Shield was never supposed to be worse in temrs of Mana efficiency. If it had been supposed to be worse, there would never have been a point in having a Discipline Priest. The problem and reason why it was not used in Vanilla was the prevention of rage generation, not because it was not mana efficient.
Even then, there were uses for them. The difference between a Disci and a Holy was that the Disci excelled at single target alive keeping while the Holy was more focussed on Raid Healing (due to Prayer, when talented well, being quite effective).
What you are achieving now is merging the two roles into one and just having a default "healer".
As mentioned earlier, even a 40 man raid could not support all healers being Discis and bubbling away, since the shield is capped through the Debuff. Usually, there were different roles for different types of healers.
While I am happy to find my way through whatever you buff and nerf around, I would like you to keep the different healer roles in mind. It seems to me that at the moment you are aiming for "all healers need to be the same", which should not be the goal. Every class has their strong and weak points for a reason, otherwise we could just all resurrect ourselves as druids and be done with it.
Reworked buffing of endgame content
Re: Reworked buffing of endgame content
Mmh yes I see your point but I really believe Shield is supposed to be worse for Holy Priests. If both Disc and Holy spam Shield then the roles also aren't different. Anyway if it's changed back, it would be possible to keep Shield untouched for a while and see how that works out with the "hardcore" portion of the buff. The shield will break sooner when bosses do more damage.
Re: Reworked buffing of endgame content
Prime is right, shield was supposed to be worse. Think about classic blizzard / game mechanics, an instant cast spell is less efficient than a long cast. Anyone arguing otherwise is not making sense.
From a DPS perspective in MC last night everything seemed "ok". There we some weird things like Judgment of Light being exponentially stronger than it was with healing debuff. Other than that the bosses seemed normal, tanks could actually die!!!, Rag was difficult but that is because we need fire resist items to actually be in the game... (DARK IRON PATTERNS PLZ!!!).
From a DPS perspective in MC last night everything seemed "ok". There we some weird things like Judgment of Light being exponentially stronger than it was with healing debuff. Other than that the bosses seemed normal, tanks could actually die!!!, Rag was difficult but that is because we need fire resist items to actually be in the game... (DARK IRON PATTERNS PLZ!!!).
Re: Reworked buffing of endgame content
How is it with Ice Barrier (and Fire/Frost Ward)? Is there a possibilty that it gets buffed up in raids and dungeons?
Re: Reworked buffing of endgame content
The tradeoff between Holy and Discy at the moment is:
Full Disci: You get Power Infusion at the cost of the spellpower you get from Spiritual Guidance. You will get Enlightenment and Focussed Power, though, wich are yummy.
If you go full Holy, you will get the extra Healing from spiritual Healing and also can Talent your Prayer of healing to cost less mana (I think 20%...which is a lot). If you go full Holy, you should not be able to get Soul Warding, which would mean PWS has a 5 second cooldown, significantly reducing the number of targets you can shield in one go. In the time a Holy priest has 1 shield out and waits for the CD, a Disci has 4 or even 5 shields up and running. That makes the difference between who shields and who heals up after.
I chose a hybrid build, because the later talents in both specs seemed rather situational to me (also 10% more healing from a talent is a joke if your healing is debuffed by 80% or whatever). With your debuff you are already "nerfing" the talents (whether that be intentional or unintentional). I think that each spec has its place, though. You have the full Disc who can give himself or a dps Power infusion and either emergency healspam or boost a DPS. You have a full Holy with more cost efficient Prayer of healing who will find raid healing less painful than I do, and you will have Hybrids who concentrate on being a good allround solution without having the more effective Prayer or being able to give Power Infusion. In a Raid, using Prayer of healing really sucks Mana. Also, again due to your debuffing, the output it gives is rather meh. so there, another (unintentional) limit on a spell you would otherwise have been happy to talent for and use.
I used to have a full Disc spec and let me tell you, giving up Power infusion really hurt xD. It was a sacrifice.
In any case, maybe You can work on the shield mechanics to balance them in a different way. For example, keep them debuffed but reduce the duration of the debuff. It would make them slightly more effective without shielding through all the damage and the mana cost would increase since the more often you cast it, the more mana you expend. With that, you could gradually work towards "balance".
In a raid, the shield should wear off before the debuff does, but it should also take enough damage to be used as a "save" for people who are taking auxillary damage (not for the tank).
Anyway, I will find a way to be effective with whatever you do. I just want you to realise that the buffing and debuffing affects more than just the "healing numbers". It limits the effectivity of certain talents as well, so in a sense, when you try for not having all healers be the same but debuffing them, you are sort of creating your own monsters, because some talents loose effectiveness....so yeh. Balance is not just "buff it and be done with it"
Full Disci: You get Power Infusion at the cost of the spellpower you get from Spiritual Guidance. You will get Enlightenment and Focussed Power, though, wich are yummy.
If you go full Holy, you will get the extra Healing from spiritual Healing and also can Talent your Prayer of healing to cost less mana (I think 20%...which is a lot). If you go full Holy, you should not be able to get Soul Warding, which would mean PWS has a 5 second cooldown, significantly reducing the number of targets you can shield in one go. In the time a Holy priest has 1 shield out and waits for the CD, a Disci has 4 or even 5 shields up and running. That makes the difference between who shields and who heals up after.
I chose a hybrid build, because the later talents in both specs seemed rather situational to me (also 10% more healing from a talent is a joke if your healing is debuffed by 80% or whatever). With your debuff you are already "nerfing" the talents (whether that be intentional or unintentional). I think that each spec has its place, though. You have the full Disc who can give himself or a dps Power infusion and either emergency healspam or boost a DPS. You have a full Holy with more cost efficient Prayer of healing who will find raid healing less painful than I do, and you will have Hybrids who concentrate on being a good allround solution without having the more effective Prayer or being able to give Power Infusion. In a Raid, using Prayer of healing really sucks Mana. Also, again due to your debuffing, the output it gives is rather meh. so there, another (unintentional) limit on a spell you would otherwise have been happy to talent for and use.
I used to have a full Disc spec and let me tell you, giving up Power infusion really hurt xD. It was a sacrifice.
In any case, maybe You can work on the shield mechanics to balance them in a different way. For example, keep them debuffed but reduce the duration of the debuff. It would make them slightly more effective without shielding through all the damage and the mana cost would increase since the more often you cast it, the more mana you expend. With that, you could gradually work towards "balance".
In a raid, the shield should wear off before the debuff does, but it should also take enough damage to be used as a "save" for people who are taking auxillary damage (not for the tank).
Anyway, I will find a way to be effective with whatever you do. I just want you to realise that the buffing and debuffing affects more than just the "healing numbers". It limits the effectivity of certain talents as well, so in a sense, when you try for not having all healers be the same but debuffing them, you are sort of creating your own monsters, because some talents loose effectiveness....so yeh. Balance is not just "buff it and be done with it"
Re: Reworked buffing of endgame content
Cleofatra wrote:Prime is right, shield was supposed to be worse. Think about classic blizzard / game mechanics, an instant cast spell is less efficient than a long cast. Anyone arguing otherwise is not making sense.
From a DPS perspective in MC last night everything seemed "ok". There we some weird things like Judgment of Light being exponentially stronger than it was with healing debuff. Other than that the bosses seemed normal, tanks could actually die!!!, Rag was difficult but that is because we need fire resist items to actually be in the game... (DARK IRON PATTERNS PLZ!!!).
He means Flarecore
Re: Reworked buffing of endgame content
The only reason people spec'd into Discipline in Vanilla was for the Spirit buff... It wasn't a general class spell back then, but a talent.Merelleya wrote:Shield was never supposed to be worse in temrs of Mana efficiency. If it had been supposed to be worse, there would never have been a point in having a Discipline Priest. The problem and reason why it was not used in Vanilla was the prevention of rage generation, not because it was not mana efficient.
Even then, there were uses for them. The difference between a Disci and a Holy was that the Disci excelled at single target alive keeping while the Holy was more focussed on Raid Healing (due to Prayer, when talented well, being quite effective).
Power Infusion was alright, but the usual spec was just to go for the Imp. Sta buff, Spirit Buff, reduced cost on instant casts, mana reg while casting. Rest of the points were put into Holy.
PW: Shield was only ever used as a safety net on low hp targets, because it grants an instant "buffer" of health, it can be a life saver in tight situations. Shield + renew is a nice combo to throw on someone that needs a bit of saving.
Rarely was it ever used on tanks due to preventing rage gen, but if the tank has full rage and is getting hammered really hard by a boss, then there's nothing wrong with shielding him.
But never was shield used much as an efficient spell to spam. The renew and heals were way more mana efficient and holy priests were really good.
Re: Reworked buffing of endgame content
Archiving this to prevent confusion for new players.
Who is online
Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 2 guests