So according to recount I have been sucking wind in raids in comparison to Muta and Aanvil and it was REALLY bothering me because I have never seen that in any other raids. Monday when Muta wasn't there I was topping the charts or at least even with Aanvil. Muta what the hell are you doing to my healing ;)
No seriously I'm confused greatly by this as the current setup includes overhealing, which druids are famous for because of the hot ticks. Any ideas as to what is happening? I have been in LFR with other Disc priests and I am not seeing the same thing. Course they probably aren't as amazing as Muta but.... any thoughts?
I ask this because If the mix with a Disc priest requires a differnt healing technique I'd love to know so I can adapt and better help the raid, not because the meters are everything... although lets face it no one likes to suck on the meters :)
The obvious first place to look is overhealing. Comparing our wipes on Durumu last week WITH mutagen to this week without him, your overhealing dropped from 50% to 40%. My overhealing dropped from 33% to 28%. It's not clear to me how much of that is because Mutagen has the bubbles and how much is just because he sucks up all the healing by being personally OP.
My math has been going downhill since I was 18, but if I understand the logs right, a drop from 50% to 40% overheal means your effective healing went from 50% to 60% of your total output = a 20% increasein hps(e). Even so, it looks like your total output went up substantially. Last week you were around 25 to 33 HPS(e) and this week it was more like 40 to 48k. So what is that, a 50% bump? By comparison, my HPS(e) went up a little but, but it can probably be accounted for by gear improvements and the 5% decrease in my overheal.
I know that about half of Muta's heals come in the form of absorb shields. I also have close to 30% of my healing coming from absorbs, so that when Muta and I are both healing, that is a LOT of absorbs on people, and that really makes my raid frames look different. I could tell right away this week that people's health was staying below full, unlike when he's around spamming spirit shell before every major event. Is it possible that you were healing substantially more aggressively because people had lower health this week? If that's the case, my advice would be to keep doing that even when Muta gets back. Nothing wrong with HOTing up a full health player when you know that dmg is incoming.
People were DEFINITELY taking more damage this week which I do attribute to lack of bubbly magic love. I did get quick a lot of upgrades in the last week which brough my gear score from 501 to 516 so I have substantially more spirit. My mana problems went poof... so that may be where it was but that wouldn't account for last Thursday. I had that gear on Thursday with the exception of the weapon. Now the weapon really helped ... soooo maybe that is my answer. It still seems a giant switch.
I'll just keep an eye on things next time Muta is in and see if we have the same issue.
You just probably performed worse then usual last Thursday vs Monday!
SkyNet logging off........,.
A huge part of the Disc dominance of meters comes from the automatic Atonement healing. Every 1.3 seconds Smite delivers a reasonably beefy heal to the lowest health member of the raid. Every 9 seconds Penance delivers three big chunks of healing and every 10 seconds Power Word: Solace delivers another big chunk of healing. I weave in bubbles, often on the tanks, for the haste buff and the mana returns (one bubble every 12 seconds is free if it gets used up). When all this automatic healing crits or I stop being lazy and actually target a heal on someone I get an extra bubble that gets used up before there is damage for your heals to register.
I'm also more mobile than ever, with the Penance glyph (cost of extra mana consumption), Solace and PWS I'm delivering much of this on the move. With many fights having 2.5 healers worth of damage when executed reasonably well, there is plenty of overhealing going around.
I don't see many Disc priests in LFR abusing this to the extent I do, they're likely trying to heal 'properly' by triaging targets and saving mana when little damage is occurring. Few of them aggressively shield the tanks or other damage taking raid members. I do the opposite, I'm always casting damage to turn into atonement healing and I'm rotating bubbles on the tanks. I'll back off and only bubble 1 tank if I see someone else's bubbles going up on a tank.
The 5.3 changes are going to make the automatic Atonement healing more of a decision, there will be a small penalty to Atonement heals and a slight nerf to Penance damage along with a buff to direct Penance heals. I don't think it is enough to even meters out but it will help and I'll actually have to decide to cast Penance on someone.
Meanwhile all my healing skills of triaging targets while avoiding fire have atrophied, if they change mechanics again I'll have to learn to heal all over again. Seriously, I could probably get 80% of my output from a one-button macro, the only skills I'm applying are getting me 20% or so more on the meters (a few well placed bubbles probably save the occasional wipe, at least I'd like to think).
Wow, Ardwen your overheal was hitting 65% last night. Then, Magaera, your healing was right back up there, possibly because there was finally enough damage to go around? Crazy. Muta you were supposed to get nerfed!
Seriously! I said the same thing last night...
They good news is my Overheals store in my mushrooms and they increase their healing by 100% this patch. They must have realized the Disc priest craziness :)
10% nerf to Atonement healing isn't much, for all the auto targeting reasons mentioned above. To be fair, 3 of the 5 bosses last night have bonus damage mechanics that artificially boost Atonement healing. Dispelling Megaeara (although I had plenty of help) and lots of Cinders evened things up nicely, I was completely OOM at the end of that fight, I could have managed Solace better (or specced Mindbender).
The Borrowed Time nerf bugs me more because it eliminates the little things I can do to get something extra out of it, a reward for playing well. I would have preferred the old behavior and nerfing the duration to something like 3 seconds.
I do have to learn to target my Penance instead of blindly dumping it into Atonement healing, as you can see from the 50% overheal for the night with Penance I still have a bit to learn. Or maybe the chance of a fat DA proc is worth the overheal.
Edit: I forgot to include the Smite glyph nerf, which is another almost 20% nerf to Smite Atonement healing but probably only a few percentage points nerf overall.