Penance
The extra time between casts is indeed an eternity. It seems that we all have to adjust to a new rhythm, and that should take probably another week or so. I've had to rearrange my UI so that the Penance cooldown is shout-in-your-face loud. Otherwise, like many of us, I'm just clicking a dead button while I could have been doing something useful.
So meanwhile, what to do with that extra time? I've applied to the Camp of Greater Heal, and I've been accepted as an Initiate. I've redone my spec, complete with 5/5 Divine Fury and 2/3 Improved Healing. Improved Flash Heal has made its triumphant return, and Focused Will is now the casualty of spec adjustments. Other disc priests would move one point from Grace to fill out Improved Healing, but I can't quite bring myself to do that just yet.
Greater Heal vs. Flash Heal
I won't go into this minefield just now, except to say that I'm happy we have hard decisions again! Our spec is no longer fully-formed out of the box. Spell usage is now very much in debate. I'm not happy at how hard it is to keep tanks up, but I am indeed happy that things have moved past the right/wrong answers that we've gotten used to.
That said, if the nerf to Penance were 1 second instead of 2, I think we could all adjust and not feel like we just got our left arms chopped off...
Prayer of Healing
The nerf scales with your spellpower. I got hit hard. I don't cast PoH as much as my holy priest friends, and this will have me casting it even less. It's a real loss. Which brings me to...
Glyphs
Ok, Penance was always essential. Shield is a no-brainer as well, though some disc priests will tell you the healing is often overheal. But I have no intention of removing this from my glyph pane anytime soon.
I switched to the PoH glyph a while back, but now this is ridiculous. The glyph took a nerf in direct proportion to the spell it augments. Plus now that I'm casting PoH less, the glyph becomes even more of a waste. So back to Flash Heal for me. Some priests are using Holy Nova these days, which is very nice for tightly-grouped hard-mode fights (like Mimiron).
Trial of the Champion
Comparisons to Magister's Terrace were greatly exaggerated. As in, LOL. Long after I got the trinket from Priestess, even after I had enough badge gear to last me into my retirement years, I still did MgT almost every day. The instance was just that well designed, that much fun, day in & day out. The new 5-man...is not.
Comparisons to Ring of Blood, however, were relatively accurate. Fast, simple, and kind of fun. However, Ring of Blood was not repeatable, except to help out guildies or run alts. The new instance is a daily event, because it drops unreasonably good 219 gear.
My level-200-geared friends are now farming the place, and I'm helping as much as I can. We even do non-heroic, because even the level 200 stuff is so nicely itemized. This is silly. I realize it represents a gear-reset patch, almost as generous as 3.0 was before LK dropped. But at least farming ZA was fun. The new 5-man...is not.
Loot pinata? Yes. Magister's Terrace? Ho-ho-ho.
Trial of the Crusader
I hope it gets better.
Tier 9
I hope I never get a tier token. That shit is ugly. And anyway, how can a disc priest ever break their 4-piece T8 bonus? Tell me!!
Really dont understand why we were hit so hard. Its not as if we are anywhere near the top of the meters, like we were in the CoH spam days. Why not just remove the penance glyph? At least that would give an extra slot. I hate to say I am seriously considering going back to holy.
Good to read your thoughts on 3.2 (and see you're still around). I too am sort of let down with Trial of the Champion. My hope is that the PvE content of this patch was more of a stopgap while they work on the final encounters of Icecrown.
I am constantly trying to cast Penance 1.5 seconds before it has cooled down. I can only hope that time will heal this wound. ;)
re:Penance CD - I macroed like this:
/castseqence reset=10 Penance, Flash Heal, Flash Heal, etc
So even if Penance is on CD I still have a fast heal on the same key. There is no point in casting FH if you have PEnance ready so I also reduce the number of buttons by one.
Since 3.2 I am casting the occasional GH, but FH is still the main option after Penance.
I agree they would have been much better to remove the Penance Glyph rather than nerf the CD.
I don't PvP but in PvE Penance wasn't really over powered IMHO.
re:PoH nerf - I don't really notice this that much. I'm gylphed for PoH and its not that bad. I'd obviously prefer more healing from such a mana intensive spell though.
re:glyphs - Because PW:S still has no CD I am still not casting a lot of Flash Heals. The mana use of FH is minor. Only heavy GH and PoH casting cause mana issues. So i'm sticking with the PoH glyph.
re:the new 5-man - Serious loot pinata. The normal mode dropping multiple ilvl 200 epics is crazy.
re: new 10/25 man raids - I don't mind them although Ulduar is much better.
4pct T8 is very nice for Disc.
Gobble gobble.
I'm leveling a disc priest. I'm just lvl 54 yet, so don't even know what it feels like to cast Penance. Tho what I can tell is that there seems to be alot of synergy between FH, DA, Grace and PW:S. So right off the bat FH seems to be what WOW creators intend us Disc Priest to use. I can't wait to have penance and from my point of view the idea of keeping the same cooldown but removing the glyph was the best solution.
I can't wait to be lvl 80 just so that my 2nd spec is not shadow (for questing) but PVP Disc! ^^
Tier 9
I hope I never get a tier token. That shit is ugly. And anyway, how can a disc priest ever break their 4-piece T8 bonus? Tell me!!
Why? my "healing" by divine aegis is like 30-35% average, according to World of Logs. So it adds like 3% more healing done.
@Jan: 3% of 30% is closer to 1%. Which is nice, but certainly not worth using suboptimal gear to get. There are pieces in almost every slot that will add up to more than 1% net healing, and will provide better HPS. So many of the tier pieces are not BiS, at least for my needs. (See my posts in Sept 09 for more about that.)
what? that was meant like 10% of 30% is 3%... not 3% of 30%...