I have been wondering about the problems a disc priest might have in PvE. As it would stand on live, using the damage mitigation skills of the 3.0 Disc Priest would result in a small but significant decrease in rage/mana generation by tanks. The effect of this would ultimately be to lower the threat generation by the tank which would thereby lower the dps that could be safely applied.
One worst-case calculation I saw was that a typical rotation of spells by a disc priest would result in a loss of 6 rage/sec by druids/warriors and 26 mana/sec by paladins.
Blizzard responded to some of these concerns today. So I am posting them here for those (such as myself) who are interested in the Discipline tree for PvE.
---------------------------------------------------------- c u t h e r e -----------------------------------------------
I'm curious, do people notice the tank dropping aggro in beta as a Discipline healer? I've done 10 and 25-mans so far on beta and I did not notice it all.
Class Designer
Koraa
2008-09-24 22:36:48Re: [Suggestion] PW: Shield and Rage Generati
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q u o t e:
In high end raiding situations, Power Word Shield could starve the tank of rage/mana for a split second, which at the end of the day means the raid must put out slightly less DPS to compensate for the tank's lower Threat Per Second. This effectively means that Power Word: Shield cannot be used as a staple of a Disc Priest's raiding arsenal. No raid would permit a healer to lessen the tanks rage/mana, no matter how small the cost.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Totally agree with this mentality on live, but it is not really that way now (on beta and for wrath of the lich king+). I'm willing to be proven wrong, though.
Shielding the tank right as he's pulling is a rookie mistake, and we're not really trying to "fix" that. What we don't want is you not wanting to PW:S or use Divine Aegis on tanks during, say, Patchwerk because of aggro issues. But so far, I don't find that to be the case. At least, not in my experiences (and I've healed as Disc for Patchwerk in beta for both 25 and 10-man).
Class Designer
Koraa
2008-09-24 22:38:30Re: [Suggestion] PW: Shield and Rage Generati
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q u o t e:
How about 5-mans where rage is harder to come by?
It's not going to cripple the tank, but you're preventing a fair bit of rage generation, and it's unfortunate that a healing spec would work against the tank like that.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mmm... I've also done 5-mans and didn't notice it. We did notice that getting random healing aggro was annoying as a Priest (on new mobs that aggro), which is why we changed Fade to drop all aggro while its up.
Class Designer
Koraa
2008-09-24 22:47:15Re: [Suggestion] PW: Shield and Rage Generati
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q u o t e:
Patchwerk hits like a truck. That's basically the exception to the rule.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
True. But we did nearly the entire instance and our tank didn't lose aggro. Tank classes and threat is a lot different now than what it is on live.
Class Designer
Koraa
2008-09-24 22:48:03Re: [Suggestion] PW: Shield and Rage Generati
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Q u o t e:
Have you noticed the threat going to the Priest from Prayer of Mending, as well as the amount healed being determined by the target's spellpower, as opposed to the Priest's? That's what's currently happening.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It should be using the Priests spell power, not the targets. As for the threat, it should now generate threat for the Priest not the target. The same was done to Lifebloom, Earth Shield, etc.