illumination was still better than rapture from pretty much everything i've seen. it doesn't appear to be getting touched.

the wording sounds weird, but it definitely looks like you can only get the actual effect once every 12 seconds. it's not like you can shield someone more than once every 15 seconds anyway.

Not only are rapture returns from direct healing missing. We'd also lose rapture returns from PW:S (replaced) and from Divine Aegis (removed!). While direct healing was by far the biggest contribution, the missing DA returns still count quite a bit.

Either does the 12 seconds limit apply to the mana return to the casting priest only, or Weakened Soul has been changed -- with the current 15 seconds WS, a 12 seconds limit per target would be meaningless.

As discipline healing shifts to absorption even more with PW:S every GCD, stacking DA and (probably) PW: Barrier, tracking the actual absorption amounts becomes more and more important. I had hoped 3.1 would bring changes to the combat log.

Enlightenment buffed to 6% (spirit and haste).

i don't think disc would have succeeded in harder content without quite a few positive changes. if it were to go live with what they have planned now it would pretty much be a dead spec. there's going to be months of testing ahead, but that really isn't that comforting with blizz's record on this kind of stuff.

as it was, holy had a single target healing advantage even with shielding included. disc isn't even going to be an option without a ton of changes.

Ghost Crawler has said a few times that they want to bump Discipline healing to be closer to that of a Holy Paladin, however these changes do not seem to reflect that desire.

Disc needs some form of scaling via talents to allow it to keep up, if anything just call it quits and make Discipline a hardcore PVP tree and quit trying to prop it up with mediocre talents for PVE.

I have been healing as Discipline for most of Wrath so far and I do enjoy it, the talent additions/changes are quite disheartening. I don't want to have to be holy to not suck.

Blizzard will hopefully see the error in there ways in the weeks to come, holy is just looking too damn sexy at the moment XD

Well yes, the rapture change quite definitly is a nerf, however I've been arguing in the BB in the past that Rapture is a bit too good and probably will need a nerf. Maybe this one overshoots a bit but we have to actually test it and provide feedback before declaring all gloom and doom.

Remember, right now an equipped Discipline priest basically does not drop below 85% mana on everything except Sarth+3 and Malygos. And we're supposed to get gear upgrades in Ulduar. So something had to happen. Actually, these changes to the shielding mechanics and interactions for discipline look like perfectly matched to a fight like Malygos. That's the fight were mana might still be a problem but if we can now cast a shield every GCD and receive a bit of mana if the shields are used up, guess what we will be doing during Vortex which right now is a huge mana sink but won't be anymore.

And we haven't yet seen PW:Barrier which is still upcoming.

Right now, I don't use my shadowfiend and mana potions because I don't need to. I don't really mind if I have to use them again, but of course I do mind if I just run oom easily and can't do my job. Blizzard however is certainly not going to butcher this new tree and healing style and if it's too harsh, they will change it again. After all, it's all up there for testing.

Here's the link as the MMO-Champion front-page is always a little less than "stable".

As for builds, I have no idea how to fit the new Disc talents along with Inspiration/DP.

Sadly it still will be due to the 12 second CD on the 2.5% mana return from a PW:S being fully absorbed/dispelled.

What is nice though is that you can spam 1 second GCD ~6k shields in AE heavy environments. I think allowing rapture to return mana based off of PW:S and Divine Aegis absorption would put the talent right around where it needs to be.

I agree that the amount of mana it was returning from healing alone was rather large.

I really read the instantly charges you as happening always and only the charging up on the target to be once every 12 second. Notice the ", and" separator between the two things. In all other tooltips that have these, it often means that there are two effects and limitations on the second do not apply to the first and vice versa. Besides, the tooltip has a typo anyway : "This effect cannot occur once every 12 seconds" instead of "This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds"

I am really certain that the "this effect" refers only to the rage,mana,energy,rp generating effect and not to the self-replenishment. Otherwise taking away the cooldown on PW:S in general and reintroduce another limiter with cooldown right again makes no sense at all. The fact they are removing the cooldown on PW:S and reducing mana cost on Flash Heal really show they want us to use these two spells primarily. It just doesn't make any sense if shielding on GCD when all shields are used up (heavy AOE) will kill our mana and runs us dry. But well, we need to see how it plays out and what the new Rapture really is doing.

if you look at how pw:s works with weakened soul then the "cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds" makes absolutely no sense in the context of the secondary benefit on the person it's cast on. they can only get a pw:s on them once every 15 seconds as is so it looks like that little blip of text would be referring almost exclusively to the mana regen part of the talent. hopefully blizz will clear this up fairly quickly.

The "cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds" has to apply to the 2.5% mana back to the priest because it would be redundant if it referred to the target getting shielded - Weakend Soul already guarantees that the target wont get the effect more than once over 15 seconds.

If rapture returns power to the target when the shield is fully absorbed, then it's perfectly possible for the shield to become absorbed near the end of or after weakened soul has worn off, and then a fresh shield absorbed within 12 seconds. On a pull, for example.