World of Warcraft®

01/30/2013 05:42 PMPosted by Stephenie

Second

thirded.

I still don't understand the problem with Chakra.

Riôt

Basically priests have decided to interpret Chakra entirely as a punitive mechanic

fourthed.

I still don't understand the problem with Chakra.

Riôt

Basically priests have decided to interpret Chakra entirely as a punitive mechanic

"Decided"?

Do you even play a holy priest? Ever? Did you even play one in Cata?

01/30/2013 04:04 PMPosted by Kaels

Skoot, I agree.

Fifthed

It would be nice if HW:Serenity at least gave a charge of Serendipity.

Chakra puts too much of a limitation to Holy's output. You either have decent AoE with mediocre single-target, or decent single-target with poor AoE. There is very little incentive to Chakra "dancing" (wtb no Chakra CD plz), and their output is balanced around being in the correct Chakra. You don't see Holy Priests being OP in fights that favor being in Sanctuary 100% of the time; rather, they get to be close to par with other healers but definitely not miles ahead.

Basically, you do not feel stronger than you should for being in the correct Chakra; but you feel very gimped if you are in the incorrect one.

What should be done is to remove the flat healing bonus from Chakra and just give Holy +15-20% flat healing baseline. Or, hell, just buff all priest healing spells by 15-20%. That fixes a lot of Disc's issues too, although you'd have to nerf Grace a bit.

They can then redesign Chakra to provide playstyle changes instead of numbers changes. For instance:

Chakra: Serenity: You gain access to Holy Word: Serenity. Your direct heals refresh the duration of Renew on their target. Your spell haste now reduces the cooldown on Holy Word: Serenity. Casting Renew grants one stack of Serendipity. Your Heal now benefits from, but does not consume, Serendipity. Your Heal and Renew casts reduce the cooldown of Chakra by 5 seconds and cause your next Chakra to increase your Mastery by 5% for 20 seconds. This effect stacks up to 3 times.

Chakra: Sanctuary: You gain access to (a cheaper and shorter version of) Holy Word: Sanctuary. Renew ticks now proc Echo of Light (affects existing Renews). Heals received from Holy Word: Sanctuary cause Prayer of Mending to jump to its next target. Casting Circle of Healing or Prayer of Mending grants one stack of Serendipity. Your Prayer of Healing and Greater Heal casts reduce the cooldown of Chakra by 5 seconds and cause your next Chakra to increase your spell haste by 5% for 20 seconds. This effect stacks up to 3 times.

Chakra: Chastise: Grants access to Holy Word: Chastise. Increases spell damage by 50%, and reduces the cost of Smite and Holy Fire by 90%. Your spell haste now reduces the cooldown of Shadowfiend and Mindbender, and the mana restored by Shadowfiend and Mindbender is increased by your Mastery. Your Smite and Holy Fire casts reduce the cooldown of Chakra by 5 seconds and cause your next Chakra to increase your healing done by 3% for 20 seconds. This effect stacks up to 5 times.

Now you've got (1) a reason to switch Chakras (each one buffs the next, with the strongest buff coming from Chastise); (2) strong healing with any appropriately-used spell in any Chakra; and (3) Chakras with an actual practical purpose that doesn't restrict your spell selection (Serenity is for efficient, moderate healing; Sanc is for burst; Chastise is for low-level healing with some damage contribution).

I love this iteration of Chakra. I suggested something similar, but I love this even more with the buffs to swapping. Casting certain spells reduces the CD rather a blanket 5 sec CD gives it so much more flavour too.

01/30/2013 07:15 PMPosted by Ashpridesin

Skoot, I agree.

Fifthed

666thd.

Alternately, if it were to stick with Holy, I'd prefer the name to be called Trinity. Much more Western (Holy) than Eastern (Monky/Disc)

01/29/2013 02:06 AMPosted by Nemockulous

every GCD matters.

Chakra isnt on the gcd

Kaels -

I like your idea, but it wasn't really what I was after. Every time this comes up, I ask the same thing, and I'm waiting until someone finally gives me the response I'm looking for...which has nothing to do with the mechanics of Chakra.

The only problem I have with Chakra is that it does not line up (imo) with the other healing class' *prep times,* if you will. I think a CD reduction to 20s would not be out of line.

Riôt

Kaels -

I like your idea, but it wasn't really what I was after. Every time this comes up, I ask the same thing, and I'm waiting until someone finally gives me the response I'm looking for...which has nothing to do with the mechanics of Chakra.

The only problem I have with Chakra is that it does not line up (imo) with the other healing class' *prep times,* if you will. I think a CD reduction to 20s would not be out of line.

Riôt

This would still not work. It won't work on encounters were the "line up" time is 30 seconds. Also when 30 sec Chakra has worked exceptionally well for me - such as the 2 Deathwing fights - as we started to farm the boss and our times between phases improved - the line up time no longer lined up.

I like your idea, but it wasn't really what I was after. Every time this comes up, I ask the same thing, and I'm waiting until someone finally gives me the response I'm looking for...which has nothing to do with the mechanics of Chakra.

What response are you looking for? The problem with Chakra has everything to do with the mechanics of Chakra. Specifically, the "no matter which one you pick, half your spells suck, 2/3 if you include DPS spells" mechanic.

The only problem I have with Chakra is that it does not line up (imo) with the other healing class' *prep times,* if you will. I think a CD reduction to 20s would not be out of line.

You speak of "prep times" as if Chakra were a healing cooldown like other classes have. It's not - it's a stance. It's always on. It's on and affecting our spell selection and needs to be correct even when we're not doing anything particularly challenging that another class would need to "prep" for (except perhaps in the sense of using 0-1 GCDs to swap an Earth Shield/Lifebloom/Beacon, the equivalent of which we have to do in addition to switching Chakras).

If you're not talking cooldowns or tank swaps, I'm really not sure what other prep time you could be referencing.

Eva for AA? AA's on a 30-second cooldown too, but when it's up, it buffs everything. And when it's down...well, it doesn't have to stay down for long. 12 seconds or until you need it. You don't have to hit a button, sharing a CD with AA, to get out of AA in order to do something else (why would you? AA's actually a buff.)

Holy Power generation? That's really super flexible. You don't go into a stance where it's like "I'm generating Holy Power and I can't spend it!" or "I can only use EF, LoD sucks!!" or "I can only use LoD, EF sucks!" You just use the appropriate abilities for the appropriate damage, and every now and then you might have to do something strange like a not-exactly-deserved on-Beacon DL to make sure you have Holy Power for a burst.

And shamans don't really have anything...I mean, AoE is like "drop a Healing Rain, then a Chain Heal, Riptide, oh, someone's getting low, let me GHW them up, then CH again..." and tank healing is like "Riptide, HW, HW, ooh the melee are hurt, Healing Rain, CH, GHW, HW..." really the only thing affecting shaman capabilities is their CDs, which are fundamentally different from Chakras in that they're not supposed to be up most of the time.

Isn't the real problem that Chakra exists? Well, at least in terms of AoE vs. Single Target?

Why does that exist?

In 25 person raids, there is essentially zero reason to leave Sanctuary. In 10 person raids, well, the Holy Priest has to choose between effective AoE healing or effective single target healing. Fine for some fights, crappy for others.

What is the point? At a minimum, if this stance dancing is going to be required in 10 person raids simply to have adequate baseline AoE or adequate baseline single target heals, there should be no cooldown at all on switching Chakras.

Unless there is a redesign of some kind that actually provides a very nice buff (and by buff, I mean bonus or increase over what should be baseline heals) to being in the Chakra, this cooldown should be gone. Or maybe there should only be two Chakras: Chastise/Heal.

01/31/2013 02:13 PMPosted by Taymage

Isn't the real problem that Chakra exists? Well, at least in terms of AoE vs. Single Target?

Yes. Specifically, the problem is that Chakra divides the buffs between AoE, single-target, and DPS rather than a more sensible division that reflects the way healing phases actually work (burst vs. sustained vs. recovery, for instance).

When you need to burst out a bunch of healing, it's not just AoE healing or just ST healing. It's AoE and single-target. If you can't effectively triage a single-target in the middle of a burst of AoE, you're a gimp raid healer. If you can't pop off a strong AoE in the moments between your tank getting hammered, you're a gimp tank healer.

When you need to sustain a moderate level of healing, it's even more obvious that it's not just AoE or just ST. If you're healing Garalon and you can't effectively bring up a soaker in between PoHs (and even a shadowpriest can match Holy in Sanc for that job), you're a gimp healer no matter how good your numbers look. If you're tank healing any fight and you can't contribute adequate raid support, you're so gimp that nobody's ever going to bring you as a tank healer.

And when you need to recover, you can't just sit there and DPS (unless you've been brought as an 0.5 healer, which is one of the few things Holy is really good at right now). If you can't throw out some light healing in between Smites at a decently high level of efficiency, and if you can't switch back to actual healing mode at a moment's notice, you suck.

**None of this should be read as saying that Holy is "underpowered" in some sort of numerical sense or that you shouldn't bring Holy priests to your raid. This is about playing a Holy priest, not playing with a Holy priest. Playing with a Holy priest requires certain adaptations from your other healers, but so does playing with any spec.**

01/31/2013 12:50 PMPosted by Kaels

What response are you looking for? The problem with Chakra has everything to do with the mechanics of Chakra. Specifically, the "no matter which one you pick, half your spells suck, 2/3 if you include DPS spells" mechanic.

Not really. The problem here is that single target spells are marginally undertuned while not in the single target Chakra (and secondarily that chakra doesn't scale very well between raid sizes in its current iteration).

"Marginally" my !@#.

I alternated between holy and disc last expac - some fights were just more holy-friendly, most disc.

So if some things have changed drastically that would make this "out of line" disregard please :p

Right now - disc uses smite/holy fire/penance to build evangelism stacks.

Give to holy with changes:

Would it be possible, instead, to make chakra more of a literal stance that specific spells in that stance would be what stacks evangelism, to build to burst healing when needed? Hitting five stacks would AUTO trigger archangel, making it passive, and empowering "stance specific" spells while those spells are being cast. Casting a spell intended for an alternate stance would cancel the empowerment.

So for example, being in the "aoe stance" and casting PoM, PrOM, and CoH would empower those abilities, and maybe allow a small mana reduction for those abilities only. Holy seems to be the bigger mana hog.

Casting Gheal, renew, heal, or flash heal would cancel the effect.

Changing stances would also reset the buff stacks, so waffling on a stance and changing it every GCD wouldn't be efficient since you'd never build stacks - but it would allow for healing style changes based on fights, phases, and co healers.

Changing the stance would be in the same place as a warrior stance, monk stance etc.

I don't know if this makes sense at all - but it seems (and did before) that the concept was decent, but clunky in execution and in CD as far as specific fights.

Now, either I've made SOME sense - or I've babbled utter nonsense :p

So for example, being in the "aoe stance" and casting PoM, PrOM, and CoH would empower those abilities, and maybe allow a small mana reduction for those abilities only. Holy seems to be the bigger mana hog.

Casting Gheal, renew, heal, or flash heal would cancel the effect.

Oh God no, that sounds awful, even worse than what we have right now. At least you get the Chakra buff right away when you switch and you don't lose it when you cast an out-of-Chakra spell.

I mean...it's bad enough that the out-of-Chakra spells are weak, that's enough reason to restrict your spell selection, but if you're forced to cast one anyway...I can't imagine losing the in-Chakra buff and having to build it again just because I had to flash the tank.