Having made a post with tips and tricks for healing with Atonement, it appears to be bugged at the moment and isn’t healing at all.
It was working last night in ToC, but not this morning. It appears that it was bugged in the first version of 4.0.1 so that it was healing every target within 8 yards rather than just one. As a result it’s been hotfixed, and that hotfix appears to have removed all the healing from Atonement.
Hopefully it’ll be back to normal soon!
Reference: PlusHeal
Update: Atonement seems to be fixed as of the evening of the 15th of October, at least for me on the EU servers.
Also, Penance seems not to be gaining extra ticks from haste, although other HoTs are working as expected. This is different behaviour to beta, so I suspect it’s a bug that will be fixed in due course. Hopefully!
Reference: A comment by Kirke on my 4.0.1 guide, and my own in-game testing. Thanks for the report.
Well that would explain why I thought it was working so badly when I healed Maraudon yesterday. I thought “wow, my atonement heals are so small I don’t even notice them”. It did work just some hours before that on my main though… weird. But new patch = weird stuff.
Yeah my Atonement was healing for a MASSIVE +80 when I was casting Smite’s around the 6k mark. Hope they fix it soon, kinda sucks the juice out of the build.
I had all sorts of issues doing the weekly raid quest this week using Smite healing (Noth vs 10xT10 equipped = easy mode) as I was pulling aggro from the tank with the heals going to all that may explain it.
Re Penance, it is a channelled spell with 3 pulses and I believe that it would result in faster cast time rather than extra ticks as true hots behave.
All I know is that it was giving an extra pulse on the Beta when I tested it, I combatlogged it, but it’s not doing it on Live.
I haven’t been able to find much information to confirm whether it’s a bug or an intentional change, other than a lot of slightly confused Disc Priests.
I’m copying my priest back over to the Beta tonight to check if it’s still the same. If it is, I’d be inclined to put it down to a bug in the 4.0.1 client introduced after the two builds diverged, but I’d welcome a Blue reference if anyone spots one.
Regarding Penance’s status: channels are in an odd place with regard to game mechanics. They’re not quite HoTs/DoTs, but they’re also not quite direct-damage spells either (try Mind Flaying or Penancing the orbs on the Blood Prince Council fight, for an example). They do tend to act like HoTs/DoTs though, for most mechanics purposes.
But they may have changed the classification or mechanic which has caused this change in outcome.
As of this evening (a couple of hours ago) Atonement seemed to be working as expected once more.
Awesome news, my smitey priest should be even more fun in BGs now 😀
Sadly it looks like there are still some bugs with Atonement on the beta. The heal seems to be working correctly (well, sort of), but the mana returns from Archangel are bugged (again). It only seems to be returning 1% of total mana per stack instead of 3%. It seems like they just have a hard time getting that number right 🙂
The big issue at the moment however is how Atonement is implemented with raid bosses. Apparently it seems to be measuring the 8 yards for Atonement from the center of the target. And for raid bosses with large hitboxes (which almost every one seems to have) it’s nearly impossible to get within 8 yards of the center of the hitbox and still tank the boss. I was healing some of the test raids on the beta today, and I don’t think I got Atonement to land once. Hopefully it’s just a bug and they’ll get it figured out eventually (to be honest, I thought they had already sorted it out).
Such is the life of the beta…
I noticed this once or twice on Live, asking the tank to shuffle in a bit instead of standing at max range. It’s not been a huge problem though, so like you I hope they can adapt the range so it’s useable on the bigger bosses.
I’ve given up trying to track the bugs and fixes in those two on the Beta, just got to hope they’ll get it right by December!
I think Penance is still 3 ticks.It would be too powerful if Penance could be gaining extra ticks from haste.