Originally Posted by Osse

Glyph and improved hunter's mark stack and the result is 450 ap.

t6 4-set bonus and glyph of steady shot do not stack.

Originally Posted by Duravi

Manly, one quick question on your spec. Is the 2/2 flame throwing for scorch since FFB has a 40 yard range?

Originally Posted by Massael

Flame throwing is for Pyro - off hot streak procs, it sucks when you have a proc up and are too far away from the boss/mob.

Originally Posted by bbartlog

I don't think those values are good. Obviously your weights are going to depend on what situation you are trying to prepare for; the last time I did a full analysis (pre-3.0.2) my chosen goal was to maximize total healing in a 5-minute fight. But doing it that way will tend to make haste look worthless, which it isn't.

Second, the changes to talents in 3.0.2 mean that you need different weightings for Disc and Holy priests. Pre-3.0.2, you could probably get by with one set of weightings that covered Holy and hybrid Disc/Holy, and assume that deep Discipline was purely a PvP spec. Now that's no longer the case.

Anyway, some more specific criticisms of your weights; I'll assume you have a deep holy spec since you mention using CoH.

- valuing mp5 three times as high as spirit is probably wrong. If you assume that you are never outside the 5-second rule during a fight, this value might be about right (though spirit also gets you some spellpower, with Spiritual Guidance); however most models of a long fight assume you can get some OO5SR regen (like 15%; sometimes I assume 20%), and in this case mp5 is only worth maybe 5/3 as much as spirit.
- Int is pretty good. With Replenishment and changes to Shadowfiend, it's as good as spirit even for a deep Holy spec, and much better for Disc priests. People also sometimes forget just how much having a big mana pool to start with will help you.

Valuing spellpower at 1/6 as much as mp5 is low. It's worth about 1/4 as much as mp5 just considering total throughput in endurance healing - roughly, 1 mp5 will let you heal another 720 health in 5 minutes, while 1 spellpower will give you an extra 180. And it may be worth tweaking it a little higher given that it also helps your burst throughput.

So I would use the following weights:
MP5 - 8
Int - 5
Spi -5
Crit - 6 (I have no idea whether this makes sense, I haven't analyzed its value post-3.0.2; just following your preference here)
Spellpower - 2
Stamina - 2 (you can't neglect this stat totally, you will be a soap bubble)

Leaving haste off entirely is probably about the same as setting it to 1. I am not sure how I would weight it, but you should keep in mind that it also helps the global cooldown - so using a lot of instants does not necessarily make it worth less.

Originally Posted by Faldrath

Er, have you guys looked at the spec I posted in post #103? It still looks better than the ones you're proposing: if you are not going to be casting Immolate, there's absolutely no reason to put points in Emberstorm and Molten Core. Better to use those points in Demonic Power to buff your imp a little bit, Soul Leech and Nether Protection. In the Affliction side, I'd much rather max out Shadow Embrace (which will always be up) than to put points in Nightfall and Eradication (which proc randomly).

Originally Posted by tedv

Thanks for throwing this together. Disclaimer: I've been leveling my Death Knight, so I haven't raided on my priest at 80 yet. Just wanted to throw in my thoughts on a few things.

First, I'd cut Inner Focus from that base talent spec skeleton. Inner Focus is great, and I'll certainly be taking it as part of a "standard" talent set, but it's not a requirement. There were some recent tests on Inner Focus + Shadow Word: Pain, and the conclusion was that Pain does not get +25% damage if you cast it with Inner Focus. This brings the talent spec to 13/0/55+4. In addition to Inner Fire, I can see situational PvE uses for every talent in the shadow tree. You'll want 2/2 Improved Vampiric Embrace when working on Sapphiron for example. Getting 4/5 Blackout sounds good on every fight with a lot of adds. And I haven't tested it, but I assume Mind Sear can proc blackout? Getting an AoE stun sounds utterly ridiculous to me, and possibly worth trimming 1 point from Focused Mind to get the full 5/5 Blackout if you're working on that kind of a fight.

On the subject of cast priority, Mind Blast is our second hardest hitting spell, after Vampiric Touch. And keep in mind that this is because Touch has double the spell damage coefficient of most 15 second DoTs, and the damage disparity between the two isn't that much. If they nerfed Touch from a 2x coefficient to 1.5x, you'd cast Mind Blast first. In particular, cast Mind Blast before Devouring Plague.

Regarding Shadow Word: Death, I'll note that Mind Flay seems to beat Death on paper, but it also depends on gearing levels. I want to see actual WWS reports to decide when its worth casting. My suspicion is that if you have 2 seconds until your next "cooldown" and can't cast anything but Death and a clipped Mind Flay, then Mind Flay is the right choice, regardless of gear levels. But if you only have 1.5 seconds, Death will be the right choice at certain gear levels. Again, this is just speculation, and we need actual data to make this decision.

I also want to stress the importance of waiting for the full set of crit increasing debuffs before casting Shadow Word: Pain. While the spell damage modifying pain will change with your spell damage (like lifebloom does now), the crit modifier and shadow weaving stack are locked in (like lifebloom used to work).

Here's what you get from waiting:
Shadow Weaving 5: +10%
Earth and Moon: +13%
Improved Scorch: +10%
Elemental Oath: +3%

This works out to 40.8% more damage on your shadow word pain. Or inversely (1 / 1.408), your pain will deal 71% of the damage it could be dealing. If pain accounts for even 20% of your total DPS, you've taken a overall 6% DPS loss by casting Shadow Word: Pain initially. It's well worth waiting even 10 seconds just to make sure your Shadow Word: Pain gets all the buffs applied.

Originally Posted by Mem

Regarding Anub'barak

Originally Posted by MasterDinadan

Finishers do not depend on the weapon speed or damage whatsoever. Envenom's damage is based only on your AP and nothing else. So really, the only reason it matters is because finishers can PROC things from the main hand.

The advantage to wielding the slower weapon in the main hand is that your mutilates hit slightly harder.

However it is always advantageous to put instant poison on the faster weapon, and since finishers CAN proc poisons (and other effects) from your main hand, you will be able to proc IP on finishers if you put the faster weapon MH. Turns out this is more useful than getting slightly more damage out of your mutilates.

Originally Posted by manly

Same as every other dot in wow. If you refresh living bomb, you lose partial ticks. If the dot ticks every 3 seconds, and you refresh at 5 seconds, then you have 2 seconds of wasted dot dps, since your tick will happen at 3 and 8 seconds if you do that.

Its particularly more notable when you have the explosion of living bomb happen at the end of it. You not only lose partial ticks, you also lose the explosion by refreshing too early. And thats not even mentioning mana.

If you go JC, the profession gain is limited by how good the jc-only gems are versus the non jc-only gems. Since it is unlikely they make new jc-only gems, but likely they add new gems later on, I expect the profession to scale down with progression.

Blacksmithing is the reverse. The better the gems are, the better the profession boost is.