I was about to post this in the healing compendium as part of the discussion of divine aegis stacking, but that discussion is getting too multi-threaded and big so I decided to create a new thread to discuss this particular problem.

Blizzard says that they can't let Divine Aegis stack because it would create "crazy" situations. This sounded ridiculous to me, so I did a bunch if calculations to see exactly how crazy it could get. I am intentionally trying to stack this situation to make Divine Aegis as overpowered as possible because the point is to show that it will never be. The craziest situation I can think of is one where a shield gets so big that a boss can't even do damage to the tank.

Since I'm in 10-man gear, I borrowed some stats from a better geared priest from the armory. Counting in raid buffs, a discipline priest might look like this: 1470 int, 1240 spirit (normally not great for a discipline priest, but has a useful application in this particular situation), 2260 spell power, 27% crit chance, about 30 extra mp5.

This means that with a grace stack (which will come quite quickly), a penance hits for about 9300, a flash heal for about 4200. The priest has 25633 mana, regens 102.1 mana per second (510.5 mp5) while casting with a mana spring totem, and 705.7 mana per second (3528.5 mp5) while drinking.

Stacking up massive shields must be done on select targets, so this will not be abusive against raid damage. I decided to use Patchwerk as a model, because he will only hit two targets (if the off-tank never loses health, he'll never hit a second off-tank). Looking at some WWS logs it looks like he is going to do about 3 million damage over the course of the fight, approximately half of it to each tank. Lets say we bring two DK tanks with bone armor (never getting hit means never losing charges, so 40% less damage the whole fight). Now we've only got 1.8 million damage of shields to put up before the fight.

We bring along six discipline priests geared as above and have them start putting shields on the tanks. Lets say they have enough haste that they have a perfect penance, FH x5 rotation every eight seconds (about 18%, which is easy enough to do). Assuming Imp. Healing and the Glyph of FH, this costs 3735 mana, which is 466.875 mana per second. Less regen while casting is 362.775 per second, meaning it takes them 70.3 seconds to run out of mana. Note they get no rapture mana as the target is at full health and they do not get replenishment unless there is an endless supply of rats for the ret paladin to judge. It takes them about 36.3 second to drink to full mana, which means they spend just under 2/3 of the time casting if they cast - drink - cast - drink. We'll call it 2/3, meaning 4 of the six priests are casting at any given time.

How big a shield do they actually put on the tank? Every 8 seconds of casting each priest pumps 9300 + 4200 x5 healing into the tank for 30300 healing. If that crits its 45450 healing which delivers 13635 worth of shield. Times the crit chance is 3703, or a whopping 462 points of shield per second. Since there are two tanks, with half the priests on each, this is 924 points of shield per second. To put a 1.8 million shield on a tank would take 1944 seconds, or just over 32 minutes. Remember that through the fight the priests have to keep casting constantly to make sure the shield doesn't fall off, so you don't even save on healers. You could have killed patchwerk sixteen times instead of going through this ridiculous exercise.

I am bouyed by the apparent fact that people actually convinced armor was too powerful for druids, and that maybe with math we can actually show that divine aegis stacking will never get crazy, unless "crazy" is to refer to the crazy people who would try to abuse it instead of just playing the game, which would be far more profitable.

What other sorts of situations would we have to model to show that this kind of stacking is really abusable?

I am not sure that this discussion would warrant a thread.

Though you feel that the time effort makes this ineffectual for abuse and I would agree that stacking DA's would be good in some form. It doesn't change the fact that your work proves just the point that they are trying to prevent. Because you "could" create a shield to the point that the player becomes invulnerable it causes design considerations. This is very similar to rogues that could stack avoidance to insane levels and tank when they were not designed for it.

You would have to show that it is impossible for abuse. That a stack couldn't get to high due to not refreshing the stack during the 8 second window. Which as more gear becomes available becomes less likely, thus increasing the ability for abuse. This would lead to Blizzard having to factor it in when designing encounters.

The situation I immediately thought of was that you could pre-load a tank with a huge shield, have innervate cast on you, and keep the shield up throughout a whole fight.

Assuming the 25633 mana, and assuming that I am just spamming Penance and FH x 5, I can put up a 100k+ damage shield on the main tank (would have to be pally or DK, since rage generation is going to be nill). Once my mana runs out, pop innervate on me, I can just cast enough flash heals to keep the shield on, and then we start the fight when I reach a reasonable mana percentage.

I think the two downsides to this would be:

1) Totally overpowered for fights where the tank takes steady damage or very little damage.
2) Forces you to have a tank that uses mana or runes.

Thats why it won't happen.

We should admit that Divine Aegis, with his current mechanics should be exploited if it was stacking. Anyway, as said by "l337n00b" it would require a lot of preparation to do it ... in fact, as much time than you need to make a bunch of try and on a very specific fight where you can bring 6 disc priests without any danger.

But let's say Blizzard politic is "no exploit at all". So, a suggestion I would make to them (maybe a US poster here can do it for me) is to allow Divine Aegis to stack, but taking in account only 30% of the effective healing instead of overheal as actual. With this simple solution, we get, in my opinion, a very good compromise without any possibility to cheat.

I disagree that I am making Blizzard's point for them. The case I gave was very extreme and even in that case stacking shields became nothing but a waste of time.

Blizzard has already stated that they have no interest in balancing the game to account for the top end, cutting edge raiding guilds because it is simply impossible for them to create encounters that challenge these guilds and are accessible to a larger player base. What other kind of guild could muster the required priests to effect such an abuse? And these guilds wouldn't even have an interest in doing this because it's no way to get world firsts. As gear gets better the amount of damage you need to stack will increase as well, and bone shield is already getting nerfed. You use an hour stacking a shield on your tank while the other guild uses the hour to learn the fight. Since most fights are not tank-and-spank, the shield is not going to make you win by itself.

How much time it takes to do things is a seriously consideration in whether they are abusive. Suppose we found a clever combination abilities that let us solo a raid encounter with a near 100% chance of success. That sounds like a problem on its face, but whether it is a problem or not does depend (among other things) on how long this will take. If it will take 80 hours of game play to accomplish then it's not really a big problem at all. The clever people can do it just to show it can be done and then go back to their guild where they get loot faster by playing as part of a team.

It's fairly obvious though that something like this could be very prone to abuse in say arenas in the preparation minute. How much shielding can you stack in a minute? Enough to make a difference in the arena I'm sure.

Stacking things in such a way is a bad idea, there will always be more creative ways to abuse something like this which we haven't thought of yet. I'm sure everyone here that played vanilla wow remembers the movie of the paladin soloing Kazzak, which was also exploiting a stacking buff.

It would seem the tech for this is already in the game, as Lightwell healing effect is broken on a percentage of life.

I'm sort of at a loss though for the purpose of the thread. I was under the impression that blizzard suggestions were frowned upon here.

Yeah, I actually got the idea form the Paladin Talent "Eye for an Eye". So the tech is certainly there.

You're right, in that there are some really simple solutions here, just saying "sorry aegis won't stack ever" is a dumb fix. Just cap Aegis' absorb value based on some stat, any stat. 50% of the maximum hp of the person affected by Aegis, or 200% of their armor value, if you want it to scale on MTs in PvE, or 300% of the priest's spellpower, or whatever, anything, it doesn't matter.

They just did this with mana drains and it failed to occur to them with Aegis, disappointing. (And right now I think we are a ways off about worrying about priests being OP in PvP...)

Its been stated that next build DA will be stacking with PWS. With Disc talents you will be able to get A LOT of mitigation on a tank. A PWS stacked with a DA is A LOT of mitigation.

See the compendium thread for more details where it has been discussed already.

Some interesting scenarios are created here, however, I´m afraid many of them are far from reality.

Firstly, arena is non-issue since every buff running shorter than 30 seconds is removed after the preparation time.

Secondly, the Penance+FH shield stacking would be possible, however, to which benefit? I don´t need such a shield in a situation where the tank takes low damage and in a case where he takes high damage removing even 100k Aegis would be a matter of short time. A typical boss fight lasts longer than 15 - 20 seconds, even if you could make your tank near-invulnerable for such a time it wouldn´t be much different from a Shield Wall (with the added 'perk' that it´s highly uncomfortable to get such a shield running since it needs a lot of time). Also, you could only have it at the beginning of a fight which is normally the time at which you need the least healing at all.

Anyways, as I already said in the Healing Compendium, be honest: It´s not such a big deal many make out of it. With the next patch Aegis will stack with PW:S which is probably more important than stacking with itself. The only really affected spell by not-stacking Aegis is Penance and I can live with this, since if Penance crits multiple times I´ll be unlikely to really need the extra throughput (though, it would be nice, no question).

Just put a hard cap on Divine Aegis.

It would seem that the priest lobbying for the stacking of Divine Aegis have forgotten, or haven't heard about rolling ignites. I recomend a google search regarding this.


edit:
link from the original level 60 Naxx with rolling ignites:
Thaddius 28.6K rolling ignite

Rolling Ignites are something completely different, you can not even start to compare those two.

Okay, seems to be some confusion here.

I'm not even sure where to begin. What are people expecting?

1: Divine Aegis adds to itself, a 4000 crit gives a 1200 DA, and another 4000 adds to the existing DA, giving a 2400 DA.
2: DA from different Priests add to eachother, so if 2 Priests crit for 4000, you get 1 DA for 2400.
3: DA overwrites any existing Absorb or Shield on target.
4: DA from a Priest overwrites any existing DA from that Priest on same target.
5: DA from a Priest overwrites and updates duration on any DA from that Priest on the same target if new DA is larger than old.
6: DA from a Priest overwrites any DA from that Priest on the same target if it is larger, also updates duration to maximum.

Right now on Live, I am uncertain how DA functions with multiple Priests in a raid. However I believe it works as #4. My wish is that it would work as #6 or #1

/target rat
/bloodrage
/sunder armor
/stopattack

or something to that effect. The warrior is now in combat, the priest that heals the warrior is now in combat. proceed to stack DA while spamming the macro.

Scaling would be a difficult. What would be a good hard cap now, would be nothing with T7 and T8 content.

Divine Aegis:
Critical heals create a protective shield on the target, absorbing 30% of the amount healed. Lasts 12 sec.

Ignite: (i can't find the 2.0 description, but this still works)
Your critical strikes from Fire damage spells cause the target to burn for an additional 40% of your spell's damage over 4 sec.


Crits, adding a buff/dot for a percentage of the crit. The only difference is one is a negative health value, and the other is a positive health value. The mechanic remains the same. Comparing seems very easy to me.

X + (X * .30) = Y Total effective health DA
X + (X * .40) = Y Total damage Ignite



edit: I may be misunderstanding what "Stacking DA" is implying. Some clarity on this would be appreciated.

I believe most of this thread is referring to #1 not being the case and people feeling #1 should be the case, with the added stipulation of some sort of mechanic to prevent abuse (e.g. the DA can only be at a maximum absorb of 50% of the target's health, or priest's health, even).

Why not model it on Incanters Absorbption, the mage talent that gives a percentage of absorbed damage as additional spellpower for 10 seconds? Multiple absorbs in a 10 second period will stack, but the stack "remembers" the time of each absorb and removes the damage from the stack after 10s has elapsed. This is best explained via an example:

t=0, 10k crit heal, 3k shield
t=5, 10k crit heal, 6k shield
t=10, first shield falls off, 3k shield remaining
t=15, second shield falls off, 0k remaining

(Assumes no incoming damage on the shielded target, obviously).

I can't see a way to exploit this, personally.

Yes, your basic thought is true, however, there´s a flaw in your thinking: Aegis gets consumed while Ignite does not. You just need a Crit every 4 seconds with Ignite. With Aegis it´s completely different since the absolute majority of times the old Aegis will be consumed the time the new Aegis hits making this 'rolling' impossible.

Furthermore you forget, that stacking Aegis would not mean a refreshing of the total Aegis that is already on the target but just the addition of the new value to the existing old one.

Quick example: You crit for 10k giving your target an Aegis of 3k. 2 seconds later you crit again for 10k but in between a 2k hit was taken. You should now have a new Aegis of 3k (new) + 1k (old) = 4k (and not as I think you do suggest 3k new + 3k old = 6k).

'Rolling Aegis' is simply not possible the way a rolling Ignite is (respectively 'was').

Aegis doesn't get consumed unless the target is taking damage.

I'm pretty sure the concern here is something like this:
- Guild attempts some future fight which they are not currently able to complete.
- Guild presets the fight by having 3 disc priests chain cast heals on the tank for an hour before the fight.
- Priest keeps the timer up by throwing at least one crit every 12s on the tank prior to the encounter.
- Guild is able to complete the fight with only one healer, adding 5 extra dps folks and having all the healing done ahead of time.

Just boosting the aegis based on incoming crits and resetting the timer would give this. Any of a number of the potential caps listed in the thread at this point would correct the problem. My guess is that it would require recoding some of the functions the shield is currently using, though, which is why Blizz isn't letting Aegis stack right now.

[Suggestion] Divine Aegis Stacking Thesis - Priest - Wowhead Forums - I posted something similar but wit a few numbers thrown around. But a brief summary is basically

Discipline priests can't be stacked to the same extent that other healers can be ever since we become viable PvE healers, Weakened Soul being the reason. Discipline priests don't use Greater Heal as flash heal is far more effective. Rapture does not give back mana if we over-heal, therefor if we cast penance which gives effective healing for the 1st tick, half effective healing for the 2nd and no effective healing for the 3rd, we are loosing efficiency.

The idea for capping Divine Aegis has the tooltip looking something like this,

With a mana pool value of 20,000, the cap would be 4,000. Rapture would return 216 mana from full absorption. With mana values hitting 30,000 (possibly) when further raids are implemented, the cap would be 6,000, with rapture returning 486 mana on full absorption.


Allowing this to happen would maximize the tools we use currently (Penance and Flash heal) without creating "crazy" situations and solves part of the over heal issue we have by getting marginal returns back.

And then you send four of your six priests to the bench, bring in some extra dps, and beat something you couldn't beat before. Patchwerk isn't really a good example of where this would be useful (though it could still allow an undergeared raid to beat him, just via dps substitution), because the amount of the needed shield is fairly ridiculous as you've demonstrated. But consider encounters where there are issues with healing due to range or mechanics (Four Horsemen, some of tanks are far away; Loatheb, limited window for healing; Maexxna, necrotic poison). Or encounters where there is a tauntable boss and an enrage mechanic (substitute tank with 100K Aegis steps in at an opportune moment). It seems pretty useful to me even at the 100-200K level, and I haven't spent much time thinking about possible abuses.

I will say that if I were implementing it I'd let it stack but subject it to exponential decay (lose 20% of the shield automatically every tick, or something). But not letting it stack at all seems reasonable too.