• constantius

Also, 1000 spellpower is so completely underpowered that nothing should ever be computed at that level. Basic raid buffs put me over 1600 spellpower at level 70, and at 80 it'll be closer to 2000. At 2000 spellpower, the 20% extra from Empowered Healing starts to really make a huge difference in efficiency. Obviously this only really applies to Holy, not Disc.

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

 

Havoc12

The math has already been done on this Return from aegis and DA

The return from aegis and rapture can easily 0.3-0.5mp5 per point of int, it also means that at high int, say ~1300, you could be seeing a return of 300-400 mp5 just from rapture and aegis, which is why a disc priest really wants to rely mostly on penance, flash, gheal and PWS for healing.

===================

@70: Flash heal: 470 mana, 1190 base healing -- Gheal 714 mana (talented), 2590 base healing. With the glyph flash heal costs 423 mana.

Scaling is cast time/3.5*188+EH ==> 100% for flash and 201% for gheal.

At 1500 spellpower

FH = 2690/470 = 5.72 base HPM
GH = 5605/714 = 7.85 base HPM.

Other factors boosting HPM affect both spells in roughly the same way, though FH benefits a little more from crit. This means that without the glyph it the overheal it takes for the two spells to have equal HPM is

i.e if FH has 15% OH and gheal has 38% OH they have the same HPM. The same is true for 20% and 42%, 25% and 45%, 30% and 49%, 40% and 56%.

Adding the FH glyph changes base HPM for FH to 6.34, so the pairs change to 15 and 30, 20% and 35%, 25% and 39%, 30% and 43%, 40% and 51% and so on.

As you can see the OH situation changes quite dramatically.

This however is where serendipity and the 2t5 + 4t6 bonus enter the game. Serendipity has made the 2t5 bonus a lot more powrefull. A gheal that overheals costs 535 mana due to serendipity and the 2t5 bonus takes this to 435. Basically a gheal that overheals even by 1 point with the 2t5 bonus costs about as much as a glyphed flash heal. Add to that the 4t6 bonus and gheal is really well above FH.

The value of the glyph is not in flash heal surpassing the HPM of gheal. This is not very likely. The value is that it means you now have a 2.6-2.8k heal that cost 317 mana with serendipity. Which is pretty much what you used the old gheal rank 1 for, only FH is a 1.5 sec cast. Basically the glyph provides you with the cheapest possible way of actively healing a deficit less than 3k.

The gain of the glyph is about 43-35 mana per cast depending on whether you proc serendipity or not. Its by no means required, but I think its the highest return glyph we have except for CoH.

I currently have the renew and flash heal glyph, which is the combo I like best, since I cast maybe 10 dispels or PWS per fight, but I have 1 renew up pretty much 24/7.

 

Tashia

I think SoL is bugged on live at this time, was doing a MH raid the other day and I got SoL procs even tho I don't have the talents. This is my spec:
The World of Warcraft Armory

And I was the only priest in the raid (heard of some bug that other priests with the talents could make you proc SoL).

 

◊ Cadfael

I wouldn't put PS on the black list for tanks just right now. Once DPS catches up on tank threat maybe, but whenever you see your tank basically have double the threat than the next player (ie, probably now), you can absolutely safely drop PS on him and profit from the damage reduction.

I generally keep it for emergency situations for non-tanks, but I really think that if it can be safely put on tanks, it absolutely should. So it might remain good for tanks at the new raid start at 80 but probably no longer easily done so later in raiding. 43% less damage taken (I'm including a full grace stack here) for 8 seconds on a tank is nothing to overlook, in my opinion. It could really save the day or trivialize phase changes with spike damage. Also everywhere where a boss is tauntable and it can be coordinated with tanks it can really prevent a huge amount of damage.

 

Hegen

I can confirm this - cleaned up Zul'jin yesterday, was the only holy priest in the raid (second priest was shadow) and got several SoL procs during the fight without actually having the talent at that time.

"Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls." - Nidaba

 

Tashia

In my raid I was the only priest, not even shadow..

 

Starfire

Did either of you guys have a mage in your group with Focus Magic?

 

Isin

Here is a WWS documenting the phenomena:

Wow Web Stats

Here is a discipline priest (i think he was 55/6/0) who gained 3 procs of Surge of Light:

Wow Web Stats

 

Squishypants

Actually similar things are happening to other classes as well. I believe people are retaining some benefits from talents after switching specs. For example my bf is a fury warrior and while spec'd for TG he was able to equip his OH warglaive in his MH. Then we spec'd out of TG he was still able to equip 2 2H weapons for awhile.

 

Hegen

I asked - she did not have the talent on Sunday, though she does now. So, no Focus magic in my case.

@Squishypants: that could be an explanation - I had 2/2 SoL on Saturday, then specced out of it before helping my guildmates with ZJ a day later.

"Ferals are obscenely good at soaking balls." - Nidaba

 

Rebelde

Has anyone take this info and made a comprehensive set of scales for Pawn yet?

 

hexpoll

Here is a calculation of the increased HPS you get from critical hits for Holy and Disc. For these purposes, I am computing the percentage of an extra heal you get for having a crit. This can be used along with your crit percentage to estimate your percent HPS increase from your critical strike. For example, I am a Disc priest with 20% Crit, so my HPS is increased by around 19% from the quation 20% * 0.95 taking the result from below.


Computing the bonus for Discipline is easy.

Your basic bonus from a critical heal is 50%. This leads us to a heal of 150% of a single cast. Now, Divine Aegis gives us 30% of that as a bubble, leaving us with another 45% of a single cast. This means that our critical heals are worth 195% of a regular heal. This is very close to what the DPS gets, and would be equivalent to getting a talent that says "Increases your Critical Hit Bonus by 90%" if we discounted overhealing and such.

-------Discipline Crit Bonus = 0.95-----------------

Computing the bonus HPS from Holy Spec Crit is somewhat difficult.

Assuming a critical hit, you are rewarded with two 30% hasted GHeals 45% of the time.
That means you have
0.45*0.6*(Greater Heal) extra healing from this effect in a crit

The Greater Heals you cast after, can themselves crit.
0.45*0.6*(GHealBase + Crit*0.5*GHealBase) = 0.45*0.6*(GHealBase)*(1+0.5*Crit)

There is a chance, however, that the spell cast before the crit in question was also a crit, meaning the first hasted GHeal is lost (would have happened anyway). The chance of the previous spell causing this haste effect is Crit*0.45.
0.45*[ 0.6*(GHealBase)*(1+0.5*Crit) - 0.45*Crit*(0.3)*(GHealBase)*(1+0.5*Crit) ]

Now, we will collect our terms
GHealBase*0.45*[(0.6+0.3*Crit) - (0.3+0.16*Crit)*Crit*0.45)]

This is a non-linear equation, so I plotted it in Octave (a free Matlab clone for linux). You could easily do this on Excel as well. The result is that as your Crit goes from 0.00 to 1.00, the effective HPS increase of the crit goes from 27% to 31%. Call it 28%, that's close enough for reasonable values of crit.

The result then, is that for HPS purposes, as a Holy spec your critical heals are scaled by an additional 50%+28% = 78%. This is less than most DPS classes that get 100% extra damage, and is slightly less than the 90% scaling that Disc gets. It would be equivalent to a talent that says "Increases your Critical hit Bonus by 56%" If we were a DPS class and did not care about mana.

There may be ways to abuse this talent by casting lots of flash heals and then using the Procs to cast Greater Heals. I'll look into that when I have the time, and if it is not too crazy-good, I'll share it. If it is that great, I'll keep it to myself so as to not be nerfed .

----------Holy Crit Bonus = 0.78-----------------------

 

Tashia

I dont know if there was a mage with Focus Magic (was a pug) but what I do know is that I never had the SoL talents not now and not pre 3.0.

 

• typobox

With the newfound usefulness of Intellect, could Ember Skyfire/Skyflare Diamond possibly be a viable metagem? My initial inkling is that it wouldn't be enough to surpass the regen from Insightful Earthstorm/Earthsiege's proc at any reasonable value of Intellect, but I'm not solid enough on the new Intellect->mp5 mechanics to run the numbers myself.

 

Havoc12

You complicate the calculations too much for no reason. More importantly ignoring overheal invalidates your calculations completely because crit does not scale in the same way as your non crit HPS with overheal.

The possibility of overwrites in this situation is calculated in a very simple manner. What is the chance that on any given spell you will have holy concentration up? The answer is it is the chance that at least 1 of your previous spells has been a holy concentration proc. That means either one of your last two spells or both being a crit, which takes care of overwrites as the chance of an overwrite is included.

The chance that you will have gotten a clearcast in your last two spells is easily calculated. It is 1-(chance that you will NOT proc a clearcast in any of your last two spells). The chance that you will not proc a clearcast on any given spell is 1-0.45*crit. Thus

Thus the chance that you have the haste buff up on any given spell is

At 25% crit this is 0.2134. Since the haste buff is 30% haste this is equivalent to 6.4% haste.

This is multiplicative with the increase in HPS from crit, which is (1+k*crit)

k is the critical HPS modifier due to overheal. It ranges from 0-0.5, but the best value to use IMO is 0.3.

at 20% crit that gives a 11.466% bonus to healing which is 57.3% benefit from critical.



At 20% crit the total crit benefit of holy is

The benefit of aegis on HPS depends on your current HPS it is simply



The benefit of aegis is ofc additive with crit , so the overall crit multiplier for disc is as you calculated except you have to take overheal into account so:



I would simply redo your calculations using these formulas if you want to be sure you are accurate.

Cancelling to gheals on clearcasts is standard practice.

 

Inken

Interesting comments on SoL from a few people.

I personally am enjoying it, for two things.

One, I use a focus macro with the boss set to focus and smite him when ever its proc'd and healing isnt too busy.

Two, I wait for it to proc when i start to think my mana burn rate is two high then sit back to get out oft he 5 sec rule knowing i can hit an instant flash heal on some one with out breaking my regen.

I also use it to chip in on tank healing when on raid heals, but thats more just to pass the time

So far I like the free instant flash heals more then I thought I would.

 

Bogart

On that note (I don't think it has been mentioned as of yet), it would be interesting to find out if the instant Flash Heals from Surge of Light benefit from the Twin Disciplines talent. The tooltip would suggest that they would, however, it could be an oversight on Blizzard's behalf.

 

hexpoll

You are correct about the overheal. I am currently specced Disc, and originally did this as a comparison of theoretical maximum output, as I believe that Discipline is underpowered in throughput.

Your solution is much more elegant than mine, but comes to the same result of a 57% increase to the effect of criticals for holy (my numbers gave me around 56%).

BTW, I see how you inputted latex into your post, so I'll try to do that from now on.

 

Xaphania

I have a question about disc healing. Raiding throughout TBC, I learned to not shield the tanks except in emergencies because they would be bitching at me about how I was hurting their threat generation. So it would seem that disc healing, with PW:S and Divine Aegis up so often, would just irritate tanks. Is this just a non-issue now because of the way their threat was buffed?

And while I'm thinking about it, what about shielding tanks before pulls? I remember when we were first learning Kalecgos, I started to shield our MT before every pull, because I noticed his health was dropping alarmingly fast while we were all getting into position. But then eventually he told me to cut it out, and said he had been clicking off the shield each time.

 

Isin

Any tank who is complaining about shields nerfing their threat has not been paying attention for the last month. It is your unfortunate duty as a disc priest to re-educate them.

If your tank is clicking off your shields, then he may as well be clicking off "Grace", "Divine Aegis", "Inspiration", and "Blessing of Sanctuary" for that matter.

 

Shocktar

Phenominal work as always, Constantinus. Thanks for all your efforts.

I do, however, have to jump on the bandwagon that you're undervaluing Holy Reach. I think it has many values beyond the simple 44% increase in total area healed (I am quoting from earlier in the thread, so forgive me if that number hasn't been 100% confirmed yet). I see tremendous value in the speed of target selection. Having a larger radius allows me to pick my target much more liberally, without first having to eye the battlefield and determine where the AOE damage is occuring (or with the ability to do this less accurately). With a larger 'Circle' of healing, I feel more confident simply choosing, say, a melee raider or a caster that's just taken damage and COH'ing them from my raid frames. This, for me, is a much faster process.
Additionally, I stand by the logic that COH is by far and away (opinion, again) the most important and powerful spell in a holy priest's arsenal, possibly the most powerful healing spell in the game currently. Any talents I can take that make it more effective (and I absolutely view 'hits more targets' as 'more effective', the glyph is a Godsend), I'm not opposed to. If Holy Reach allows me to get that 6th target in, say, 5 times over the course of fight, I find more value in that than I would in additional healing and crit chance on targets at or below 50% health (which, if I'm AOE'ing right, with the shamans, should be rare).

Gear is how hard you hit. Skill is how often you hit.
http://sig.gamerdna.com/quizzes/INFL...tealth5325.png

 

Xaphania

k that's what I thought, thanks. The Kalecgos thing happened a couple months ago though (we were 3/6 when the patch came out). So just to make sure, it is completely safe to shield a tank before a pull now?

 

Isin

I don't want to make blanket statements, but yes, in general pre-shielding is fine. In particular in a raid scenario where a tank should be getting misdirected on any kind of pull that is threat sensitive, and with tanks generating more threat from their own personal dps, you should definitely be pre-shielding as a disc priest as you want that weakened soul debuff to be active any time you're hitting the tank with heals, really.

It is important that you shield BEFORE the pull, and not during, as the shield itself generates aggro toward yourself, but you knew that, right?

 

• constantius

I reiterate what I said in the 2.2, 2.3, and 2.4 versions of this thread. Any tank complaining about a PW:S pre-pull in a raid situation is a moron. End of story. It absorbs, at most, half a hit. If they're smart, they ran in with Bloodrage up anyway (or equivalent for feral druids), so they have enough rage to land their opening move. The shield lowers the incoming damage for the first 5 seconds of the fight, during which they should have landed at least 3 auto-attack swings, giving them enough rage to use another special. Then it's over, the damage ramps up, and they have enough rage.

Rage-starving in a Sunwell raid environment is a myth pre-3.0. And post-3.0, they have so many tools in their arsenal, and such great TPS that a little lost to slightly less rage generation is meaningless.

Shield your tanks.

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

 

Inken

I assume the claims around haste changing the spell coefs are incorrect? It was always my understanding that there was no change due to haste, unless 3.x has changed this.

No one seems to have commented on this.