I thought, from the description, that Promised Interposition would proc it's heal EVERY time it's target was hit for 15k or more, for the duration of the buff. But, it doesn't work that way... It's only ONE proc, max. "This passive ability causes your Promised Healing line of spells to apply Promised Interposition VII, which will heal your target for 40000 health if they are hit by a direct damage spell or melee attack that deals 15000 or more damage, for 00:18. This focus applies to the following spells: yada yada (maxed includes all promised line)" Yes, I do understand that it says "...hit by A direct damage spell or melee..." and not "each time they're hit by" or something similar. But, it's still fairly vague in it's description, if it's MEANT to only proc once. Almost all other AA or spell descriptions that I see that have a proc limit SAY what the proc limit is. I'm really hoping that it's broke, and is meant to proc EVERY time your target is hit, and will get fixed, BUT... If it's meant to only proc once, this is a pretty poor AA, and it's procs should be increased by several... at least 5 or 6 hits.
Only Dzarn can say for certain, but it was always my understanding that it would only proc once per cast. The description probably would be more clear if it were written as: "This passive ability causes your Promised Healing line of spells to apply Promised Interposition VII, which will heal your target once for 40000 health if they are hit by a direct damage spell or melee attack that deals 15000 or more damage within the 00:18 duration" It's still a good ability even if it only procs once per cast because it gives the promised heal line an immediate/instant heal component that reacts to the damage a target receives, providing them with a heal often before other casted heals can reach them. That is something only three of our other spells/abilities can do: AI, DI, and Divine Guardian. AI provides a larger heal but the damage threshold required for the heal to proc is much higher (28k compared to 15k for promised), it reacts to melee damage only, and the cast time is terrible (7s base compared to 0.25s for promised). DI and Divine Guardian also provide much better heals but they are triggered by a target falling to a certain low health percentage, which is useful because they will be activated when the target needs a heal the most but also limits them to that specific healing situation, while promised can be used the many times a target might take a big hit but does not fall below 20% health as a result. DI and Divine Guardian also have longer recast timers and like promised, all of these spells/abilities can only proc once per cast. The other reason that the ability is still good is that promised heals have a relatively short recast timer (15s) and a short cast time (0.25s) and a target receives a fresh promised interposition buff each time a promised heal is cast on them, so one cleric could cast it on a target and have it trigger the interposition heal then another cleric could cast a promised heal on the target so they have a chance at another proc. This does ruin the delayed heal portion of the promised heal, of course, as the timer for that gets refreshed with the new cast, but that is the price for getting another interposition heal and cleric teams and individual clerics can decide for themselves when it is more important to let the delayed heal run its course and when overwriting an existing promised for another interposition proc might be more useful. There are other issues with the promised heal line itself, including the fact that the spell from last expansion can overwrite any rank of the spell from this expansion and that the druid promised line curiously blocks cleric promised but those can mostly be worked around through coordination (confirm that all clerics are using the same spell, same rank and don't let druids cast promised on tanks). I wouldn't be opposed to adding more procs to the ability but I don't feel that it needs them to be useful. The ability pretty much saved a spell line that was dead in the water because the delayed heal with the long timer, while still useful, was designed around how slow and methodical healing was in the past and does not really fit the fast-paced, twitchy nature of healing as it exists today.
Advancing that AA with a chunky-costed second proc would be super nice. I'd sure put in the 150 or 200 to give it that second go
I'm not saying it's worthless... But, it's not great. In fact, it's not even what I'd call 'good'... Most people have promised itself blocked, cuz mercs are terrible... Interposition still lands though, even if they have promised heal blocked. 40k mainly unfocusable heal... For a 2 second (cast + recast) is NOT good. At least a couple more procs from it though, could make it good, to very good. Having it proc every hit would be pretty OP, but ya, at least 3 procs, maybe 4, would be much more reasonable. Doesn't even warrant a spot on my spellbar any more... Rather cast a 6 expansion old Remedy, that I, and tanks, can focus, crit, and twincast, that can utilize tanks' abilities to stun mobs, proc additional lifetaps, proc group heals, etc.
The interposition heal is definitely affected by other healing effects/buffs, as noticed here (and this was when the base heal was 20k before it was doubled with the release of ToV): [Sun Aug 11 18:50:40 2019] Shmid's promised interposition is fulfilled Shmid healed himself for 63989 (68130) hit points by Promised Interposition Heal V. (Critical) I cast the promised heal that proc'd this on Shmid (a paladin) before the entire raid took damage from Megahammer Mallet II (a Target AE that did about 50-120k damage to everyone). As can be seen, the interposition heal managed to negate all of the damage he took from it. It landed a bit before the shaman squall wave that healed everyone else. As mentioned in my last post, that's what makes the interposition heal so valuable. It lands immediately after the damage reaches the target. Though it's certainly possible for other heals (particularly shaman squall because of how many waves are produced with each cast) to reach the target not long after damage is received, it's hard for most priests to land a single-target heal with that kind of timing or accuracy every time. The delayed heal, also, while it does not land very often, can land for significant amounts: [Sun Aug 11 20:32:21 2019] Foob is infused by divine healing. Foob healed itself for 240544 hit points by Promised Remedy Trigger III. (Critical) [Sun Aug 11 20:32:21 2019] Foob is no longer berserk. That happened on a Plane of Smoke event where the raid was separated and Foob (a warrior) wasn't receiving the usual healing spam. That kind of heal doesn't happen often (in fact, this is pretty rare) but if the delayed heal does manage to land at the right time, it can be impactful. The other important thing I would note is that a lot of my promised casts (as well as elixir and ward casts) are performed when they provide the most healing potential at that particular time. That could be before a tank engages the mob or when there is a lull in damage, in which case casting a remedy wouldn't do much good because if the tank doesn't take damage in the 0.5 sec it takes to cast, it has no healing potential. A promised heal, on the other hand, can produce an interposition heal for up to 18 sec and will trigger a delayed heal if the timer is allowed to expire. So that action has a higher healing potential during those times given that the tank has more time to take the damage. Not all clerics or cleric teams will see the value in promised interposition/promised heals as they exist now and that is fine because most raids are definitely winnable just using remedy and splash spam. Tanks, however, have no good reason to block promised heals on raids because even the delayed heal, as shown in the log snippet above, can be impactful if allowed to land (and the vast majority of raid clerics are more intelligent than a merc). I still encourage our clerics to use promised and in general dig deeper into their toolset even on events that are trivial to us because it is good training for other events that do/will require us to do more and just in general gives tanks a better chance of surviving.
Like I said, it isn't worthless. As you pointed out, using it on a tank that is about to tank, and no other target needs a heal, it's better than spamming a non-needed heal. As a pre-buff for tanks that are about to engage, it's great. As a spam heal, it's definitely lacking. The fulmination of promised has actual heal values fairly decent, if there's only 1 cleric in the raid using it, to be honest. When 3-4 clerics using it very regularly, it gets overwritten a lot, and rarely fulminates (the other 'big' issue with it, besides being blocked a lot) - yes, there are workaround for both those issues, assigning particular clerics/tanks to use their promised on, reminding everyone to make sure and remove buffblock on promised, if have it on, etc... but, it's still a pain. You posted what it's possible to do... Here's another example of what's possible... and to be fair, for all these to happen from 1 cast isn't common, but not rare either... Proc rates from knights for their abilities are like 70% or higher, for instant heals cast on them. Everyone knows what proc rate for alliance and abundant healing are, fairly high... In your example above, when healing a paladin right after an AE, a lowly Spiritual Remedy would average heal for about 70k from it, would likely trigger about an average 20k group heal from the Paladin (another 120k of overall healing), possibly trigger an alliance heal worth up to ~250k healing on the raid, proc abundant healing AA for 8k instant and 16k/5 ticks for 88k hp possible healed, and stun the mob, if it's a stunnable mob (SK, instead of pally, would have been an additional lifetap, for ~65k ish average hp healed on the SK). And, I'm probably still missing additional things that a 'real' heal can proc. Compared to a single, one time only, ~64k (when crit, from a knight) interposition heal... Promised has it's uses. As a spam heal on a toon that is steady taking damage, it stinks though. If interposition heal proc'd about 4 times though, and if an additional cast by another cleric reset the counters, then it would be a good spam heal. Right now though... it's a pretty poor spam heal.
Anyone whose using promised as a 'spam' heal definitely does not understand how the spell works or how best to use it (as posted above). I don't raid these days, but anytime a raid hits a new phase where you know exactly when adds will spawn (either by timer or mob %), a cleric or two (not the entire crew) tossing this on the one or two people who is going to be taking that hit from the mobs makes it the most effective use. It does surprise me that after all these years of having this spell line, there are still cleric crews who find that their team members overwrite each other on this. I guess it's possible but I'd expect it more from the relaxed way back guilds than higher/more structured guilds.
The guild my cleric is in has just finished ToV recently, so ya, a touch behind. Other than when I was casting it, promised was cast maybe 6 or 7 times a night, total, by maybe 1 other cleric, for an average of maybe 1 or 2 casts per event, other than when I was casting it, total. Nobody uses it, cuz it's very limited when it's 'good'. (I, now, no longer cast it. It's not good enough to deserve a gem.) Need that gem room for nukes
