How clunky is the Atonement mechanic? I would almost think that if it did Penance damage in addition to Smite, that would make it more distinctly disc.

Here's my current pve disc spec: Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft
I would imagine you'd be casting mostly bubbles and your damage would be Smite to proc Evangelism and Atonement. A mouseover macro to bubble people in the raid + smiting the boss then popping Archangel for needed burst?

Hmm... that spec doesn't have Inspiration. (Really: can they just put it into the Disc tree already? Swap that and Evangelism/Archangel)

Disc is actually missing something in Tier 3. You either have to pick up Imp Inner Fire or one of the Smity Six to move on. That probably that will get addressed soon. PVE's also lacking a good 30th point also (again, unless you go into a pvpish talent - reflective shield or Focused Will or one of the six Smite steps)

At least overall the trees are getting better, but it could use another pass of loving.

The Darkness change is very welcome, though, and gives a reason for healers to dip into shadow. (And Veiled Shadows, if for the Shadowfiend effect)

Currently every healer tree besides holy priest forces you to pick only +healing talents and some have more than you can take. This is not as severe as DPS since healing talents are not so clear cut - there can be several good builds - but it's probably not that they want to achieve.

edit about Telluric Currents: Using level 80 numbers Telluric Currents is quite the potent mana regen talent, and scaling up to 85 won't change that unless it is nerfed heavily. We'll see how these talents turn out - and their predecessor, Seal of Wisdom, the pinnacle in balance nightmares.

Regarding resto shamans, they just stated:

Source: MMO-Champion BlueTracker | Restoration Shaman Concerns

While this is about shamans, it clearly describes what Blizzard intends regarding dps talents that save mana for healers. They're not meant as regen mechanism for healing.

While I also think the old implementation of chakra was clunky I don't like the 1m CD concept. It's some time ago but GC stated, that healing priests have enough keys to manage so probably will not see many more spells. But we get more and more keys. Beside the new class spells we now get the Holy Word and Chakra to add to our bar.

I liked the idea behind the former implementation more. You enter your chakra by doing whatever you want to boost. I liked the idea that you had to do it more than once to get the full power of it. Since we probably want to use different spells anyway it was not like the old spam feast but it actually changed your choice of spells. That's not preserved by simply adding a new button to press.

Another idea I liked was fading between chakras. I don't want to create talents for blizz but I think something like an inversion of the new owl mechanic would be more fun. It would be different because it would be something between more than 2 sides. I imagine something like:

You have up to 5 chakra points that you can put into different chakras. You put a point into a chakra by using the according spell. Each chakra can store up to 3 points (which may fade after 15s or whatever time needed). For each chakra point in the chakra you get one third of the maximum chakra effect. So you get some effect early but only get the full potential when you use it multiple times. If you want to move to a chakra you have no points in, you have to wait until another point drops (so you can use renew and heal without moving away from your chosen chakras). If you press the holy word button the chakra with the most points is chosen. (If they have equal points it could take the newest one.)

That would give the option to have more than one chakra but only one with full potential. It would feel less clunky than the old implementation, because could get the benefits earlier but not fully. You can start to switch to another chakra whenever needed but it would take some time. You can benefit from the chakra talent without thinking about using a CD. But to get the full potential you have to monitor what spell you chose. However it would not fix a rotation.

I can see it being useful for small groups. I can imagine the following spell rotation

-renew/pom on tank or highest threat level player at pull
-spellpower trinket/power infusion->smite spam to burn down most dangerous target, SW:Death if you get pom bounces
-top up group with regular heals, refresh renew/pom
-return to dps, pew pew!

All depends on the numbers of course but in theory it can see it being taken as part of a heroic farming build or at least for those crazy social players that exclusively level and quest in groups.

I think it depends on many numbers. If disc can chose to take Archangel instead of reduced mana costs, at least one point in Atonement may be an interesting choice for disc. But smite has to hit either hard enough or be cheap enough that you want to stack Archangel with Smite. Holy paladins have used judgements all the time while healing. In most cases that's to generate more mana. But non the less doing dmg to the boss is part of what they do while healing or to improve their healing.

At the moment both first tiers of holy and disc feel like they have a little bit too much points. Especially disc. There are so much boring "reduced cost", "more spellpower" and "shorter cd/casting time" of our core healing abilities that it's hard to have enough free points to get the "interesting" or utility stuff. They stream-lined the holy tree a little bit with the last build. I hope they do something like this a little bit more, so that disc has some less pressure to spent every possible point in those flat talents, stuff like Atonement can get an interesting choice for different gameplay or a PVP-spec that's also a viable raiding spec.

I would agree disc needs more work now, but lets be honest, if you didn't "have" to spend points in the boring talents, what would you do with them? Say you had 3 more points, what are you going to do other than the damage points? Yes, you could go shadow, but I bet that there would just end up being another pretty standard build, it'll just include Archangel (assuming its somewhat useful in raids) or whatever ends up making the most sense. I doubt there will be much choice/variety. I'm not saying I wouldn't like it, I'm just saying, don't get your hopes up.

The crab has spoken about lightwell again.
Hopefully we can provide good feedback on the latest changes (whatever they are) and get this lead weight of a talent made useful.

Subspec talents don't change gameplay for most specialization, in fact. They bring a little bit benefit, that's all. I'm taking here a few examples, at random :
- Frost DK : likely subspecs talents are bladed armor (flat increase for AP), epidemic (longer diseases), virulence (spell hit) and morbidity (death-coil / D&D damage). Potential is Blood-caked blade, which is a secondary passive strike. Only epidemic has a slight change on the gameplay, because it increases cycle length.
- Balance druid : likely offspec talents are Blessing of the grove (boost moonfire), master shapeshifter (4% spell damage), heart of the wild (more mana) and natural shapeshifter(cheaper shapeshifts). Nothing exciting here.
- Combat rogue : in Assassination, coup de grace and lethality are flat damage increases. Ruthlessness procs combo points on the finishers, that changes hardly gameplay (you've 15s at least to notice it), quickening is a little-bit gameplay changing : it increases basic speed. Blackjack improves only sap... In subtlety, resentless strikes decreases the cost of some spells, camouflage increases stealth speed, and elusiveness decreases numerous cd. Nothing really sexy for gameplay either.
- Fury warrior : In arms, Blitz, Field dressing and war academy are pretty useless. Deep wounds adds passive damage, second wind is useless in PvE, drums of war gives a free interrupt / demo shout / fear, and only tactical mastery allows you to do really something more : changes stances for an acceptable penality. That's not something you really do often (at least on live). In protection, Incite boost the rage-dump heroic strike damage.

So, globally, I don't find offspecs to be more sexy for other classes. More than that, Desesperate Prayer is one of the few (at least, the only one I'm aware of) talented ability that is in the first 2 tiers.


That's a good catch for PW:s boost. I didn't realize that borrowed time was heavily nerfed on that aspect. I'm still suspicious about letting a specs that is designed to use PW:S often (even if less than currently) get B&S : disc would be either too good on movement fights, giving sprints all over the field. Or in bad shape for static fights. At least on live, holy can't really sustain PW:S spam, and it provides only half healing if using it too often.


[/quote]Another problem I see with the flat talents is, that every healing priest now can get additional SP and reduced costs for nearly every heal if we spend all the points. It's again many points, but at the end it's more or less pointless in the new talent concept, because either healing priests are balanced to not take them (all) or they are balanced to take them all. Chances are very high, that priests will think, that the talents are needed whatever Blizz thinks. So at the end every priest will have them, so priest have to be balanced to have them at least at this point. If every healing priest gets a SP increase for healing stuff anyway, and every priest has to spend additional points to take more of those - it does not match the concept most other classes see.
[/quote]

It's one difficult point for hybrids. If we don't get enough powerful talents / masteries, shadow priest will be able to off-heal too efficiently. Priest are even more problematic, because we have two healing tries that need to feel different.
But I agree we have too much "useful healing" talents : I expect more disc changes, but even holy, which seems more finished, has not enough choices. Currently, the choices are basically limited to "drop two points among SoR / Desesperate Prayer / Serependity / Twirling Light / Lolwell". HEaven, holy has nearly no non-healing talents : only one PvP talent (blessed resilience), and one "half-dps talent (twirling light).

I have a question for those SP that have access to the beta : what is the precise mechanism of dot refresh now ?
Is it similar to the live SW:P refresh (ie. , set the duration to full again, next tick as "normal") ?
Or is it more similar to the DK rune refresh (ie., the full duration is added to the remaining one, with a cap to prevent abuse) ?

If the first cast holds, it will still be painful for those with lag / jitter, and timing and clipping will be abundant, because we'll want to refresh it at the last time possible before it fades. It will be somehow similar but opposed to live, where we want to refresh it as soon as it has faded : the (usually) worst case scenario will be when we let it fade, but early refresh are also a loss, because we waste partially cast time to refresh it (to be more concrete, if one would refresh it at half time only, one would need twice the number of cast compared to optimum). )In live, the worst case is to refresh before the last tick, and the "low" loss is time without dot ticking.

If it is the second case, and provided the threshold if fine, we can have a window (let's say 3s long for example), where any refresh will be optimal : no partial tick is lost, and no duration is lost either.

Avoiding the spamming of Improved Devouring Plague, perhaps?