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?
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Comment by Zusterke — April 10, 2009 @ 6:59 AM
It is a direct buff to penance if you ask me. If you crit two or three times with penance, it now offers stacking DA shields. This is great news as a matter of fact.
I wouldn't worry one bit about the max amount of the shields. It requires 33K healing to be done, through crits, from that one priest, and if any damage is taken while he's building up his shield, the shields mitigate it. It's unlikely it will reach the upper boundary, and it is more likely the full effect of the shields will count.
DA duration is 12 seconds. It isn't rare for some tanks to avoid attacks for that long, but not a single blow during 12 seconds? not likely to be a tough encounter then ;-)
Still, should the duration be an issue… refreshing it by forcing some crits on the tank is hardly a bad idea. The crit also procs inspiration which can easily yield a 10% physical damage reduction. In other words: awesome synergy.
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Comment by Chris Anthony — April 10, 2009 @ 8:15 AM
Well, the “aren't useful” bit was before it occurred to me that they might still refresh the duration. :) But in fairness, your scenario involves a single Discipline priest healing the target. What if you have two or three? DA could stack rapidly in that scenario.
You're right that this is a direct buff to Penance. I agree 100% with you there. :) I'm also in agreement that if a shield stays up for very long, the encounter's not that hard to begin with. ;)
What worries me is that this is going to be used as fodder for the “Discipline priests are only single-target healers” argument. Although it's a counter-productive attitude to have, I know I'm not the only Discipline priest who's hesitated to heal a target with DA up because “what if I crit and I waste my DA?”. I know it's silly, but from my discussions with other healers it's far from uncommon, and this buff to DA removes that moment of consideration; even if my DA doesn't add to the amount absorbed, it does add to the duration of the shield.
Anyway, I guess the bottom line is that you've answered my question and given me some things to think about. Thank you!
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Comment by khaeli — April 10, 2009 @ 9:04 AM
I haven't been on the PTR at all either, and you raise an interesting question about the mechanics of the “new” DA. I love playing Disc and I love watching the bubbles proc on my fellow raiders. But as it currently stands, the ability isn't that awesomesauce. As DA only absorbs based on effective healing, those bubbles can actually be misleading (as in, they won't absorb anything because the heal was actually minimal or even an overheal)
I'm glad to see these two changes: it'll stack (makes sense with Penance in particular as I hated seeing 2 or 3 crits on that spell and having one or more bubble wasted) and it'll work off of total healing, not just effective healing.
I'm not sure I understand your concerns. While the absorption amount will be maxxed at 10K, I don't see how it'd be easy to reach that unless your target was taking no damage. I think DA would be consumed before it'd have a chance to stack that high. Of course, I have no data to back this up, and I don't want to construct hypothetical crit heals with hypothetical incoming damage to argue the point.
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Comment by Chris Anthony — April 10, 2009 @ 11:04 AM
Thanks for commenting, Khaeli. :)
That's a fair point – for some reason I'd misremembered DA as shielding for 50% of the healing done, not 30%. The lower number makes it much harder to reach the 10k cap, although I don't know what healing numbers for T8+ look like. I'm less reluctant to construct hypothetical scenarios, but since I don't have all the details it's hard to do so anyway. :)
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Comment by Marvel — April 11, 2009 @ 10:17 AM
As far as i know, on live DA procs off total healing, not effective, so there won't be bubles that absorb nothing. Seems like quite a few people confuse DA and rapture mechanics (only rapture works off effective healing)
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Comment by Chris Anthony — April 12, 2009 @ 6:31 AM
Marvel, if you happen to check back, I promise I haven't deleted your comment! I can see it on the WordPress dashboard, but Disqus isn't delivering the comment to this page.
To respond: on the live servers, no, Divine Aegis doesn't take overhealing into account. According to the patch notes, that's been changed in 3.1: DA will now take effect based on total healing, not effective healing. However, Matt's tests on the PTR have been inconclusive; he hasn't seen DA proc when he casts on himself at full health. No idea whether that's a cast-on-self issue or a not-proccing-on-overhealing issue.
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Comment by BobTurkey — April 13, 2009 @ 4:38 PM
Thats my understanding of how DA will work. New crits add to the existing DA (up to 10k) and that the duration is restarted/refreshed.
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