PvP Dispersion will be great -- if it's not dispellable with normal dispels. (i.e. it would take the same MD that ice block/DS takes) If it's dispellable normally, then it's spellstealable and most times you'd need to use it, it would get stripped away immediately.

If it's not considered a magic effect, then that's just gravy.

Apparently in the data mined alpha files I'm told it's counted as being a physical effect with no dispel type.

Heh. I can't imagine that going live, or even getting off the drawing board considering that Silent Resolve's -20% was deemed OP. Maybe the -30% on Shadowform is intended to replace Shadow Affinity entirely, and the old talent will be removed. Shadow Affinity is peculiar, as most threat reduction talents have been given secondary benefits by now. I was surprised it didn't get one in these leaked changes, but if the plan is just to remove it that would make sense.

I don't think the multi-target vt->mind sear combo will be as great as it seams, and won't scale at all past three targets.

1.5 second cast x3 =4.5 seconds (5 with lag) then two mind sears and your VT's start expiring. 2x 1.5 seconds, and your first VT ends before your third mind sear does. Lots of busy work.

Heaven forbid we have to do more than push a single button (or 3) to get results right?

edit: Also, my VT is at 1.3s cast now so you might want to factor haste into your calculations.

With it now only being 2% mana return, they need to redo the rest of VT. Make it a 30 sec duration no damage debuff similar to Vampiric Embrace.

With the trend towards AE capability in WotLK VT in its current form will become somewhat useless. And without it we'll be nothing more than a second rate AE/DPS caster.

I'm not seeing the necessity in dotting 3 targets with VT. You know you gain mana back for damage done to ANY target so long as VT is on one target, right? If anything you would put up one VT and 2x SWP in the case that there weren't enough targets being hit by Mind Sear to cause it's damage/cast time to surpass that of SWP. Also, the casting system introduced with patch 2.3 is effective at eliminating casting lag, so I wouldn't add in that half second of lag.

Shadow Power - "Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death spells by 2/4/6/810%, and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death spells by 10/20/30/40/50%."

I'm thinking it would be a lot more useful if it were tweaked a little:

Shadow Power - "Increases the critical strike chance of your Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death spells by 2/4/6/810%, and increases the critical strike damage bonus of your Mind Blast spell by 20/40/60/80/100%."

Possibly reduce the critical damage bonus to some point between 50% and 100%, since mind blast is castable much more often than SWD.

I am 99% positive that this is false. I'll in heroic mech right now, though, so I guess I'll test it to make sure.

Edit: Yeah, you are 100% wrong. Sorry bud.

I don't see how you could have tested this as we don't have a shadow AE spell at the moment. (Unless you are a part of the F&F alfa).

There in only one direct target of Mind Sear. Maybe that target having VT is enough to gain back 2% mana of whole damage the spell does, including any other nearby target that gets affected by it.

My understanding of VT is that it returns mana for all (non-wand) shadow damage dealt by you to a target debuffed with your VT. Bloodtear appears to be suggesting that it returns mana for all such damage targetted at a target debuffed with your VT. This seems an unlikely way to go about things, though I cannot off the top of my head think of any way to test it at present (since we have no AoEs). Tymir appears to be suggesting that as long as you have VT active on something, you will gain mana for all such damage dealt to anything (so for example if I put VT on ghoul A and then I begin nuking ghoul B, I will gain mana for the damage done to ghoul B). This last version of events is incorrect, and that is what Renegar is responding to.

What seems evident is that, even if it's coded that way for now (no way to test on live), it won't survive the beta phase... Having VT return all AE damage as long as primary target is under the effect would be way overpowered.

Disc is meant to heal in raids, especially with the new talents. Rapture isn't affected by damage spells. Only GH, FH, and Penance. You include Grace, Penance, and Divine Aegis in that mess, and its pretty obvious that they are supposed to be single target (read: tanks)/ulitily healers. They will not be the best healers, but I do believe your right when you say there will be a disc, holy, and shadow priest in each raid.

I see a 51/20, or 53/18 (i would say take SoR over penance, but thats one of the three spells that affects rapture). The first 4 tiers of holy talents mesh well with deep disc. +crit, inspiration, -time/mana on GHs.

Basically, they are doing what they said they would do. Making it so Disc is raid viable. They won't be the best healers, but they bring so much utility to a raid (and rapture is sick nasty) that its definitely worth it.

Edit: sorry for going offtopic =D

I wonder if Mind Sear will proc Blackout or stack Shadow Weaving on secondary targets.

Highly possible, shadow dmg is shadow dmg

impact and ignite can proc on AoE effects, I see no reason why shadow weaving and blackout wouldn't.

What I would be interested in however is if shadow weaving stacks per tick on mind sear. I know mindflay only stacks it per cast, but mind-flay is essentially a DoT (with a dependany on a dummy channel effect to stay up). Only 1 target is effectively being channeled on mind sear and the AoE component can't be considered enviromental (like blizzard and flamestrike are). So its highly likely the AoE part is considered a direct damage effect each second, and hence will stack shadow weaving in 5 seconds (which the warlocks will LOVE when they're seeding).

It might be a bit early to ask this question, but is there any word on whether the duration is refreshed at the start or end of a Mind Flay?

They changed some of the Shadow talents around in the F&F Alpha. According to the wiki, here are the changes:

Priest Patch Notes For F&F Alpha

So Dark Spirit and Growing Pains basically got new effects added to them. The new effect on Twisted Faith is basically the affliction talent Soul Siphon (except not shared among shadow priests), so expect it to work similarly. To whit: the number of extra effects is calculated on-cast and does not include the mindflay itself, although recasting a mindflay early will allow the previous one to count as the debuff is still up when the new one starts casting.

Two sources list different numbers for Twisted Faith, No idea what's the correct one.

Also note:

So much for double dipping on healing items : /

Vampiric Touch is a debuff applied to the mob, so if it works like pretty much every other similar debuff, you're not going to get mana back except from damage applied to that specific mob.

Consider:

Rapture - In a raid setting, you're unlikely to generate more than around 500 hps from direct, single target heals. There simply isn't enough to heal and too many healers covering it. So your Rapture is really no better than Mana Spring Totem - nice, but not gamebreaking.

Grace - The mitigation value of this talent is roughly equivalent to the buffs/debuffs an Affliction Warlock brings to your tank. Since people don't tend to use Affliction Warlocks now in endgame raiding, I don't know that they'll bring Discipline Priests for Grace either.

Divine Aegis - Compare this to Test of Faith. Test of Faith provides superior burst precisely when you need it (target low on health). Divine Aegis provides superior burst precisely when you don't - when you just landed a critical. In a raid healing situation, all Divine Aegis is really going to do is reduce the effective healing on your Druid's Lifebloom.

All of these talents are great if you're solo-healing instance or PvP'ing. And they're all mediocre in a PvE raid setting where burst and longevity are key. I just don't see a Discipline Priest as being even close to a Holy Priest in raid healing performance given the WotLK talents.

Divine Aegis also provides that additional heal in a way that guarantees its utility, possibly even if the entire original heal was overheal. It depends on the exact interpretation of the wording, but a crit heal means that some of the heal is counting towards the next attack rather than the current one.

Looking at the talents and spells i notice a couple things. One, we have very few new spells listed compared to the other class' I have seen. Two, Dispersion is a great talent but it seems a little underpowered as a 51 points talent. I almost wonder if Dispersion is planned as a new spell but is being implemented as a talent point right now for tuning. I know blizzard did something similar with Cloak of Shadows in the Subtelty tree for rogues prior to BC release.