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The PTR notes have been updated again today. There were no new models or textures and the size of the build was for music that will be used in Ruby Sanctum and the Echo Isles event.

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"We started using discipline priests in Ulduar. The discipline fight was Freya hard mode where Power Word: Shield would provide an effective health increase versus Ground Tremor. Before that, I can't even remember a discipline priest in a raid that wasn't someone who was too lazy to change from their PvP spec," says Nokaru, guild master of the US guild Deus Vox.

Discipline used to be the PvP spec for priests, a spec with no real place in PvE. That has changed. Somewhere in between tough Ulduar encounters, a Circle of Healing cooldown and the Soul Warding talent, discipline priests have become a staple of 25-man end game raiding, even threatening the holy hegemony.

Insane coefficient

Deus Vox has one full-time discipline priest, and one priest that alternates between disc and holy depending on the fight. So does the US guild Premonition. "We have two players who can swing holy or disc, and basically use both in almost every encounter. I think Vezax is when we started using discipline priests. Now, the hardest encounter in the game requires them," says Xav, officer and warrior in the guild.

The strength and niche of the discipline priest is their damage prevention. Power Word: Shield is spammable and scales extremely well. By shielding the raid, discipline priests increase the effective health of each player. A well-geared disc priest is able to pump out shields that absorb 9000 damage or more. Needless to say, this is particularly strong in fights with heavy, predictable burst damage.

"Power Word: Shield has an insane coefficient," says Lawliepop of the US guild Blood Legion. Playing a holy priest with a shadow offspec, the guild officer has two additional priests in her ranks, one full time discipline and one holy/discipline. About a month ago, they tested the Power Word: Shield coefficient. Their result was that the effective coefficient was 1,512803004. For those not into theorycrafting, this means that for every point of spellpower a discipline priest has, Power Word: Shield will gain 1,51 damage absorption.

WoW's best kept secret

Blood Legion has been using discipline priests for quite some time. While doing Sartharion with three drakes up, they had a discipline priest as tank healer. At the beginning of Ulduar, they got a full time disc priest. "I think having only one holy paladin sparked it. Honestly, I kind of had a something of a negative view on them. My previous experience with disc was mostly in the Wrath of the Lich King Beta at very low gear levels," Lawliepop explains.

Even as a holy priest, she recognises discipline as a very strong spec. "The priests in Blood Legion like to constantly joke about how disc is WoW's best kept secret, and we are scared that they are going to be nerfed. What they do is to stabilise the raid in a way no other class can. In 95 percent of the fights, you want at least one dedicated disc."

Because of the strength of discipline priests, it is fairly common for main spec holy priests to have a discipline offspec. Ensidia priest Poptisse used to play holy more or less exclusively. That has changed. She now has a discipline dual spec that she has to use quite frequently. "You are a fool if you don't use a disc priest. In fights where we only use one priest, it is a disc one rather than a holy. The burst damage in Icecrown Citadel can be so insane that people having 9000 more hit points is more important than getting a 4000 heal from Circle of Healing. It sucks, because holy is by far the most fun spec to play. But a disc priest brings something no one else can, and I think that is why they are the 'Flavour of the Instance'," she says.

Ensidia currently has two priests that can play both disc and holy. They started using discipline in Ulduar on encounters like Freya, but with Icecrown Citadel, it became a staple in their raids. "I like their utility, but whenever we use a disc priest it is for the sole purpose of spamming shields or getting the crit buff on tanks. It gets really boring to play. I only need one keybind and it makes me want to fall asleep rather than keep me awake. I hated having to play it, and I still do!" she reveals.

Required for Lich King

Right now, a lot of top guilds are working towards the last fight in the game that hasn't been done yet: The 25-man Lich King hard mode. Interestingly enough, this fight apparently requires multiple discipline priests in the raid. With Infest hitting for around 15 000 damage, shields seem to be the way most guilds choose to handle it. "I don't like the fact that this completely negates the 'Bring the player, not the class.' No one can do LK 25 hard mode without shields," Poptisse says.

With the strength of discipline discovered by more and more players, holy priests seem to be less desirable in raids. Until now, it is holy that has been nerfed, first with the cooldown added to Circle of Healing, then the effectiveness of Prayer of Healing took a hit. The question is if discipline will suffer the same fate. Poptisse doesn't think so.

"I don't think disc needs a nerf, I think holy needs a little boost - something that is not Lightwell or a 3 minute Guardian Spirit that never procs anyway. We need some kind of powerful tool to boost burst HPS a bit more, or maybe they could remove the cooldown on Circle of Healing! But really, Prayer of Healing is way too annoying. Circle of Healing has a cooldown. Renew can't even compare to Rejuvenation, and haste stacking shamans are laughing at holy priests at the moment. Even paladins do."

I wanted to put together something to highlight cool things from around the community today before heading off to GDC. Expect more great stuff from the content team today, and don't forget to check out Leviathonlx's coverage of the mastery system, which was the first full coverage of Eyonix and Ghostcrawler responding to community questions.

Anniversary Captions

Cameron kicked this thread off with his caption, and it quickly turned into a masterpiece with Chimina's excellent Wowroll. A creative combination of the WoW Anniversary wallpaper and the YouTube classic, the Rickroll!



Think you can come up with a great caption for the anniversary wallpaper? Upload it to the image gallery and then post it here!

Argent Tournament Failure

Ahh, the WoW forums. You never know what you're going to get when you visit them, but this sure turned out to be a gem! I took notice of it when it appeared on the blue tracker, and it's definitely worth a read. Check it out in full here.

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Starcraft II -- Wings of Liberty Protoss Units

A great video from Lore at TankSpot highlighting the Protoss units in StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. If you're in the beta and looking to play with others from WoR, stop by the StarCraft II thread!



And in closing, I wanted to congratulate katuka for reaching prestige rank 10 in Modern Warfare 2. While it's not something that takes a lot of skill, it's one hell of a grind when done legitimately, so congrats!

3.3.3 Background Downloader

The background downloader for 3.3.3 has started which means the release of 3.3.3 is getting close.



Mastery System

Ghostcrawler and Eyonix clarified a few points on the mastery system after it was posted last night. His posts are below.

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Blue Posts

There were a few interesting Blue posts today also.

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The Raid - Lady Raiders

Thanks to Jer for the tip on this latest interview short from the folks at The Raid.

Hello, World of Raids Community! Kultcher here. I’ll be responsible for supplying you with a weekly dose of raid-related content, from esoteric stuff like raiding philosophies to more practical matters like raid troubleshooting and theorycrafting.

By way of introduction: I’m a veteran raid leader with about three years’ experience. I’ve pretty much single-handedly lead my guild’s raids since we first set foot in Karazhan. Leading a guild with decidedly casual roots has been challenging at times, and I’ve had to wear a lot of hats along the way: coach, teacher, mediator, strategist and troubleshooter, to name a few. My goal with this column is to bring you a little of the expertise I’ve gained over the years.

But first! Who doesn’t like a good editorial? I assure you there’ll be some nice crunchy mechanics stuff in future articles, but for this week I’ve got something a little less concrete in mind. Let’s talk about the future of raiding.

Wrath of the Lich King, much like the 60s, was a time of great experimentation. It produced a lot of wonderful and memorable milestones, but also resulted in a lot of horrible, haunting, and regrettable decisions. Each new raid tier brought something fresh and new to the game, for better or for worse.

Hard modes were ultimately a success. The Emblem system, while flawed in many ways, did more good than harm. Because let’s face it, forcing new people to gear up through each tier of raiding is just not practical or fun, especially for the people who have to run the new guy through it all. On the other hand, limited attempts were a disaster of epic proportions, the gating of Icecrown was in poor taste, and the stacking zonewide buff has left bad tastes in many a raiders’ mouth.

So what will the raid of the future look like? Blizzard has already hinted a little bit at their intentions for Cataclysm. We know that the Emblem system will be getting an overhaul, and we know that hard modes are here to stay. Thankfully, Blizzard has also confirmed that limited attempts will be a gimmick if anything and not a core mechanic. Huzzah!

But what about the stacking buff mechanic? It’s a good idea at its core. It’s ultimately a more elegant solution than just nerfing the instance. The fundamental problem is that there is no cost to it. For this solution to truly be accepted by the masses, accepting the buff needs to feel like giving up, just a little bit.

Here’s what I would suggest. To start, the buff should be off by default. Players could talk to an appropriate NPC to activate it. When the buff is activated, several penalties are put in place. First of all, no achievements can be gained whatsoever. There would be a separate, single achievement for clearing the whole instance with the buff, but that’s it. Second, all emblem gains while the buff is active would be cut in half. Finally, each boss would drop one less piece of loot than normal (so 1 in 10-man, 2 in 25).

With this system, guilds that need the buff could still progress (albeit more slowly), yet there would still be incentive for guilds that can defeat the encounter normally to do so. Plus, since achievements are the standard for measuring progress and the buff would preclude standard achievements, we could move past this idea of “tainted victories” from top guilds using the buff. That said, this idea would open up some new cans of worms – but I’ll examine some other possibilities in part II of this series.

So what are your thoughts on the Icecrown buff? Do you think it’ll come back in Cataclysm? Is there a better way for Blizzard to make content more accessible for the majority of the playerbase?