News craziness
3 days ago
So on Friday night I managed to get into a pugged 25 man ICC rep run. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what this entails, it involves clearing all the trash up until Marrowgar, and then resetting the raid and doing it all over again. There is a lot of initial trash, so you can get quite a bit of rep this way. I managed to get myself to Revered with Ashen Verdict, which meant I could upgrade my ring, as well as spend some Frost Emblems on Primordial Saronite to buy a couple of Tailoring patterns.
This new ring is the first in its specific series to have a proc on it. The proc in question?
"Your helpful spells have a chance to increase your spell power by 285 for 10 sec."
For most healers, this is probably a perfectly satisfactory proc. Granted, I'm not a big fan of random spellpower increases for healing, since you can't really depend upon them, but it's still not bad. You can use it as a good opportunity to blow some cooldowns, like Tranquility or Divine Hymn.
Unfortunately, for Disc Priests, all this does is make me want to punch someone.
"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already effing active, stop spamming your shield key in rage."
ARGHHHH.
I know that the bubble on that mage only has an absorption value of probably 10-20 health left on it. I have a tool on XPerl that gives me a good indicator of how much shield someone has left. And I cannot put a new shield on that mage.
This isn't a bug. This is an annoying error message that people get all the time with spellpower procs. Thorns is a good example. There is a little thread over on the WoW forums that talks about it a bit. Why is it a particular problem for Disc Priests?
Because it's more than just annoying. The current combat log system does not seem to actually record the absorbtion value of the shield on people. You can't hover over the Power Word: Shield icon in your buffs and see how much shield you have left. All that matters to the combat log is that you have the buff. Period.
I get a spellpower proc, and I put a shield on you. You take enough hits to wear down 99% of that shield. In fact, you only have enough shield left to absorb about 20 hit points of damage. Weakened Soul drops off, and I go to bubble you again, only to find out that I can't put a nice fresh bubble over the one you currently have that only has about 20 hit points left to it... because the combat log still considers the old bubble "superior" to the new one, since the original shield I cast on your was larger than the one I'm trying to cast on you now, due to having more spellpower when it was cast. It doesn't matter how much shield value actually remains.
So instead of having a shield on you that will absorb 10,000 damage, you are stuck with that nasty old used up one that will only absorb 10 points, until the buff times out, you take another hit, or you have the presence of mind (and nothing better to do I guess) to right click off the old buff.
See the problem here?
Again, we find ourselves in a situation in which tank healing Disc Priests have much less of a problem with this than raid healing ones. The tank will almost always use up that original shield before Weakened Soul drops off anyway. For shield spammers... be prepared to get very frustrated with a proc that will mostly just screw up your shielding rotation.
Hopefully an updated combat log reporting system will accompany Cataclysm - shields are not recorded in a very good way with the current system.
This new ring is the first in its specific series to have a proc on it. The proc in question?
"Your helpful spells have a chance to increase your spell power by 285 for 10 sec."
For most healers, this is probably a perfectly satisfactory proc. Granted, I'm not a big fan of random spellpower increases for healing, since you can't really depend upon them, but it's still not bad. You can use it as a good opportunity to blow some cooldowns, like Tranquility or Divine Hymn.
Unfortunately, for Disc Priests, all this does is make me want to punch someone.
"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already active."
"A more powerful spell is already effing active, stop spamming your shield key in rage."
ARGHHHH.
I know that the bubble on that mage only has an absorption value of probably 10-20 health left on it. I have a tool on XPerl that gives me a good indicator of how much shield someone has left. And I cannot put a new shield on that mage.
This isn't a bug. This is an annoying error message that people get all the time with spellpower procs. Thorns is a good example. There is a little thread over on the WoW forums that talks about it a bit. Why is it a particular problem for Disc Priests?
Because it's more than just annoying. The current combat log system does not seem to actually record the absorbtion value of the shield on people. You can't hover over the Power Word: Shield icon in your buffs and see how much shield you have left. All that matters to the combat log is that you have the buff. Period.
I get a spellpower proc, and I put a shield on you. You take enough hits to wear down 99% of that shield. In fact, you only have enough shield left to absorb about 20 hit points of damage. Weakened Soul drops off, and I go to bubble you again, only to find out that I can't put a nice fresh bubble over the one you currently have that only has about 20 hit points left to it... because the combat log still considers the old bubble "superior" to the new one, since the original shield I cast on your was larger than the one I'm trying to cast on you now, due to having more spellpower when it was cast. It doesn't matter how much shield value actually remains.
So instead of having a shield on you that will absorb 10,000 damage, you are stuck with that nasty old used up one that will only absorb 10 points, until the buff times out, you take another hit, or you have the presence of mind (and nothing better to do I guess) to right click off the old buff.
See the problem here?
Again, we find ourselves in a situation in which tank healing Disc Priests have much less of a problem with this than raid healing ones. The tank will almost always use up that original shield before Weakened Soul drops off anyway. For shield spammers... be prepared to get very frustrated with a proc that will mostly just screw up your shielding rotation.
Hopefully an updated combat log reporting system will accompany Cataclysm - shields are not recorded in a very good way with the current system.
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I'm going assume what you're looking for Blizz to do to fix this is to make bubbles like so:
Let's assume your bubbles absorb a standard 8k damage. And for the point of this example working, the proc makes your bubble absorb 12k (not to scale?).
You get a proc and bubble a DPS, 12k shield initiated! Proc falls and the DPS has absorbed a little more than 4k damage making your unproced bubble a higher absrobing one then whats on him, so you should be able to shield him for 8k.
Blizzard has this problem with a lot of buffs in the game. I see the bubble should be treated like a heal, you can continously refresh a renew on a target no matter what procs were there before (if I'm not mistaken) so why shouldn't a bubble be treated the same way. I feel your pain on Coagulater.
How does GC deral with it? Why didn't he address in his priest post? Lol.
Just curious: what is it you use to get Xperl to show remaining shield power? Perhaps somethings exists for grid too...
@Fealen
Aye, what I'd like is for the shield to overlap any shield that has less absorption value. However, I believe in order to do this, they will need to make some serious changes to how shields are recorded in the combat log.
@Vonvonn
On Xperl, there's actually just a box you can check as an option. I think it's under the general tab.
For Grid, BobTurkey recommends "GridStatusShield" -> http://wow.curse.com/downloads/wow-addons/details/gsshield.aspx
@Fealen
I believe we have the same problem with HoT's. At least I know for a fact that it happens with renew. I couldn't put a fresh renew on me until the one that was cast with a spellpower proc wore off. =/
@Miss Medicina
I Feel your pain! Those procs are annoying!
At least they force you to make good use of Rapture, right? =P
Hmmm, do you know of any other addons that estimate the amount of damage your shields can still absorb?
I heal with Vuhdo and do not use X-Perl =/
@Tiex
I am no add-on expert, particular in regards to Vuhdo. However, I asked twitter, and I got this response from Eressea:
"If you go to Panes -> HoT Icons there is a checkbox for "Shield Status" but it says it is experimental and I haven't tried it"
Try that, and let me know if it works :)
The Thorns thing drives me insane and makes me want to stab things. I get so annoyed asking tanks to dispel their Thorns so I can refresh them. I can only imagine how frustrating it would be for a Disc priest! I hope they do address these issues, would save a lot of headache.
I hate that!!!
Honestly, I try to pick items that don't have spellpower procs, but have mp/5 procs instead. Spellpower procs for healing annoy me. Healing is supposed to be PREDICTABLE.
@Tiex
When I'm healing on my priest I don't notice it because I mostly do 5mans and when in raid I only pop Renew on people without the green indicator on their raid box, maybe thats why I think that....lol.
@Rades
Thorns...my demise. Why should the healer have a better thorns then me? I am a balance druid....it is a balance spell. Blizzard---->Fix this!
I get this a lot on holy, too. Did not realize it was the stupid ring I worked so hard to get. LOL It is pretty darn annoying. Maybe blizz will fix it- if indeed something THEY believe needs fixing. Gosh, I hope so. There shouldn't be any reason for us not to be able to throw a necessary heal on someone b/c of a ring proc. I wonder if there are a lot of examples where someone has died before the priest could put a fresh heal on them?
That's awful! I had no idea that it did that to your shields/thorns.
I've never noticed the problem while playing my resto Druid, although, I can't remember having a proc that could cause me a problem. Even if if I had to wait to refresh a Rejuv, it's still ticking, while Disc has to wait for the damage to be absorbed and juggle the Weakened Soul debuff on top of that.
When I raided on my priest this drove me so crazy with both Renews and PW:S.
Holy Paladins do not suffer from this problem whatsoever. Our FoL hot will always override an older one (even if the new one is 1/3 as effective as the current), and Sacred Shield (while affected by spellpower) will always allow you to override because the shield itself procs via damage taken, not by my casting it.
Without being too familiar with Shamans, I'd imagine their biggest problem might be refreshing Riptide or Earthshield.
It really seems to me like Discipline is more strangled by spellpower procs than any other class/specs. Even if you avoided spellpower procs on your gear, you'd still have to deal with temporary raid buffs that come and go if the warlock's pet dies or the shaman switches a totem midstream. Like you, I hope for some changes in Cataclysm to give priests more flexibility. You should never have to click off a good thing to get a fresh version of the good thing!
a simpler, perhaps interim solution would be to simply allow you to refresh your shield whenever you want. You might be putting a weaker shield up - but hey, that's your loss!
Shammay Earthshield is this way - I may put it up with several buffs, but I can immediately put a weaker one over the top, regardless of how many charges are left.
Where exactly on XPerl is there a Shield Power remaining sort of indicator? I'm not seeing one at all :( I see the option to show me how much longer the duration will last, but that's it.
I'm currently using VuhDo, and I know how VuhDo does the same thing (shield duration remaining), but use XPerl for my Target unitframe, so being able to try this out would be a great help to me..
And for whatever reason, I'm not finding the experimental option on VuhDo to show power remaining, either :( I've got a Swiftmend option at the top, but that's for Druids only. >_<
I know what you mean, but mostly for renew. At least for that I see an easier fix: Will the new renew heal for more total than the remaining ticks of the old one? For a bubble, that's tough, since maybe the bubble is still at full strength, but it will run out in a second, so as you said, the rotation is messed up.
Reminds me a bit of when AP or SP procs would cause ret paladins to be unable to reapply judgement of light back when it scaled off AP.
@Miss Medicina
Hey, there! =D
Just to let you know that the Vuhdo trick worked like a charm!
It shows a circle around the shield icon that estimates how much absorption it still has. It seems pretty accurate.
What I don't get is how I missed a GIGANTIC button like that XD
Anyway, thanks a lot =)
For holy, I think it's great. It prevents clipping of the renew (although it can be frustrating when you want a quick instant heal without a SoL proc up, but that's rare).
If you're just having this issue now, does this mean you don't use Lightweave?
I'm really looking forward to getting it. I already use a spell power trinket on cool down and with lightweave (plus some other buffs) I saw 4.3 spell power on my character last night.
@Aryas
You know, that's a good question. I do use Lightweave, and I did have this problem before due to Lightweave procs. However, the combination of the two different procs means that it is now a helluva lot more frequent that I can't reshield people, and it drives me nuts.
As holy, it's great though XD
Checked Curse to see if there was an update, and apparently there was (three weeks ago... so probably within a week of when I first downloaded the mod to try out - go figure!).
If anyone else is using VuhDo but doesn't see the Shield Status button, get thee to a mod site and download the current version, it's right beside Swiftmend (slightly lower).
Holy crap is that what that is. Agreed, most annoying thing ever.