Yes, as a holy priest with 7% crit, getting a crit when you need it is very lucky. Specing as disc you would double your crit rating to somewhere around 14% without even taking into the likelihood that wotlk will have more crit on good healing pieces due to gear consolidation. Add in the fact that penance has 3 chances to crit in 3 seconds, while G Heal only has one in 2.5, and you get a lot more reliable crits. It won't be on par with a holy paladin, but it will be significantly more frequent than a holy priest.

I do agree with the people talking about differences between Aegis needing a crit, and PWS not being able to crit. I think that they need to make grace proc off of renew or at least PWS. If it proc'd off PWS that's only another 1 spell every 15 seconds on the same target to get off a grace. Although this might be a little broken for PVP, especially if the +6% healing of grace applies to PWS as the -6% damage already helps it.

I think that disc isn't quite where it needs to be to guarantee a raid spot, but I definitely think that its above the -20% that people are giving it. It relies on more tricks that are harder to calculate than holy does. Holy has a lot of +healing talents with a large reliance on G Heal. I think disc will be using a larger number of spells. It's also harder to calculate disc's efficiency/tank healing capabilities because disc has mana regen that is based on effective healing, aegis which is based on crit rating and can override itself, pennance and PWS which both have cooldown limitations, and many more "oh crap" buttons. I know I wouldn't want to try to do the math on all that without actually seeing it in action first.

Also, as others have said, it will be largely dependent on what type of encounters are most dominant.

At the risk of stating the obvious, but couldn't the Disc style (damage absorption) through PW:S and Divine Aegis potentially rage/mana starve a tank, esp. with a higher crit rate? It's the whole "don't shield the MT before you pull" argument but applied to combat. Yes, you could say the same of Inspiration - but a healing crit spree vs say a Karazhan level boss on a well geared tank could be quite painful.

I think DA needs to be reworked a little. Perhaps 3 charges of 10-15% instead of 30%.

It doesn't really matter if the tank gets hit for 8k or 5k he'll get a full rage bar anyway... and if you're in an encounter where the boss doesn't hit that hard you'll be using those shields on your casters since soft hitting bosses means big raid damage. I can see disc priests being good on all encounters, but I really wonder why holy got the mana conserve talent for overheals, it really feels like it should be in disc!

I feel very strongly that Rapture needs to go back to group mana return. We currently raid with 2 shadow priests and are looking to move to a third for more mana regen. If we priests are meant to be a mana battery, by all means that is fine with me, but let's please make a strong push to get Rapture back to returning mana to the group.



Also:
Since my thread on the holy talents was locked, can the OP please update his first page to include the holy talents/changes etc. I listed.

Just copy and paste if you have to.

Yeah, anything that needs more than two healers to keep a tank up (all bosses really) will blow through those shields like they weren't there as far as rage gen is concerned.

This. That would make an ENORMOUS difference in disc raid viability.

I'd say make PI a group buff, rapture working as mana regen for the group and put PI back on 3 min cd from 2. Then you're pretty set, because as of now I think you're not getting the bang for the buck as discipline.

Edit: Also put PS on 2 min cd again.... 3 min cd on a spell which is pretty hard to use (you'll pretty much have to use it BEFORE big damage) makes it alot worse. The 5% less threat is already enough if blizzard are afraid of us spamming it.

1. I used hps for the same reason I used Greater Heal: it's the standard metric. If you have an argument for using a different metric, then present it. I'm not going to do the math for you on every possible combination of effects a Priest can launch in an attempt to prove whatever point you're trying to make.

2. The 1.24 scaling factor is the haste bonus from Improved Holy Concentration, taken over time. Presuming you never cast Binding Heal, you have an 1 - (0.84 ^ 3) = 0.407296 chance of having proc'd Clearcasting on one of the three previous heals. Since the haste bonus is 60%, this means you have 24.43776% haste over time. Or simplified, 24%.

3. Integrating overheal. Your numbers seem to be just made up off the top of your head. Each 1% critical adds 0.5% for Holy and 0.95% for Discipline in raw throughput. If you want to calculate overheal into the mix, you'll need raw data from WotLK content parses - which I'm pretty sure you don't have and I'm positive I don't have. Also, saying Divine Aegis and PW:S do not overheal is a bit like saying Renew doesn't overheal. While literally true, these effects still generate wasted healing - overhealing is a conflict between two heals and even though damage meters aren't comprehensive enough to track the interaction properly, when analyzing healing strategies you have to recognize the existance of the second heal.

Grace cannot overheal because it doesn't heal in the first place. It's like noting that Spiritual Healing can't overheal. True, but why mention it?

4. I've read the entire discussion, and the "20%" figure cited is based on a slightly different set of talents.

Whether or not raids will care about Improved Spirit is a somewhat interesting question.

In current Burning Crusade raiding, Improved Spirit is largely useless to healers since only two healers gain much benefit and the benefit they gain is rather slight due to the fact that 10% of Spirit to spell damage/healing is such a small portion of their total healing. It's also not very useful for dps casters since dps casters don't have much Spirit.

In WotLK, some emphasis is being placed on giving pure dps casters (Warlocks, Mages) reason to stack Spirit. However, the enormous disparity between the mana consumption of chain-cast nukes and any remotely feasible level of mana regeneration means that it is almost never worthwhile for dps casters to waste any of their itemization points on mana regeneration. If they do have issues with mana, they either use external mana regeneration or respec to take advantage of a more mana efficient spec. They don't try to pile on mp5/Spirit gear.

Resto Druids get less return on investment for Spirit in WotLK as well. Spirit stacking isn't a particularly viable strategy for them right now, as they're chain-casting as well.

So it's looking like in WotLK the only players who will really benefit significantly from IDS are healing Priests. This is simply too few players in a raid to make a raid-wide buff of such low magnitude all that impressive.

In terms of Rapture, it makes Power Word: Shield "less than free" at any reasonable level of gear, which is certainly very solid. However, the combination of Weakened Soul and the cooldown make PW:S inappropriate as a primary heal. Rapture will likely reduce the cost of Greater Heal about the same as Holy Concentration and Flash Heal a little less than Holy Concentration.

In terms of Borrowed Time, this certainly makes PW:S quite a bit better. However, it's still going to be outscaled by Flash Heal in Holy. The reduction in cast time is nice, but reducing the cast time on cooldown abilities doesn't help the cooldown abilities so much as it gives you more time to do other things. Since virtually everything that falls under the rubric 'other things' that Discipline could do is either inferior to Holy or only marginally superior, the cast time reduction just isn't all that worthwhile.

When rapture was a group mana return it was much deeper in the tree and weaker in effect (returned only 2% of effective healing and nothing from damage absorbed by pw:shield). Tests on alpha were showing returns of less a mana spring totem to a group w/ constant spamming. It also virtually "forced" the priest to forgo all personal regen outside the fsr in order to continue to maintain giving mana to the group. It's just not like dps based regen where more dps = more mana. More healing just wasn't equating to more mana simply because there are functions of healing that are beyond your control. You can't just "heal more" and return more mana. Your productivity will be limited by the tanks incoming damage and any other heals that would cause you to overheal.

Even if it was mana returned for all healing, the poor priest who had that job would be nonstop spamming. The blizz devs were very clear that they did not want any healing class spamming a single button over and over. At the same time they also didn't want to ditch an alternative to spirit regen since disc is a very spell spammy tree. Even if you aren't spamming heals you would be spamming buffs like PI and pw:shield a fair amount w/ the current talents.

I would really caution anyone about looking for "one great talent" that will suddenly make disc a mandatory raid build. It already is pretty much the mandatory pvp build and is quite good at it.

Edit: I disagree about IDS being of less value to people. The reason it was reduced is because the amount of spirit on gear was increased. And if you look at spriests who convert spirit into damage and arcane mages who also have spirit based talents there are a number of classes that will benefit from DS and IDS. I would say all priest specs will benefit significantly from spirit and it's a travesty, imo, that DS is not a trainable spell even if IDS was left as a talent. Would be nice if they would just roll IDS into Imp fort, but I'm dreaming on that one! Improved stam and spirit: just like food buffs!

2nd Edit: As far as druids they have a meditation spell so they still receive 30% of their spirit regen while casting. Spirit regen scales well for them even with chain casting. I think the one thing they are missing is a spirit to +heal talent that priests, shaman (int to +heal), and pallys (also int to +heal) already have.

Kortar, I would like to differ n one point, there. For warlocks and Arcane Mages at least, spirit just GREATLY increased in value. I know on my own warlock I am already trying to grab gear with some spirit for the exchange.

Warlocks now have 4 uses for spirit: 30% (33% talented) Regen with Fel Armor, 30% (33% talented) to Spellpower from Fel Armor, 15% to Stamina conversion from their Demonic Embrace talent, and mana return from Lifetap (scales with three times your spirit).

Arcane mages are now getting a talent to convert 15% of their spirit into crit rating, along with a spirit-amplifying talent in literally linked to the former.

I cannot speak for other classes that well, but IDS is hardly "useless" to anyone other than Warriors, DK's, Feral Druids (though they use it in limited fashion anyway), and Hunters.

Just a quick note about DS and IDS. Outside of IDS. I see DS rank 6 being useless simply because you can now have an inscriber make equivalent scrolls. Do you really want to lose the deep holy talents for 6% spirit as spell power. :/

This seems to be one more reason to make Divine Spirit a trainable ability already (while still leaving the Improved part of it as talents).

I really really do not understand this- scroll of spirit, an item anyone can use any time is equal in strength to a 21-point "signature" talent? That just doesn't seem correct at all. 21 point talents are supposed to be unique and useful abilities: not just something you can get to replace widely available consumables. Yes I am a bit outraged, I really hope Blizzard is looking at this- to make DS trainable or something, as many of us have been asking for it as such for quite a long time.

I also agree with those who have said, it doesn't seem that hybrid priests will be prevalant. There is just TOO much amazing goodies located at the very bottom of the holy tree. I think it would be more gimp to take a 23/48 or 42/29 hybrid than it would to just bring a full-on disc priest to a raid. In pre-tbc raiding, we had 31 point talents of holy and disc that were very lackluster- the 25/26 builds and such were very popular and good. But it would seem to me any kind of disc/holy or holy/disc hybrid in wrath will be super gimped, with neither GS or PS. Of course as many have said most of "what will be good" healing wise hinges on the encounters themselves.

Thank you Maybella, this is very important and needs to be looked at.

Shaman Resto Tree - Nature's Swiftness (no consumable can give you instant heals)
Priest Holy Tree - Improved death is only good because of the spirit buff, even then it is kind of lack luster.
Druid Resto Tree - Nature's Swiftness (again no consumable given, very good)
Paladin Holy Tree - Divine Favor (100% crit, very useful) If used with holy shock you can have back to back instant casts with the new Infusion of Light talent that makes your holy light instant after critting with holy shock... very good combination.

Just an idea off the top of my head, since Inner Focus is on a 3 minute cooldown why not make a 21 point talent something along the lines of this:

Prolonged Focus - If you do not critically heal while using inner focus, your spells stay reduced in cost (10% decreasing per cast) until you do critically hit (only affects spells that can)

For example you would use inner focus to greater heal, it costs no mana and has increased crit chance, but if it does not crit, then your next spell cast has 90% redux in cost, so on and so forth until its back to 0% reduced or you critically heal? Again just a random suggestion.

Again, I ask politely, Blizzard if you are reading please look at the Disciple Tree.

The "signature" (if you like) from Divine Spirit is the scaling part. It looks like Fortitude also is replaced by a scroll for tanks on progress encounters, as far as I remember the best Scroll of Stamina is 150+. To me the scrolls are a good thing, as they give us more choices. It's not like priests will be left behind in Ironforge because of this anyway.

I agree with Havoc12 who has said a few times that 23/38-specs won't make it into Wrath (as 23/48). It's either deep disc or deep holy. Scrolls only make that choice even more easy.

It's a thin line before it gets overpowered. It would have some heavy implications for PvP with 10 seconds Weakened Soul debuff - I know a few warriors who wouldn't be very happy about that. Reducing the cooldown sounds reasonable though.

PS! PI as group buff ... ye right

That would be a rather logic change in my opinion, given the changes to Totems and how powerful Bloodlust/Heroism will remain.

Right now Power Infusion doesn't stack with the new Wrath of Air Totem which increases Spell Haste by 10% for the entire raid, instead of spell power for just the party.

So in any situation that has a Wrath of Air Totem up (all raiding) PI ends up giving 1 person 10% spell haste increase and 20% mana cost decrease for 15sec every 2min or every 1min 36sec with 2/2 Aspiration.

With Aspiration and using PI on a caster every cooldown gives an average gain of 1.56% Spell Haste and 3.12% Mana cost decrease. With such values this simply has no place in PvE unless The Curator becomes the blue print for many future encounters. As a group buff it still doesn't look that appealing in 25man raids if it remains to not stack with the new WoA totem, for a 10man with only 1 shaman and doing windfury it would be more than worth it of course.

Has anyone noticed that many of our new talents are based on old set bonuses/procs from gear?

Divine Aegis is a scaling version of the old Tier 3 (Faith) 4-set bonus (Armor of Faith 500 HP shield). Missed this - was always good healing an OT @ Patchwerk and seeing 1-2 of these on your tank. AFAIK, DA doesn't stack which is a shame.

Test of Faith is basically the proc from the Illidan Mace. Wonder how that will work for CoH. Serendipity is the 2-set bonus from Tier 5 (100 mana returned if you overheal). Imp. Holy Conc's proc reminds me of the Priest ZG trinket (1.5s GHeals).

This is good because these were all fun set bonuses. If they ever fancy chucking in a talent equivalent to Reactive Fade (5-set T2), GH Renew (8-set T2), or Atiesh aura, any of those would be gratefully received.

I completely agree but I'm afraid the answer will be: "You can't use those scrolls in arena".

Honestly I'm expecting to see:
Power Word: Fortitude Rank 8
Power infuses the target increasing their Stamina by 165 and Spirit by 80 for 30 min.

Imp. Fortitude would maybe be renamed and limited to apply to the Stamina part of Fortitude, and Divine Spirit would be an increase of the Spirit part of Fortitude or add a small passive like maybe 5% regen while casting, it would make the spirit not entirely useless for Paladin/Shamans/Hunters and 5% isn't that much for the others now that everyone has 30% regen.

Imp. Divine Spirit would do the same it does now and could be renamed to something like Fortunate Spirit. (because I don't like Improved *** talent names )

But history says they will go with the arena excuse. Good news for people taking up inscription tho, those will sell incredible well if deep Discipline doesn't become a standard in 25man raids, hopefully they buff the scroll stack sizes to more than 5, would require a lot of slots otherwise.

I doubt that the developers are that bad these days, not saying that they don't make questionable decisions but that level of sophistry would be asking for riots reminiscent of the infamous time back in 1.2 or whenever when several thousand warriors crashed one of the servers with L1 alts.

It has also been suggested in another thread that the devs are aiming for 5 healer raids. Can anyone suggest where this was stated? If true how would this affect the power of grace? can someone familiar with 5-6 healer fights (aka muru) comment on this? Personally I'm not sure how they can do this without either pattycaking either boss damage or raid damage, or adding harsh dps requirements to every fight. I would also think that it may limit thier ability to design complex fights. Council springs to mind here with 4 massively spread out tanks and oodles of random raid damage. However it must be said that the raid designers are an inventive lot and could well come up with some nifty designs that are currently eluding my sleep deprived brain.

That's not sophistry to me.

The "it's only useful in arenas excuse" counts for another 11-point talent too. Who uses Holy Nova for anything else than breaking stealth and dealing with a Snake Trap? I don't see much complaining about it let alone riots, either people have given up on Holy Nova being useful outside arenas or concluded that a talent doesn't have to be useful everywhere. That would now apply to 11-point Discipline too and developers wouldn't consider that an issue because Holy Nova didn't change at all either.

I do hope it is changed but I also recognize that changes like this are a cascading effect affecting more than just rewriting 3 talents and that might not be worth it for something that isn't really a new problem. It always hurts to lose something but in this case Inscribers gain something and them lacking purpose is probably more of a worry than Divine Spirit right now.


P.S. Sorry but, I'm not going to debate the usefulness of Holy Nova outside arenas to argument the need for a Divine Spirit change (sophistry), buying scrolls doesn't bother me much, all melee will have to do it for Agility/Strength as well. I would like a talent point into Divine Spirit to be more useful in PvE than something you get from AH as much as any other Priest but it's not riot type kind of bad.

Holy nova is fun/fluff for AoE pulls like the fish in magistairs terrace and it adds somthing the class is otherwise totally lacking, AoE ability even if gimpily. Second there is no consumable that can even remotely replace it unless you want to count immolation oils.

Along the same lines, there is now a Scroll of Stamina VIII, which does the same thing as the max rank of (untalented) Power Word Fortitude (+165 stamina in both cases). This was not the case in TBC when both Spirit scrolls and Stamina scrolls were much less than the priest versions (let alone not as readily available as Wrath scrolls will be through inscribers). Looks like priests will only bring Prayer of Shadow Protection (plus a meagre 30% upgrade to the stamina buff, through talented IPW:F) as a unique buff to the raid table.

Given the option of bringing a priest or making people spend a money on scrolls that they have to use every 30mins/death, I think most raids will just bring the priest as far as fort is concerned. The only thing the scrolls will change is that it will allow 10 mans with no priest to have that very helpful fort buff. I don't think that the scrolls will make priests lose a raid slot. I do agree that it kinda lame that spirit is a 25 pt talent when there's a scroll for it. Is there gonna be a scroll of Kings?