Lets just hope the come up with good ideas for the use of Tranquil Air Totem - positioning micro management for tanks is kinda soso.

Still nothing about adding a multi-person cooldown to it though (I prefer the name "lustbearance") as they did with Drums, meaning Shamans will still be just as stackable as they are now.

Of course it just might not be one of the things they plan to discuss, the shaman WoWboards would go all "QQ you're nerfing us!".

This has probably been suggested in this very thread already, give immunity to the effects of the totem while in/under the effect of (Dire) Bear Form, Defensive Stance, Righteous Fury or err... do Deathknights get some sort of "tank mode" spell/ability?

I doubt that the totem changes will encourage bringing more than one holy priest. Priest healing simply needs to be a notch better than everyone else to compensate for the lacking raid utility.

Either that or those champion spells they played around with in TBC beta should come back. They were a form of stacking raid utility if i remember correctly.

Yes, it's called "Frost Presence" and it's a base ability.

I wonder which totems will be raid wide though, a raid wide Mana Tide would be incredible. It would basically mean infinite mana.

We can pretty safely assume that some totems will continue to only affect party members.

Unlikely, I think. Totemic Mastery is clearly worded as increasing the range of totems to 30 yards, it doesn't state "Increases totem range by +10 yards" or something equally variable. It's also a nice limiting factor; sure totems are raidwide, but it doesn't mean jack if the raid is spread out like in Gruul.

In my opinion, I'd rather have totems get 90 yard ranges, but remain party only; I hate constantly fretting over whether I'm in totem range, especially in extremely mobile fights.

The totem range is the defining factor for its viability and mana tide isn't overpowered at all because of it, also they probably add some AOE-dmg-like feature to it so you get less mana the more people standing in range. Also raiding is all about moving and spreading.
All the more intresting and cool to me.

Actually totem changes make bringing more than one holy priest more viable as you need fewer shammies for the same effect. Don't forget that AoE healing seems to be changing in wrath and is something that blizzard may decide not to focus on in their design for wrath encounters.

Also they are adding various desirable effects to both holy and disc so 1 or each spec seems reasonable to me. 3 priests will still be above the numeric 2.5 avearge of 10 classes and 25 slots.

When it was announced that some totems would work across the raid, it was stated as, "so it can affect other raid members who are nearby." They may increase the range somewhat, but it does seem to be the intent for players to still have to think about range when it comes to getting certain buffs, like totems.

This would match my interpretation of the change too - this should tie in nicely with continuing to emphasise positional awareness as a core raiding skill, whilst reducing the impact of the stacked group metagame. I expect to see a continuation of the mobility fights come Wrath endgame, with a few positional fights (a 25 man rendition of Netherspite could make for a fantastic encounter, for example).

The homogenisation of certain debuffs across classes (the Curse of Weakness change etc) would not only support the 10 man progression route, where you can't guarantee having a particular class/spec, but also indirectly helps shift away from heavily stacked, synergistic groups, in favour of a synergistic raid group. I think we will be seeing further changes along these lines as we head into Beta.

All the versions of improved holy concentration that have appeared so far (both the 100% casting regen for 10 seconds and the 60% haste for 10 seconds) have been absurdly powerful. I don't think either will see live, but the principle seems to be to make holy priests raid-viable by making them enormously powerful healers.

Mark of Divinity is another spell that could be ridiculously powerful. It heals the target for 30% of all healing the priest does. Even at worst (doesn't count overheal) that's enormous. I would also expect it to be tuned down a lot, but once more it shows they're at least thinking of giving priests some pretty powerful tools.

I'm skeptical of the possibility of balancing healers to make one provide less utility but simply be a much more powerful healer (how do you prevent the utility-less healer from completely dominating small-group content?) but they look like they're considering it a little. (Or maybe they just have no idea what to do with healing priests and are trying out some obviously too-powerful stuff.)

Whatever they do with priests, resto druids are largely in the same boat. But it's been like that all through TBC.

It's states:
But actual effect is:
Add Flat Modifier (6) mean radius.

Tremor is 30yard base but affect by totemic mastery.

You seem to forget disc healing priests will be pretty impressive in raids:
- giving mana to your group by healing
- reducing damage taken by 3% and increasing healing done by 3% on their targets (can stack 3 times)
- pain suppression (less useful, but still)
- power infusion

The difference is that holy priests will get a raw healing buff and disc priests will have the utility, you'll just have to decide what's more important depending on your raid setup.

There is 10class and 30spec but 25 raid spot. What you can leave out?
I would think that hybrid get 3 spot and pure classes only 2.
You dont need third warrior, mage, warlock, hunter, rogue or deathkingt(maybe a hybrid but no need for 3)
This leave you one spot empty and you can put there best dps or another healer/tank.

It's more than likely that all 3 specs of priest will be needed. 1 shadow priest to supply debuffs and mana to a group, 1 disc priest to supply healing buffs, and 1 holy priest to supply Guardian Spirit.

Now, this is pure speculation, but take what you will from it: What if bosses in WotLK did something like a "Death Touch"; 100% of the MT's health removed in 1 shot, or over a small fraction of time? We'd have two ways to deal with it: a priest's Guardian Spirit to prevent death, or a shaman's Spirit Link to offload some of that damage to friendly targets. I personally think these two abilities are somewhat related in what Blizzard intends to do with them.

This also fixes holy priest specs: right now, priests are pressured to go 23/38/0 (or 23/48/0 in WotLK) because Imp DS is so powerful and the 41point holy talents are always so weak. If Blizzard forces holy priests to spec for Guardian Spirit via the encounters they design, then the disc priest will have to handle DS buffing.

The only complaint I have with Disc is that it's a bit top-heavy in PvE talents; I tried out some PvE raiding Disc specs on the WotLK talent calculator, and I almost always ended up having to take useless crud in low Disc, then taking a ton of talents in high Disc.

Interesting idea - a boss that can do 100% of MT health in damage and ordinarily kill them outright. A boss like this would obviously have to be high tier, endgame 25man raid instance. Theres nowhere else really suitable blizzard could demand that you MUST have a Disc priest in the raid or your MT will die. However in an end-game instance like Sunwell (Felmyst VS Mass Dispell) it would fit right in perfectly. (Lets assume its not tauntable and doesnt reset agro, so no soulstones either)

I do wonder how much of class/spell/talent design is the result of Raid Encounter developers correspondance with the Class designers. Do encounter designers ever say to class developers, 'Hey, we'd love to make a boss Mechanic X who did Ability Y and a class needed Spell/Talent Z to counter it'. Behold: Spellsteal and mage tanking, Mass dispell and felmyst etc etc.

Or is encounter designer purely done after classes have been finalised fully and the raid designers sit down and say, 'ok, so this is what we are working with'.

Shadow Embrace is 5% reduced damaged.

And defensive stance is 10%, grace is 9%, and there's probably at least one or two others out there. The attack could do 125% of tank health to get around this however.

Restricting this ability to high-end raids assumes that there are only two specs that could let a tank survive such an attack. The targetable Cheat Death is the best tool for that particular encounter, but it and Spirit Link are by no means exhaustive. Ordered roughly by how much life the tank would end with, starting from full (note some can be combined):
51-point holy - full(?)
Spell Reflect - full (spell only)
Anti-Magic Shell - 75% (spell only, 100% with talents)
Bone Armor - 40% (physical only?)
Defensive Stance - 16% (spells)
Spirit Link - 4k or so
Defensive Stance - 10% (physical)
Disc Priest - 9%
Spell Warding - 6%(pally)/5%(DK) (spells only)
Priest Bubble - 2k or so
Shadow Embrace - 5% (physical only)
BoSac - 150 or so
The 51-point holy talent makes the theoretical ability easier to counter, and significantly so at that, but it's not required unless the ability is a literal Deathtouch, or Chaos Damage, either of which would probably negate Spirit Link as well. Considering the breadth of this list, I wouldn't mind seeing this boss ability (non-chaos version) even in a 10-man.

This is, I think, illustrative of the broader trend occurring in WLK that we're seeing reduplication of abilities, so that even if there is a clear winner for a particular use, it's by degrees rather than outright being the only option.

Incidentally things like the Cheat Death Angel would make "hard" enrage timers a bit softer. Perhaps we will see more of the "soft enrages" like Gruul and Entropius of bosses reaching unhealable levels of damage through normal fight mechanics. I always liked that more than the just "lulz 6 minutes time to kill you" mechanic right now.