I wanted to put some thoughts together on the post 3.1 Rapture ability and our overall mana regen. A lot of players have contacted me and wondered why I thought it was a buff and asked what it meant for their mana regeneration. Why am I so optimistic about something that’s going to tank our regeneration?
Two key concepts
Mana regen is but one important piece to the whole puzzle. But here are two important concepts:
- Regen: Your ability to grain the resources you need to perform your skills.
- Obstacles: This is stuff that makes you use your skills and drains your resources.
We have access to half the puzzle right now. We sort of know what our mana regeneration mechanics are going to be like (in theory).
But we presently don’t know is under what conditions they’ll be stressed. We don’t know what our opposition is like yet. We don’t know how combat’s going to be in Ulduar. We don’t know the fights, we don’t know bosses, we really don’t know anything.
Calm down.
This is the public test realm. Players on there are supposed to provide honest feedback about what they feel works and what doesn’t. I’m not complaining about any of the changes yet because I haven’t been able to test them in combat. I don’t have any healing dummies, unfortunately.
Here’s the new Rapture:
Rapture ( Tier 8 ) revamped. Now a 3 point talent. When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled you are instantly energized with 1.5% of your total mana, and you have a 33% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy or 32 runic power. This effect cannot occur once every 12 seconds.
Fully talented, the 1.5% of total mana becomes 2.5% of total mana and the 33% chance becomes a 100% chance to energize. I’m not sure if the second effect applies to Priests who cast it on themselves. I think the 12 second limitation effect is for the latter component not the Priest’s mana energized component. So if you’re shielding 3 tanks and they wear off one after the other, that would be 3 separate activations of the mana return. Only one of your tanks would get the benefit from the 8 rage.
I just can’t test that theory out right now.
Anyway, it’s a buff in the sense that the players we Shield will gain a return of some sort to their power. Warriors will no longer have a reason to cry and request zero shields on themselves. You are getting bubbled whether you like it or not.
With extra gravy.
We are now glorified battery chargers.
On the other hand, you could always click it off.
I’m okay with nerfs
They can nerf our regen if it’s proven that we (as Priests) don’t need it. Decently geared players don’t have to watch their mana as much. I’m not potting, I’m not hitting my Hymn of Hope, I’m not asking for Innervates and I’m not breaking out the Shadowfiend because they aren’t necessary right now.
When does it become a problem?
If our nerfs our active and we’re hitting all of our consumables and mana regen abilities and we’re still running out of gas? That’s when it becomes a problem.
Holy changes
Serendipity has lost its mana gaining flare. This is supposed to be counteracted by the revised Holy Concentration.
Holy Concentration (Tier 7) changed to: Your mana regeneration is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 sec after you critically heal with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal or Renew. (Previously had a chance to grant clearcasting effect)
Beneficence started a thread on Plusheal regarding the new 3.1 mana regen mechanics. Be wary as it is numbers heavy. The bottom line from Bene:
The HC change itself strikes me as about even with it’s current iteration, by itself. Once you factor in the oo5sr changes that can result from that, it looks like a light nerf. The loss of serendipity’s mana restoring mechanic though, can be a pretty noticeable loss, even if you are relatively efficient.
Why so optimistic?
In my line of work, I kind of have to be. I have a fun job where I get to write about a game and a class I truly enjoy playing. Every buff, every nerf, every change I view as fascinating! It’s just another step in the evolution of the Priest. If all I did was zero in on nothing but nerfs, I’d end up being just a shell. I’m being optimistic because my sanity depends on it.
Ever watch or read the news lately?
There’s always a shooting. There’s always a homicide. Someone gets robbed. Someone gets sexually assaulted. Even in newspapers, you read about corruption and what’s wrong with our society today. Good news is lucky if it even makes it on to the side bars.
It’s depressing.
Now imagine what kind of blogger I would be if I approached every change negatively. If I said our class was getting wrecked left and right. If I told you to all reroll Paladin (heaven forbid). If I told you I was quitting the game. I’m sorry, but that’s not who I am. My glass is not half empty. It’s going to be completely full.
In the sense of the Priest, some parts of us are getting hit with nerfs. Other parts are getting buffs. We’re getting non stop changes.
A majority of us have yet to try out the changes in the situations where it matters: On the field.
And once I do, you’ll get an honest, zero BS assessment. I won’t bore you with numbers. It will be a straight up yes-or-no answer to the important question we’re all dying to know: Are we running out of mana in combat?
Besides, we’re apparently missing a few talents in the Disc tree.
For another point of view about Rapture, try this:
- Rez the Weak – RIP: Rapture – Lots of numbers and maths.
I see the changes to Holy Concentration as Blizzard really trying to avoid letting us accidently slip into oo5s. By taking away the free casts, basically now we have to actively try to dance the 5 second rule instead of occasionally slipping into it and getting mana spikes because of it. It’s a fair trade off, but I want to see tested numbers before I give it a stamp of approval.
Holy Duegs last blog post..Of Nerds and Lore
My first reaction to the Rapture change was pretty negative but then it’s very early days of testing. It seems pretty clear that not everything has been released yet, there are further changes to come. Finally, Blizzard have a record of making changes like this and making drastic reductions to abilities then tweaking them back up as the effect becomes apparent. Given all this I’m more than happy to reserve judgement until we see what are actually going to get.
Hulans last blog post..Woe Is Me!
And that’s why I love your posts.. I’m not even really in the half full or half empty camp.. I love WoW, I know that Blizzard does their absolute best to improve this game with everything they do (unlike the vast majority of the idiots on the official forums that think they know the game better than Blizzard or think that Blizzard intentionally tries to screw classes over).. I just let the changes come rollin’ in.. look at ’em.. ooh and ahh a little bit.. and when the changes hit, adapt to them and keep on’ truckin’..
great post. i hadn’t read much about priests mana regen changes. i also find it mildly amusing that priests are now being discouraged from going oo5s while pallies are almost pushed toward it with the divine plea nerf. leave it to blizz….
i hope that ulduar is an 11 on a 1-10 difficulty scale. i honestly hope it takes our guild over 2 month to do all the achievements. i know there are are “hard modes” settings but even on the regular fights i hope ulduar proves to be a challenge.
My only cavet is this. BM hunters also thought that once Blizz read their response to being nerfed so heavily it would swing back around. For them it hasn’t. Being optimistic is one thing. However Blizz has proven they are VERY slow to correct nerfs to classes.
I have a wait and see attitude personally, but Blizz’s track record doesn’t have me holding my breath.
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The Rapture change is only a big deal, like many other things, if you can’t control your healing and your ability to read into damage being taken.
Also, I believe the Shield can grant you multiple sources of mana (2.5% of your total mana when talented in fully), but only one tank/DPS/other person gets the other benefit every 12 seconds.
And I predict we won’t run out of mana!
Kittss last blog post..Brief 3.1 Changes…
A nerf to Rapture isn’t the issue, its clear some adjustment was needed. What’s bugging me about these changes is that it feels like they are radically changing the way the spec functions, instead of tweaking it. Which means that all the gear choices, enchants, gems, etc. that I have spent the last three months making are now for naught. Should I really have to regear from ground zero? Really? And should I have to play effectively a different spec now because they couldn’t come up with a way to adjust it short of changing it radically? Frankly, it feels like they don’t have a good hold on what the spec is supposed to be. Makes me very leery of committing to figuring out how to play whatever the new version turns out to be.
good points all around, Matt. I was just on the healing forums and couldn’t believe all the nay-sayers downing Disc because of the Rapture changes. Totally agree with your earlier post about there being too many Disc priests and Blizz doing something to level it out; but where will all the CoH-spammers turned Disc go now? Back to their warlocks, maybe? lol
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@Viktorious: Heh, I think those guys rerolled Death Knights.
I don’t really care whether the new rapture is more or less mana return, what matters to me is that this new form is simply a much less interesting mechanic. Can we please leave some complexity in the game, instead of narrowing everything down into mediocrity?
Thanks so much for this post, I was worried about the mana changes, the blogs/forum posts you linked to with math are awesome!
I was wondering whether you had a chance to heal on the ptr yet? I’d love to hear about it once or if you do.
For holy, it’s clear that OFSR dancing is getting a serious blow. Not only is it becoming harder without clearcasting but it’s also less efficient. But we are not being penalized for spam healing. Some of the theorycrafters at plusheal are pointing at a 50% to 70% uptime of the holy concentration buff. While there is no clear consensus, I would think it’s safe to say that we’re getting a hand in our regen.
We are no longer able to exploit clearcasting effects to the same extent, but it is clear that we will have a more stable (and reliable) regeneration while casting. The net value will be an acceptable nerf and in some spamheal fights we might even come out with a comparable or better regen.
Okay, please tell me if I’m way out on this… but the other maths didn’t add up for me…
Rapture (Tier 8 ) 3/3. 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 cannot occur once every 12 seconds.
80 Base Mana: 3863 (From DwarfPriest)
Power World Shield (%23 of Base Mana) = 888.5
-10% Mental Agility = 800
-30% Soul Warding = 560(?)
With a 22k Mana Pool the new 2.5% Rapture return will be ~550 mana?? Did I miss something? I’m not on the PTR so can’t test it. With the glyph thats a free heal and time bought. Maybe I’m being too optimistic but this sounds great.
With a 25K manapool you can actually gain mana from a fully talented shield 🙂
By refreshing it on the tank, you should be able to get the return every 15s and turn shielding the tank into a mana resource. It will not add up like rapture did in 3.0 though.
I will miss the Divine Aegis returns and the general rapture/crit relationship. Is putting Disc priests back in Spirit/MP5 gear really the best move? I thought we had a nice new little healing dynamic there, I specced back to Holy for a couple of encounters and hated it. It was boring as hell. I really hope they can come up with a balance…
battery chargers that are made in china are a bit under rated so i don’t use them anymore**: