Hello everyone!
I’m maining a mage because I need a break from tanking and healing. However, I want to make a priest alt for those times when I get the healing bug.
Glancing through the classes, I noted tanks shouldn’t be shielded. Meanwhile, a disc priest casts a shields to prevent damage.
Does that mean players should only play Holy & Shadow specs? Or is Discipline playable in Classic if the player only shields the tank when it’s absolutely necessary?
What, are you planning on investing every single point into discipline? discipline is inferior to holy when it comes to pve, that’s not even debatable, but going heavy into discipline and then the rest in holy is better for healing in PvP. They just have different purposes.
Discipline is a great spec for levelling, especially when you want to do everything.
Power Word: Shield is mostly a personal levelling spell that prevents pushback while casting.
My favorite Priest levelling spec is 5 points of Spirit Tap in Shadow, into full Discipline as a Night Elf. Starshards is really great consistent, mana-efficient damage if you don’t lose channel time.
If I am misunderstanding I apologize, but it sounds like you are thinking of specs in terms of how retail works. Disc priests aren’t forced into using shields to heal and have all the same spells as a holy priest, minus the ones in the holy tree of course.
Casters will love you long time for giving them power infusion.
Disco is fine at end game for pi. If you are ally and while leveling have pally tanks then shield away. I did some cath runs with a shaman tank and it was a pleasure to shield them. Pi builds tend to be farm but depending on composition you can net yourself a nice position as tank shielder and your guilds FAVORITE priest for the lucky mage. Make sure to make them compete for it.
there are no holy or discipline priest in classic. There are healing priest and shadow priest. Difference is in gear (+heal/+spd), not in talents. Also any healing priest will most likely take talents from both trees, since some are mandatory (like casting speed to heals) even when you want to focus one tree heavier.
Just because no-one has mentioned it yet - specifically, avoid shielding warriors and druids because you’ll rage-starve them.
All priest healers take a mixture of holy and disc talents. Mental Agility and Improved PW:S are beneficial to PW:S but disc doesn’t use shields particularly more heavily than holy, unlike later expansions.
In retail, a disc priest uses shields. In classic, a disc priests uses their normal heals.
That’s true. I’m still new to Classic and don’t remember a lot from Vanilla.
Holy crap someone else actually agrees with me on Starshards!
Discipline is fine, it gives you more utility and some unique buffs (Divine Spirit, Power Infusion) at the cost of not quite as strong raw healing. Every raid group wants at least 1 Disc Priest around, though Holy is probably better for class-stacking.
Shielding the tank is not bad in itself, but rather, shielded damage does not generate Rage. If the tank is a War/Bear who is already high on Rage and rushing between packs, putting up a shield is fine. But if the WarBear is struggling to get Rage as it is, shielding too much will hurt their threat generation.
Paladin tanks love bubbles.
Shaman tanks love bubbles.
Just depends on what your tank is, really.
Either way, get Spirit Tap 5 ASAP. It helps more than you could imagine if you have never used it before. Then go into whatever talents you want.
Edit: Another option if you worry about raid comp, is to go Power Weaver.
A truly hybridized build 31/0/20 which gets PI and Shadow Weaving, with 5/5 Shadow Focus to give you the Hit% you need to not let Weaving drop. You play as heals between the 10s Mind Blast (rank 1) casts, basically, which just keep Weaving up.
Using this if your group lacks a Spriest is very helpful.
Great to so right before a big AOE pull. Some mages like it others freak out 
was it sunday where you live when you posted that
Vanilla Disc wasn’t about shielding. That was WotLK - WoDish.
Vanilla Disc has no unique identity at all, it’s just a secondary support tree that uses all the same spells as a holy priest + has a spirit buff. It does have a few PvP-centric talents also.
TBC Disc was I think mostly just the better PvP spec, but I didn’t really raid in TBC.
No they don’t, paladin tanks require that they take damage in order to generate threat through retribution aura/redoubt/holy shield/blessing of sanctuary/shield spike. If the paladin tank isn’t getting crit, they aren’t keeping up 100% uptime on redoubt and they lose 30% block. This is a massive blow to their threat generation.
The only time you should ever shield a tank is if they just took a massive hit and you need some breathing room to get your long cast heal off before they die, or if they specifically ask for it. PW:S is your emergency button, not your primary means of damage control.
Uh… no. It’s Saturday. I was serious when I asked the question.
It’s still in the air whether I’ll roll a priest or not. It all depends on who steps forward to heal or tank.
I don’t really have a problem with bubbles except for the priests that use them as i am in the middle of body pulling… that becomes crappy real fast. Judge wisdom> reactivate SoW>consecrate> cast BoM a few times> never losing threat. Unlike warriors we stockpile our resources from the beginning and it works great. It’s not like the shield is on forever (it’s a waste of a priest’s resources unless you spam sit /lol) and it doesn’t prevent on crit events like redoubt from proccing (at least for now).
Disc Priest does less throughput than Holy, but you bring PI which your Mages will quite literally do favors for.
Not really, you’re thinking of the Disc priests were in later expansions. Basically in classic the reason for Disc is Power Infusion, not shielding.
Shield seems more like an emergency button than something you want to cast regularly. If the tank is at say 10% health you can use it and give yourself a few seconds to casts a heal. Also, if the tank is at 10% health they’ve probably taken a lot of damage recently and thus have a lot of rage already. You can also use it on a dps that has gotten aggro, give them a shield and renew and hope they sort out their issue.