Duct Tape and a Prayer

As of today’s patch notes:

• Divine Hymn: Healing and healing scaling reduced by 30%. Buff on affected players changed from 15% to 10%.
• Renewed Hope: Effect can no longer be dispelled.
• Soul Warding: Mana cost reduction is now 15% down from 30%.
• Glyph of Mass Dispel: Now only decreases Mass Dispel cost by 35%.
• Glyph of Penance: Now increases critical strike chance by 5% instead of its old effect.

One by one:

Divine Hymn: Significant nerf, but Divine Hymn was so completely badass in 3.1 that it kind of needed a nerf.
Renewed Hope: Largely an arena change; doesn’t affect PVE at all.
Soul Warding: This makes Power Word: Shield slightly less mana efficient, but at least the cooldown reduction isn’t going away.
Glyph of Mass Dispel: Does anybody actually have this glyph?
Glyph of Penance: I am redacting my first reaction to this nerf because this is nominally a PG-13 blog. At full usage – using Penance every time the cooldown is up – the previous version of the glyph (reduced cooldown by 2s) effectively provided a 33% increase in Penance’s throughput. The new glyph provides a 2.5% increase in Penance’s throughput (since healing crits heal for 150% of the normal amount). The new glyph, therefore, sacrifices 30.5% throughput for an additional 1/20 chance per tick to proc Divine Aegis.

Honestly, with this change to Glyph of Penance, and now that Prayer of Healing is targetable, I might recommend Glyph of Prayer of Healing over Glyph of Penance for Discipline priests.

Click the image for full-sized heuristics!

(The font used is Titillium, an open-source Futurist sans-serif typeface.)

There is a very simple explanation for why I haven’t been posting: I haven’t done a link roundup in two weeks, and I feel like I need to do that before I can post anything else here. Unfortunately, I also haven’t found the time to go through my RSS feeds and pull out my favorite posts! So I have a conundrum: don’t post until I get my act together, or give up on the link posts from the last two weeks and move forward. I’m sure you know how difficult a decision this is for someone like me. :)

Anyway, that’s where I’ve been.

Khaeli has a couple of good posts up on Shadow Weaving: Gearing your Discipline Priest in 3.1, where she talks about the theory behind gear choices, and Khaeli’s (Ulduar) Gear Wishlist, where she lists the actual gear she’s looking at. Along the way, she pointed out the Tier 8 healing priest set bonus (I hadn’t even looked at T8 yet); the 2-set is nice for Discipline priests, but the 4-set is fabulous for this style of healing, since not only will PW:S give us haste, it’ll give us extra oomph behind our healing spells as well.

Some comments on comments:

tom jones: Glyph of PW:S is definitely useful, but it’s actually not as geared to this play style as it looks like it ought to be. The trick is that we’re using PW:S largely for mitigation and for the speed bonus; a lot of the time, we’re going to be shielding people who aren’t actually taking damage, so the glyph isn’t going to be useful. However, when we do shield someone who’s taking damage, that 20% healing is going to be handy. As for PW:S and DA being rage sinks, they’re not anymore; at least according to some early patch notes, damage mitigated by magical shields now counts for the purposes of rage generation. (Original comment)

Tsark: I’d actually forgotten about Enlightenment when I started writing that post! The low amount of Haste you actually need, between Borrowed Time and Enlightenment, to reach the 33% soft cap means that you can easily get it from enchantments and consumables (more rigorous math over on Khaeli’s blog, linked above, leads to a figure of 77 Haste Rating), leaving you free to make gear choices based on other criteria like Crit Rating and Intellect. I’m not sure that I’d recommend getting haste gear at all – certainly not more than one piece – given how easy it is to hit 33% with this play style. (Original comment)

caladein: I haven’t been able to make it past Flame Leviathan so far (my guild raids on Wednesday, Sunday, and Monday, and on Wednesday night we were plagued by server crashes), but from what I’m hearing, you’re right on the money with your comments about Mimiron and Kologarn. I’m hoping that the pattern stays the same throughout Ulduar, in terms of making Discipline priests useful like this. (Original comment)

Let’s start from the beginning. (I’m told that it’s a very good place to start.)

Right now, the conventional wisdom is that Discipline priests are for single-target healing and should stack crit (for Divine Aegis and big heals), and that Holy priests are for multiple-target healing (and should stack Spirit for the spellpower bonus and mana regen). I’ll say up front that this is a perfectly valid way to play the class. I don’t think that either of these assessments are untrue; Discipline priests are strong single-target healers, and Holy priests are strong multiple-target healers.

However.

Just because Discipline priests can be strong single-target healers doesn’t mean they can only be strong single-target healers. WOW itself has an excellent example of this kind of dichotomy: just because Feral druids can tank doesn’t mean that’s all they’re good for. I see another approach to Discipline healing, which focuses less on talents like Divine Aegis and more on talents like Borrowed Time and Renewed Hope.

Think about the distinction between fast and slow weapons in WOW for a moment. At a given level of DPS, slow weapons hit harder but less often; fast weapons hit far more often, but for lower amounts. With proc-per-minute weapon buffs, a fast weapon has a much lower chance per strike to activate its effect than a slow weapon does, but since the fast weapon is hitting more often, it evens out. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.

So it is with Discipline healing. The conventional-wisdom method is equivalent to a slow weapon: it doesn’t cast very fast, but it heals for a lot. However, talents like Borrowed Time, Improved Power Word: Shield, and Renewed Hope, and the Glyph of Power Word: Shield, make a fast-but-weaker option both viable and desirable. Instead of stacking crit like CW Disc priests do to increase their chances of getting Divine Aegis off, fast-but-weak Disc priests stack haste. These priests don’t heal for as much as their crit-heavy brothers, but they are much more agile in any environment, and specialize in hit-and-run healing.

Note that this is a question of approach, of philosophy, not of gear. It’s actually improbably easy to reach the soft haste cap with this philosophy; assuming that you have Borrowed Time and Enlightenment, it only takes 66 Haste Rating to reach the 33% haste cap after you’ve cast Power Word: Shield. This cap is based on reducing the 1.5s global cooldown to 1.0s, which is as far as it will go; at 33% haste, multiply your spell’s cast time by 0.67 (1-0.33) to get the actual cast time. This reduces the cast time of Flash Heal to 1s, the channel time of Penance to 1.3s (a tick goes off at 0s, 0.67s, and 1.34s), and the cast times of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing to 2s. Further Haste Rating will increase your haste (and lower your casting time) even more, and it’s possible to reap some advantage from this, but more haste has a diminishing effect (because of the

The idea behind this approach, therefore, is that you’ll be casting Power Word: Shield at just about every opportunity. This will both ensure that Renewed Hope stays up on your targets (both the -3% damage buff and the +4% crit chance) and allow you to cast your heals as quickly as possible. You’ll also do a lot of mitigation of damage, and since you’ll be keeping the Weakened Soul debuff up on a lot of players at once, you’ll also have an increased chance to proc Divine Aegis when you do have to heal someone.

There are, of course, drawbacks to this approach. The first and most obvious is that it goes through a lot of mana. This can be mitigated by a high Intellect and mana regen rate, and even without those advantages, I had little trouble in 10-man fights when I tested this approach last night. Another objection at first glance is that by by relying on casting Power Word: Shield before you cast your heal, you’re effectively adding to your cast time (the half-second shaved off your Flash Heal is offset by the 1-second GCD from PW:S). My only response to this is that it’s better to be casting PW:S almost constantly. By doing that, you’re keeping yourself in Borrowed Time for when you do need to heal somebody.

I admit that this is an approach that feels strange to a lot of healers, myself included; spell haste is for caster DPS, and PW:S is for emergencies! I think that’s a Burning-Crusade, Holy-style healing mindset, though, and getting used to Discipline as a healing spec means getting rid of some of our preconceptions about what it means to heal as a priest. We can start with allowing for the possibility that PW:S and our caster stats can be used differently than we’re used to.

(Yeah, I’m kind of bad at conclusions.)

After some testing, I can say that Divine Aegis works thusly:

• If you cast a critical heal on a target, they gain the Divine Aegis effect, which lasts for 12 seconds and absorbs 10/20/30% of the total (not effective!) heal amount. (I was using Flash Heal to test, so I was getting 1.5-2k DAs.)
• If you or another Disc priest casts another critical heal on the same target, the Divine Aegis effect refreshes its duration (back up to 12 seconds), and 10/20/30% of the second critical heal is added to the remaining shield from the first crit heal. For example, I establish a 1.5k DA on the Tank, the Tank takes 1000 damage, and then I cast another crit heal on the Tank for another 2k shielding, which makes the total shielding 3.5k and the remaining shielding 2.5k (since the shield absorbed 1k damage between the first and second crit heal).
• The maximum damage that a single DA can shield is the level of the target * 125. That’s 10k damage for a level 80 tank. If a DA reaches this amount through repeated application, and you cast further crit heals on the target, the DA’s duration will be refreshed but no additional shielding will be added.
• When the DA buff wears off, the next crit heal starts the process over again.
• You can have Divine Aegis going on more than one target at once. Each shield has its own independent shielding total and duration.

I hope that’s helpful!

(Nota bene: I’ve already written this post once. If I seem a little terse here, that’s why.)

I’ve been reading over the comments left on this blog, and it occurs to me that a lot of the disagreement I’m seeing might stem from a misconception about where I’m coming from. I see a lot of bloggers, forum posters, and WOW personalities adopting an attitude of “of course I’m right” or “of course Elitist Jerks/the Big Name Bloggers/the WOW devs are right”, and I’m doing my best to avoid that here. My goal is for Duct Tape to be a place where hypotheses are floated to see if the facts fit. I have no interest in treating what the Big Names say as though it’s holy writ; I want to try things out and see if they work. At the moment, my attention’s on Haste as a desirable Discipline Priest stat, and I do think it’s a valid course to pursue, but if it doesn’t work out, I’m not bound to it. I’ll just move on to the next hypothesis.

An important corollary to this is that the positions I take on this blog are going to change over time. That’s by design. It does nobody any good for me to insist on sticking with an idea after it’s been proven wrong. (But see above; “that’s not what thus-and-such says” or “that’s not the conventional wisdom” doesn’t count as proof!)

The bottom line is this: I’m here to experiment and figure things out. If you’re more interested in Being Right than in figuring out what right is, perhaps this isn’t the place for you.

Divine Aegis: Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target). It will also now take into account total healing including overhealing.

I haven’t tested this on the PTR, so take this with a grain of salt, but my impression is that what happens is that when Divine Aegis is already up on a target, and another heal crits, the duration of Divine Aegis is refreshed, and 30% of the heal amount is added to the absorption amount, except that a single Divine Aegis can’t absorb more than 125*targetlevel damage no matter how many times it’s refreshed. At level 80, that’s 10,000 health.

So here’s the thought: with Discipline priests stacking crit like they are currently, it seems like it’ll be awfully easy to reach that 10k absorption cap on a single Divine Aegis, which means that further crit heals on the target, until DA runs out, aren’t useful (at best, they refresh the duration of the maxed-out DA). I know this isn’t likely to be an issue on boss fights – but then, with tanks stacking avoidance lately, it might.

And here’s the question: does DA work in 3.1 like I think it does? Specifically, do crit heals that don’t increase the total amount healed (because the absorption cap has been reached) still refresh the duration of DA?

I’ve shuffled some things around on the server, and hopefully now the old etherjammer.com/wowblog/* links will redirect to ducttape.etherjammer.com/* . Specifically, this should mean that RSS readers using www.etherjammer.com/wowblog/feed should start updating again! If you’re still having trouble, please let me know below.

It turns out that the first two days of 31 Days to Build a Better Blog are things I’ve already done (the WWSGD elevator pitch) or things I already have a habit of doing (my Linkathon list posts). Here, without further ado: my favorite posts from the WOW blogs I read from the last week, in Google Reader order:

• So You Want to Be a WOW Blogger from Aspect of the Hare, by Pike
• Top Secret BRK Project from Big Red Kitty, by Temerity Jane
• Teaching with WOW from Bob’s Casual Huntering WOW Blog
• Your Warlock’s Achievement Is Lacking from Destructive Reach, by Saresa
• Hannelore’s Crystal for Mana Mana from The Egotistical Priest, by Hannelore
• Steps to Leveling Reputation from Escapist Scrawl, by Shawndra
• Mini-pet collecting: is it wrong? from Holy Discipline, by Anea
• Bring the Player, Not the Discipline Priest from Holy Dueg!, by Dueg
• 20 Questions with Nance from The Hunting Lodge, by Brigwyn
• Sometimes, I’m a Bitch from For the Bubbles, by Ambrosyne
• Synergy from Less QQ, More PewPew, by Dan
• Out with the old, and in with the new! from Master’s Call, by Faulsey
• Answering the Bell from Me and My Ghoul, by Grimtorn
• 4 Useful WWS Filters for 3 Drakes from Mend Pet, by Brajana
• Manually Installing Addons: A Beginner’s Guide from No Stock UI
• Sniper Training Revisited from OutDPS!, by Euripides (I love Euripides’s enthusiasm in his titles! He also seems very enthusiastic about post tags.)
• It’s a Hum-Drum Life from Pixelated Executioner, by Pix
• Members Wanted! from pw: bubble, by Renee
• Blog Achievements: 100 Posts from Sideshow and Syrana, by Syrana (Congratulations!)
• A Word with Brigwyn Lee from Slow Wolf, by Klinderas
• Day Dawns from Stabilized Effort Scope, by Rilgon
• 10 Things All Protection Warriors Should Know from Tank Like A Girl, by Kadomi
• I never take off my pajamas. from Temerity Jane, by TJ
• Ten Commandments for All Tanks from Through the Eyes of Death, by Arrens
• Ten Commandments From a Priestess from Warpriestess, by Arcania
• Friday Five: Breaking Out in Song from When Enraged, by Jezriyah
• Story of a Textbook Gquit from World of Matticus, by Matt
• Simpler Times from World of Warcraft, Eh?, by Kelly
• To know, know, know me… from Zannniee’s, by Zannniee (I always have to struggle to get the right number of “n”s in that)

Trivia: I’ve added three WOW blogs to my blogroll since I started writing this list.

If there’s a blog you think I should be reading (especially if it’s yours, and especially especially if we talk on Twitter!), let me know in the comments!