03-01-2009, 01:30 AM
(This post was last modified: 04-04-2009, 02:15 PM by Concillian.)
Breaking this into 3 sections for the primary trees. Thanks to Vor for some insight on the Holy post. Most of this is just a consolidation of info from various other sites (mmo-champ, WoRaids, WoW forums, etc...) along with a few experiences that seem to corroborate mana ramification estimations, which are largely based off of back calculating from 3.0 WWS logs based on 3.1 PTR mechanics.
PvE Discipline
Nerfs:
- Rapture was majorly changed from some mana back on almost every heal to 2.5% of max mana back if Power Word: Shield is fully absorbed with a cooldown of 12 seconds. For practical purposes, I'm considering this a 15 second cooldown (Weakened soul effect on the MT means once per 15 seconds on the MT). See the buffs before worrying, a lot of the previous benefit was put into other talents, just with less scaling with gear.
- Grace changed so that it applies to only one target at a time. Somewhat an interesting implementation because you can't help but heal multiple targets at times, it just means you really don't want to heal them with penance, flash, or greater heal, meaning shield, renew, binding, or Prayer of Healing should be primary non-tank heals.
- Removed the -3% damage component from grace (read buffs beefore worrying about this, it was added as an easy-to-apply raid-wide buff on another talent)
- Removed Improved Divine Spirit (perhaps the penance damage buff is to help offset this for soloing priests)
Buffs:
- Rage can be generated through shields (and on shields, which is a PvP nerf for priests, and a PvP buff for Warriors)
- Shadowfiend buffed in every aspect, does more damage, returns more mana, has more health.
- Talent that provides 15% mana reduction to the main "filler" spell -- flash heal
- Added +3% crit to an existing talent usually skipped for PvE (but they freed up talent points so it's pretty accessible)
- Added talent that gives 10% crit bonus on flash heal when target is below
- Added talent that gives 30% mana reduction on Power Word: Shield
- Grace changed so that the priest casting gets an additional +1-3% healed on the target and duration increased 7 seconds
- Added +1% haste and +1% spirit by reducing talent points required for enlightenment
- Talent removes the 4 second cooldown on Power Word: Shield
- Added Glyph of Penance, which decreases Penance cooldown by 2 seconds, applies before 20% reduction talent, so 6.4 second cooldown)
- Divine Aegis will stack to a maximum of 10,000 absorb on a level 80 target (previously did not stack at all, only refreshed duration)
- Penance can be cast on yourself (largely a PvP buff, but has some applications in PvE)
- Penance got a damage buff (mostly soloing, I rarely dare spend my penance cooldown on damage in a 5-man or raid)
- Renewed hope has a component added that offers 3% damage reduction buff to the entire raid whenever you Power Word:Shield anyone in the raid (20 sec duration)
- Meditation buffed to inside FSR mana regen is same as 3.0.x to offset the spirit formula nerf.
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Mana Ramifications
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Mana wise, Rapture returns will be MUCH, MUCH less. At 25k mana raid buffed, it works out to be around 200 MP5 at 1 absorbed shield per 15 seconds. This compared to my last patchwerk kill where it worked out to be 526 MP5 and I wasn't even at 25k mana because there wasn't a mage for AI or a Felhunter for Fel Intelligence.
OMG HUGE NERF!
Wait, hold on.
The reduced cost of flash heal and PW:S effectively "bake in" a large portion of the benefit of Rapture3.0. That same patchwerk kill, the mana savings from those talents would be equivalent to about 200 MP5
so the overall nerf is on the order of 120-140 MP5 if nothing changes in my current gear.
Also keep in mind that my current gearset I've been using basically minimizes mana regen on the gear in favor of throughput, because I largely do not need the regen. So the loss can be partially compensated by gearing in a more balanced set of gear.
The Shadowfiend buff effectively increases mana regen by about 40 MP5 in most disc gear. It's a slightly larger benefit to Disc than holy due to the extra mana Disc has with the +15% INT talent. That offsets a portion of the rapture loss so the total loss in MP5 is likely under 100 MP5.
The largest change is the need to "manage" your power word: shield removals. The design of the Rapture talent is extremely awkward. I think it needs to be redesigned to offer mana returned based on your max mana, but in an over-time manner that the duration can be refreshed whenever a PW:S expires. As it stands, it's extremely odd mechanics, needing PW:S to fully absorb sometime after the cooldown, but offe you nothing if it expires 0.5 seconds before the cooldown.
--------
Throughput ramifications
--------
The perception among hardcore raiding priests was that Disc suffered in throughput compared with other healers. I think this was true. Disc 3.0 has very, very little mana issues if they have enough INT (happens almost automatically in 25 man gear), and they have slightly lower throughput (even considering the absorbs and such). The delta for disc3.0 grows as gearing increases, because Disc 3.0 has significantly less in terms of +x% healing compared with other healers. Holy priest talents like empowered healing and Divine Providence really allow for better scaling with high spellpower, while disc was stuck with +4% on talents and potentially +6% if there's a grace stack (which theoretically is there if you're always healing someone, but in a 10 man, I've found a lot of heals going to targets who don't have grace buffs). DA gave a multiplier on crits, but it was a relatively small one.
2 very significant throughput improvements are virtually impossible to quantify:
- 2 second reduction to penance cooldown through use of Glyph of Penance:
This brings penance theoretical usage time up from about 22% to about 30%. Given that penance is the highest throughput of any single target priest heal in 3.0 (serendipity enhanced GHeal will definitely outpace it in 3.1) , it's increase in potential usage will increase healing throughput. This is incredibly welcome, as I sometimes find myself 'saving' Penance due to it's HPS. Shorter cooldown is very welcome.
- Divine Aegis stacking. This is probably a pretty small percentage of total. You have to get 2 crits very close to each other. However, penance puts three heals in very quick succession. If cast after a PW:S three heals hit in about 1.5 seconds, and crit rates are around 30-35% on geared disc priests with raid buffs, so it wasn't as it this was a totally impossible scenario, but it happened occasionally, and there will be a small increase in throughput capability.
Quantifiable throughput is shot-gunned throughout the disc tree:
+ 1% haste
+ 3% crit
+ 1% healing per grace stack (+3% on most primary targets, since they'll usually have 3 grace stacks)
+ 10% on targets less than 50% health healed with flash heal.
average I'd probably consider it about +7-10% throughput improvement, which is pretty significant.
So deciphering everything It looks like disc can probably regear with some balanced regen and end up around the same as they are now, maybe with a small throughput increase or a small regen hit, or gear as they are now and get a bump in throughput for a regen loss of what equates to about 100 MP5 or slightly less. This means if people are currently not using a pot per fight (I'm not). Then a pot will get you where you are now for a 3.5 minute fight with no gearing changes. This means for fights lasting ~5 minutes there can likely be little to no changes and still do okay.
----------
Talents
----------
Newer builds seem to have "stabilized" priests (there are very minor changes on priests, with more major changes to other classes). Disc seems to have stabilized to where you can get pretty much every useful PvE talent in Disc + inspiration with a leftover talent point for Desperate Prayer:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050...03&version=9684
An alternative build that I am starting to favor after some Sarth+2D experience will get full Divine Fury. Greater is not heavily synergized, but it's still useful throughput to couple with that borrowed time buff, The goal being enough haste to squeeze a PW:S, Penance and Greater heal into that 5 seconds of borrowed time, and also the spellpower buff on 4 piece T8, which is 5 seconds long. Technically it fits without any haste on gear, but the margin is less than 50 ms. This puts the margin in the 350-450ms range which should actually be possible:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050...00&version=9757
I'm debating on filling out renewed hope and going just 4/5 in Divine Fury, I keep going back and forth on that last point. 1/2 renewed hope seems mandatory for that 3% raid-wide damage reduction. the second point is only 2% crit on targets shielded, but with grace dropping off the MT if you heal anyone else and with Rapture virtually necessitating shield usage on tank, it seems like that talent point does have value.
Glyph selection is very obvious with Flash / Penance / PW:S
Other than that, I don't see a whole lot of flexibility. Someone on the WoW forums was convinced they should skip borrowed time so they could go 18 deep in holy to reduce penance cost by 15%. I guess if you're very worried about mana this is an option. It maths out to something like 75 MP5 bonus if Penance is used every 6.4 seconds for 5 more talent points in Holy, which I think is not worth it. However, the option is there if you're overly worried about mana. I don't think people need to be that worried about mana, but time will tell.
PvE Discipline
Nerfs:
- Rapture was majorly changed from some mana back on almost every heal to 2.5% of max mana back if Power Word: Shield is fully absorbed with a cooldown of 12 seconds. For practical purposes, I'm considering this a 15 second cooldown (Weakened soul effect on the MT means once per 15 seconds on the MT). See the buffs before worrying, a lot of the previous benefit was put into other talents, just with less scaling with gear.
- Grace changed so that it applies to only one target at a time. Somewhat an interesting implementation because you can't help but heal multiple targets at times, it just means you really don't want to heal them with penance, flash, or greater heal, meaning shield, renew, binding, or Prayer of Healing should be primary non-tank heals.
- Removed the -3% damage component from grace (read buffs beefore worrying about this, it was added as an easy-to-apply raid-wide buff on another talent)
- Removed Improved Divine Spirit (perhaps the penance damage buff is to help offset this for soloing priests)
Buffs:
- Rage can be generated through shields (and on shields, which is a PvP nerf for priests, and a PvP buff for Warriors)
- Shadowfiend buffed in every aspect, does more damage, returns more mana, has more health.
- Talent that provides 15% mana reduction to the main "filler" spell -- flash heal
- Added +3% crit to an existing talent usually skipped for PvE (but they freed up talent points so it's pretty accessible)
- Added talent that gives 10% crit bonus on flash heal when target is below
- Added talent that gives 30% mana reduction on Power Word: Shield
- Grace changed so that the priest casting gets an additional +1-3% healed on the target and duration increased 7 seconds
- Added +1% haste and +1% spirit by reducing talent points required for enlightenment
- Talent removes the 4 second cooldown on Power Word: Shield
- Added Glyph of Penance, which decreases Penance cooldown by 2 seconds, applies before 20% reduction talent, so 6.4 second cooldown)
- Divine Aegis will stack to a maximum of 10,000 absorb on a level 80 target (previously did not stack at all, only refreshed duration)
- Penance can be cast on yourself (largely a PvP buff, but has some applications in PvE)
- Penance got a damage buff (mostly soloing, I rarely dare spend my penance cooldown on damage in a 5-man or raid)
- Renewed hope has a component added that offers 3% damage reduction buff to the entire raid whenever you Power Word:Shield anyone in the raid (20 sec duration)
- Meditation buffed to inside FSR mana regen is same as 3.0.x to offset the spirit formula nerf.
--------
Mana Ramifications
--------
Mana wise, Rapture returns will be MUCH, MUCH less. At 25k mana raid buffed, it works out to be around 200 MP5 at 1 absorbed shield per 15 seconds. This compared to my last patchwerk kill where it worked out to be 526 MP5 and I wasn't even at 25k mana because there wasn't a mage for AI or a Felhunter for Fel Intelligence.
OMG HUGE NERF!
Wait, hold on.
The reduced cost of flash heal and PW:S effectively "bake in" a large portion of the benefit of Rapture3.0. That same patchwerk kill, the mana savings from those talents would be equivalent to about 200 MP5
so the overall nerf is on the order of 120-140 MP5 if nothing changes in my current gear.
Also keep in mind that my current gearset I've been using basically minimizes mana regen on the gear in favor of throughput, because I largely do not need the regen. So the loss can be partially compensated by gearing in a more balanced set of gear.
The Shadowfiend buff effectively increases mana regen by about 40 MP5 in most disc gear. It's a slightly larger benefit to Disc than holy due to the extra mana Disc has with the +15% INT talent. That offsets a portion of the rapture loss so the total loss in MP5 is likely under 100 MP5.
The largest change is the need to "manage" your power word: shield removals. The design of the Rapture talent is extremely awkward. I think it needs to be redesigned to offer mana returned based on your max mana, but in an over-time manner that the duration can be refreshed whenever a PW:S expires. As it stands, it's extremely odd mechanics, needing PW:S to fully absorb sometime after the cooldown, but offe you nothing if it expires 0.5 seconds before the cooldown.
--------
Throughput ramifications
--------
The perception among hardcore raiding priests was that Disc suffered in throughput compared with other healers. I think this was true. Disc 3.0 has very, very little mana issues if they have enough INT (happens almost automatically in 25 man gear), and they have slightly lower throughput (even considering the absorbs and such). The delta for disc3.0 grows as gearing increases, because Disc 3.0 has significantly less in terms of +x% healing compared with other healers. Holy priest talents like empowered healing and Divine Providence really allow for better scaling with high spellpower, while disc was stuck with +4% on talents and potentially +6% if there's a grace stack (which theoretically is there if you're always healing someone, but in a 10 man, I've found a lot of heals going to targets who don't have grace buffs). DA gave a multiplier on crits, but it was a relatively small one.
2 very significant throughput improvements are virtually impossible to quantify:
- 2 second reduction to penance cooldown through use of Glyph of Penance:
This brings penance theoretical usage time up from about 22% to about 30%. Given that penance is the highest throughput of any single target priest heal in 3.0 (serendipity enhanced GHeal will definitely outpace it in 3.1) , it's increase in potential usage will increase healing throughput. This is incredibly welcome, as I sometimes find myself 'saving' Penance due to it's HPS. Shorter cooldown is very welcome.
- Divine Aegis stacking. This is probably a pretty small percentage of total. You have to get 2 crits very close to each other. However, penance puts three heals in very quick succession. If cast after a PW:S three heals hit in about 1.5 seconds, and crit rates are around 30-35% on geared disc priests with raid buffs, so it wasn't as it this was a totally impossible scenario, but it happened occasionally, and there will be a small increase in throughput capability.
Quantifiable throughput is shot-gunned throughout the disc tree:
+ 1% haste
+ 3% crit
+ 1% healing per grace stack (+3% on most primary targets, since they'll usually have 3 grace stacks)
+ 10% on targets less than 50% health healed with flash heal.
average I'd probably consider it about +7-10% throughput improvement, which is pretty significant.
So deciphering everything It looks like disc can probably regear with some balanced regen and end up around the same as they are now, maybe with a small throughput increase or a small regen hit, or gear as they are now and get a bump in throughput for a regen loss of what equates to about 100 MP5 or slightly less. This means if people are currently not using a pot per fight (I'm not). Then a pot will get you where you are now for a 3.5 minute fight with no gearing changes. This means for fights lasting ~5 minutes there can likely be little to no changes and still do okay.
----------
Talents
----------
Newer builds seem to have "stabilized" priests (there are very minor changes on priests, with more major changes to other classes). Disc seems to have stabilized to where you can get pretty much every useful PvE talent in Disc + inspiration with a leftover talent point for Desperate Prayer:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050...03&version=9684
An alternative build that I am starting to favor after some Sarth+2D experience will get full Divine Fury. Greater is not heavily synergized, but it's still useful throughput to couple with that borrowed time buff, The goal being enough haste to squeeze a PW:S, Penance and Greater heal into that 5 seconds of borrowed time, and also the spellpower buff on 4 piece T8, which is 5 seconds long. Technically it fits without any haste on gear, but the margin is less than 50 ms. This puts the margin in the 350-450ms range which should actually be possible:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050...00&version=9757
I'm debating on filling out renewed hope and going just 4/5 in Divine Fury, I keep going back and forth on that last point. 1/2 renewed hope seems mandatory for that 3% raid-wide damage reduction. the second point is only 2% crit on targets shielded, but with grace dropping off the MT if you heal anyone else and with Rapture virtually necessitating shield usage on tank, it seems like that talent point does have value.
Glyph selection is very obvious with Flash / Penance / PW:S
Other than that, I don't see a whole lot of flexibility. Someone on the WoW forums was convinced they should skip borrowed time so they could go 18 deep in holy to reduce penance cost by 15%. I guess if you're very worried about mana this is an option. It maths out to something like 75 MP5 bonus if Penance is used every 6.4 seconds for 5 more talent points in Holy, which I think is not worth it. However, the option is there if you're overly worried about mana. I don't think people need to be that worried about mana, but time will tell.
Conc / Concillian -- Vintage player of many games. Deadly leader of the All Pally Team (or was it Death leader?)
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.
Terenas WoW player... while we waited for Diablo III.
And it came... and it went... and I played Hearthstone longer than Diablo III.