My impression from the priest Q&A is nothing short of complete and utter disappointment. Which, to be honest, it is difficult to be so disappointed when you were expecting much.

The issue that I was most concerned with involved greater heal.

Community Team: Many players assert that Greater Heal becomes less desirable as their gear continues to improve given the cast time and mana cost required, even with talent points in Serendipity.

Q: Do you feel that, given the risks and costs associated with using Greater Heal, it is sufficient in its current form; and are the benefits of Serendipity adequate?

Ghostcrawler: I think the only cost is the long cast time and the fact that the extra healing it provides isn't often necessary. The scale is just off -- Flash Heal is big, so Greater Heal is just overkill. Combine this with the fact that there are other spells that are doing a lot of the healing that Greater Heal used to do -- Penance for example. I don't think many players look at Greater Heal as being too expensive from a mana-per-healing standpoint. They often aren't in danger of running out of mana. It's also worth pointing out that max rank Greater Heal has always healed too much. The difference is that priests used to be able to cast down-ranked Greater Heals. We have considered offering say Lesser Heal as a literal 50% mana, 50% healing version of Greater Heal, but at the moment we're having enough to do getting both Greater Heal and Flash Heal to get used.

Q: Similarly, do you feel that the comparative cast time and mana cost of Flash Heal is appropriate given the amount of healing it provides?

Ghostcrawler: It's supposed to be an inefficient spell that gives you speed but at a high cost. The intent is that Greater Heal is the default heal a priest might cast, but then switch to a Flash Heal for those "oh snap" moments. Most fast heals in the game use this same model, with the exception of Flash of Light, which is mana-efficient but heals for a very small amount.

The problem is that in the current raid environment, speed is everything while mana isn't nearly so scary. What I mean is that you are generally at a greater risk of failure through raid members dying than you are for healers going out of mana. The speed of Flash Heal just trumps other issues. Two other things complicate this issue. One is that heals in general are very large compared to health pools. This means that a Greater Heal often just over-heals for more. Second, in a raid in which healers don't coordinate well it's easy for other healers to stomp on your big, slow heals. While you are casting, someone heals your target for you. I'm not saying these are bad players -- in my experience it's just the style of raid. Some players are really talkative and coordinated. "Big heal coming." "I got Jimmy." Or else everyone has their targets and won't heal someone else unless something unpredictable happens. Other raids just heal anyone who is injured and don't have a lot of assigned targets, except for probably the tanks. Both systems can work. The second one is going to get more use out of faster heals though.

Q: Have you considered reducing the 10-minute cooldown on Divine Hymn?

Ghostcrawler: It was balanced like Tranquility. We basically want these to be once-an-encounter spells. We have considered a mechanic that allows you to use the spell again in the case of a wipe, sort of the same way Bloodlust / Heroism works.

Q: Since Pain Suppression can easily be considered the life-saving mechanic of the Discipline tree, are there any possible improvements that could be made to this spell?

Ghostcrawler: Pain Suppression is more or less targeted Shield Wall. It's really good.


Theses are the questions that I was interested to see the answers to but unfortunately it seems that greater heal is being taken in the context of being a holy priest. They have a reduction to cast time, mana cost, and buffs to both flash heal and greater heal in their tree. Discipline does not have these resources and to even get part of them aside from reduced cast time would result in sacrificing penance.

Furthermore, if the "intent" of greater heal is that it should be the main spell that even holy is casting, Blizzard has missed that mark by a very large margin. Holy priests use flash heal to top off individuals and resume raid healing because with a druid in the raid or a pally or a shammy chainhealing--using greater heal on anyone is going to end up as a waste of mana and a large portion of overhealing.

But, with the nerf to Penance, Discipline should have greater heal as an option to fall back on. I am sure I might end up using it but honestly, the cast time and the talent points invested just to make it useable make it questionable if it is still worth it since it is still a slow cast and still mana intensive without the boost to healing that holy gets.

As for flash heal, it might be true that it is too powerful for holy but if I try to use it as a "filler" spell to keep the tank up until penance is useable again, unless I am insanely lucky with crits it is very hard to keep the tank up in even a 10 man situation.

I do not think that Blizzard will be making any changes in favor of discipline in the near future but eventually they will realize that we need stronger heals since they have nerfed the backbone of our healing rotation.

As for the, "I got Jimmy" approach, that might work except that by the time you start casting it and call it out to the raid it is easily just as likely that someone has already gotten them with a coh, chain heal, or a quick heal because should someone stopcasting because another healer has called out they have the heal? No, not ever. It might not be mana efficient but it is ludicrous to think that in the 2.5 seconds of casting someone else is not going to heal the person up. Not to mention, if this is a tank such a slow heal is just asking for the boss to whomp them into oblivion.

So yes, speed is king in Ulduar and I suspect it will be in the Trial as well. But for discipline with the buff to our other healing spells we will fall behind and not be as effective as other classes who single target heal.

On another note, I would like to see divine hymn reset like heroism upon a wipe but I also think that with the nerf they recently did to it, it is not unreasonable to have a shorter cooldown.

All in all, I expect there to be a followup to this Q&A. There were too many concerns not covered and the priest community on the forums is nothing short of outraged. Personally, I feel that the shadow priests and healing aspects should have had a separate Q&A because a majority of the Q&A was spent addressing shadow priests and their pvp concerns.

I feel as though Discipline as a spec was ignored for the most part of this Q&A since saying that Pain Suppression is good does not really cover any of the concerns I have had and when the concerns I have had were addressed, it was done from the perspective of a holy priest with the talents to make greater heal and flash heal powerful and worthwhile.

However, if in the followup to the Q&A there is a large portion that is again over shadow, I have to call foul play. They pointed out that priests have two distinctive healing trees but more than half is about being shadow and discipline was almost entirely ignored in the face of holy and shadow pvp concerns.

I suppose that since Discipline is good when it comes to pvp in their eyes that we do not deserve the time and effort the other specs of our class do.

Val'anyr Stats changes in 3.2 (MMO-Champion)

• Item Level has been increased from 239 to 245
• Stamina has been increased from 52 to 55
• Intellect has been increased from 54 to 57
• Spell Power has been increased from 587 to 621
• Critical Strike Rating has been increased from 47 to 50
• Haste Rating has been increased from 46 to 49

With 21 fragments in the bag waiting to be crafted into this weapon, I was excited to see the change.

I admit, when the stats for the weapon first came out and I compared them against the weapons that drop in Ulduar I was wondering exactly why the stats on a legendary weapon would not be higher.

Eventually, I decided that it would merely be a matter of switching weapons once I had gotten the use out of the proc. Blizzard has neatly solved this problem by making the change to where whenever it is equipped the proc will be put on cooldown. This also makes it so in later expansions I won't be able to swap out either.

The change to the weapon makes the stats more attractive and makes it feel like the effort put into creating the weapon by a raiding guild is more of a reward and benefit to the raid. Also it makes it more viable for using it longer in the next tier.

However, one thing that I believe seems to be underestimated by many healers is how good this proc is. I have read many complaints on forums about how lackluster this weapon is and depending on when the proc happens it can easily go unused to its full potential. However, I think that it is important to think ahead to future fights. Yes, the loss of spellpower may at some point not merit the difference but I think that with the upgrades of the rest of a healer's gear, since the proc will scale as gear gets better it is very likely that the loss of spellpower will be made up by the proc.

Our 10 man group has finally gotten this done. The fight is much more doable without a specific healing setup since the nerfs to Mimiron.

A discipline priest for this fight is extremely useful. Somehow I doubt it would have been easily done without shield spam, power infusion+PoH spam, and lots of penance. This fight more than any other makes me wish that Penance was not getting nerfed (which I still maintain that this is a pvp nerf rather than a pve nerf).

Dealing with the penance nerf will be more doable with new gear and the t9 4 piece bonus (not to mention the divine aegis from shields). However, Discipline priests have no other heal that is as power that can even contend with the power of penance. This nerf encourges Pve priests to use filler spells that will "hopefully" keep everything up until the cooldown is up.

It leaves us as healers at the mercy of cooldowns.

Don't get me wrong, I am sure that we can adapt but after recent mana nerfs and such it is no longer a question of saving penance for spike damage, we have to use it because our other heals are either too underwhelming or too high and mana cost.

I miss having Greater Heal as a viable tank healing option.

The truth of the matter is we have no talents similar to Empowered Healing and so simply the only spell that scales is PW:Shield.

What does this mean for healing?

It means there will come a time while you are raiding where you will have to depend on the fact that there is someone else healing with you on the tank who can cover the few second gap where we do not have a powerful heal. Using Greater Heal costs too much mana and costs 5 talent points for disc to have the viable option of even casting it because otherwise the spell cast is too long to be useful.

The same is true of Binding Heal, high mana cost and no real benefit out of it. I did use it for firefighter in 10 man last night when I was the only healer for a few nailbiting moments. Its just like how renew is also a lackluster option, again high mana cost for a spell that doesn't warrant the cost (1200 per tick just doesn't do much).

I wish Blizzard would instead nerf things for PvP only. Nerfing penance isn't a matter that oh we aren't going to use the spell now, it is a matter that we will be less capable of healing a tank. We are less likely to save that person who suddenly drops low because if I know a plasma blast is coming in less than 10 seconds, I'm going to save it for the tank.

Flash heal would be the only real option for healing this person if the already had weakened soul. PoM is going to do anything unless they get hit again, Gheal would take to long and cost too much to just top them off. The thing with flash heal, it isn't as strong as a holy priest's so I may as well leave it to them. Discipline needs more viable options that will not make us go oom with repeated use. That is why people are using penance so often, it is a quick, efficient heal unlike anything else we have in our arsenal. Personally, I have not come across any time where my Divine Aegis was stacked so high due to penance that is lasted longer than a few moments of incoming damage.

The outcry of PvE disc priests is being heard on the forums but I doubt that they will give us anything to suppliment the longer cooldown so that we have a useful option until the cooldown is up.

And frankly, I don't see them nerfing Holy Shock's cooldown which is an instant cast that heals for a good bit, especially with a crit.

It might not be right to compare penance to holy shock since penance is better but as a single target healer I have to say that we should have something or some talent that improves our flash heals or makes greater heal a viable option that will not make a priest (any priest for that matter) oom in a matter of a few casts.