Blizzard can you please explain to me...(disc priest)

[Kencredible]

I am a long time reader of these forums, but I have never found a reason to post before, when I can find most of my answers by searching. I have read a lot of the new threads pertaining to the the new PW:S mana increase plus the 4.0.6 changes, and haven't been able to find my answers so I will ask here. Also I have been playing a disc priest since ulduar (well I was really shadow, but ever since we started doing HMs and Drake runs, I have been forced into the healing role, so we can actually put forward enough quality raiders to raid).

First I agree that in WotLK bubble spamming was the standard for Disc priests, and I'm glad Blizzard decided to change that come Cata. I also am in very big favor of Blizzard buffing the absorption amount of PW:S in 4.0.6. I can also see how something needed to be done to prevent the bubble spamming from becoming prevalent again. That being said I am a little confused at Blizzard's take on a disc priest and here is why...

Rapture; used to be a nice form of mana return for us, something to keep track of and get a shield out on CD, or right before CD came off to continue the rapture proc. However it only returns 6% of our mana. The new cost of PW:S is ~6k mana and assuming a raiding priest in 359 gear having ~110k mana, that is only a 6600 mana return. 600 mana back every 12 seconds over the course of a 5 minute fight would allow us to cats an extra PoH three times during the course of the fight. Now I understand with procs, such as PT on your weapon, it will return a little more mana, but significantly reduces a mana return ability for us.

4set; Give us 540 spirit for 10 seconds when a penance is cast on someone with Weakened Soul on them. Besides how ridiculous I think it is compared to every other healing classes 4 set before the change, lets look at it after the change. To get the Bonus I have to spend over 8k mana and 2 GCDs in casts to get an extra 540 spirit for 10seconds. How does this even make sense? 540 spirit while in combat I believe yields ~336mana/5sec...double that and we get a total of 672 mana back in those 10 seconds, even when added to the rapture return that is ~7200 mana back that it took 8k mana just to cast. Now I understand that yes we could in theory keep this 540 spirit bonus up the entire fight, if we cast PS on a target that has the WS debuff on CD. Now a Holy Priest can keep up this 540 spirit bonus the entire fight for free with one GCD every minute. Don't get me wrong, some mana return is better than nothing, but it doesn't seem very efficient to me anymore given the new PW:S changes

Mastery; affects two spells, crits and one 2min CD. Now that shield is as expensive as it is to use, it will greatly decrease the value of this stat IMO. Yes I appreciate the effectiveness on it with PoH but that has now been reduced by 15% as well, also reducing the value of mastery.

"Bring the Player, not the class"; Obviously a disc's role in healing has always been damage absorption, and stopping the damage before it happens. Now I know spiritus has developed an extremely great guide to raid healing as a disc priest, but if blizzard thinks that we should be able to effectively raid heal, and they take our only multi-target heal (not including binding heal, which is a great heal, but situational) in PoH and nerfed it by 15%, and yes now Divine Aegis can crit on it now, which is nice and all, but I would rather have the non cirt absorb and that 15% back, especially with the mana cost of this spell plus the glyph HoT doesn't stack as far as I can tell. I think this change significantly reduced our effectiveness as a raid healer. Yes renew is now cheaper and we have ProM but you can't control ProM except on the first target and renew even spec'd and glyphed (which I think would be a waste of a glyph) still has poor throughput for disc. I know personally my role is typically a raid healer in our comp, and I have noticed the difference.

Please don't take this as another disc priest QQ thread. I understand what Blizzard is trying to stop by raising the cost of PW:S and I think it is a hasty and poorly thought out fix given how our entire spec revolves around that one spell. I think overall up to the mana increase of PW:S, disc had a fairly beneficial patch up to this fix. I don't think that blizzard looked at all of the consequences that raising the mana cost of PW:S would have on the class in their attempt to fix bubble spam, and in conjunction with the PoH nerf have limited our ability to raid heal, and thus forced us into a tank healer roll. Maybe they did look into all of these affects. I have always been of the opinion, don't complain and just go with the flow of the changes, everything will work itself out in the end...up to this point. I think there are a lot of things that need to be fixed or straight up changed, which I'm sure we all have our ideas on.

TL;DR--> With PW:S increase, rapture sucks, 4 set sucks, mastery sucks, can't raid heal effectively...I understand why but think it is a hasty and poorly thought out fix to the bubble spam problem

[MoanaLisa]

Blizzard won't reply to anything posted here so this is a waste of time and space. Go forth and post on the cesspool that is the official forums. And best of luck to you.