PW:S nerf = lazy fix

[Suzaku]

Shield spamming sure was our most effective way but if we were to go Holy and compare the way of healing between holy&disc, holy is using more abilities than what disc did ( since the patch changes ) and I believe that's what blizzard wants each healing spec utilize their whole spell book than just that one spell just as it been said in their Blue Post.

Blizzard should have expected a Discipline Priest to Shield spam when they tie 80% of our talents and mastery to a single spell, while Holy Priests have their talents spread evenly amongst all of the Holy spells. Discipline Priests' full spell book is one spell and that's Power Word: Shield, because our talents do not buff any of the other healing spells directly. And do not give me the Discipline Priest has Holy Spells excuse, because Shadow Priests also have Holy Spells but they don't heal in raids.

And this change is just pathetic. Discipline Priests already have the weakest mana regeneration in PvP, and this change just further nerfs Discipline mana in PvP while offering nothing to Discipline Priests that would have them save mana in another area. And as the poster above me have stated, now Holy Priests can bubble spam with Body and Soul and Soul Warding, so basically Discipline Priests lost their signature spell while Holy Priests got the ability to bubble spam on top of everything else that they can already do better than Discipline.

[Deleted]

Just go holy and spam pw:s, Blizzard is soooo good at balancing this game.

Just checked your specc Tiduz and I admit, I'm in love with it . Shield spam is back with all the Holy shinny toys as well .

[Deleted]

Well, the mana increase is obviously a temporary 'fix' I suppose to see how things go over the next few weeks - or to evaluate the QQ.

Id like to see a 'fix' whereby Weakened Soul cannot be active on more than 5 targets at a time. This would make the Strength of Soul talent very useful in removing the WS debuff to allow another shield forceing you to use your actual heals. The only problem i can forsee is how would they distinguish a Disc Weakened Soul from a Holy Priest Weakened Soul - there is probably some way round it...

Keeping it to 5 targets - you still get your shields on the tanks and the most vunerable raid members. Almost changing the use of PW:S to a cooldown type ability - or at least making you think about who to shield and why.

Other than that I still like the idea of an insta cast prayer of aegis ability to boost our raid healing - which is what we lack if we are limited via mana.

[Deleted]

Base mana cost cannot just be increased as we go up a tier because it will screw over newly dinged Disc Priests.

You don't have to wait for us to go up a tier for newly dinged disc priests to get screwed over, take a look around Orgrimmar and ask the first level 85 priest you see with greens/blues to shield you. You'll laugh your ass off at his mana pool.

[Strakha]

Thinking about this more, anyone else find it weird that they basically dropped the rejuv amount by the same % and think it is ok for resto druids to go back to their system of spamming rejuv whereas it is not OK for disc priests to spam PW:S? Why is this?

[Kam]

It is a very lazy fix, they will indeed need to increase the cost to compensate in later tiers and they need to do that with all spells really otherwise raids will turn into even more spam than it is now.

I actually think with the revamp in Cataclysm they should have just removed mana regen completely. Mana regen should just be constant based on your level, gear does not increase it. Gear just increases your healing output so that you have to cast less spells to do the same amount of healing. Thus regen goes up based on your gear healing better.

Then in higher end content the damage increases, and thus you need to cast more often again thus making mana an issue, and then as you gear up it becomes less of an issue once more.

Then there needs to be no spirit gear in the game, no need to spirit -> hit talents and all caster gear can be for all classes. So simple, but so sad they won't do it.

[hikamiro]

Just go holy and spam pw:s, Blizzard is soooo good at balancing this game.

This is going to turn out well for pvp disc priests. I just know it is.

/sarcasm off

[bypass]

The mana system in its entirety is flawed. You either balance mana in such a way that it is far too limiting in the early tiers, or you make mana costs reasonable for the first few tiers and then have people completely disregarding mana at the end.

The best solution I can think for this would be a zone-wide mana debuff in the higher tier of raiding, i.e. Sunwell's avoidance debuffs. This would make mana an important consideration throughout all tiers of raiding.

I agree with the sentiment, but I think a better way to manage the situation would be to put diminishing returns on mana gained (but not spellpower) from intellect. As it stands healers are already using intellect consumables rather than spirit ones simply because the mana regeneration is already superior. By limiting the mana pools from growing out of control it is possible to fix spells like pw:s in this way whilst at the same time allowing spirit to play a more important role for healing classes.

[Southern]

Just checked your specc Tiduz and I admit, I'm in love with it . Shield spam is back with all the Holy shinny toys as well .

O M G.....the proof is in the pooooooodin!! And I wanted to be different from the normal healer by choosing to be disc....I think we should all spec Holy Priest with Body and Soul and cause Blizz to do another knee-jerk!! Mind you, they may say it's ok since being holy we may use more than just PW:S cos that's like absolutely the only thing a disc priest does in raids

[balrok69]

Blizz isnt thinking in pve mode...
Few patches ago, nerf the prayer a 15% to disc because they dont want that we used this spell...
Now shields are expensive to quickly prevent damage when the raid goes down...
"Heal" as disc, it's not a option in hc modes..., but it's a T2 bonus...
What's next?

[drubibu]

And what was their motivation? "We don’t find this to be a particularly compelling playstyle and have found that it encourages players to avoid using other spells such as Penance." HELLO PENANCE HAS A COOLDOWN! You nerfed POH, now you nerf PW:S and tell me to use penance? I am in total confusion on how to heal efficiently. (maybe not casting anything while penance is on CD)

[Deleted]

ok - I want all the druid innervates to go to the holy priest with this spec who is also gonna use inner will plz: http://wowtal.com/#k=v1wNgUBn.aei.priest.qr3w3u

lol - how long will it be before we see logs with Holy Priests winning with absorbs !!!

[ZeroWashu]

Not sure what you are getting at with post here, should they take it away? Leave it alone? It is like CoH in WotLK, using one spell for an entire fight is ridiculous, do you honestly feel like you accomplished something when you sit there and spam one button for an entire fight?
.

Maybe because Shielding is considered a major trait of Discipline priests? I could be wrong here, but I play my discipline spec far different than my holy spec. This is simply another Blizzard nerf because we were not doing it right, by right I mean what the developers have deemed fun and correct in their books. It probably is too overpowered in Arena fights so anything like that must be curb stomped.

I can see making PW: Shield cost more mana and then giving Discipline the means to reduce that cost so as to keep the separation of Discipline and Holy, however this type of change goes against the spec at its heart and that is why the change is wrong.

Blizzard is so hell bent on making people use every damn spell they overlook the fact that we have too many as it is. I don't need a bar filled with healing spells. If they want me to be doing something other than spamming my heal spells then find a way to let me roll dps into my roll so the challenge is knowing when to heal and not what spell to use.

[Deleted]

lol - how long will it be before we see logs with Holy Priests winning with absorbs !!!

Not long mate
http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/r...m/healingDone/

Btw I like the idea, and hoping Blizz won't fix it hehe. So all those moaners for Disc nerf will STFU and die.

[prox]

this isn't nerf directed at shields but disc regen :/

[Sparkiee]

The majority of the Disc tree + Mastery needs a complete rework now if they want to disc to be how they describe. The fact you can just go Holy, and shield spam with the added utility of Holy and pretty much put out the same output as we did pre-hotfix shows how retarded this "fix" is.

How sombody at Blizzard couldnt see this happening from the PTR is completely beyond my belief, because it wasnt in your face blatent that the shield spamming was going to happen.

I look forward to seeing there next "hotfix" for this, what will you do now, stop people from putting talent points in Soul Warding if your already deep into the Holy tree? Sounds about right...

[Memoryz]

Our Disc had no issue pulling fantastic numbers tonight, as per usual. This nerf is a very stupid, very boring fix however. Disc is anemic as is, it's a shield spec with one shield. I'd really like to see this spec see some real development

The funny part of this change is that apparently specing Holy (Body&Soul) and dropping into Soul Warding is now a viable bubble spam option.

First of all, numbers on Conclave on skewed based on who you're paired up with.
Second, I don't care about what numbers I pulled. I care about the ability to pre-shield people grouped up to mitigate damage ACROSS THE BOARD. Not just 2-3 people. I don't care about shielding just 2-3 people, I care about mitigating the damage raid wise.

Discipline is always going to have decently high numbers no matter what, but that doesn't mean anything when it comes to considering how well the role is played now.

---------- Post added 2011-02-17 at 07:39 AM ----------

The majority of the Disc tree + Mastery needs a complete rework now if they want to disc to be how they describe. The fact you can just go Holy, and shield spam with the added utility of Holy and pretty much put out the same output as we did pre-hotfix shows how retarded this "fix" is.

How sombody at Blizzard couldnt see this happening from the PTR is completely beyond my belief, because it wasnt in your face blatent that the shield spamming was going to happen.

I look forward to seeing there next "hotfix" for this, what will you do now, stop people from putting talent points in Soul Warding if your already deep into the Holy tree? Sounds about right...

We don't put out the same output pre-patch, sorry. Blizzard needs to realize 2 things:
1) Shields were simply just abit too powerful after the patch, lower the absorption.
2) Reduce the mana cost of shields back..... please.

[Deleted]

There is no focus or well defined role for Discipline... enven Shields are better for Holy with these new hotfix.

Discipline must become something new . I propose a kung-fu style tanking spec, BANG !

(forum wont let me post video link to diablo3 monk trailer)

[achaeon]

Blizzard always goes over the top in one direction or another these days, it's getting old. They have no concept of 'balance'. Just buffing and nerfing.

[La]

Seems to me like minus a few things, there`s just no reason to go disc over holy PvE wise, and to be honest the only one reason to play disc over holy was because shields were unique, what`s the point in using pennance and every heal a holy priest can use if holy can use them better?

They might as well just put Disc as more of a PvP spec and balance it around that if they`re just going to kill the damn spec for both PvE and PvP, while I agree that shield spamming isn`t a good way to heal and this expansion has been about "use every skill where needed" and choosing what to use, if you`re going to make shields basically only for tanks and the odd dps, well that`s stupid because they`re about mitigating predicted incoming damage, now even if you predict it you can`t cast enough to prevent it.

I love how Blizzard always says one thing, then says another...it`s really an amazing thing they do, and the fact we have to sit around and twiddle our thumbs just makes it even worse.