I would much prefer rather a slightly weaker spell on a 5 minute cooldown. I know that our Sarth3D attempts are often much faster than 10 minutes, and having only one Shaman in the raid is a pain in the ass (indeed, they've fixed this for 3.1).
5 minutes feels like a good "once per fight" spell; 10 is pushing into "only use it on attempts that are going well" territory.
I would much prefer rather a slightly weaker spell on a 5 minute cooldown. I know that our Sarth3D attempts are often much faster than 10 minutes, and having only one Shaman in the raid is a pain in the ass (indeed, they've fixed this for 3.1).
5 minutes feels like a good "once per fight" spell; 10 is pushing into "only use it on attempts that are going well" territory.
You're forgetting that a lot of ulduar fights can be that long. Sarth3D is kind of unique. It's a long fight, but if you're going to wipe, you will do it at around the 3 minute mark, which is when Vesperon's disciple kicks in. It's pretty difficult to wipe after that point. I'd be surprised if all the Ulduar hard mode fights behaved that way also.
I like the new hymn of hope, despite its downsides. I don't mind the channel time. In a 25 man situation, when there are several other healers to cover for you, 8 seconds can usually be spared as long as it is timed correctly. If the regen nerfs are really as bad as they say, the other healers will be more than happy to cover for me for that short time in exchange for a few thousand mana. I have not seen any of the fights in Uludar, however I'm sure there are times when the channel can be ninja'd in (boss starts RP'ing, phase transition, everyone is topped and damage is light, etc). Blizzard has also said that they want to make healing less intense/spammy (which to me translates as "you can channel for a few seconds and not wipe your raid"). Worst case scenario: a priest cannot heal anyone when they are OOM anyway. So best start singing.
The idea of having that mana go to a DPS class who really does not need it is slightly annoying however. I will just try to laugh about it when it happens.
As for the new empowered renew... I like it, but not for the cost of 6 talent points and a major glyph. As much as I'd love to have it, I will be unfortunately be skipping it (except for the 1 point required to get it to proc holy concentration). Currently I use renew on just on tanks, and I like to cast it when they are at full HP. We have a pro tree druid in our raid who takes care of the hots on everyone else.
Divine Hymn: so far sounds amazing, but it is still being tinkered with. I will just need to see what version ends up making it to live.
8/10 seconds HoH isn't the problem, but the random element of it. Imagine having Mana Tide going to retpalas and enhashamans all the time - or even pets. Either make it based on group (not likely), range (my favourite .. "gather around the priest for more mana") or base it on max mana.
I can always pull off 8 seconds HoH if the mana is needed, but then I need to know that the mana goes into good use. This is so obvious and easy to fix ...
Divine Hymn nerf is not a problem really. Once per fight is "enough" for such a good spell.
Divine Hymn is ticking for FAR less now. Last patch with 2354sp they were around the 11k mark. Testing now on PTR with 2440sp is around the 8200-8300 mark.
8/10 seconds HoH isn't the problem, but the random element of it. Imagine having Mana Tide going to retpalas and enhashamans all the time - or even pets. Either make it based on group (not likely), range (my favourite .. "gather around the priest for more mana") or base it on max mana.
I can always pull off 8 seconds HoH if the mana is needed, but then I need to know that the mana goes into good use. This is so obvious and easy to fix ...
Divine Hymn nerf is not a problem really. Once per fight is "enough" for such a good spell.
Max mana would make it go to disc priests/holy paladins over holy priests though - they stack int even more than we do.
The HoH glyph is not really worth the slot. Its return is just too small. A glyph can indeed increase effectiveness by a large margin. An extra tick of HoH is like an extra 3-4% base mana to 3 ppl every 6 minutes. Comparing it with glyphs on spells that you can use pretty much constantly, like CoH, PoH and flash heal, its return is just too low.
Channeling somehting that gives mana back to your team for 8 seconds, is never going to be the problem. Even in the toughest fights you can find 8 seconds to achieve that. The real problem with a long channel is the potential for becoming interrupted and adding an extra 2 seconds is too much. Aside from that the real fatal flaw of HoH IMO is unpredictability, in a 25 man raid senario.
I think the spell should always target the priest in addition to the raid targets.
Max mana would make it go to disc priests/holy paladins over holy priests though - they stack int even more than we do.
I think he meant the deficit of max mana as this would ensure it would only go to classes with large mana pools that are running low which are specifically the people you want this spell to target. Healers are likely to have some of the largest mana pools and therefore are more likely to have large deficits at a time when you may be interested in using the spell. If you have mages and locks who frequently let themselves get extremely low on mana, you can either use this spell to boost their DPS or you can notify them a little bit before you use the spell and ask them to get their mana pool higher. Either way, if HoH worked more like that you could use better planning and better communication to use it to its fullest.
I'm strongly in the camp that 8-10 seconds of channel time isn't really that large an issue; I've been able to use the previous version of HoH on every encounter we've tested so far in Ulduar. I will say that I would like to see the glyph give 100% pushback resistance in addition to the extra time because even when you use the spell properly you're still rolling the dice a little bit. With that said I've seen Blizz post a number of times that they like RNG in PVE; they like the idea that sometimes things don't go perfectly and you need to blow CDs you normally wouldn't, so I'm not sure that the argument that HoH being interrupted is too random is going to garner a lot of support from the developers.
Even if there were some additional changes to the glyph I don't know that I would use it, however, because frankly the encounters we've tested so far in Ulduar haven't been taxing enough on mana to warrant using a glyph slot to increase regen. Clearly they still have time to change things, so I may be eating these words but even the hard modes we've tested haven't left me struggling for mana and at this point I'm in gear that's nearly 4 resets old and missing some key upgrades from what I'll actually have when we hit live. Perhaps if they made the glyph affect both hymns and gave some cool secondary benefit to everyone DH touched it would be worth a slot. Otherwise, I'll have to agree with others who plan to use the major glyph slots for a spell we'll use more often.
From the look of them I think they look great. However, the Healer 4 part bonus (for Holy Priests) and GC's response annoys me somewhat. I just can never imagine them putting a 4 part bonus on mage gear that only affected Frostbolt or on Warlock gear that only effected Shadowbolt - the QQ from Fire/Arcane Mages and Fire-Destrolocks would drown Azeroth.
Surely a bonus that effects something both trees use a lot - like Flash Heal crits return 60% of the mana cost (slightly OP or what- no one would EVER get that right?) or a dual bonus to something that you cannot access from either tree like 4pt: Reduce Cooldown of COH and Penance by 1 second. Or 4pt: Your Borrowed Time is not consumed on the first cast and your SOL procs can now crit.
Also, do you guys reckon Disc will be getting any more throughput talents? Or do you think the +3% crit (Focused Will), 1% Haste (Enlightenment) and 3% extra healing (Grace) will be enough? I'd love to see a Spirit or Int converted to throughput talent. Apart from Mages' Meditation-like talent they had little use for Spirit and have been givien a scaling armour - Disc Priests also get little from Spirit apart from Meditation so would love a deep Disc talent that gives extra SP/crit or haste on our Inner Fire (or give it to us for free - I'm bored of all the conditional bonuses Disc is getting).
Err, the difference is a Fire mage or Arcane mage have no reason at all to use Frostbolt. But Holy Priests still have reasons to use Power Word: Shield. Double bonus if you pick up Body and Soul.
The only compelling argument I can think of would be to point out a Holy priest afflicting someone with Weakened Soul denies a Discipline priest from using their stronger shields on the same person.
P.S.
And even so, a more accurate description would of been if the Warlock's bonus gave 240 spellpower after casting Shadowbolt. In fact, that would of been a very interesting ability for Warlocks IF the 240 extra spellpower boosted the next two warlock spell sufficiently enough to make up for using Shadowbolt over Incinerate (and it probably would have).
Originally Posted by arison
Everyone should start from the same place and rise based on their abilities, desires, and schedule. No one plays MMOs to *be* powerful, they play MMOs to *become* powerful. It's the journey, stupid. The rarer loot is, the more cherished it is when you get it, but only so long as there is a reasonable expectation to get it. The rarer loot is, the better it feels when you kill a boss or when $AWESOME_TRINKET drops.
I pray to god blizz does NOT give us any talent like that for additional throughput. The explosion of our class when the nerfbat hit us would be heard from Northrend to Gadgetzan. Disc has gotten enough love and I am entirely happy and content with it.
I made the suggestion on numerous forums to have the 4-Piece T8 bonus for Priests be:
"Casting Penance or Circle of Healing also grants you 250 spell power for 5 sec."
I'm crossing my fingers that Blizzard considers this alternative as, currently, the Priest 4-Piece bonus is the only set for any class that:
1) If Holy, it has a negative impact on any Discipline Priest in a raid setting due to Weakened Soul debuff.
2) If Holy, forces the Priest to use a spell outside of their normal spell casts to gain the benefit.
From what I can gather - every other 4-Piece T8 set bonus for all other classes utilize abilities that are part of the class and spec's normal rotation. I won't lie, as a Holy Priest I do use PW:S occassionally - by no means, however, should a Holy Priest be using this spell regularly. Especially if a Discipline Priest is present.
The set bonus is flawed. These flaws are very apparent and the fact that it will negatively affect a raid that has a Holy and Discipline Priest present should be reason enough to reconsider.
Set bonus shouldn't be the deciding factor between picking up set pieces and not. They are just that, a "bonus". Look at it this way, our new T8 isn't ilvl 239, with so many bosses having hardmodes there is sure to be a full set of 239 cloth healing items too.
It's better to have set bonuses that are actual bonuses than ever having something like T2 I mean seriously, think of the ramifications that would happen if after every Penance or CoH we gained 240 spellpower. The spellpower bonus would have to be nerfed. Or think of it in terms of ilvl, I recall reading the Sartharion trinket in it's old form of 250 spellpower was worth 300 ilvls.
Originally Posted by arison
Everyone should start from the same place and rise based on their abilities, desires, and schedule. No one plays MMOs to *be* powerful, they play MMOs to *become* powerful. It's the journey, stupid. The rarer loot is, the more cherished it is when you get it, but only so long as there is a reasonable expectation to get it. The rarer loot is, the better it feels when you kill a boss or when $AWESOME_TRINKET drops.
I agree, Starfire, that firstly the set bonus isn't the be-all, end-all; and secondly that T8 won't be best in slot.
But you surely have to see the issue here? The set is a set for two specs - holy and discipline. Disc priests use PW:S as a primary tool. Especially with the new Soul Warding talent, they'll be throwing it out a lot. We holy priests won't. For us it's more of a gimmick. It's very useful on some fights. For example on Grobbulus, shielding the diseased person as he runs away is great. But on the vast majority of fights, we won't be casting it at all, and if we do cast it, it hurts the Disc priest in the raid.
So a discipline priest will look at the set bonus and go "Wow, that's awesome! In theory I could get 100% uptime of the buff." A holy priest will look at the set bonus and go "Meh, maybe a couple of times per fight." And immediately start looking for replacements. Set bonuses should at least have SOME appeal.
I agree, Starfire, that firstly the set bonus isn't the be-all, end-all; and secondly that T8 won't be best in slot.
But you surely have to see the issue here? The set is a set for two specs - holy and discipline. Disc priests use PW:S as a primary tool. Especially with the new Soul Warding talent, they'll be throwing it out a lot. We holy priests won't. For us it's more of a gimmick. It's very useful on some fights. For example on Grobbulus, shielding the diseased person as he runs away is great. But on the vast majority of fights, we won't be casting it at all, and if we do cast it, it hurts the Disc priest in the raid.
So a discipline priest will look at the set bonus and go "Wow, that's awesome! In theory I could get 100% uptime of the buff." A holy priest will look at the set bonus and go "Meh, maybe a couple of times per fight." And immediately start looking for replacements. Set bonuses should at least have SOME appeal.
Not to whine, but I direct your attention to T7 4 piece.
All in all, I'm content with it. I mean it could have been renew or something. I hate when set bonuses are mandatory, everyone looks alike.
So we're tied with the Druids, but Druids don't roll with a mandatory 14 points in another tree. Likewise Discipline gets those points in for free.
I suppose 4 points isn't quite so much of a difference, but when I play with builds I find myself juggling key abilities deep in the holy tree, and for other healing specs you juggle optional abilities.
So we're tied with the Druids, but Druids don't roll with a mandatory 14 points in another tree. Likewise Discipline gets those points in for free.
I suppose 4 points isn't quite so much of a difference, but when I play with builds I find myself juggling key abilities deep in the holy tree, and for other healing specs you juggle optional abilities.
Yes, but discipline also has a mandatory 13 points in the holy tree to get 5% Holy Crit and Inspiration. I do agree though on the bloath in the Holy tree. I will likely go disc+holy dualspec in 3.1 as I am the only healing priest of our guild and I can't really find a build where I'm fully satisfied with. A solution to free up some points could be to merge Improved Healing and Healing Prayers. This would free up 2 or 3 points depending on how much ranks the merged talent would have.
On a side note: since our HoH had it party restriction removed and now has smart targeting, I'm wondering why they're not altering the shaman mana tide to a similar mechanic. On healer mana intense fights I foresee putting myself in a group with 2 shamans and on AoE intensive fights grouping the mages with those 2 shamans. Ofc as long as the shaman poison/disease cleansing totems have party restrictions on them shamans will still be shuffled around on certain encounters.
So we're tied with the Druids, but Druids don't roll with a mandatory 14 points in another tree. Likewise Discipline gets those points in for free.
Druids do 14/0/57 quite often and at least 11 is "mandatory" in Balance while the additional 3 points are questionable in 3.1 with the changes to Nature's Grace et all. If this is another attempt at "meditation should be baseline" I just wouldn't go there on these forums. Granted we have little use for more than 57 points in Resto regardless of how many are needed to be spent elsewhere so I guess that makes things slightly different?
Is it only me that's really really happy that we don't get a too good 4PC set bonus? This way getting the higher ilvl loot (ilvl239) pieces will be a no brainer for a holy priest.
For a disc priest either, there is far too much Haste on T8, it's not worth wearing 4 pieces for the bonus.
I disagree. In many scenarios haste is better than crit as a throughput stat, even for disc priests. With more haste on your gear you can save people many times from dying, since your heals will have a higher chance to land on time. This is very hard to make a mathematical model out of, but it's still the major benefit with haste in my POV.
Try a haste vs crit set at Mimiron P2 and you'll understand what I'm saying. My recommendation would be to mix the stats both as holy and discipline, but with a slight favour of haste for holy and a slight favour of crit for discipline.
I disagree. In many scenarios haste is better than crit as a throughput stat, even for disc priests. With more haste on your gear you can save people many times from dying, since your heals will have a higher chance to land on time. This is very hard to make a mathematical model out of, but it's still the major benefit with haste in my POV.
Try a haste vs crit set at Mimiron P2 and you'll understand what I'm saying. My recommendation would be to mix the stats both as holy and discipline, but with a slight favour of haste for holy and a slight favour of crit for discipline.
Um, have you seen the changes to serendipity? I find it very hard to believe that haste is such a major factor anymore. Secondly, that argument "with more haste you can save people" does not really make sense because one could just as quickly say "with big crits you can save people"
03/24/09, 2:13 AM
