Advanced Topics in Priest Play

[Xanthix]

Interesting.  If it does allow it, does it reduce the amount of rage generated or does it not affect the amount at all?
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According to the poster, it does not measurably reduce rage generation. It would make sense to me that PW:S either blocks rage generation completely or not at all, as it does with damage.

[Tal]

Interesting.  If it does allow it, does it reduce the amount of rage generated or does it not affect the amount at all?
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In my limited and unscientific, annecdotal experience it does reduce the amount of rage I generate.

[crowley]

Interesting.  If it does allow it, does it reduce the amount of rage generated or does it not affect the amount at all?
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The priests asked the warrior forum to conduct these tests, the results seemed to be No but allow for the possibility of reduced Rage Gen.

I tend to agree with the warriors who say Rage generated per HIT and not per damage point. If it was the latter than PW:S would indeed stop rage generation...but it clearly does not. And absorbed hits still count as successful hits, as kick/gouge and other abilities still have their status effects when PW:S is on.

[Professor Frink]

Here's a list of some very good healing & aggro information tested under controlled circumstances. It's been verified by numerous priests on the board, and does fly against "common knowledge" out there...proving that most people don't know what they're talking about (i met a level 30 mage the other day who insisted he got leather armor at 40).

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...est&T=68148&P=1

PW:S does cause half the aggro, per point. However that's still ~500  points of aggro instantaneously.

Damage is taken away from PW:S after armor calculations. So PW:S lasts much longer on armored warriors than on cloth casters.
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Thanks for the link, that's some useful information.

Is everyone sure that a mob deciding to change targets doesn't change anyone's aggro level? If that's the case, it should be possible to carefully balance two characters to have exactly the same level of aggro, and cause the mob to run back and forth between them using only a few points of ranged damage. Has this been confirmed? It would not surprise me if Blizzard added some histerisis to the aggro system, so that once a mob changes targets, it tends to "stick" with that decision. (for example, mobs could require another target to have a certain % more aggro than the current target to change, or changing targets could add aggro to the new target, or lose aggro from the old target...) If this were the case, it would skew their results.

Also, that thread claims that over-heal doesn't cause aggro, but the part where they describe their experiments doesn't show how they determined that (I didn't read every post, but I did search the whole thread for "over"). Did I miss something, or are they just assuming that?

-- frink

[Treesh]

If that's the case, it should be possible to carefully balance two characters to have exactly the same level of aggro, and cause the mob to run back and forth between them using only a few points of ranged damage.  Has this been confirmed?  It would not surprise me if Blizzard added some histerisis to the aggro system, so that once a mob changes targets, it tends to "stick" with that decision.  (for example, mobs could require another target to have a certain % more aggro than the current target to change, or changing targets could add aggro to the new target, or lose aggro from the old target...)  If this were the case, it would skew their results.
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Maybe I'm not quite understanding exactly what you're trying to say here, but I do know that GG's druid and my rogue bounce aggro back and forth between us quite frequently and it's exceptionally fun. It's not ranged damage that we're doing it with, but he moonfires (or starfires, whatever he chooses), goes into cat form, the critter runs up to him, I ambush or backstab, the critter turns on me, GG then attacks from behind in cat form, critter turns on him, and (if the critter isn't dead by now) I backstab, the critter turns back to me. It's just tremendous fun watching the critter not know where to turn. :D

[Professor Frink]

Maybe I'm not quite understanding exactly what you're trying to say here, but I do know that GG's druid and my rogue bounce aggro back and forth between us quite frequently and it's exceptionally fun.  It's not ranged damage that we're doing it with, but he moonfires (or starfires, whatever he chooses), goes into cat form, the critter runs up to him, I ambush or backstab, the critter turns on me, GG then attacks from behind in cat form, critter turns on him, and (if the critter isn't dead by now) I backstab, the critter turns back to me.  It's just tremendous fun watching the critter not know where to turn. :D
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I'm talking about that sort of thing, only testing to see if there's a lower limit on how little damage you can do and still have the enemy be confused. The way the aggro system is described in that article, you should be able to do the following:

Player A walks toward the hostile mob, and draws it toward him without doing any damage. He gets some (unknown) amount of hate from doing this, and the mob starts hitting him.

Player B, using a weak attack, hits the enemy until he eventually builds up enough hate for the mob to turn and start hitting B instead. (this tells us the currently unknown amount of hate you get from walking near a hostile mob)

Player B stops attacking. B now has more hate than A by up to the damage done by B's last attack, and no more.

Player A hits the mob with a similarly weak attack, doing at least as much damage as B's last attack, but hopefully not more than a point or few more than that.

A will now have slightly more aggro than B again. The mob will change to attacking A. (this is the critical step, if this ever doesn't happen, the official forum is in some way wrong)

Now you can repeat, with B doing what A just did, causing the enemy to switch back and forth doing trivial amounts of damage.

If that experiement worked reliably, then it would rule out any sort of sticky aggro system. If there's a situation where mobs can't be tricked into doing that (without increasing A's and B's damage), then there's something wrong with the official forum theory of aggro, which would undermine their other tests.

-- frink

[Treesh]

I'm talking about that sort of thing, only testing to see if there's a lower limit on how little damage you can do and still have the enemy be confused. 
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Ah, so that's why the "only a few points of ranged damage". I was wondering why that was specified and emphasized. I'm not quite with it today, mentally.

[Kevin]

It sounds like this information came from this WoW forum thread about healing and aggro. A priest has been doing lots of testing to determine actual aggro rates. She includes her testing methods as well.

Some of the conclusions regarding PW:S:
- PW:S generates half the aggro per point of damage prevented compared to heals
- PW:S does take armor into account
- PW:S does allow warriors to generate rage when being hit

Some of the other very interesting findings:
- Healing X HP generates about half the aggro of doing X damage
- Aggro does not decay over time
- Overhealing causes no additional threat, only actual healing done does
- Fade works by removing X threat, then returning it when it expires. It does not affect the threat of heals cast while Faded
- Healing someone does not necessarily cause aggro on all mobs

This last point is very interesting to me - supposedly healing person X will only cause aggro for mobs who have X on their hate list. So if a warrior is tanking 3 mobs and a rogue is tanking one, healing the rogue should only cause aggro with their mob, not the other three (assuming that the mobs were pulled seperately). Also, self-healing should only cause aggro for mobs that the priest has made himself known to (it, the mobs whose targets the priest has healed, and the mobs the priest has attacked).

This has some very interesting ramifications for priest play, and group play in general. Not all of the findings may be 100% correct, but I think it is a good start for testing.
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I haven't read it all but the test with AC and PW:S was done with Inner Fire. I would have been much happier had it beend done with changing actual amor around and on another person not just the caster, mainly so that you can have a greater difference in armor values for the tests.

The healing taking aggro was all done with shielding not with actual healing. PW:S is not a heal and may behave differently. I would have prefered to have seen that test done with a heal spell. But the conclusion jives with what I have seen when using my druid as main healer. I would just liked to have seen the test repeated while using an actual heal spell. I realize that testing in this game can be hard, but drawing conclusions about a heal spell from a shield spell bothers me.

There were no tests on overhealing just a conclusion drawn from the other tests. Of course testing an overheal would be difficult as well.



Of course much of what was said in that thread matches up with my experience. I don't really read the main forums so I don't see a lot of the "conventional wisdom" so that hasn't clouded my thoughts when making my oberservations. Unfortunately I'm generally too lazy to actually try and test things and I know all about the problems involved with human obersavation.

[MongoJerry]

Class Defining for Priest...ok i'll state the opinions of myself and friendly guild members here...these are pretty much opposite of what most people think.

Flash Heal/Greater Heal/Renew: Druids, Paladins, Shamans all have a 1.5/2.0 sec heal fast heal, all have a 3.0+ big heal. Druids have an instacast HOT. They can all make one of the ~70% uninterrupted by damage via talents.  I know Priests praise FH as an "emergency heal",

Bingo. You think Flash Heal is an emergency heal -- the way other classes think of their fast heals. That's your error. Flash Heal is the priest's primary healing spell -- not their emergency healing spell. PW:Shield is the emergency healing spell and Greater Heal is used on occation to save mana (not really effective unless talent points are spent in Improved Healing). It is the fact that the priest has this fast casting normal healing spell that they can chain cast for a long time (due to their tendency to have a large mana pool) that makes them different from other healing classes.

but Druids can drop a 2.2k base heal as instacast with NS, just every 3minutes. If a group needs something faster than every 3min, it's not really an "emergency" at that point it's every pull.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. I can instacast shield each player for 942 damage every 15 seconds if needed. But we're not trying to say what class is better here -- just what makes priest different from other healer classes -- so I don't know how this applies.

POH: i don't have enough experience with AE Healing, so i defer to your experience that AE Healing is a Priest job.

You can see from the numbers above that once you have three or more people damaged, PoH becomes both the most mana efficient healing spell and by far the fastest healing per time spell. It's even better with Improved Prayer of Healing, and I've come to really love this spell.

[MongoJerry]

Our priest must be lazy or we're just risk-takers.  He preshields our mages while I go charge headlong into battle and get everyone riled up.  He tosses a renew on me, and the mages go to town with various AoE attacks (generally IAE combined with Frost Nova and the occasional Blizzard.)  I use rage accrued to snare the mobs, the mages nuke them, and we move on.  Just seems much more efficient than having me tank each and every mob and forcing the mages to use a quarter of their attack power so that I can maintain aggro.

When you stop zerging instances, you'll find this tactic won't work. At level 58, you should be running lower Blackrock Spire and Scholomance in 5-man teams, or if you want a little easier time, you can run Blackrock Depths. But from our earlier discussions (when you were running the Scarlet Monastery at mid-to-high 40's), I imagine that you're just running Marauden and the Sunken Temple now. When you fight mobs of roughly your own level and boss mobs at levels higher than you, you'll find that many tactics you had used before stop working.

[BoddoZerg]

Keep in mind the assumption of 10 points spent in the holy tree.  That's probably the difference in the numbers.  A priest without at least that minimum investment in the holy tree at level 60 should be immediately booted from any instance or raid party.
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Ouch, that's pretty harsh.

I've been working my way through BRD in 5-man groups, as a level 57 Undead Shadow Priest. Now, my character is a pure PvP build. As in, not a single talent point spent in anything that has to do with PvE - no improved Fade, no aggro reduction, no healing talents.

I've tried my best to keep my healing abilities up to par. I keep two separate sets of eqiupment, one with +126 Shadow Damage and one with lots of +INT/+SPI. I keep heavy runecloth bandages around so that I still have some healing when OOM. That said, I don't pretend to be nearly as effective as a healer with healing talents.

But does this mean that every instance or raid party should immediately boot me? Ouch, you make me feel like a Rogue.

To be honest, I wish PvP Honor would get implemented quick, because then there would be a way to get cool items without having to raid instances all the time.

[Hedon]

Ouch, that's pretty harsh.

I've been working my way through BRD in 5-man groups, as a level 57 Undead Shadow Priest. Now, my character is a pure PvP build. As in, not a single talent point spent in anything that has to do with PvE - no improved Fade, no aggro reduction, no healing talents.

Well, the truth is, that you will get through 90% of all encounters fine as a priest with no investments in the holy tree, but at this remaining 10% you will find that you simply don't generate enough HPS, that is, that you will not heal enough to compensate damge dealt to your main tank. So yes, the first 10 points in the holy tree really pay off.

I hadn't invested anything in holy myself until I had hit lvl 60 though, because Shadowform is simply too good to pass on it when you do grinding. But i did notice that from lvl 58 on there are simply to many thight situations where I wished to have greater HPS.

On the other hand I found myself using shadowform rather rarely in PvP. As good as it is in speeding up grinding, I really prefer the ability to heal myself in PvP.

I would greatly recommend on investing not only 10 points in the holy tree, but also these 2 points for improved fade. These 2 points are really worth it.

To be honest, I wish PvP Honor would get implemented quick, because then there would be a way to get cool items without having to raid instances all the time.
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Unfortunately I have found that the PvP sets for casters are not as good as the set items you can gain from running instances (that is when the informations on the WoW Homepage are correct).

[castille]

I'd just like to add at the current end of this, since I think it fits.

There is no such thing as overheal.

Say it with me now:

There is NO such thing as Overheal.

It doesn't exist. The only problem with overhealing someone? You waste mana. Precious, precious mana. If you're a Spirit and Discipline-specced priest, this may not be as big a deal, but overhealing doesn't cause anymore aggro than you would have if you had just healed, exactly, 3000 hps of damage. The problem comes in that most elite mobs are capable of a consistently higher damage than most defensive-based tanks. He's taken 3000 points of damage, but only dealt 2000. You heal 3000? Well, you just beat out his damage, and possibly even his aggro-enhancing skills.

I just felt it needed to be said, in clear words, for anyone who came after me. It's a myth, along with a 'secondary aggro table'. They just don't exist. There is but one aggro table, and you happen to be down the list somewhere. These are theories for people to explain weird things they see when they're playing, but don't take into account crit heals, or +healing, or aggro over time. I dunno. But neither exist. Not in the reality that is World of Warcraft ;)

[TheWesson]

Thanks for the link, that's some useful information.

Is everyone sure that a mob deciding to change targets doesn't change anyone's aggro level?  If that's the case, it should be possible to carefully balance two characters to have exactly the same level of aggro, and cause the mob to run back and forth between them using only a few points of ranged damage.  Has this been confirmed?  It would not surprise me if Blizzard added some histerisis to the aggro system, so that once a mob changes targets, it tends to "stick" with that decision.  (for example, mobs could require another target to have a certain % more aggro than the current target to change, or changing targets could add aggro to the new target, or lose aggro from the old target...)  If this were the case, it would skew their results.

Also, that thread claims that over-heal doesn't cause aggro, but the part where they describe their experiments doesn't show how they determined that (I didn't read every post, but I did search the whole thread for "over").  Did I miss something, or are they just assuming that?

-- frink
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I believe that a distance factor adds some hysteresis to aggro. That is, you can instantly bounce aggro if two party members are both standing right next to the monster, but it takes quite a bit of extra aggro to make a monster run a ways to attack somebody else.

I believe this from playing a Warlock. My impression is that my DoT's combined with my first Immolate pull the mob from my Succubus fairly readily when I'm standing next to her while she's attacking. If I'm at maximum range, sometimes the monster's stuck to her even through Immolate, Shadowbolts and Searing Pain, which can result in a dead succubus.

This is with her talent for aggro reduction, Soothing Kiss, turned off.

[edit to continue the thought]

Anyhow, my belief is that effective aggro (that is, the decision who to attack) is the result of the aggro list run through a distance filter (mult by n/(n+distance) say). Doing X still causes Y aggro, no matter what the distance. However, the monster may not act on that aggro, partly depending on distance.

Another way to look at this is ping ponging the mob:

It's hard to pull a mob off someone standing far away. If you apply enough damage/aggro to do so, that mob (if it gets to you) is likely to be "stuck" to you for a while, because it took a lot of extra aggro from you to get it over to you in the first place, and your ping-pong partner will have to overcome that extra aggro AND the distance factor to get the mob back over to him.

This makes sense from the mob's point of view, because time spent running around is time not spent killing the hated enemy.

From blizzard's point of view, you get realistic mob behavior for cheap, so that they're not always running all over going after the last party member that hit them.

[TheWesson]

Another interesting commonly held belief about healing vs damage I picked up from the Blizzard forums:

Talents affect damage AFTER +spellpower (+damage) is applied.
Talents affect healing BEFORE +spellpower (+healing) is applied.

in other words, if your multiplier from talents is X:
HealingFinal = Healing * Talents + Spellpower
DamageFinal = (Damage + Spellpower) * Talents

In other words, if you have a LOT of +spellpower, your healing talents are kind of worthless. But this is not true for damage! Damage talents and +spellpower work togther, so that damage talents multiply your +spellpower.

I report, you decide.

[edited said power when I meant talents]

[Concillian]

I believe this from playing a Warlock.  My impression is that my DoT's combined with my first Immolate pull the mob from my Succubus fairly readily when I'm standing next to her while she's attacking.  If I'm at maximum range, sometimes the monster's stuck to her even through Immolate, Shadowbolts and Searing Pain, which can result in a dead succubus.

Playing in this situation, download and run DamageMeter. Set it to show total damage and use the option to reset when combat starts. This should show you exactly when you exceed Succy's damage and you have a visual cue as to if you're catching up to damage she has done or if you are exceeding her damage and not pulling the monster.

DamageMeter is your friend in these cases, as you can really accurately gage how close you are to pulling aggro. From my experiences with Warlock/succy I don't think distance is a factor, but I haven't done any detailed testing.

[Flymo]

You can see from the numbers above that once you have three or more people damaged, PoH becomes both the most mana efficient healing spell and by far the fastest healing per time spell.  It's even better with Improved Prayer of Healing, and I've come to really love this spell.
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In fact, Improved PoH is more mana-efficient than Flash Heal if only two people are damaged.

[TheWesson]

about the issue of aggro:

Found a thread on warrior forums (sorry I've lost it now) with tons of tests and discussion about aggro.

From memory:

Seems that if A and B are both in melee range, then B must do 10% more damage (or other aggro) than A to get the mob to turn to B. Then A would inflict 10% more damage than B to make it turn again ...

Healing counts as 50% of damage for aggro purposes (changed by talents.)

Things which are out of melee range of the mob, B would have to generate 30% more aggro than A to make the mob run to B.

Not clear on this part, but apparently taunting has 2 effects: gives the warrior the same aggro as the top person on the aggro list, and forces monster to attack the warrior for a short time.

Hence a warrior who dies and is combat-resurrected, actually has a chance of tanking the mob again without having to himself inflict all the aggro necessary to be on top (or high enough up) of the aggro list. This resurrected warrior would not have to chain-taunt to keep the mob on him - taunt gives a certain free gift of aggro.

The main thing I get out of this as a healer is to stay out of melee range. (And, once you have aggro it's kind of hard to get rid of it.)

So ... according to this, there IS hysteresis to aggro.