Psssst! Want to hear a secret?
Did you know Priests can maintain a near limitless amount of mana?
It’s very possible. But it does abuse a certain in game mechanic. This post is just for educational purposes only. I’m not here to encourage you to knowingly abuse game mechanics. Wynthea has this deluded idea that Blizzard reads my blog. Personally, I’m a skeptic. If I see a hotfix or a patch update within the next several weeks that address this, I’ll believe it. But until then, I’m going to assume I fly well under their radar.
I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while. It wasn’t until I read this post on Plus Heal that the urge to get it out there resurfaced.
Anyway, this idea revolves around Rapture.
When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled you are instantly energized with 2.5% of your total mana, and you have a 100% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy or 32 runic power. This effect can only occur once every 12 sec.
After you shield someone and their shield wears off because it absorbs the damage or get dispelled, you gain back 2.5% of your total mana. Your target gains some form of energy back as well. But we’re not concerned with that aspect of Rapture.
Normally, for the tank healing Discipline Priest, it’ll only work once every 12 seconds just like the tool tip says.
However, for the raid healing Discipline Priest, something else occurs.
Let’s take a fight like Kologarn. Kologarn has the Shockwave ability where his arm completely manhandles the raid and does a fair amount of damage. A shield cast on a player will be fully exhausted after one sweep.
So what happens if you shield 10 players before Shockwave connects?
My Priest has around 33000 mana fully raid buffed (Note: Newer Priests, do not do what I do and stack copious amounts of Intellect. I do it to have a bit of fun with my Priest). Rapture will give me back 837.5 mana if one shield gets absorbed or dispelled. Seeing as the Rapture debuff is not in effect because the shields have not been consumed, it’s easy to conclude that you would gain a ton of mana back if your shields were simultaneously absorbed at the same time.
In other words, I would get 837.5 x 5 = 4200 mana back. Give or take. Shield 10 players, and I would get upwards of 8000 mana as the Rapture internal cooldown kicks in.
Anyways, that’s today’s public service announcement. Don’t go around spreading this secret now. We might get nerfed again after all!
Well… as a fellow Disc priest who stacks copious amounts of Intellect and is well aware of this mechanic, I want to point out that PW:S *does* cost ~650 mana, so we really aren’t fabricating 4-8k mana out of nothing, but it is a nice way to get back 2-3k in a pinch if you need to. This trick, imo, is much more about the FREE PW:S + Mana when you know raid damage is incoming.
However, as a Disc Priest, do you ever really run under 50% mana? even then, after popping a pot and the fiend, you are right back up at 100% in a few seconds. Also, running at 600+ MP5, you have practically regenerated 25% of that mana in the time it took to cast the shields… So, I doubt the nerf bat is coming anytime too soon.
I’ve been using this strategy on Kologarn for some time now. It also tends to work well on XT for Tympanic Tantrum although an unlucky Light Bomb can net you less mana.
It’s pretty insane to shield 12+ people thus preventing 80-90k damage or more while gaining back mana. After the shields pop toss out a couple of PoHs — mana isn’t a concern since you can just shield up another 12+ people and let the mana roll back in.
Although to be fair, even without the busted rapture, I could still afford to shield a large portion of the raid before each shockwave, though I’d probably have to be more conservative about the PoH or two afterwards.
<– Disc priest who constantly runs out of mana 🙁 I think I cast too many spells or so.
And no, I do not have enormous overheal, generally around 12-15% (many many shields).
Yes, I do have over 600mp/5 in combat regen, way over even.
And as far as I'm aware I'm doing fine with chosing which gear I use.
Still have to ask for totem or inner more often than any other healer I know :S
.-= Shy´s last blog ..I wuvs my tanks! =-.
I tried it (it was mentioned on elitistjerks and IIRC here before), but I seldom got those results, because a player got eye beamed or something else happened and produced a single rapture instead of one for the whole raid. 🙁
.-= Baraan´s last blog ..Daily Hero nur mit Epics? =-.
I’m just a holy priest, with only around 25K mana, or less. Between CoH, Holy Nova (don’t laugh till you try it; just don’t spam it–it IS situational!), PoH, and Renew, I’ve never had a problem keeping people alive on either Kologarn or XT in those situations.
And my fiend? Generally, I use him for DPS at the end of fights (last 2% or so). Those are NOT the mana-burning fights, for me at least.
.-= Kestrel´s last blog ..The State of the Kestrel and of the Aerie =-.
Dammit…forgot to click the “followup” button. Again.
.-= Kestrel´s last blog ..The State of the Kestrel and of the Aerie =-.
I (we?) have been doing this since Ulduar hit 😛 Even on XT, before tantrum, it’s a handy thing. I’ve been waiting for the nerf…
Wow, very cool 😀 I’m assuming then it would work in any situation so long as the shields aren’t disspelled at *exactly* the same moment in time? I wonder how Blizzard are going to fix this one? 🙂
.-= We Fly Spitfires´s last blog ..Is It OK To Play A Character Of The Opposite Sex? =-.
@We Fly Spitfires: Good question. I have no idea.
I just assumed it was a bug that would get fixed at some stage.
33k mana pool? Thats crazy.
Gobble gobble.
.-= BobTurkey´s last blog ..Amazing discovery of the week =-.
I must confess I am not nearly as sure that this is an abuse of game mechanics. Pre shielding targets in the case of AOE damage is the primary method of raid healing for disc priests (pre-emptive healing at least) isn’t it?
On that basis what approach is there? deliberately try and proc rapture so its on cooldown? not shield the raid? it seems to me like its more an unintended consequence issue. For pallies everyone believes that the masses of mana obtained from seal of wisdom is unintended (I get about 1400 per proc which happens a lot if I park in melee range and get the odd swing between heals). No-one believes that is an abuse of game mechanics though.
Am I crazy? I am really careful about that sort of thing but I cannot see any abuse here.
.-= Silk´s last blog ..Still more H ToC =-.
@Silk: It’s not so much abuse as it probably was unintended.
I do this all the time on Yogg phase 1. You can basically solo heal it like this and never go under 90% mana. Also happily use it on Gormok the Impaler aswell. Its lovely when scrolling combat text says +819 mana 8 times and you look at a full mana bar.
Doubt its abuse, its just a disc priest way of mana regen, just like many other classes have.
I personally doubt this was intended and I’d say it will get fixed. I wouldn’t get to used to using it or get to the point where you depend on it.
Interesting. I would always shield myself for a type of mana regen but never really had time to spam it across 10 ppl.
.-= Skonged´s last blog ..Leveling a Paladin 1- 40 =-.
The fix will be easy, you’ll probably just get one proc regardless of how many targets you shield in each 12 second block.
Currently there’s no check on how many events are coming in before the internal cooldown starts, so if you get say 10 events (shields burnt) within a check cycle (a small period of time), then 10 get processed. Unintended bug.
I’m so glad you stuck that little (Don’t do this at home!) parenthetical statement in there. 😛
((I have ~32k mana raid buffed, and I do not stack solely intellect, I have plenty of spellpower in there too. So you’ve only got 1k mana on me, sir. But I’ve got ~200 more spellpower. How does that make you feel? :P))
.-= Lilitharien´s last blog ..L2Discpline: Growing Your Talent Tree =-.
Blizz DOES know about this bug, but they’re going to leave it as it is, seeing as it’s not an exploit of any kind, it’s just, in their words, “Clever use of in-game mechanics”.