Well Svena, Disc has never had the throughput of Holy and I doubt it ever will. Divine Aegis and our PW:S is what allows us to surpass Holy in certain aspects. DA is never lost to over healing and simultaneously adds to your targets effective health pool for its duration. This is why Disc can be utilized as a solid tank healer even though they may not have the raw HPS of other healers.
I am not saying Disc is perfectly well to do and does not need any buffs, but it certainly isn't behind Holy on single target sustainability.
In regards to the penance glyph, I am really disatisfied with how Blizzard is going about with these rampant priest nerfs. Season 6 has been live for less then 2 weeks and we already have nerfs to every ability used in arena , a few of which are largely detrimental to PVE. I am not saying non of these nerfs were warranted, but I doubt Blizzard actually had any solid Q&A over the last 9 days to assemble the information to go about ALL these changes. 5% more crit on penance in pretty negligible considering with weakened soul up 40% holy crit isn't too hard to attain. I will probably stick with it out of principle, since I spent 125g for the thing.
I've spent a while thinking about this now, I started plotting rotations but as far as I can tell it's actually this simple:
Over 32sec you will now cast 4 Penances instead of 5. Hence you lose the healing of one Penance and gain the amount of healing you can do with <other spells> in 2secs. In addition your Penance gains 5% crit.
Of course you can model that gain/loss fairly easily, but you have to look at it like that. It's no good working out how much you lose for casting one less Penance with 5% more crit but ignoring the 2sec that you gained. Assuming the numbers above are accurate we're looking at ~13k lost but you could make up at least half of that from other spells easily.
So that is a throughput nerf but it's not as huge a nerf some people are making out.
The issue of healing burst and Penance being on cooldown when you need it is of course still very relevant and not really something you can model in any useful way.
The issue of healing burst and Penance being on cooldown when you need it is of course still very relevant and not really something you can model in any useful way.
I agree we can't really model it without knowing exactly the damage profile of a fight, but we can still consider some of the impact.
The way I view Disc healing is that it has lower overall throughput than competing specs (holy pallys etc.) but it's on-demand peak throughput is higher. I mean that when we really need it to deal with a big spike Disc can really crank out those numbers. I use Penance as an anti-spike tool rather than on every cd to maximise throughput. The Penance glyph nerf (and I can't see any way in which 1.6s cd -> 5% crit is anything but a nerf) reduces the likelihood of our big healing being ready when we need it.
As an example take a big-hitting boss (two-shotting tanks) with a swing-timer of someting like 1.5s; Ignis would be a good example I guess. Say the tank takes two melee swings in a row. Flash heal simply isn't up to topping the tank up. Greater heal has the throughput but in the small age it takes to cast (without borrowed time) the tank could eat a third melee swing or some aoe and it's all over. This means we have two tools to deal with these big hits; PW:S + hasted heal of some sort (both on the tank - shield on someone else just for the haste doesn't really help) and Penance. If neither of these is available there is a significantly increased likelihood of our tank dying. If one or the other is up we're probably going to be able to prevent a tank death. By extending the cd on Penance by 1.6s you're effectively saying we have to gamble on the RNG for one extra swing each spike before we can top the tank up effectively.
To put a specific number on things consider this scenario:
Tank takes 'random unavoidable boss special ability A', which eats a PW:S + Penance combo (cos I'm a pro healer and knew the damage was coming.) I now have either 6.4s or 8s until my first anti-spike ability comes off cd. That's either 4 or 5 melee swings from our 1.5s swinging boss. Assume taking 4 hits before Penance comes off cd kills the tank (even with my low throughput flash heal spam thrown in). With a 6.4s cd the tank needs to avoid 1 of these hits. With an 8s cd he needs to avoid 2. With avoidance numbers round the 40% mark this gives the tank a 18% or a 23% chance of dying respectively. So a 1.6s longer cd increases the chance of tank death by 5%. The 5% extra crit is pretty much irrelevant here. I realise this is a highly contrived example but it works to illustrate what I'm trying to say.
The Penance glyph was not about throughput, it was about having Penance ready when you really need it.
Last edited by Silkath : 05/01/09 at 10:52 AM.
Reason: Size 5 font was bigger than I expected.
The Penance glyph was not about throughput, it was about having Penance ready when you really need it.
Definitely the main point.
For the people posting about how you will be "losing" penance casts and building formulas for the "loss", you are doing it wrong. You will be filling out that lost penance with different spells. Less efficient, I know, but its unrealistic to just throw out all the time you gain by not casting penance.
Over a period of 51.2 seconds, you cast 6.4 penances nonglyphed, or 8 penances glyphed. Castime is 12.8 and 16s respectively ignoring haste (cooldowns not affected + all casttimes are equally multiplied). So for every 6.4 penance casts, you are replacing the 1.6 remaining penances with 2.1 flash heals instead.
Healing = casts*noncritsize*nocritpercent + casts*critsize*critpercent*critshieldmultiplier
Picking some random person's WWS log, ~30% crit
penance 3155 hit, 5134 crit
flash heal 3751 hit, 6917 crit
Filling in the variables,
80846 penance healing no glyph
101058 penance healing prenerf
84225 penance healing postnerf
11356 flash heal filler for postnerf
So using penance glyph with flash heal filler is essentially a ~5.4% loss on throughput postpatch, not 20%.
The crappy part though, is that glyph been reduced in half of its effective.
Prenerf, penance glyph increased its throughput by around ~9.6%, but now we are looking at ~4.1% after considering flash heal filler
Tank takes 'random unavoidable boss special ability A', which eats a PW:S + Penance combo (cos I'm a pro healer and knew the damage was coming.)
Precast GH! The glyph change is not going to a kill a tank, it just means you have to devote more time to watching his HP and predicting damage. This change (along with Soul Warding) is aimed at the "MT healing while PW:S spamming the raid" healing style, imo.
The Penance glyph was not about throughput, it was about having Penance ready when you really need it.
Even though I agree with this statement to some extent, your example seems to be describing a lack of throughput. You're saying you now can't cast Penance often enough to keep a tank up and Flash Heal doesn't provide enough HPS in the mean time. That has nothing to do with healing burst, that's sustained throughput.
The real issue is: does the tank sometimes get hit so hard that they are in danger of dying and need Penance for an instant heal, and then, in a gap between 6.4 and 8 seconds later, it happens again. Does this happen? Yes, inevitably it does. Is it suddenly going to result in lots of tank deaths? Not really since there are other buttons and other healers to make up for this. And even without these it's still only an issue if it turns out that the boss actually does gimp your tank right after he manages to perfectly time his burst to annoy the Disco Priest. I just don't see this being as big of an issue as some people are making out.
I feel the throughput/mitigation of disc is still inferior to holy at the moment.
I'm not up to the maths but looking at divine aegis non crits self buffed.
Holy 6700per hit Disc 5400 per hit - with divine aegis added on average would make it about 6000.
Flash heal non crit disc 5400 holy 6700 healing.
Prayer of healing disc 3800 holy 4900.
Penance is our throughput. The change to the glyph to 5%crit is nasty.
Of course we do bring other things to a raid.
With all due respect - at what? At raid healing? Circle of Healing, good game.
At tank healing? Holy is the worst tank healer in the entire game. Of course disc is better, SHAMAN are better.
The sky is not falling, discipline is not dead because it is paying more mana for shields and is spending 1.6 more seconds waiting for penance. It does mean that Divine-Fury free Disc builds are dead, as pre-casting Greater Heal for huge damage spikes so you can follow it up with a penance is going to have to become part of a disc priest's healing, because 8 second cooldown is a nice long time to wait for the spell to come back up. Remember, penance cooldown starts ticking at the START, not the END, because it's channeled (this is very different from other cooldowns with a cast time, i.e. mind blast, holy fire, et al). So the actual cooldown went from 4.4 seconds (minus haste) to 6 seconds (minus haste). This is quite huge.
Discipline is still good at what it is good at. It just means a few more +16 int gems, and using a previously rarely-used spell.
Even though I agree with this statement to some extent, your example seems to be describing a lack of throughput. You're saying you now can't cast Penance often enough to keep a tank up and Flash Heal doesn't provide enough HPS in the mean time. That has nothing to do with healing burst, that's sustained throughput.
I disagree, sort of. To me sustained throughput means being able to put out enough healing to match the bosses total damage done over the entire fight and to be able to keep casting at that level of throughput for the entire fight. I suspect that on a typical 10-man run total damage done to the tank/length of fight is not significantly different dps to the hps of flash spam (or flash + shield spam). It's been a long time since I've seen healers lacking for sustained throughput.
If you look at a graph of Disc hps over the course of the fight it is incredibly spikey. Clearly part of this is because incoming damage is spikey but in the weird theoretical case of an infintely empty healthbar you'd still see consistent spikes when Penance and PW:S are available. In between those spikes our max instantaneous hps with flash spam is lower. A longer cooldown on Penance makes it harder to match the spikes in our output to the spikes in incoming damage.
Originally Posted by Tunga
The real issue is: does the tank sometimes get hit so hard that they are in danger of dying and need Penance for an instant heal, and then, in a gap between 6.4 and 8 seconds later, it happens again. Does this happen? Yes, inevitably it does. Is it suddenly going to result in lots of tank deaths? Not really since there are other buttons and other healers to make up for this. And even without these it's still only an issue if it turns out that the boss actually does gimp your tank right after he manages to perfectly time his burst to annoy the Disco Priest. I just don't see this being as big of an issue as some people are making out.
In 10 mans there frequently isn't another another healer to help out. There are a couple of times in 25s where you might be solo-healing a target away from the raid (Auriaya add tanks, Iron Council tanks for example). And my main point is we don't have that many other buttons actually - if Weakened Soul is on a target and Penance is on cooldown there aren't really any other options. I agree that it isn't that likely that your tank will get gimped like that, just that the glyph change makes it more likely. Tanks do get hit an awful lot in an average raiding week.
Originally Posted by ttyl
Precast GH! The glyph change is not going to a kill a tank, it just means you have to devote more time to watching his HP and predicting damage. This change (along with Soul Warding) is aimed at the "MT healing while PW:S spamming the raid" healing style, imo.
I suspect you're right, which is a shame as I really liked that playstyle. Maybe smoothing tank spikes and mitigating raid damage was considered too versatile a role for a single player to fulfill in a raid.
And I nearly put 'Precast GH' in at the end of my first post. Don't think I've had to do that since Morogrim...
Tank takes 'random unavoidable boss special ability A', which eats a PW:S + Penance combo (cos I'm a pro healer and knew the damage was coming.) I now have either 6.4s or 8s until my first anti-spike ability comes off cd. That's either 4 or 5 melee swings from our 1.5s swinging boss. Assume taking 4 hits before Penance comes off cd kills the tank (even with my low throughput flash heal spam thrown in). With a 6.4s cd the tank needs to avoid 1 of these hits. With an 8s cd he needs to avoid 2. With avoidance numbers round the 40% mark this gives the tank a 18% or a 23% chance of dying respectively. So a 1.6s longer cd increases the chance of tank death by 5%. The 5% extra crit is pretty much irrelevant here. I realise this is a highly contrived example but it works to illustrate what I'm trying to say.
The Penance glyph was not about throughput, it was about having Penance ready when you really need it.
It seems to me that the change to the penance glyph was really a PvP nerf if anything yet I have not seen one person say that it was not both a needed and correct change to disp PvP. Yes the nerf will affect healing in raids but last time I checked priests have the most varied arsenal in the game when it comes to healing spells and an extra 1.6 seconds to cast one of them between the uberness of penance in the end really isn't a huge deal. Don't get me wrong I'm not trying to argue that this change will indeed lower the throughput of disp speced priests but based on the math posted up to this point only by a very small percentage. And I'm not a hundred percent sure on this point but I do believe I read somewhere that they are greatly buffing DA to take into account the full heal including overhealing, it will stack, and add a 10k cap to any health bar you see fit to spam your heals on.
Most of the discontent from the nerf seems to be coming from disp priests who went out and dropped 400-800g on something they saw was almost over powered if anything and wanted to exploit it as soon as possible. I would like to see some ideas as to how we could see an increase in the effectiveness of the glyph for PvE without it being a viable PvP boost. I am thinking something in the realm of a 10% increase to critical chance would still make almost any disp priest drop if for PvP but make it a worthwhile PvE glyph for sure.
I am thinking something in the realm of a 10% increase to critical chance would still make almost any disp priest drop if for PvP but make it a worthwhile PvE glyph for sure.
Honestly, no. As has been stated repeatedly, the value of the glyph was the ability to have penance available when you needed it. I keep penance off the cd in order to respond to spike damage -- the difference those two seconds makes is huge as far as upping the ability to do so. Without it we're back to pre-loading a (highly inefficient) greater heal in between penance cooldowns, which I admit I'm not looking forward to, as it kills a large portion of my mobility. Standing there pre-casting is not what I want to be doing during say, Hodir. Or ever, really. It's a throwback to old mechanics and it is remarkably un-fun compared to what I've grown used to.
This is not to say I have any sort of entitlement; I was fine with penance as it was pre-ulduar, but with the spike damage and damage output in ulduar I found the cd to be highly restrictive, making the glyph a huge asset.
Even at 10% crit I find it unlikely that I'd take it in PvE or PvP. PoH, for as untalented as I have it, would be a better glyph option for me at that point.
Another effect to take into account with the nerfed glyph is mana usage. We end up using more mana because we have to cast another flash heal in the "rotation," so we lose about 5% in throughput and lose some mana efficiency. I wouldn't know how to begin to quantify that though.
EDIT: Penance glyph change is going to be reverted:
I just wonder why people are considering not using the penance glyph, or calling it useless....
there isnt another glyph that i see even half as useful to a Disc priest
but the 2 second knock off from the CD is so much better then subbing in a FH filler in your rotation
for Many reasons, Penance has a higher Mp5 gain (w/ improved healing) has higher HpS and gives more healing per mana...
not to mention since its initial tick hits almost instantly, why would u rely on a cast time?
(making it much more useful in fights where tanks take enormus spike damage)
with DA being able to stack, 3 straight crits off penance means an additional 4-6k shield (or just 1-2k speaking realistically with a 1/3 penance crit)
why would you even consider using FH over penance?
my MT healing rotation 90% of the time is
PW:S + penance + Hasted Greater heal
then PoM
rinse and repeat using PW:S on any off tank or raid member taking damage
or even another healer so they get a 2% mana back gain from rapture
I just wonder why people are considering not using the penance glyph, or calling it useless....
there isnt another glyph that i see even half as useful to a Disc priest
Nobody's calling the penance glyph useless, or advocating using flash heal in place of penance. It was announced that the glyph would be changed to instead increase penance's crit chance by 5%, which would be next to useless compared to the current form of it, but they backed out on that and the glyph is not changing.
I noticed something interesting that I hadn't seen posted yet: Borrowed Time works on Mind Sear and doesn't consume the buff. I can't say how valuable this would be in a raid, but I tested it out on a timed CoS run last night with pretty nice results. When the party wasn't taking much damage I would PW:S the tank and get two 3.5 second Mind Sears off.
Maybe Disc Priests can help expedite trash clears? I can't really think of any boss encounters where this would be useful as healing always comes first. Maybe someone more experienced can shoot this idea down for me.
Has anyone done any testing on trinkets yet? I'm deciding if I should go for the Nobles deck since DMF is this week or wait for Pandora's pleasave dkp for Pandora's plea which almost every caster wants.
Hey, I noticed the Shadow t8.5 pieces are better in Rawr then the Holypieces, but the T8-4P bonus is so great. Which set should I get? :X
I have not yet gotten around to handling T8 in Rawr so it rates items on pure stats, not taking set bonuses into consideration. Also have to add that Trinkets are in for a major rehaul as no Ulduar trinkets are currently handled.
Rawr - Coder of HolyPriest (Healer) and ShadowPriest (DPS) Modules. Get Your Rawr 2.3.x!
Yesterday we tried some Thorim Hardmode. ( Got this little bitch to 28% )
I specced Disc, because we saw some Vids (Vodka e.g.) who used Disc primary for Raidhealing.
So let me say Im kinda impressed of what Ive seen yesterday.
To give some numbers:
Tank Heal was done by 2 Paladins with one Resto Shaman.
Raidheal was done by Druid, Holypriest and me.
Druid and Holy were about 1,3 Million in effektiv healing. Ive done 550-600 thousand Healing with
Glyphe PW:S, Flash, Penance and PoH.
Most of the healing comes throug PoH, I think this is clear.
My "Recount guessed Absorbs" shows me values in between 480-600 thousand absorbs per long try (I thing we got 10 really good and long tries). Pushing me behind the Holypriest and the Druid.
The Holy Priest was in the arena in P1, so we can assure that he was Top in Healing meter going in to P2.
I think specially in Thorim Hardmode Disc for Raidhealing is an immense benefit for any Raidgroup.
I didnt count all the Deaths I avoided with PW:S, but no other Class could have saved their virtual lives any better, especially in this Encounter.
I think the main benefit is the combination of saving someone from death with the next hit an giving the raidhealers more time to bring out their big heals an top the raid or the person who ran low in health.
Normally I play Holy. I love the new Healing style of holy and I think the Priest is coming to his good old shiny days.
But I was so impressed seeing this numbers from Disc Raid healing yesterday, I want to share with you.
If you ran in trouble in Encounters with people dying because the healers need more time to top Raidwide Damage give Disc a try and push that fucking PW:S button even harder as CoH @ Twins. GCD is your limit
I think the bug is if multiple shield get taken off at the same time, you gain the benefits from rapture from all of them. This may have been fixed though.
I can confirm that this bug is still up on live. I saw it last night during an XT fight.
1:28'49.378 Urania gains 636 Mana from Rapture. #233672
1:28'49.378 Urania gains 636 Mana from Rapture. #233673
1:28'49.394 Urania gains 636 Mana from Rapture. #233675
1:28'49.394 Urania gains 636 Mana from Rapture. #233676
1:28'49.394 Urania gains 635 Mana from Rapture. #233682
1:28'49.394 Urania gains 636 Mana from Rapture. #233683
1:28'49.394 Urania gains 636 Mana from Rapture. #233684
The big problem I see with Disc raidhealing is the big waste of all my crit I have on my gear, and if you spam PW:S on raid, you will be soon haste capped, so a lot of stats will be wasted.
More than often, I shield some raid members in any "free GCD" on the tank , to keep BT and gain 4pc bonus, but only raid healing seems a little weird to me.
I have questions reguarding stats for Disc priest. What is the best correlation between haste, crit and spell damage?
I know the answer may varry depends of the healer role in the raid. So, I'm playing as a tank healer the most time and rarely as a raid healer. My stats are about 2,3 spell power, 35% crit rating and 10% haste(raid buffed). I neved use gems for a spirit or intelect since I rarely even use Mana potions.
My main spells:
Glyphed Penance - which like crit, haste and spell power
Flash Feal
Shield on cooldown - which counts only spell power
POM when moving
Is 2.5k spell power, 40% crit and 10% haste the target for me?
05/01/09, 2:15 AM
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