Discipline and Holy WotLK Talent Preview and discussion. - Page 97

François · 09/18/08, 5:09 AM

Originally Posted by Incoherence

That was always there, actually.

The Holy Concentration change is slightly vexing because it breaks even at 20% crit from the previous version (which was generally agreed to be weak), but it's a decent idea.

edit: Reconsidering, I'm less sold on this. Especially if you have Inspiration, the few seconds after a crit heal are generally not the few seconds where you really need haste, because you've generally just topped off the tank, and he's taking less damage. The RNG isn't much better, but it has the capability to proc when you actually need the haste to catch up. Couple that with the fact that it breaks even at 20% compared to the last build (and compared to live HC), I'm pretty sure it needs some help still. (Does anyone know what crit chance the premades at 80 have? How about an 80 in Naxxramas gear?)

Once the servers come up and I can play with the numbers a bit, I'm probably going to offer the following suggestions:
1. Give it a chance to proc equal to the crit chance times some percentage, but don't restrict it to procs on critical heals. Same scaling behavior, but doesn't ALWAYS proc right when Inspiration and a giant heal bomb have just gone off.
2. Increase the crit chance conversion rate. 20% breakpoint strikes me as too high; 15% (which would imply a 60% chance on crit, or by #1 a chance equal to 60% of your crit rate) seems more reasonable. I need to go check what crit rate the level 80 premades have, though.

very late edit: posted thread on beta forums with idea #1, since I'm fairly sure #2 will take care of itself: WotLK Beta (US-English) Forums -> Make Holy Concentration a separate roll

I see the IHC Haste buff more as a way to secure the mana gain of HC : as of today, when HC proc, you should transform your downranked GH spam to cast-canceling max rank, in order to get more out-of-5-sec-regen. With IHC, it seems like you could wait for the tank to get hit, and use your haste do effective reactive heal with GH. This means critical heals open a mana regen sequence.

As a side note, the procs on critical heal give Binding heal an advantage, because you have two chances to proc on a single cast. Add the change on Surge of light, and you get good mana returns from crit.

A 20% Breakpoint seems ok, you need only 10% from base+equip, 5% talented, 5% Moonkin aura or Elemental oath. I quite like the idea to make crit valuable for every spec.

Lambi · 09/18/08, 5:30 AM

You guys do understand how good the new holy conc is I hope? With the CoH glyph you have 6 chances to crit per cast... that's alot of hasted and free heals, or did I miss something?

Edit: Don't listen to me, I'm too tired to read it appears. However binding heal does actually give you two chances to crit, and that's going to make that spell even more powerful.

james · 09/18/08, 5:40 AM

I'm curious as to what happens when you get a SoL proc AND a iHC proc.

On the new SoL, I like how it will break up a GH rotation but don't like how it will still trigger the full GCD. I'd prefer an instant/freebie PoH if they're on offer - could be very nice being able to crank out 3k instant healing - but removal of part of the GCD would be nice.

But right now, the tree is feeling pretty bloated at the top end - which is good and bad. It's a bit of deja vu, but I'd very much like them to move Empowered Healing from tier 8 to tier 10, swapping with Divine Providence, with the latter talent reduced to 2 or 3 points.

Or they could free up some talent points by reducing Unbreakable Will to a 3pter, dropping imp Fort to tier 1 and slotting Meditation in at tier 2. Though still would like to have some trainable "Stance Mastery" style passive for spirit in combat because I can see a lot of shadowpriest build without it, which kind of sucks for them since their gear is loaded with it and that "10% spirit = +shadow" talent doesn't go anywhere near justifying it, though imp Spirit Tap goes some way.

Actually, why not just make every class get 15% spirit regen whilst casting as a passive?

Zorath · 09/18/08, 8:02 AM

About guardian spirit.

Ive been thinking.

We need something nice looking in our tree. How about a guardian spirit that stays at your side, maybe hovering at your right shoulder, giving a smal, balanced passive effect, but mostly looking really cool.

And ofc the on scarifies effect needs to be upped a tad. 20% would not be overpowered. thats atleast one hit taken after death.

james · 09/18/08, 8:18 AM

"Twin Disciplines (Tier 1) Increases your spell power on instant spells by 1%. (Previously increased spell damage and healing)"

I always think of tier 1 talents as being those that are useful for levelling (hence why I tolerated Wand Spec) and am pretty confused by this now underwhelming talent. Your lvl 10 priests will not have much +spell power so will barely benefit from this talent. Such a shame, Discipline could have been an interesting levelling path.

That said, it's the only talent in 2 expansions that actually effects Renew. /golfclap.

I like the idea of giving the 51 pt talents a passive effect that indicates you've specced them, even if that passive effect is only visual.

Havoc12 · 09/18/08, 9:01 AM

Originally Posted by 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.

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.

1) They say its there so its going to be there so I included it.

2) Sorry but my estimate is perfectly accurate. Discipline has 4% more crit defacto from renewed hope and they also have a whole 15% more intellect and will stack more int than spirit than holy. They are also going to fully spec into divine specialisation, while holy priests need to take 1-3 points away from there. Instead holy priests will have to take more spirit. Anything less than 25% crit for discipline is a non issue. I can raise the holy crit to 18% if that will make you feel better but its not going to make a big dent to the difference. The reason is that disc has effectively double scaling due to aegis, which in real terms is much higher beacuse aegis has no overheal. If disc and holy have roughly the same max HPS, disc blows holy out of the water for tank healing due to PWS and aegis, which have effectively zero overheal. Holy needs 10-20% more HPS and the old test of faith to be better.

I am afraid you misunderstood the calcuation. I did indeed take into account the 5% haste, but I did so in a more accurate way. If you add up the spell cast times of all spells in the disc sequence you will find that its more than 30 seconds and applying the 5% factor reduces that time to below 30 seconds. Thus I have taken enlightenment into account in the number of spells included in the 30 second sequence.

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.

Please refer to the calculations in my post. I already take divine aegis fully into account with 100% accuracy in calculating max HPS. The formula giving the average value of a disc heal excluding overheal is

(Base + spellpower*3/3.5*1.88)*(1 + 0.5*crit + crit*0.45)

The value of a the average divine aegis sheild is (Base + spellpower*3/3.5*1.88)*0.45, and the average increase per heal by divine aegis is (Base + spellpower*3/3.5*1.88)*0.45*crit

To take overhealing into account:
(Base + spellpower*3/3.5*1.88)*[(1-crit)*NonCritEffective% + 1.5*crit*CritEffective%

(Base + spellpower*3/3.5*1.88)*(1*NonCritEffective% + crit*(1.5*CritEffective%-NonCritEffective%) + crit*0.45)

NonCritEffective% = 1 - %overheal on non crit heals

CritEffective% = 1- %overheal on crit heals

This formula can be simplfied by assuming %overheal on crits and non crits is the same is the same:

(Base + spellpower*3/3.5*1.88)*( (1+0.5crit)*NonCritEffective% + crit*0.45)

I have posted more about how divine aegis affects HPS in a previous post.

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New holy changes. I am surprised no one spotted it

Lets say you have surge of light and holy concentration. You score a crit with gheal. You proc both holy concentration and surge of light. What happens when you press the flash heal button. Does the free instant FH consume the holy concentration buff and one of the hasted charges? If it does I would rather cut off my finger than spend a single point in SoL.

Even so, surge of light clashes with nearly every other talent. The free instant FH, will ignore the crit boost from test of faith and will reduce the overall number of crits you get, which also means less holy concentration. Also when spamming FH, every crit produces an instant spell which is not faster in any way than a normal flash heal and it cant crit to boot.

So SoL in a raid senario only gains the priest mana, but it actually nerfs HPS by reducing flash heal crits.

Sure a combo of Gheal crit + 2xgheal+instant FH provides extremely high burst HPS, but overall HPS gets reduced as a result.

The main value of this talent is PvP, as free instant heals are lifesavers no matter how you look at it, but PvP viability for holy does not look very good right now. The only real benefit of SoL now is procs from PoM while you are moving for a free FH along the way. I am going to give the new SoL 2 thumbs down. I would much rather we got an increase in clearcasting proc chance. I think this is a patently stupid change.

Seriously if you are trying to catch up to AoE damage by spamming say CoH, would you be crazy enough to blow 1.5 seconds on a free flash heal? Nope what you gonna do is finish your CoH spamming then use the FH on a single target. All it does is saves you some mana, but it also means you are going to lose a possible imp IHC proc or a possible test of faith crit. That is 2 talent points spent very badly. I can't help wondering if this is a joke. Look we give you an instant FH, after you crit which is in no way faster than a normal FH and which cant crit right after we make clearcasting proc of crits. I am going to go to my room and cry now

The new improved holy concentration is nice, as its now 2xhasted spells which doubles the haste output.

Overall we are looking a 0.45% chance of entering holy concentration per crit point. Its still very low.

tasha · 09/18/08, 9:35 AM

Anyone on beta tested Martyrdom with the new pushback mechanism ? I just noticed the 20% interrupt resist effect was changed to 20% interrupt time reduction (Wich is good. Bad RNG, bad!). But from the wording it's only up when the clearcasting effect is up on you -> not good enough.

Holy Con + Imp Holy Con seem a little expensive in talent points for only 45% proc, especially when you compare it to the new Surge of Light which costs only 2 points for a half-weaker effect (procs more often with CoH but can't crit). Also if you have both Holy Con and Surge procing together, you probably can't use your instant flash heal right away because it would waste the Holy Conc.
Besides, I don't like being pushed toward Holy Spec, considering the ever-bad scaling of crit for healing throughput. (Yes I'm jealous of resto shamans' Ancestral Awakening).
edit : disregard the last sentence. Dumb me. Still too many RNG.
edit 2 : from reading Havoc's edit I assume Surge's proc ought to be off the gcd for efficient functionning. 6 points for Holy Conc still too much imho.

It seems PVP Discipline priests will have to balance crit vs spirit pieces of gear. More theorycrafting fun :p.

Schieni · 09/18/08, 10:47 AM

I'm a little bit confused about CoH-CoolDown. In PTR-Patchnotes they tell us there is a 6sec CD. On Beta-Server there is no CD. What's right? Will there be a CD or not?

Isin · 09/18/08, 10:53 AM

Originally Posted by Havoc12

New holy changes. I am surprised no one spotted it

Lets say you have surge of light and holy concentration. You score a crit with gheal. You proc both holy concentration and surge of light. What happens when you press the flash heal button. Does the free instant FH consume the holy concentration buff and one of the hasted charges? If it does I would rather cut off my finger than spend a single point in SoL.

I'm almost certain that the free Flash Heal will consume the clearcasting proc (it will be one of the first things I test on beta when I get home).

However, I do like the new synergy with Inner Focus- where I no longer have to wait for Clearcasting to pop before going into an earring, inner focus to get some 5sr ticks. Now I can pop inner focus and an earring (or the equivalent +spirit/regen trinket in wotlk), which is likely to cause SoL and Holy Concentration Procs, creating a likely free heal chain and likely incurring a nice period out of the 5sr.

Supermerkicus · 09/18/08, 11:27 AM

I like most of what I'm seeing, but I'm disappointed yet not surprised to see Unbreakable Will still sitting at a useless 15% reduction in stun/silence/fear.

Is that even noticeable at all on anything besides a lengthy Warlock fear?

The 30% it *should* be would drop all sorts of stuns by about 1 second - the 15% is not even relevant :/

Kamakaze · 09/18/08, 11:34 AM

Originally Posted by james

"Twin Disciplines (Tier 1) Increases your spell power on instant spells by 1%. (Previously increased spell damage and healing)"

I always think of tier 1 talents as being those that are useful for levelling (hence why I tolerated Wand Spec) and am pretty confused by this now underwhelming talent. Your lvl 10 priests will not have much +spell power so will barely benefit from this talent. Such a shame, Discipline could have been an interesting levelling path.

I agree that if the talent does what it implies, then it would be totally useless for leveling up. The same can be said for things like Improved Inner Fire, which is not worth it until leveling above 70 when it actually gains spellpower.

I do wonder though if the new Twin Disciplines wording means that it will affect Power Word: Shield aswell. Since it adds to the spellpower on instant spells it may well add to PW:S and was changed for that sole reason. It does make the talent much more confusing though.

gia · 09/18/08, 11:39 AM

Originally Posted by Supermerkicus

I like most of what I'm seeing, but I'm disappointed yet not surprised to see Unbreakable Will still sitting at a useless 15% reduction in stun/silence/fear.

Is that even noticeable at all on anything besides a lengthy Warlock fear?

The 30% it *should* be would drop all sorts of stuns by about 1 second - the 15% is not even relevant :/

That should really be looked at if they ever decide that our trees need a diet treatment.

It should be made 3 points for 10/20/30% reduction, also martyrdom or imp pw:f should be moved up to tier 1 to fill the void (and provide an alternate path to twin disciplines for pvp specs).

Mental Agility reduced to 3 points for 3/6/9% reduction would be great as well.

Having another 2 points trimmed somewhere from the tree would help too, but I can't decide another place where it would make sense, maybe merging imp. fort and imp. DS?

Also on the holy side 3 points Holy Spec for 2/4/6% crit as mentioned previously.

Kamakaze · 09/18/08, 11:46 AM

Originally Posted by gia

That should really be looked at if they ever decide that our trees need a diet treatment.

It should be made 3 points for 10/20/30% reduction, also martyrdom or imp pw:f should be moved up to tier 1 to fill the void (and provide an alternate path to twin disciplines for pvp specs).

Mental Agility reduced to 3 points for 3/6/9% reduction would be great as well.

Having another 2 points trimmed somewhere from the tree would help too, but I can't decide another place where it would make sense, maybe merging imp. fort and imp. DS?

Also on the holy side 3 points Holy Spec for 2/4/6% crit as mentioned previously.

I have always thought it would make sense to merge Improved Fort, and Improved PW:S. They are both called "improved", and both are "power words". Combine the talents and change it to "Improved Power Words", "Increases the effect of your Fortitude by 30% and your PW:S by 15%"

Supermerkicus · 09/18/08, 12:23 PM

That should really be looked at if they ever decide that our trees need a diet treatment.

It should be made 3 points for 10/20/30% reduction, also martyrdom or imp pw:f should be moved up to tier 1 to fill the void (and provide an alternate path to twin disciplines for pvp specs).

Mental Agility reduced to 3 points for 3/6/9% reduction would be great as well.

Having another 2 points trimmed somewhere from the tree would help too, but I can't decide another place where it would make sense, maybe merging imp. fort and imp. DS?

Also on the holy side 3 points Holy Spec for 2/4/6% crit as mentioned previously.

I think you can justify the 5 talent points for 30% reduction in 3 effects - but Blizzard is probably arguing that it would be 'overpowered' if it were 30%.

Here's a comparison of the other similar talents, which all got massive boosts in the conversion, while ours just went from 15% resistance to a worthless 15% reduction.

-Note the point cost reduction in iron will, and the doubling (or tripling) of effects.

-Unbreakable Will
Live: 3/6/9/12/15% chance to resist stun/silence/fear
WoTLK : 3/6/9/12/15% reduction in duration of stun/silence/fear

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

-Nerves of Steel
Live : 5/10% chance to resist stuns and fears
WoTLK : 15/30% reduction in duration of stuns and fears

-Iron Will
Live : 3/6/9/12/15% chance to resist stun and charm
WoTLK : 10/20/30% reduction in duration of stun and charm

-Stoicism
Live : 5/10% chance to resist stun effects and 15/30% chance to resist dispel effects (talk about an overpowered talent btw...guarantee you this is way overbudget)
WoTLK: 10/20/30% chance to resist dispel effects and 10/20/30% reduction in stun duration

-Surefooted
Live : 5/10/15% chance to resist movement impairing effects, 1/2/3% increase to hit
WoTLK : 1/2/3% incrase hit, 16/32/50% reduction in duration of movement impairing effects

Pretty obvious disparity that isn't covered by "unbreakable will affects 3 things/ is a tier1 talent".

Starfire · 09/18/08, 1:16 PM

This reminds me of something I've always hated. I hate how when Holy Concentration is up, if you use Inner Focus, both are consumed -_-.

That said, it did occur to me if you have Surge of Light and Holy Concentration proc, you could just cast two Greater Heals -then- Flash Heal.

Also, we can use this to think outside of the box. Let's go with Nidaba's numbers and assume a 20% crit rate. You hit Inner Focus and you now have a 45% chance to crit per a target if you use Circle of Healing or Prayer of Healing (and well Binding Heal). 1- .55^5 = 94.9% (1 - ,55^2 = 69.8%) chance at least one person will be critically healed. Then 50% chance of that to be a free flash heal.

(Roughly 70% chance your binding heal gets a crit, then 45% chance of that to proc IHC is pretty hot too).