Duct Tape and a Prayer

Blizzard has released PTR build 10571 for patch 3.3. It’s not a wide-sweeping build; in fact, there’s only one change that has direct bearing on healing priests. That one’s a doozy, though:

• Power Word: Shield: This spell can now be cast on non-raid/party friendly targets.

It’s nice for Blizzard to finally acknowledge that Discipline priests exist outside of parties and raids, but here are two questions I want to see answered:

• When I shield someone who’s not in my party or raid, who gets Renewed Hope?
• Does this mean I can shield NPCs?

Shadow priests

Shadow priests have also seen some sweeping changes:

• Glyph of Mind Flay now Increases the damage done by your Mind Flay spell by 10% when your target is afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain.
• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain changed to – The periodic damage ticks of your Shadow Word: Pain spell restore 1% of your base mana.
• Glyph of Shadow now increases your spell power by 30% of your spirit for 10 sec. (Up from 10%) (Here’s the current version.)
• Improved Devouring Plague: This spell now deals 10/20/30% of its total periodic effect instantly, up from 5/10/15%.
• Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague, Shadow Word: Pain, and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.
• Vampiric Embrace: This ability is now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff.

Read that last one again. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

In its current incarnation, VE is frustrating because it’s a debuff that doesn’t actually do anything to the target. By changing it to a 30-minute buff – which I assume is self-only, like Inner Fire; otherwise it would be completely overpowered (imagine tossing VE on a warlock) – Blizzard has saved Shadow priests a GCD per target and removed a major concern about their AOE damage. Since VE will be a self-buff rather than a target debuff, using Mind Sear in a multiple-target environment will be much more attractive; likewise, I can easily see a Shadow priest cycle being to tab-cycle around the adds dropping SW:P (since it restores mana with each tick), debuff the main target, and then alternate Mind Sear and Mind Flay, with Mind Blasts woven in to keep Replenishment up. (Keep in mind that I don’t know the Official Community Shadow Priest Raid Tactics – it just seems to me like that would work really well.) Likewise, I can see 21/0/50 being a very effective Shadow build.

Thoughts? Questions? Something I missed?

Blizzard has updated the Tier 10 set bonuses for healing priests – and, oddly, both of them actually sport different mechanics than the original versions. (This is especially odd in light of a comment made by Ghostcrawler last week that they’d generally worked out the mechanics and were fine-tuning specific numbers.)

The updated set bonuses:

• 2-piece: Your Flash Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over 9 sec.
• 4-piece: Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

The 2-piece bonus continues a pattern Blizzard’s created of giving small heals HOT components and giving HOTs immediate-heal components, and as such, while it’s interesting to see priests’ utility heal get a HOT, it seems to largely be a rehash of Flash of Light.

The 4-piece bonus is a reworking of the original bonus (you may remember it from my last post); this version is, in my opinion, vastly preferable, both because it allows synergy between two heavily-used spells (which, as @Greth22 points out, feels elegant, even if we haven’t seen it in action) and because it doesn’t encourage Penance/COH-FH-FH-FH spam like the previous bonus did.

I continue to find it interesting that Blizzard is functionally equating the Discipline 51-point talent with the Holy 41-point talent with this talent, especially since they have much different cooldowns. Penance’s untalented, unglyphed cooldown is officially twice as long as Circle of Healing’s, although the channel time lowers the effective cooldown somewhat. To equate the strength of the 4-piece bonus on a Holy priest to its strength on a Discipline priest implies, I think, that Blizzard considers both Aspiration and Glyph of Penance to be mandatory, which seems kind of silly. Blizzard, you clearly want us to make the cooldown 8 seconds; just make the cooldown 8 seconds!

The following is the current (datamined) Healing Priest Tier 10 4-piece set bonus:

• Your Flash Heal spell has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance Spells.

With my current haste rating, Penance has a 1.64-second channel, leaving me 6.36 seconds to cast Flash Heals before Penance’s cooldown is up. (I’m glyphed and have Aspiration.) Since my Flash Heal’s cast time is 1.31 seconds, I can cast it 4 times before Penance cools down, with 1.12s left over.

The math for determining how likely a percentage-based proc will go off is 1-[(1-proc chance)^(number of opportunities)]. (It seems unnecessarily complicated, but that’s how probability works.) In this case our proc chance is 0.15 (15%), and our number of opportunities is 4.

If I’m just spamming Flash Heal until Penance cools down – which I rarely am, but let’s assume it for the sake of a best possible scenario – then my chance to reduce Penance’s cooldown by at least 1 second is 1-[(1-0.15)^4], or 47.8%. Given that, roughly every other Penance cooldown will be shortened by at least 1 second.

(Without going into the math, the increased number of casts from dropping Glyph of Penance and Aspiration don’t justify the extension of the cooldown.)

For the record, if you’re just spamming Flash Heal after you use Penance (which I hope you’re not) and assuming 0 Haste (I hope you have some), you have 15% chance to reduce Penance’s cooldown by 4.5 seconds, 27.8% to reduce the cooldown by at least 3 seconds, and 38.5% to reduce the cooldown by at least 1.5 seconds. (Remember, the proc doesn’t go off until the Flash Heal spellcast does, so you have to let Penance cool down by at least 3.5 seconds – 2 seconds channeling Penance and then 1.5 seconds casting Flash Heal – before you can trigger the bonus at all.)

Incidentally, due to the nature of the problem, there is no point at which you’re guaranteed a proc. You get to 99.9% chance of having triggered the bonus at some point at about 27 Flash Heal casts, but it’s possible to beat probability and go forever without having triggered the bonus proc. That said, with no Haste, on average you’ll reduce the cooldown of your Penances by about 0.6 seconds. (If you have Haste, the average reduction is [0.6 * (1 + Haste %)].)

• Brewfest has been extended by two days, until 11:59 PM server time on October 5. This is not a permanent extension to the holiday, just to this year’s event.
• The preview content for patch 3.3 is Icecrown Citadel: The Frozen Halls, a new series of five-player instances that focus on Jaina Proudmoore and Sylvanas Windrunner leading players into a back entrance of Icecrown Citadel while Arthas is engaged at the main gates.

I’ve stopped raiding.

Don’t get me wrong – I love raiding, and I really like the group I’ve been raiding with. But right now, my son just came back from his summer in California and has started school (he’s in 5th grade this year – I can barely believe it), my wife is going back to being a full-time student (to finish an English/Business degree), and I’m working 50 to 60 hours a week (and that doesn’t include the time I’m spending training up on work-related skills). Plus, we have a new dog who needs to go out regularly. All of that comes together to put me in a situation in life where I really can’t put together three or four uninterrupted hours at the times when my guild raids.

Because I feel guilty about not raiding, I’ve been avoiding playing my priest – I think I’ve been in the new 5-man all of three times (not for lack of trying – someone else always gets to the healing spots first), and of the new raid I only ever saw Northrend Beasts. I’m kind of tired of dailies, and I don’t do heroics (for a lot of reasons – one being that as a healer, I’m the one who’s going to take the blame, deserved or not, if the group fails). Instead, I’ve put a lot of time into my rogue alt (she’s level 44 now – I’m averaging about a level a day for the last two weeks), since I can play her in little bits. (Heirloom shoulders, chest, and dagger mean she’s doing just over 100 DPS and getting 120% XP from killing and quests, so I’m cruising right along. I’ve been out of rested XP since level 27…)

I try to log on to Theande and Sisuphe once a day to transmute and do the Jewelcrafting daily, respectively, but I don’t always remember, and I’m running out of green Northrend gems to feed the daily – and I really don’t want to have to fly around Storm Peaks two dozen times gathering ore again. (I know, I bought Sisuphe’s epic flyer so she could do exactly that, but I do my best farming when I can play uninterrupted and, as above, I don’t really get uninterrupted time these days. That’s one of the reasons I love my rogue – if I have to step away, I can just stealth in a corner until I get back.)

I am happy about most of the changes in 3.2 (the Penance cooldown was a nerf, and honestly we should have taken the +5% crit they offered us in exchange in 3.1), and I’m really looking forward to the reworked Onyxia in 3.3 and to Cataclysm. But otherwise – well, I don’t really have very much to say about WOW right now, I think.*

All of which is to say that I’m sorry posts have been thin on the ground here lately, and I don’t know when I’m coming back.

* Yes, I’m consciously invoking this in order to kick-start my creative brain. Don’t tell it that, though, or it won’t work.

From the official forums:

Let’s not everybody get too excited here. Yes, they’re planning on letting us switch factions. No, we have no damn idea how it’s going to work. Maybe we’ll be able to pay a one-time fee and redesign our characters from the ground up, only on the other side. Maybe we’ll have to get sponsorship from someone on the other side, guild-charter style. Maybe it’ll be race roulette (thanks to Anea), where you can switch factions but everything is randomized. We don’t know.

I’m aware that fandom rule #1 is “If a situation is ever unclear, assume whatever it would take to drive you into a blind rage.” Please resist that urge. This probably won’t be out until WOW 4.0 at the earliest, so be patient and rational, and withhold judgment until you actually know what’s going on. Okay?

I liked the original system of granting mounts at level 40, and although reducing the level requirement to 30 made gameplay sense, from a story perspective it wasn’t particularly meaningful. Level 20, though, not only makes sense from a gameplay perspective, it also carries a lot of weight in the storyline. At level 20, if you’ve been proceeding as planned through the quest lines:

• Humans have scattered the Defias Brotherhood and defeated Edwin VanCleef, and in recognition of this, Stormwind has instructed Randal and Katie Hunter to allow them access to one of their prize rounceys.
• Dwarves and gnomes have defused a plot by the Dark Iron Dwarves to destroy the Stonewrought Dam and flood the Wetlands. King Magni Bronzebeard rewards his loyal defenders with a fine war ram from the stables kept at Amberstill Ranch.
• Night elves have defended the port town of Auberdine from invasions on two fronts – naga to the north, and demons and undead to the east and south – and the Cenarion Circle has extended these fierce kal’dorei the privilege of riding the druids’ saber cats.
• Draenei have fought off the blood elves who stowed away aboard the Exodar and have slain Sironas, the Eredar who attempted to create Sun Gates between Bloodmyst and Outland. In thanks, the Prophet Velen allows the heroic Draenei to take an elekk from the Exodar’s already-limited menagerie.
• Orcs, trolls, and Tauren have cleansed the Wailing Caverns of the Druids of the Fang, driven out invading humans at Northwatch Hold and dwarves at Ba’el Modan, foiled the efforts of the Venture Company, forced the tenacious quillboar and centaur out, and staved off an invasion by the Silithid. Thunder Bluff, Orgrimmar, and Sen’Jin Village each recognize the Horde irregulars’ efforts with kodo, worgs, and raptors from their stables.
• Forsaken have defended the Sepulcher from the Kirin Tor and Arugal’s worgen. The Dark Lady Sylvanas rewards her servants with undead chargers, necromantic steeds that are an additional insult to the defeated Kirin Tor.
• Blood elves have cleansed the Ghostlands of the undead and nerubians left behind from Arthas’s attack on the Sunwell. Regent Lor’themar Theron has rewarded these staunch sin’dorei by ordering the Farstriders to allow them to ride the hawkstriders normally reserved for the finest rangers.

Thank goodness:

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.

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?