More Disc talk (Sky! Falling! Duck!)Follow

I think Grace and Rapture are leaving us. By think I mean want.

Grace is awesome if you are focusing one target but the punishment for healing another target is just silly. It is both overpowered, cumbersome and not fun. See the ps below. I would imagine Grace gets reworked to boost GH and Penance somehow.

Rapture losses much of its luster as PW:S becomes cast less often. Plus is now expensive talent point wise now that it lost its energize effect. Have no idea what they will do to boost regen beyond something related to boosting GH's efficiency.

EH gets the love mainly to boost GH. GH gets used to gain access to IF more often.

VS would better than Darkness but going from 5 minute CD to 4 isn't that impressive considering you typically go a minute or 2 before you pop the little guy. So not really sure you would get to use it again on the same fight. Assuming 6 minute boss fights. The CD is 5 minutes? That's what mmo says, being able to drop fiend to a 3 minute CD or less is a way different matter.

Using BT for haste is a good thing, always has been always will be. The way Disc is set up now haste isn't a strong stat as we are using faster casting spells and have an insanely low soft cap because of BT. A 10% nerf on BT will be noticeable but so is any thing with a cast time other than FH with out BT being up. With BT having less on an impact haste will become a better stat for Disc as both the soft cap will be higher and we will be under BT less as PW:S is expensive.

You don't *need* Inspiration as you can heal with a pally and a druid neither of whom bring said buff. Plus to get Inspiration you have to either drop SoL or out of shadow entirely. Would be easier and more logical if it was on the first tier of Disc but that is neither here nor there. I think it should change places with Mental Agility but I digress.

I agree on SoS, talent needs some tweaking especially as the other new stuff isn't as Heal centric.

I can easily see GH and Smite becoming the backbone spells of Disc's tool set.

PS: teacake, there has been debate about 1/2 Grace for most of the xpac mainly to prevent it from changing targets, ie to help keep it on the tank. The talk tapered off after Uld when Disc became more of a raid heal spec.

PS2: Moz, what are heals costing these days? I made assumptions based off of what I've read and the last time you posted them. :P

A) I assume we'll have a lot more longer boss fights in Cata. This is at least true for 5-mans, so far.
B) 5 to 4 is pretty significant, as it means that even in a 6 minute boss fight you'll be able to pop it twice instead of once. Popping it after 1 minute isn't an uncommon thing, tbh - you can easily get full mileage out of it.
C) Even if you ignore all that... TWO PERCENT HASTE? Really? The reason priests use haste now is because it helps you get heals of faster. You need to make decisions so fast that haste can alleviate some of your inability to calculate and save your target. That, and slightly improve throughput. In Cataclysm, we'll need neither. You're going to have 10 seconds for every decision - it's the decision that matters, not the time in which you make it. Hence why haste is kind of useless.


This would be true, if haste didn't became pretty much pointless like I just explained.


Inspiration is one of the 'math talents'. And by that I mean one of those talents that the geeks at EJ have proven to be the unmistakable top for keeping your tanks alive. I usually take EJ's comments with, say, half a grain of salt, but they are so comitted to Inspiration that even I am very hesitant to just 'drop it'.

As for the Heal cost... I don't actually know. It should be the same as I posted earlier, but I'll take a look for you tomorrow.

To be fair, I don't mind if haste stays where it is. I never used it in WOTLK and succesfully raided pretty much all 10-man content and ~60% of 25-man heroic content without it. The only thing haste really does is shorten the time between you making the decision of "this person needs to be healed" and the person in question actually being healed. If you're a good healer, you'll be able to make these decisions quickly enough without the need for haste compensating your slowness. It is possible right now in WOTLK, and regardless of what happens (unless haste starts speeding up your mana regeneration or such), it'll be worth less in Cata, regardless of whether this means "completely useless" or "slightly less useful".

The shammy version works off of any crit heal they cast. I'm hoping they change the priest version to be the same. Especially since I will definitely be going Smite heal spec and it doesn't work with Emp Renew or Lolwell.

Otherwise Penance will be saved for the tank to try and keep it rolling. Still expecting more changes to Smite-healer spec to come in the next patch or 2 as the huge dragon hit box makes Atonement worthless all ready as an example.

That could be fixed internally though making the range be effective based off max hit box as opposed to the current center of box that normally applies.

Plus non-Smite Disc is fairly weird as it is PW:S based and PW:S is not spammable in Cata from what I gather and the spec has a lot of PW:S centric talents.

That is the my main beef with Disc right now. All the talents propping a spell that they are making more situational, the Heal-PW:S synergy is nice but BT is odd if we don't focus on shielding as is the CD reduction as the Heal-PW:S spec as it seems very tank healing oriented.

I do like where Smite-Heal spec is going, it makes me happy.

Grace is still both OP and awkward at the same time and needs to just get nerfed into a self buff or some other valued raid buff.

Side note: Serendipity working off of BH and FH which are both expensive emergency heals doesn't make sense in the Cata healing paradigm.

I think you're overlooking several important concepts.

First, haste increases the HPS of Heal, our most efficient spell. This has a multifaceted benefit. In Cata, the primary reason a person will cast G.Heal or F.Heal is that they can't fill up health bars fast enough with Heal/Penance. By increasing it's HPS you reduce the frequency with which you need to cast G./F.Heal. The more you spam it, the more opportunities you have to force Surge of Light and Inspiration procs. There may also be some small benefit to Grace in that you can get 3 stacks up faster when switching targets. All of this stuff saves mana.

Next, haste increases the DPS of Smite, with a corresponding increase to HPS, as well as making it easier to 5stack Evangelism every time Archangel's CD refreshes. Casting 5 Smites every 30 seconds nets you max mana return on AA and 15% increased potency with 60% uptime. Also, thanks to Evangelism, each smite you cast gets more powerful and more efficient. That 5th Smite gets a 20% mana reduction and 30% potency boost. If you miss 1 or 2 Smites every 30 seconds you are losing mana and healing potency from AA and DPS/HPS from Evangelism.




I think we are being a bit dramatic in regards to PW:S. It will still be a very mana efficient, instant cast "heal", with low to no CD, that just improves with mastery. However, every time you cast that Shield it better get fully absorbed (no "overhealing" allowed in Cata) and, if it's on CD, proc Rapture.

A bunch of interesting survival/utility talents were added to other classes trees. They want those classes to actually consider using the skills and if a Disc priest can spam Shield all day to prevent damage those talents become junk. Healing is tough for all classes right now so I think the reports we were getting early were taken out of context. Also, consider that the trees and encounters are not fully balanced/tuned and PW:B just got a big fat cost reduction.

I'm thinking Blizzard did a good job by making several different specs viable for different situations and gear levels. Borrowed Time and Soul Warding improve with mastery rating so they get more attractive over time. Inspiration and Strength of Soul may be situational for raid healing. Veiled Shadows might be useful for long fights and leveling. For some gear levels, Darkness may be an option. It will be interesting to see what the options are for cloth gear and how the different specs are best able to utilize them.

This is actually a good point. But then we enter hazyland where it becomes unclear what exactly a disc priest should be doing because his "Blizzard-defined rotation" isn't optimal. The fact of the matter is that Inspiration, if up permanently, is a huge load of damage mitigation. With how it is now, the most optimal 'rotation' might be to spam Heal until a crit before you start spamming Smite. Because this would just make the class needlessly complicated, I'm going to assume Blizz will change Inspiration for it to work with everything, like Horsemouth mentioned.

In regards to haste, this;

doesn't really change anything about my point. If you're a good player, you'll have no troubles keeping people up with Heal without haste anyway. The fact of the matter is that you don't need haste to "be able to heal through most stuff with Heal and only use other spells in emergencies".

But this;

is a more interesting argument. Haste improves your Smites, which increases DPS and with that also HPS (which is something that might actually be needed in the case of Atonement heals). There's no denying this. On the other hand, though, Smite is on a 2 second cast. As it currently is, spamming Smite and using Archangel every CD just about breaks you even. 5 Smites mean 10 seconds of casting, which is shorter than Archangel's 15 sec CD. If you add more haste to this, you will end up Smiting more without being able to use Archangel more often - this will only run you OOM in the long run. There's no denying that there's definitely some kind of benefit from haste here though, seeing as in a perfect situation you only have 5 seconds of non-Smiting per Archangel-rotation to heal up the rest of the group, and this might be a too small interval that can be increased with haste.

Edit: Let me clarify. When I say "spamming Smite and using Archangel every CD breaks you even", I mean to say that 5 Smites followed by one Archangel means your mana goes back to where it was before the 5 Smites. The proportion Smite:Archangel to break even is 5:1. I don't mean to say that you can chain-cast Smite for 15 seconds (=~7 Smites) and still break even - you will start losing mana that way.

On another note, the new talent builds are up again. Rapture is still 3 points, but Soul Warding is down to 2 and so are Borrowed Time and Atonement. This makes it possible again to put 31-points in disc and grab all the things you need for PvE, with the exception of Power Infusion, which I still can't fit into my build. The main 'problem' the spec really has left is that I want two damn points in Veiled Shadows and one in Power Infusion. I need to use these points for Surge of Light, because at it is now, that talent is too wicked good to give up for disc.

For Holy, Empowered Renew (now named Divine Touch) seems to has been nerfed, as it now only affects 10% of your Renew's total heal instead of 20%. This doesn't change a huge lot for the spec though, just that you now need to choose between that or two points in Test of Faith.

Edited, Sep 27th 2010 9:18pm by Mozared

Take a point from SoS for PI, the mana reduction on PI is huge and the CD is short.

Also I'm still not feeling VS. Especially with the CD at 4.5 minutes. As to use it twice you end up having to pop it early when you wont even get the full effect as much of the mana returned will be overmanaing. I'd still go 10 in holy and just pass on Shadow sub-spec all together.

edit: This is what I'm leaning towards using at 85.

Edited, Sep 27th 2010 10:01am by Horsemouth

Your attitude about this is a bit strange. If you're a "good player" haste just makes you better. You don't have to intentionally gimp yourself to prove you're good. Not to mention you ignored the extra SoL and Inspiration procs. Even if you are able to clear most content, those perks reduce downtime and make you a better healer and team player.

Another benefit I didn't mention is that haste allows you to "stick and move" more rapidly. On fights with lots of movement you can get out of the fire/goo/etc. faster without interrupting your cast or taking damage. It also allows you to heal the goon who is standing in the fire more rapidly. I assume your stance here is "let the ****** take the damage" and while I agree philosophically, sometimes it happens.

As a disclaimer I'm not saying haste will be the end all, stack it up stat for Cata. Just that it is strong. And it will be on Disc gear. Screenshots are already out of tier stuff.




AA is on a 30s cooldown. Even still, you seem to be overlooking the fact that a healing priest has to do other stuff than just stand still and cast smite. Shields, Dispels, Heals to take advantage of that big AA buff to potency, movement related to fight mechanics, these things take time and use GCDs. 5stacking Evangelism on boss fights where you are forced to run around like crazy and be casting constantly is where haste will shine.


Edited, Sep 27th 2010 8:30pm by CatPredator

Spellpower and MP5 are replaced by Intellect and Spirit, which can't be reforged, and will be less relevant when min/maxing. Critical Strike, Mastery, and Haste are what a healer has to consider (caster dps will have hit as well but we won't worry about that due to ).

Crit and Mastery will probably be more valuable than Haste due to Divine Aegis (despite some of the bubbles going unabsorbed) but you were oversimplifying and I could see a gear threshold where Haste eclipses Crit.

Slap me silly, but what the @#%^ are UA and BoA? Are those warlock spells he's gone back to referring?

Edited, Oct 2nd 2010 5:01pm by Mozared

At the moment, Spirit can be reforged.