So, the series is postponed until the 3.1 patch is released. I will however review the current changes in my next post.

First let’s look at the holy tree. There are anywhere from 13 to 19 points to consider spending in this tree.

PvE Holy Talents:

Holy Specialization – This talent increases your crit %. Critical heals proc Divine Aegis and Inspiration; they also increase your overall throughput. As a discipline priest (well any healy-type priest IMO) you should reach 20 – 25% unbuffed crit %. (more on why that is in a later post)

Inspiration – This talent procs and armor buff on any target you critically heal. We aim for as close to 100% uptime of this as possible (when considering single target – MT – healing).

In order to get to Inspiration you need to spend five more points to get to there. There are two schools of thought here – 1) Divine Fury and 2) Healing Focus + Improved Renew. Of course some people take partial talents, but I don’t like to think about that (partial talents EEWWW!) so you can decide that for yourself.

Your choice should be based upon your personal healing style. You may end up changing your mind several times while you are learning the ins and outs of your new spec. If you cast Gheal a lot, then Divine Fury is probably the way to go. If you get a lot of pushback (more likely in Heroics than in raid zones), then Healing Focus and Improved Renew might work out better for you.

Personally, I cannot decide. Originally I took Divine Fury, then I stopped casting Gheal, but I was doing a lot of PvP (dropping renews like crazy) and Heroics (pushback love fest) so I spec’d into Healing Focus and Improved Renew. Now, I haven’t PvP’d in a couple of weeks and I haven’t had time for heroics. Plus, I’m casting Gheal a lot more in raids (normally after I shield so it falls under the Borrowed Time haste benefit). So, another respec is pending soon. I’ll probably yo-yo back and forth until dual spec ability is released!

The last talent in the Holy Tree to consider is Desperate Prayer. As a dwarf priest I’ve always had this ability, so not having it would be like not having my beard beer! (OK I don’t really drink but I had to think of something) This is an instant cast self heal that packs a pretty good wallop! I highly recommend it for those “Doh! Forgot to heal myself” moments.

Improved Healing – also in the holy tree and reduces the mana cost of Penance and Gheal. You can spend points on it if you like, but you really need to get out of your “holy healing” mind state. Mana efficiency is important for a discipline build, but it is an entirely different method of efficiency. Traditional mana reduction talents are not neccessary. Yes, they make you more mana efficient but you’re not going to go OOM without them if you play the discipline spec properly. You’ll see why later.

PvE Holy Talent View:

Option 1 for PvE  

Option 2 for PvE  

Obviously there aren’t ONLY two options, but these are the two main (best) ones IMO.

PvP Holy Talents:

Holy Specialization – This talent is probably not as important for BG healing, but it could still be valuable. For arenas I would definitely take this talent. PoM will proc your Divine Aegis anytime it crits. Any of your critical heals will proc Divine Aegis. Damage absorption is your friend in Arenas where you can’t just rez and come back with full health and mana to help overcome the other team.

Let’s thing about rogues for a minute, Rogue ambushes one of your teammates, your PoM goes off and crit heals for 5k at that same moment it applies a DA that absorbs another 1500 damage. This might buy you enough time to outlast that pesky rogue’s burst damage – or enough time for someone else to deal with the rogue all together.

Spell Warding – reduces spell damage by 10%. This is pretty self-explanatory. Any talents you can take to reduce incoming damage is a + for PvP – especially in arenas.

Blessed Recovery – This gem heals you anytime you get critically hit. Over six seconds, it heals for 15% of the critical attack (or spell) damage. If you get crit again while this is active it “stacks”.

Desperate Prayer – A lifesaver in PvP. Period.

Healing Focus – Your shield will not always save you from pushback in PvP. This talent is the best help you have to fight pushback. It could be the difference between saving your 2v2 partner and losing the match.

Improved Renew – meh. Renews are useful for on the move healing… but disc is pretty good at that already. Plus, the extra 100 healing per tick probably isn’t going to make much of a difference when compared to the other talents you can get. I’ve included this talent because a lot of people view it as an important talent to have in PvP. Skip it IMO, it’s three points without much return.

PvP Holy Talent View:

Option 1 for PvP  

Option 2 for PvP

Again, there aren’t ONLY two options, but these are the two main (best) ones IMO.

Tomorrow I’ll try to post a review of the discipline talents. I may break it up into two posts – one for PvE and one for PvP.

*funny hand gestures* that “joke” never happened *funny hand gestures stop*

Discipline in WotLK is fairly new to me. I’ve been reading a lot and getting some good in game experience with the spec as well. In light of the changes to mana regen i5SR, disc could see a population explosion in the very near future. I thought I’d start a series of “How To” posts to help others out. Not because there aren’t answers and information out there in the blogoshpere and healer type forums… but because I’m opinionated dog-gone-it! So, I’m peddling blogging my own flavor of disco right here!

So you think you want to be a Disc priest? First, there are a few things you should know about disco:

~Our throughput is lower compared to other, equally geared, healers.

~We do not top healing meters.

~Our AoE healing ability is lower than a holy priest’s.

~We shield.

~A lot.

~A large portion of the WoW community still views discipline as the “PvP” tree.

~Therefore, uninformed players scoff at us in raids.

So why on earth would ANYONE in his or her right mind want to play a discipline priest?

~Bubbles

~Lasers

~We pwn.

Seriously though, a discipline priest’s value cannot be determined by a superficial look at recount or WWS. We prevent damage; we don’t just react to it.

Currently, the WoW combat log doesn’t really measure damage prevented in any form that is easily tracked. Damage that is partially absorbed will be listed as “Absorbed” with no indication of what spell did the absorbing or whom the spell originated from. Fully absorbed damage will be counted as a “miss”.

My shield absorbs over 5k damage. Without getting to theory-crafty, lets take a closer look, shall we?

If I only shield one tank, I can shield him or her four times a minute. Let’s assume that the 5k is easily gobbled up with in the 15 seconds the tank is affected by the weakend soul debuff. That’s 4 x 5,000 = 20,000 damage absorbed in sixty seconds, or 333.33 damage prevented per second. As far as I’m concerned, damage prevented is equal to damage healed, so that’s 333.33 HPS. Does the meter measure that? Nope.

Divine Aegis procs when you crit and absorbs damage equal to 30% of the amount healed by your critical. Let’s look a Penance and assume one of the three “ticks” will crit for 4k each time Penance is cast (it is very uncommon to not have at least one of the “ticks” crit each cast). I can (and do) cast Penance every 8 seconds. That’s 15 casts with a 4k crit each cast; so that’s another 18k damage absorbed in two minutes (150 damage prevented per second).

Larger crits will absorb more damage and Divine Aegis doesn’t cause a debuff like PW:S does so there’s no set “cool down” period from aegis to aegis. DA can be overwritten by a smaller crit though, ofc it can be overwritten by a larger one as well.

In addition to shield and aegis, we have a lot of “oh, crap!” buttons. Pain Suppression and Power Infusion to be exact. We have the best priest healing ability in the game – Penance. Yes, even with the cooldown it’s that good. Disc priests have great mana regeneration and haste via talents as well. I’ll go into all these talents more later on in the series when we cover how to spec your discipline priest.

I hope this introduction has piqued your interest and you come back to read the next installment of the series!

Pip, pip, cheerio for now!

Priest (the ugly green boxes aren’t actually there… that’s just where my class timer bars for target and focus are):

Rogue UI (class timer bar – one bar version – is under the action bar below my character):

So far the only priest change listed is the long hoped for time increase to Inner Fire (30 min duration – up from 10!)

In 3.09 Rogues have quite a few changes though…

HFB – damage increasing from 3% to 5% per stack (guess we know why it jumps to 15% in a single stack in 3.10 now don’t we?)

Mind Numbing Poison changed from 60% reduced cast time to 30%. (meh… who cares?)

Mutilate damage bonus on poisoned target going down from 50% to 20% (my priest thanks you blizzard… now I may have a fighting chance once the all too long stun sequence is complete – hey at least I can get a heal off or something)

Slice and Dice – increased attack speed up from 30% to 40%. (This is a good across the board change for rogues that should help us struggle a little less on recount)

It still costs WAY too much energy IMO and it’s a very short range…

The range is less troublesome as its possible to use it and still not break any CCs that may be bleating about. I know… who uses CC anymore??! Well, if you do a lot of unsteady PUG heroics – YOU MIGHT.

The energy cost is what I’d really like to see reduced. I’m only thinking of my Subtlety friends out there without the regen abilities of combat rogue of course… srsly though… 50e abilities suck.

Anyhow… it’s a good little AoE ability for a class that really hasn’t had one since they nerfed BF. Don’t believe me? Head to a heroic CoS and try it out for yourself!

^_^

p.s. AR + FoK = 15 secs of pure death… when’s that patch coming out? O THAT’S SOMETHING… imagine the decreased CD on AR + FoKs for clearing trash in raids (or heroics)… combat = moooovin’ on up (again). OFC boss DPS is still where it’s at in raids… so we’ll see how our sneaky friends fare in 3.10 (my priest will be praying for y’all).

The old HfB increased damage by 3% and stacked 3 times (at 30e a pop). (plus a bleed effect remover thingy)

OK HFB probably costs too much energy for three stacks and stacking on skills like this is just plain annoying (read – stupid). So, taking away stacks is good. But do mut rogues really NEED another 6% damage on top of the 9% already granted by three stacks?!? I don’t think so. Though I speak not from experience – only from combat jealousy. BUFF US PLZ?

p.s. please note it doesn’t specify (yet) that the bleed effect has to be the rogue’s to use this…

* Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.    

Speaking of combat buffs… /yay! /dance

Now I wonder, is the AR glyph being modified?

* Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.    

This is good… except now I have to figure out how to fit it into my spec >< /sigh I had it all worked out w/no partial talents! *grumble* /emo

* Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.    

Mmmm

Mmmm

MMMM

* Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.    

OK so is this replacing the current increase to physical damage on poisoned mobs? Do they still need to be poisoned? Or is this also replacing the AP buff (sad panda)?

* Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.

Well they are trying to get us 4 viable weapon class options… (p.s. rogue really shouldn’t be using maces anyway if you want to get all RP about it…)

All and all it looks like we are getting some love… but will it be enough to keep combat competitive in the end game? It doesn’t seem like it TBH (at least not yet), but at least we’re on the path now.

In the next patch it looks like Disc priests are getting some well needed lovin’, Holy Priests are getting some PvP attention and AoE heals are getting some (positive) attention.

What’s that you ask? What about Shadow Priests? Meh… I thought they were already pretty ridiculous in PvP so I’m ignoring the buff they are getting >< (SEE NO EVIL)

Holy and PvP – lol wut? No more yummy discipline PvP dominance??!?!? *sad panda* I guess I’ll allow this… >.> but only because I’m tired of the whining!

Warrior Notes (yes warrior… you’ll like it, I promise!)

You now gain rage when damage done to you is absorbed. Srsly? this is one of the best changes for a disc priest period. HELLO LOVE and good bye sniviling warriors… please to tank for meh?)

Divine Spirit

Trainable spell for any priest!! This is a good thing The best thing about this is the proposed talent to take it’s place…

Power Word: Barrier

New talent in the Discipline tree, this is an AoE shield of some sort. Not much else is known at this time but it’s got my approval. I was just telling one of our druids the other day that an AoE shield of some sort would have been the perfect Discipline talent.

Then only negative here that I can see is that based on the name alone… it sounds as if it will be some sort of barrier around the priest that you have to be in range of (or within)… rather than use it and all group members w/in X yards will be shielded. It’s just like blizzard to do something lame like that… yanno?

Additionally I doubt the AoE shield will be a mere 20 point talent… so be prepared for a complete rearranging of the Disc tree and we all know what that means… FREE RESPEC!!

AoE Heal Lovin!

PoH - This does not sound like a smart heal change (which is what we have been hoping for). It sounds like you have to target someone now to cast (ugh) and that is the party you cast it on (yay for better). WTB raidwide smart heal! I mean COME. ON. it’s a three second cast… with no talents to decrease it!

O_o IDEA ALERT!!!

Add it to Divine Fury…

HN - mana cost has been reduced. (and on that day there were many dancing in the chapel) That’s one issue with HN addressed (well two if you count the glyph helping it’s HPS and HPM). Now… lets just make it a tad bit larger shall we?

CoH - heals for more. It’s about time. The six second cooldown really hurt CoH. It was a miserly heal that was only worth using because it was instant and you could spam it. Even with that it often couldn’t keep up with a lot of incoming damage. It currently heals for about 1/3 of what wild growth heals for (based on tooltip info only), so if they double it’s current strength it will still heal for 2/3 wild growth thus compensating for the 10 points difference in the talent tree (assuming I’m right about it currently only healing for 1/3 wg).

Penance – can now be cast on the priest. YUM. I thought it was crazy that I could channel heal someone who was 40 yards away… but I couldn’t channel to myself 0 yards away. This is a good change.

Serendipity – now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast. I don’t know if this is in addition to its old ability or in place of. It’s nice to see a PoH cast time reduction… too bad I’ll never benefit from it ><

Last but not least (again) nothing says lovin’ like some FREE RESPEC’N!!!

All things considered, I’M COMPLETELY ESTATIC ABOUT THE NEXT PATCH!!!! (OK so this is only true because I’m choosing to completely ignore the mana regen changes that are pending… more on that another day)

(OK so <—— was actually the next thing I typed)

I get my summons and go on my merry way. The group was a PUG prot warrior, my friend the healer (23/48 priest – yay for my old spec!), another rogue from our guild and an enhancement shaman (also a friend). All melee… woah!

The run went great (if you ignore the fact that an enhancement shaman was beating me by about 200 DPS on the meters) right up till the end – when it was still going great for everyone but me. I’ve never really done a timed run, I’ve made a few attempts at one but something always happened and before the 2^nd boss we would know it would be fruitless to continue rushing.

Anyhow, we got to the last stop arthas makes before Mal’Ganis when I noticed he had stopped and the rest of the group kept on a truckin’ So me being the thoughtful player I am, talked to him so he could catch up to the others.

It was then that I noticed the others HAD GONE THE WRONG WAY!!! OH EM GEE!! So, I’m all like “HEY, YOU GUUUUYSSS” (in true goonies style of course) “it’s this way… quick arthas is getting pwnd!” So my friend, the smart mouth, is like “no raiv he’s this way”.

Right about now is when it dawned on me… Mal’Ganis doesn’t drop the mount… it’s a special mob (shut up Chromie I don’t want to hear your “I told you so” anymore).

UGH.

Two seconds later I get an achievement, “The Culling of Time” (my second realization of what a noob I was because I’ve read this stupid thing like a bajillion times).

Immediately followed by my death.

I was out of range of the kill, so I didn’t get to roll on the mount. *sad panda*

That’s not it folks. Yeah, I know its kinda hard to be a tool at this point in the run… AMIRITE?

Some leather bracers dropped off the boss, which I only half glanced at and saw one or two stats that were melee-ish. I’m like asking the other rogue “care if I need on those with you?” I mean, my rogue is technically not my main anymore so I didn’t want to be rude now did I?

His response was a bit puzzling to me… “I needed them?” I’m thinking… hmm his bracers are less better (yes, I said less better) than mine… why wouldn’t he need those???! Maybe it’s because he’s a LW and he’s planning on crafting something better…

Thankfully I took a second look (and noticed everyone else greeding them as well) at them before making a ninja out of myself. I was thinking they were the epic leather bracers that drop in H-HoL…

Whew. I did manage to win the frost orb though!