Yeah, seems bugged. Possibly some bad interplay with castigation giving you that first extra bolt?
But POTDS HD penance has always been very, very strong as an ST heal. You just couldn’t guarantee a POTDS proc before. Where now you can with mind blast.
I don’t know if they’ll nerf it though. It’s been around in a state close to that for so long.
Well the description says +2 extra bolts with 2 points, but it’s giving 3 with or without Castigation. My guess is its bugged.
Penance doing 500-700k heals to people seems kinda busted though. I can only do 300k crit heals with Serenity on the PTR playing Holy.
Yep. Even in live, it does 125% per bolt which is 875% sp in harsh discipline. That’s already higher than Serenity.
Then POTDS is a 50% increase. So 187.5% sp per bolt,
If you proc HD right now on a POTDS penance you just get 1312.5% spellpower.
But that’s not all, you might be in shadow covenant, which is another 25% increase, so 1640% sp.
But it’s CURRENTLY like that, and it’s kinda been like that for a while.
It’s why I’ve said I don’t think contrition is terrible in the healing sense. It basically lets you get a slightly worse than atonement heal on a d.penance which is like the strongest ST heal in the game.
The problem is penance is also just so much of our damage and so much of atonement in general. The more you use those procs on penance, the less damage you deal. And it only becomes a bigger damage loss with penance feeding into inescapable torment now.
Basically it’s a crazy overtuned ST heal that people try their hardest not to use. But if you’re new to the spec, or you ever need an ST heal? Penance is gigantic.
I’ve personally never used Penance as a heal ingame, but I’ll probably use it when needed because it’s useful on bosses that put nasty bleeds on people.
I compared Disc on live vs the PTR though against the target cleave dummies in hps/dps. Overall I’m doing about 10k more dps, but roughly the same amount of overall hps.
The difference between live and retail is that we’re not dependent on stacking Shadow Covenant + Schism to be up 50% of the time.
The biggest playstyle difference is not having the instant cast Radiances anymore which slows you down. I’d be able to do more dps/hps if I wasn’t stuck channeling it.
This is the thing holding me back from rerolling to Disc or picking it as my main-alt (since I always like to play multiple healers and basically co-main two each patch). I really rely on those instant radiances, especially during movement phases for rot damage. I know it just means anticipating damage earlier, but it’s also losing the extra duration on PW:R from current tier too. I’m not sure I’m too keen on smite spam either…
Would you say it is decent to drop mindbender and put that point into DA, can still get 1and a half min/2 min Shadowfiend with stronger shadow cov, or is the higher uptime w/ bender looking better for more consistent throughput? I haven’t been able to test at all yet.
EDIT: Also should have specified talking about M+ specifically.
Rdruid can now do ridiculous healing with Lifebloom, Regrowth and Guardians and they all cost nothing or 3k mana compared to most other healers spending 6-9k per cast.
Hpals are getting even more efficient healing tacked onto their Holy Shock and are still using the same kit and playstyle as they do now which has no mana issues at all.
Mistweaver now has Mana Tea and the ability to effectively never run OOM.
Disc is very, very efficient in keys with the 50% Atonement buff with how powerful Smite can be now and how often Mindbender or SF can be up.
Holy Priest is sharing the title of worst mana in the game along with Rshams in my experience on the PTR.
Of what you listed, I only really see Rdruid and Disc being significantly more mana efficient - with disc being more M+ specific.
Rshams are ooming themselves instantly, and I think Hpriest is pretty on par with MW in most scenarios. I haven’t gotten to play pally yet.
You’d have to be doing some really, really nutso casting to be ooming on hpriest IMO.
As Hpriest tier and changes look right now, we won’t be casting much PoH. PoM/CoH are insanely mana efficient, and you can’t really oom yourself at 4p unless you literally never stop casting Flash Heal, which would be a wild way to play. Our tier set procs so often you’ll rarely be casting it outside procs, and halving the mana cost makes them cheaper than your fillers. And to top it off we didn’t lose Sfiend or enlightenment. We didn’t really NEED Symbol for its mana regen even in this last tier, we were using it on defensive resets.
Add Amalgam’s into the mix (which effects the spells we’re likely to mostly be casting), and I really think hpriest mana’s fine. I’m more concerned about its actual healing throughput which looks like it’s about to be pretty mediocre.
Personally I don’t think it’s worth it. You’re already going to take Void Summoner/IE. Bender is just seems like a no-brainer because the healing is close with DA but you’re going to do way more damage in M+ with higher bender uptime.
In raid it’s a different story. You can save 2 points there because you don’t need IE in single target fights.
Thats kind of what I was thinking as well, I still want to try fiend vs bender in keys and see how each feels. I’m imagining fiend will give a more bursty profile on a longer cd, it’s nice that we have the option though between the two, as opposed to before they swapped void summoner and bender in the tree.
Still praying they don’t nerf sins now that they have the 5-man atonement knob and not just an overall atonement knob, but I could totally see a nerf. We’re doing double the next healers damage on average in raid rn and I just don’t see a world where that is staying.
I can understand wanting to simplify the very complex Shadow rotation and I am actually a fan of this change, but then the new 4set bonus goes against this very argument. Adding a whole new button to the rotation. And thats the only Issue i find with this update.
4set makes you use Shadow word pain every 12 - 15 seconds in single target or every 8-10 seconds during execute. The damage of which is very high therefore taking priority over “procs” such as shadowy insight. I would suggest baking this damage effect into another spell, like Mindflay/Mindspike or even Mind Blast. That would reduce the need to add an extra button to the rotation.
The use of shadow word pain also desync your damage over time effects, something shadow havent had to deal with since the end of shadowlands. So one solution would be that a fully stacked 4set proc would also apply Vampiric touch. That would remove VT from the rotation.
Although I doubt this would happen It would have been possible to bake it into Mindgames, Halo and Divine Star. By making extra procs that make you go over the 12 limit reduce their cooldown instead. I think that would have been cool. Would have made these spells that feel weak very strong. without removing value from the rest of the kit.
Here is my Idea to fix the Shadow 4 set.
Current - (2) Set Bonus: Shadow Word: Death triggers 2 additional times at 50% effectiveness. Triggers again 1 additional time at 50% effectiveness if Deathspeaker is active or your target is below 20% health.
Proposed - (4) Set Bonus: Each time Shadow Word: Pain deals damage, increase the critical strike chance of Shadow Word: Death by 5% for 3 seconds and the damage of your next Shadow Crash by 20%, stacking up to 10.
What this does is makes it so when your SW:D goes off, you can have a maximum of 50% additional critical strike chance for Shadow Word: Death and its additional triggers and in addition, your Shadow Crash can deal an additional 200% damage.
Mess with the numbers as needed but it should make SW:D and Shadow crash hit hard without the clumsy bit of needing to manually cast SW:P.
Shadow’s tier is fine, it doesn’t need any changes. To keep the set engaging you would either need to pool around the stacks, or use a spell to trigger the effect. Since we rarely (never) cast it, Shadow Word: Pain is the best candidate for the latter.
I mean, that’s exactly what I just did.
Not sure what your saying here.
You want to be forced to cast Shadow Word: Pain? Because that’s just feels bad when we are forced to have Misery, which is a good thing.
I didn’t say I wanted to be forced to cast Shadow Word: Pain. I said Shadow Word: Pain is the best candidate spell to keep the tier set engaging. Your proposal changes an effect one would play around to being entirely passive.
I fail to see a way to make Shadow Word: Pain feel engaging without being forced to actually “engage” in pressing the button.
The “engagement” is the moment you hit SW:D and Shadow Crash.
By “engagement” I mean any activity that deviates from the normal rotational behavior. In your proposal casting Shadow Word: Death provides zero engagement. It critting has zero bearing on rotation or outcome. Shadow Crash, on the other hand, does since you are being intentional with casting it at the maximum number of stacks.
The more you hold back on SW:D the tighter the “spring” becomes in that when released, it will hit hard by critically striking in rapid succussion.
If you don’t hold it back and just use it on CD, then you will have a much smaller chance to hit hard.
So the choice is do you want to take a chance and roll often with some hits and misses on getting a critical hit or save for a bit longer and have a greater or guaranteed chance to critically strike. Mix in with Ancient Madness and Mastermind and you can get some really hard hitting SW:D in rapid succession.
You can go another route if you don’t want to roll for crit and have a stacking damage mechanic but even then, both cases if you try to empower Shadow Word: Death at all… it seems moot if it cant be every SW:D since you can get quick resets with Deathspeaker and way too OP if all SW:D hits were always hitting at an enhanced bonus from the Tier set.
So my suggestion was to walk the line between the two extremes in saving for a major hit or use often with a lower chance for a major hit.
But regardless of my idea, I am still stuck on the idea that you rather NOT use Shadow Word: Pain itself while at the same time saying the tier set is fine.
Those are complete opposite statements. That baffles me.
This assumes that one of these is not always the correct choice, which is false.
I said that Shadow Word: Pain is the best candidate spell to achieve the goal of what the tier is trying to achieve. There was no negative or positive connotation provided.
I don’t see why the tier has to forcibly update or change our rotation. If can also be something that provides a boost to our weaker damage points, grants us better utility for our spells, or provides a better quality of life to our gameplay.
I get that it’s unlikely for them to significantly rework this teir set, but one thing that could be beneficial would be adding charges to Shadow Crash. And I also think the reason he is creating more passive engagement is because the set bonus works in opposition to their design goal for changing the Mind Spike: Insanity talent. If the spec is “too busy” because of that proc, creating a rotation revolving around using Shadow Word: Death AND Shadow Word: Pain in places where you wouldn’t before just makes the rotation even more complex.
I didn’t say it did. I said that it served the purpose quite well for what it is trying to achieve.
My impression is they nerfed Surge of Insanity because of the tier set, to accommodate for the extra business the tier set introduces to the rotation. Therefore I do not believe it to be counter to their design to want the tier to make the rotation more complex.
That being said, pressing Shadow Word: Pain can be thought of as tedious since the spell itself is not engaging to press. I think that could easily be remedied by introducing a new spell effect for triggering the 4p bonus. Perhaps a short beam to the target.