3.1 PTR Priest Summary

[Concillian]

Breaking this into 3 sections for the primary trees. Thanks to Vor for some insight on the Holy post. Most of this is just a consolidation of info from various other sites (mmo-champ, WoRaids, WoW forums, etc...) along with a few experiences that seem to corroborate mana ramification estimations, which are largely based off of back calculating from 3.0 WWS logs based on 3.1 PTR mechanics.

PvE Discipline

Nerfs:
- Rapture was majorly changed from some mana back on almost every heal to 2.5% of max mana back if Power Word: Shield is fully absorbed with a cooldown of 12 seconds. For practical purposes, I'm considering this a 15 second cooldown (Weakened soul effect on the MT means once per 15 seconds on the MT). See the buffs before worrying, a lot of the previous benefit was put into other talents, just with less scaling with gear.
- Grace changed so that it applies to only one target at a time. Somewhat an interesting implementation because you can't help but heal multiple targets at times, it just means you really don't want to heal them with penance, flash, or greater heal, meaning shield, renew, binding, or Prayer of Healing should be primary non-tank heals.
- Removed the -3% damage component from grace (read buffs beefore worrying about this, it was added as an easy-to-apply raid-wide buff on another talent)
- Removed Improved Divine Spirit (perhaps the penance damage buff is to help offset this for soloing priests)

Buffs:
- Rage can be generated through shields (and on shields, which is a PvP nerf for priests, and a PvP buff for Warriors)
- Shadowfiend buffed in every aspect, does more damage, returns more mana, has more health.
- Talent that provides 15% mana reduction to the main "filler" spell -- flash heal
- Added +3% crit to an existing talent usually skipped for PvE (but they freed up talent points so it's pretty accessible)
- Added talent that gives 10% crit bonus on flash heal when target is below
- Added talent that gives 30% mana reduction on Power Word: Shield
- Grace changed so that the priest casting gets an additional +1-3% healed on the target and duration increased 7 seconds
- Added +1% haste and +1% spirit by reducing talent points required for enlightenment
- Talent removes the 4 second cooldown on Power Word: Shield
- Added Glyph of Penance, which decreases Penance cooldown by 2 seconds, applies before 20% reduction talent, so 6.4 second cooldown)
- Divine Aegis will stack to a maximum of 10,000 absorb on a level 80 target (previously did not stack at all, only refreshed duration)
- Penance can be cast on yourself (largely a PvP buff, but has some applications in PvE)
- Penance got a damage buff (mostly soloing, I rarely dare spend my penance cooldown on damage in a 5-man or raid)
- Renewed hope has a component added that offers 3% damage reduction buff to the entire raid whenever you Power Word:Shield anyone in the raid (20 sec duration)
- Meditation buffed to inside FSR mana regen is same as 3.0.x to offset the spirit formula nerf.

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Mana Ramifications
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Mana wise, Rapture returns will be MUCH, MUCH less. At 25k mana raid buffed, it works out to be around 200 MP5 at 1 absorbed shield per 15 seconds. This compared to my last patchwerk kill where it worked out to be 526 MP5 and I wasn't even at 25k mana because there wasn't a mage for AI or a Felhunter for Fel Intelligence.

OMG HUGE NERF!

Wait, hold on.

The reduced cost of flash heal and PW:S effectively "bake in" a large portion of the benefit of Rapture3.0. That same patchwerk kill, the mana savings from those talents would be equivalent to about 200 MP5

so the overall nerf is on the order of 120-140 MP5 if nothing changes in my current gear.

Also keep in mind that my current gearset I've been using basically minimizes mana regen on the gear in favor of throughput, because I largely do not need the regen. So the loss can be partially compensated by gearing in a more balanced set of gear.

The Shadowfiend buff effectively increases mana regen by about 40 MP5 in most disc gear. It's a slightly larger benefit to Disc than holy due to the extra mana Disc has with the +15% INT talent. That offsets a portion of the rapture loss so the total loss in MP5 is likely under 100 MP5.

The largest change is the need to "manage" your power word: shield removals. The design of the Rapture talent is extremely awkward. I think it needs to be redesigned to offer mana returned based on your max mana, but in an over-time manner that the duration can be refreshed whenever a PW:S expires. As it stands, it's extremely odd mechanics, needing PW:S to fully absorb sometime after the cooldown, but offe you nothing if it expires 0.5 seconds before the cooldown.

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Throughput ramifications
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The perception among hardcore raiding priests was that Disc suffered in throughput compared with other healers. I think this was true. Disc 3.0 has very, very little mana issues if they have enough INT (happens almost automatically in 25 man gear), and they have slightly lower throughput (even considering the absorbs and such). The delta for disc3.0 grows as gearing increases, because Disc 3.0 has significantly less in terms of +x% healing compared with other healers. Holy priest talents like empowered healing and Divine Providence really allow for better scaling with high spellpower, while disc was stuck with +4% on talents and potentially +6% if there's a grace stack (which theoretically is there if you're always healing someone, but in a 10 man, I've found a lot of heals going to targets who don't have grace buffs). DA gave a multiplier on crits, but it was a relatively small one.


2 very significant throughput improvements are virtually impossible to quantify:
- 2 second reduction to penance cooldown through use of Glyph of Penance:
This brings penance theoretical usage time up from about 22% to about 30%. Given that penance is the highest throughput of any single target priest heal in 3.0 (serendipity enhanced GHeal will definitely outpace it in 3.1) , it's increase in potential usage will increase healing throughput. This is incredibly welcome, as I sometimes find myself 'saving' Penance due to it's HPS. Shorter cooldown is very welcome.

- Divine Aegis stacking. This is probably a pretty small percentage of total. You have to get 2 crits very close to each other. However, penance puts three heals in very quick succession. If cast after a PW:S three heals hit in about 1.5 seconds, and crit rates are around 30-35% on geared disc priests with raid buffs, so it wasn't as it this was a totally impossible scenario, but it happened occasionally, and there will be a small increase in throughput capability.

Quantifiable throughput is shot-gunned throughout the disc tree:
+ 1% haste
+ 3% crit
+ 1% healing per grace stack (+3% on most primary targets, since they'll usually have 3 grace stacks)
+ 10% on targets less than 50% health healed with flash heal.

average I'd probably consider it about +7-10% throughput improvement, which is pretty significant.


So deciphering everything It looks like disc can probably regear with some balanced regen and end up around the same as they are now, maybe with a small throughput increase or a small regen hit, or gear as they are now and get a bump in throughput for a regen loss of what equates to about 100 MP5 or slightly less. This means if people are currently not using a pot per fight (I'm not). Then a pot will get you where you are now for a 3.5 minute fight with no gearing changes. This means for fights lasting ~5 minutes there can likely be little to no changes and still do okay.

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Talents
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Newer builds seem to have "stabilized" priests (there are very minor changes on priests, with more major changes to other classes). Disc seems to have stabilized to where you can get pretty much every useful PvE talent in Disc + inspiration with a leftover talent point for Desperate Prayer:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050...03&version=9684

An alternative build that I am starting to favor after some Sarth+2D experience will get full Divine Fury. Greater is not heavily synergized, but it's still useful throughput to couple with that borrowed time buff, The goal being enough haste to squeeze a PW:S, Penance and Greater heal into that 5 seconds of borrowed time, and also the spellpower buff on 4 piece T8, which is 5 seconds long. Technically it fits without any haste on gear, but the margin is less than 50 ms. This puts the margin in the 350-450ms range which should actually be possible:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050...00&version=9757
I'm debating on filling out renewed hope and going just 4/5 in Divine Fury, I keep going back and forth on that last point. 1/2 renewed hope seems mandatory for that 3% raid-wide damage reduction. the second point is only 2% crit on targets shielded, but with grace dropping off the MT if you heal anyone else and with Rapture virtually necessitating shield usage on tank, it seems like that talent point does have value.

Glyph selection is very obvious with Flash / Penance / PW:S

Other than that, I don't see a whole lot of flexibility. Someone on the WoW forums was convinced they should skip borrowed time so they could go 18 deep in holy to reduce penance cost by 15%. I guess if you're very worried about mana this is an option. It maths out to something like 75 MP5 bonus if Penance is used every 6.4 seconds for 5 more talent points in Holy, which I think is not worth it. However, the option is there if you're overly worried about mana. I don't think people need to be that worried about mana, but time will tell.

[Concillian]

PvE Holy

Nerfs:
- Improved Holy Concentration talent removed, which removes the haste after a clearcast would proc

I am very sad to see this talent go. because I will no longer be referred to as Improved Holy Conc. I will only be able to be referred to as Holy Conc. I guess that's acceptable. It's a lot better than when I was playing a warrior and people would keep telling me to blow someone or another.

- Holy Concentration talent replaced the chance for clearcast on a crit with a 100% proc for regen every crit. Math turns out to be a nerf (see later comments)
- Spirit regen nerf hits this spec the hardest.

Nerf or Buff, depending on how you value it:
- Serendipity talent replaced the 25% of spellcast mana returned when a greater or flash heal overheals with what amounts to a combo point system. Each flash or binding heal cast decreases the cast time of the next greater heal or Prayer of Healing by 12%. Note that this is not spell haste, but a flat decrease in the cast time. This stacks up to three times, for a maximum 36% reduction.

Without any points in Divine Fury, Greater & POH would be 3.0 / 2.64 / 2.28 / 1.92 second cast time. With divine fury, I'm not sure the mechanics, but I'd assume it's 2.5 / 2.2 / 1.9 / 1.6. If you're primarily casting greater on this combo point basis, the value of divine Fury is diminished.

This makes it a large nerf to mana regen, but a large buff to situationally being able to toss out a very large, very fast heal. You can use flash for the basics, then when a large heal is needed, throw out a larger heal with an even faster cast time than flash.

Buffs:
- Empowered Renew talent added. adds 5 / 10 / 15% of spellpower to renew + an instant heal portion for 5/10/15% of the total renew amount that can crit. SP portion effectively adds about 100 / 200 / 300 to total renew amount. with the other renew talent you're looking at renews that tick for ~1700. The instant heal portion will be smaller than the ticks, around 1300ish & can crit. Glyphed, the ticks will be over 2k, but the instant portion the same.
- Added +1/2/3% heal on Blessed Resilience, however, unlike the similar buff to the Disc PvP talent, you can't really get this talent without giving something else up, there aren't enough points.
- Shadowfiend was given more mana returen, more health and even a way to do more damage. Extra mana is on the order of 30-40 MP5 depending on gearing.
- ~40% base heal improvement to Circle of healing
- Prayer of Healing changed from always on the casting priest's party to cast on whatever party the person you have targeted is in.
- Shields buffed so rage can be generated through them, meaning no hesitation on casting them on warriors (though you may still need to hesitate on tanking pallies in easy content due to Spiritual Attunement mechanics)
- Meditation buffed to offseet spirit nerf inside FSR.

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Mana Regen implications
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Holy concentration comparison:
Old Holy concentration gave a free cast. Assuming this was used on flash heal, and you glyphed flash heal, this was worth 625 mana, plus potentially getting out of the 5 second rule if you did some other things. It had a 45% chance to proc. So every crit gave a 45% chance at 625 mana, or 280 mana on average, per crit.

New Holy Concentration gives +50% spirit regen for 8 seconds. It says +50% regen, but PTR is currently working so that it's only spirit/int regen via that formula they made complicated in 2.4.x. (323 / 573 MP5 inside / outside FSR --> 448 / 824, which is more like a 40ish% increase). If inside FSR the whole time it's like 125 MP5 for 8 seconds or 200 mana. and depends on gear, especially spirit.

So 200 mana per crit < 280 mana per crit already. Then there's intangibles like:
- Holy Concentration 3.1 cannot stack, crits back to back only refresh the 8s duration.
- Holy Concentration 3.0 allowed exiting the FSR easier by chaining with a Surge of Light proc or using Inner Focus. This results in a reduction in outside FSR time. I'm currently extimating that at 5% outside FSR instead of 20% outside FSR, but those are pretty much WAGs since my regen mod is tracking my play as disc, not my play as holy. At those estimates, the change combined with the reduction of outside FSR regen is a loss of approximately 100 MP5.

Serendipity loss I'll estimate by a naxx run of serendipty gains by Necrali. WWS log shows Replenishment at 235 MP5 when it was up and ratio-ing serendipity gains to that it's around 105 MP5. So another loss of around 100 MP5

MP5 loss estiamtes:
holy concentration loss based on free flash heal vs. crit effect (based on Necrali Naxx run: ~30 MP5
Loss based on spirit regen and estimated time outside FSR delta: ~100 MP5
Loss based on Serendipity: ~100 MP5

Gross loss ~230 MP5

Gains are from Shadowfiend (~30-40 MP5 in a 5 minute fight)

So net loss based on this log is around 200 MP5.

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Throughput
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There is a loss of the semi-random throughput increases from Improved holy concentration, but it is replaced with the much less random throughput increase of the new Serendipity talent which allows a very fast Greater Heal or Prayer of healing to be cast after "building up combo points" with flash or binding heal casts.

Throughput of Greater Heal spam is definitely lower, and it will be replaced with a flash spam --> greater rotation that will be slightly lower throughput, but will likely be considerably more precise in the application of that throughput.

It's possible the +3% healing from Blessed Resilience3.1 will make up for some of the haste loss from IHC. Overall, I think the changes here are quite decent changes from the single target throughput side of things. They seem to focus on being less spammy and more thoughtful decisions, and I encourage that.

Circle of healing increase plus targets Prayer of healing targetable both mean that AoE throughput potential is pretty huge, though mana will definitely become an issue.

Overall I think it's difficult to be disappointed with throughput changes. Raw throughput is theoretically lower, but in application, it's probably a better situation to be in for a skilled player.

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Talents
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There will be a tough decision in points spent to be made. I put together this rough framework:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?priest=050...03&version=9684

Which has 5 points leftover.

First the initial 4 tiers have some decisions:
- there are a lot of floating points here actually. Desperate Prayer, Healing Focus, Holy Reach, Imp. Renew, even Divine Fury are semi-optional talents. Improved healing is potentially optional with focus on less use of Greater Heal. There is just a lot of this portion of the tree where some cookie cutter spec will emerge, but in reality I think there is a LOT of personal flexibility afforded here. There is enough down the tree where you don't really want to spend more than 20 points in the first 4 tiers, but you can.

- The 2 virtually mandatory talents here are 3/3 inspiration and 5/5 Holy Specialization, which leaves 12 points to the discretion of the player for 16 potentially strong PvE locations to put them in.

The middle Tiers are fairly set. It's tought to get rid of any of Imp. Death +10% healing +25% SP on spirit, surge of light and holy concentration

Which, if you have 20 points in the first 4 tiers, leaves 5 points to distribute between:
- the last 2 points of empowered renew
- Blessed resilience (+3% raw heal)
- Test of Faith

1 point in Empowered Renew is probably best considered to be "Improved Holy Concentration" because it allows Renew to crit and trigger the mana return. Thus it's farily important to use at least 1/3 empowered renew.


Also of note is the Glyph of Guardian Spirit being added. Currently set at: "If your Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec."
That sounds like it might be pretty worthwhile, because guardian spirit is amazingly good.

Overall, Mana-wise, it's a significantly larger nerf than Disc had. It should be manageable, but the loss in mana is nearly the same as replenishment. It's a lot to make up without having to do significant re-gearing.
Mechanics wise, spirit value vs. INT & MP5 is similar to 3.0 in terms of their relationships. I think INT gained a small amount with the Shadowfiend buff. Spirit lost OO5sr time, but gained the chenge to Holy Concentration for about a net 'break even'
Holy will likely have to re-gear some to help out on the mana side, which will reduce the throughput a little further. However, I really like the re-tooling of Holy Conc, and that may still be worth it.

[Concillian]

PvE Shadow

Nerfs:
- Blackout removed. We knew this was coming, Blizzard said that random stun procs were on their way out. PvE this is not really much of an effect, PvP wise a medium scale nerf. It was not nearly as powerful as the mage stun (a shaman earth shocks a mage cast, silences him for 2 seconds, but takes some fire damage due to molten armor and gets stunned for 3 seconds... lame)
- imp shadowfom was re-tooled and maths out to be about the same as current mechanics. It's in the nerf section because in earlier builds it mathed out to be a nerf.

Buffs:
- Darkness (+10% shadow damage 5 point talent) moved up to Tier 1 to replace blackout. no real change for full shadow.
- Added talent for Improved Devouring Plague effectively becomes about +30% devouring plague damage (+15% damage on the ticks, +15% total damage instantly)
- Added Glyph of Mind Sear (+5 yard radius)
- Psychic Horror made into a talented skill and reduced to 1 talent point. Single target 3 second terror effect & 10 second undispellable disarm (disarms bows too). Basically for PvP, and an obvious buff
- Glyph of Dispersion - PvP glyph for making you immune to movement impairs for the duration of dispersion.
- Shadowfiend damage buff (Shadowcrawl spell -- increases damage by 30% for 5 seconds, 6 second cooldown). Shadowfiends move much faster (approx +30% speed), they have significantly higher health.
- Spirit Tap and Imp. STap are buffed to offset the spirit formula nerf (inside FSR)

Not too much to discuss here. Slightly better damage scaling and the loss of Blackout that we knew was coming, and a couple survivability buffs to make up for the loss of Blackout.

[Tuftears]

Was Power Word: Barrier replaced by the talent to zero out PW:S's cooldown?

[vor_lord]

To my knowledge PW: B has just kind of disappeared. I'm assuming it is still being worked on and not scrapped but I don't believe there has been any official word.

[Concillian]

Was Power Word: Barrier replaced by the talent to zero out PW:S's cooldown?

I believe so, I think it really didn't make sense. They also changed the 3% damage reduction so that it's no longer on the target, but is applied raid wide for 20s whenever you cast PW:S on anyone.

[Kevin]

I believe so, I think it really didn't make sense. They also changed the 3% damage reduction so that it's no longer on the target, but is applied raid wide for 20s whenever you cast PW:S on anyone.

So PW:S becomes another way to get BoSanc then it sounds like. I doubt those effects will stack. That actually makes some sense.

[Concillian]

So PW:S becomes another way to get BoSanc then it sounds like. I doubt those effects will stack. That actually makes some sense.

They didn't stack before, but it was applied to Grace, which was generally only kept at a 3 stack on the MT. Sanc obviously has the desirable extra effect, but it's a way to get the damage reduction to the whole raid without NEEDING a prot pally in the raid.

[Concillian]

I edited the main posts for current PTR build.

Adding Hymn changes here:

Hymn of Hope redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, restoring hope to those in despair. Restores 3% mana to 3 nearby low mana friendly party or raid targets every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and temporarily increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 seconds. After the effect expires, the mana is lost. Maximum of 12 mana restorations. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.

Divine Hymn redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, summoning the power of the Divine to assist you in your time of need. Heals 3 nearby lowest-health friendly party or raid targets for 4960-5208 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and increases healing done to them by 15% for 8 seconds. Maximum of 12 heals. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.

I have yet to test either of these.

Provided Divine Hymn scales with spellpower, it looks to be a decent small scale "tranquility" Will be situational, for sure though. However with a boss ability like:

Tympanic Tantrum: Deals 10% damage every 1 sec for 12 sec. Nearby enemies are also dazed for the duration

Which if you choose his hard mode will potentially be 13% every 1 second for 12 seconds. (hard mode increases damage output by 30%, but I don't know if it stacks with this particular % based ability.)

It might be pretty useful to throw out a Prom / CoH on the melee then pop this for help getting the tank back to full during the time he's losing 40k health or whatever, but at a once per fight thing, it's difficult to count on.

Hymn of Hope is odd in that it doesn't guarantee mana to the casting priest. Will go through a period where people figure out mechanics so this is used best... so the mana goes where you want it too. Potentially rewards very high levels of coordination by boosting Mana tide, Divine Plea or Shadowfiend effectiveness.

[Concillian]

I've seen quite a bit of MP5 vs. Spirit questions on the WoW forums from disc priest. I looked into the formula yesterday and am re-posting that info here.

Holy priests have a clear extra scaling with SPI from Holy concentration (crit = triggers an MP5 buff which scales with your regen gained from the SPI / INT regen formula) and Spiritual Guidance (25% spirit = +spellpower). There really isn't any question for Holy, Spirit > MP5.

But for Discipline, for whom spirit ONLY equates to mana regen and nothing else, is spirit or MP5 better?

3.1 mana regen formula:

Code:

(SPI * 0.003345 * SQRT( INT ) * 5 ) + 0.001 = OOFSR regen
ISFSR regen is half of that.

Spirit scales MP5 from that formula linearly. That is, if you go from 100 to 200 SPI, you get the same benefit as going from 700 --> 800 SPI.

INT, however, will amplify the effect of SPI, so INT gives you more at high values of INT than at low values of INT. This is, however, a fairly weak function.

Itemization formula is such that 1 MP5 on gear = 2.5 SPI
FOr these examples, I'll use 10 SPI, because 10 Spirit = 4 MP5 and we get no decimals, yay.
Well, no decimals until you figure that disc priests will typically have +6% spirit from talents and +10% spirit from kings... then it ends up 11.6 Spirit = 4 MP5, but if you're looking at gear or gems it's 10 SPI = 4 MP5.

So I'm going to map some INT values so people can actually grasp what's going on without having to understand the formulas fully. Here's what the numbers will mean:

INT (raid buffed INT value)
mana (roughly equivalent to this much max mana)
10 Spirit on gear = X MP5 out of FSR / half that Inside FSR assumes you are buffed with kings & have 3/3 Enlightenment
Percentage of time you need to be outside FSR in order to "break even" with 4 MP5
average MP5 per 10 SPI on gear assuming 9% of time outside FSR (you'll see why I chose 9% when you see the numbers)
total MP5 loss or gain if you replace 25 MP5 on gear with 100 spirit (since Ulduar gear is all spirit gear, the likelihood is that MP5 will reduce and Spirit will increase), again assuming 9% out of FSR.

Code:

1100 INT ~20.0k mana = 6.43/3.22 MP5 ~25% out of FSR to break even.  3.50 MP5 at 9% => 3.08 MP5 lost per 25 MP5 -> 100 SPI.
1200 INT ~21.5k mana = 6.72/3.36 MP5 ~20% out of FSR to break even.  3.66 MP5 at 9% => 2.10 MP5 lost per 25 MP5 -> 100 SPI.
1300 INT ~23.0k mana = 7.00/3.50 MP5 ~15% out of FSR to break even.  3.81 MP5 at 9% => 1.17 MP5 lost per 25 MP5 -> 100 SPI.
1430 INT ~25.0k mana = 7.33/3.66 MP5  ~9% out of FSR to break even.  4.00 MP5 at 9% => no change, MP5=SPI @ 9% OOFSR
1500 INT ~26.0k mana = 7.51/3.76 MP5  ~6% out of FSR to break even.  4.10 MP5 at 9% => 0.60 MP5 gained per 25 MP5 -> 100 SPI.
1600 INT ~27.5k mana = 7.76/3.88 MP5  ~3% out of FSR to break even.  4.23 MP5 at 9% => 1.43 MP5 gained per 25 MP5 -> 100 SPI.
1700 INT ~29.0k mana = 8.00/4.00 MP5   0% out of FSR to break even.  4.36 MP5 at 9% => 2.25 MP5 gained per 25 MP5 -> 100 SPI.

Now is the time to speculate on how much time people will spend inside or outside FSR...

Given the stated design goal of reducing intellect / spirit formula regen contribution outside FSR, it's a fair assessment that the devs are designing with pauses in the fights. If you look at a PTR testing video of say Mimiron, you'll see it's a 4 phase fight with pauses between each phase. I think this is a fair assessment that you will spend at least 9% outside FSR. Perhaps more, perhaps 15%.

9% just happens to be a nice number because 25k buffed mana is a reasonably common goal for a buffed 25-man disc priest in current content (presumably this would translate to about that for a buffed 10 man disc priest in Ulduar gear, and a buffed 25 man ulduar priest will have a little more, maybe 26-28k)

1700 INT is the breakpoint at which Spirit is better than MP5 in every possible case (except the incredibly rare case that a healing priest is raiding Ulduar without 3/3 meditation :wacko:)

Even if you are not well geared, and are only hitting 1300 INT raid buffed, you are still only losing 1 MP5 per 100 spirit compared with gear that had MP5 (and so itemized slightly better for low INT disc priests). Hardly anything to worry about.

So do not worry about the Spirit on pretty much all cloth gear in Ulduar. The difference between Spirit and MP5 is minimal at the INT values a typical ilvl 213 --> 230 geared disc priest will have. Any delta between Spirit and MP5 is so small that there is no point in worrying.

Given that the stated design goals of the devs seems to be towards having slightly more time outside FSR, then something around 1300 INT (raid buffed) will probably be near the break even point for SPI to equal MP5. This is not really all that difficult to reach for a disc priest. People seem to be using 25k buffed as their mana number for assumptions, and this would need 9% OOFSR to break even with MP5. I think that the fights I've seen videos of from Ulduar, this is not out of exprctation (Mimiron has breaks between phases, for example)

Now for druids and holy priests, they get significantly more benefit from spirit than a disc priest. If Spirit is as good or better than MP5 for disc in most cases, then it will be significantly better than MP5 for those specs as well.

[lanasingh]

I doubt that the fine folks here are interested in name brand knockoffs.

~Mirajj