Ellyh

Sorry but I don't buy this 50% healing 50% damage role. Raids min/max, that is a given that isn't going to change. Druids can dps/offtank because they have the ability to deal competitive damage in a tankish spec. Also the tank requirements within an instance there is more vary more than than the number of healers, 1-4 varying wildly vs 6-8 varying not much outside certain blatant exceptions in sunwell where the raid designers really went way beyond what is normal.

Nothing I have seen added to disc indicates that it will be a competitive dps spec. It brings no utility to the raid in this role and requires notably different talents to the healing role. Also you will need two appropriately tricked out gear sets even given the spellpower changes because of Hit/regen issues. Don't be fooled by the current triviality of Kara into thinking that 10 mans will favour this sort of flexibility, think instead of starting ZA in appropriate gear or doing ZA on a bear run. This is more indicative of what I expect cutting edge 10 mans to be like and there is no room in either case for a raid to bring a bits and pieces player who is not 100% effective in a least one role.

 

Brinas

I agree when it comes to 25-man but 10-man is much more flexible. When I joined my kara raid more than a year ago, I was in nothing but quest gear as shadow spec. When most other raids that I knew of were bringing 3 healers, we had a holy priest, a resto shaman, and me, a recently-respeced-from-holy shadow priest. My damage contribution was slightly more than the tanks but my VT/VE, and shackle were just enough to let the raid kill things they were previously struggling on.
I think in a top end guild my argument doesn't hold well, but with the proposed 10-man wotlk raids there will be much more casual raiding going on, and I think people will be more willing to take a disc priest as a 3rd offhealer than another hunter or something. Pickups/Casuals are happy to get any healer they can. If we're talking the Wotlk equivalent to SWP then yeah I don't think the 50/50 is very viable.

 

Tainter

I agree with your sentiments about Persecution. Perhaps it could be granted an effect similar to Mangle bit instead of Bleed effects, Magic effects. Otherwise I'd prefer it if it was a Stun, Root or even Daze effect. The fact that it's an Incapacitate effect means that I wouldn't take it. In fairness, I don't think Disc needs an ability like that, but of course it depends on what "the others" are getting.

 

Alici

In response to Ellyh about dual roles and Tainter about Persecution...

Discipline will have a deep holy talent for healing synergy in Grace. If what's holding discipline back from an alternative (or simultaneous?) DPS role is raid utility, then how about adding a utility component to Persecution:


Persecution (5 points): Your holy damage spells have a (2%/4%/6%/8%/10%) chance to incapacitate the target for 3 seconds, and have a 20%/40%/60%/80%/100% chance to place the "Divine Persecution" effect, increasing damage done by spell critical strikes by 10%(20%?). Divine Persecution stacks up to 5 times, and lasts 10 seconds.


This would give Discipline priests an unique mechanic, gives them a reason to DPS in raids, and it would also be thematically relevant (Foes are blinded by divine light, making them more vulnerable), while still retaining the initial PvP/solo element.

It would also give disc priests in raids a choice, or perhaps dual responsibility, to keep both Grace and this debuff up, and further utilitizes Penance, making it a useful tool to stack either for healing or for damage.

 

Thorongil

Towards Persecution: The incapacitate effect seems a bit awkward to me. It has no real use in PvE and especially in arenas it could probably result in a whole lot of Holy Nova Rank 1 spam, especially when fighting melees. I wouldn´t mind if was changed in something that gives raid-utility. Although even then the worth of Holy/Disc-DPS speccs has to be doubted strongly.

 

PyroTEK85

I don't think it's been mentioned on these forums, but I've read rumors that Persecution may work with Reflective Shield the same way Blackout can with Shadowguard/Touch of Weakness. If that's the case, I'd imagine it would have some PvP viability, especially when melee try to focus on you.

 

Tainter

It would be nice if that was true. However the tool-tip leads me to believe that it isn't the case, because PW:S isn't a "holy damage spell". Let's hope though, hehe.

If you can't join them?
Beat them.

 

PyroTEK85

You're right it's not. The trigger would be Reflective Shield, and I guess that will depend on whether it's considered a damage spell or some other effect. It may not be, because unlike Shadowguard or Touch of Weakness, it's not a separate spell in your spell book, its a talent. I hope it will work though, as it would go well with the defensive theme theme Disc seems to have.

 

Alici

If Reflective Shield and Persecution have such synergy, it would be a much greater benefit than that. Reflective Shield procs on everything. Melee, ranged, spells, DoT ticks, anything that would damage the priest under PW:S would have a 10% chance to incapacitate the attacker. In past duels where I asked an affliction lock to help me test the talent, he was literally machine-gunned by his own DoTs being reflected, and with Persecution each reflect would potentially CC him. Also, PW:S can be cast on others, and then those group members would also be protected by Reflective Shield. Imagine a 5x5 arena match, where everyone on the opposing side could cause you to become CC'ed if you attack them. It's quite a powerful mechanic, would make disc priests in arena teams even more indispensible, and easily justifies why it's only an incapacitate effect rather than a stun or other stronger effect, if this synergy is actually in place.

 

Ellyh

With reports comming in from beta testers that grace has an 8/9 sec duration it's going to be very similar to lifebloom as to how many targets you can keep buffed. The new twin faiths talent will also help reduce the power disparity between holy and disc.

 

Havoc12

Priest - WotlkWiki - Wrath of the Lich King Information

There seems to be a new talent tree out. I wonder if its real


Discipline

- Focused will removed and replaced with enlightenment

- Improved inner fire also increases healing bonus from inner fire by 10/20/30%

- Focused will nerfed to 2% less damage 3% more healing per stack

- Divine aegis now says its 30% of critical heals, not just GH/FH.

- Grace nerfed to 2% per stack.

- Rapture changed to 2.5% of healing from GH/FH/Penance and 25% of the damage absorbed by PW:Shield return as mana to you --> A very big boost to the mana efficiency of PW:S but no mana returned to party.

- *NEW* Borrowed time 5 ranks, reduces global CD on PWS by 0.1sec and increases the damage absorbed by 4% of your healing.





The new borrowed time talent is also very powerfull. 50% of bonus healing effects and 15% improvement from imp PWS means that at 2500 healing PWS heals for about (1265 + 2500*0.5)*1.15 = 2892, infinitely better than an FH. On top of that 25% of this is returned to you as mana i.e. 723 mana. In other words disc priests will be hitting the PWS on the tank every CD, as they gain mana from casting it and it increases their HPS greatly: 1 sec for 2892 healing is better than gheal rank 7 at this +healing and it has no overheal. A disc priest on the tank will now result in MASSIVE damage reduction. 2892 every 15 secods + maybe 10% less damage from inspiration + 6% less damage from grace + divine aegis. If the disc priest is casting on average 4k heals on the tank every 2.5 secondswith 25% crit rate that means 180 damage reduction per second or 2700 damage reduced per 15 seconds. Lets say that without divine aegis and PWS the tank would take 3k DPS. Inpiration and grace reduce that by 16% so that becomes 2520. Add to that 372 less DPS from PWS/aegis that is 2148 DPS. The damage on the tank has been reduced by a total of (3000-2148)/3000 = 28%. On top of that the tank also gains 6% more healing.

This is definately making disc priests very strong tank healers.

 

Jonny_Monroe

So you guys don't mind throwing PW:S on arcane mages in in fights where the whole raid takes damage, then? Arcane gets a really nice tallent to buff their spell damage whenever they absorb damage.

 

Jubling

Borrowed Time seems spectacularly useless, reducing the global cooldown on a spell that also has a 4 second cooldown and a 15 second recast on the same target doesn't make any sense. Compare it to the similar Resto druid talent which works on two different spells that don't have any kind of cooldown, which results in actually being able to cast those spells faster.

The damage spells proc incapacitates talent and wand spec got replaced by a +5% damage and healing talent, finally a great talent at the start of the Disc tree!

 

Havoc12

What are you talking about? You should go back and re-read my post. The 0.5 reduction in CD allows you to spam the spell on CD, for free while increasing your HPS output! at a 1.5 second GCD PWS has less HPS than gheal. With 1 second CD it has significantly more. If you are add 1 PWS every 16 seconds, e.g. a sequence of 6 gheal + 1 PWS then if your current HPS is X with this your HPS will be 1/16*2892+15/16*X. At X=1000 this represents a 12% increase in HPS output. Without the 0.5sec reduction and 20% extra scaling adding 1 PWS every 16 seconds REDUCES your HPS at X=1000. Far from being useless borrowed time represents a very hefty increase in your single target HPS and makes PWS a spell you want to be using as much as possible.

 

Brinas

I thought the same thing at first. Then I realized that they are trying to make PW: S a primary spell for disc priests, but they don't want them to just spam it on the main tank because that would be OP. I think the Borrowed Time effect is intending to make it so that Disc priests can use PW: S for helping with raid healing by keeping people alive until the Chain heal goes off, etc. With all the talents that improve PW: S you get +35% to the shield, reflect 50% of that, and 3.5 second CD, granted you spend 13 talent points for this. I don't think it's amazing but would be nice to see PW: S absorb more than just half of a hit (if that).

Twin Disciplines is definitely nice. Will most likely be taken in any priest spec, imo.

 

Havoc12

An imporatnt point to remember is that PWS now returns more mana than it takes to cast it due to rapture being affected by PWS. Disc priests will ideally want to cast as much PWS as possible, as they can regenerate mana that way. However when you are tank healing, you can just take GCDs whenever you fell like. The 0.5 reduction is essential for making good use of PWS.

 

Palendior

Well yes, it will be a must in any spec aside from some early levelling perhaps - and that is why I think it is a poor choice as an answer from Blizzard to the (justified) complaint that Discipline tree suffers from having to spend talent points on useless filler talents in order to reach the awesome stuff at the end of the tree.

An all across talent in the first tier that adds to both damage and healing - what is the point, from a design perspective? Effectively, since 5/5 here becomes a must for all specs, when the time comes for fine tuning the balance between classes towards the end of the beta, Blizzard will have to assume that all priests have it and thus balance the overall output of either the encounters or of the overall priest output (through coefficients, itemization etc).

And thus the net result of this talent is nothing, except to remove 5 talents points from the choice making in setting up specs - effectively lessening complexity and game strategy options. Twin Disciplines as it stands is just lazy design, and I hope it won't make it to release but is rather a temporary placeholder, recognizing the need for a new talent here, while working out a more proper talent.

I am glad to see that the designers are listening and adjusting to justified criticisms of problems - I just wish they would have chosen a much better option to the lack of viable talents in the early part of the discipline tree. The ideal first tier talents are such that they are tempting for all other trees to pick, while never being a must and preferably having a situational use. obviously they shouldn't be useless either, such as Wand Spec is. As such, Unbreakable Will is an excellent first tier talent. I would have loved to have seen a similar talent alongside it, as a meaningful talent point dump for the discipline tree. Alternatively, if they really feel they want Twin Disciplines to be in there, oputit a few tiers further down, so you have to sacrifice something in order to grab it for your Holy and Shadow specs.

 

Thorongil

Let me get this straight, you would rather fancy spending 5 points in a talent that is quite pointless (at least in PvE) than getting a quite awesome Tier1-talent, only because it is so good (for Tier 1) that everyone has it? By that rationality any good low-tier-talents would have to be removed or moved higher up in the trees. I would assume that the designer think of your scenario before adding a talent (especially if it´s Tier 1) and the intention is not to nerf the priest but to buff any priest-specc in which I can´t see a problem.

 

Palendior

Of course I wouldn't. As a player I will of course choose the talent, because it is awesome for me as a player, compared to not having taken the talent. I am discussing in what way it adds to the quality of the priest trees from a game design perspective. And from that point, any talent that is such a must that everyone will have it is poor design. The whole point with having talent trees is to force players to make choices. Forcing players to take useless talents (as it now is) is not good. But forcing players to take talents that are so obvious that the class as a whole will have to be balanced around everyone having them, is also bad.

What I would rather fancy is a tree design that forces me to think "hmmm.. should I take this little goodie, or that little goodie?". Current lack of goodies does not. But neither does Twin Disciplines because it is an effectively mandatory talent (for Discipline, Holy and Shadow priests alike) - and one that does not add in any way to game play either.

EDIT: Oh, now I see what you mean - Unbreakable Will - I didn't mean that that talent is great per se, just that the fundamental functioning of it ("sometimes something useful procs") is a good choice for a tier 1 talent, while as Twin Disciplines ("almost everything you do is always 5% better") is a bad choice. Obviously I would prefer a much more PvE oriented talent there than Unbreakable Will, alongside UW.

 

constantius

Just as notes on the new PW:S talent:

1) You don't PW:S a tank every cooldown. This reduces their rage.
2) It's not a massive damage reduction if it's roughly 3k at max-rank. The scaling from Vanilla->TBC went from just over 1k to just over 2k. Going to 3k is a natural progression, and last I checked *TBC* bosses hit for 8-10k. Absorbing part of a hit isn't "massive dmg reduction". Get your perspectives straight.

From the look of the new tree, Blizz has no intention of Disc being a fully viable PvE spec. The nerf to Rapture and Grace, along with the other changes and the clear indication that they intend 51st point talents to be PvP-centric indicate to me that nothing has changed. You can go deep Disc if your raid lets you, but it's crap. You won't heal for anywhere near as much, your damage will be mediocre at best, and your 'amazing utility' consists of keeping a 6% healing / 6% reduced damage buff up on a tank.

It's on the same level as an affliction warlock, something no serious raid guild has had since early BT excepting learning attempts on Brutallus where the -5% damage may have meant something.

My best attempt at a dps-focused Smite-build that includes Grace for raid-utility is this and the overall gains are:
1) 5% spell damage
2) 6% spirit as spell damage + 80 raid-wide spirit
3) 5% spell damage (good job repeating a talent, Blizz)
4) 4% spell hit on Smite
5) 5% crit on holy spells
6) 10% damage to Smite, Holy Fire and Holy Nova

Just in case anyone is confused ... THIS IS HORRIBLE. As a dps spec, there is very very little synergy, there is only *one* scaling modifier, and you'll hit like a wet noodle. Take a close look at shadow and the synergies there for an example of how you're supposed to do things. Shadowform (15%), Shadoweaving (10%), Misery (5%), Darkness (10%), Shadow Power (10% crit, 50% increased crit bonus) and Twisted Faith (30% of spirit as spell power with scaling damage based on total shadow DoTs on the mob). It's not even close. Grace doesn't even come in the same ballpark as a real dps spec like Shadow. All of the talents are based around increasing your *spell damage*, not your actual spell scaling. This means overall it's much much less effective.

I do hope they keep tweaking Disc, don't get me wrong. Just don't make faulty assumptions at this stage in the game. The changes from early Alpha of Grace and Rapture have been entirely toward pvp and soloing, and away from raid utility and a gimped replacement for a shadow priest.

Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can't help being stupid. - R.A. Heinlein

Anyone who cannot cope with mathematics is not fully human. At best he is a tolerable subhuman who has learned to wear shoes, bathe, and not make messes in the house. - R.A. Heinlein

 

Havoc12

1) Sorry but a tank taking 2.1k DPS instead of 3k DPS will STILL have his rage bar at 100% permanently, its a lot more rage than a tank can spend. To be threat starved a tank needs to be taking less than 700 DPS, which is pathetic. You outheal with with flash of light. The very idea that you would not want to reduce 3k DPS to 2.1k DPS because you would rage starve your tank is absurd.

2) First of all you need to get your numbers straight. Its 3k *at level 70 values*. Second, you are telling me that dont consider the fact that a single healer can reduce 3k DPS on a tank down to 2.1k DPS massive damage reduction? If that is the case we have a difference of oppinion here because I consider that bloody insane. If an 8-10k hit become a 5-7k hit I would certainly call that massive damage reduction. Its damage reduction equivalent to a 3 stack lifebloom. You don't think that is a tad much?

If you want to talk progression then at 80 with 3k equivalent of +healing PWS with this talent will absorb (2300 + 1500)*1.15 = 4370 damage, return 1092.5 mana (228 more than it cost to cast it) and have 1 second GCD. In contrast your gheal spell at 80 for a disc priest using the same values will hit for about 8.5-9k. PWS is close to 50% of a max rank gheal. You call that natural progression? I dont think so.

At level 70 levels PWS reduces incoming tank damage by 150 DPS, for a 1 second cast and returns 200 mana. If your tank takes 3k DPS that is 5% extra damage reduction ON TOP of inspiration, grace and divine aegis. Instead of adding 9% healing and 9% DR, disc now adds 11% DR and 6% healing. I would argue that that is more useful than just grace.

The amount of damage reduction a disc priest offers is extreme and all of it returns mana rather than costing anything.

Certainly taking the party return of rapture away greatly reduces the viability of deep disc, but the ability of disc to reduce the damage the tank takes has gone UP not down.

 

Vihermaali

PW:S changes are quite interesting. But you have to remember, Power Word: Shield still causes weakened soul effect, so spamming it on tank isn't possible. But then you have to also remember: before enlightement was changed, at least I felt I had to "waste" at least 4+ points for almost no return, in order to get access to later talents. I'd rather spend them for upgrading PW:S than dispels.

Like Havoc12 said, damage reduction disc priest offers seems to be pretty significant:
1)Grace -6% dmg taken +6% healing done
2)Using PW:Shield actually gives you mana, and seems to be (at 70) on par with flash heal's healing done
3)Shields Diving Aegis gives - dunno how they will work yet tho, but with 20-25% crit rate we will see them often
4)Inspiration: with penance inspiration up time will go up greatly. Thanks goes to Penance, which has chance to crit every second (or less with spellhaste). 25% crit and chances to have inspiration up majority of the time are great.

In addition to normal heals (and not counting Pain Suppression). I've always felt that healing priests were taken in the raid because of their ability to keep people alive, not because they gave some nice buff. Then again, I was never a shadowpriest. But my point is: less group synergy (rapture nerf) seems to continue this trend. I'm not sure it was actually a nerf tho.