QQ: Disc or Holy

About two months ago we had the big nerf to penance.  I’m still recovering QQ’ing about that.  I still find myself hitting penance with a second or two left on the cool down.  It’s only killed a few people but for some reason I’m just not adjusting to the change.

Burnout = Change

I’ve started several drafts, some of them being the same and quickly abandoned them.  I’m fighting a major case of burnout with WoW at the moment.  My main form of entertainment, raiding, is on farm.  Our recent conquering of Sartharion +3 has left us with nothing but achievements to work on.

I hate achievements.

Luckily for me we’ve decided not to waste time trying to do them now.  No one wants to spend 4hrs in Naxx25 trying to get achievements when we could full clear it in under 3.  Sydera at World of Matticus sums it up much better in this post.

This has left me with a ‘what to do’ feeling.  I’ve scoured the sites looking at 3.1 information, mainly loot and how pretty it looks.  I’ve read up on some of the bosses trying to get a feel for them and even watched a few of the live streams, which is pretty awesome to watch.

I’ve also been heavily contemplating going back to Holy.  I enjoyed Discipline, it was fun, but I like healing the raid.  Holy does that far more efficiently than Disicipline does now and my first love, Renew, is getting an amazing talent upgrade  (Empowered Renew 3/3: Your Renew spells gain an additional 15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew spell will instantly heal the target for 15% of the total periodic effect).  That’s pretty sweet.

I have an older copy of my toon on the test server (he’s missing some of my most recent upgrades) and logged him in to check out the possibilities of going Holy again.  The changes in the way each spec works is a great time to rethink my priorities, which is raid healing and to focus my spec more on that.

MMO-Champion.com has an update to talent calculator HERE that allows you to see the changes of 3.1.  Using that talent calculator I’ve come up with this rough Holy spec.  It’s untested and will require some testing tweeks but that will happen when 3.1 rolls out.  Some of the reasons I chose certain things over others…..

Soul Warding > Guardian Spirit:  It took awhile, but I got used to using Pain Suppression on tanks as an oh shit button.  I can easily see Guardian Spirit replacing that, but I’m not tank healing anymore.  I’m raid healing.  Being able to spam PW:S, also at a 30% reduced mana cost, will be extremely helpful I think.  Much more helpful than being able to save someone roughly every 3 minutes.

Blessed Resilience(BR) 3/3 instead of Divine Providence(DP) 5/5 (4/5 atm):  Blessed Resilience used to be a PvP talent that used to reduce your ability to get crit, it now also increases your healing by 1% per point.  Divine Providence increases healing of POH, POM, COH, Binding, Holy Nova, and Divine Hymn by 2%.  Its a tough call whether to have 1% to all my spells or 2% to specific spells.  I’ll have to review my WWS post 3.1 to see if I should be switching that 1 point, but for now I think the increase to Greater Heal and Renew is worth it.

Blessed Resilience > Surge of Light(SoL)?:  I struggled with this one.  COH almost guarantees an SoL proc (or it used to, haven’t had these talents in awhile).  While I would need an addon so that I could pay attention to my SoL proc its a free instant Flash Heal that could be worth it.  I think this choice is going to effected a lot by what my main heals turn out to be.  If I endup moving 1 point out of BR then it is likely I will drop it and pickup SoL.

A big change to the Holy tree is how Holy Concentration works.  Holy Concentration now increases your mana regen from spirit by 50% for 8 seconds after critically healing with a Flash, G.Heal, Binding, or Renew.  Even with the nerfs to spirit mana regen I expect this talent to significantly outshine the mana return that Discipline is getting.

Another interesting talent is Body & Soul 2/2, when you PW:S someone their movement speed increases by 60% for 4 seconds and when you cast Abolish Disease on yourself it has a 100% chance to also cure a poison effect.  An awesome PvP talent change, just in a spot I would consider horrible.  It is deep in the Holy tree and we all know that if you are PvP’ing, you are Discipline.  Granted, I don’t PvP much but I don’t think Holy has what it takes to work in an Arena setting.

I’ve rambled enough today, again sorry for my delays in postings to those who are still sticking around to read me =)

PTR 3.1: Build 9626

More changes were added as well as some clarifications to previous questions.  I also have some more funtimes with math!

• Glyph of Fade – Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 9 sec. (Down from 15 sec)
• Glyph of Mass Dispel — Reduces the mana cost of Mass Dispel by 50%. (Up from 20%)
• Glyph of Mind Control — Reduces the chance targets will resist or break your Mind Control spell by an additional 17%. (Old – Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec.)
• Glyph of Smite — Your Smite spell inflicts an additional 20% damage against targets afflicted by Holy Fire. (Old – Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Smite by 100%.)
• Glyph of Scourge Imprisonment — Reduces the cast time of your Shackle Undead by 0.5 sec. (Old – Increases the chance of success for your Shackle Undead spell by 8%.)

Some more Glyph changes, all for the better.  The Smite one makes me giggle a bit, here comes my lolSmite build offspec rawr!

Discipline

• Grace doesn’t reduce damage dealt to the target anymore but now increases the healing received from the Priest by 3% (Up from 2%)

The increase to the heal from Grace is kewl.  It seems to be bugged on the PTR at this time though.  Having Grace up on someone then healing someone else gives the other person Grace, but it doesn’t fall off your first target.  Not sure if that is intentional or not.

• Renewed Hope now also give you a 100% chance to reduce all damage taken by 3% for 20 sec to all friendly party and raid targets when you Power Word: Shidld a friendly target.

The change to Renewed Hope is either really good for some groups or useless.  My 25 group always has a protection paladin so this seems very moot.  Its possible the damage reduction could stack though, but I’d wager against it.  If you don’t have a protection paladin then this is a pretty good addition.  A very nifty way of giving the Blessing of Sanctuary damage reduction to everyone.

The comments about Discipline Priest throughput and our lack of PW:Barrier atm has prompted this response from the Blues.

I believe there are 1 or 2 more Disc talent changes you don’t have yet that boost healing a little more. We’re not worried about Disc mana generation, because it was really good before, but let us know if you get on the PTR how it feels.

And finally I want to talk about Rapture… again.  On the Elitist Jerks forum the Discipline Priest Compedium has exploded with the 3.1 patch.  Prior to the patch I think it was at 3 or so pages and now you are looking at 10+.  It can be tough to read through all of it but a lot of it is theorycrafting and numbers (which I love to read, but I’m guessing others don’t really care about the math).  Squeakster, a consistent poster on the thread, posted the following math.  He took the current live server Rapture and determined his mp5 over the course of a raid with it and compared it to his theorycrafted mp5.  I’ll list my math below but I followed his formula and while I would end a fight at about 15% mana, I would still have some is the point.  That is without potion, shadowfiend or innervate.

Begin Maths…………………………………………………………………………….

Naxx25 2.14.09:
Patchwerk – 3mins 3seconds (183secs / 5 = 36.6 rounded to 37)
Old Rapture: 38757 mana returned / 37 = 1047mp5

Flash Heals Cast x78:
Live: 48906 mp
PTR: 41574 mp
Live – PTR = 7332 / 37 = 198mp5

PWS Casts x7:
Live: 5607 mp
PTR: 3738 mp
Live – PTR = 1869 / 37 = 51mp5
2.5% of 28k = 700 * 7 = 4900
+4900 mana / 37 = 133mp5 (Only casting PWS on the tank I was healing would result in a Rapture trigger every cast)

PTR MP5′s: 198 + 51 + 133 = 382mp5

Live mp5 – PTR mp5 = 666mp5 loss

666 * 37 = 24642 mana NOT regen’d during the fight.

……………………………………………………………………………….end Maths.

With my current raid buffed 28k mana pool I would still have ended this fight with around 4-5k mana.  I also didn’t take full advantage of the new Rapture either by keeping Weakened Soul on my tank which would have resulted in a large return of mana.

“We are continuously faced by great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems.”
- Lee Iacocca

RIP: Rapture

When they began talking about nerf’s to mana regen I wasn’t at all feeling threatened.  Rapture gave me what I needed to stay in the game.  I chose to stack INT so I had retarded mana regen but I could have easily sacrificed that to pickup more spellpower or crit or haste or whatever I was wanting.  3.1  Patch Notes came out today and I read this…

Rapture (Tier 8 ) revamped. Now a 3 point talent. When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled you are instantly energized with 1.5% of your total mana (2.5% w/3 pts), and you have a 33% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy or 32 runic power. This effect cannot occur once every 12 seconds.

There is plenty of stuff I wanted to comment on about 3.1, but this seems the most significant, important part of the patch notes to me.  What does this mean for our mana regen?  Let’s see a few of the other talents that MIGHT help to mitigate this…

Improved Flash Heal, Tier 7, 3 point talent – Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal by 5/10/15%, and increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal by 4/7/10% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.

First, some math…

Priest Base Mana Pool: 3863
Flash Heal: 18% of Base Mana (696)
Flash Heal (glyph): 627
Flash Heal (imp flash): 592
Flash Heal (additive): 522
Flash Heal (multiplicitive): 533

Flash Heal is so efficient due to our current Rapture.  A recent post I did about Flash Heal gave me an average of 180 mana returned while completely unbuffed (22k mana pool), the bare minimum that I would see in return.  I have the Glyph of Flash Heal, which would put the cost of my average Flash Heal at 447 (as of 3.0).  Raid buffed I sit around 28,000 mana though which would yield an average return of 225, making Flash Heal cost 402.  I realize this is a lot of number crunching that people aren’t interested in but we are looking at a substantial nerf to our mana regen in my opinion.  The new Rapture also fails to return mana from Greater Heal, Penance, or Divine Aegis which are all spells we rely heavily on.

Soul Warding, Tier 5, 1 point talent – Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 sec, and reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Shield by 30%.

More Math….  EDIT:  Rapture is 2.5% when 3 points are put into it, not 1.5%.

PWS: 23% of Base Mana (889)
PWS (mental agility): 801
PWS (soul warding): 623
PWS (mental / soul): 534
PWS (mental / soul / rapture w/28k mana): -166 (You would gain 166 mana)
PWS (mental / soul / rapture w/22k mana): -16
Every 1000 mana = 25 mana return from PWS

An interesting talent that allows us to spam PWS a bit more.  While we can’t spam it on the same person due to weakened soul we can toss it more freely around to the raid.  The change in Rapture benefits PWS significantly, as it would be possible (in theory) to gear your intellect to make PWS actually return mana (about 36,000 mana pool).  As per above you would only need 22k mana to start recieving benefits from PWS. This means we can expect a nerf to Rapture in the future.  This assumes the shield is fully used and that the 12 second CD mentioned in Rapture ONLY applies to the energizing your shield target.  If  the 12 second CD for energize doesn’t apply to JUST the portion on the target then Rapture will be… useless?

There is a few more changes to the Discipline tree…

• Penance (Tier 11) Damage increased slightly across all ranks.
• Grace (Tier 9) now lasts 15 sec. (Previously lasted 8 sec)
• Focused Will (Tier 7) now increases spell critical strike chance by 1/2/3% in addition to its previous effect.
• Reflective Shield has been moved from Tier 7 to Tier 5. It is now a 2 point talent and causes 22/45% of the damage you absorb with Power Word: Shield to reflect back at the attacker.
• Enlightenment (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent and now increases your total Spirit by 2/4/6% and increases your spell haste by 2/4/6%. (Previously a 5 point talent)
• Meditation (Tier 3) now increases mana regeneration by 17/33/50%. (Previously 10/20/30%)
• Improved Power Word: Fortitude (Tier 2) now also increases your personal stamina by 2/4%.
• Unbreakable Will (Tier 1) now reduces the duration of Stun, Fear, and Silence effects done to you by an additional 6/12/18/24/30%. (Previously 3/6/9/12/15%)

I don’t need to comment on all of these, at best I would say ‘meh’ on most of the changes.  Reflective Shield is still pretty much useless.  My BIG concern… no mention of Power Word: Barrier.

I’m waiting on my patch for the PTR to get done DL’ing and I already have my character copied over.  I’ll do an update as soon as I found out more specifics on things.  So far though I’m very saddened by the changes to Discipline.

The changes to Rapture were best expressed by one of my best healy friends…

Every decision I’ve made about my priest for the last 3 months… what spells to use, what stats to stack, what talents to take…. undone.”    -Kraylessa

EDIT (2.26.09):  World of Matticus: Thoughts on Rapture and Mana Regen – A positive outlook on the changes.

3.1 Mana Regen on Disc Priests

My dawg GC was nice enough to clarify more on 3.1 mana regen,

The goal is to have mana last about the same for all healers. We don’t think many players would be that interested in a style where you heal crazy good for a short period and then run OOM. How classes manage their mana varies a lot, and we are making tweaks to it for 3.1 to try and keep them in line. For example, the shadow fiend needs to be more reliable.

I am still not following the logic that Int now trumps Spirit by even more. It may have been a better stat already, but these changes shouldn’t affect it that much unless you A) skip Meditation and Intensity, or B) relied a whole lot more on OOFSR regen than the average raid healer of reasonable skill.

I will break from our normal practice and go ahead and provide the numbers, just to make sure nobody is guessing about the details when doing their estimates:

• The amount of base mana regen granted has been reduced 40%. We called this “Spirit” in the notes, since most players associate OOFSR regen with Spirit, but in reality Int factors into the equation as well and we only lowered the constant, not the relative contributions of Int or Spirit. In retrospect, this probably caused more confusion than it alleviated, but mana regeneration is a fairly technical concept.
• The effects of talents that provide mana regen while casting have been increased by 67%. This includes: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac, and Spirit Tap. For example, Intensity and Meditation are now 17/33/50% mana regen while casting (up from 10/20/30%). For most dps classes who never got much mana from OOFSR in the first place, the results should not be noticeable. Boomkin may be a possible exception because of Innervate, and we’ll take a look at that.
• This should leave mana regeneration while casting (even the contribution of Spirit) relatively unchanged, but reduce mana regeneration while not casting by 40%. (If you don’t understand our logic, I suggest you re-read the excellent post I quoted above.)
• Since paladins don’t rely on any of those abilities for mana regeneration, we lowered the healing penalty of Divine Plea to -50%. We are also likely to make Spiritual Attunement provide less mana for non-tanking paladins. We are not touching Illumination for the moment. Nor are we lowering the effects of Replenishment (though as I have suggested, it would be our likely next target if we aren’t happy with the results of these changes).

This is much more substantial to people who actually get OO5SR.  Disc priests however are rarely OO5SR.  Personally I’m never out of it thanks to the wonder of flash spam and rapture.  Meditation gives you an increase from that ‘overall’ mana you can regen so they are buffing it.  From what they say you shouldn’t see a reduction to your current mana regeneration while casting.  I’ll make sure to get on the PTR and test that once 3.1 comes around.  All in all though this makes me quite happy to know that it only effects my out of casting regen.