Rapture Must Retire - Blue Tracker

#1 - April 28, 2012, 6:56 p.m.

Rapture being reintroduced to Disc is fundementally flawed. It is not "cool" nor "fun". It is unnecessarily complex, and punitive-- especially in light that Monks, Holy Priests, Pallies, Shaman, and Druids enjoy 50% baseline spirit regen with no "cool" model to have to maintain. (ahem: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4362520161?page=2#22)

Quote from: http://talesofapriest.com/2012/04/28/why-rapture-needs-to-retire/

This is an issue for a number of reasons, but really two large issues. Firstly, it is immediately imbalanced as far as maintenance. This will require Disc Priests, to maintain equal footing in the mana department to constantly maintain their Rapture cooldown. This requires Disc Priests to track rapture via any number of AddOns that exists to do so, as well as be proactive about casting their shields to keep that 12 second cooldown as short as possible. Keep in mind, this does not just mean CAST a PW:Shield every 12 seconds, this means have one fully break every 12 seconds. With dodge streaks, and damage patterns often not fully predictable in 12 second intervals it puts Disc Priests at a disadvantage. On a fight with damage really only hitting the tank predictably (eg. first half of every platform on Madness of Deathwing) and cast PW:S too early? Well, sorry… you now have Weakend Soul on your tank, and you can’t reliably get a PW:S to break until WS drops off. (Yes, other players are randomly targeted for Smash, but random targets are random). Moreover, as Tanks gear up, their avoidance will increase, as well as the size of our PW:S… which can delay the time it takes for PW;S to break and then in turn keep us out of step with the regen of the other classes and specs.

Look at top 50-100 log parses for any given fight, very few priests actually are able to keep (nor actually really try) Rapture at 12 sec CD. In current content, I’m pleased if I hover around 18-20 seconds! And I feel like I babysit it! Do I NEED to baby sit it that much in my current gear? No, I probably don’t. In low level, low regen gear at 85 or 90, will I need to? You’re darn right, we’ll need to if we’re 25% behind in spirit regen. A great player MIGHT sit around 14 or 15 second Raptures… which fundamentally flaws the system. No one is perfect, and with damage patterns— no one can be.
Secondly, this now makes multiple Discipline Priests in a given raid often fighting for Rapture procs. Using Madness as an example again, the 2nd tank is only a viable target when Impale taunts occur or when adds spawn… this forces multiple Disc Priests to have to coordinate and sometimes take turns on Rapture.

The question is: Why does Rapture have to exists? Does Disc really need an overly complex mana restoration ability while the other classes enjoy a passive regeneration ability. Having to Maintain the CD just for the sake of maintaining it is not a “cool” mechanic. It is overly complex and frankly, punitive. Holy Paladins were in a similar situation before 4.3. They had to keep their Judgement pretty much on CD otherwise they would have major mana issues… Blue felt this was too much maintenance, and instead gave them Judgements of the Pure, which lasts for 60 seconds after every Judgement. Notice that this is after a Judgement, not after a PW:S FULLY pops.

“But Derevka! The new Rapture is 150% of spirit! That’s a lot!” /facepalm… you’re missing the point, and more importantly doesn’t fully math out when contrasted with Holy and the other classes regen models when using preliminary numbers.

How do we fix this? There are a number of answers to this.

1. Remove Rapture, and just give us a 50% spirit based regen model. There is no need to complicate it, and make multiple Priests fight over Rapture targets.

2. If we insist on having it, have Rapture be a 60 second buff that applies similarly to Judgements of the Pure.

3. Have Rapture proc on PW:S CAST not full mitigation.

The TLDR on why Rapture needs to go away is that there is no reason Disc Priests need to maintain it, and have an overly complex regen model (with no substantive superiority over the other models) while other classes enjoy mana regen baseline. Kill it. Burn it with fire.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#58 - May 5, 2012, 6:15 p.m.

We don't think Rapture is "fundamentally flawed." We also added it back because so many Disc priests asked for it. It's challenging for us to present a design when some players want something and some don't want it. :)

Discipline would struggle if the spec was designed around flawless Rapture use, but it's not. Meditation is still there and in fact a Disc priest with flawless Rapture use would have more mana return than other healers. A priest who totally ignored PW:Shield would have lower mana return, but why are you playing Disc if you ignore PW:Shield? For many Disc priests who say benefit from Rapture every 20+ sec instead of the minimum 12, their sustainability should be comparable to other healers. Keep in mind what I said in the other thread about considering the entire package; the only real measurement of sustainability is how long the various healers can cast in average (low HPS) and scary (high HPS) situations without going OOM.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#146 - May 7, 2012, 9:30 p.m.

While I'm not a big fan of Rapture in the beta environment, I think this is the wrong way to look at it, that if it provides less mana than PW:S, it's not "regen." Assuming PW:S is a spell worth casting on its own merits (and it should be, when MoP is live, or else I think even Blizzard designers will agree they failed), then you'd be casting PW:S anyway and it's part of the total mana-out over the course of the fight. Rapture simply increases the mana-in over the course of the fight, making it regen.

While it's intuitive to tie it directly to the cost of PW:S because that's the trigger, it's an arbitrary measure of mana regen in reality...almost like saying "Shadowfiend doesn't provide back even as much mana as I spent in the fight, so it's not actually regen."

Now, if PW:S isn't worth casting on its own merits and is ONLY used for Rapture, then it's perfectly fair to point out that Rapture doesn't even refund PW:S's cost. But, again, if that ends up being the case, it will mean discipline is truly broken and devs will surely fix it. I don't think anyone believes PW:S shouldn't be a valuable spell just from its effect in mitigating damage.

Yes, this is how we see it. Rapture isn't trying to be Telluric Currents. You shouldn't spam PW:Shield when you need mana. Rapture is intended to offset the cost of PW:Shield when the latter is used intelligently. I said "regen" in the more generic sense of mana returns. I understand the posters saying that it's not increasing your mana over time because you are still casting PW:Shield.

Rapture is a mana increase on live mostly because we scale too well with Int (as a regen stat) and the gear item levels went crazy just like at the end of Wrath. It was not the original plan for the spell, otherwise it would have functioned as a mana-increase at the very start of the expansion.

PW:S is quite probably the most powerful spell in our toolbox, and without a prohibitively high mana cost, it will wind up being spammed to the exclusion of other spells. The Rapture mechanic serves to moderate the mana cost of the spell when tank healing while not interfering with the mechanics that prevent us from just spamming PW:S 24/7. Supposedly we'll have other tools for raid healing, though I personally find these tools lacking.

As far as our overall mana regen goes, we've got 25% passive regen, rapture procs and shadow fiend. I think that'll be enough regen for single tank healing, but not enough at all for raid healing or multi-tank healing. I'm concerned that Mind Bender is going to wind up being a mandatory choice for Disc at this point.

Yes, I agree with all of this as well. The challenge of designing Disc has always been trying to balance the fun of PW:Shield with the power of PW:Shield.

We don't want any talent to be mandatory for Disc (or any spec). If Disc has mana problems in AE situations, or if Holy regens too much compared to Disc during periods of not casting, then that is something we can address.

Our goal is to make mana-management with a fresh level 90 a little easier than it was at 85. It was close at 85, but just a little too punitive. Once you hit 90, let us know how dungeons feel.

Ghostcrawler

Game Designer

#182 - May 8, 2012, 5:12 a.m.

That's a great analysis, Jesinta. I didn't double check all of the numbers, but nothing jumped out as me as being really off either. I will note that we are considering retiring Judgment of the Pure.