OK, thanks. So it become more potent if you're then able to get out of the five seconds rule after HC procs.
Yes. Not to steal your thunder, but I brought up this exact issue not too long ago in this post on the 3.0 compendium thread. Skip down to the paragraph that starts out "However, uptime is a little tricky to model..."
Basically, I completely agree with you even if you didn't know it. I think the tricky part is choosing an appropriate distribution of N(t), so I'd be curious if you had any of the common distributions in mind. It isn't obvious to me how n might be distributed.
I kind of like the idea of just building up a histogram based on combat logs -- an empiric distribution. Then you just use that as a probability density and sum it all up as you've described nicely. To be even more thorough, you'd want one for when you are inside the 5 second rule and another for when you're outside the 5 second rule. The latter may have a lot of mass at n=0. But to get a pretty good expected value for mana returns from holy concentration, you'd need that information. An average will always overestimate by a bit.
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 think the benefit of Serendipity isn't the sustained HPS. It effectively gives us the fastest non-cooldown reactive big heal of any class. I was healing MT on Sarth-10 tonight, and I kept thinking to myself just how amazing Serendipity would be in a fight like that. You could probably go so far as to say you could afford to flash the raid and use your quick gheals entirely for the tank, and never really fall behind. It's all about triage anyway, and this gives us another element of that.
That's exactly what I said, we're excellent at this kind of healing. But if you're only casting 1/3-/1/4 if your heals on the tank, then you're not tankhealing in my book. Having a priest raidhealing with 0,9 sec GH as backup on the tank is obviously amazing
I dont see how swiftmend and holy shock compare with serendipity. Serendipity is an entirely different tool similar to tidal waves, light's grace and GotEM.
Swiftmend is a 15 second CD and it uses up a HoT on the target. The tool that holy priests have that is comparable to swiftmend is PWS/PoM and I consider PWS/PoM to be far superior to swiftmend in utility. Nature's swiftness = GS and priests also bring inspiration.
(...)
The mana regen side of things is not really an argument against serendipity. The new serendipity makes priests better tank healers by greatly reducing response times and greatly increasing the number of heals landing on the tank and making flash heal a spell you can cast on the tank without fear of dropping HPS. If our mana efficiency is bad, that is something that can be addressed via holy concentration.
I'm sorry, but you need to know more about other healing classes before you draw conclusions.
I'm guessing any druid progressing past Loken heroic would use [Glyph of Swiftmend]. Holy Shock is instant, has extremly high crit chance and has same "cd" as hasted GHs - it's far superior in any aspect. A holypaladin can cast Holy Lights at about the same speed as our Flash Heals and keep Holy Shock as backup (and he can go back FoL-spaming if everything is so damn easy as it seems in your example).
And of course Serendipity change can't be seen isolated from the total regen nerf (Serendipity+spirit). The manaburn is about the same for Greater Heal and Flash Heal so if a priest is in mana issues we don't have any other option than stop casting. A paladin can go "defensive" and keep a steady stream of FoLs landing on the tank, a druid can keep HoTs up even as "oom", while a priest can do nothing else than stop casting and then cancel-cast. If they give tight enrage timers with current mana regen it will challenge healer's mana and priests are totally fucked on tankhealing as we've known it. Only hard encounter I can think of where I rather would have new Serendipity over the old one for tankhealing is M'uru sentinel tank-duty.
Now to sum it up, Serendipity is not what makes holypriests great at tankhealing, I'm pretty sure Blizzard want us to go Disc for that. Serendipity however makes priests spectacular raidhealers ... and competent at best tankhealers compared to the real experts.
Having spent some time trying out Empowered Renew on my priest alt I found that my renew ticks were ticking for a lot less than I had expected them to be assuming the formula for determining healing per tick is as follows:
After quite a bit of jumping off of high places I have found that the spell formula for renew ticks is actually a better fit to the following:
(Sum of Improved Renew,Twin Disciplines, Spiritual Healing and Glyph Effects)*(Base+Spellpower*C*(Empowered Renew))
Having stripped my toon of all gear and talents I have confirmed that Base = 280. By throwing gear on but having no talents and glyphs I tentatively determined C to be approximately 0.376. Through gradual addition of the talents and the glyph of renew to the mix I found that Improved Renew, Twin Disciplines, Spiritual Healing and the glyph of renew appear to be additive rather than multiplicative in their effects. Empowered Renew is indeed a spellpower coefficient modifier as is clearly indicated by the tooltip information.
For my priest, with 2231 Spellpower, including Inner Fire but no Divine Spirit active (to compare to live) the formula, as derived from my empirical testing yields the following prediction for a renew tick:
With regards to the Upfront healing component of an Empowered renew it appears that it is currently being determined as follows:
Upfront Healing=0.15*(Total Amount Healed by 5 Unglyphed Renew ticks)
Again, for 2231 Spellpower, if Upfront healing were determined by the ACTUAL amount of total healing done by my glyphed renew it would be in the range of:
0.15*1929*4<=Observed Upfront Healing<=0.15*1930*4 -> 1157.4<=Observed Upfront Healing<=1158, which clearly it was not from my testing.
But what if it were calculating based on 5 ticks, not 4? Then the observed range should have been on the order of
1446.75<=Observed Upfront Healing<= 1447.5. So clearly the actual healing done by your glyphed renew ticks is not how the upfront component is being calculated.
Now, what if we remove the glyph effect from the healing? Going back to my predictive model for renew ticks I estimate an unglyphed renew tick at 2231 spellpower to be 1618 (which also appears to correspond with observed ticks for fully talented but unglyphed empowered renew). 5 ticks @ 1618 healing = 8090 Healing Done, 15% of which is 1213.5 which falls within the observed range of the Upfront healing component of Empowered Renew. At 963 Spellpower, 5 unglyphed ticks should yield ~4527 total healing done, 15% of which would be 679, again corresponding to the observed upfront healing component.
I can confirm these observations. The renew glyph increases ticks by ~16% but reduces HoT healing by 6.4%, but it does not affect the initial heal. Also the initial heal is not subtracted from the total HoT.
The total renew formula for unglyphed renew now appears to be
with ticks of
The talent factors are the appropriate %number, i.e. glyph =25% or 0.25 impR = 15% or 0.15 and so on.
The total renew formula for glyphed renew now appears to be
Glyphconstant is 4/5 and reflects the loss of 1 tick. This obviously can be simplified into
With ticks of
Thus unglyphed renew with full talents heals for
1.495*(1400+1.88*1.15*spellpower) with 0.26*(1400+1.88*1.15*spellpower) per tick.
Glyphed fully talented renew heals for
1.435*(1400+1.88*1.15*spellpower) with 0.31*(1400+1.88*1.15*spellpower) per tick.
The glyph reduces healing done by renew by 4% and increases healing per tick by 19.2%.
Playing around with the Patchwerk test, and our tank healing (as Holy) has taken a huge hit to the regen nuts. I simply can't sustain tank healing anymore. It used to be, with careful use of IHC, I *could* spam GHeal at the same rate as paladins and their HL. On PTR (with current build), it's not even close. The paladins can sustain a mixed healing for the entire duration of 30 million HP ... I cannot.
I'd try Disc, but I'm not Glyph'd.
That is unfortunate to hear. I'd love to hear your impressions of disc, if you get a chance to try it on the PTR. The data I've seen on live and my own experiences are that disc lacks throughput compared to holy even in single target healing (and counting the shields). If disc is our only viable option in 3.1 mana wise for tank healing, it'd be nice to know if it has the power for the job.
The pessimist in me wants to say discipline is fine on mana on the PTR because it is pumping out less "healing" (counting the shields and mitigation) than holy.
The optimist in me wants to go disc and never look back.
With the new Penance glyph (which noone has yet) it should be good. Still no match against a Paladin but good enough on its own terms when we factor in the new -3% damage taken effect on all raidmembers (which is mostly useless on Patchwerk but nice in all AOE heavy fights since you can expect 100% uptime).
Can't speak for Holy mana regeneration but Disc also lost noticeably and I wouldn't just claim that "10 minutes with disc is absolutely no problem" just yet. It is on live but on the PTR you have to use your mana fiend and you start to watch out for possibilities to get mana from somewhere. Also, if you die early and get CR'ed you are fucked as you can't make up that mana anymore and you just run dry; if you can use your manafiend and/or a pot you can draw out a minute or so. At least with the current pre-3.1 equipment. You absolutely can't use small pauses in healing demand to put up damage spells. You can't spare that mana anymore unless there's going to be a huge decrease in healing required like there's in Thaddius P2 (as it looks right now Freya P2/ Thorim P2 might be candidates for this)
"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."
That is unfortunate to hear. I'd love to hear your impressions of disc, if you get a chance to try it on the PTR. The data I've seen on live and my own experiences are that disc lacks throughput compared to holy even in single target healing (and counting the shields). If disc is our only viable option in 3.1 mana wise for tank healing, it'd be nice to know if it has the power for the job.
The pessimist in me wants to say discipline is fine on mana on the PTR because it is pumping out less "healing" (counting the shields and mitigation) than holy.
The optimist in me wants to go disc and never look back.
Its getting harder and harder to say that holy throughput is better in single target healing(counting shields) than disc. Assuming we are purely talking about tank healing in a HPS fight as disc>holy HPM fights. Grace now puts our flash heal about on par with holy flash heal(ignoring BR and ToF admittedly ). We get much more crit on the tank than holy(and via mental strength albeit not much) and as stated our penance spell glyphed is extremely powerful. We have an instant 6.5k shield.
I want to go back to holy but seeing as how I am stuck as MT healer its not going to happen.
Last edited by Sureall : 03/02/09 at 11:48 AM.
Reason: clarity
That is unfortunate to hear. I'd love to hear your impressions of disc, if you get a chance to try it on the PTR. The data I've seen on live and my own experiences are that disc lacks throughput compared to holy even in single target healing (and counting the shields). If disc is our only viable option in 3.1 mana wise for tank healing, it'd be nice to know if it has the power for the job.
The pessimist in me wants to say discipline is fine on mana on the PTR because it is pumping out less "healing" (counting the shields and mitigation) than holy.
The optimist in me wants to go disc and never look back.
You can't translate PW:S directly into HPS. Absorbing damage is better than healing it, it's zero overhealing and you can increase HP on tank before spikes. You can't look at pure HPS and compare it to a paladin.
Its getting harder and harder to say that holy throughput is better in single target healing(counting shields) than disc. Assuming we are purely talking about tank healing in a HPS fight as disc>holy HPM fights. Grace now puts our flash heal about on par with holy flash heal(ignoring BR and ToF admittedly ). We get much more crit on the tank than holy(and via mental strength albeit not much) and as stated our penance spell glyphed is extremely powerful. We have an instant 6.5k shield.
I want to go back to holy but seeing as how I am stuck as MT healer its not going to happen.
I don't think holy is at all suited for tank healing anymore. We simply don't have mana to keep healing. It will be an awkward version of cast/cancel which isn't all that viable when tanks are taking 25k hits. Any priest that wants to tank heal probably should get a disc dual spec. Better yet, get enough paladins to sort tank healing. They never run out of mana.
Healing myself self buffed with greater heal on PTR I manage to empty my 18,4k mana bar in 45 seconds. Doing the same on live I lasted anything between 1m5s (0 holy concentration procs) to 1m38s (lots of holy concentration procs). This is without using Inner Focus, Surge of Light procs. Basically I didn't even try to get out of the 5 second rule as to not make it even more biased to how it is on live servers. Granted, every heal on the live test got a serendipity proc which makes a big difference. But overall our single target spam capacity has taken a huge blow.
You can't translate PW:S directly into HPS. Absorbing damage is better than healing it, it's zero overhealing and you can increase HP on tank before spikes. You can't look at pure HPS and compare it to a paladin.
No aegis kinda destroys the whole point of Disc imho. Granted you have alot of keyspells like penance, pain supression and renewed hope, but losing out on inspiration and divine aegis makes me wonder what would grant you a spot before a paladin.
I personally won't be going that far into Holy as I see no need. Given some PTR Testing (albeit somewhat limited), I did not find mana to be a big issue as Disc. However, I did have to dust off my Shadowfiend on some attempts, kinda felt good to actually use it. Also, one attempt without Replenishment was a nightmare whereas in live I can get by without it.
I also gem for straight +int and have a Greatness card with Int so my regen is in a very good spot.
Assumptions:
Base Raid Buffed stats
1100 Spirit
1100 Int
25% base raid buffed crit
2400 Spellpower raid Buffed
Holy stats (with talents):
1155 Spirit (Spirit of Redemption)
1100 Int
30% base raid buffed crit (holy spec)
2689 Spellpower raid Buffed
Disc Stats
1166 Spirit (6% talent)
1265 Int (15% talent)
38% Base Crit (1% from 15% int increase, 5% holy spec, 4% weakened soul, 3% focused power)
2400 Spellpower raid buffed
Flash heal cast:
Disc: Base[2040+(2400*0.8068)]*(1.09)*(1.04) = 4507 Crit 0.38*1.95*[base] = 3340 Total average healing+prevention = 7847
Holy: Base[2040+(2400*1.0068)]*(1.10)*(1.03) = 5049 Crit 0.30*1.5*[base] = 2272 Total average healing = 7321
So flash heal on a TANK clearly wins for disc. The absurd 1.95 coefficient on critical heals is what pushes it over the top. With Aegis stacking to 10k, clearly none of the 0.45 Aegis will be overhealing.
On a non tank, Disc loses 4% crit without weakened soul, dropping its flash heal to 7495. Still a slight win for disc, but with a much, much, much higher chance for Aegis to be overhealing, the win seems reasonably irrelevant. Meanwhile holy is proccing surges and holy concentration from tossing flash heals about.
So I want disc to tank heal, I want holy to raid heal, when all is said and done, even with flash heal.
P.S. My holy build simply isn't realistic, that build maximizes tank healing at the cost of raid healing, which obviously isn't something a holy priest would do. My point was that even maximized for tank healing, holy is still behind disc.
Well, don't be so hasty. Why wouldn't you PWS instead of Flash Heal as Disc? You're assuming the non-tank won't have weakened soul, but if that was the case, then why not just PWS them.
Here are my thoughts on that: using flash heal will remove Grace from your tank; no matter how you slice it, PWS is always more efficient than flash heal and has the added chance to the 2% mana thingamabob (P.S. is this working on PTR? I've never seen it proc); PWS is instant, no longer has a cooldown, and therefore can be used on the move.
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.
15% cheaper Penance and Greater Heal is absolutly nothing compared to another Shadowfiend or two (depending on encounter obviously).
Lambi: Ye, Aegis over something else, that was not the main point of the post though!
Let's look at the numbers:
Mana Gained from an extra Fiend
Assume you use Fiend at the 2 min mark into a fight that lasted 10 minutes. Here I'm using reasonable timing for Fiend usage and not at the very start or end of a fight to artificially inflate numbers:
5 Min Fiend CD:
Fiend 1: 2 min
Fiend 2: 7 min
3 Min Fiend CD
Fiend 1: 2 min
Fiend 2: 5 min
Fiend 3: 8 min
Let's say for argument's sake Fiend returns 40% of a 30k mana pool, which is 12 000 mana, it could be less and it could be a little more but that's a nice solid number.
Mana savings from Improved Healing with Penance:
Assuming using the Penance Glyph: # of Penances in 600 seconds minutes = 100
Subtract 15% for human error and variability = 85
618 mana cost for Penance untalented
Minus Mental Agility (10% decreased mana cost) = 556 mana
Minus Improved Healing (15% decreased mana cost) = 472 mana
Total mana saved = (556-472)*85 = 7140
This is without factoring in the usage of GHeal with BT procs (1232 base cost on GHeal, 1050 with IH, 182 mana saved per cast)
Summary
Over a 10 minute fight your spec has given you 5k mana more than me, a pretty solid number. However, I've also greatly reduced the amount of mana I need to heal my tank given that he has +25% armor and my Divine Aegis has prevented a significant amount of damge that your spec has not AND all of my heals hit 9% harder.
Sure, you may get more mana but I'm a much stronger healer in my spec than yours. All of this being said I really do not believe it will be necessary to put more than 13 points into Holy as Disc spec come 3.1 and putting points into Shadow is a waste.
Come 3.1,
As it stands you would generally opt for PW:S first. More outstanding shields is the best chance of achieving the 12sec CD on Rapture. The total value of PW:S is on par HPS+MPS, HPM+MPM verse Flash heal. Though in any scenario where you absolutely know the target won't need the absorbtion imminently, you would probably want to resort to flash but in this scenario why bother with either. After the PW:S then you would follow up with a Flash though cross healing probably has already taken care of it unless the target is still taking substantial damage.
Currently, everything I have seen on the PTR indicates that the Grace being limited to one target was reverted. The latest tool-tip doesn't show it and in-game testing doesn't indicate it dropping off the tank.
Originally Posted by Sharajat
-snip-
Flash heal cast:
Disc: Base[2040+(2400*0.8068)]*(1.09)*(1.04) = 4507 Crit 0.38*1.95*[base] = 3340 Total average healing+prevention = 7847
Holy: Base[2040+(2400*1.0068)]*(1.10)*(1.03) = 5049 Crit 0.30*1.5*[base] = 2272 Total average healing = 7321
So flash heal on a TANK clearly wins for disc. The absurd 1.95 coefficient on critical heals is what pushes it over the top. With Aegis stacking to 10k, clearly none of the 0.45 Aegis will be overhealing.
-snip-
So if you want to figure Average Healing + Prevention you have incorrect numbers... What you actually show is the average critical.
Your "healing number" is correct with 4507. But if you want to find the average heal you would multiply by (1*(1-CritChance) + 1.5*(CritChance)) to get the average cast.... For 38% crit, that means 62% of the time you get 1.0 base and 38% of the time you get 1.5 * base = 1.19 times the base on average.
4507 * 1.19 = 5363.33 Average Healing
To find the average prevention number you take the 4507*1.5*30% = 2028.15 for the average DA. This only happens 38% of the time on average so multiply it by .38 which gives, 770.697.
The sum 5363.33 + 770.697 = 6134.027 is the average healing + absorbtion.
The same mistake is made with holy which you should have found to be... 5806.35 healing on average.
A few things, you quote me and didn't read the quoted part: I would spec Aegis - it was a mistake. My original point was just that going after that extra shadowfiend or two is actually an option, not what's the best spec in disc.
I never said that this spec was anything special for tankhealing. It's amazing for pushing out BT-hasted PoHs though
You're numbers for shadowfiend is totally wrong. Without any buffs will fiend hit 10 times - that's 50% mana back. Add Windfury/Heroism and you get more. And no, I don't think anyone use Penance on CD (again, that's not what this spec is mainly for) so your argument is basically worthless as you have some perfect conditions for your spec and extremly bad conditions for the shadowfiend-spec.
Also, you don't heal that much more going into holy, with this spec: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...0&version=9626 you lose 6% crit and Inspiration. Depending on encounter this can be a big or a minor deal.
12 minutes fight, 50% mana back from Shadowfiend (this is too low), 30k/25k mana pool:
54/0/17: Four fiends á 15k mana will give 60k mana back from Shadowfiend.
60/11(14): Two fiends á 12.5k mana will give 25k mana back from Shadowfiend.
See what I did there?
Last edited by Bjork : 03/02/09 at 8:21 PM.
Reason: Fixed numbers
Ran with 6 healers
I personally was on raid healing and used Flask of Frost Wyrm/fish feast food buff, and I didn't see any sort of "hard" mana problem at all. I of course used Shadowfiend/pot, but I also dpsed during phase 3(when just the last small guy was left). I was missing some addons, and raid frames etc were a bit weird for my taste, and there was some lag, but overall it wasn't bad, mana didn't seem like an issue at all. I didn't really opt to use Prayer of Healing that much besides if the Valkyrion guy decided to rune of death(big green one)? and there was a group or two that got hit hard. I didn't use my Serendipity buff proactively. I usually just CoH/PoM/Flash heal people getting hit, and used a hasted Gheal on someone low or the tank.
Will probably take a bit of runs to get used to the new changes, but I don't see them as bad or anything on mana issues. This was probably an "easy" mode, and will be tuned harder, but even then, I can opt to use PoH more if raid damage is increased, and still wouldn't have too much trouble with mana.
I'm really surprised you did so well with mana. From looking at the wws, I'd estimate you spent about 180k mana over the course of the fight, and received back almost 62k mana directly from procs/replenishment/shadowfiend/etc. Assuming you'd have a mana pool of about 21k buffed, that means you were averaging at least 935 mp5 of innate regen to not go totally OOM. That's some seriously effective use of oo5sr regen and the spirit world glass I guess, unless I'm overlooking something.
Come 3.1,
As it stands you would generally opt for PW:S first. More outstanding shields is the best chance of achieving the 12sec CD on Rapture. The total value of PW:S is on par HPS+MPS, HPM+MPM verse Flash heal. Though in any scenario where you absolutely know the target won't need the absorbtion imminently, you would probably want to resort to flash but in this scenario why bother with either. After the PW:S then you would follow up with a Flash though cross healing probably has already taken care of it unless the target is still taking substantial damage.
Currently, everything I have seen on the PTR indicates that the Grace being limited to one target was reverted. The latest tool-tip doesn't show it and in-game testing doesn't indicate it dropping off the tank.
So if you want to figure Average Healing + Prevention you have incorrect numbers... What you actually show is the average critical.
Your "healing number" is correct with 4507. But if you want to find the average heal you would multiply by (1*(1-CritChance) + 1.5*(CritChance)) to get the average cast.... For 38% crit, that means 62% of the time you get 1.0 base and 38% of the time you get 1.5 * base = 1.19 times the base on average.
4507 * 1.19 = 5363.33 Average Healing
To find the average prevention number you take the 4507*1.5*30% = 2028.15 for the average DA. This only happens 38% of the time on average so multiply it by .38 which gives, 770.697.
The sum 5363.33 + 770.697 = 6134.027 is the average healing + absorbtion.
The same mistake is made with holy which you should have found to be... 5806.35 healing on average.
A few things, you quote me and didn't read the quoted part: I would spec Aegis - it was a mistake. My original point was just that going after that extra shadowfiend or two is actually an option, not what's the best spec in disc.
I never said that this spec was anything special for tankhealing. It's amazing for pushing out BT-hasted PoHs though
You're numbers for shadowfiend is totally wrong. Without any buffs will fiend hit 10 times - that's 50% mana back. Add Windfury/Heroism and you get more. And no, I don't think anyone use Penance on CD (again, that's not what this spec is mainly for) so your argument is basically worthless as you have some perfect conditions for your spec and extremly bad conditions for the shadowfiend-spec.
Also, you don't heal that much more going into holy, with this spec: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...0&version=9626 you lose 6% crit and Inspiration. Depending on encounter this can be a big or a minor deal.
12 minutes fight, 50% mana back from Shadowfiend (this is too low), 30k/25k mana pool:
54/0/17: Four fiends á 15k mana will give 60k mana back from Shadowfiend.
60/11(14): Two fiends á 12.5k mana will give 25k mana back from Shadowfiend.
See what I did there?
Under your math for a 12 minute fight, a 5 min CD Fiend gets popped 3 times. However, both of those scenarios see subpar mana regen from fiends as it's not usable mana. The Fiend is either used very early when your mana is not low enough to make use of it or late enough in the fight that it does not matter. The typical Fiend hits 10 times for 5% mana back each hit. You're assuming those hits are *never* dodged or miss and both those combined give a 10% chance to not return mana. Heroism is once every 10 minutes now and a WF totem will net you at best one more swing realistically for 5% more mana. You are ignoring real world conditions for your argument while I am taking at least modest steps to assume what would be an actual scenario.
Also, if you're Disc and you aren't using Penance on CD most of the time, you're not playing the class properly. It's the most efficient and powerful single target heal in the game and given the DA stacks, it's even better in 3.1. You'll notice I inserted a 15% buffer on my calculations, which is perfectly reasonable for a real world scenario.
You suggested a Disc build without Inspiration, which in my mind, is just unfathomable. Disc is first and foremost a tank healer and while you do spend a bit of time on the raid, at least 75% of your time is on a tank. To not take arguably the best tank synergistic talent for a healer is extremely questionable - you might as well roll a paladin if you aren't going to take Inspiration.
Even if you switch over points to Aegis, you're still missing Grace, at least 5% crit (if not more) and Inspiration - all pretty significant abilities for Disc. tank healing. Again, my spec does not forego the talents to such a large degree but merely reduces their chance to proc, which given focused tank healing won't realistically be an issue. As I also said, I don't think it's truly worthwhile to go that far into Holy or into Shadow at all as with proper gearing, mana shouldn't be an issue.
Finally, my point was that there is a spec that available that minimizes important talent loss from Disc but still nets you good mana savings, something your spec doesn't do. I recognize you were trying to be off the wall and come up with a different spec but it doesn't work and just neuters some of the better aspects of Disc healing.
You guys really are being hard-headed when he explicitly said the build was for maximum endurance on PoH spamming with some flexibility.
Although, a worthy point would be to bring up Healing Prayers perhaps, but then you lose out on Penance.
It's more or less a hybrid spec designed to raid heal and occasionally throw Penance at a tank or something. But, he's not trying to be a tank healer, or a one-trick pony healing only a single tank. Your points are certainly valid, but they're not on topic with his goals.
But back on topic, the spec is designed for Prayer of Healing, Grace is a moot point there since Grace won't affect Prayer of Healing. He's going to get Divine Aegis because it does affect Prayer of Healing.
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.
Ahh, interesting. You guys take focused will over mental agility? With rapture not working on aegis, is it worth it for you? I feel I save more mana having points in MA vs crit, and with my aggressive playstyle I've actually been bordering to oom (too much PoH).
1) You assume 100% return from critical which immediately on its own invalidates your calculation
2) You base it on max HPS, which is meaningless. Its sustained HPS, burst HPS and heal spacing that count.
3) You are looking at flash heal spam, which is quite a ridiculous assumption when tank healing.
Originally Posted by Bjork
I'm sorry, but you need to know more about other healing classes before you draw conclusions.
I'm guessing any druid progressing past Loken heroic would use [Glyph of Swiftmend]. Holy Shock is instant, has extremly high crit chance and has same "cd" as hasted GHs - it's far superior in any aspect. A holypaladin can cast Holy Lights at about the same speed as our Flash Heals and keep Holy Shock as backup (and he can go back FoL-spaming if everything is so damn easy as it seems in your example).
And of course Serendipity change can't be seen isolated from the total regen nerf (Serendipity+spirit). The manaburn is about the same for Greater Heal and Flash Heal so if a priest is in mana issues we don't have any other option than stop casting. A paladin can go "defensive" and keep a steady stream of FoLs landing on the tank, a druid can keep HoTs up even as "oom", while a priest can do nothing else than stop casting and then cancel-cast. If they give tight enrage timers with current mana regen it will challenge healer's mana and priests are totally fucked on tankhealing as we've known it. Only hard encounter I can think of where I rather would have new Serendipity over the old one for tankhealing is M'uru sentinel tank-duty.
Now to sum it up, Serendipity is not what makes holypriests great at tankhealing, I'm pretty sure Blizzard want us to go Disc for that. Serendipity however makes priests spectacular raidhealers ... and competent at best tankhealers compared to the real experts.
I am not going to get into a pissing contest over this.
Rejuve/swftmend ~7k, PoM/PWS ~6.5k, holy shock = 6.5k when it crits. They are all the same.
As for the holy shock/instant HL option, that is about as good as binding heal/Gheal and druids don't have anything like this.
Also remember that JoTP requires refreshing and it could easily go off at an awkward moment.
Serendipity allows you to tailor your out going HPS to spikes and it increases both burst HPS and heal spacing. If you don't understand why this makes you a much better tank healer, simply run a simulation. Find an example where the tank dies with gheal spam and add in serendipity. You will find that there is a very large number of such examples where with serendipity you comfortably save the tank.
I did a simple simulation. Boss hits for 15k with 1.5 second swing timer and has a 20% chance to proc 100% increased attack speed for 3 seconds. Tank has 45k HP and 50% chance to completely avoid damage. I use the RAND() function in excel to calculate hits and procs. Damage looks like this
I only run the function once and this is what it gave me. a couple of hits early on but mostly avoided, then suddenly you get two closely spaced procs followed by a string of unmitigated hits. Spamming gheal results in the tank dying 4 seconds after the spike starts. To save the tank another healer needs to supply 35k healing over 10 seconds 6k of which must come within the 1st 4 seconds. With serendipity and bh/gh spam at the last few seconds the tank lives for 6-7 seconds after the spike begins and only 20k healing is needed over 10 seconds. Basically without serendipity you need another healer spamming big heals instantly after the spike begins to keep the tank up. Which means you need a full time second healer. With serendipity you can solo heal this if you keep renew up and a druid stacks some HoTs on.
A paladin spamming HL every 1.5 seconds does only slightly better than as a priest with serendipity and only when you factor in crits. The tank lives for about the same amount of time and the other healers have the same window to react, but a little less healing is needed to keep the tank up (15k instead of 19k).
There is no question that serendipity was a massive boost to our ability to deal with tough to heal tank damage. We are quite close to paladins right now in those terms. If our mana regen is really bad then that is another concern entirely. Blizzard set out to nerf our mana regen and they did. Serendipity was introduced to address a major concern for priests, which is the fact that they had no reliable way to proc speed boosts like shamans and paladins do. The new serendipity certainly delivers that. Right now as it stands purely in terms of our ability to deal with incoming tank damage, holy is in the best shape it has ever been. If overall due to mana concerns we fail, that is another matter entirely.
Serendipity allows you to tailor your out going HPS to spikes and it increases both burst HPS and heal spacing. If you don't understand why this makes you a much better tank healer, simply run a simulation. Find an example where the tank dies with gheal spam and add in serendipity. You will find that there is a very large number of such examples where with serendipity you comfortably save the tank.
What fight is it you think of, where greater heal spam will not save a tank but some sort of timed use of a hasted greater heal will? I'm trying to think of such an example but can't think of any where I would expect to see that happening on any kind of regular basis.
Besides in any such example a hypothetical increased survivability of the tank from the hasted greater heal will be offset by his lowered survivablity when you spam flash heal to stack serentipity.
If you are arguing that raidhealers will be able to help out in a crisis situation because they have a pocketed 0.9s greater heal, sure. But for tank healing the change to serendipity is a major nerf to holy priest. At least until we are rolling in gear with 2k spirit and int.
03/02/09, 7:12 AM
