Coztomba

SoL is such a great talent and yet I see that it's going to take away so many opportunities now to proc Holy Concentration. The more crit you get the worse if will become since SoL works on everything. Out of party PoH + CoH + Mending + Even renew now means we'll have SoL procs all over the place lowering the chance for me to get those HC procs and diminishing the value of the talent.

If you give up SoL you loose a great talent on mobility fights and throw away 650 mana every say 10 seconds conservatively.

Looking at Sinndir's numbers, a HC proc boosts his MP5 by 146 for 8 seconds. So ~233 mana back over 8 seconds.

Every crit that procs SoL and every time time you proc HC while you already have HC active will lower the effectiveness even more. I really dislike how these 2 talents have no synergy together.

 

Tainter

Of course you can have both SoL and Healing Prayers. And that's probably what I'll get. In all likelihood I won't get Test of Faith. I'm also skipping the last two points in Divine Fury. As Holy I just don't tank-heal enough for it to be really worth it. Particularly if I get MORE AoE healing options I will spend even more time AoE healing. The new Serendipity gives me faster Greater Heals than Divine Fury ever could anyway.

I had a look at some Naxx25 speed-run Disc Priests last night. Calculating their real absorb from Rapture I have to say that none of them ever beat any of the Holy Priests if there were any. None of them ever topped the healing. Yes, they were probably drowning in mana, but their output was worse than that of the other healers. If someone is seriously interested I'd share my spread-sheet and I may also explain it.

The only way Disc can compete at the moment is if for some reason the fights take forever and Holy has to stop spamming to conserve mana. At that point Disc may be able to pull ahead. I figured that Ulduar would head that way, but now I'm not so sure anymore. It looks like Disc mana is taking a beating and because the promised group-shield didn't show up the output will be more or less stagnant.

At this moment the only reason to go Disc for anyone would be if they have no Paladins and need a spammy tank-healer for some content or other. And right now the future doesn't look like a paradigm shift is on the table.

Some thoughts about Power Word: Barrier
At the moment it doesn't look like it will show up. It's not mentioned in any of the talents or any official post. There's no place for it in the talent tree. Ultimately I guess it would've lead to too much homogenisation. Also as a 21-point talent one could grab CoH and Barrier, turning into an AoE-healing monster (with way too many arms).

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

Sinndir

There are multiple problems with the Empowered Renew talent. If you are going to go that, you must go 3/3 Improved Renew and you must go Glyph of Renew to further bump the power. Personally, I never have (nor will) cast renew that much to put that much into it. Flash heal seems to (almost) always be the better choice for the mana to be spent.

 

Eupherine

This is an interesting point but to continue with the thought of still taking SoL, I think of it in this fashion.

In a raid heal situation, I would be looking at choosing between PoH, CoH, Renew (possibly, depends on context of use, though I still consider it more of a tank stabilizer) and Flash Heal. With those 4 spells, only the renew and flash heal has a chance to proc HC. If I'm mostly using PoH and CoH, I will gladly take a free Flash heal to toss into the mix get 625 mana worth than worry about HC's ~233 mana.

Another way to think about SoL would be to use it as a way to 'reset' the time between HC. It would not overlap as much and thus reduce the mana loss because it is incapable of a crit.

Though, I am looking forward to playing around with both scenarios.

 

Sinndir

One thing to remember is how hard our regeneration was hit. I kid you not I was able to empty my ~18.5k mana pool in about 30 seconds using a simple cast sequence.

PoM
Flash x 3
PoH
CoH
-repeat-

Surge of Light is a fantastic regeneration talent, it is not for throughput.

 

• constantius

The interesting thing I noted is that Renew can now crit (seemingly without a post to indicate the same). The combination of 30% crit on Renew ticks, +15% from Imp Renew, +15% from Empowered Renew, +18% (or whatever the screwed up rounding gives on the Glyph), plus the initial heal ... it's a sexy, sexy HoT now. Destroys Rejuv on a 1v1 ratio (as, imo, it should: we only get 1 HoT to druids' 3-4).

And given that we don't have to put points into Imp HC anymore, those points (at least for me) are moving directly into Emp Renew. I'll probably end up with 2/3 ToF and 1/2 SoL / Holy Reach and otherwise an identical spec to right now.

Once I can get the client to be stable, I'm going to start playing with the efficiency question, and see just how badly we got hit. I think (and this is just my gut, based on the blue posts I've seen) they are really trying to push healers toward a much less "this is my spam sequence" and more of a "measured healing strategy". So basically ... ya, any healer will empty their mana bar in 60 seconds if they spam. But (hopefully?) they balance the damage so that's doable ... otherwise, we're screwed.

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

 

Sinndir

The ticks cannot crit, it is only the instant heal portion at the start that is capable of critting (and currently bugged on the PTR to not proc Holy Concentration).

"Empowered Renew, Tier 9, 3 point talent - Your Renew spell gains an additional 5/10/15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew will instantly heal the target for 5/10/15% of the total periodic effect.

[edit]

The more and more I think about it we have become raw throughput, raid healing monsters; at the price of efficiency. I'm going to do some regemming and swap some gear around and play with a high spirit and high crit gear setup that can help to keep me within Holy Concentration (because this should be our goal). I really like how spirit, int and crit are very synergetic now (even at the cost of my 600 haste being not so hot anymore).

 

Coztomba

Anyone had a chance to check out shadowfiend? How much HP they have now? How much damage do they deal now with the SP scaling? Also unclear of the difference between "when it's melee attacks land" vs "when it deals damage".

 

JustNalkara

Here's an official post introducing PW:B MMO-Champion BlueTracker - Upcoming Priest Changes in 3.1.0

 

• typobox

Yes, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't have changed their minds about it since then.

 

Awina

I appreciate the fact that there are now a few more things than FH, PoM and CoH to consider.

A hasted GH, a hasted raid wide (party bound) PoH, and a 15% crittable balloon option on Renew make things interesting.


With Dual Specs, are they allowing Dual Glyphs as well? I thought that was mentioned. If so, I might simply make 2 deep Holy Specs - one with Renew talents and the Renew Glyph, and one without. Then I can switch for fights that Renew is usable. (Not sure I understand the limitations of Dual Spec yet).


Usage of Renew, CoH and PoM along with lower regen puts Mental Agility back in play again, I think. It's not the most efficient use of points to get there, but it is an option. It comes at the expense of a few points in empowered healing or something, so the HPS for mana tradeoff is a question. It will be interesting if I can simply trade out some SP gems for INT/SPI gems and find a nice comfortable regen range or not.

 

JustNalkara

Of course =) but i was simply correcting Tainter who was saying there were no official posts.

 

Sinndir

Awina, I played around with the Dual Spec thing for a bit and here is what I got out of it:

1) First have to learn it at a trainer (costs 1000g), after that you can swap between your talents as often as you want out of combat. I honestly forgot to check while in combat or in a dungeon/raid zone.

2) Swapping to your alternate talent setup does the follow: Brings you to 0% (zero) mana, even if you were at 100%, swaps your action bars (pretty crazy), gives you a different set of glyphs to use. So you technically have two characters (just with the same gear), though the in-game gear manager seems pretty cool.

I'll likely be doing Holy + Shadow, then doing Shadow for trash or a DPS intensive boss fight etc.

 

Finkum

Can someone confirm that this is indeed the case? It hardly seems worthwhile including it in HC if only the instant-heal portion is capable of critting.

 

emeey

The HoT part of renew does not crit. Only the initial heal of Renew can crit, therefore being the only way for renew to proc Holy Concentration (though yes, it is bugged on the PTR right now and does not proc it).

 

Sinndir

I can confirm it myself, I sat there for quite some time renewing without a crit aside from the initial heal (which was not proc'ing HC). I wore my crit gear and was at ~25%, so it was bound to happen after about 5 minutes (if it was going to at all).

[side note]

Pending on if I am able to give up Glyph of CoH or PoH, the Guardian Spirit glyph is tremendous. It is basically a bonus for not letting your tank die.

Scenario:

Tank is at 100% health, gets rocked to between ~5-15% health and multiple healers in the raid, and tanks themselves will use oh shit stuff. You GS (off GCD btw) and a NS heal lands for 15k+, tank lives and your GS is up in another 60 seconds... hell yes.

 

Awina

Thanks Sinndir.

That confirms what I stated above that one could indeed have 2 Holy Healing specs, one with Renew talents and Glyph and one without.

Most will likely go Shad/Holy or Holy/Disc probably, but the Holy/Holy combo is good for people like me that mostly PvE heal and suck at DPS

 

Havoc12

Its very important to actually sit down and calculate what renew does right now.

Question 1) Does the amount healed instantly get deducted from the total healing of the HoT or is it in addition to the full heal.

Question 2) how does this instant heal interact with the glyph.

Question 3) How does the glyph interact with empowered renew.

Right now I have a feeling that the glyph gets screwed up when you add imp renew to the picture. I will test it iwhen I can get a bloody character on the PTR.

This is what I suspect.

Renew untalented:

Healing = x
Healing/tick = X/5
Glyphed tick = 1.25x/5
Glyphed healing = 4*1.25x/5 = x

Renew + imp renew

Healing = 1.15x
Healing/tick = 1.15/5
Glyphed tick = (1.25+0.15)x/5 = 1.4x/5 a 21.74% increase over unglyphed imp renew
glyphed healing = 4*1.4x/5 = 1.12x a 12% increase in total healing, i.e. 2.6% less than unglyphed imp renew.

Renew + imp renew + twin faiths + spi healing

Healing = 1.15*1.05*1.1x = 1.32825x
Healing/tick = 1.32825x/5
Glyphed tick = (1.25+0.32825)x/5 = 1.57825x/5 an 18.8% increase over fully talented unglyphed renew
glyphed healing = 1.2626x or 26.26% increase, i.e. 4.9% less than fully talented unglyphed renew.

If this trend continues then adding empowered renew is going to result in

Healing = 1.5274875x
Healing/tick = 1.5274875x/5
Glyphed tick = 1.7774875x a 16.4% increase over fully talented unglyphed renew
glyphed healing = 1.42199x which is a full 6.9% less than fully talented unglyphed renew.

Thus with full talents and the glyph as it is it will add 16.4% healing per tick, but reduce the number of ticks by 1 and decrease overall healing by 6.9%.

This pretty much means that its a bad idea to take the glyph if you start piling so many talents on top of renew, especially if the intial heal subtracts healing from the HoT.

That brings us to the question of how the intial heal works. I expect it to subtract healing from the HoT.

Fully talented unglyphed renew

HoT healing = 1.3x with 1.3x/5 ticks
Intial heal = 0.23x*(1+0.3*crit)
Total: (1.53+0.069*crit)x with 1.3x/5 ticks.

The next thing to consider is how the intial heal works with the glyph. I expect the intial heal to work after the glyph is applied, though its possible that 5 ticks instead of 4 ticks are used in the calculation, which would be great but I am not holding my breath.

Fully talented glyphed renew:

HoT healing = 1.21x with 1.511x/5 ticks
Intial heal = 0.213x*(1+0.3*crit)
Total: (1.423+0.064*crit)x with 1.511x/5 ticks.

The comparison is 16.2% more healing per tick
6.9% less healing on the intial heal
7% less total healing at 25% crit

This makes the glyph not all that appealing. 16% increase is not massive and you do get a noticeable drop both in the intial heal and the total amount healed. I am not quite sure the glyph is worth it if you have empowered renew. Ofc if blizzard gets off their arse and fix the glyph then renew will be really powerful.

With all talents stacked renew gets a 53% boost over base. At 2500 spell power renew heals for 1400+1.88*2500 = 6100. A 53% boost makes this 9333. At 2500 flash heal is ~5500 (with 25%crit) for 10% less mana and now renew has an equal chance of procing SoL and HC. Also with a scaling of 2.8764*spellpower and a base value of ~2100, renew has nearly tripple the scaling that flash heal has.

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

I am amazed that people have not realised that with the new serendipity and the massive nerf to mana regen, priests will have to cut back on flash heal usage. The boost to CoH and raid wide PoH, means that priests must save as much mana as possible for CoH, PoH and PoM. The more you use these spells, the bigger your effective healing will be if mana is limiting.

You can expect flash to reach 9HPM before overheal at 2500 spellpower.
At the same level renew approaches 14 HPM and greater heal approaches 11HPM.

CoH is now well over 16 HPM with PoH and BH at the same levels.

If mana does become the limit, then everytime you cast flash you are going to drop a little effective healing.

Flash on small damage, renew on periodic damage, gheal on big damage, PoH on group damage, CoH on CD if it will hit 3+ ppl, PoM when it can bounce at least 2x. Assign a target that will have to heal himself through lightwell, dont heal targets with HoTs on, unless its an emergency. Welcome to the new reality.

SoL may actually be counter productive now. A crit from a flash can give you back up 8 seconds of 50% increased regen, which is something like 240 mana and ofc 30% more effective healing on average which is easily 1.5k healing or at 7 HPM 214 mana. That means a crit can give you the equivalent of 450 mana with 25% crit rate that is 110odd mana on average. I fully expect SoL to result in a 10-15% loss of regen from HC.

I honestly cannot see why anyone would take SoL over the new test of faith. A PoH on 5 ppl below 50% health can easily return more healing than an SoL flash. Same thing for CoH and PoM. On targets below 50% health all your multitarget spells return more free healing with ToF than with SoL and don't cost a GCD.also with gheal and PoH at potentially very low cast timers, I think ToF is mandatory. A ToF flash heal crit will return more than 2k healing. Considering that SoL has a 50% proc chance, that is nearly as much free healing as SoL would return on average. A gheal crit with ToF, actually has a better return than an SoL flash. With the new HC SoL is no longer any good at all at boosting the efficiency of BH, flash heal and gheal. Its main value comes from nova, CoH, PoH, PoM and renew.

No matter what people said, SoL was not a very important or awesome talent let alone mandatory. It had a decent return and it had lots of drawbacks. In the new patch, SoL is not really going to give much more of a benefit than other talents it competes with.

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

The spec I am going for is this:
13/58

Though I might decide to still get IF

 

Sebalot

If Ulduar is taxing on healers mana, I see no holy build being viable without SoL. It is by far the biggest mana conservation method we have point for point and they have made a full frontal attack on healer mana.

Also there is a logical error saying that SoL is bad because it conflicts with HC (and thus can't get the extra regen there). Smart use of SoL will still be able to take us out of the 5 second rule now and again which still gives more regen than a HC proc. Not all the time, but enough for it to be worth accounting for. Just because they nerfed spirit regen doesn't mean it has faded to insignificance.

I think Test of Faith and Blessed Resiliance are the optional talents in the holy tree for the time being. Possibly all 6 renew points if you like us pretty much always run with two resto druids.

 

Elimbras

Take care that empowered renews increases the spell power coefficient of renew, not the total healing.
What you basically tells us here is that the glyph is additive with other effects, when it shall be multiplicative.

But since Empowered renew is not a multiplicative bonus to renew, but a change in the coefficient, it might be factored earlier in the computation, and therefore work correctly with the glyph.

 

Sharajat

This makes literally zero sense. SoL isn't manditory, yet mana efficiency is the new god, and healing is going to be less spammy, and priests are going to be using more CoH?

Wow. The logic there is literally incomprehensible. First, if healing is less spammy, then SoL becomes better. The major (and indeed only) problem with SoL at the moment is you might not WANT to use Flash Heal. If healing is less spammy, you will almost certainly have a spare GCD for flash heal.

Second, if mana efficiency is key, and Circle of Healing is the holy priest gig, then SoL becomes unbelievable. CoH procs SoL with disturbing regularity.

That being said, I can't figure out why SoL and ToF are the two things on the cutting board for a build. Playing with the Talent Calculator, I personally don't think those 2 are the first on the cutting room floor.

Also, I wonder if 1/3 Improved Renew makes sense. I don't see a good reason to give up the chance of having a crit proc on holy concentration or Surge of Light, but I don't think the second and third points do nearly as much (since 5, 10, or 15%, the chance to crit is identical). If the changes to disc are as underwhelming and incomprehensible as they seem right now (and they really are, all things considered) I may very well be heading holy again, and if that's the case then I fully intend to take 1/3 points there.

Though god I hope it's not the case. Having to regear for spirit is going to suck so badly.

 

Tainter

This probably means that you get mana even if the fiend attack gets parried or dodged. Becuase the Fiend doesn't have any expertise we currently miss out on about one attack per cast to dodge/parry. It does sound like misses will still lead to missing mana, but at least the direction of attack won't matter anymore.


Of course I meant since that post. I didn't make PW:B up. That is the only ever reference by Blizzard to that ability. It's not currently on the cards. I'd even bet against it ever showing up on the PTR.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

◊ Cadfael

You might want to take a look at this GC posting then: World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> If these changes are true for Disc...

It's just the start of the PTR. Not everything is in and all that is in may yet change totally.

"Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through with the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy. And yet you act as if there were some sort of rightness in the universe by which it may be judged."

 

• constantius

Did everyone notice the new, updated Blessed Resilience tooltip? It may be worth taking that for PvE over Test of Faith: 3% all the time vs. 12% some of the time.

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

 

Hegen

Yep, saw it and am itching to test on PTR whether this is actually true. I hate let people's health drop on purpose just to make use of something like Test of Faith. Though I may still be tempted to use Test of Faith instead should I get a shoot at 10 man Sarth 3D.

Did someone have a chance to test this already?

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