[Priest] Mental Strength - 4.0 Discipline Discussion

[Kelesti]

What state of the game can we be looking forward to, from Discipline going into 4.0?

New Regen (that is supposed to actually matter), the expectation to cast "healing spells".

Power Word: Barrier, Leap of Faith? Evangelism, Archangel?

The state of Power Word: Shield in general? Without Desperate Prayer, is Discipline still "The PvP spec", and are absorbs being brought into the combat log properly?

[Deleted]

Personally I hope that disc will still be a viable PvE spec in 4.0.
I would like to see something like a new, more involved, mana regeneration option. I just have doubts that the Archangel-mechanism will work out well in raid situations (and when I remember right, Blizzard also had their doubts in the first official statements to priests in cataclysm).
From the new abilities we are going to get, I find 'Inner Will' the most interesting and I'm still curious if disc priests get a secondary shield spell and how it works out.

I would like if they constrain the preemptive shield-spamming healing style. I would appreciate it if we had to put some forethought in placing our shields. But don't get me wrong, I love the PW:S spell and I still want it to be an important spell for disc priests.
I also hope that disc priests get something to heal up the teammates with a similar healing throughput as other healing classes. I think this will be necessary due to the higher HP pool of all players (also see http://bobturkey.wordpress.com/2010/...aling-dynamic/ regarding this).

[kelevandros]

My wishful thinking is that disc will do pretty well in both pve and pvp. There will be a change of focus from bubble spamming to decent healing + shielding combo, which will help disc priests handle both tank and raid healing roles (the goal for all healers). The key is to shift from "whack a mole" to choosing which spell fits the right moment in fights, and I think transferring some of the focus of shielding to mainstream healing tools is a key aspect of that "healer decision making process" that will make cataclysm healing more interesting.
I'm pretty sure they will excel at pvp (regardless of desperate prayer). I'm more concerned if holy will make it in pvp, rather than if disc will be a good spec at pvp.

[Blackmorgrim]

So far, Disc looks to be turning into the paladin of old, with some new tricks of its own. With paladins getting a more varied repertoire of spells, and priests already having an adaptive healing spec with holy, it wouldn't be too bad for them to get a specialized single target spec with Disc.

Unlike any other class, priests have 2 trees for healing... so they don't need to have all their variety in one spec.

[Danner]

When it comes to manaregen, Archangel is not going to be the answer. It is a mana loss to build mana that way; 5 smites cost more than 15% of your manapool. As far as I see it, the archangel is there to pay back some of the cost you spend while smiting. And sometimes, smiting is nice... I personally found it kinda annoying that I had to wait until I was clad in ulduar gear to be able to afford to use that spell in dungeons.

Likewise, with the massively increased cost of heals, even Rapture is not going to make a major difference, unless you can abuse it massively. I don't think you will be able to. In the short term, this is going to hurt disc priest mana availability by a lot.

If you want mana, I actually think putting 2 pts into veiled shadows is going to do a massive amount of difference. To the point where it is blatantly OP for healers and either it or the fiend need a nerf. I prefer the latter, as missing a fiend will be rather dramatic if it's 60% of a manabar lost.

Ultimately, I somewhat suspect that blizzard will have to go through the priest healing spells and look closely at the cost. Even if they want heals to cost a lot, at this rate Prayer of Healing is going to cost us 5 digits of mana to cast at level 85. This spell in particular is horribly overpriced compared to chain heal, but it's really a problem with the entire priest toolbox. To some extent it's okay, but... we all know blizzard overdid it. Ands unless they actually want discpriests to survive based on abusing the rapture bug - which I doubt - something has to change here.

[Kaesebrezen]

When it comes to manaregen, Archangel is not going to be the answer. It is a mana loss to build mana that way; 5 smites cost more than 15% of your manapool.

This is
a) not true for level 80 (do the math ... smite costs 580, your manapool should be anywhere over 25000, this means it does regen mana)
b) not true for Holy Priests with Surge of Light (as long as you're not in a holy nova situation, you'd be an idiot to waste the free mana proc)
c) true while leveling and not upgrading your int-stat (you gain a lot of int on gear from 81-83 btw)

If you want mana, I actually think putting 2 pts into veiled shadows is going to do a massive amount of difference.

I doubt it will stay in the first tier.

[Deleted]

I really cant wait to see priest game play.. they removing spamm dispelling and this is one of the priests GREAT power in pvp!

[Danner]

Kaesebrezen:

I stand corrected, actually. Even at lvl 85, smite should not remain a dps loss to cast for particularly long - heroic gear should probably fix it. But consuming your evangelism buff by casting archangel is not something that should be done lightly; a loss of a very big HPS buff is going to be extremely painful.

Side note: I really don't like evangelism at all. As others have said, it does feel wrong for your ability to heal to be punished by not dpsing as well. It's good and well that priests are offensive healers at heart, but... those GCDs spent smiting are going to hurt when the crap hits the fan and you need to chose between maintaining the evangelism buff or keeping people alive - but at the cost of a buff that will kill people later if you don't have.

Especially the holypriest is going to explode. Maintaining evangelism for healing throughput, using archangel to maintain mana, smiting when a surge of light procs, tracking cooldowns, bluebar, 25 lifebars, raid position and other procs... it's going to be a lot. I'm not sure the additions are quite well thought through.

[Ananan]

Also, people tend to forgot what Evangelism actually does. If the first smite costs 580 mana then the fifth smite would cost 440 mana.

[Abandon]

When considering the mana return from Archangel balanced around the mana cost of actually casting the Smites, remember that each Smite will reduce the mana cost of the next one by 6%, up to 30% as Evangelism stacks. The increase in damage also increases the healing from Atonement sightly, and since most big spike damage is predictable from what I have seen (move away while it charges, interrupt it, ect) you can consume them and get a decent mana boost as well as 15% extra healing for when you do need to heal.

With my gear at level 80 it restored about 5,000 mana with 5 stacks, which is about twice the Smite cost.

Edited for clarity.

[Tylmarande]

Currently, a PvE Disc build can't obtain Evangelism/Archangel without giving up essential PvE performance talents. I'd like to see the tree redesigned to make some talents cheaper so we could grab this if we wish. Mental Agility, Twin Disciplines and Inspiration seem like they could have their talent point investments reduced to free up these points (preferably the first two of these will be axed completely and replaced with more interesting talents).

[Deleted]

I agree with Danner: This 'smite to regen mana' mechanic is the most complex and error-prone way to regen mana I have ever seen in WoW. I'm sure you can regen 5,000 mana or more with this when smiting the training dolls in undercity, but I doubt that this will be as effective in a raid environment.
This perfectly fits damage dealers though, and that's why I suggest to move these talents into the shadow tree and replace them with something more suitable for disc priests and raids.

[Abandon]

I agree with Danner: This 'smite to regen mana' mechanic is the most complex and error-prone way to regen mana I have ever seen in WoW. I'm sure you can regen 5,000 mana or more with this when smiting the training dolls in undercity, but I doubt that this will be as effective in a raid environment.
This perfectly fits damage dealers though, and that's why I suggest to move these talents into the shadow tree and replace them with something more suitable for disc priests and raids.

Actually, I was regaining that amount of mana between healing the tank and group in the new instances, not just static testing. I actually prefer the "Smite to regain mana" model over "stand AFK to regain mana" that we used to have in Vanilla, which was replaced by "What the hell is mana? My blue Energy bar doesn't go down" more recently.

They are not deleting passive Mana regen, or Shadowfiend, or Hymn of Hope. You will have all the tools you currently have to regain mana, as well as this additional one which also provides 15% +healing if you choose to spec for it which results in giving up some passive -Mana cost talent like Mental Agility or Veiled Shadows.

[xer0cide]

I agree with Danner: This 'smite to regen mana' mechanic is the most complex and error-prone way to regen mana I have ever seen in WoW. I'm sure you can regen 5,000 mana or more with this when smiting the training dolls in undercity, but I doubt that this will be as effective in a raid environment.
This perfectly fits damage dealers though, and that's why I suggest to move these talents into the shadow tree and replace them with something more suitable for disc priests and raids.

TBH i really see the evangelism+ archangel mechanic to be more proned towards priest with downtime during a raid encounter. Which is dumb because we choose to heal not dps and you'd probably save more mana just sitting than tossing smites here and there. More of a PVP ability imo

[Deleted]

I did some math comparing the beta disc tree and the live disc tree and noticed all they did was split numbers between talents rename them or made them 1 instead of 3 points etc but overall almost ALL numbers were nerfed.

Enlightment gone : -6% spell haste , - 6% willpower
Soul warding: on beta its 3 sec cd reduction and a 3 point talent instead of 4 sec cd and 1 point ---- 2 more points for a 1 sec cd nerf ?
Grace : beta its 4% less damg and 2 stacks, live its 3% less damg and 3 stacks ----- 1% nerf
Borrowed time: 15% spellhaste and 12% of spellpower to shields compared to 25% haste and 40% sp for shields ------- 10% haste and 28% sp nerf
renewed hope: +6% crit to weakened sould affected targets for heal spells on beta , 4% higher crit AND 3% less raiddamg on live ------ 2% more crit is a joke compared to the loss of 3% less raiddamg taken.
We loose improved powerword: Fortitude: 4% less stamina and 30% less effect on the buff
We loose inner focus
Rapture is self only on beta: no benefit for others anymore
We loose focused power: 4% less heal on beta than on live servers
Despite blizzard wants us to heal MORE we loose: Improved flash heal: 15% more mana cost and 10% LESS crit chance on beta

And btw due to talent nerfs the already nerfed PW:S costs 5% MORE mana on beta.....

I know the numbers are likely to get changed during beta, but some numbers have ALREADY been adjusted and they have been adjusted DOWNWARDS.

The current beta build disc is a joke compared to live its worse in every aspect.
You are FORCED to smite all the time just to get the healing buff from archangel and even then you cant heal as well as the other healers.
With each patch disc gets worse and worse and not better...

If thats what we get every time the devs look at us i prefer they stop looking at us already before they make the tree even worthless for shadow and holy cause for pure disc it is already.

[cruxxy]

The extent of the discussion in the thread reflects the amount of energy Blizz seems to have put into the Disc tree.

[Hushkoon]

The extent of the discussion in the thread reflects the amount of energy Blizz seems to have put into the Disc tree.

Agreed... (but hopefully it's Disc's turn to be tinkered with now, seeing they have been doing so with holy and shadow for a while now)

Regarding Nocturna's comparison of beta and live talents I must say that I was actually a bit shocked. Not so much about that some numbers have been reduced (some by a far to large stretch if you ask me), I figure they will make it so we scale nicely for when Cata hits; but the part that shocked me was the fact that Disc no longer gets to reduced all raid damage with 3% and no Rapture effect for the receiving part of PW:S. I find that a very sad thing, cause I already think priests in general lack some raid related buffs for Cata (like what the TEDDYBEAR! is up with Shamans getting Concentration Aura and we don't). I do so hope that some of the lacking part of our talents simply is an error of withdrawing the info about the talents every time a new Beta client comes, that or Blizz simply messed up when playing with the talents.

Anyway, I do hope, and think, that Disc will get it's love before live hits and we have to remember that Disc can now pick up Empowered Healing + Divine Fury with ease, thus we are actually not at all as nerfed as it may seem.

Ps. Nocturna it seems that you have misunderstood how Grace works; it's increase healing only for the priest, on the target that has Grace on it.

[Deleted]

Anyway, I do hope, and think, that Disc will get it's love before live hits and we have to remember that Disc can now pick up Empowered Healing + Divine Fury with ease, thus we are actually not at all as nerfed as it may seem.

Ps. Nocturna it seems that you have misunderstood how Grace works; it's increase healing only for the priest, on the target that has Grace on it.

Devine Fury and empowered healing are NOT in the disc tree but are HOLY talents.
Its about disc talents, other treesd oesnt matter at all since they are OTHER trees.
You judge a tree by the talents in that tree and not if you can get certain talents in another tree.
Holy can get Twin disciplines and Improved Powerword Shield easily now too but that is just a bonus and holy performs great without those 2 talents.
If i put all my points into one tree that tree must be able to compete with the other trees out there.

Several blue posts made clear that the devs want us to judge a tree by its own and NOT by the combinations with other trees.

P.S: I know how grace works i just explained it wrong :-) i meant 1 % less healing on beta than on live.

[Hushkoon]

Well, seems like you are only talking about the Disc talents on their own, while I'm talking about Disc as a whole. And I would argue that any person with just half a brain, should be logical enough to grasp that you cannot just sit down and judge one thing on it's own, when that said thing is intended to scale and work together with other things. There is no point in screaming and kicking because you find the Disc tree not powerfull enough, if the Disc spec as a whole is where it should be at (not saying that I think it is, but who knows really?)

Furthermore I'm pretty sure that almost everyone else here is talking about Disc as a spec and not a tree, just as I'm pretty sure it's intended to be that way. But by all means, carry on thinking in only a tree (how narrow sighted that might be), but don't come and make fuss about it, when the fact is that Disc is not as nerfed as it might seem, when looking at the whole picture.

[Deleted]

Well, seems like you are only talking about the Disc talents on their own, while I'm talking about Disc as a whole. And I would argue that any person with just half a brain, should be logical enough to grasp that you cannot just sit down and judge one thing on it's own, when that said thing is intended to scale and work together with other things. There is no point in screaming and kicking because you find the Disc tree not powerfull enough, if the Disc spec as a whole is where it should be at (not saying that I think it is, but who knows really?)

Furthermore I'm pretty sure that almost everyone else here is talking about Disc as a spec and not a tree, just as I'm pretty sure it's intended to be that way. But by all means, carry on thinking in only a tree (how narrow sighted that might be), but don't come and make fuss about it, when the fact is that Disc is not as nerfed as it might seem, when looking at the whole picture.

You really think that TWO talents in the holy tree make up for all the nerfs to the disc tree ?
Thats like EVERY taylent in the holy tree was nerfed and you say :"Holy is ok cause they can get a better shield with the first disc talents"
And btw its the devs who think that the tree makes the spec not me.
Thats the whole point why the devs force players to put 31 points into a tree before you can put some points into other trees...............

Btw since you CANT put points into holy UNLESS you are lvl 70+ and therefore you dont even have access to the talents you mention, your argument is simnply false and pointless......
Its IS the tree that makes a specc.