much for discipline. They have better use of their casting time.

 

Bjork

Any holyspec with MA is gimp and it's not needed in any way. I'm 14/56 (last point imp inner fire or healing prayers: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft) on beta and haven't had any mana issues whatsoever (Naxx + Sartharion so far). Normally I can dps in some phases and help out doing AoE with Mind Sear even on bosses. Mind Sear makes Holy Nova look like a joke btw, mine is ticking for 730 every second in holygear and as holyspeced. Very decent AoE from a healer.

We could need a heal between FH and GH, even though FH is a lot more viable now (same manaburn as GH ..!) I sometimes feel like I need some option for those people needing 6k healing.

However my main impression after just 2 Naxx and one Sartharion is that Blizzard need to do some heavy work to balance out healers. Some talents are just overpowered (Flourish anyone?) or simply broken, while I feel my priest is close to being done.

I alredy love Guardian Spirit and don't belive we will bring a single disc. priest for any raid in Wotlk. It's a 10 second window where a tank simply cannot die. Great for tactical use and a very nice end-talent.

Hm, I'm actually positive.

 

Observer

You know what would be really nice for Renew? A healing version of Pain and Suffering. And they could call it..... Renewed Hope.

Oh, wait.

Seriously, though, even if Renew hasn't really kept up, I would think you'd still want to keep it on the tanks whenever possible -- more HoTs is always better, isn't it? And Renew still isn't exactly gimp, especially if you have the glyph.

 

KalistraMerged

@Havok oh one reason im 2/2 grace is I want to be able in 1 raptur to know I'm going to be max stacks, good for tank swapping.

Overall, disc is looking nice, but we need the top collapsed in slightly, or a buff to GH built in (IMHO) needs a little more throughput to compete against holy

 

uh...ok

I'm a bit skeptical about this one since by all other accounts from priests playing on beta, GS isn't even worth the GCD it takes to cast on a tank during "oh shit" moments because the tank just dies from the next hit anyway.

 

Jood

GS is off the GCD now.

WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Blue/Develeper Attention on Priests

 

Shan

And I'm sure that once people get out of 5 mans (where Lightwell has always been strongest) and into challenging content that the novelty will wear off quickly and the still present problems with the spell will become more apparent. It has always been that way, in classic, in TBC and will be the same in WotlK.

I do not understand why certain people want lightwell, and not something that's simply well designed from an useability point of view. That holy doesn't have any other mana saving/restoring talent isn't a good argument, they could add one easily in place of lightwell.

 

cruumash

I see the caveats in Shan's objections are starting to pop up. =)

We want tools that work. If Blizzard wants to give us more/new tools, we'll take those too. What I can understand is why you were rejecting its usefulness out of hand when a vast majority of its issues were addressed.

 

Observer

It sounds like it hasn't gone live yet, so there may be no way to know, but has Pain Suppression been removed from the GCD as well?

Forgive me, I mean no offense, but we do have a lot of other spells... why are you so dead-set against this one in particular?

Did... did Lightwell... hurt you?

Okay, I meant a little offense ;P But seriously, let it go for a while? Crusades are for paladins.

 

Shan

Because it's a horrible spell? It's been there for.. 3 years? That's long enough.

Rather than repeat myself, I'll uote a post from the beta forums which sums it up pretty nicely.

Does this answer your question? If not.. let me repeat that if the priest community asked uniformly for a new spell without all those drawbacks, we would get it. But rather people prefer to pretend as if the spell hadn't severe flaws. Or maybe they just don't know any better.

Also, no offense taken.

 

KalistraMerged

This I can't disagree with. My personal 'crusade' on the forums has been about the disc bloat.. doesn't help when one person posts, its fine just dont take the T10 talent. The T10 talent of course, kinda being important to what disc is meant to do.

They are therefore implying a) T10 talent is crap b) even if it is good, don't worry about bloat live with it.

I'm enjoying disc, but its to ram-rod at the moment, it needs some degree of flexability, 5 points (IMHO) need to be found.

 

Bjork

It's already been said a few times in this thread, Guardian Spirit is off the GCD. I've just macroed it with FH, so in those "oh shit moments" you activate GS and land a FH for 6-7k 1,4 seconds later (where's my lvl 70 haste ) I've found it very useful, especially on the Obsidian Sanctum-dragon (with all aspects active) for tactical use. You can basically make "almost unhealable" to "quite easy" with a combination of GS + SW + LS. This is obviously very encounter sensitive, but I've used it quite often and it's also very nice to have an ability to save someone.

When it comes to the constant whine on Lightwell ... I'm not a MOD here, but can you please take it to the general forums? "It's a bad spell, buh-buh", then you don't bring any arguments.

Here's a list of SW bosses where new Lightwell is very useful:

Kalecgos
Brutallus
Felmyst
Twins
M'uru
Kil'jaeden

If you want tactical advice on how to use it, please PM me and I share it with you for free.

 

Shan

I provides pages of real and solid arguments, don't blame me if you didn't bother to look for them. Also good job on missing the point like every other Lightwell apologist so far.

Nobody is saying that the spell is useless, but that doesn't mean that it's not outdated, convoluted and unnecessarily penalizing from an useability standpoint.

There have only been very slight changes to its useability, but big changes to its power (which was never the main problem). Lightwell has been in a theoretically useable state for years now. The majority of TBC raid content is Lightwell compatible (yes, even the old "break on damage" Lightwell), yet nobody is using it. Even the patch a while ago which buffed its power did not change this.

Once you understand this, you will be able to understand why people are asking for a redesign or even removal of it.

 

Promethia

I think you're being a little generous to discipline in your analysis for a couple reasons:

1. I assume the +6% is from grace? I realize there's a blue post saying it will have that bonus, but it isn't there yet as far as I know, so I'm a little skeptical about adding in bonuses that don't exist yet. They may change bonuses to holy too, so I don't think it's fair to compare the current holy bonuses to a presumed future bonus for discipline.

2. Assuming +25% crit for discipline and +15% crit for holy is also unfair. In essence you're assuming "same gear except disc has more crit", and that's not the same as assuming the same gear, which is the only fair comparison. While it's true discipline priests may stack more crit, you then have to take away something else to make a valid comparison.

Incidentally, I assume you mean "Penance has 150% scaling... " instead of "Rapture".

I'm a little puzzled why you don't factor in the 5% haste as a multiplicative factor, which you can do by dividing by 0.95. I'm not saying it's wrong not to do that, and you may have a good reason, but I'm just curious. Certainly it's simple to just divide by 0.95 to get the effect on HPS and as long as you don't run into the 1.0 second cap on anything, it should be valid.

Also, to simplify computations, divine aegis can be considered at least equivalent to increasing your crit heals by 45% (30% of 150%). It's actually a little better than that since crit heals may overheal, diminishing the benefit of crit heal bonuses. At least with DA, you'll always get 30% of the heal as a shield, even if the heal overheals completely.

I sincerely hope that discipline does end up being the hands down winner for single target priest healing. It better, since holy already has a clear advantage for multitarget heals, so it's a bit hard to sell a raid on discipline priests if they don't have something they're definitely better than holy at. With that 6% from grace, I think they do edge out holy at single target healing, but not by tons. Without that 6% bonus, they don't even do that. I'd like to play a discipline priest, but I really can't do it if holy can beat them at what they're supposed to be good at.

The most obvious hybrid build to me actually goes further and picks up enlightenment. Something like this. However, I completely agree the 51+ builds are better overall.

 

Lambi

Is there any new reason I should know about to why you're not taking Healing Focus in that build?

 

Shatter Combo w/ Fries

New build, early sightings:

-Desperate prayer indeed 11 point talent, 19% base mana, listed heal looks the same, 3700-4300

-Dispersion: You disperse into pure Shadow energy, reducing all damage taken by 90%. You are unable to attack or cast spells, but you regenerate 6% mana every 1 sec for 6 sec. Dispersion can be cast while stunned, feared or silenced. If Dispersion runs its full duration, and you are not the victim of any damage or harmful effects during its duration, your spells gain 25% damage for 1 min.

Edit 1:
-Borrowed time lost GCD reduction, gained 25% spell haste on the spell you cast after PW:S

Edit 2:
2/2* (edited from 3/3 my mistake) grace will increase your healing to the target by 2% per stack as noted earlier.

Edit 3:
Improved Divine spirit now grants spell power equal to the spirit divine spirit gives.

Edit 4:
Holy reach and improved healing effect divine hymn
Blessed recovery change went in

Edit 5:
Holy concentration is now 10/20/30% on critical heals
Improved holy concentration: another 5/10/15%, 30% haste for the next 2 heals
Test of faith is 6% healing and 6% spell crit on targets < 50%