The set changed pulled forth two very different reactions in me:

1) "HAHAAAA! A steady bonus that I don't have to pay extra attention to to even make it useful!"

Which to me, was a godsend. 4T10 while 'somewhat useful', becomes absolutely useless if you don't pay attention to the proc. Excellent..another proc to watch out for while healing. I have to admit that I find the proc more useful as holy than disc. I am guilty of whooping when getting COH-surge proc-COH-surge proc chains. However, that is for holy and this thread is for disc...

My second reaction was:

2) "NOOOOOO now I have to refigure out what to do for infest+rapture proc". -_-

It is a fight we are still learning at the moment. My role as disc usually just consists of rolling shields from start to finish (we have some excellent raid healers so my duties really only consist of that and helping wherever I can). I usually start rolling shields 25 seconds before combat and can usually get 3 groups + 3-4 people each infest afterwards.

With my gear at the moment, I rotate max rank shield and rank 12 shield to make max use of mana + absorbs. That usually puts me at a healthy mana level. E.G. For the initial infest I use max rank, second round I use rank 12...etc. I admit, I am not a number cruncher but SCT usually gives me a good idea of what I have 'left' per infest. At rank 12, I absorb around 6k some of the initial hit, 1-2k gone to resists, which left 500ish as damage - again, these are rough numbers. The 5% tier bonus will probably shoot me over and after some tests, downranking to 11 will put me way below a 'safe' margin for absorbs. With that I am currently headaching at the moment to see what I can do to solve it.

While I'm not sure how the zone wide buff will affect discipline healing. I can say that the raid will still have use for a disc priest regardless. Damage absorbed is still damage prevented - it frees up the other healers to worry about something else. A shield will still save somebody's behind in a way that a proactive heal cannot (doesn't matter how large your heal is if your tank gets one shotted by an overkill of 1 hp). Admittedly there is a point where you are buffed to a state where healing is 'useless' (figuratively speaking), but I believe by the time it gets to that point, it probably won't matter what you bring to the raid.

One question I have about the new bonus for those who can test it: does the 5% more absorb go off the base amount or does it go off after spellpower and talents are factored in?

Morning Edit: Erm...after sleeping and clearing my head. The above is solely about 25LK. For 10 LK which we have downed, I didn't run into mana issues with max rank. It was only until p3 when all three healers (Paladin, tree, me as disc) were cycled into the Frostmourne room consecutively that we were all running on fumes at the end. We were effectively 2 healing the entirety of P3 -.- Why Blizzard, why?!

I found a similar reference on a thread on tankspot's healing forums, citing a patch note that suggested that absorption spells would benefit from the buff in 3.3.3, but I couldn't find a link to the notes.

Does anyone have a link to a blue note on this or another authoritative source?

I found it here. It should be noted that (and this is quoted from the article), Until 3.3.3 goes live or if Blizzard decides to put this in the patch notes, all this is so far is a change supposedly seen on the PTRs.

Hellscream's Warsong and Strength of Wrynn now provide their bonuses to player pet health and damage, as well as the absorption amounts of Power Word: Shield and Sacred Shield.

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> PTR Patch 3.3.3 Notes - 03.15.10

PI on yourself is a waste, with Borrowed Time up you are already at the haste cap.

I believe he meant he was using PI for the Mana Cost reduction, not for the haste. Using PI on yourself every CD is a great way to boost Mana Efficiency on those select fights where a Disc might have some Regen issues. The other Priest in my guild disagrees with me on this, only because he thinks it's better to boost raid DPS by PI'ing a Caster DPS, but I've always saved it for myself to increase my longevity, unless I was certain I wouldn't need it.

Well the larger issue is that with proper gearing and SF / HoH / pot usage you should be able to avoid oom in almost every encounter without PI. It's best use would then be on a DPS since you don't *need* it.

Correct. As I mentioned in my earlier post, I rarely ever go OOM on encounters; I'm using PI on myself for mana reduction purposes.

Normally that works fine, but due to the timing of Infest, I didn't really have time to channel HoH, etc.

As the raid gets better at not taking extra damage, I'm hoping it'll become easier. In the meantime, I'm pretty happy with what I'm doing for now.

PI works fine for shielding, it saves you some Mana. Next time i will try this exotic Shadow Fiend spec: click
This should help me a ton more than the 8% crit with spells i rarly use in this encounter. It does reduce the value of the PW:Shield Glyph, true, but won't have to rely on abusing rapture.
Especially during p2 when people get oor often it messes with my timing for the proc. Plus i can shield the tanks without thinking twice when the MT healer gets carried away.

I am having some very simple issues with:

Power Word Shield

and

Divine Aegis

I know there are math threads and post on how this all work, at least for PWS. But I can say without a doubt my Shields vary a ton for absorption in the logs. Is there a reliable formula that I can count on for my shield strength? Logs say that at times my shields are covering 10K+ and well that seems a bit high, with an average of 3k being covered, which seems a bit low.

PWS cannot have a crit effect from everything I have read for the value it mitigates.

I am running 3200SP self buffed.

DA is another sore spot for me. Clearly there is a stated amount that will be produced off any crit heal I toss out. Is there some invisible cap? I have ask because I have seen my Greater Heals tag a target for 17k+ and then the logs say the largest DA I proc'd is 2.5k for that fight. Just doing the simply math that DA should have been 7.2k. Are their any coefficients for DA like SP or talents as well buffing it up further or is it a simple effect that seems to be malfunctioning?

Or is DA simply the amount actually healed vs the total amount it could heal?

This still does not explain the PWS issues, of the average PWS for me is 3k with a range up to 9k. That just confused the hell out of me.

Can some one give me some insight on this?

On the 4PC:

Since the 4pc is actually useful now, I finally got my last piece of tier gear last night. How many stats are worth sacrificing to maintain the 4 pc? Right now, I'd have to use 2 251 pcs and drop the badge gloves and badge chest/pants in order to use them. That's a pretty heavy loss to haste and crit.

My rough head math shows that I do 50-60% of my healing from PW:S so the bonus is a 2.5%+ increase in healing roughly. That surely has to outweigh 100 or so haste, and some crit correct?

Just looking for some clarification or if someone has already done the actual math.