-- Disc is going to look terrible on meters. This is pretty obvious to anyone who looks at the talents, but just how terrible was evident last night. As 20/41 or 23/38 I'm used to being top 3 or top 5 respectively based on the fight, and last night I was consistently dead last on every fight except RoS. My general healing style for the night was to keep PW:S on CD as much as possible, keep PoM on CD, keep Renew on the tank and then cast Penance or FH on any target that was taking DD. I don't particularly care about meters, as my guild knows what I'm doing, but I can see this being a downside for some people. Blizzard has even made a concession to meters with some of the changes to PoM, so while EJ readers may dismiss this point, I think many people will avoid disc.
As I don´t have much time I´ll just comment this point:
Yes, disc is going to look worse on meters than most other healers. Mainly due to its high focus on absorbing and mitigating damage instead alongside with healing it. Nevertheless, I would not advise to use PW:S on cooldown. That´s definitely not what it´s meant to be. PW:S with Borrowed Time is the best emergency tool with such a low cooldown out there in the healer world, but using PW:S on CD is pointless to me, since you will give up the whole Borrowed Time effect often. Also, even a discs PW:S is not especially efficient, it can´t crit, it does not proc Grace and Inspiration. Using Penance and while its cooldown Renew/GH/FH/BH is far more useful and will also yield a more satisfying result in meters (for those who care about them, anyway).
As I don´t have much time I´ll just comment this point:
Yes, disc is going to look worse on meters than most other healers. Mainly due to its high focus on absorbing and mitigating damage instead alongside with healing it. Nevertheless, I would not advise to use PW:S on cooldown. That´s definitely not what it´s meant to be. PW:S with Borrowed Time is the best emergency tool with such a low cooldown out there in the healer world, but using PW:S on CD is pointless to me, since you will give up the whole Borrowed Time effect often. Also, even a discs PW:S is not especially efficient, it can´t crit, it does not proc Grace and Inspiration. Using Penance and while its cooldown Renew/GH/FH/BH is far more useful and will also yield a more satisfying result in meters (for those who care about them, anyway).
It does, however, guarantee full returns on Rapture (assuming you know the target will take the damage within 30 seconds). I agree that it shouldn't be specifically used every cooldown just for the sake of doing it, I think a healer should never rely on a "rotation" or single spell to do everything.
As for our place on the meters. It's at the bottom and that isn't going to change unless somehow damage absorbing effects are counted. Until then we'll have to calculate the amount shielded by using our mana return from Rapture and subtracting the amount of mana gained by effective healing (only counting those heals that return mana via rapture obviously). The leftover number (divided by the inverse of 2.5%) should give us total damage absorbed. It's a pain in the ass, but that's the best I can come up with for now.
As I don´t have much time I´ll just comment this point:
Yes, disc is going to look worse on meters than most other healers. Mainly due to its high focus on absorbing and mitigating damage instead alongside with healing it. Nevertheless, I would not advise to use PW:S on cooldown. That´s definitely not what it´s meant to be. PW:S with Borrowed Time is the best emergency tool with such a low cooldown out there in the healer world, but using PW:S on CD is pointless to me, since you will give up the whole Borrowed Time effect often. Also, even a discs PW:S is not especially efficient, it can´t crit, it does not proc Grace and Inspiration. Using Penance and while its cooldown Renew/GH/FH/BH is far more useful and will also yield a more satisfying result in meters (for those who care about them, anyway).
I see your point about the Borrowed Time, but I disagree that the shields aren't efficient.
Assumptions:
13525 Mana
56/5/0 Spec
20% raid buffed crit rate
FH Glyph and PW:S Glyph
Already PW:S is more mana efficient than casting a FH, and it has the benefit of being faster, and with Borrowed Time and Renewed Hope, it leaves the target in a better position to get a follow up heal from me if necessary. If you factor in that a non-crit overheal FH gets 0 benefit from Rapture, but a PW:S on a target that may take more damage in the next 30 seconds can result in up to 165 mana refunded, it seems clear to me that from an efficiency standpoint, you always rather use a shield on a target than an FH if you are a deep disc spec.
Edit:
And I suppose I worded it poorly when I said I tried to keep PW:S on CD. More what I mean was that I was using PW:S as my primary raid heal on trash, and on bosses I was using it every time weakened soul dropped on the tanks. By my math PW:S is one of my most efficient heals, so it makes sense for me to use it often, and it provides a nice buffer that allows CH, CoH and WG to all work nicely.
It does, however, guarantee full returns on Rapture (assuming you know the target will take the damage within 30 seconds). I agree that it shouldn't be specifically used every cooldown just for the sake of doing it, I think a healer should never rely on a "rotation" or single spell to do everything.
As for our place on the meters. It's at the bottom and that isn't going to change unless somehow damage absorbing effects are counted. Until then we'll have to calculate the amount shielded by using our mana return from Rapture and subtracting the amount of mana gained by effective healing (only counting those heals that return mana via rapture obviously). The leftover number (divided by the inverse of 2.5%) should give us total damage absorbed. It's a pain in the ass, but that's the best I can come up with for now.
I was under the impression that by the statement "keep PW:S on CD" it is clear that he simply tosses shields around, which means that the rapture return won´t be maximized (since you have to shield 3 other people before being able to shield the MT again).
However, concerning meters I can say that I feel like being quite on par in 10-mans. I haven´t yet noticed a big gap between me and other healers. That may of course change for 25-mans, we have yet to see. Note also, that I have not been able to make recount work for me in the Beta so far, thus I have not been able to really analyze specific fights and differences between the healers in depth (there´s e.g. always the possibility that the other healers simply were morons and thus were unable to top my raw healing-output).
€: @MavSteel: You´re right to some extent. Yet you forget one thing: PW:S is not a heal. It´s as good as a heal if you know the target will get the damage, no argument about that, but you can hardly be sure that random raid members will get targeted again by RSTM spells. If you know it it´s fine, I agree, but you can NEVER set an absorb-spell on the same level as a heal spell. Both have their strengths and both their weaknesses, but absorb does not heal, remeber that (on a sidenote: I´d never use the PW:S glyph to raid. It might be awesome for PvP and to solo but it´s simply way too few healing to really matter in a group/raid).
Tip of the day: Never spec penance without aspiration, the rotation is just so much easier with 6 second downtimes.
On kara, ZA and a couple of heroics, I did not feel the need for aspiration. The higher your penance usage the better, but I don't think it hurts that much to squeeze a cancel cast gheal in there.
Mostly keeping PWS up on both tanks, penance and gheal. PoM and FH and PoH on raid. I did not use much renew tbh. I don't want it ticking on the tank and eating up effective healing from my rapture procing heals. Having big gheals to work with and PWS in between, meant that I really did not fire more than 1 gheal every 3.5 seconds.
I was under the impression that by the statement "keep PW:S on CD" it is clear that he simply tosses shields around, which means that the rapture return won´t be maximized (since you have to shield 3 other people before being able to shield the MT again)
The experiences I related were a combination of trash and boss healing, and on trash it's very easy to anticipate which non-tank will take damage. Additionally on fights like RoS P1 and P3, Gorefiend, Naj, IC, Mother and Illy P2 and P4, if you put it on someone there is a pretty decent chance that 100% of your shield is going to be used. There is so much raid damage going around that some basic awareness of the fights ensures that my PW:S were going on targets that were likely to do damage. Please don't characterize "keep PW:S on CD" as "I just spammed PW:S on any target because I really didn't know who was going to take damage". Just like you'd pre-cast a GH on a target when you thought they may take damage, I PW:S a target if I think there is a chance they'll take damage. If I'm right, and they get hit hard enough to need it, I can follow up with a hasted Penance or GH with a 4% higher crit rate.
The experiences I related were a combination of trash and boss healing, and on trash it's very easy to anticipate which non-tank will take damage. Additionally on fights like RoS P1 and P3, Gorefiend, Naj, IC, Mother and Illy P2 and P4, if you put it on someone there is a pretty decent chance that 100% of your shield is going to be used. There is so much raid damage going around that some basic awareness of the fights ensures that my PW:S were going on targets that were likely to do damage. Please don't characterize "keep PW:S on CD" as "I just spammed PW:S on any target because I really didn't know who was going to take damage". Just like you'd pre-cast a GH on a target when you thought they may take damage, I PW:S a target if I think there is a chance they'll take damage. If I'm right, and they get hit hard enough to need it, I can follow up with a hasted Penance or GH with a 4% higher crit rate.
I already supposed you meant that. I was a bit too picky about your words, sorry for that.
Basically I can see your points in at lvl70, nonetheless what I was referring to is my experience in lvl80 10-mans. I hardly ever feel the urge to shield people other than the tank, unless they drop below say ~50 % in a few seconds (in which case the incoming damage is really high). For most other cases waiting one or two seconds to be able to toss a Penance (if it has been on cooldown in the first place) or just handing out Renews has turned out to be perfectly sufficient. The point is that the damage has to be outhealed anyways (unless you want to leave people at low hp throughout the fight) and placing a shield when I´m quite sure I can deal with the damage just by a HoT seems a bit too cautious.
I've also had occasions when DA hasn't procced off critical heals (and I am specced fully for it). It only appears to be greater heal crits, but i'm trying to replicate it.
I've also had occasions when DA hasn't procced off critical heals (and I am specced fully for it). It only appears to be greater heal crits, but i'm trying to replicate it.
From my experience DA is still somwhat buggy. For example I´ve noticed many times that DA from PoM does not return mana to me. I wasn´t sure whether this was intended or just an oversight, but from hearing these mentioned oddities I feel it is quite safe to say that DA needs some bugfixing done.
I'm posting just to give feedback on the spec suggestions you gave me.
I finally decided to go full disc with a 56/5 build. We've been raiding BT up to Illidian in these two days. I'm using the FH and PW:S glyphs.
My impression:
- Penance is a great spell. Really responsive, fast and saves the day if ever the tank's health slips a bit.
- PW:S works really well, prevents a significative chunk of damage and the healing added by the glyph helps in the situations in which you use it as an emergency spell: PW:S + FH or GH with borrowed time.
- I have not missed a bit the casting time reduction on GH. I've found myself using it very little anyway, as glyphed FH with it's of similar efficiency, less overhealing and thus more effective return through rapture and better responsiveness has served me well.
- Mana efficiency through rapture is great if your shield is used completely and you limit overhealing.
- Comparatively speaking with other healers I've lost positions in the recount healing meters. I used to stand first or second in a 25 raid, now I usually lag to 4th or 5th. However:
* I don't believe the meters reflect accurately disc's strength, as damage prevention is not included in the healing meters and I believe the added utility via PI, PS, DS and grace is quite nice.
* I believe this is more a result of the changes to other healing classes than of me speccing disc, as the pure holy priest in our raid is no better positioned than I am. Besides, I have specced directly into disc, so I did not test myself how holy works in this patch.
* Paladins top healing meters in my raid by a huge (and by huge I mean galaxy-wide huge) amount. This might be in part caused by the bug I think seal of light / judgement of light has now, as in fact, the 2nd on the healing meter was consistently the paladin tank.
* The fact of BT being a joke with the patch, doesn't help the reliability of the healing meters.
All in all, I like disc. I find it really fun and different from what I've been doing for ages, so whether I remain full disc or go back to a holy spec will depend completely on whether I'm allowed to raid as disc, which I'm afraid will probably have some relationship with the position I get on healing meters.
Thanks to everyone for your suggestions!
Last edited by Suhné : 10/17/08 at 10:12 AM.
Reason: Typo
You can calculate the effects of grace on the tank from the WWS report. You decrease damage by 3% so add 3% of the damage the tank takes to your healing. You also get about 10% of your healing as a absorption from aegis and an additional 200 HPS or so if you are keeping PWS up on the tank as soon as weakened soul expires, more if you are using the PvP gloves to reduce weakened soul duration. In BT disc will be behind holy because of the large amount of AoE healing. You really cant count judgement of light to a paladins healing. Its just silly.
You can calculate the effects of grace on the tank from the WWS report. You decrease damage by 3% so add 3% of the damage the tank takes to your healing. You also get about 10% of your healing as a absorption from aegis and an additional 200 HPS or so if you are keeping PWS up on the tank as soon as weakened soul expires, more if you are using the PvP gloves to reduce weakened soul duration. In BT disc will be behind holy because of the large amount of AoE healing. You really cant count judgement of light to a paladins healing. Its just silly.
I agree. Judgement of Light produces silly amounts of healing for the Paladin (already had the situation on Sartharion where the tanking paladin did more than 20 % of the total healing, I was only very neatly ahead of him according to Recount). However, you can hardly calculate the said absorb/mitigate effects the way you suggest. You might be able to retrieve a tendency with such calculations, but no more.
I understand that disc priests will have problems to justify themselves in raids that are merely meter-focused but I´m afraid that will be the way it is (unless there is some way to add Absorb numbers and such to the meters, though, then you could also put a tank´s armor-reduction in such meters, ultimately producing pointless data). Basically I´d say you have to show your worth to your raid (if you are unable to do it by mere argumentation in your forum). Just run heroics, run 10mans as disc and most people that can look outside of their box will recognize just how strong disc is, no matter the meters. And if they are unable to get it do not refrain from explaining and argumenting. Innovations will always need argument over established things, that´s just how it works and you should be aware of that if you want to play disc in your raid.
I started to play with Discipline as well and can echo some of the sentiments here. Although I did not raid yet, doing some heroics with the new playstyle was refreshing. However it feels so untangible, even to myself. I don't really know if the people are taking that few damage because of the changes of the patch or due to me preventing the damage.
Now maybe that won't be a huge issue for the raid you are in, but it might be a showstopper for any priest that wants to PuG, as the community at large can be quite conservative and/or uninformed and slow in adopting new stuff ("lol disc is pvp spec. get out").
So I really wonder if there's nothing we can do about that. The combat log does report absorption values and I believe we are agreed upon that this value, if re-attributable to a disc priest, could be interpreted as healing done. Let's assume this is doable, then all that's left to do is to find out whatever our healing targets can do themselves that makes them absorb. In other words, the question is what other absorption occurs that is not a discipline healer's effect and if this is completely distinguishable from our damage mitigation? Since only one PW:S can be on any one target and the shield going up is cleary distinguishable, we generally know which priest is responsible for the damage prevented.
So what kind of other absorption shields can there be ? Mage and Warlock can have shields on their own for example, but I wonder if those are up concurrently with a PW:S, which shield is consumed first and if this data is easily obtainable from the combat log or the combat events (is the absorption of both shields separate or is it merged?).
If we can extract all sources that cause damage absorption, we would achieve the goal of having a clearly visible performance meter. It's not healing done but it's "healing made unnecessary". It could be mapped on the healing meter and there simply be used to compare different healers and healing styles.
I'm pretty convinced that this is what needs to be done in order to have meaningful data basis to judge the true gains of having a deep discipline healer in the raid/group. The damage reduction from Grace can be derived from the buff uptime and total damage taken during that window, I'd expect but that is something of a calculation akin to a affliction lock's contribution pre-3.0.
You can calculate the effects of grace on the tank from the WWS report. You decrease damage by 3% so add 3% of the damage the tank takes to your healing. You also get about 10% of your healing as a absorption from aegis and an additional 200 HPS or so if you are keeping PWS up on the tank as soon as weakened soul expires, more if you are using the PvP gloves to reduce weakened soul duration. In BT disc will be behind holy because of the large amount of AoE healing. You really cant count judgement of light to a paladins healing. Its just silly.
Wish that could be done. However, it's not that easy, as many times the tank will have Blessing of Sanctuary, thus making any damage reduction provided by Grace redundant. :-/
The DA effect is even more difficult to measure, the way you pointed might be an indication, but just that.
By the way, don't get me wrong: I love disc. But until its strength can be more objectively measured and proved to RL is not gonna be that easy to justify your raid spot, at least to RL that cannot see ahead of the healing meters.
I started to play with Discipline as well and can echo some of the sentiments here. Although I did not raid yet, doing some heroics with the new playstyle was refreshing. However it feels so untangible, even to myself. I don't really know if the people are taking that few damage because of the changes of the patch or due to me preventing the damage.
Now maybe that won't be a huge issue for the raid you are in, but it might be a showstopper for any priest that wants to PuG, as the community at large can be quite conservative and/or uninformed and slow in adopting new stuff ("lol disc is pvp spec. get out").
So I really wonder if there's nothing we can do about that. The combat log does report absorption values and I believe we are agreed upon that this value, if re-attributable to a disc priest, could be interpreted as healing done. Let's assume this is doable, then all that's left to do is to find out whatever our healing targets can do themselves that makes them absorb. In other words, the question is what other absorption occurs that is not a discipline healer's effect and if this is completely distinguishable from our damage mitigation? Since only one PW:S can be on any one target and the shield going up is cleary distinguishable, we generally know which priest is responsible for the damage prevented.
So what kind of other absorption shields can there be ? Mage and Warlock can have shields on their own for example, but I wonder if those are up concurrently with a PW:S, which shield is consumed first and if this data is easily obtainable from the combat log or the combat events (is the absorption of both shields separate or is it merged?).
If we can extract all sources that cause damage absorption, we would achieve the goal of having a clearly visible performance meter. It's not healing done but it's "healing made unnecessary". It could be mapped on the healing meter and there simply be used to compare different healers and healing styles.
I'm pretty convinced that this is what needs to be done in order to have meaningful data basis to judge the true gains of having a deep discipline healer in the raid/group. The damage reduction from Grace can be derived from the buff uptime and total damage taken during that window, I'd expect but that is something of a calculation akin to a affliction lock's contribution pre-3.0.
As I suggested a few posts ago, you can calculate the amount absorbed by simply looking at the returns from Rapture. Mage/Warlock shields aren't going to give the Priest mana back from Rapture.
X = Total Mana Returned by Rapture
Y = Total Mana Returned by Rapture from Healing
Z = Total Mana Returned by Rapture from Shields
X = Y + Z
To calculate Y you simply need to take the effective healing done by GHeal, FHeal and Penance and multiply by .025. Subtract that from X and you have Z. Unfortunately this doesn't differentiate between PWS and Divine Aegis, but at least it's something. It would also be slightly skewed any time you do effective healing at full mana, which, obviously should be very rare.
Well the mana returned is based on your mana, so the amount returned depends on how much mana you have. It also is affected by how much you actually heal for. It is a possibility but of course will only work for players with Rapture.
I would really like blizzard to fix this problem themselves in the combat log by showing who triggered the absorption effect.
I did a bunch of testing this morning with Prayer of Mending (which now being able to crit is great!). Being able to proc Surge of Light and Inspiration (though not needed usually) it would be awesome to see PoM get added to the spells that can activate Holy Concentration.
Any thoughts on that? I think it could potentially be very powerful, especially when on a fight like M'uru or KJ where you almost always get your 5 bounces. Perhaps they did not want to include it in fear of it being too strong.
I've learned to stop worrying and love the Grace. Its true the BoSanctuary may be used in its stead, but assuming a Disc priest is around, the tank may have Kings instead, making for -3% Damage, +10% Health. Its a huge net win not making the tank choose between the two. Plus, in situations where the tank is taking a lot of damage, mana and rage should not be much of an issue and the other effects of BoSanctuary are largely wasted.
I heard something about the combat log being updated to show absorption more clearly (will try to find it). I would expect that to make its way into a patch soon, allowing meters to keep track of Discipline contributions.
Here's a 3.0 SWP log of me healing as Disc. Actually the meters don't look too bad for us at the moment. Recount was bugged counting JoL for the Paladin so the meters were way off but WWS actually looks right. Who knows if this will translate well to 80 raids but this is promising.
10/16/08, 11:03 AM
