Something is being absorbed, because I ended up being the only healer on Loatheb once, which is a great way to check the mechanics of the fight, and PW:S definitely keeps people up. Their bars dropped much less with it up.

DA also probably absorbs stuff on that fight because I was running like 90% crit and I was getting procs everywhere. I could definitely flash heal people to keep them alive.

On a blue message talking about discipline I saw this :

We do want a lot of Power Word: Shields to be getting tossed out. You can use it on multiple people throughout the raid for additional regeneration if needed.


But actually there is a cooldown on the effect isn't ? or has it been removed on the PTR ?

It has been removed for the last few builds. I have been tracking it and posting about it on the 3.1 thread.

Ok fine, it seems the post from GC states that is intended .

Feel a little less worried about mana now

This last post about Discipline Priests got me worried again. According to our design it seemed like we were intended to be tank healers, and Blizz has also said they wanted to make healing less frenzied. But now we get these conflicting statements that there are bosses hitting for more than half the life of the tank, and at the same time they expect us to toss out a lot of PW:S. At the same time Grace remains a clunky mechanic that punishes us for trying to spread out our healing... No mention to PW:Barrier, also. Holy seems like it might be way more fun than Disc now, something that really surprises me when I think back to the feeling I got with patch 3.0 for Disc...

I will admit Grace is clunky, but I get the feeling Grace is sort of a backhanded way to nudge us towards using Power Word: Shield.

Imagine if all we did was Penance/Flash Heal/Power Word: Shield the tank. Grace would never fall off of our main target. But, we could still use Power Word: Shield on raid targets without losing Grace. And of course Prayer of Mending somewhere in there.

Of course, there might be issues if there are multiple Disc Priests in a raid, but at that point someone should just respec Holy anyways (imo).

As of 3.1, a Priest's DA will now be stackable. I was wondering if anybody had the skill, or knew of an addon, that could keep track of how much a DA could absorb. Using the priest's own crits ( would be too complicated to incorp. all disc priests crits) and the combat log to figuire out how much the DA has left in it.

No, it's pretty much been explained multiple times that not only is that mechanically impossible, it will remain mechanically impossible for the foreseeable future. Any addon that pretended to tell you that would be guessing (very similar to the addons that 'tell' you how much is left on your PW:S, then PW:S doesn't fall off when the addon thinks its entirely consumed).

Whether or not such an addon is a good idea - I think it would introduce a good chance of 'information overload' and just end up being of minimal use - right now you'd end up with somewhat inaccurate to wildly inaccurate results, depending on fight mechanics.

Just clarify one thing for me. Why is it important to know how much is left on a DA?

As it stands, each PW:shield, when talented gives (party or raid 3% damage reduction for 20secs ala renewed hope), so using PW:Shield nonstop seems pointless, especially if more than one disc priest is in the raid; however, as been mentioned previously, DA stacks. This is exactly why you will be able to stack disc priests. Two disc priests healing the main tank would add to each other's DAs. Back to renewed hope, I would be surprised if the 3% damage reduction buff had an infinite range, or affected all raid member so it remains to be seen exactly how this mechanic will work out, which may or may not end up making more than one disc priest a viable option.

Currently on PTR as Disc I spam PWS around in low damage phases or when the tank isn't taking spikes. It puts preventative damage on them and a small heal, since there is a lot of aoe, and it gives me a small mana battery. Its not about keeping up the buff, its about utilizing the ability to a greater benefit for mana and shielding.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I believe every fight (short of course Flame Levi) has an AOE component that does more then 6k every 30 seconds ya? Could be wrong but pretty sure all of them (at least that the US has done, do not know the EU ones as well) have something to damage raid wide which a disc priest could use shield as a mana battery. Personally I did not stack int much going into PTR, not knowing what to expect, but even my shields are giving back mana. I grabbed JC and if I find mana an issue I will definitely stack int at which point these shields will definitely be a huge amount of mana. Imagine though, going into a place where one knows there will be lots of raid damage and maybe not a lot of tank damage, shielding a ton of people and popping hymn just long enough for all of the shields to go off. With the mana cap increase that equals a lot of mana. On my latest WWS parse which got some of the 25 council attempts in I had some Rapture ticks of 777 (while shield costs 532 I believe) which might have been during a Hymn pop, couldn't be sure as I didn't check the parse thoroughly.
Unfortunately on PTR the bosses are like trash mobs and don't parse separately but fight dependent I am keeping replenishment fairly close to my rapture numbers and this is only while running on test. I have a feeling disc can be in a very good place still, as far as mana return is concerned, come 3.1 if we have some GCD's to use for shield tossing. I just hope our throughput for MT healing can keep pace with Pallies as they seem to scale better then us and already start ahead in the race.

If raid damage is low but exists, could we toss some Shields (rank 1) for mana battery (to ensure all the shield is consumed) or do Rapture only works with highest rank ?

Downranking is not helpful. Rank 1: 55 base @ 903mp. Rank 14: 2564 base @ 799mp. You would lose mana, even with Rapture. And the shield would absorb an insignificant amount of damage.

Some numbers for those thinking of down-ranking. The numbers are numbers I could find on wowwiki and wowhead, I may be wrong on the down-ranked cost as well, I wasn't able to find a number other than the 26% listed on wowhead for a rank 1 PW:S, versus the 23% for a rank 13 or 14.

Assuming 3.1 talent build including 3/3 Mental Agility and 1/1 Soul Warding, which would reduce the mana cost by 40% (10% and 40% respectively).
Base Mana - 3863
Cost of PW:S (max rank) - 23% Base - 889
Cost of PW:S (rank 1) - 26% Base - 1005

40% Cost reduction from talents
889/0.6 = 534
1005/0.6 = 604

Break Even points for mana returns:
Max Rank - 534/0.025 = 21,336
Rank 1 - 604/0.025 = 24,160

Assuming 2400 sp (very easy number to reach raid buffed) with 3/3 Imp Shield and 5/5 Borrowed Time:
2400/0.8066 = 1936 (Spell Power applied to PW:S)
Max Rank - 1,936+2,564 = 4,500 ->Talents-> 6,525
Rank 1 - 1,936+55 = 1,990 ->Talents-> 2,886

If you are in a situation where raid damage is between 2,886 and 6,524 in a 30 second time frame and your mana pool is much greater than 24,160, go right ahead and spam rank one. On the other hand, if you are in a situation where raid damage will be nearing 6,500 (in 30 seconds) it would be much more prudent to be using max rank, especially since the mana gain will be much greater if you meet the requirement of Mana Pool >> 24,160.

[e] I would also assume that they would have rapture only work with spell ranks where you could attain rapture, so numbers are probably a moot point.

1. It is fairly easy to figure out how much a DA shield can absorb based on crit heal sizes.
2. It is not at all easy to figure out how much damage absorption a DA shield has left in it when it expires. There is no single line event in the combat log that tells you, and you have to bring to bear a lot of data to figure it out. No mod does this, and I expect none ever will since it's a big pain. Hopefully Blizz will change their logs to tell us how much charge a shield has in it when it is put on and when it is removed. But right now, they don't.
3. I don't think looking at #2 above (i.e. how much of DA shield potential expires) is crucial. The vast majority of DA shields will be absorbed, and many of the ones that are not are at the end of combat, where heals typically don't matter much either (but are still counted as effective heals).

If you're worried about accounting, my advice is just to track how big the shields are and report that. I already have tried showing others data just like that and explained clearly that "shields might not be fully absorbed in some cases, depending on the fight". That is easy to do, and so far no one has complained. It's a big step up from the alternative, which is people having no idea at all.

Also, as originally reported in this thread, a decent estimator of DA absorption is:



This formula may be slightly high, but the error is probably less than 10%.

I'm not interested in doing it either, just it is plausible when meeting the above criteria. I actually hoped to dissuade people from doing it and head off the theoretical conversations by having numbers available for people to look at. You have to have ~3k more mana to get the same return from a rank 1 versus a max rank. It seems kinda silly, exploitative, and too analytical of your surroundings to make me want to make it work.

I can also confirm that the 3.0 version of rapture does work with rank 1 shields, and that the 26% base mana for down ranked shield is correct.

No one should be thinking of down ranking, ever. Your argument makes no sense. Yes, you have proven that at a higher mana pool the return from rank 1 is the same as max rank with a lower mana pool. Plug in the rapture return numbers of a max rank at the 24k mana mark, add in the 70 mana saved per cast, then add the optional heal from glyph and let us know what you get. Better yet, don't do that, spend the time contemplating why we are wasting time even commenting about this ludicrous, unplausable mechanic.

The fact is that someone was contemplating it. I wasn't making an argument at all, I just happened to have the time to find numbers and calculate them. I was providing information, nothing more, there was no decision making, postulating or suggesting. As you could see in my second post, I don't support it either. I even said that I was trying head off theoretical conversations by presenting numbers so that people could read and make informed decisions. Even more importantly, everyone can play their character the way they like, and if that includes down ranking a PW:S so be it. Hopefully they will at least know what that does for them instead of not knowing.

Furthermore, for the sake of completeness, the extra 3k mana nets you 75 rapture return (added to the 70 mana saved from casting is 145 mana), and in a situation where you would want to be casting a rank 1, the glyph heal would be negligible.

Quick question (answer might be buried somewhere in this thread) : is improved PWS talent fixed in 3.1 ? At one point I know the return on investment was really poor...

I did an Undying attempt last night with my guild and while we did very good, it was devastating to fail at Kel'Thuzad after a flawless run...

We were running with a group of 3 healers, me (disc priest), a holy priest and a resto druid and we had a disastrous frost blast spreading to both the other healers just after one of them had moved due to a void zone.

When I realized I was the sole healer responsible for saving them, I sort of panicked and ended up hesitating a bit too much. I did a bit of combat log digging (from this parse: Wow Web Stats )

This is the chain of events :

T = 47.468

T + 0.000: Frost Blast on Riotstar (5489)
T + 0.001: Frost Blast on Goldentung (5087)
T + 0.805: Frost Blast tick on Riotstar (5488)
T + 0.805: Frost Blast tick on Goldentung (5088)
T + 0.808: Fathermerrins Glyph of Power Word: Shield heals riotstar (+1146)
T + 2.012: Frost Blast tick on Riotstar (ABSORB)
T + 2.013: Frost Blast tick on Goldentung (5088) LETHAL
T + 2.823: Frost Blast tick on Riotstar (4765, 724 absorbed)

Riotstar (the holy priest) survived, while Goldentung, the resto druid, died due to my panicking and hesitating too long.

Obviously the most important lesson is to respect the distances and never go too close. But in the event that it DOES happen, is it possible for one healer to save two people, even without circle of healing?

Looking at the chain of events, what really screwed us here is me taking so much time to react initially, that's the sole thing that would've done it. I simply wasn't prepared for the horrendous event of the two other healers getting frost blasted and the panic I felt when I realized that the two people that got hit were BOTH healers and that I was the only remaining one was what caused me to hesitate for a whole 0.808 seconds. That felt like a lot longer last night I can tell you.

The correct response for a disc priest in that situation, I think, (holy would, like I said, save the day using a single CoH) would be PW: S on the first target, followed by a Borrowed Time hasted Penance on target #2.
This does not cover the eventuality that PW: S and/or penance might be on CD and that both targets might have Weakened Soul on them. If that happens, the disc priest is probably screwed. But let's assume that neither of this happens (which is actually the more likely outcome, since with the gear level of our tanks, I don't need to be chaining PW: S and Penance on every cooldown, far from it).

My Penance hits for an average of 3.2k (non crit) per tick and with
Borrowed Time it ticks with a period of roughly 500 ms. Given those numbers, you'd probably need two ticks of Penance to land to be safe, meaning that it must be cast no later than 500 ms before the last Frost Blast tick (and that's cutting it close). Working backwards, this means that the initial PW: S must be cast within:

2.013 (Goldentung death) - 0.5 (penance tick time) - 1.05 (borrowed time hasted gcd) = 0.463 seconds

Which should be quite easily doable, given that you're properly mentally prepared for the eventuality that this could happen, which I'm ashamed to say I obviously wasn't.

Is this the correct response to this situation, or is there a better way to handle it?

As you said the problem was that you were not prepared for this. A Pain Suppression on the druid followed by a PW:Shield on the priest would have saved both of them or if PS was on cooldown just shield one of the PoM and flash heal the other (if penance on cd) the probability that both of them have Weakened Soul is very slim since you already had 2 raid healers to take care of the AoE dmg. Granted I'm holy spec but the first thing I do when a chain ocures is cast PoM since they were chained (they are close to each other) its highly probable that PoM will jump between them and for me it heals enough to save them only from that but of course I wont risk it and I follow up with CoH and flash heals to top them off.