World of Warcraft®

Just in:

Priest
- Power Infusion - in addition to current effects, also increases all damage by 10%.
- And now, Discipline. Recall that the main problems we are trying to fix for Disc in PvE are that they are overpowered and relying too much on Prayer of Healing spam, especially in 25s. We made some changes to Divine Aegis, but we're not happy with them. Because of the interaction with crit and mastery, we worry Disc will be too crit-dependent and won't be strong enough when they fail to crit. On top of that, we're worried that it will be too easy to push Disc priests into loving mastery and hating crit or loving crit and hating mastery. To try and address all of those problems, old and new, we are trying a few different things:

1) Divine Aegis now works differently. It causes any critical heal to proc a bubble for 100% of the heal instead of doubling the heal. In other words, a crit for Holy is a 200% heal. A crit for Disc is a 100% heal + a 100% bubble. The bubble however benefits from mastery, so it's more likely a 100% heal + a 130% bubble.
2) Power Word: Shield can now crit for Discipline.
3) Mastery now boosts shields by 1.6% per point (down from 2.5% per point) but now also increases all healing by 0.8% per point.

What we hope this does:

- Keeps the kit of Divine Aegis making crits do something special.
- Makes Disc still awesome at bubbles, but not quite so weak at heals. (Holy will cast bigger heals than Disc, but not 50% higher.)
- Makes Prayer of Healing good for periods of restoring damage, but makes Power Word: Shield better for periods of preventing damage. (Inner Focus to force Divine Aegis and Spirit Shell also help with preventing damage).
- Making crit a good stat, because it benefits most of the toolbox (including PW:S) and causing Divine Aegis bubbles, but also keeping mastery a good stat, because the bubbles are large, and even when you don't get a bubble, it will still help your heal.

"Help, I'm a nervous Disc priest. Reassure me!"

Keep casting Prayer of Healing like you do today. Keep using Spirit Shell when you anticipate big damage. Start using Power Word: Shield more than you likely do today. Remember that we buffed Penance. Atonement still works. You might need to pay more attention to Spirit (the way the other healers do today).

Yes, I wrote all of this from a PvE point of view. We made several other Disc changes to help in PvP, and we haven't reverted any unless I explicitly mentioned them.

Thoughts?

I think this will help balance the value of crit (by reducing it from 3x to 2x) and mastery (by having it increase base healing) the total effect of mastery on DA is increased by a tiny amount. The double dipping on PW:S will be interesting. Not a fan of screwing around with rapture returns.

Making crit a good stat

Confuses the hell out of me. as does

Keeps the kit of Divine Aegis making crits do something special.

It only makes crit better for PW:S. Just how much PW:S are we supposed to cast in 5.2? It makes it worse for everything else, and will hurt burst healing (the %increase gained from crit rating).

Mastery might be interesting again, but haste will be better if mastery still doesn't affect SS (which we'll have to see how that plays out, since DA is changed)

It makes crit "worse" when compared to the previous proposed 5.2 ptr changes. But I think he's saying it is still a more interesting stat than it is on live? It's just that now, instead of mastery being pretty bad under the previous proposed plan, there are viable choices in terms of secondary stats. Maybe, idk.

At first blush, these changes seem mechanically great to me. But like Tiriel said elsewhere, I suppose everyone will have to see how the numbers actually work.

Oooh, unintended side effect of this is that renew might become worth casting. With high mastery, it should hit fairly hard.

Lessee, currently I have...

31.55% mastery unbuffed in my healing set. Multiply that by about 30% (which is close to what the healing part of new mastery is in comparison to the total amount of mastery.)

You get about a 10% healing increase to basic healing without absorbs. That's not including the mastery buff which adds about 10% total making that a 13% buff to basic healing. (Obviously rounded quite a bit.)

All in all, if this works out with atonement, this is actually a fairly substantial buff to the way I play disc and makes me a very happy priest.

Also... PW:S being able to crit makes my pants tighter, so in summation, all I have to say is... HNNNNGGGGGG.

02/14/2013 07:59 PMPosted by Keirisonis

Also... PW:S being able to crit makes my pants tighter

o_0

02/14/2013 08:02 PMPosted by Taymage

Also... PW:S being able to crit makes my pants tighter

o_0

Yeah, it IS a bit strange seeing a female toon post something like that...

Oh Evry, Kaels answered your question here: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/7909481150?page=15#293

1) Divine Aegis now works differently. It causes any critical heal to proc a bubble for 100% of the heal instead of doubling the heal. In other words, a crit for Holy is a 200% heal. A crit for Disc is a 100% heal + a 100% bubble. The bubble however benefits from mastery, so it's more likely a 100% heal + a 130% bubble.
2) Power Word: Shield can now crit for Discipline.

I don't know...
It makes me "hate" Disc, not Crit or Mastery, because I can see this person, who could use a big heal, then ends up with a mediocre heal but a huge bubble, which mostly would be wasted... Then, that tank health spike, because he had a gigantic bubble on him last time... And, somebody heal Tsulong please. My eyes are blinded by that big, bright circle around him.

I'm very excited to see the results of these changes. Hopefully some insight will be shared soon from the theorycrafters.

02/14/2013 08:12 PMPosted by Qùess

I'm very excited to see the results of these changes. Hopefully some insight will be shared soon from the theorycrafters.

Oh Quess! I was wondering what you thought . . .

02/14/2013 08:11 PMPosted by Jesminia

I can see this person, who could use a big heal, then ends up with a mediocre heal but a huge bubble, which mostly would be wasted

If they actually need a big heal, that implies that they're likely to take damage in the near future, which means the bubble won't be wasted.

If they don't need a big heal, you're still probably going to get more value out of this than you would from 'normal' crit mechanics, because the reduction in crit overhealing is probably going to outweigh the healing lost from the occasional bubble expiration.

In any case, your raid is almost certainly better off than they would be with a 'normal' crit, because you aren't accidentally sniping someone else's HoT or pushing your own next PoH cast into overheal. You gain the same extra healing another healer would from a crit (maybe a bit more), but without the drawbacks.

And on top of all that, all your heals are now 10-15% bigger before even considering crit, so while you might lose some healing from the occasional RNG lottery jackpot, you gain even more healing in a consistent and predictable form.

I have to say I'm also very interested as I'm a fan of creative and interesting solution rather than number tweak.

Maybe something where part of the DA trickle down into healing, essentially doubling as a HoT.

Say you crit on a base heal of 50 K, so you get a 70K bubble on target with mastery, well then over the next 10 sec half of that bubble become heal on the target every 2 sec. So you start with a bubble of 70K, but 2 second later the shield is only of 63K and the target restored 7000 health. So the bubble is still a bubble but isn't wasted if there's no damage. Just random thought

I can only imagine this to become a bit of a scaling nightmare in the long run, depending on how much Mastery you'll be able to get eventually. However, it is nice to see Disc is getting a bit more of consistency on the way Crit and Mastery work for the spec.

02/14/2013 08:19 PMPosted by Taymage

Oh Quess! I was wondering what you thought . . .

I'm not a very mathy person, but my fundamental thoughts on the changes are that they're overall positive for the spec, and keep the feel of the spec as well.

Critical PW:S is something I've wanted since I started playing in Cata. It just makes sense, and it's powerful.

The change to DA is interesting. I know a lot of people worry that the absorbs will fade away before they're used, but that's kinda silly. If you're doing any mildly dangerous content, they'll break. This is the change I feel will require a more math oriented PoV though to figure out.

Mastery change was also needed imo, the stat weight was too low. Having some raw throughput will be sweet, but I agree with Kaels. Grace/Archangel+Mastery, we could be seeing some silly and possibly unintended results.

Power Infusion change seems more intended for Shadow, but will directly impact Disc as well. Most Disc Priests already take PI, so this is just a straight buff of 10% DPS during PI. I have no qualm with a buff to damage. :)

02/14/2013 08:41 PMPosted by Thalassia

I can only imagine this to become a bit of a scaling nightmare in the long run, depending on how much Mastery you'll be able to get eventually. However, it is nice to see Disc is getting a bit more of consistency on the way Crit and Mastery work for the spec.

Doubtful. The bulk of Disc's activity (actual heals and Spirit Shell) is actually going to get less Mastery benefit than other specs do.

If you assume, for the sake of argument, that a disc priest's output is 50% PWS and DA and 50% everything else, then Disc gets effective Mastery scaling of 1.3% per point, or only slightly higher than the standard 1.25. For a more realistic scenario for the next tier - say 30% PWS/DA, 70% everything else - you're looking at 1.1% per point, or somewhat less than the standard.

SO disc is getting buffed again?

02/14/2013 08:56 PMPosted by Dezie

SO disc is getting buffed again?

yep it's time for you to reroll i guess!

It looks like they managed to fix secondary stat scaling without changing the average strength of our heals by more than a couple percent (and made them more consistent), and slightly buffed average PW:S (less on noncrits, more on crits).

phew......that was a close one huh? 5.2 could have been very ugly for us..............