Okay, I posted this on the PTR forums.

I'm reasonably sure this would solve most of the problems of Disc while distinctly NOT copying anything in the holy tree. Hopefully we can get this somewhere where Blizzard can see it.

Grace still works as always on the current PTR build. Some clarification would be great though, as the "Grace can only be active on one target at a time." part keeps coming up in patchnotes.

Yes, I did some testing and I definitely still got three stacks on me and a second target and both targets were actually receiving the bonus healing (I was worried it might have been just graphical that both had the buff but it wasn't actually benefiting). Blizz maybe just hasn't "fixed" it yet to be in line with the tool tip, obviously wouldn't be the first time. These patch notes have been full of ambiguity and indecision form Blizz from day one, why stop there?

Does the energize portion of Rapture work now on self ? It didn't in the previous patch and I reported it. (I don't mean the mana gain when the shield fades at most once every 12 seconds, I'm talking about the 100% chance with 2/2 to energize on appliance).

Thanks on the grace test. I really wonder what the intention actually is. Could any of you try to goad GC into clarifying wheter the tooltip is wrong or if the spell is bugged and not yet working how they envision it ?

While I agree that calculating the potential has some value, I think that something that is overlooked regarding Beacon is that it is not reliable healing. So while it may be nice to pad paladin numbers and may assist other healers, in many (not all) practical scenarios, another healer still has to be healing the target. It just may make their job a little easier.

For instance, consider Sarth10+3. If you beacon the drake tank and heal the Sarth tank, 50% of the time beacon is going to be doing zero healing on the drake tank since there will be no effective healing done on the MT. So while the occasional extra throughput may help lessen the burden on the healer that is healing the drake tank, it doesn't change the reality that there still has to be a dedicated healer on each tank. Yes, a paladin beaconing the add tank (which is the intelligent use of Beacon, I know, I was just making a point) and healing the MT (or more likely the drake tank) can then more or less handle two tanks at once, but then again healing on the add tank is generally very easy - an elemental shaman can do it.

Effective throughput is a factor to consider when evaluating healers, but it is not the only factor. A healer can put out very very high HPS but if they are not able to handle a spike and a target dies, in essence they've failed.

Beacon does not, in a practical sense, often help as much as its throughput may suggest unless the targets are taking extremely constant, most likely very high, damage (ala Patchwerk, and even on Patch there's generally other healers to pick up the occasional Beacon slack), or if the possibility for target death is very low i.e. for outgeared content (in which case healing is more or less unimportant). Otherwise, you're probably going to have similar healer-distribution regardless of the presence or absence of Beacon, and Beacon may just help lessen the load on one of the other healers (perhaps freeing them up to do a bit more raid-healing, etc).

I don't say this to knock Holy Paladins at all. It's just very easy to look at the (very high) theoretical throughput numbers of paladins and say that we - or any other single-target healer - are underpowered, when in reality two of their tools that push their HPS to such high levels (Beacon and the HL glyph) are unreliable - either overhealing or not on-demand throughput. In contrast, many of Disc's staple abilities (PW:S, DA) are attractive despite slightly lower theoretical throughput because they are 100% reliable and effective. If I am healing the MT and throw a PW:S on the offtank, that full 6k-7k absorb will always be effective.

Even if you completely ignore beacon and holy light glyph, paladins have 50% higher HPS (9000 vs 6000) and 50% higher HPM than disc priests, and scale better with gear (20 vs 14).

That's if you assume those two things do literally zero healing.

Can anyone confirm the Penance glyph is working? I turned on chatlogging with second intervals and am getting 8 second intervals between first tick of one cast and first tick of next cast like clockwork on self which shouldn't be effected by travel time. Is there a better way to test this I may be missing? My CD Mods are starting at 8 and descending from there as well.

Since glyphs are currently getting deleted every time you zone I was able to hearth back to the crash site and test with chat time stamps just to make sure they weren't calculating for a flight time somehow and I can confirm that without the glyph I was getting 8 second cooldown as well so I am under the impression the glyph is currently broken. Might be fixed later on in the night.

Well we have to assume that PoM isn't an efficient use of a Global Cooldown then too, which it really is (it usually is about the same % as beacon for me). I love beacon, I think it's a great talent, one holy pallies deserve, and it really isn't, at the end of the day, all that. 30% is unrealistic, and as I've said, I have no problems being beaten by a holy pally in some gimmick fight where it can get that high. I mean I kick that holy pally's butt on Loatheb.

Holy Light glyph is really situational at 8 yards. It's no zero, but I don't think anyone should count on it.

I also think it's a bit closer than all that, but yeah, I think a holy pally is about 30-40% above a disc priest in throughput, which would make it the single most unbalanced situation remaining in the entire game.

I've been trying to bring this to the attention of the devs, and I'm confidant it will be fixed, if not in 3.1, in a later patch, but until it is, I think the final say on the "Discipline Priest Raiding Compendium" needs to be "Compendium closed due to lack of raiding, until further notice."

So, to interject, has anyone heard anything about Blizzard adding a damage mitigation tracking mechanism for the combat log? If they're not going to increase a Disc Priest's throughput, they should at least make their contribution to the prevention of damage as transparent as possible, in order to elucidate their worth to a raid. Any blue posts regarding this?

EDIT: My table below lacked a header and was kind of indecipherable before. Fixed; apologies.

Also, since it was asked, the base stats quoted are before talents are considered. (30% crit is probably a touch high, in hindsight, even for Ulduar, but the playing field is at least level.)

Mearis and Sharajat, where are you getting your numbers? I threw together a script this afternoon and I'm just not seeing the disparity you are. Perhaps I made an error.

Base Stats:
2400.0 Spellpower, 30.0% Crit, 300.0 Haste, 1000.0 Intellect

I ran scenarios both with and without Beacon and with and without taking into effect overhealing. When overhealing comes into play, I used 50% Effective Heal, 100% DA Effective, and 20% Beacon Effective. (Beacon without overhealing I calculated at a straight 2x.)

Class	Spell	Modifiers	Overheal	HPS
Disc	PW:S	No Glyph	N/A	4710.76220988
	PW:S	Glyph	No	5304.31824833
	PW:S	Glyph	Yes	5007.5402291
	Flash Heal	-	No	5035.72489936
	Flash Heal	-	Yes	4923.36295863
	Penance	-	No	8561.34387966
	Penance	-	Yes	6456.19570624
	PW:S -> Penance	No Glyph	No	7802.84873359
	PW:S -> Penance	No Glyph	Yes	6444.68862171
	PW:S -> Penance	Glyph	No	8090.05326832
	PW:S -> Penance	Glyph	Yes	6588.29088908
Pally	Holy Light	No Beacon	No	8758.7014021
	Holy Light	Beacon	No	17517.4028042
	Holy Light	No Beacon	Yes	4379.35070105
	Holy Light	Beacon	Yes	5255.22084126

Some notes:
- I didn't even consider HPM (yet).
- This is run using 3.1 talents, not live.
- I ignore the HL Glyph. While it will increase Holy Pally HPS, I'm looking at this from the perspective of one- or two-target healing, in which scenario the HL glyph is irrelevant.
- Grace is assumed up, at 9%. WS is assumed up. LG is assumed up.
- I assume the Pally has Glyphed Seal of Light up.
- The pally build picks up the 8% crit in Ret, but not the 5% heal in Holy.
- The Disc build picks up the 3% crit from FW.
- I assume the PW:S glyph to be as it is in the tooltip (20% of the shielded amount). In reality I believe it's a little off from that (I've lost track of even which direction or whether it's been fixed yet), but that should only have an extremely minor effect on the numbers.
- DA is rolled into the healing, at the percentage effectiveness stated (I'm assuming a reasonably challenging healing assignment, so 100% effectiveness is not a bad assumption).

While Paladins do more or less destroy everyone in a no-overheal situation (especially with beacon), it's also a relatively constrained style of healing, as soon as you introduce a decent amount of overhealing, Disc begins to show its strengths. DA and PW:S are more or less guaranteed (when used intelligently) to be zero-overheal, which enables the priest to both proactively and reactively heal more easily than the paladin.

Honestly, I don't think the two specs really need to compete that directly, and I don't really like comparing specs back-to-back like this as I think one spec generally comes out looking far better when that may not be the reality of the situation. While both are tank healers, I think they have different enough strengths that they can complement, rather than completely compete with, each other.

I think current theory on this is not only does the combat log not track it, it's entirely possible the game itself doesn't track it. PW:S generates threat on a target when you cast it, not when it absorbs damage. Simple test of this, have a tank with a bubble face pull. Mob will walk over and start beating on him. Face pull with no bubble, cast one before mob is in range to hit him. Congrats, you have aggro!

After that, the bubble simply floats into the mitigation mechanic. There doesn't seem to be anywhere that it say's this is Bob's bubble - just a buff with a duration timer.

Similarly, the DA pool doesn't seem to know which priest started the Aegis (imagine two disc priests contributing to the same DA pool for a second. The pool doesn't seem to particularly care whose number was whose). I think this is one of the reasons that we haven't seen Weakened Soul become priest specific, even though it would really help disc priests in raids. The game just doesn't know whose was what.