The Holy Guide will be updated in the next 24-48 hours, although it has minimal changes from 5.1! (Grrrr….that irritates me on a number of levels. Holy’s shortcomings being overlooked).

Hope everyone is enjoying the Throne of Thunder, stay tuned for the Holy update, as well as a State of the Union 5.2 in the next week.

Keep calm, and keep healing.

5.2 Discipline Guide – Thunderstruck! is a post from: Tales of a Priest

But before I dive into the meat and potatoes of the post, I will provide a brief update on myself: it has been a chaotic January for me.  Work has been quite busy with a lot of travel, my SO and I are on the property hunt here in Boston (Rant: SO EXPENSIVE), and I am prepping to go away on vacation on a cruise at the end of the month with some friends.  Progression has been pretty solid, as of today we are working on Heroic Sha of Fear 25-Man, everything else is on farm. I expect a kill in the next few nights… It seems like one of those fights that just clicks and you make leaps and bounds forward. (Dear Huddle in Fear, why you love me so much?)

For this “Best Practices” I am going to split it into two sections, one for Holy and one for Discipline. Now I know a vast majority of us priests are playing Disc over holy simply because Disc is that much stronger at the moment— but for better or for worse, that will change in 5.2. While I personally feel that Holy will still be underpowered, despite GC’s “holy only seems underpowered because Disc is so overpowered…” we’ll see a lot more opportunities to play and shine as Holy than we do now in 5.1.

##Discipline##

Best Practice #1 – Smite, You Fools! (Diagram)

Atonement healing is nothing short of amazing. First, its exceptionally mana efficient… particularly if you have 5 stacks of Evangelism.  Secondly, the healing it provides its smart. So on many fights, which have periods of low raid damage, you can contribute easily to raid DPS, while triaging (smartly) and tank healing direct with Atonement heals. Penance, until 5.2, is often best used OFFENSIVELY unless you are stacking Grace on a target.  (Sidenote: Amazing with 4pc)

Additionally, on fights that have +damage taken on the boss. (eg. Heroic Lei Shi) It is not uncommon to see 100+k heals smartly healing your Scary Fog soakers. Delicious.

Perhaps most importantly, Smite/Atonement Healing is necessary to gain your Evangelism stacks to be able to use Archangel— and consequently other Best Practices.

Some fights, Atonement healing is NOT the best choice, and you should only be stacking Evangelism via Instant Holy Fire’s or while Weaving a smite/penance in between your POH’s since your raid is just taking Constant raid damage. (eg. Heroic: Garalon)

Best Practice #2 – Use Archangel With Spirit Shell

In a build earlier this year, we gained the ability to couple Archangel and Spirit Shell. (Previous TOAP Post). Archangel can increase your healing by up to 25%, and in turn adds a 1.25 multiplier to the Spirit Shell calculation… so a substantial increase. Spirit Shell is generally used to prepare you raid for incoming damage, which means you have specific times where you are going to be using it— why not prepare yourself by aligning this powerful cooldown to further augment Spirit Shell.

I have a Spirit Shell keybind with AA already built in. Since both SS and AA are off the GCD, macroing them together works perfectly to use them in tandem. Remember, AA lasts a few seconds longer than SS so even after SS expires, you still have a few seconds left with your heals empowered.

Best Practice #3 – Use Archangel Off Spirit Shell

Yes I know this is (intentionally) counter to my previous best practice, however the cooldown for Archangel is short enough that it allows you use it with Spirit Shell, and once without Spirit Shell before SS’s cooldown is complete. So many Disc Priests forget to use AA, even in periods of low damage and they are simply smiting away. There is no good reason to not have AA running, if it will be back off CD when you will need it (or if you will be casting Spirit Shell) before big damage hits.

A great way to do this is to monitor its cooldown, its duration, and your stacks of Evangelism. I suggest using a tracking mod, or simply import the Weak Auras I’ve created here.

Bonus Disc Tip: Use Inner Focus with Spirit Shell

This effectively gives your Spirit Shell target(s) a double shell, as Inner Focus will “crit” that cast of GHeal, Flash Heal, or POH. Nothing says raid mitigation, like a 200k+ shield on 5 targets!

##Holy##

Best Practice #1 – Pre-Cast Lightwell/Spring

You should have your Lightwell out before the tank pulls (or before damage goes out that you’ll need it)… I tend to prefer to have it out a good 30+ seconds early. Lightwell’s cooldown is your standard 3 minute cooldown. Some fights, like Tsulong, start the fight with large amounts of damage –sometimes consuming your entire Lightwell before the 3 minute cooldown is up.  IF you have pre-cast Lightwell, your CD will be up sooner, providing a shorter total downtime of the Lightwell for your raid to access.

Best Practice #2 – Stance Dance; When Appropriate

Evaluate when you should be in Serenity or Sanctuary. Look at your logs, are you casting POH/COH more than you are casting Single Target heals while you are in Serenity? Perhaps it is better to be in Sanctuary. A very easy fight to know when to stance-dance is Tsulong. You almost always want to be in Sanctuary during Night Phase, and almost always Serenity for Day Phase. This is a great fight to get used to going in and out of difference Chakra states.

Sometimes you ARE single target healing, before you start AOE healing… you need to look at the fight and determine if the 30 second Chakra cooldown is short enough to swap stances, and be able to swap back to the appropriate stance when the time is right.

Best Practice #3 – Use Your Words…

Yes… I said USE them. Our Holy Words may be flawed, but they are still a part of our toolkit. I rarely use HW: Serenity in 25 man, since I primarily am Sanctuary, but when I am in Serenity I use HW: Serenity on cooldown. Why? Because its mana efficient, instant, and provides a buff. Amazing? No… but something we should be using on CD when in that Stance. HW: Sanctuary, on the other hand, is something I use sparingly. It is expensive, hits like a wet noodle, but is not useless.

Do I think HW: Sanctuary needs developer love? Yes. However, if you have the mana to spare, your raid is camped in a given area, and constant raid damage is going out… any extra healing is helpful, so why not cast it? Don’t dismiss the spell as “useless” and refuse to cast it… sometimes, even though it is a bad spell in its current form, does not mean it doesn’t provide healing that is helpful.

Bonus Tip: Use Renew Effectively

A lot of people gear specific haste levels and glyph for Renew— but never cast it. Why are you gearing for a Renew breakpoint but cast it so infrequently? You’ll likely get more bang for your buck with Mastery. Your mileage may vary… but take a look at your logs: How often are you casting renew? How much are you overhealing with it? Would increasing your Echo of Light be a better option and provide you with more raw output? (most cases, probably yes)

Need more?

I would be remiss not to suggest that everyone visit www.HowToPriest.com and register there for more good priest ‘best practice’ discussion Healing and otherwise. Its where I spend most of my Priest forum time. Lately, I’ve found the official forums, EJ, MMOC I find woefully lacking in discussion beyond QQ. Besides all sorts of awesome people hang out there… myself included!

Holy and Disc Best Practices is a post from: Tales of a Priest

In early MoP Beta, Disc had a lower base regen than Holy did forcing Disc to rely on Rapture returns to get into parity with Holy in terms of regeneration. Then came changes, increasing our Meditation to 50% for both Holy and Discipline, making Rapture just added gravy. I had concerns, however, it really didn’t culminate until Rapture was buffed to 200% spirit.

Every time your Rapture procs, you gain 200% of your total spirit back as mana– on a 12 second CD. At the moment, this also includes Temporary Spirit Gains.  So this means any temporary spirit proc/boost, if active when Rapture procs, also contributes to your Rapture Regeneration. (eg. Mana Tide Totem, Tailoring enchants, DMC trinket, Tsulong trinket, low mana Jade Spirit proc). This is in addition to whatever baseline regen this spirit grants you through the normal regen calculation formula.

Combat Regen Per 5 = Total Mana *0.02 +(1.1287*SPI*Meditation%) 

As of now, you only need 9,150 spirit to make a single PW:S case per Rapture CD mana neutral. With the plethora of spirit procs  you are often seeing Rapture returns in excess of 30k– now yes, some of these trinkets have ICDs longer than a standard Rapture CD, but still restores substantially more mana during that proc’s uptime. Many priests, myself included, are tracking our Spirit Procs and timing Rapture’s during that proc’s uptime.

Some might argue you should subtract the cost of PW:S from the mana restored, since that costs mana to cast. However, you should NOT do this. Why? You need to assume that you would have cast that PW:S anyway, and the cost is sunk as the mitigation happened. If the mitigation didn’t happen, you would have had to heal it up anyway, thus the cost of the PW:S is not included.

Is Rapture a Sign of the End of the World is a post from: Tales of a Priest

• Divine Aegis creation has been increased from 30% to 50%.
• Archangel now affects Spirit Shell properly.
• Spells affected by Inner Focus cast while Spirit Shell is active now fully apply critical effect to the shield provided.

All three of these changes are really good news as they are substantial and direct increases to our output— caveat: when used properly. If I have said it once, I have said it a million times: “The single best thing a Discipline priest can do to increase their effective healing is to know the fight.”  It is as simple as that, know the fight. Know when damage is coming and to prep the raid for that oncoming damage.

Knowing the fight is important for a number of reasons, but simply put it is to know when to effectively use your cooldowns . (And Disc has MANY) When in a fight will your raid be grouped up and PW: Barrier will be best used? When will activating Archangel (and subsequently when will stacking Evangelism be a priority) be best used? When will Spirit Shell’s mitigation be needed? All these questions are things you should be asking yourself as you go into a fight– complicating these questions is, of course, being sure you aren’t sitting on the cooldowns so long that you are WASTING the cooldown itself. (ie. Could you have used it a second, third, or fourth time in that fight if you didn’t hold it?).

Could you simply just blindly spam your absorbs and have them be eaten up by incidental damage and be effective? Yes. But it isn’t the best way to play your class. One example of this kind of gameplay is when people simply macro Spirit Shell to their POH keybind— again, is this effective? Yes… is it the best way to heal? NO! Spirit Shell is best used when in conjunction with specific boss abilities– know when they are coming. Before the raid look at the Dungeon Journal, look at Wowhead tooltips, watch your bossmod timers, prepare your raid for the damage, and do what Disc is designed to do: MITIGATE.

Lets take Blade Lord Ta’yak as an example. In our most recent Heroic 25 kill, we used two Disc Priests. We both prepared the raid (we assigned ourselves 2 groups and shared the 3rd) by popping Archangel with about 15 seconds lead time before Unseen Strike hit.  When the raid soaked Unseen Strike, when combined with our PW: Barrier rotation our HP barely moved!

Spirit Shell is unlike no other ability in the game. What other ability allows you to prepare a raid and pretty much “STOP ALL DAMAGE NOW”. Heroic, Normal, and LFR fights all value the ability to stop damage– and many Heroic encounters greatly lean on this as part of healing strategy. Damage Avoided (or mitigated) is generally superior to damage re-healed. Figuring out what you can do to maximize this ability, by both gearing and playing correctly is something we should be thinking about.

Even though Spirit Shell has a short CD, we still need to maximize it’s output during its uptime. (beyond just gearing correctly— Mastery is gold). This often means finding time to stand and “turret-heal” for the duration of the buff. One of the worst things you can do is waste the CD by casting it right before you have to do a good deal of moving. Now, this does now beg the question: how many casts can you actually FIT in this 15 second window? Remember, Spirit Shell only applies if the buff is active when you complete the cast. Our fellow priest theorycrafter, Aidinne, actually did a great analysis of that question (here).

It is important to keep in mind that generally most disc priests are NOT gearing for Haste (and they really shouldn’t be). To summarize my interpretation of Aidinne’s results, in most raid environments you’ll likely be getting 6 POH casts in during Spirit Shell’s uptime. (This is assuming you are Raidbuffed with 5% haste;  you’re only looking at 1-2% haste when adjusted for latency and human lag).  The 7th cast of POH during that 15 second period would require higher amounts of haste than you’d probably like to have, particularly considering the amount of Mastery & Crit you’d have to sacrifice to get that amount of Haste in current gear.  If you decide to run Power Infusion concurrent with Spirit Shell, you would be able to get 7 casts in that window.  Of course, if you have a Borrowed Time banked prior to activating Spirit Shell, you likely will able to get an additional POH, but generally we should be planning for 6 casts of POH during Spirit Shell’s uptime.

Now that we’ve laid out the facts, I’d suggest looking at your gear and your logs. When doing this, instead of trying to figure out how to gear to be able to ‘sneak in’ additional casts during Spirit Shell, evaluate how effective you are being with your time when Spirit Shell is active. Are you doing a poor job deciding when to activate it and are forced to move and lose a second or two? Are your keybinds too complex to activate SS, AA, and Inner Focus at the same time without losing precious seconds of the buff? Are you activating Spirit Shell too early, and as a byproduct losing Shells on people before the ‘big damage’ comes? Are you able to time Borrowed Time into that rotation?

A tricky thing we need to keep in mind is to not waste casts during Spirit Shell. For example, if you have time to cast multiple casts on a group (or a single player) capping Spirit Shell over 60% of the casting priest’s HP is wasteful. Now that Inner Focus applies to Spirit Shell casts, it is easier to cap. At the moment, there is not a plugin (that I am aware of) for any raid frame that lets you know if a Shell is capped; and a lot of “intuition” needs to be used when cycling through targets. (Less of an issue with POH, but more of one if you are casting single target heals)

Perhaps the most interesting question you could ask yourself regarding Spirit Shell is: should I be using Power Infusion (assuming you are spec’d for it) to get a single extra cast of POH during Spirit Shell? Sometimes the answer is no. It might be better use of Power Infusion to cast raw POHs and get actual healing out. Evaluate your fight’s damage patterns— know the fight, and respond with our vast toolkit.

Disc is a fun spec, however mastering it does take some time. A lot of being good at disc is not just learning how to play the spec, but also learning the encounter and how your raid’s strategy impacts that encounter’s damage. Prepare, Mitigate, Succeed.

Getting the Most Out of Disc and Spirit Shell is a post from: Tales of a Priest

First let me just say…

In all seriousness, people need to KEEP CALM. The state of the priest is not as dire as some of the forum posts I have seen might suggest. Perhaps the biggest question I am seeing all over forums (official forums, H2P, and otherwise): Why are priests so under-powered and horrible right now?

This. Is. A. Fallacy.

I am sick of seeing all that garbage. Are priests in need of a slight buff here and there– sure. Do I think it is as dire as the forums would let you believe? No.  Did Discipline need a buff to its output to compensate for Holy’s Chakra Scaling on our Level 90 abilities, and larger raid healing toolkit? Yes.  Does Holy need the throughput increase (coming in 5.1) to compensate for the lack of utility? Sure.

Holy is doing well when played well, use Lightspring, find the correct places to use your Hymn, when and where should you be using Cascade/Halo/Star? Are you playing too cautiously? Could you be healing more aggressively? Do you have the opportunity to swap Chakra stances for certain fight mechanics/phases? (e.g. Serenity for Day Phase Tsulong, Sanctuary for Night Phase). Figuring out which Chakra stance, and when will be even more critical come 5.1 when Chakra stances are buffed 10%.

Disc now can blanket a raid (10 and 25) with Spirit Shells in preparation for incoming damage– this playstyle is exceptionally powerful. (Perhaps too much so?) In fact, you are already starting to see Guilds stack multiple Disc Priests to stagger/chain DA and Spirit Shells to “STOP DAMAGE NOW”. (I’m looking at you Force and Verve!)

Simply because these buffs just came out/are coming, does that mean Priests are in a bad spot right now? No.  Our output is pretty solid, heck, the image in the masthead has myself and my priest-partner in guild holding our own in one of our first Heart of Fear kills. (Disc/Holy combo) Not once have I thought, “Man, I should sit out of this fight there is nothing I can bring to the table of value.” And that includes 4 healing fights on 25 man.

I do think a lot of the doomsaying about priests is directly related to the perceived FOTM-Status of Mistweaver Monks. Are Mistweavers powerful healers? Yes. Are they being nerfed in 5.1? Yes. Is a lot of Mistweaver healing overstated and overhyped? Yes.  Are Mistweavers great additions to your healing team? Yes. However it does not mean that “reroll MW or GTFO” is what we should be thinking here— quite the contrary. With Monks as the new class, you’ll be damn sure that Blizzard has all eyes on Monk performance and balance. Priests have ALWAYS been well rounded healers, not once in my long tenure healing in WOW have I felt that Priests wouldn’t land on our feet. We always have.

My guild, Something Wicked, is doing a great job our Heroic 25 man progress (as of this post we are Realm 1, and in the US top 50) and we have ZERO Mistweavers in our healing team. Yep…. zero. Mistweavers are by no means “required”. Play your priest well, and leverage your abilities… you’ll be fine!

Keep Calm, Keep Healing, and Keep Learning.

Post Publication Edit:

In a twitter conversation with Chase, a rather good point was made. A lot of this priests suck/reroll or GTFO mindset is infecting the community as a result of people only looking at WoL/RaidBots for data. What we all need to keep in mind Healing Meters on WoL/RaidBots does NOT account for differences in raid comp, strategy, healing role, skill, or healing style. These all can dramatically affect the Parse results. Healing logs/parses simply do NOT paint the whole picture and we should NOT live and die by them— regardless of what people are yelling about on the forums or trade chat.

Keep Calm and Keep Healing is a post from: Tales of a Priest

This isn’t mechanically different than POH spamming to prepare a raid with Divine Aegis prior to damage occuring that many priests have been comfortable doing in 4.3. Spirit Shell now simply allows us to do this much more effectively, and with much greater ease. Note: Spirit Shell caps at 60% of the Casting Priest’s HP and each Disc Priest in your raid can cast a unique Spirit Shell.

Using Spirit Shell effectively will be a hallmark of a good Discipline Priest. You could simply use Spirit Shell on cooldown and either pad a tank, or POH pad a raid and see fairly positive results— however the real marker of a good Disc Priest will be using SShell when its needed the most. Despite it having a fairly short cooldown, we might want to pause a second or two to line up Spirit Shell’s absorbs to large raid/boss damage. Simply using the ability on cooldown will be effective, but ultimately not as effective of using it when the fight benefits from it. The tricky part is not delaying it so much, that the short cooldown is wasted.

Why is understanding Spirit Shell so important? Spirit Shell will represent a LARGE PORTION of your output on many/most fights… understanding its mechanics and stat scaling will be critical.

Spirit Shell scales exceptionally well from both Mastery and Crit. Each cast of a heal while Spirit Shell is active will be the same (barring throughput procs). The Spirit Shell calculation takes Mastery, Crit, and Divine Aegis creation into account and rolls it all up into a single absorb– making this one of our most scalable heals in our arsenal. Spirit Shell scales linearly by Mastery as well as by the amount of critical strike chance you have. Additionally, when Spirit Shell is active, it essentially ignores the RNG aspect of Crit as it provides direct scaling based on your critical strike chance (guaranteed). (It does this by essentially looking at Crit as an aggregate stat, not as a RNG stat based on a single heal)

Spirit Shell’s Calculation is as follows:
Non-POH Shell = Average Heal * (1 + Mastery %) * (1 + Crit %) * (1 + (Crit % * 0.30)) 
POH Shell = Average Heal * (1 + Mastery %) * (1 + Crit %) * 1.30

As you can clearly see, SShell’s stat scaling is quite liberal, scaling crit linearly with the amount it absorbs as well as mastery. This method of scaling essentially guarantees crit chance to provide scaling to the heals cast when SShell is active. (as well as accounting for Divine Aegis).— This method of scaling, in fact, is better than the baseline spell’s scaling  just by nature of Spirit Shell. In fact, it may be too good on a number of single target heals– be careful don’t overcap the 60% cap on SShell! Currently, a single GHeal gets you about 80% capped…. and with full stacks of Grace and a healthy amount of Mastery, you’ll likely get capped in a single GHeal cast.

Haste does not have a direct throughput increase to an individual cast of Spirit Shell, however it does allow you to cast faster while the Spirit Shell proc is active, and theoretically, create more Shells during a single Spirit Shell cooldown. Generally speaking, you should be able to fit in 6 GHeal/POH casts during Spirit Shell’s uptime. (some haste and spell conditions might allow for upwards of 7). Haste scales Spirit Shell in a tiered fashion, given the fact that you must complete the cast when Spirit Shell’s buff is active. If you cannot complete the cast when the buff is active, it is considered a regular heal. Once you get enough haste to complete that cast in the time allotted, then you can count it towards SShell scaling.

How do you make the most out of Spirit Shell? Know the fight. That is always the biggest boon to a Discipline Priest. The more you know and understand the fight, the better you can be at predicting periods of large amounts of damage and preemptively preparing the raid (or Tank) with Absorbs.

Spirit Shell does not scale with Archangel, so save this cooldown for after/before Spirit Shell is going to be used. Further, Inner Focus only provides the mana cost reduction when Spirit Shell is active. (this is intentional given how Spirit Shell’s guaranteed crit scaling is already accounted for). Remember to use, and time these abilities appropriately before or after a Spirit Shell period.

Generally, absorb mechanics are fundamentally superior to raw healing. This is because it actually preventsthe damage from happening to a player. If a killing blow is prevented via mitigation, regardless how much a player can raw heal, that mitigated damage is tops.

Editor Comment: Thanks to my friends Valen and Dayani for assistance in the TC and confirmation of calculations.

Demystifying Spirit Shell is a post from: Tales of a Priest

Regen will be a big part of our playstyle and gearing in Mists, so it is important to understand how each of our regen abilities work. I think we’ve covered and understand how Spirit and Rapture work from my previous post (here). But let’s take a look at the talent choics in our Third Tier that is available at Level 45.

**note that this post has been updated on 7/30/12 to contain data from Beta Build 15913**

From Darkness Comes Light – FDCL is arguably the hardest talent to quantify the amount of mana we ‘regen’, since it mostly is a mana savings ability. That said is is the least predictable source of mana regeneration since it purely revolves around RNG. Additionally, for FDCL to proc you have to be casting one of the required spells to trigger it— depending on your role, casting a Heal, Flash Heal, Greater Heal, or Smite might not be something you do with much regularity (ie. If you are primarily raid healing). If that is the case, you might not proc FDCL often enough to benefit from it. If you are doing a lot of Single Target Direct Heals (STDH) , and have good RNG on the proc, it could work out greatly to your advantage. And for Holy priests, FDCL’s free-Flash Heals, also can translate into discounted Greater Heals and Prayer of Healings via Serendipity.

Mindbender – We’ve seen this little critter get changed a number of times over in the last several builds– most recently increasing it from 1% to 1.3. (though the math seems to be using 1.33…%) The first thing to keep in mind is that this replaces Shadowfiend. If you do not spec into this, you will still have access to baseline Shadowfiend. The latest incarnation has it have a 60 second cooldown, and restore 1.3% mana per swing. The biggest boon with this change is that we can cast it more often (well, duh)… It gives you greater uptime of the spell, despite per CAST Shadowfiend restores more mana. The fact that you get more off in a given encounter is the critical point.  That said there are some issues with both Shadowfiend and Mindbender. We should be able to assume SF would give us 8 swings (3% regen per swing), and MB would give us 10 swings (1.3% regen per swing). Even with 0 Haste (remember MB/SF swings are affected by haste, so it is possible to get MORE than 8 or 10 swings) you can be ‘shorted’ swings and in turn result in less mana restored. For purposes of analysis, we are going to assume we don’t lose (or gain) swings.

Power Word: Solace – A 2 second cast that simply restores 2% of our mana back. Currently, even if you miss damaging the target with the spell, you are still granted the 2% mana back. (Resto Shaman everywhere just screamed… since missing a TC Lightning Bolt was painful). For priests who are comfortable with ‘weaving spells’ (e.g. Atonement Priests in Cata), this could be a net gain back for you. The question is, will you be GCD capped too often that you won’t be able to weave these back in. That said, potentially the biggest strength of PW: Solace is its granularity in the method it regens (ie. you dont have to worry about holding off on the spell to ‘cap’ your mana pool).

Ok lets take a look at some of the numbers— for purposes of this analysis, lets ignore Haste as it will provide scaling for all 3 options, and any ‘Free/Discounted Heals’ provided by FDCL will be consumed as raw healing.

Per Proc/Cast Analysis – Data

From Darkness Comes Light – when proc’d is worth a free Flash Heal, at a mana value of  19,800. (A each Stack of Serendipity provides a discount of 1980 on GH, and 1500 on POH.) Per proc “Regen” is worth 19,800 for Disc and 21,300 – 21,780 for Holy. We will not deduct the cost of the spell that proc’d FDCL as that is a sunk cost. (The same reason we do not count PW:S’s cost into Rapture regen assumptions). Average regen: Disc at 19,800 and Holy at 21,540

Mindbender – provides ~40,000 (rounded due to repeating) mana per cast.

Shadowfiend – (remember if you don’t spec MB, you  still have SF!) provides 72,000 mana per cast.

Power Word: Solace – provides 6,000 mana per cast.

Potential Simulation and Theoretical Mana Returns

Now that we have a per cast, calculation we need to equalize the information (for ease of consumption, we will use a per minute comparison). Additionally we will need to make assumptions regarding FDCL procsrate, and the number of possible PW: Solace casts you could weave in during a given period of time. Additionally, the FIGHT DURATION is important, as you may or may not be able to get full use of Shadowfiend. (ie. 2 minutes left on CD of Shadowfiend… Mindbender would have had 2 additional casts). To equalize that, let’s take a look at a 5 minute fight. (This is typically the standard fight assumption). (2 casts of Shadowfiend, and 5 casts of Mindbender) Perhaps most importantly, we need to keep this haste nuetral as you must create a constant.

Lets look at these one by each, first the easiest comparison….

Mindbender vs PW: Solace…. Ready? Fight!!!

Lets take a look at the lowest common denominator… a 3 minute fight, where you get 1 Shadowfiend and 3 Minbenders– aka Advantaging Mindbender as much as possible given the synching of CDs. This means Mindbender grants you 117,000 mana (3 casts, regenning 40,000 each). With two casts of Solace Per minute, you’ll outpace. In fact in this example, you’d only need one additional solace over the 3 minutes to match Mindbender. Simply, you’ll need 2.6667 every minute– since you can’t cast .6667 of a Solace,  any additional casts of Solace beyond your 3rd would put PW: Solace in a superior position (over the length of the fight)… again, provided you can find the GCD to not heal, and cast Solace. It might require slightly more work or planning on your part, but if you can find your way to cast additional, you’ll be able to outpace Mindbender. 

It is important to recognize that the 3 minute fight advantages Minbender as much as possible (because of the length time and how it syncs up with cooldowns). The 5 minute fight, at ~3 casts per minute is about equal to Mindbender (though slightly more) given how the cooldown of Shadowfiend lines up and ‘catches up’ any disparity in mana. The key you need to remember is that this assumption forces you to have 6 seconds (3 casts at 2 seconds per cast) with no raw cast-healing output. Inspired by some numbers that Malevica did, I want to present the information similarly so you can easily see how the fight duration impacts “which is better” at what interval, and number of Solaces.

This chart illustrates the importance of understanding the fight’s length and when/where additional Solaces might be needed.

From Darkness, Comes Light is a bit trickier… with a 15% proc chance, normalized, you would need to cast 7 qualifying spells to proc it once. Again, under zero Haste assumptions, this means (provided you are chain casting spells that could trigger the proc) the most you could get in a minute (normalized) is roughly 3 (potentially 4, depending how often you cast Smite). How likely are you going to be chain casting those qualifying heals? Not very. Normalized, you should only be experiencing 1-2 per minute…. that is, if you are remembering to cast those Single Target Heals! It really will vary depending on how much triage healing you’ll be doing, and how much AOE healing you’ll be doing. For argument’s sake lets also account for Serendipity‘s discount as well.

PPM = Procs Per Minute. FDCL numbers include Shadowfiend Regen

Now it is important to realize that FDCL, might look incredibly overpowered… but its not ‘true’ regen. Its illustrating the psuedo-regen from the fact that you could heal with that Surge of Light proc for free, and then the impact of the cost savings from Serendipity (if spec’d Holy). So, you need to ask yourself “Will I be in a raid encounter that requires me to single target heal often enough, to then need a free single target heal again? Is that the regen/mana savings I need?”

With that in mind, I foresee FDCL being powerful for Priests who are doing a good deal of single target healing; be it 5 man healing, 5 healing in raids, or raid encounters that demand single target healing… (eg. Baleroc, Spine of Deathwing…). Now we could simulate triage healing, and 15% chance of that triage healing… but making up simulations like that is a bit of a red herring. A 10,000 foot view of analysis is sufficient to get the big picture… running parses in real raid encounters is typically superior form of analysis. Besides…. maybe you do single target heal a lot in your raid group. If so… FDCL, might be the talent of choice.

Based on the facts current as of Beta Build 15882… PW: Solace still seems to be the strongest potential for regen. FDCL is the hardest to evaluate but really depends on your spell and damage design of a given encounter. (Our ability to respond to the encounters, illustrates the benefits of the MoP talent system very well). Mindbender’s buff was probably due… and it really depends on how much movement, and your ability to weave and learn how to get those PW: Solace casts in. (A simple mouseover/assist macro should make this easier for folks) Mindbender is much stronger than the previous Beta build, however has a finite amount of restoration, while Solace relies on how much YOU can cast it– thus greater potential regen.

These abilities, just like the rest of our talents we need to remember that we can respec! A measly 12 gold will allow us to buy a reagent to respec. So, if you are in a fight where you think one ability is superior… then by all means use that one over the other. The biggest change to the talent system is something that allows us to respond to the encounter:  Evaluate the encounter– look at your spec, and respond accordingly.

Mists of Pandaria – Priest Regen Talent Choices is a post from: Tales of a Priest

At 90, all Priests will have a total mana pool of 300,000 regardless of intellect. Spells will now cost a fixed percentage of total mana (changed from Cata’s “% of base mana”). This is means if Greater Heal costs you 6.6% mana (or 19,800 mana at level 90), it will always cost the same amount regarless of gear level. This addresses and interesting issue that Blizzard has always struggled with: mana cost scaling as people gear up through tiers.

Remember hitting 85 and realizing that the one greater heal you just cast seemed to cost 20% of your mana pool? Well, thats because they needed to balance mana costs so the cost scaled with gearing. Look at yourself now in Cata, probably walking around in Dragon Soul gear… one greater heal is a fraction of your mana pool. Well, in Mists of Pandaria that cost is going to feel the same at just hitting 90 and being geared to the teeth in full T14 gear.

This also impacts how we look at our regen as well, and means that mana regen abilities that used to scale with our gear will not do the same in Mists of Pandaria. Take Shadowfiend for example: Shadowfiend restores 3% mana per swing. Well, in Cata this 3% scaled as your mana pool got bigger, increasing the value of Shadowfiend’s regen as you geared up. Well… in Mists, it will still be 3% per swing, however since our mana pool will not increase that 3% per swing at Level 90 is 9,000 mana per swing. That is 9,000 mana as a fresh level 90 in quest greens, or in full Tier gear. The same logic applies to Hymn of Hope, Innervate, and all the other “percent of mana” restorative abilities.  Since these are now essentially fixed amounts of restoration, you can think of them similar to a Mana Potion: a flat amount of mana you will get back that does not scale.

What does this all mean?

Well, it means we have to look at mana a bit differently. It really will become a finite resource and the way we look at our pool will be the same regardless of gear level…. until we layer in regeneration. Aside from our static regen abilities (Shadowfiend, Hymn, Mindbender, and Mana Potions) we will have spirit based regeneration. As of the latest beta build the spirit regeneration while in combat is provided by Meditation.  Holy and Disc have their own versions of Meditation (Currently, both Holy have 50% of their spirit based regen, continue while in combat), while Shadow does not have a spirit based regen model while in combat. (their primary regen is through Vampiric Touch).

This means, Disc and Holy will need to look to Spirit as their go-to stat for regeneration.

Every priest, regardless of spec, spirit level, or combat status will have an innate baseline regeneration amount. This is 2% of Total Mana every 5 seconds. After backing into the ratio in the charsheet, Spirit, is worth 1.1287 MP5.  This then allows us to back into our formula:

Combat Regen = Total Mana *0.02 +(1.1287*SPI*Meditation%) 

Now that we have our formula, we can take a look at how spirit as a stat will scale for both specs. Baseline, they have equal regen based on spirit. However, it is important to note that Disc still has the Specialization ability Rapture. Putting my personal feelings about this ability aside, Rapture now creates a really tricky balancing act for the developers to keep Discipline’s mana in check.

What Rapture provide’s Discipline, isn’t necessarily “regen”, but when Power Word: Shield is used on Rapture’s cooldown, it provides a Shield at a very reduced cost. This is because when the Shield is fully consumed, the priest is restored mana based on their total spirit… essentially providing an exceptionally mana efficient shield.

At 90, with Inner Fire active, PW: Shield costs 6.1% mana or 18,300– with 10,000 spirit, attainable in the first Tier of MOP raiding, Rapture restore’s 15,000 mana, which means this shield costs 3,300 mana. Exceptionally efficient– regardless of how much it shields for.  From a scaling perspective, this could put Discipline at a marked advantage, providing them with a “free PW: Shield and additional regen” once they reach 12,200 spirit. (The point where Rapture restores the full cost of PW: Shield)

Scaling

Since Combat Regen scaling is so single stat-linear now (unlike in Cata it had interaction with both Intellect and Spirit), depending on the total amount of spirit available on MoP gear, there WILL come a cross over point where there will be threshholds on where spirit will be devalued. (there is in the Cata model as well, but its less evident given that it moves based on two stats vs MoP’s single stat)

Its actually pretty easy to model since you know how much MP5 a finite amount of spirit restores, and you could make mana consumption assumptions. Its one of the downsides and follies to having total mana and the per point value of spirit equal in Quest Greens at 90, and Full Epics at 90.

Conclusion

The take away for everyone is:  Spirit will play a notably important role for both Disc and Holy’s mana regen model. Now, spirit, while not a direct throughput stat like Crit, Haste, or Mastery… it does provide indirect or “pseudo throughput” since you will have more mana regenerated, and thus will be able to cast more spells.

This will be different than what Disc priests  have been used to up until this point, who have always looked at Intellect as their go-to stat… However, ultimately, this new model could result in balance cross-tier if they can balance how fast Spirit/Spirit Regeneration scales in the long term. I do have some concerns that upper tier will result in so much spirit based/innate regen that this balance could tip… but time will tell.

Editor’s Comment: Updated as of 8/28/2012

Mists of Pandaria’s Spirit Regen and Mana Models is a post from: Tales of a Priest

“We agree that Rapture was a cool mechanic for Discipline, and we’d like to add it back, but have it scale with Spirit, so that Disc priests don’t neglect Spirit on their gear (or worse, get mad at us when priest gear that they share with Holy has Spirit on it).”

What? No… just because something is “cool” does not mean it is a fun or even good mechanic.

For those of you who might have missed it, in the latest Beta Build, Rapture has been added back and when your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled you are instantly energized with mana equal to 150% of your Spirit. This effect can only occur once every 12 sec. With a cursory look, it sounds decent, however you will see that our version of Meditation now only grants 25% of your mana regeneration from Spirit to continue while in combat, while Holy Priests enjoy 50% of mana regen from spirit while in combat. (Druids, Shaman, Pallies, and Monks enjoy 50%). Previous beta builds had Disc’s spirit based regen also at 50%, and Rapture was removed from the spec.

This is an issue for a number of reasons, but really two large issues. Firstly, it is immediately imbalanced as far as maintenance. This will require Disc Priests, to maintain equal footing in the mana department to constantly maintain their Rapture cooldown. This requires Disc Priests to track rapture via any number of AddOns that exists to do so, as well as be proactive about casting their shields to keep that 12 second cooldown as short as possible. Keep in mind, this does not just mean CAST a PW:Shield every 12 seconds, this means have one fully break every 12 seconds. (Don’t forget the new 6 second cooldown on PWS, which creates more timing issues) With dodge streaks, and damage patterns often not fully predictable in 12 second intervals it puts Disc Priests at a disadvantage. On a fight with damage really only hitting the tank predictably (eg. first half of every platform on Madness of Deathwing) and cast PW:S too early? Well, sorry… you now have Weakend Soul on your tank, and you can’t reliably get a PW:S to break until WS drops off. (Yes, other players are randomly targeted for Smash, but random targets are random). Moreover, as Tanks gear up, their avoidance will increase, as well as the size of our PW:S… which can delay the time it takes for PW;S to break and then in turn keep us out of step with the regen of the other classes and specs.

The question is: Why does Rapture have to exists? Does Disc really need an overly complex mana restoration ability while the other classes enjoy a passive regeneration ability. Having to Maintain the CD just for the sake of maintaining it is not a “cool” mechanic. It is overly complex and frankly, punitive. Holy Paladins were in a similar situation before 4.3. They had to keep their Judgement pretty much on CD otherwise they would have major mana issues… Blue felt this was too much maintenance, and instead gave them  Judgements of the Pure, which lasts for 60 seconds after every Judgement. Notice that this is after a Judgement, not after a PW:S FULLY pops.

“But Derevka! The new Rapture is 150% of spirit! That’s a lot!”  /facepalm… you’re missing the point, and more importantly doesn’t fully math out when contrasted with Holy and the other classes regen models when using preliminary numbers. (Stuff is way off to the point where it needs to be corrected)

How do we fix this? There are a number of answers to this.

1. Remove Rapture, and just give us a 50% spirit based regen model. There is no need to complicate it, and make multiple Priests fight over Rapture targets.

2. If we insist on having it, have Rapture be a 60 second buff that applies similarly to Judgements of the Pure.

3. Have Rapture proc on PW:S CAST not full mitigation.

The TLDR on why Rapture needs to go away is that there is no reason Disc Priests need to maintain it, and have an overly complex regen model  (with no substantive superiority over the other models) while other classes enjoy mana regen baseline. Oh, and don’t forget PW:S has a cooldown in MOP… Kill it. Burn it with fire.

Post Publication Edit:  Official beta forum thread - http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4796049763

Why Rapture Needs to Retire is a post from: Tales of a Priest

In case people missed it: both Holy and Disc have their own “filler spell”.  Holy has Heal and Discipline has Spirit Shell (SS). I won’t call it our “triage” spell… because well, we saw how long that lasted in Cata!  This is pretty much a mana nuetral spell (at 85 it costs 2,000 mana) and with fairly attainable spirit levels, you can pretty much chain cast this spell and never run out of mana… even with Rapture removed from the game, with some minor reforging back to spirit my MP5 was fine. That said, there are some fundamental issues with the spell, as is. Now, of course, this analysis has only been done and tested at level 85 and 86 on the beta servers.

In its current form,  I am not a fan. First off it has SUCH A LONG CAST TIME… The base cast time for Spirit Shell is 3 seconds. While GHeal and even Holy’s regular Heal enjoy a baseline 2.5 sec cast time. This does seem like an oversight and will (hopefully) be address in a future beta build, but even with that issue getting addressed there are other fundemental concerns I have with the spell.

My issues with Spirit Shell are the the fact that it cannot crit (nor can the 80% heal at should the shield expire) and as a result scales with only Spellpower and Mastery. Additionally, it is affected by neither Grace nor Archangel. It also will only scale up to its 20% Priest’s HP as a hard cap. (Tested both with no items equipped and with full T13) Consecutive casts will stack the absorb (up to the cap) and reset the duration of the shield. With a fairly fairly low % of HP as the cap, we could wind up having interesting statweights. (Remember  Mastery doesnt increase the 20% cap) It will depend on where SP and HP land at lvl 90, but we could wind up having Spirit Shell be very easy to cap, while Holy doesn’t get restricted in that manner.  (Of course, Mastery will increase Divine Aegis for the GHeal, and Penance heals we critically heal on, and the baseline POH DA’s– not to mention PW:S’s absorption so Mastery will be vital for Disc in MOP; however, lets not dive into hard statweights before level 90 and the class gets more polished)

This presents a fair amount of inequity between the two specs for our “mana nuetral” spell. With mana management being a major focus for the developers in MOP, this inequity poses a potential problem. (Your mana pool is fixed as intellect will NOT increase your pool). In current T13 gear, it takes me 3 casts to cap 20% HP (yes… at a 2.57 cast time with my T13 haste, thats ~7.7 seconds to create a ~30k bubble. Yawn) On the other hand, Holy’s heal, at 2.5 sec base cast time (hasted to 2.29 in T13 gear) in the same 3 casts (6.9 seconds and is critable) for ~10k per hit and whatever stacks of Echo of Light have been generated. This means Holy can scale with both Crit and Mastery and  baseline “heals” for the same amount. Unless Blue is trying to draw a line in the sand and state that pre-emptive healing is that superior to raw healing (which I doubt), there are inequities that need to be addressed before this spell can go live.

The alternative argument would be to Atonement heal or GHeal if I wanted to raw heal with scale.  However with mana being such a limited resource (100k, regardless of Intellect; Spirit will be king for recovering mana)— chain casting Smites and Holy Fire will not be something we will likely be able to do with much regularity as they are much more expensive than Spirit Shell).

I think we will see Spirit Shell get a number of passes before it goes live as it is a new spell in our toolkit, and frankly is one of the more unique spells in the game. I would imagine we would see the cast time reduced to 2.5 seconds, as well as something to address scaling– even something as simple as increasing the HP cap to DA’s 40% and allowing it to Critically “shield”.  I am sure the development team is watching this spell and listening to feedback– so I’d expect to see a number of changes before MOP goes live.

Mists of Pandaria Beta: Musings on Spirit Shell is a post from: Tales of a Priest