Assessing Your Discipline Priest, Pt 3: Calculating Shields and Absorption

I used to write posts called “Self-Assessment” about my own Disc healing.  But now that my guild note has switched from the rockin’  ”Disco Infernooooo” to the oh-so-bland “Holy,” I guess it’s best to remove the “self” from the assessment, eh.        

Nonetheless, I want to continue these columns, as it’s my hope that this sort of information can help priests evaluate their own performance and make arguments to their raid leaders that they are indeed doing their jobs.  

Previous posts in the series:

Self-Assessment, Pt 1:  Assessing a (Discipline) Healer

Self-Assessment, Pt 2:  Discipline  Priests and Overhealing        

This post will give some tips on calculating the amount of shielding that a Disc Priest brings.

In some ways, the problem with assessing a Disc Priest is something shared by all healers:  healing meters suck.  While DPS can look at their position on the damage meters as an indication of how well they are performing in comparison with others, healers cannot.  Those assigned to raid heals, for example, will outheal someone dedicated to the tank(s).  But an even more crucial element of healing meter suckage is the fact that the sort of competition that DPS engage in vis-a-vis meters — “omg, top 3 ftw” — can be detrimental when undertaken by healers.  Healers need to learn to work as a team, and sniping heals and/or deviating from one’s assignment might place one at the top of the healing meters — “omg top 3 ftw” — but at the cost of efficiency.

Disc Priests suffer from the run-of-the-mill healing-meter-assessment not only by their assignment as tank healers.  When Blizzard made the commitment to making the talent tree a viable PVE spec, they neglected to change the way in which the combat log tracks a Disc Priest’s contribution to the raid.  A Disc Priest’s strength lies less in “healing” than in mitigation, and the combat log (and the add-ons built to parse the logs) doesn’t accurately track the absorptions from Power Word: Shield and Divine Aegis.  This is unfortunate as not only does it make it hard for a healer to figure out how well s/he’s doing, but it also perpetuates the myth that Disc Priests aren’t good healers.  

There is no easy solution, although “Blizzard is aware of the problem.”  In the meantime, here are some ways to gauge (roughly) what a Disc Priest brings.  

1)  Add 30%

Just work with the math that the good folks at EJ have already done.  Take the Discipline Priest’s effective healing and add another 30%.  Bam.

2)  Napkin math:  Glyph of PW:S

Disc Priests will have Power Word: Shield glyphed, healing the target for 20% of the amount shielded.  Add up the heals from the glyph and multiply by 5.  This is a problematic calculation, however, as while the heal from the glyph can crit, the shield itself cannot.  To further complicate things, the heal from the glyph doesn’t appear to benefit from other spellpower- and heal-increasing talents, whereas the shield itself does.

3)  Napkin math:  Rapture returns

Patch 3.1 will change the way Rapture works for Discipline Priests, and this method will no longer work.  Until then, however, one can use the mana returns from Rapture to gauge how much was absorbed.   For the time being:

Rapture Mana Return = (Healed or Absorbed Amount / 11460) * 2.5% * Mana Pool

Find the amount of mana returned from Rapture, and do the math.  Then be sure to add to this amount the other heals that don’t trigger Rapture — PoM, Renew, Glyph of PW:S  etc.

4)  Napkin math:  Divine Aegis procs

(God, I hate math.)            

5)  Recount for Disc Priests

This add-on modifies the original Recount in order to calculate absorptions..  It works with the assumption that the Disc Priest has PW:S glyphed and Divine Aegis fully talented.  It also assumes that shields are fully absorbed.  While healing meters undervalue Disc Priests’ contribution, this mod likely overestimates it.

6)  WoW Meter Online

Support WoW Meter Online‘s attempt to figure this out.  While I use WWS to upload and evaluate my own combat logs,  I do keep meaning to try this other site.  They do calculate shields and absorptions in their reports, saving yourself the napkin math.  When I go back to Disco Infernooooo, you can bet I’ll be using their tool.

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