Disc. Tree Changes (Build 9014)

[Emmalina]

In the latest build, Imp. Inner Fire has been moved from Tier 3 to 2, and Imp. Fort has been moved from Tier 2 to 3, basically the talents have been exchanged.

Before : http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/priest/talents.html
After: http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest

Just another frustrating change that essentially requires more points in Disc. to pick up some very important talents. This change won't have much effect on Disc. specs since those will be picking up Imp. Fort one way or another, but for a Holy build this change just wastes more talent points. It's already pretty much mandatory to go 13 points into Disc. for Meditation, 14 if you're sane and pick up Inner Focus. That's 14 points for near-essential talents for any healing build, and skipping out on Mental Agility and DS/Imp. DS. At least Imp. Fort was a freebie on the way to Meditation.

With this change, to get to Imp. Fort and Meditation, you'll probably go 5/5 Twin Disciplines, likely 3/3 Silent Resolve, but now have 2 points to fill. Imp. Inner Fire and Martyrdom are talents to mitigate damage, however in raid situation it's unlikely that a priest will survive significant damage, so I don't find either of those talents particularly valuable. That leaves me with 2/3 Imp. PW:Shield, with Shield being of questionable valuable in a raid situation. 10 points in, you put 3 into Meditation, 1 into Inner Focus and you're at 14 without Imp. Fort. With Imp. Fort you're at 16 points.

For a priest who'd like to spec deep Holy but not give up too much versatility in smaller groups that may not have a Disc. priest, this change effectively reduces their spec flexibility by 2 talent points. Seems significant to me.

Why class designers would move the improved version of the most fundamental group/raid buff in the game deeper into a tree is beyond me.

[Arcdelad]

I believe that they all graduated from U of A's school for video game design....a standard of logic can't be applied ot them =)

[Docsamson]

This seems in-line with Blizzard's intention of making Discipline a viable main-tank healing tree.  Unfortunately, Discipline (as of current) lacks the throughput and mana longevity to really keep a main tank up and running, due to the simple fact that the majority of the Discipline tree % raises are focused on boosting the strength of Power Word: Shield, a non-spammable spell that brutalizes rage generation if it were used in the quantities they want it to be.  Now, with the Imp. Fort. changes, you either end up with at least one gimped Holy priest (but we've been used to this for ages due to needing one person going 28/33 for Imp. DS) or bring along a Disc Priest for your buffs.  With all the other changes they've made about how they want to remove the requirements for one "off-spec" being required to raid, and gutting a lot of people's raid-utility trees and giving multiple classes the same buffs, this really feels to be going in the opposite direction.  It used to be that all Priest builds had Imp. Fort guaranteed, but with this change it doesn't look like Shadow builds will pick it up, depending on our mana longevity towards end-game.

Fortunately, it appears (at least so far) that most Heroics and raids can be handled without meditation, using only Dispersion and the Shadowfiend, along with our personal regen from IST and no longer needing to re-cast SW:P.  If this remains, we'd have no need to pick up Mediation and could instead grab Imp. Fort. and Inner Focus.  However, if 3/3 Meditation becomes necessary, it will force Spriests and guilds to make a choice between having Imp. VE and another priest with Imp. Fort.  The obvious choice here is Imp. VE, as (so far) it has not had it's party health restoration mechanic changed, and we've had our personal DPS increased to be on-par with that of other caster DPS classes.  This would, strangely enough, make an Spriest an optimal addition to a Melee DPS/Tank group, as VT is now raid-wide, as are most of the other buffs (Windfury being the prime example, which is now a raid-wide Haste buff).

On the bright side, however, Imp. DS was nerfed pretty hard, making it no longer necessary to have one 23/38 priest, as the buff no longer scales with base spirit.  So, really, unless they make Imp. DS scale again (which would be obscene at the L80 spirit amounts), or give people absolutely no reason to bring a Disc healer on raids.  Now, I'd be perfectly fine with Disc not being a raiding tree.  It's our PvP tree, really, most people are fine with it.  Plus, using it as your MT healer, the only place where it has comparable throughput to a full Holy priest (less than 10% lower) ends up murdering a tank's threat generation.  All this really does is force Holy priests to sink more points into Disc, the exact opposite of what the dev's have said their intentions were (I.E. streamlining talent trees and consolidating bloat) as well as forcing people to bring along yet another off-spec for "raid optimization".

[Shadowwolf]

Unfortunately, Discipline (as of current) lacks the throughput and mana longevity to really keep a main tank up and running, due to the simple fact that the majority of the Discipline tree % raises are focused on boosting the strength of Power Word: Shield, a non-spammable spell that brutalizes rage generation if it were used in the quantities they want it to be.

Um...where are you getting your info from? I main heal as disc right now and my mana regen is definitely not a problem, in fact I believe I have a higher regen rate casting and not casting than most holy priests do (~975/~430). My heals dont hit for as much as holy does because I dont get all the added bonuses to +healing, but for longevity, I last longer and can spam smaller heals longer with greater efficiency.

I see the changes coming as a way to make Disc finally competitive with Holy in terms of healing but through the ways it was intended to be and that being damage absorption and avoidance. Disc is never going to outheal Holy because it wasnt intended to but everything in the tree was designed to mitigate damage done to whomever to increase survival. I see the changes with this swap being a way for Blizz to force the hand of priests to choose 1 or the other instead of hybrid specing which is something they've said time and time again with WotLK they want to get rid of. They dont want the "cookie cutter" raid specs anymore because they feel lots of parts of the talent trees get skipped in favor of min/maxing. Was on a Blue post on the beta forum a little while ago but im too lazy to look it up.

From the looks of the upcoming changes, Disc is getting even better mana regen stats through talents to make it even more of a longevity healer class and viable competitor with Holy. With the changes to tanking threat, using PW:Shield on a tank no longer causes threat issues on a rage tank as thats one of the primary things people asked to be fixed. It will basically come down to a style of healing and what you prefer, longer larger heals or smaller shorter heals mixed with damage reduction. In the end they will even out and fill in their own niche.

[Emmalina]

Good to see the Arc coming in and making constructive conversation 

I've spent quite a bit of time as Discipline, pre-BC and post, and never felt like it gimped my healing. Certainly you lose some output per heal, but like Shadow said it's simply suited to a different style of healing and when you make a few adjustments it's an equally effective healing tree. In terms of streamlining the trees to stand on their own, I think Blizzard has made progress. With Dispersion, shadow priests, like you said Doc, can get away with skipping out on Meditation if they choose and have tons of flexibility in the Shadow tree. Discipline specs have always been able to work even with just 5-10 points in T1 Holy, and the new talents show clearly that Blizzard is focusing this tree onto damage mitigation. There may still be some minor talent issues within the trees, but effective specs in either one are focused and flexible, so 2/3 is progress.

However, I still balk at Holy. If Blizzard truly is trying to break the hybrid cookie cutters, they need to give Holy a mana regen source. Meditation could become trained instead of talented (makes the most sense to me), Meditation could be moved into tier 1 or 2 in Disc so Holy specs aren't wasting points to get to it, or there needs to be a new talent in Holy. I don't see the last one happening, but it seems like the first 2 are completely viable. Although basing the new Holy around crit heals isn't quite my cup of tea, I'd still like to try a deep Holy build, I'd like to try CoH and the other talents, but there's so little flexibility to do that. I think there's just a fundamental flaw when you pretty much cannot take your 51 point talent, as is the case with Holy.

Like I say, I think good progress has been made with Shadow and Disc, but there's definitely some work left to do in Holy.

[JohnnieRat]

Spec shadow?

[Emmalina]

Okay, I'll spec Shadow, but to compensate for the loss of a healer, you have to spec Holy. 

[Arcdelad]

JR used to be a truly KICKASS healer...one of the best pally healers I have ever seen...

...until he decided that doing mediocre dps and watching autoattack over and over were fun

[Shadowwolf]

Thats how its been with Holy for some reason. They never quite fix it completely. They add some great talent, then somewhere along the line, usually right away they must think "oh thats too good" and then beat it into oblivion with a nerf bat to the point where it becomes trivial. Lightwell, or LOLWell is one of those. Great spell if the cooldown wasnt 5min, it had more than 5 charges and the HoT didnt break if you took damage. CoH, also, good spell, but could be a lot better if it wasnt limited to the group your target is in and rather just worked on 5 people nearest them. The likelihood that 5 people are in the same group and also clumped together is too low to make that spell useful across the board.

They always come close with Holy then they fail to finish it off and make it worthwhile. Thats why I just stick with Disc and overflow some extra points into the higher Holy tiers.