I hit 80 with my priest on Sunday. [...] Mana nerfs are needed in pve.
Honestly, I think the problem here is less about mana regen needing nerf (except for Replenishment, which is quite insane), and more about the content being quite trivial for now. i'm pretty sure that with Heroics with the same difficulty than 2.1 and no Replenishment, we would not see the "I've got too much mana" situation we see right now.
Would be interesting to see how easy/hard is the mana management on heroic with a full blue group on PTR.
But I suppose not many players are there to test heroics, and even less are in blue gear.
If violence doesn't solve your problem...
... you simply haven't been violent enough !
[...] So, to succinctly summarize what you evidently missed by skimming the calculations, this is an argument for Disc because disc does less overhealing
[...]
You can't basically compare the capacity of tank healing for both specs just comparing their flash heal spamms.
Disc does a lot of flash heals, and uses penance and PW;S (marginally on one tank only, due to weakened soul).
Holy uses a lot of great heals, which have more hps and hpm than flash.
I do think that Disc will still be better than holy for tank healing: it has less mana problem.
But your comparison is nothing close to conclusive (except saying that Disc has better flash spam than holy on tanks)
What I'd like to know is what we will do as holy for tank healing (assume we are required), especially which rotation of flash and great heals will be better for hpm and hps.
I think that the idea of healing with 3 flash, then wait till gh is needed is tempting for burst healing, if the hps and hpm are enough. This would be better on Patchwerk compared to gh spam : you have a 0.9s gh landing just after the big strike on the tank, which is better than the average time till your gh lands when spamming (basically, you do have only 40% of gh left, compared to 50% on average when spamming).
And it has the main advantage to require no overheal if you tank has a lucky avoidance sequence.
It's main drawback is that it requires more hpm to heal the same amount of damage. But the overhealing reduction might compensate enough, especially if you sometimes can have a few second OOFSR. This would definitely shine on OT2.
The instant heal portion of Empowered Renew is correctly healing the targets, however the crit is still not proc'ing Holy Concentration. I am no where near a trainer, if anyone is willing to test 1/3 and 2/3 Empowered renew to see if it is proc'ing please do so!
To fully compare tank healing capabilities you need to compare (with numbers not anecdotes) three parameters
a) Heal spacing: What is the frequency of heals landing on the tank
b) Sustained HPS: What is the highest HPS you can sustain for a certain fight time (this is the most crucial parameter)
c) Burst HPS: What is the maximum short burst HPS you can deliver and in what time frame so you can deal with spikes.
Disc currently heals with a combination of PWS, penance, flash heal and gheal on borrowed time. Holy currently tank heals mostly by spamming Gheal.
For Disc
Based on 25k mana pool, 2500 SP, 30% crit, 25% haste... Based on PTR current build. Disc is based on PW:S, Penance, Flash, and Greater Heal as needed. PoM/Renew/PoH might be used depending on playstyle but I will just look at the basics.
a) Heal spacing generally is 1.2 seconds (Flash heal - cast time). 16% of the time the heal spacing will be .8 seconds between ticks of Penance. Every 15 seconds you can clear a Penance with .66 seconds between ticks and follow it up with a 1 second Flash or 1.66 second Greater heal. So looking at the standard window 15 seconds ... the heal spacing averages to .9375 seconds. (Normally Greater is not used, if you do use it following the PW:S it shifts to ~1.0)
b) Using the standard cast sequence of the above 15 second window... Chain casting. That is a throughput of 5926.1 at a mana pool burn rate of 397 mp5. I didn't factor any i5sr/replenishment/shadowfiend/gear procs ... only the Rapture on PW:S ... Counting in just i5sr regen mine is currently (303) that lets me maintain that sequence for 265.9 seconds, add a mana fiend, replenishment, and other mana return sources(IED, Darkglow, ...) and it is infinite because you only have to find a way to offset 94 mp5 worth of mana consumption which is well in the realm of possible even without replenishment.
c) The highest burst cycle would be PW:S->Penance->Gheal for 8955.8 throughput per second the first 2.33 seconds, and 8334.8 throughput per second for the total 4 seconds. You could argue PW:S isn't always available... Though you can and probably will throw PW:S around the raid as you have time so BT will be available near 100% of the time. Worst cases BT Flash - 5699 througput per second or BT Greater - 7469.9 throughput per second.
- One thing to remember with Disc is that of those throughput numbers they are combined hps(healing per second) and mps(mitigation per second)... The mitigation is going to be stacking between hits and will balance normal spike damage. I only ever notice extreme abilities such as Sarth 3d Breaths at high % multipliers, early breaths can go literally unseen in tank hp pools.
Feel free to run Holy numbers and compare them...
Note: I don't account for any of the crit from Imp. Flash Heal.
Last edited by TheDoctor : 03/04/09 at 2:42 PM.
Reason: Added WS to throughput...
Wow, Havoc, you seem inclined to hate on disc. I don't see why it's wrong to assume that Holy has similar critical heal effectiveness than disc, because numerically Disc crits more frequently, Holy heals for slightly more hp, and thus a crit has a larger numerical heal - more chance of overhealing. This seems roughly even, when all is said and done with a small heal like flash the biggest risk of overhealing comes from being heal sniped by another healer - and disc is STILL more useful there.
If we shift to analyzing Greater Heal versus Flash Heal, overhealing is going to become important, because GHeal is so much bigger than flash.
You're absolutely, 100% wrong on Penance consuming Borrowed Time. Maybe it is SUPPOSED to work this way, but currently it isn't, and since it seems like a simple fix, I have to assume it's working as intended. As for a lot of it being only meaningful to certain builds, there are core talents that make Disc, well, Disc. Sure you could put 35 points in the Discipline Tree and somehow avoid Divine Aegis, Borrowed Time, Rapture, Penance, and everything that makes Discipline worthwhile. Then we'd be theorycrafting stupid. It seems about as valuable as theorycrafting what happens if you stand in KT's Void Zone.
A) Favors disc (their heals land before the damage arrives - you can't beat instantanious, Flash heal arrives before Greater Heal, Penance arrives instantly)
B) Have you actually played with Penance? Oh wait, the Borrowed Time answered this question. Disc all the way.
C) Divine Aegis and Power Word: Shield and Penance. Disc again.
So you now have another list of 3 points that... favor disc for tank healing.
I dunno, I guess I should put together some insane Prayer of Healing build for Disc and then claim it's a better raid healer than Holy, just so you could have a similar quality inanity to refute. Disc is the best tank healer of the two specs. If you're assigned to tank healing regularly, and your raid doesn't have a Disc priest, spec disc.
For disc healers, has anyone yet considered the value of using Power Infusion on yourself for the mana savings? The cooldown is fairly short, and over a 10 minute fight, I'd expect you could use at least 5 of them on yourself, if not 6. In any sort of high HPS requirement situations where you are forced to blow mana quickly, this could alleviate some of the mana pain being up 15% of the time, or used to increase HPS at no extra cost. It's certainly not new information, but for those of us that haven't looked at this spell this way, it might be a good idea.
The reduced mana cost was simply a way to offset the 'cost' of the haste, resulting in almost no effect on efficiency. (your 'or used to increase HPS at no extra cost'). Ignoring the haste portion (the better part of this spell in my opinion) would net a gain in efficiency, but what would that take?
To do this you would have to ignore the haste PI granted, and try to cast at the unhasted cast speed of the spell. I would argue that in your scenario of high HPS situations, you would end up loosing throughput when you add in typical reaction times, as we are all used to casting off a latency adjusted castbar. Other posts pegged reaction time, using .1s as best possible if I remember right. In this scenario, a .2s reaction time to account for the calculation of the unhasted cast time then the casting of the spell seems appropriate.
Using Rellapses figures for tank healing cast sequence , I come up with a maximum 26mp5 if you can accurately cast on the GCD and jam all of these spells into 15 seconds. Missing one cast will drop this down to 21mp5, (which i think would be more nearer the mark), with a subsequent loss of 1 spell to your throughput (TheDoctor has a post regarding disc heal spacing at 1.2s, so i think you can jam all these casts in the length of PI).
Spell Mana Savings
PI 463 -463
PWS1.5 532 106.4
PoM3.0 521 104.2
Penance4.5 618 123.6
FH6.0 521 104.2
FH7.5 521 104.2
FH9.0 521 104.2
Penance10.5 618 123.6
PoM12.0 521 104.2 411.6 17.2
FH13.5 521 104.2 515.8 21.5
FH15.0 521 104.2 620 25.8
No math to support his, only spreadsheet nonsense, as I am one of those sub-humans Heinlien talks about in Constatntius' signature.
The reduced mana cost was simply a way to offset the 'cost' of the haste, resulting in almost no effect on efficiency. (your 'or used to increase HPS at no extra cost'). Ignoring the haste portion (the better part of this spell in my opinion) would net a gain in efficiency, but what would that take?
To do this you would have to ignore the haste PI granted, and try to cast at the unhasted cast speed of the spell. I would argue that in your scenario of high HPS situations, you would end up loosing throughput when you add in typical reaction times, as we are all used to casting off a latency adjusted castbar. Other posts pegged reaction time, using .1s as best possible if I remember right. In this scenario, a .2s reaction time to account for the calculation of the unhasted cast time then the casting of the spell seems appropriate.
(snip)
I would argue that it's not exactly tangible, because the on-demand haste allows you to delay your heal sufficiently, meaning that you could heal even more reactively. I agree with the math on the mp5 gain of using it for that purpose, but because of the haste, you can deliver a heal at a more appropriate time.
Another way to look at it is to consider a constant DPS on your target. You then need a constant HPS to heal that target. Regardless of haste you will not need to cast any more healing spells during the time Power Infusion is active because they aren't taking any more damage than they otherwise would. Thus Power Infusion can be used as a tool to conserve mana. The haste can be seen as a bonus that provides you with burst HPS should the need arise.
[e] So what I'm trying to say is that Power Infusion will work as either an efficiency or throughput tool depending on what you do while it is active. You can either have a constant HPS with higher HPM, a higher HPS with constant HPM, or anywhere in between.
I am indeed wrong about penance and borrowed time. I confused it with Inner Focus. Those who remember that bug will understand what I mean.
Self use of PI depends on encounters. On saph I use it on CD. On malygos it goes on DPS on phase 1 and self on phase 2. On sarth it goes on DPS in the begining, then it goes straight on self as soon as vesperon lands.
Usage on self in CD to lower the mana cost is not anywhere near as effective as using it on the right time to either improve DPS or help you deal with a hectic moment
Originally Posted by Sharajat
Wow, Havoc, you seem inclined to hate on disc. ...
I dont hate disc at all, in fact I am disc right now, for sarth 3D MT healing (just got the achie yesterday) and I very often play disc for PvP. I am simply saying that your method of comparing disc and holy is appaling. Yet again on this post, you do not run the numbers though someone has been kind enough to do it for you.
Its a bit early to be comparing tank healing for disc and holy as currently on the PTR holy sustainable HPS is a joke.
While I do agree that a quantitative analysis about who heals more, for longer, is important, I feel we're forgetting that Disc's main advantage is that the absorbtion shield they create complements traditionnal heals. The absorbtion actually works as a boost to the tank's hit points, a very powerful stam buff if you will. It creates an extra cushion in case of bursty damage. 10k extra HP are not to be sneered at.
Already in MC, we always took care to mix HoTs and regular heals on MTs. I think we now need to add Absorbtion to that, if the content ever ceases to be trivial.
While I do agree that a quantitative analysis about who heals more, for longer, is important, I feel we're forgetting that Disc's main advantage is that the absorbtion shield they create complements traditionnal heals. The absorbtion actually works as a boost to the tank's hit points, a very powerful stam buff if you will. It creates an extra cushion in case of bursty damage. 10k extra HP are not to be sneered at.
Already in MC, we always took care to mix HoTs and regular heals on MTs. I think we now need to add Absorbtion to that, if the content ever ceases to be trivial.
If you are looking at my analysis that has numbers with it... I list "throughput per second" because I acutally account for both hps & mps individually on my own theorycraft work.
Mixing HoTs and direct heals isn't necessarily the same as needing to add absorbtion to that scenario... Even if you could achieve 100% crit chance DA shields would still only acount for 23% of our throughput. Under normal circumstances you will find that DA shields will account for <15% of our throughput.
Absorbtion is clearly superior to healing of any sort. Though it needs a new method of looking at its impact not to be incorporated into old thoughts. What I think needs to be valued is "tank health impact" via mps similar to what you mention. This tank health impact is how much additional health they will normally carry into the damage pattern of a particular boss. Example - What is the additional Sarth 3d Breath survivability on average if you provide 400mps from direct heals and 6500 mitigation from PW:S prior to a breath? How much less health is required of the tank to not get 1 shot?
The instant heal portion of Empowered Renew is correctly healing the targets, however the crit is still not proc'ing Holy Concentration. I am no where near a trainer, if anyone is willing to test 1/3 and 2/3 Empowered renew to see if it is proc'ing please do so!
Havoc, I run numbers and you QQ that the numbers are wrong without even attempting to provide any other numbers. I don't run numbers, but instead provide tangible, logical reasons that you'd expect disc to be a better tank healer, based on observation and experience, and you QQ that there's no numbers for you to QQ about.
I don't think it is wrong to assume that heals are used effectively. Back when we downranked, you would have had a point. Heals were selected for the situation, and since we could literally heal an entire health bar with our most powerful heal, it was generally assumed that you selected the right heal and crit was wasted healing.
Even in TBC, this was generally a good assumption.
In WotLK it's obviously a bad one. If we need a fast heal we cast flash heal. If we need a small heal we cast flash heal. It doesn't matter if Greater Heal rank 2 would be sufficient to fill up the entire health bar, we're obviously not using it. We have to cast flash heal, wait to cast greater heal, or use a different tool in our toolbox. We have a lot less granularity in selecting the heals, and because of that critical effects are far more important than they used to be - we can no longer assume that the right heal for the situation even exists. Therefore modeling disc and holy's potential healing is an utterly legitimate tactic. Overhealing has proven to strongly depend on playstyle, and and is probably running quite high at the moment because no one is heal canceling - it's better to just let it land, as the mana cost is irrelevant. Once we have practice at the new playstyle, and start to get some very solid numbers on overhealing % on crit and non-crit from quality priests, we could theorycraft the results and the difference in overhealing.
On top of this utterly irrelevant objection, you toss in the idea that we can't model holy's output because holy has sustainability issues. If you notice, I didn't model sustainability, because that's exactly what Blizzard is busy tweaking the hell out of at the moment, and I don't believe that we can safely say that anyone's sustainability will be the same on live as it is on the PTR at the moment.
I do think they're more or less done tweaking outputs, seeing as how they changed holy's output only by adding 3% to Blessed Resiliance and changing ToF into a pure healing mechanism, while giving a similar crit boost and crit mechanism to disc (probably to further differentiate the two trees). Serendipity is a huge improvement for burst healing, but I doubt its moving in a MORE positive direction - the amount of haste a 3 stack grants is quite huge, and I sincerely doubt it will be adjusted upwards.
So, I did Ignis (sp?) the Halls of Lightning remix boss tonight. And it was the first pleasant tank healing I've seen in Ulduar. It's what I imagined when Blizzard said they wanted healing to be less frenetic and more pensive / careful.
Basically, imagine 25-30k hits on a 3-5 second cooldown. If the tank dodges, you can go a solid 10 seconds without healing. I would Flash x3, then wait (reactive healing, zomg) for a hit. GHeal (0.9-1.0 GHeals are lawl, let me reiterate), and then go back to Flash x3, wait. I didn't drop below 80% mana until later in the fight when another (we were running 5) healer died and I had to start raid healing a bit in-between.
It was nice. Obviously it was "easy", but honestly, tank healing shouldn't be as much about SPAM SPAM SPAM as never screwing up your rotation. It's not like tanks do much besides avoiding fire, balancing cooldowns, and managing a rotation. Why should healing tanks be any more difficult?
I still haven't had the chance to really play with Disc on the PTR yet (need glyphs; haven't had time to transfer them and head to a city to put them in). I imagine it would have performed around the same on this fight, with the obvious caveat that with so little (and very spiky) damage, the constant smoothing of shields and DA might have been less effective.
It seems that priest+paladin is going to be the default healing team for tanks in Ulduar, since Inspiration is going to be critical to keeping tank spikes as low as possible. Obviously Disc will be the primary role for this, so if you don't run a Disc priest now (like Fusion), you might have to change. Either Wreath or I will be going 50/50 Disc (dual-spec) in 3.1, with the other going Shadow/Holy for trash and low-healer fights.
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
For the priest that played on the PTR, do you use the same gear as on live?
So are the gear list in the holy and disc topic still the best items pre Ulduar, or have some items become more valuable for regen?
I don't have the slightest idea what 3.1 will bring for me, I've seen the patch notes but don't know if I'm gonna stay disc or going back holy.
As for the out of five second distribution, the main question is : is there phase transition with OOFSR regen during the fight ? Or phase with low enough damage so that you can go OOFSR ? When there is, yes, then indeed you need their own distribution (but n = 0 is fine). Otherway, I guess OOFSR is marginal, when we don't have any more clearcast, and when OOFSR is much less rewarding than it was.
The problem I was thinking about was when you go to estimate the mana returns you'd get from holy concentration, how often are you inside the five second rule when the HC buff is up?
For instance, suppose 20% of your in combat time is outside the five second rule and that you have HC up about 40% of the time. Is it safe to assume 40% of your outside 5 second rule regen will be increased by 50%?
Probably not, since your HC uptime is likely to be concentrated more in your inside 5 second rule time. Kloutch brought up that problem in the other thread here.
Anyway, I was just thinking we want to know the probability of HC being up, given we're inside the 5 second rule versus the probability of HC being up given we're outside the 5 second rule. Otherwise we can't properly estimate mana regen from holy concentration.
Originally Posted by Mearis
Promethia, if you are interested, I have about ~2 years worth of WWS logs saved if you want to write a datamining tool to model uptime. PM me if you are interested.
I wish I had the time... But alas I do not at the moment. I don't even really have time to post here.
Originally Posted by Havoc12
The 0.005 factor promethia has been calculated by regression calculations, when the new regen formula first came out. Check the relevant post here at EJ and also at the combat ratings at 80 post. Its simply because mana regen never goes to zero even if spirit/int go to zero. Its not really important as its so small. I only included it for the sake of completeness.
Oh, yeah I remember those posts now. That's fair enough, but you have to keep in mind that in regression analysis, you are estimating parameters based on measurements. There is always an error of measure, so more properly it should be 0.005 +/- something. Most likely, that something is > 0.005, which means it's not statistically significant. It's a little hard to believe that in the "true" formula on the server the value wouldn't be zero. But who knows? Maybe some blizzard programmers thought it would be fun to mess with us and add in a small constant for kicks.
I agree that the value of crit in mp5 is significantly smaller than that of int or spirit. If you didn't already, you could adjust FSR up when calculating "G" to account for the fact that you are more likely to be inside the five second rule during HC uptime. I really don't know how much to tweak it up, though, as I mention above...
One nice thing is that if you assume FSR = 100% for HC uptime, then:
and your mana from HC simplifies to:
And the change in mana you get from changing crit is:
So assuming FSR=100% makes calculations simpler if nothing else. It should underestimate mana returns slightly, but since assuming n is constant overestimates HC uptime, these two assumptions cancel each other out a bit.
For the priest that played on the PTR, do you use the same gear as on live?
So are the gear list in the holy and disc topic still the best items pre Ulduar, or have some items become more valuable for regen?
I don't have the slightest idea what 3.1 will bring for me, I've seen the patch notes but don't know if I'm gonna stay disc or going back holy.
The gear list in the original post of the holy thread is Nidaba's personal opinion. Many people will disagree on what exactly the best items are within an ilvl tier, particularly when you're weighing regen vs. throughput.
From the standpoint of regen stat valuation, not much has really changed: spirit is now lower in value for holy priests but still a good bit above mp5 (it was already slightly below mp5 for discipline and that won't change unless you break ~1700 intellect), crit is somewhat less effective for holy as a regen stat than in 3.0.x, and crit no longer has a direct regen benefit for discipline. The rest is the same: in particular, if you're gemming for regen you're already gemming for straight intellect. (Toot toot, everyone hop on the Replenishment train!)
The problem I was thinking about was when you go to estimate the mana returns you'd get from holy concentration, how often are you inside the five second rule when the HC buff is up?
For instance, suppose 20% of your in combat time is outside the five second rule and that you have HC up about 40% of the time. Is it safe to assume 40% of your outside 5 second rule regen will be increased by 50%?
Probably not, since your HC uptime is likely to be concentrated more in your inside 5 second rule time. Kloutch brought up that problem in the other thread here.
Anyway, I was just thinking we want to know the probability of HC being up, given we're inside the 5 second rule versus the probability of HC being up given we're outside the 5 second rule. Otherwise we can't properly estimate mana regen from holy concentration.
I perfectly agree with you. Ideally, one would need to know both.
And you can't use the same number.
But I was just saying that most of the OOFSR in live should be phase transition, with an HC uptime close to zero.
When I'm doing any new content on the PTR, I go 4-piece T7.25 and Mantle of Diss. I also put on 2 regen trinkets, and swap my neck for the spirit/crit one from Malygos instead of the Sapp crit/haste/spell one. It puts my raid-buffed spirit around 1600, which is just barely enough to only have lost 500 OO5SR regen (and a bunch of uncalculated IHC + Serendipity regen).
One thing that still hasn't been fixed is the fact that it now takes me 45 seconds to drink to full. The nerfing of OO5SR regen really really nerfs my 0->full regen time post-buffing, and it's really obnoxious. We need %-based water, and we need it now.
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
03/04/09, 12:53 PM
