WotLK Healing Discussion v3.3: Icecrown Citadel awaits! - Page 14

Abraham · 03/04/10, 5:35 AM

Originally Posted by tedv

That said, it's still mathematically better on average for a HoT to tick faster (weird stuff like Maexxna excepted). Suppose you could pick exactly one of these abilities:

Heal 10k over 15 seconds
Heal 10k over 12 seconds
Heal 10k over 6 seconds
Heal 10k instantly

I'm pretty sure the last one is the best and the first is the worst.

The last one should more likely be "Heal 10k after 3 seconds", not instantly, so it's not as good as you claim it to be.

Demøn · 03/04/10, 6:42 AM

I think it helps to think of the renew glyph the following way to make your own decision.

WITH glyph: Your renew heals faster & harder but you have to reapply more often at the expense of more mana
WITHOUT glyph: Your renew heals for longer & will cost less mana overall but won't heal as hard

So really the question is just how hard do you expect your tank to get hit? If hard->glyph of renew. If not->no glyph. Overhealing is bad i heard.

If you're still torn, it's probably not worth wasting a glyph spot anyway.

tedv · 03/04/10, 11:35 AM

Originally Posted by Demøn

WITH glyph: Your renew heals faster & harder but you have to reapply more often at the expense of more mana
WITHOUT glyph: Your renew heals for longer & will cost less mana overall but won't heal as hard

So really the question is just how hard do you expect your tank to get hit? If hard->glyph of renew. If not->no glyph. Overhealing is bad i heard.

If you're still torn, it's probably not worth wasting a glyph spot anyway.

Glyph of Renew doesn't affect the total mana cost per point healed. It just makes the Renew heal the same amount faster. You heal the same amount in a shorter amount of time, with the cost that you must cast the spell more often. Logically this means that against a raid that's constantly damaged, using the glyph will change neither your healing per second nor mana spent per second. All the glyph does is add extra stability, in the same way that a Flash Heal cast from Surge of Light is generally better than a hard cast Flash Heal (despite the latter being able to crit).

On the subject of wasting a glyph spot, I think that ship has sailed. There are no appealing choices for the third glyph, so in some sense you're wasting it regardless of what you pick. I'm actually considering glyphing Hymn of Hope, because at least that helps the other healers in my raid.

RootBreaker · 03/04/10, 12:32 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

Glyph of Renew doesn't affect the total mana cost per point healed. It just makes the Renew heal the same amount faster.

That's not actually true.

Glyph of renew increases the amount healed by each tick of renew in an additive way with improved renew, spiritual healing and twin disciplines, instead of the multiplicative way you'd expect. It only increases the healing of each tick by 1.55/1.3 or 19%, so it actually reduces the overall healing over a full renew by nearly 5%.

tedv · 03/04/10, 12:43 PM

Originally Posted by RootBreaker

That's not actually true.

Glyph of renew increases the amount healed by renew in an additive way with improved renew, spiritual healing and twin disciplines, instead of the multiplicative way you'd expect. It only increases the healing of each tick by 1.55/1.3 or 19%, so it actually reduces the overall healing over a full renew by nearly 5%.

I understand that's technically true, but you also get less overhealing on average with a renew that ticks faster. My intuition was that the effective healing would be comparable for this reason.

At any rate, the more I think about it, the more I'd rather just glyph Hymn of Hope. It actually does something meaningful to a long cooldown ability that you should cast at least once per fight.

RootBreaker · 03/04/10, 1:24 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

I understand that's technically true, but you also get less overhealing on average with a renew that ticks faster. My intuition was that the effective healing would be comparable for this reason.

That doesn't seem intuitive to me at all. I cast renew a lot basically only on aura fights (blood queen, sindragosa, festergut, bonestorm of marrowgar, twin valks). In these cases, the 5th tick of renew is no more or less likely to overheal than any of the other ticks, except in cases where the aura is reducing in power or going away (festergut inhales, bonestorm ending). This effect is offset by pre-cast renews lasting longer into the aura phase. It seems like, if anything, glyphed renews would overheal more since they have larger ticks.

tedv · 03/04/10, 3:01 PM

Originally Posted by RootBreaker

That doesn't seem intuitive to me at all. I cast renew a lot basically only on aura fights (blood queen, sindragosa, festergut, bonestorm of marrowgar, twin valks). In these cases, the 5th tick of renew is no more or less likely to overheal than any of the other ticks, except in cases where the aura is reducing in power or going away (festergut inhales, bonestorm ending). This effect is offset by pre-cast renews lasting longer into the aura phase. It seems like, if anything, glyphed renews would overheal more since they have larger ticks.

If there's a fight where everyone takes a fixed X damage per second, and renew heals Y damage per second without glyph and Z with it, then yes, whether or not the Glyph helps depends on whether X > Z and X > Y. I don't think that's the only good use of renew though.

On a lot of fights, there some subset of the raid that takes a bunch of damage, then has time to get healed before it's likely they'll take the next hit. In this situation, you want to heal people up but it's not imperative to do so immediately. This is a not-infrequent situation-- I estimate it happens on half of the bosses in Icecrown. In the latter situation, the whole team of healers are trying to top off the entire raid. A standard renew is more likely to get stomped than a glyphed renew in this situation, in the same way that resto druids do worst on fights where discipline priests do best. Someone else's healing makes your healing less useful. The faster your renew ticks, the lower the chance someone else will see fit to heal your renewed target once they finish healing someone else. For me at least, this is the most frequent use case for Renew.

RootBreaker · 03/04/10, 4:26 PM

Originally Posted by tedv

If there's a fight where everyone takes a fixed X damage per second, and renew heals Y damage per second without glyph and Z with it, then yes, whether or not the Glyph helps depends on whether X > Z and X > Y. I don't think that's the only good use of renew though.

On a lot of fights, there some subset of the raid that takes a bunch of damage, then has time to get healed before it's likely they'll take the next hit. In this situation, you want to heal people up but it's not imperative to do so immediately. This is a not-infrequent situation-- I estimate it happens on half of the bosses in Icecrown. In the latter situation, the whole team of healers are trying to top off the entire raid. A standard renew is more likely to get stomped than a glyphed renew in this situation, in the same way that resto druids do worst on fights where discipline priests do best. Someone else's healing makes your healing less useful. The faster your renew ticks, the lower the chance someone else will see fit to heal your renewed target once they finish healing someone else. For me at least, this is the most frequent use case for Renew.

I assume you're not referring to things like frostbolt volley or infest, since 100% of the raid is rather a large percentage to call a subset. I also assume you don't mean things like bone spikes, blood boil, and vile gas, since while renew is a reasonable way to heal these things, healing them is the eaisest, smallest and least interesting part of healing the fights they're a part of. Could you give examples of what you're talking about? The closest thing I could think of is the ooze explosion on Putricide.

tedv · 03/04/10, 4:49 PM

Originally Posted by RootBreaker

I assume you're not referring to things like frostbolt volley or infest, since 100% of the raid is rather a large percentage to call a subset. I also assume you don't mean things like bone spikes, blood boil, and vile gas, since while renew is a reasonable way to heal these things, healing them is the eaisest, smallest and least interesting part of healing the fights they're a part of. Could you give examples of what you're talking about? The closest thing I could think of is the ooze explosion on Putricide.

Yes, I'm not referring to Frostbolt Volley (which should be interrupted) or Infest (which should be shielded). If there's large quantities of raid-wide damage, you should obviously cast Circle of Healing and maybe Prayer of Healing. I'm talking about situations where 5 to 15 people have taken a reasonable chunk of damage but aren't in any short term danger. You need something to cast once your Circle of Healing is on cooldown.

Examples:
- On Lord Marrowgore, people take some large collateral hits during the kite phase, especially while bone spikes are out.
- On Rotface, when people get hit by slime spray or an ooze is created on the melee pile and the person doesn't move in time.
- On Putricide when players collapse on a green ooze, when people were slow from getting out of an ooze puddle, or got hit by malleable goo.
- On Blood Council when some players have to reposition or get knocked around and have taken a bunch of damage from moving
- On Lich King during the Phase 1->2 and 2->3 transition

Also, I think the same argument about "healing faster produces fewer overheals" might apply to raid wide damage auras on fights like Blood Queen and Sindragosa, but I'd need to think about it more.

For the record this is all kind of academic, as I don't see a compelling reason to use the glyph. I just don't see a compelling reason to NOT use it either.

Havoc12 · 03/04/10, 9:32 PM

The renew glyph reduces the amount of healing renew does overall by about 5%, but it does not affect the healing done by empowered renew. At least this was the case when I tested it. The reason was that the glyph ignores the bonuses from improved renew and spiritual healing.

Now lets investigate the impact of the renew glyph:

To my knowledge the following calculations are correct, please correct me if things have changed without me realising it.

The amout healed by unglyphed fully talented renew is:

Empowered renew: [(base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15]*(1.15+0.1)*0.15
HoT: [(base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15]*(1.15+0.1)
per tick: [(base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15]*(1.15+0.1)/5

Total: [(base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15]*(1.15+0.1)*1.15

For convenience let (base) + (spellpower contribution)*1.15 = RH(sp)

Thus

The amout healed by unglyphed fully talented renew is:

Empowered renew = RH(sp)*0.1875
HoT = RH(sp)*1.25
per tick = RH(sp)*0.25
Total healing = RH(sp)*1.435

The glyph only applies to RH(sp) thus fully talented glyphed renew:

Empowered renew = RH(sp)*0.1875
HoT = RH(sp)*1.5*4/5 = RH(sp)*1.20 i.e. reduces HoT healing by about 0.05*RH(sp) or by 4% of unglyphed value
per tick = RH(sp)*1.2/4 = RH(sp)*0.3 i.e increases healing per tick by about 20%
Total = RH(sp)*1.3875 i.e. 3.5% decreased healing compared to the unglyphed value.

Now that the numbers are down lets move on

Ignoring overheal unglyphed renew sacrifices 1 GCD (1.3s) and heals RH(sp)*1.4375 over 15 seconds. i.e. casting a renew gives you ~0.0958*RH(sp) HPS at the cost of 8.67% of your casting time.
Glyphed renew sacrifices 1 GCD and heals RH(sp)*1.3875 over 12 seconds.

This is ~0.1156*RH(sp) HPS at the cost of 10.83% of your casting time.

Thus the question of whether the renew glyph helps or is dependent on whether that 2.9% of casting time that you lose is worth ~0.02*RH(sp) HPS.

Using the reasonable value of 10k for RH(sp) that is about 200HPS at the cost of 2.9% of casting time.

In realistic terms renew only really competes for casting time with flash heal or serendipity gheal. The HPS of flash heal ignoring OH is something in the order of 4.5k HPS so 2.15% of casting time costs about 130 HPS. For gheal its about 170-180 HPS.

Hence ignoring overheal in any situation where you maintain a small number of renews (2-3) ticking at all times during the fight you can expect the renew glyph to be worth between 30 and 70HPS per renew. This is going to be reduced if OH for renew is greater than FH/GH. If the renews are consistently getting clipped then the value of the glyph will obviously increase.

In a situtation however where a larger number of renews is maintained, then refreshing them is likely to interfere with casting of CoH or PoM and hence since CoH and PoM take priority, that means lost ticks. If a renew falls of for 3+ seconds then the glyph will actually result in reduced healing

Let us now consider what happens if you maintain the maximum number of renews possible. I.e that means casting PoM and CoH as soon as possible then renew in between, in 18 seconds you can expect 3 coh and 2.5 PoM just about, i.e. 7.15 seconds, leaving 11.85 seconds to be filled by casting renews or approximately 9 renew casts every 18 seconds. If there is no tick clipping (i.e. you only cast renew on someone who does not have one) all renews will provide their full number of ticks in 18 seconds and since 9 unglyphed renews heal for about 0.315*RH(sp) more than 9 glyphed renews, the renew glyph will actually reduce your HPS.

Thus the renew glyph is beneficial only when

1) When there is enough free casting time to maintain a certain number of renews and being able to maintain more is not beneficial
2) There is extensive renew clipping

This is basically true in fights where a small number of renews is constantly maintained throughout the fight and you have enough free casting time between CDs to do so.

The renew glyph is a loss of HPS when the reduced duration results in loss of more than 20% of potential renew ticks.

This basically happens in fights where its beneficial to maintain as many renews as possible and not clip them e.g. mostly when there is constant raid wide DoT damage or a large number of individual dots.

So far I have excluded overheal to highlight some important features of the glyph. However overheal can change things drastically.
The renew glyph increases in value if the early ticks provide more healing on average than later ticks due to overheal and in any situation where the damage heals by renew exceeds the value of an unglyphed tick.
The renew value loses value when the proportion of renew healing provided by emowered renew ticks increases, when overheal is more uniform between earlier and later ticks and when the damage healed by renew is below the value of an unglyphed tick.

Hence is it not valid to assume that the renew glyph is a gain in HPS. It can be a small gain, but depending on the circumstances and casting style it may also be a loss of HPS

Also, I think the same argument about "healing faster produces fewer overheals" might apply to raid wide damage auras on fights like Blood Queen and Sindragosa, but I'd need to think about it more.

On the contrary I would expect the value of the glyph to go down drastically in such fights. Raid wide damage auras means that maintain many renews and not cliping them is beneficial and it also smooths out the amount of healing per tick between earlier and later ticks. In addition if glyphed renew loses a tick because a heal got there before the renew tick you lose 25% of the hot healing compared with 20% for the unglyphed renew

icephantom02 · 03/05/10, 9:25 AM

Question for you guys:

My guild has been trying for weeks now to down the Blood Princes on 10 man. The last time we did it, we one shotted it, but now, for three straight weeks we keep wiping on the boss. The reason is that the person tanking the shadow orbs is getting hit for like 80K, even though he is grabbing the orbs right when they appear. We have a pally tank tanking the other two bosses and the other pally tank holding onto the orbs. We've dodged the vortexs and we keep that one orb floating in the air. I've even made sure to not use my PoM, just in case it jumps to the tank with the shadow orbs and crits, creating a bubble and removing the stacks.

Is there any advice that you would have?

Thanks!

Serntus

Carnathagia · 03/05/10, 10:04 AM

Originally Posted by tedv

I don't see a compelling reason to use the glyph [of renew]. I just don't see a compelling reason to NOT use it either.

In usage, it compares similarly to the [Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation]. To use the Druid terminology, it increases the 'focus' of my healing, but decreases the 'spread' without affecting the healing per second across the raid (ignoring the slight loss from the glyph's funky math). The effect is a lot less pronounced, but I found it useful for similar situations. Saurfang is the most extreme example, Sindragosa would probably see the least benefit.

Originally Posted by Havoc12

The renew glyph reduces the amount of healing renew does overall by about 5%...The reason was that the glyph ignores the bonuses from improved renew and spiritual healing.

This is somewhat correct. The loss comes from the glyph's multiplicative healing bonus being added with Improved Renew and Spiritual Healing, but with the duration decrease divided from the total healing value. The testing and data is linked on the previous page.

Tersa · 03/05/10, 1:12 PM

Originally Posted by icephantom02

I've even made sure to not use my PoM, just in case it jumps to the tank with the shadow orbs and crits, creating a bubble and removing the stacks.

Is this a bug I'm supposed to know about? I heal our 25 man orb tank (dk) on this fight all the time and last week we even got the orb whisperer achievement. I know nothing about DA removing stacks. I've certainly seen DA proc on him as well.

As to your question, are the orbs taking damage and disappearing? Or is he getting hit through their protection? A combat log would be nice.

tasha · 03/05/10, 1:45 PM

Havoc12,
I don't see Twin Disciplines nor Blessed Resilience.

I'm not 100% sure myself about the formula, but as far as I tested, it would be something like this:

Total Renew = (base + spellpower x 2.16) x (1+ 0.05 + 0.15 + 0.10) x 1.03 x 1.15
1 Renew Tick = (base + spellpower x 2.16) x (1+ 0.05 + 0.15 + 0.10) x 1.03 / 5

In game with 3771 spellpower and 1400 base heal on renew, I get ticks of 2558.

Feel free to correct me.

Edit: I first misunderstood what you meant by spellpower contribution.
contribution = spellpower x coef = sp x 1.88

ScarletEpiphany · 03/05/10, 2:02 PM

Hi all, I have recently read several forum posts on the eu and us boards and have grown rather despondent with the attitude of the developers towards priests. I would like some assistance in drafting a forum post back, and before i post on the EU forums i would like if possible people could check my maths. First up i wish to make a rebuttal to "Flash heal is fine" and thus prove it is worse than both nourish and lhw.

Brief overview of research and what i wish to prove

My opinion is that priests abilty to heal a single target is inferior enough to warrant a patch to fix it as soon as possible. I will attempt to present proof that in a 25man raid situation priest single target healing is so bad that it is not worthy of consideration as a viable strategy.

Methods used

I have gathered the data for the base healing, coefficients and total percentage healing modifiers of spells with a cast time of 1.5seconds from an addon called Dr Damage and then inserted them into a mock up model of a healer that has 4000 spellpower and 15% crit before talents. I am aware that different classes will gear for different things, but all will have a roughly consistent progression in spellpower (if they choose to) and likely will have base 15% crit. The value obtained at the end of it all is the amount of healing done by the spell in question in a set period of time. Ie if you cast this spell fo 1minute, what is the weighted value of healing done the spell will achieve.

Assumptions

In this model I have assigned the caster a base amount of spellpower, 4000 and a base amount of crit 15%. I realise that the numbers for both crit and and spellpower will vastly vary from this in an actual real world scenario, but that is a choice based upon gearing and thus all casters could if they wished exercise the abilty to gear in that manner, they cannot choose to talent differently. I have also assumed certain glyphs will be used (Nourish, Lhw) and certain spells will be kept up (Rejuv, Eathshield, Pw:shield), in any situation where i assume the presence of a spell on the target, it is a spell thats Healing per cast time is higher than the 1.5sec spell of the caster and thus would only be of benefit to cast. I further assume that mana is not an issue.

The numbers

Druid - Nourish = 13474.92

Average Base Heal - 2238.5
Coefficient - 0.873, +3492sp (5730.5)
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - 152.80% (8756.20)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 110% (9631.82)
Critical strike chance - 42%
Critical strike effect - 95%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 139.9% (13474.92)

Shaman - Light Healing Wave = 9568.08

Average Base Heal - 1738
Coefficient - 0.906, +3624sp (5632)
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - 139.90% (7501.44)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 100% (7501.44)
Critical strike chance - 29%
Critical strike effect - 95%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 127.6% (9568.08)

Disc Priest - Flash Heal = 8777.40

Average Base Heal - 2254.5
Coefficient - 0.807, +3228sp (5482.5)
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - 120.20% (6590.18)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 106% (6985.60)
Critical strike chance - 27%
Critical strike effect - 95%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 125.7% (8777.40)

Holy Priest - Flash Heal = 8299.81

Average Base Heal - 2254.5
Coefficient - 1.007, +4028sp (6282.5)
Multiplier from talents and glyphs - 120.20% (7545.28)
Multiplier from talent Haste - 100% (7545.28)
Critical strike chance - 20%
Critical strike effect - 50%
Multiplier from Critical Strikes 110% (8299.81)

According to my data which does not include 2piece set boonus as yet but can be added easily, Both shaman and druid will comfortably outheal a disc priests flash heal spam on a single target. Of course this is a base line model equipping haste gear should make them all scale identically, equipping crit gear will lead to the holy priest falling away a bit.

Thanks in advance for any comments people have on the comparitive scaling of these heals.