The Egotistical Priest
An irreverent and opinionated discussion of the many classes
in the World of Warcraft gaming universe.
Getting Used to the Changes
by Vonya
Patchmaker, patchmaker, make me a patch!
So…this isn’t the post I’d planned for today. Maybe you’ll get that one on Tuesday.
Yesterday was the first usable day after the big patch. Patch day was filled with bizarre server inconsistencies and giddily playing with new talents and pets. I spent Tuesday on my hunter, getting exotic pets in between sporadic server crashes. It was time well spent, as I’m sure Un’Goro and the Draenei furbolg den are swarming with eager hunters now.
The Day After Patch Day
Yesterday all of my required addons became available, and most of the guild happened to be online at the same time, exclaiming with shock and awe over their new capabilities. So, since we were all online anyway, we decided to hightail it to an impromptu Zul’Aman run, sparking last night’s quickie post.
After ZA, we did a few heroics so that I could get a handle on healing (the shaman’s chain heal basically solo-healed ZA) and the changes that were made.
Spec-ulation
My new level 70 spec is similar to my old spec, though I didn’t go down far enough into discipline to grab Divine Spirit. I’m one of the very few priests I know that actually prefers the DS spec, but in this case, there were too many incredible holy talents that I’d lose if I tried to go that deep in Discipline. I really think Blizz needs to rethink their positioning on that talent. The Discipline tree is where you GET the talent, but it’s the HOLY tree that actually benefits the most from it.
Very poor planning, in my opinion.
Lessons
The heroics were a great idea, since I actually had to heal something. DPSers can practice on the shiny new target dummies to perfect their rotation and damage abilities. Healers have to tweak their skills under fire. As far as I know, we have no other options to force us to learn to heal multiple people with spike damage and inconsistent aggro.
Heroic MrT was only marginally useful – the instance is almost a joke with the new DPS we’re cranking out. I did manage to get in a few more UI tweaks though, so not a total loss.
Heroic Sethekk Halls was much more of a testing ground for me (I still need a raven mount!). Sure, it was done much faster than our previous runs, but with all the fears, mobs with secondary target abilities and those that actually punish people for pulling aggro, I got to stretch out my healing muscles a little more.
The Problem
I’ve got a big problem though. Previously, Frisbee (Prayer of Mending) gave aggro to the person being healed. NOW it gives aggro to ME. Plus, I didn’t spec into Silent Resolve because tank aggro has gone way, way up, and my theoretical 80 build will make better use of improved Inner Fire (after the level 71 version of the spell, which will also up our spellpower).
I wanted to see whether the talent was needed or not.
In truth, it’s not. A pre-emptive frisbee front-loads me with one to two k healing threat before the tank really has a chance to gather aggro. Once he’s got it, it’d take an epic-geared Retadin to take it from him.
However, my “autopilot” healing involves throwing around a LOT of frisbees. In particular, I frisbee the tank before a fight, to give him a little extra threat pad and some extra time before I need to toss heals that actually generate threat for me.
That no longer works. I know this. Intellectually, I know that the threat from Frisbee goes to me now, so I need to hang back, let the tank take a bit of damage, toss a gentle HoT on him to slowly build up my aggro and give him some cushion for when I need to throw a greater heal down.
My fingers, however, have been taught over the last year to throw a frisbee. Fight starting? Toss a frisbee.
I need to rig up a temporary situation where I shock myself if I throw a frisbee out of combat or something. Granted, one run isn’t really long enough to undo a habit that I’ve ingrained for over a year now, but I caused a few heart attacks with my flippant frisbee flinging.
The Solution
Practice. I just need to practice. I’m going to tell my tank to yelp at me whenever I do it (trust me, he notices), and my husband’s been helping by reminding me as well. I feel like a smoker. Sometimes I have a cigarette lit and between my lips and I’m already halfway through the first drag before I even realize I wanted one.
Not a good habit, not a good habit at all.
Other Notes
Other than that, I’ve also noticed that my heals are currently a lot less effective than they used to be. I still get the job done just fine, but my greater heal hits for a smaller percentage of the tank’s healthbar than it did two days ago, and that’s a fact. I don’t believe the lack of Imp Divine Spirit is the cause, so I’ll bet some of my gear got “normalized” in terms of spellpower.
And sadly, I wasn’t smart enough to take screenshots of what it USED to be and compare it to what it is now. Dwelling on the past isn’t going to fix this anyway. I just need to keep an eye out for possible gear that is now an upgrade and used to be DPS gear (and dps casters, you do the same for gear that you used to think of as healer gear).
The “other stats” on the gear will help determine whether it’s for a healer or a dpser. Healers still don’t need spell hit, for example.
But crits just got a new level of importance for priests, and I had a lot more “Hmm, where should I put THIS talent point” moments when I was creating my spec than I expected.
Summary
Priest healing may not have as many shiny changes as…oh…say…hunters or ret paladins, but there ARE changes, and it’s a good idea to grab your favorite group and go a-heroicing. Chances are, they want to try out their new stuff, too.
October 16th, 2008
Well, I to was/am still unsure of what is the correct build for healing now. I went with a 23/38 build so I could keep the IDS. Originally I had about 1900+ healing before patch and our priest class officer had 2200+healing. I ended up with 1140ish spell power buffed with IDS, while our guild mate non IDS and ended up with 1036 spell power. Now, considerign she is better geared than I am and now has less spell power, I think IDS may still be a worth while talent for bigger heals, though I dont do all the math part of the game so I may be totally incorrect. Yes you lack the ability to get some of the new toys, but IF I am correct your bread and butter healing will still get more from IDS, this of course only applies to the old healing gear I am wearing with the spirirt stacked on it. Another factor to consider is mana regen, spirit equals more, and it shows with IDS.
I would also like to ask if anyone has actually tried a Disc dominate build for healing? I know that sounds strange, and I realize that a person would have smaller heals, but with soem of the talents you would have more mana, higher overall spirit and two of the deeper Disc talents (I am at work and I forget thier names, sorry) allow you to not only get back up to 2.5% of your max mana per FH, GH and Penetence, but you also get teh one that give steh target Grace, and can stack upto 3 times and gives an extra 8% healing per for your spells. This last 8 seconds and if stacked 3 times….thats an extra 24% healing, great googly moogly. Am I reading those wrong and they do not actually work that way? If someone coud please confirm or let me know I am inept at reading tool tips please let me know.
Thanks all.
October 16th, 2008
@Solaril
I’m debating the ImpDS build myself. I really do love the talent. Once we settle down and decide what our groups will be for leveling and raiding in WotLK, that will decide it for me. If we have a lot of SpellPower users, I’ll spec it, but if there are only 2/10 people who can use it, I might not. We shall see.
As to Disc-heavy healing, it can be done, and from what I can deduce based on talent points, it’s very bubble-heavy and focuses on keeping damage from happening rather than healing it afterwards (which is not to say that’s ALL it can do, just that it’s the focus).
As long as the tank doesn’t need to be taking damage to be effective, I think it’ll be a great healing tree (and should make battleground healing MUCH easier).
In the BC world, warriors and pallytanks didn’t like bubbles (in general) because pallytanks get mana back from being healed and warriors got rage from getting hit.
I’m not sure how much that has changed in the new world.
October 16th, 2008
I can’t wait to see how much dps Zack starts to put out…and at this point, I’m trying to find ways (as a BM Hunter) to use mana… I finished every bossfight in ZA with full mana…
I kinda hope they stay this way, because they’re so synergistic in being an effective spot healter, dps, and mana battery. I’m all for it!
October 16th, 2008
As a quick note, I did a Kara run specced 51/10/0 with an overgeared warrior tank last night, and he was in an infinite rage situation the entire night despite constant shields being applied to him. It looks like bubble healing may possibly be viable.
October 16th, 2008
There is a practice ground for us healers, but it’s temporary. If our faction own Halaa, and the enemy bombs it from above, than the guards are taking 50K damage out of their 1M HP. They are healable by us. Unfortunately damage meter addons don’t work since we are not in combat. But we have combat log.
October 16th, 2008
I took my mage into heroic bf the other night (yeah for getting an achievement for heroic and regular) with a warrior tank and a priest healing.
Shall we just say that once the warrior tank gets going pulling agro is almost impossible. Pretty much the entire run he never once complained about rage issues. We had 3 wipes, did I mention we did this run on the day the patch hit, just more due to no one remembering the instance real well. I don’t think anyone had any real problems in there, the tanks threat held up well enough (I think the talent/skill is vigilance so a % of my mage’s threat was his).
I went with a fire mage, and I can see where mana is going to be an issue. Hot streak crops up often enough so that instant pyroblast is fit in. I added to glyphs, one for scorch and one for evocation. The scorch means on a boss fight I only need 2 shots to have 5 buffs up on the boss. The evocate now also gives me back 60% of my health as well.
For anyone playing a hunter, wow … mana issues as they stand now are not a problem. I was toying with my hunter and it doesn’t take long in aspect of the viper to refill your mana.
October 16th, 2008
Well, getting a shock every time you throw a Frisbee might be a bit hard to arrange, but you could just remove it from your UI until you stop. Working it back in mid-fight would probably be easier…
October 16th, 2008
In reference to Onydan’s post, and thanks for the info Onydan, does that mean that shielding no longer stops rage build up, or is it that with the newer warrior abilities they build rage much faster due to higher damage output to make up for the shielding? Another of the Disc talents gives you a chance to shield the target with each heal, and the shield is a X% of the heal. If rage still builds regardless of shielding or if rage just is no longer a problem, then this talent alone offers a very high yield of damage mitigation which would offset the lower power of each heal. I have long been a IDS holy priest, but I admit the changes in the Disc tree make the imagination run wild, even though it would HAVE to work in 5 mans and raids, I dont pvp.
As a side comment on PoM, yes it creates aggro now and can no longer be used as an opener, but atleast it can crit now!! Nothing like watching PoM tracker as those numbers rise up and now even better that is can crit. What other spell can have the ability to heal so much for such a small cost.
I would also like to get others opinions on Holy Nova used in conjuction with the Major Glyph. Makes Holy Nova heal for 40% more while lowering the damage by 40%. I never saw Holy Nova as a dps spell anyhow, but with +spellpower and an extra 40% to the healing it does at the cost of 500+ mana a shot and an instant cast to boot with no threat, should it be taken over CoH in a 5 man run? I admit I never took the talent in TBC, but with the glyph it has more possibilities…or am I incorrect and should once again pass over this talent?
Thanks again.
October 16th, 2008
From what I can tell, it’s just that the new warrior abilities and talents allow them to generate much more rage than before. I commented to our warrior during a prince fight on how he had 100 rage the entire fight, and he replied that had been the case the entire night, even during trash pulls. Admittedly, we did have a prot pally providing Blessing of Sanctuary, so I’m sure that didn’t hurt with rage generation (Blessing of Sanctuary provides 10 rage to a warrior when he blocks, dodges, or parries an attack), but Ciderhelm at Tankspot has mentioned how much easier tanks get rage.
About Holy Nova vs. CoH, DwarfPriest did a great write-up on that very topic. You can find it at http://dwarfpriest.com/2008/10/13/showdown-noly-nova-vs-prayer-of-healing-vs-circle-of-healing/ . The short version is that since Holy Nova doesn’t effect anybody outside the party, it’s still not good enough to beat CoH, and Prayer of Healing crushes Holy Nova when it comes to healing a party.
October 17th, 2008
Holy Nova, such a great spell. When it comes to AOE dpsing, I’ve always managed to grab the #1 on the dps chart for a particular AOE. Even the king of AOE have to take a back seat. The beauty of Holy Nova is that it doesn’t generate any threat. You can spam Holy Nova until you are OOM and yet heal the party at the same time. It is very situational but i would strongly recommend that give Holy Nova a chance. Heroics BOT and MgT are 2 instances where you can shine.
On the other note, did 3.02 takes away the ‘mouseover’ function in macro? I have macros that do mouseover targeting. I’ve noticed that it no longer works on the actual character but still works on the portrait.
Thanks
October 17th, 2008
“DPSers can practice on the shiny new target dummies to perfect their rotation and damage abilities. Healers have to tweak their skills under fire. As far as I know, we have no other options to force us to learn to heal multiple people with spike damage and inconsistent aggro.”
Remember the triage quest in Arathi to learn Master First Aid? How awesome would be it be for Dalaran/SW/Org to have a triage event that allowed healers to practice healing. Shouldn’t be too hard to code a raid-wide damage scenario, a spikey tank damage scenario, and a tank + a little raid damage scenario for healers to work with.
Also, re: Disc healing – there are two ways to look PW:S. One is to use it as much as possible on the target taking most damage (tank) whenever Weakened Soul is down. Various talents improve your heals when you keep PW:S in your rotation, and as Onydan said, it doesn’t look to significantly impair threat gen.
However, I think one of the later EJ posts on the Holy/Disc thread calculated PW:S to being slightly more powerful and efficient than a flash heal, but never being able to crit. I’m not excited about keeping a flash heal in my non-emergency rotation, and plenty of beta testers have confirmed that a Disc priest can also use PW:S as a powerful emergency button (or maybe semi-emergency button) and do a good job using just Penance, Gheal, Renew, and PoM. Penance is good enough all on its own.
October 17th, 2008
(Oops, posted this in the wrong topic earlier, sorry for the double post)
After leveling my priest alt all the way to 70 as a smite priest, I respecced after the patch as a deep Disc. healer. In my current gear I’ve got 550 Int, 267 spirit, 881 spellpower (raid buffed), 20% spell crit chance, 90mp5 while casting. A couple of nights ago I healed a full Kara run with a holy priest, and last night I healed heroic Mech and heroic Bot to see how I did solo healing.
It was a lot of fun, (MUCH more fun than spamming chain heal pre-patch on my resto shaman), and a perfectly viable spec for healing. I wish I could give more objective feedback, but it seems that WoW Web Stats has not yet been updated for 3.0.2, so I could not analyze my combat log.
In the heroic 5-mans, I kept the raid up with PoM, shields & renew. I kept the tank alive with penance, shield, renew, cancel-casting g-heal, until it was time for penance again. In a pinch I used prayer of healing on the raid, but not very often.
I never had mana issues. I presume rapture was working as it should… however without my WWS analysis I don’t know the details. In all of Kara I used 2 mana pots (we had an enh. shaman with mana spring totem, but no raid members with replenishment were present).
I have never healed as holy so I can’t make any direct comparisons, although in Kara the holy priest was ROCKING circle of healing, so I rarely had to heal the raid and therefore mostly focused on the tanks.
Oh, and PW:Shield never seemed to interfere with either the warrior or the druid tanks’ ability to generate rage/threat. I used Shield whenever it was off cooldown, except at the beginning of pulls when the tanks’ rage bars were at zero.
Divine Aegis procs off of all crit heals (including POM, PoH, and Holy Nova) so as a disc. healer I am going to stack crit chance to about 25% or so unbuffed, maybe more depending on what consensus ultimately forms on the elitistjerks forums. The caster gear I collected as a smite priest seems to have transitioned nicely for the Disc. healer spec because of the generous amount of crit rating.
I can’t think of much else to say other than I’m using Glyph of PW:Shield and Glyph of Renew. So far so good!
October 17th, 2008
@Xtian
I believe I know which thread you’re discussing on EJ, and in response to the statement that PW:S isn’t quite as good as FH, someone posted some useful numbers (this can be found at http://elitistjerks.com/f31/t27943-priest_discipline_holy_wotlk_talent_preview_discussion/p92/#post939550 ). Here’s a quote of the relevant part of the post. Of particular note is the fact that he included crit in his calculations:
“Assumptions:
13525 Mana
56/5/0 Spec
20% raid buffed crit rate
FH Glyph and PW:S Glyph
PW:S — 541 Mana, 3100 Absorbed + 620 healed (Glyph) = (3100 + 620)/541 = 6.8 HpM
FH — 424 Mana, 2200 Healed = (2200*.8 + (2200*1.5 + 2200*1.5*.3)*.2)/424 = 6.2 HpM
Already PW:S is more mana efficient than casting a FH, and it has the benefit of being faster, and with Borrowed Time and Renewed Hope, it leaves the target in a better position to get a follow up heal from me if necessary. If you factor in that a non-crit overheal FH gets 0 benefit from Rapture, but a PW:S on a target that may take more damage in the next 30 seconds can result in up to 165 mana refunded, it seems clear to me that from an efficiency standpoint, you always rather use a shield on a target than an FH if you are a deep disc spec.”
The poster neglected to list the spellpower used in his calculations, but if they are correct, then PW:S has great utility in a Disc priest’s arsenal.
October 17th, 2008
I’m a Disc/Holy Priest (Disc down to IDS) and we ran ZA last night. Before the patch I had about 2200 +heal unbuffed and I now have 1200 +heal unbuffed. I honestly did not see a change at all in the amount of healing I did – the numbers looked about the same as they always have. What did change was my tank’s HP – it was 4000 more (24,000 up from 20,000) than it was pre-patch. That’s a 20% increase and may have been what you were noticing when you said “my greater heal hits for a smaller percentage of the tank’s healthbar than it did two days ago”. If you healed for 5000 with your GH pre-patch, that was 25% of the tank’s health; now it’s only 20%. That was the only difference I noticed heal-wise.
Mana-wise was a different story. The increase in mana cost for my spells was very noticeable. I never used to run out of mana (having 270mp5 while casting and 700mp5 out of 5 sec rule – this hasn’t changed with the patch) but I found myself saying more than once last night “oom”.
Also, I tossed out my frisbee as usual – before the pull – and the tank had no trouble keeping aggro at all. However, I agree in that it should be used with caution. The tank last night was quite exceptional and I would be hesitant to use it before the pull with many other tanks. I think that part is all about how well you know your raid members (the tank and I have been raiding together for 8 months now) and what you know you can get away with.
So, there’s still some exploring to do with the new changes and I’m sure it will all sort itself out in the end. Good luck all!
October 17th, 2008
I changed to Disc/Holy 51/10 last night and used it in Heroic SV and in ZA. To make a correction, Grace of Air gives 2% to healing not 8% as I had typed ealier. So stacked 3 times that is a 6% bonus. Also Rapture does work nicely giving back mana each tick for 14 or 15 seconds with 5 points in the talent. I believe I was getting back about 27 mana a tick on average last night, so you can really get back a fair amount of mana over the course of a fight. My spell power hovers just over 1k and on average my GH is 4k+ with crits at 6-7K. Renew ticks at 810. Penence is a VERY nice spell, basically drops what would amount to a GH but does faster and in ticks with each one able to crit. Aegis is nice, and as stated by some above, rage was not a problem at anytime. As for the PoM, I still front loaded it, with the tanks new ability to charge, causes a stun affect and builds insta rage, so they charge then perform a devestate or a shield slam, insta grab threat and no issues. Though if they were gun pulling or face pulling I can see where it would be an issue.
I can also say that buffed with INT buff I was dragging around about 12k mana, added to the higher regen rate with IDS and rapture, no potions in either the heroic or ZA were quaffed.
Sorry to keep plagueing the thread.
Solaril
October 18th, 2008
You’re not the only one who has noticed your greater heal hits for less. For the last 2 months I stopped downranking to get use to the change in mana cost/get better about conserving and get a good feel for how much they land for — however, they dont land for the same as they were. For a fact. And I *wasn’t* IDS before — and *am* now, and they STILL land for less. The nerf bat to priests was strong, and silent.
My guild also ran ZA — we would often struggle on the two animal bosses after bird and bear boss — but we’d usually be able to get them down without more then one or two wipes. After xpac we were able to very quickly get through the first 4 bosses but still had a lot of trouble on hexlord. The pally healer in our raid had a meter for me .. and where as before we use to be pretty much neck and neck for percent healed — he was healing about 20-25% more then me. Ouch.
Part of that came from me being more cautious about using my frisbee, because of the new threat mechanics of it. And also because my threat meter wasn’t working for the raid at all at that point and I was being cautious — but a big part of it I believe was just the overall difference in how much our heals land for.
To answer someone’s question about Disc trees. They fixed shields. They no longer prevent tanks from building aggro with them on. And there is a new glyph out that lets whatever damage is absorbed by the shield, heal the target of the shield. (That should help pally tanks with their mana).
I haven’t tried a deep discipline build yet .. but I’ve been thinking about it.. about the only thing positive I *can* say about priest healing .. is with IDS, the spirit from my mostly badge gear / t5 crafted gear .. and that new ‘over heal = mana talent’ i went through all of za drinking one mana pot the entire time until we starte to repeatedly wipe on hexlord.
October 19th, 2008
I was a confirmed lifer IDS priest. Loved it. the solo power, the raid buff, and the fact I could single target heal well gave me versitility and mana, I could still spam the frisbee (lol) and renews on the raid and put up great numbers.
after this patch, and the raidwide buff change. Hey whom doesn’t have a shammy with a flametounge totem? *which cancels our IDS)
and now with those nice raid wide buffs, ret pallys, and mana spring totems… and shadow priests… screw IDS. and screw mana.
My guild isn’t great but I can walk into hyjal and spam coh like there is no end. while the holy pally rolls bombs on the MT. if need be np, back to rolling greaters on him.
Its actually mindless. I keep looking for ways to play like i used to with more thought, and planning. the best I can do is try to look for a tank that isn’t getting enough heals or an overzealous dps squishy who is about to die without a quick fix.
all while spamming coh. I’m not bitching. we are effective healers. and there is no reason to take IDS again.
but I do miss it. =( that style has been taken out of the game. Perhaps a deep discipline build, I’ve tried that too. and just wasn’t impressed, and contrary to what blizz thinks… TANKS DON”T WANT BUBBLES!!!! lmfao. anyway… COH time.