Discipline’s Tier 10 4-piece Joke

Haha!  Hey!  Hey!  I got a great one for ya! 

“What do you call a 5% buff to Power Word: Shield?”

“Insignificant.”

Wait!  I got another one!

“Name something fun, interesting, and awesome that gets replaced by something as mundane as a bowl of rocks?”

“The Priest Tier 10 4-piece Set Bonus.”

Let’s bring everyone up to speed.  Not all priests are at a place where they can experience, or even look forward to the set bonuses of the current tier.  The current Tier 10 4-piece is as follows:

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.

Avalonna at talesofapriest.com has a great write-up of how beneficial this was to Holy Priests.  Now, I have very little knowledge of Holy, since I’m primarily (and almost solely) Discipline.

From a Discipline standpoint, this was amazing as a tank healer, or even a Discipline raid healer.  Follow me on this one, as it’s my first attempt at something resembling theory-crafting.  I apologize in advance if my numbers are off a little bit.

The “Math”

Penance is 16% of your base mana.  You get 3 pulses of healing.  I can crit all 3 for ~14k.  Flash Heal is 18% of your base mana.  With Glyph of Flash Heal and Improved Flash Heal, it’s less.  I can crit and get about ~9k (with a 3-stack of Grace).  Penance is relatively cheap, and heals more than Flash Heal.

With full raid buffs and the Borrowed Time proc, my Flash Heal cast is ~1 second.  With Glyph of Penance, the cooldown is down to 8 seconds (thanks to the lovely Penance nerf we had a while back).  So, you’re telling me I have a chance to reset an 8 second cooldown with a 1 second cast?  Yes, please! 

Not to mention that Avalonna also points out in her post that this Flash Heal! proc doesn’t have an internal cooldown.  It’s possible that you can have a string of Flash Heal -> Penance -> Flash Heal -> Penance -> etc. etc.  Even without worrying about Grace, this becomes pretty powerful. 

The Fun

When I was first looking at the likelihood of getting my Tier 10 set, I was salivating at the mouth for a cool and interesting 4-piece bonus.  Look at what we’ve had in the past:

Tier 7 – Reduces Greater Heal cost by 5%. (Discipline doesn’t really utilize this in most circumstances.)

Tier 8 – Casting PW:Shield grants 250 spellpower for 5 seconds. (Obviously useful for Discipline.  Kinda “meh” for Holy.)

Tier 9 – Increases Divine Aegis and the initial hit of Empowered Renew by 10%. (Blizzard gets the idea to involve both specs.  Still, marginal increase.)

So finally, we get a Tier bonus that’s interesting, challenging to work with, and it gets tossed under the bus.  If it was deemed overpowered, a simple fix would be to either shorten the window needed to cast the Flash Heal, or reduce the chance for it to proc to less than 20%.  I feel that completely redesigning it was a bad move on Blizzard’s case.  People need to understand that this game is organic.  I personally enjoy having to tweak my playstyle a bit to get more “oomph” out of my healing.  The Tier 7 set had me speccing into Divine Fury and utilizing a Borrowed Time-hasted Greater Heal for a while.

The Replacement

Our incoming Tier 10 4-piece set:

This bonus now increases the effectiveness of the caster’s Power Word: Shield and Renew spells by 5%.

Sorry, I just gagged a little while reading it again.  Blizzard has gone the “easy route” and just given us a static stat increase.  As far as Discipline goes, it’s a sad one at that.  Thanks to math from Zusterke, I’m able to whip out some numbers for you.

Let’s say you have 3000 spellpower, raid-buffed or not.  Your glyphed Power Word: Shield will total 8,813 (as of right now).  At 3200 spellpower, it’s 9,177. 

With this new “buff”, those numbers change to 9,254 and 9,636, respectively.  You’re looking at a 441 and 459 jump.  Even at 4000 spellpower, you’re only increasing your shield by 532 points of absorption.  With how bosses and mobs hit, this is hardly worth even considering. 

Even if you’re able to keep up PW:S on the raid the WHOLE time, you’re preventing only ~11,500 extra damage every 15 seconds. 

Hence, this bonus is far from worth it to me.  Dawn Moore wrote up on WoW.com her initial thoughts on the changes.  She writes:

“Still, the buff is exceptionally good. The only problem with it is that so many priests who turned their back on the tier gear for other badge items (such as shadow’s tier gear) with better itemization are now going to be screaming bloody murder.”

I disagree with the phrases “buff is exceptionally good”, “only problem”, and….well, hell, I disagree with her.  I really don’t know any Priests that I game with or interact with in the blog/twitter communities that were against the original set bonus.  If anything, those that were on the fence about the bonus were quick fans once they actually acquired the bonus.  This news of “4-piece hatred” came out of nowhere, as far as I’m concerned. 

Then again, I’m just one person.  It looks like I’ll be going the route of dropped loot, crafted pieces, and off-set badge gear.  This particular Priest isn’t too thrilled about the change.

Other Thoughts:

Lilitharien from Divine Aegis

Bati from Holy Nova NOW!

Miss Medicina’s “To Bonus or Not to Bonus”

How do you feel about it? How does this affect your gearing strategy as you make your way through the content?

Email: elder.thespius@gmail.com | Twitter: @Thespius

 

36 thoughts on “Discipline’s Tier 10 4-piece Joke”

  1. I don’t agree with how the old bonus was welcomed before it was tested. But unfortunately, my lack of experience with the bonus cannot promote it either.

    Looking at the numbers here, I’d have to agree that it will not be an impressive upgrade. However, looking at some parses of other Disc priests I see PW:S make up a notable amount of their healing. In flat numbers, we could be looking at something between a 1% and 4% throughput upgrade depending on what the priest does (assignment). I wouldn’t faint in amazement but… that is worth a few talent points. I doubt it will impact the priest’s style though, where the previous bonus did have more impact on.

    I think the interesting question to pose now is: is this new bonus worth gearing for? Assuming we take the tier pieces except the head, then we get 368 Spirit. If we could replace that with items that have more crit or haste instead, we’re probably looking at about 368 rating distributed over crit and haste rating. If it is crit rating, we’re looking at 8% crit. If it is haste rating, we’re looking at 11.2%. It is reasonable to assume that these stats or any mix of it will grant more throughput than the tier pieces for tankhealers, even if we would compensate for the loss of regen. I wouldn’t carve these numbers in stone, but I would say this is my educated guess.

    A shield spamming priest might be tempted with this bonus, partly because the bonus works on its most important spell, partly because of the reduced benefit from haste and crit. I could sound negative about this, since it seems to separate the Disc priest into two roles with 4 pieces of gear being different… but it might actually prove interesting for holy priests dual specced with Disc.
    Still, reading how Ava revered the original T10 4P bonus, I can’t help feeling the old bonus did a better job at that.

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  2. Thespius, you are crying over the 20% chance that your cooldown goes away?

    in a PURE tank healing situation, weakened soul is up and you are chain casting flash and penance on cooldown you are still unlikely to see this proc at a time when the tank is not already topped off. Borrowed time requires a shield on a non tank target (1 sec gcd) then a flash heal that requires a custom addon to watch for the hidden buff so that you can cast a flash heal (1 sec gcd) plus the time it takes you to move from the shield target back to the tank (assuming mouseover macros .2 sec) gives us ~2.2 sec in which time we could have cast a Gheal with a 2 sec (worst case with the haste we run at) cast time that crits for 18k with 3 stack grace, and hits for 10k. Its a moot point, and a crappy bonus for any disco priest who is not a total tank healer 100% of the time.

    if you only ever tank heal as disc, and still actually use penance (which we still should, but i see priests who forget to) then this change may cause you to lose a tiny bit of healing. But if you are running with a pally or 2, you’ve already lost the tank healing race, and you are just topping the overhealing charts for the sake of pride, and pride doesn’t keep raiders alive.

    I see why holy would love having more access to CoH, but if you wanted more smart heals, then shammies have you beat.

    its not easy to find a way to give a slight buff to 2 flavors of priest for the 4pc bonus, and I don’t think Blizz has found it exactly with the new bonus… bus as @lilitharien says 10-15% would be better.

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  3. Sorry but I disagree the current T10(4) is totally unreliable. In an ideal situation it will kick in when you really need it but lets face it those times will be few and far between. The static increase proposed by the new changes is IMO much better. Sure 5% doesnt seem like very much and as Lilitharien has already stated id much rather have 10 or 15%.

    Quick bit of math of my own:

    Taking my Guild’s latest Prof P kill into consideration – I was MT healing pretty much constantly so I think that will be more useful to consider rather than the likes of Queen where I am mainly bubble spamming people, although I will put that down as well because the amount of DMG that can be absorbed on that fight by PW:S is just impressive.

    So on the Prof my absorbtions from PW:S totalled 942,495 DMG so the added 5% would mean that my absorbtions from PW:S would have been 989,619.75.

    On Queen my absorbtions on one fight were around the 1.5million mark meaning …. quick math ….would result in an extra 75,000 dmg absorbed.

    (Clearly these numbers arent exactly mind blowing but the extra 5% soon adds up.)

    I think the T10(4) on the PTR at the moment although not mind blowing will definately be worth picking up. I read a post my someone on some forum somewhere (sorry I didnt take a note of name or place otherwise I would deffo give you props) who said that:

    “the 5% might not seem amazing but its similar in many respects to Blessed Resilience in the Holy tree. If it were a level 1 talent choice in the Disc Tree or Holy Tree would you pick it up?”

    I think this is probally the best way to look at it. Hell just think of it as an extra 2 or 3 talent points which are being put into a talent that you would probaly have taken if it had been an option.

    I had planned on getting T10(2) and then go for shadow gear for the extra haste over spirit. Assuming the PTR change goes live I think I will try and pick up the T10(4).

    Oh and the T10(4) for Holy was and still is awful. It forces you to change your healing to a set rotation (at least to a certain extent) rather then focusing on making your healing situational, and even in an ideal situation you are only realistically shaving 3 – 4s off the CD. The proposed changes arent much better for Holy but im Disc so the new change would be more beneficial to me as PW:S is one of my main spells and I always have a few renews rolling around.
    .-= Panzee´s last blog ..So perhaps my last post is a little more relevant now 😉 =-.

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  4. I am holy (offspec- main shadow) and like using Renew more than Flash.

    When using a mixture of Mend/CoH/Renew/Binding and Flash, the previous set bonus with a chance of reducing CoH cd was utterly useless for me.

    So I was perfectly happy spending all my emblems for main spec and using my good hybrid items with high spirit for healing once I got enough to beat the 4piece 232 t9 set I had before.

    In my case, the new set bonus looks somewhat useful if not outstanding, so I will start using emblems to buy the healing set as well.

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  5. I think Panzee makes a valid point but that is exactly the difference between what we had and what we’ll get: the old 4P gives you ‘mechanics’, the other one ‘adds up’. One makes a difference in your game, the other one shows nice on the meters. It’s dangerous to compare the value of these two… it might require cutting too many corners I fear.

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  6. I remain Bonus Ambivalent, I’m afraid. I am, as you phrased it Thespius, on the fence about this one. The reason: I currently use Renew quite a lot. But then, I wasn’t that unhappy with the current bonus. (Not that I am close to using T10 yet..)
    .-= Ari´s last blog ..Power Word: Fail =-.

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  7. Why thank you Zusterke. I dont mean to come across as focusing on meters, and taking it 1 PW:S at a time it does seem rather lack luster but you need to consider the picture as a whole.

    I still dont feel all that comfortable about having to pick up all that unecessary spirit in order to get the T10(4) but the T10(4) on the PTR might just be worth it. I am Disc MS and Holy (Renew Spec) OS so the Bonuses now seem a little more appealing as I can switch back and forth easier.
    .-= Panzee´s last blog ..So perhaps my last post is a little more relevant now 😉 =-.

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  8. I agree that the new bonus is less “interesting” than the old one, but a nice +5% bonus to PW:S, our bread and butter spell, is far from lackluster. Asking for a 15% increase is a bit much IMO. A 15% bonus would be as good as 15 talent points; it would be equivalent to almost 500 spell power. Sure it’d be nice but that’s a little silly for just a set bonus, it would blow away all non-set gear.

    But I think it’s sort of a moot point for Disc priests for this tier. All the tier pieces are dripping with spirit and have precious little crit. If you are aiming for the set bonus, you’re doing so at a disadvantage already. Maybe someday Disc and Holy will value the same stats, or we’ll get 2 choices for healing priest tier gear.
    .-= Wikwocket´s last blog ..Disc tips: Festergut =-.

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  9. So any news or opinion on this whole “5% healing bonus in ICC” not affecting the “Absorbs” of PW:S?

    I think My RL’s believe that Disc’s are now “Bugged” (their words) and they secretly sat me out of ICC 10 last night bc of this.

    I think everyone is going to assume that DISCs are less useful than holy..Starting to hate this game and those that play it.

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  10. I came to really like my holy four set bonus. The trick was knowing exactly when it proc’d. TY, Power Auras! What do I have to say to Blizz? Well, I am guessing the comment policy would not allow it. LOL Anyhoo- I think the whole renew thing is less challenging. I enjoyed getting the random proc- which sometimes proc’d three times to four times in a row- in Prof. Putricide! That would have taken at least 24 seconds without the bonus- so hey, I like the darn thing. I am still learning how to play disc, but I did notice the buff name for the reset is the same (“Flash Heal!”, yes with the exclamation point BTW). My summation? People who did not know how or who did not take time to LEARN how to work the buff have whined so much that Blizz has taken a cool buff away from those of us who figured it out. /mourn omgpriest.com

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  11. For everyone who did not follow the relevant discussions on EJ:
    For Holy T10 was as meh as it gets. The majority of priests I know did not bother at all with the set and went for offset pieces.
    The new 4 set bonus accomplishes to nerf it for Disc without really improving anything significant for Holy.
    I’m sorry for all Disc mains as Blizzard managed to destroy the fun of the 4 set for them without gaining anything meaningful out of it. But as Holy I just say, move along, nothing to see here ^^.

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  12. As Discipline I really didn’t find the old tier 10 4 piece bonus all that useful. As a tank healer it was nice but doing any other role it was almost entirely worthless. For shield spamming it’s worth 0 and even for trash raid healing or 5 mans or what not it’s hardly worth anything.

    So, having a bonus that’s only good for tank healing and realizing that many guilds do not use Discipline Priests for tank healing because of a tendency to lean towards Paladins for that, I’m not really upset about losing this bonus at all. I’m only annoyed that we are now getting a rather unimaginative 4 piece bonus.

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  13. I’m really disappointed as I’m 5 badges from my T10 4P bonus. I was really looking forward to Flash -> Penance -> Flash -> Penance! The bonus looked like a lot of fun.

    Why did Blizz remove a fun mechanic in favor of a bland stat increase? I thought as we moved towards Cataclysm we would be seeing more “fun” talents and abilities. Seems like they are stepping back from that already.

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  14. Have you been thinking about/doing math on the new zone buff in ICC not including PW:S? If there are a couple of holy paladins in the raid, discpline priests often end up on the chain shielding duty. If there is no change to the buff to include our shields, at what point does respeccing to holy make sense for the over all good of the raid?

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  15. Thespius – If you are Disc the current T10 is terrible. If you are Holy T10 is OK. I can’t be certain, but I would be willing to bet the only reason Blizz is changing it is because so few Healing Priests are using the set. You want to see an interesting, awesome set bonus… check out Shadow.

    Disc – T10 is swimming in Spirit. We ain’t in Cata yet. Blizzard might want to consider moving to a three set model for priests. They would have to put an amazing, mind blowing bonus on the set for me to take that many pieces with Spirit on it. Neither the old bonus nor the new bonus qualifies. So dump the Spirit… wait Holy still likes gear with Spirit… uh oh.

    Holy – T10 is OK. The bonus will provide a nice kick to raid heals, where a proc has a chance to be useful. But overall its not a huge game changer. With craftables, emblem purchases and drops all at the i264 level why dump a truckload of badges into 251 gear. With upgrade tokens so hard to come by for all but the best of guilds, who gets the few we see off of Saurfang? Well most guilds try to gear tanks first. When the inside bosses got tagged as “Gear Checks” who do you think was next in line for upgrade tokens? DPS… So what have the priests been doing, going off set in mass.

    So now they want to change it… sorry its too late for most raiding priests to really care. Unless you have a chance to upgrade to 277 tier why should you. Its all very silly and short sighted of Blizzard.

    Dahk

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  16. @Dahk – I’m a pure healer, hence I have no desire to check out the shadow set, but I appreciate the suggestion. =) Although I would love to see Blizzard go to a 3-set model, I hardly doubt we’ll see that happen. Something in my experience tells me they wouldn’t go for that. However, I disagree that t10 is “terrible.” I will agree that the itemization of t10 isn’t ideal for Discipline, but the set bonus was something fun and interesting that made up for it, in my mind. Those priests I know that have the 4pc, both Holy and Discipline, really enjoy it, and have even commented on how the proc can help with hardmodes on an exponential level.

    /agree “very silly and short sighted of blizzard”

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  17. Well, my understanding was that the T10 bonuses were irrelevant to any Disc priests running the FH-less build. A set bonus that appeared to be designed to make FH more appealing to these players instead served to cripple the set for them instead. If Ghostcrawler’s comments on how he heals are to be believed, the set bonus wasn’t compelling enough to get even the developers to cast FH as Disc.

    I see this change as “we swung and missed” at making a set bonus appealing to both classes while retaining a more interesting mechanic. As per other comments, it seems that it may be time for Blizzard to separate Holy and Disc into two sets, each with a specific and interesting bonus, instead of trying to shoehorn them into a single set.

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  18. I agree with Dahk. If you’re geared to the point of doing ICC, then Spirit for Disc is absolutely worthless. You don’t need the regen, and there are no talents in the Disc tree aside from Meditation that benefit from Spirit at all. When you look at the badge cost of the T10, you can buy other items that are itemized far better for the spec for similar cost.

    I haven’t tried the current T10 bonus because it wasn’t worth the wasted stats (i.e. Spirit) for Disc. The new bonus doesn’t tempt me to spend badges on T10 either.
    .-= Mongrr´s last blog ..Priest T10 4pc bonus… Redux =-.

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  19. Typical raid healing disc priests (aka shield spammers) have about 60-80% of their heals from PW:S.

    5% of that would equate to a 3-4% EHPS bonus from the new 4 piece.

    The current penance based bonus offers nearly no benefit to shield spamming disc priests. So for the 25m raid healing disc priest this bonus is SIGNIFICANTLY better. It is boring tho, sure, and not that good for any disc priest that is still a tank healer.

    The 5% bonus to Renew however is pretty lame since you have to lose the T9 2piece to get it. It actually becomes a net loss for awhile… =(

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  20. This post is just plain biased. The change to the 4-set bonus because Blizzard realises that many priests (including me) are skipping the 4-set t10 bonus. This is based on pure statistics.

    And you probably have not been following priest trends for most people thinks that the former priest 4-set is garbage.

    The change is good. However, I think it needs to be 10% instead of 5%. The only bad thing is that I actually have to think whether to grab the 4-set now (as Dawn Moore pointed out).

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  21. Azzur: Blizzard made the change because priests were whining left and right. It’s just too much work to expect people to be able to handle it. My God, they’d have to change their playstyle a little.

    Also, what “priest trends” have you been following? Initial theorycrafting showed the set bonus was meh — as priests entered hard mode content, higher end priests actually tried it out and ended up finding it extremely useful, much moreso than an arbitrary boost to a filler spell and a minor absorbtion buff.

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  22. I was just trying to be a little funny about splitting the healing Tier for priests. I know its not going to happen, and once Cata hits, the stat changes will probably make it unnecessary.

    I don’t think Spirit is worthless for Disc. I just don’t want every piece loaded with it.

    I am really interested in this talk about how good the current bonuses are in HM’s. Just looking at US servers, less than 400 guilds are even able to attempt HM’s (25) yet. That is a microscopic slice of the raiding population. I am sure with the ever increasing buff that will change significantly. Does anyone have any combat logs or data showing an “exponential level”. Or is this just conjecture?

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  23. I’m usually bubble spamming when I go Disc with some FH and Penance mixed in. I’m not using Penance every CD so the old 4 piece bonus wasn’t a big turn on. The buffed bubbles will be more beneficial.

    As Holy, I hit Renew a lot so the extra 5% will be useful. But I do use CoH every CD so the old tier bonus would have been quite useful as well.

    My problem is I have only seen 1 tier token drop for Priests, Pallies and whoever else. One of the Pallies grabbed it with higher DKP. So most of the time I wear my 264 EoF gear + crafted legs instead of the 251 tier pieces. I switch to using the 251 gloves and shoulders when I go Holy.

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  24. @Matt, im not sure all who you were talking to, but i know of a lot of end game priests who do not care for the current 4pc t10. It is sad that it has only been recently that ive started to post in more public places, but i can assure you that the current 4pc isn’t worth using considering all the other gear options out there. Yes it might be a fun 4pc but its not really worth it for disc.

    @Zusterke i think most would take the helm, only because it has crit instead of haste, and you can get nice haste/crit legs from either crafting or 10man(10man heroic).

    @Panzee one thing you have to remember is that those are estimated absorbs so just slapping on 5% can be both undervaluing the effectiveness of the bonus as well as overvaluing its usefulness in a raid application. Also this is thinking that the 5% is applied after all buffs, which may or may not be the case.

    @wikwocket afaik they plan on change alot of the disc tree, which hopefully both holy and disc can come to some agreement on what stats they prefer. I think the biggest difference between holy and disc right now is the use of spirit, in disc, i would be happy to drop all of it and continue to use double solace.

    @padre you need disc priest at end game content, all ill say on the matter.

    @rulez i dont think its a huge nurf to disc. yes throughput on mt healing might go down, but i think its overall applications to many other disc priests will go up.

    @huffy yes i agree i think that many guilds dont rely on disc priest (entirely) to mt heal, disc priest provide a very very very very nice buffer between big hits so pallies can land their 1.2 HLs.

    @Thespius well i am one priest who doesn’t think that the 4pc is espeically helpful for hardmodes, in either spec, maybe its because of my play style, but honestly i could be wearing all offset pieces and still achieve the same goal.

    @Azzur badges come quick enough ^_^

    @Burlyn what “higher end priests” are actually really enjoying the current 4pc? And more specifically what encounter is it really helpful on? Like, i will admit that i am currently wearing the 4pc 264 for some fights, but that is only because it has the most sp available to me to make my shields as big as possible.

    @Dahk if you want more information about the current hardmodes find a way to contact me, i can try and post you so logs and other things like that to show you the numbers i put up.

    Anyway, im just trying to play a bit of the devils advocate here, trying to show a perspective that isnt always represented in these blogs and forums. I do apologize if i do come off as a bit of an elitist, i know that i am one and so I apologize for it. Anyway what i post here are my own opinions so yeah.

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  25. Your post is qq without much reason to back it up.

    The change is a good one because the 2 and old 4 set belonged in the trash. I really love beening in a 5 minute fight of HM Blood Queen and see the 4 set piece proc twice. Ya I’ll i take 5% more renew any day of the week.

    On top of that take look at all top parseing disc priests and see what they do is pw:s, not penenace because pallys are much better tank healers.

    You should consider deleteing your post because it is misinforming and misleading on a good change that will help priests be more competive on raid heals.

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  26. Talk about a loaded post! I wouldn’t say it is misleading in anyway. It’s Thes’ opinion and while we might not agree with it there are people who heal in his style. I thought the original 4p t10 bonus for Discipline was… less then exceptional because of the heavy spirit on the tier gear and since the proc could easily come at an inopportune time it make it nearly worthless. It certainly seemed much neater for Holy priests (because of the longer CD on CoH and the much higher chance it would be a useful proc) but I still opt’d to go for better itemization than take my chances with a proc.

    I made a post about this as well, (http://reztheweak.wordpress.com/2010/03/04/t10-4p-change-discuss/) and my main point is that going with a generic bonus like this is certainly not what is wanted (imo). I’d much rather see something neat that makes you think and possibly leads to a new playstyle.
    .-= Xeonio´s last blog ..Totem knocks priest unconscious! =-.

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