Nor will having grace on the main tank matter on fights where the tank out-gears the boss or can be kept healed easily enough without Grace.

Not every guild runs an affliction warlock today, even though he reduces physical damage done to the tank by 5%.

But why not excluding this pvp tree? Why would requiring a Demo Lock, Marks Hunter, Sub Rogue, Frost Mage or whatever you had in mind be bad but this is good? With a nerf to CoH Holy Priests will probably have trouble getting raid spots as well, why not just give them this treat?

Many of you are optimistic that Blizzard will revamp the beginning and middle of the Disc tree and add new spells to make it a viable playstyle, and I certainly hope you are all correct. I feel our duty is to comment on the current changes however, so that if there is no more to come, if Blizzard really does think this is sufficient and good, that they are hopefully convinced otherwise.

This is also a good point, DPS increases never become obsolete but reducing damage or increasing healing will eventually become unnecessary. Nevertheless, for the first time you see a boss this buff is too huge not to take along, and that's what really matters, not farm status, right?

Anyway I think I've said enough on this topic, just going to close with saying I think the new Holy talents are lackluster (super Clearcasting excluded), the nerf to CoH is baffling and the inclusion of a mandatory talent in deep Disc is distressing. I can easily see raids in WotLK bringing 1 Disc, 2 Shadow, 0 Holy and IMO this is completely contrary to the spirit of the Priest class, it should be more like 2 Holy, 1 Shadow.

Does it really matter what spec a class is? The important thing is that a raid will be carrying 3 priests either way. The whole point of this particular thread is to stop class-stacking (5 shamans for Lust chaining, for example). If we cared about spec, then this discussion would be moot as shamans and priests are generally split among their specs.

9% is a bigger deal than 5%, and much more likely to tip the balance towards needing one less healer in favor of another DPS. In any case, I'm not particularly concerned for optimal farming specs. Disc's damage reduction and cooldown abilities with transitions and whatnot make it more valuable for progression content. I wouldn't want a raid of them, but one or two in a raid of otherwise-min-maxed healers would give a greater margin of error that could shave a day (which could mean a full reset) off a first-kill. They also have some potential to be the best spec for undergeared priests, because they contribute vicariously through other people they're buffing.

Well I may be alone in this, but I think for Priests the spec does matter. Priests aren't hybrids, we're the healer class. Our offspecs are increasing in desirability while our healing spec is diminishing. I would liken this to hypothetically Prot Warriors becoming worse tanks while Fury and Arms are given indispensible buffs (perhaps Arms has some kind of great tanking aid buff ). Sure the number of Warriors remains constant but the warrior who really liked tanking and rolled the class to be a tank and not a support class or a DPS class isn't very pleased.

I feel like Blizzard is changing the class role of a priest and just want to voice my opinion while WotLK is early in the developmental stages. I currently enjoy healing on my priest, but I think its wrong that I sometimes wish that when I decided to reroll a healer I had picked Shaman instead of Priest. I don't think such a trend should continue. but really don't want to get into a "nerf Chain heal" discussion.

The problem being that this thread is about trying to cut down on overstacking, such that bringing more than 3 of any class is less optimal. This includes priests. If we include only 3 priests, and assume 1 is shadow, this leaves either 2 holy or 1 holy/1 disc (I don't think anyone's pushing for 2 disc). In a similar vein, yes, some warriors love their tanking job. Doesn't mean that we should be bringing more than a single prot warrior for encounters. It means leaving out some other spec, or lowering the representation of another class.

Yes, that would be exactly the point. One Spriest brings Misery and a little mana regen for the group. Two brings... well, a little mana for another group, which probably isn't worth dropping an actual DPS slot for. One Disc priest brings Grace, and a little mana for their group, two is like adding another Spriest, the mana regen isn't worth losing another healer. But, if you're limited to 3 priests, you probably want one of each spec, rather than dropping either a shadow or a disc for another holy, because 5% spell damage, or 9% healing, to the entire raid, is just a little too powerful to ignore.

Where have you been for the past 18 months? Ever since Death and Taxes 5-manned Loatheb at level 60 using a warrior, three shadow priests, and a warlock it has been abundantly clear that priests are a hybrid class that is capable of fulfilling more than one role. Even though there are four classes that have specs which enable them to be powerful healers, each of those four classes has other specs that enable them to fulfill non-healing roles. WoW does not have a "pure healer" class. It just happens that priests are the only one of those four classes who has two "healing" trees, one of which currently does not have a clear purpose in pve. Blizzard is trying to bring some kind of rhyme and reason to the discipline in WotLK.

It is also unfair to compare the relationship between holy and discipline to the relationship of arms/fury to protection. Just as arms and fury are two different ways of performing the same role (melee dps), Blizzard is trying to bring discipline up to par so that priests have two ways to be a viable healer. For a warrior, fury does higher personal damage than arms but brings less raid utility; currently in alpha, holy has higher throughput than discipline but brings less raid utility. Your hypothetical concern about prot warriors being forced to spec arms or fury even though they like tanking is more similar to a hypothetical situation in which holy priests feel pressure to spec shadow even though they like healing -- a situation that already occurred in the first few months of TBC for reasons that need not be rehashed here.

Even with the alpha CoH nerf, deep holy still has much better raw throughput (and hence stackability) than discipline, such that brining two holy priests appears viable, while two discipline priests does not. I wouldn't worry about being forced to go discipline just yet.

I would agree, and I would bet that Blizzard is attempting to force raids to carry 1 priest of each spec. Shadow for debuffs and mana regen for your most mana-starved group, disc for regen and buffs, and holy for sheer healing power. Any more than 1 priest per spec is really a waste, and any less is gimping the raid. Plus, 3 priests buys Blizzard space to do more gimmicky stuff, like mind controls and mass dispels.

If anyone has a complaint about discipline it cannot be about the new deep discipline talents. The early portions of the tree may not provide much healing support, but Divine Aegis, Grace, Rapture, and Penance are excellent. Grace and Divine Aegis distinguish Discipline priests as tank healers, while Rapture helps ensure that raids will not feel compelled to bring multiple shadowpriests. Currently, shaman and paladins are really the only healing classes that actively encourage stacking, but it will be exceptionally difficult to stack resto shaman and holy palis when their other class specs are desirable and the number of raid slots is limited. Unfortunately, the counterpoint is that 25-mans will probably need 6-7 healers. If raids were to need 2 shadowpriests for mana regen it would guarantee that the direct damage classes (mage, rogue, hunter, and warlock) would be squeezed even tighter in terms of raid spots. Giving a healer a group mana regeneration accomplishes exactly the sort of raid utility consolidation that this thread is talking about. It spreads out the group regen between two distinct builds and opens the door for more raid composition flexibility.

Having said that, the problem with Discipline is that the tree virtually mandates 18 points in Holy to perform a healing role, but even then it misses out on crucial throughput talents like Spiritual Healing and Empowered Healing. At the same time it forces players to waste points in DPS talents like Force of Will. It would certainly make a lot more sense if Force of Will applied to both damage and healing spells. It would also make sense for Searing Light to move down a tier (so Penance builds could actually get it while getting the efficiency of Improved Healing). Lastly, Reflective Shield could also stand to move one tier earlier in the tree and for a heal-scaling talent of some kind to be added in its current place.

Just wanted to point out that this isn't necessarily true. Sure, it is true on a person by person basis, but in 25 man raids the number of healers has room to vary. So bigger healing numbers don't mean that healing will be wasted, it just means that it could be possible to replace a healer with a DPS.


Regarding priests and their claims to being the healing class. I think that's basically a combination of the preconceived notions that people brought to the game and perhaps a bit of misleading advertising on Blizz's part. In actuality, before some of the more recent patches, I would say that Paladin had the best argument for being the Healing Class. That is, before the Ret buffs, no one took a ret pally to raids and prot pallies always seems a step behind their Bear and Warrior brothers except for the few "gimmick" encounters that had just a ton of weak hitting adds (my guild still doesn't use a prot pally for Hyjal adds). Thus, you could make an argument that the best spec for both PVE and PVP pallies was Holy. Meanwhile, Priests could spec either shadow or holy for PVE and use Disc for PVP.

You could simply use the mechanics/debuffs already in place that require a tank rotation to be set up. Or Saber lash, etc.

I'm not really sure what the benefit would be of increasing the number of tanks required to raid though. If you assume that getting together a PUG is at all a random sample of what role/spec are most represented than increasing tanks will just mean that at a meta level, raids will have the same problems that PUG have, finding/keeping/retaining enough tanks.

If you want to make the same ratios apply to 5 mans as apply to 25 mans, I would say that you should go about it the other way. That is, make about half of the 5 mans require 1 tank 3 dps and 1 healer and the other half require 4 dps and one healer.

I'm saying I think the lack of tanks for 5 mans in part comes from the lack of need for tanks in raids. The small number of tanks in a guild means they never go outside the guild to group, and it discourages people from rolling tanks and competing for a small number of spots when you can roll a healer and basically have guilds begging to take you on.

And going the other way would be making some 5 mans require 2 healers. Raids typically have the same 3/5 DPS that 5 mans do. You could probably achieve this with instances without aggro tables, ala 3rd boss in MgT. I don't think the warrior forum would take this approach too well though.

Blizzard is addressing the tank imbalance issue by making all three specs of death knight viable small content tanks. Death knights have no "tanking" tree - they have a melee DPS tree, a summoning/disease tree, and a control/snare tree. All three trees have tanking talents in them. Thus, even your die hard DPS or PvP specced death knight will be able to tank a 5-person dungeon, and given that this new class starts at 55, everyone and their great aunt will have one.

Personally, I find this approach extremely clever.

The lack of healers for raiding (because 5 dungeon groups makes a 5 tank, 15 DPS, and 5 healer raid, which is almost a M'uru raid but nothing like any normal raid) is another issue however and one which I do not see going away, unless they design Wrath's raid encounters to need fewer healers.

If Mark of Divinity makes it into the game as-is, it will be one of the most powerful abilities in the game. I'm relying on Wotlk.wikidot's assertion that this is a priest ability.

A shadowpriest doing 1.5k DPS heals at 1875 HPS with imp Vampiric Embrace. If 30% of this is directed to the MT (assuming he can only have 1 Mark) then that's 562 HPS HOT on the MT.

That could indeed enable the raid to take 1 less healer.

Expect LFG to be full of "DPS DK LFG Heroics", "DPS DK LFG Instance", "DPS DK LFG Any (Not a tank!)"

The problem with finding tanks for 5-mans is not a shortage of classes or players that can tank. It's how painful it is to tank without the proper spec, and the fact that respecing is still relatively painful. In the expansion, 4/10 classes will be capable of tanking.

Assuming 50g in WotLK is like 10g is now, this will practically solve the 5-man vs raid tank problem alone, assuming most hybrids are willing to fulfill whatever role is needed in the group.

I'm still praying for additional improvements/convenience for changing talents and/or ridiculous improvements to tanking without the right spec.

True enough, but the issue is, do they want to tank? 5man tanks and healers usually take all the abuse when something goes wrong (even if it's not their fault), repair bills are higher for tanks, etc. Arms/Fury warriors can tank 5 mans just fine, it's just that they don't want to tank.

My bet is that you'll see most DKs specced in the best PvP tree, and screaming "DK LFG for Strat/Scholo/BF/Ramps, DPS ONLY!".

Vampiric embrace heals 25% of the priest's damage to each person in their group, so overall, it heals 125% of their DPS.

Whether this buff draws 30% of the effective healing or 30% of the total healing done would be a good question to answer as well. Sounds like 30% of total healing, but they could easily make it 30% of effective healing to keep it from being so out of control powerful.

I quite like the idea of healing coming from damage dealing, as I hear mentioned about AoC healers that have to DPS to keep their healing going, so I'm not opposed to this kind of thing, just thinking.

I'm more interested in Mark of Divinity's uses with Prayer of Healing and raid-Circle of Healing. I wouldn't be surprised if it's somehow inviable in shadow form, for whatever reason.

This would completely scuttle any hope of ever finding a tank for a PUG. If, as a new 70, you could do half the instances without respeccing to tank, and respeccing to tank meant you weren't wanted for half the instances, why would anyone ever spec to prot before raiding?