An undergeared disc priest was likely not helping your case… but not necessarily for the reasons you think (and certainly not the ones he or she was). An on-par (245ish or higher) geared disc priest’s bubbles won’t break a sweat … nor will they ‘pop’ due to infest.. meaning the disc priest doesn’t gain rapture through full absorbs on his or her shields… which over the length of the fight will oom the priest if they try and bubble everyone all the time. Previously, they could down rank PW:S to adjust there spell power / shield absorb level… now all they can do is remove gear / buffs. Because intel is both mana pool and spell power it becomes a very fine line to walk if they choose to play that balancing game. Dropping the inner fire buff is still viable if they are not spec’d into the reduced spell damage. Alternatively, they can prioritize ranged players (dps and heals) so that they are only bubbling 5 of 10 players — shields still don’t break but their mana should hold out.

A skilled and adequately geared disc priest (232-251 ilvl gear) should be able to handle the infest damage on the raid without too much assistance. The number of folks the priest can bubble is effected by his or her haste as well (although should be less of an issue on 10m), but primarily influenced by his or her mana management given the lack of rapture. Shields on tanks should be avoided unless the tank is idle to conserve mana. Prayer of mending can and should be used on a melee target just prior to infest hitting (causing it to bounce it’s healy goodness around as infest does it’s thing). Prayer of healing can be timed to hit the melee exactly as, or immediately after, infest hits. Holy Nova can also be used to proc mini DA shields on ranged to further reduce the infest damage.

From a resto druid perspective try placing a ‘pre-rejuv’ on a melee (preferably not the PoM target). When infest hits — swiftmend to start green puddle of healing, followed by a WG… these ‘hots’ should stabilize the melee long enough for you to cast direct heals on anyone that is not at 90%+ health. Trying to heal infest on multiple targets by spamming rejuv is like trying to put out a fire with spray bottle — not very effective. In 25s, rejuv is more viable as you can play the triage role and get the hots out until the other healers can catch up.

Other things that could be making infests more difficult:
- Melee (or ranged) getting aggro on ghouls, these eat disc bubbles like candy and hinder getting infest healed up. Your OT should be gathering ghouls as much as possible between shambler spawns (they need at ~5 + 2-3 disease drop offs to kill the shamblers without external dps).
- P2 the valks drain life (after they drop their victim) from players, this also eats bubbles like candy. Again OT should be taunting the valks to the tanks to keep random damage off the raid.
- The valks found your disc priest tasty… save defensive / raid cooldowns for this (and the infest that follows). A good time for Tranq, bubble wall, aura mastery shadow, Divine Hymn etc.
- Missing Shadow Protection / resist aura/totem.
- and of course the good old standing in defile / pulling aggro etc.

Big wigs and DVE both have ‘audible’ count down alerts that can be configured for any of the big raid wiper abilities. As disc I had this enabled for infests, as dps/non disc heals I had this enabled for defiles, and as tank I had it enabled for soul reaper.

Blizzard math can be really funny sometimes… especially percentages, but regen things can be worded badly too.

http://www.zabery.com/blog/2010/02/28/a-holy-paladin-and-his-ephemeral-snowflake/

Definitely more useful on some fights than others.

Previous to the lastest rejuv nerf I was handing over all my innervates to our holy priest on 25m heroic modes. This week? I was using them on myself, plus mana pots I haven’t touched in months…. on normal 25m modes (last hurrah for folks missing achievements). Half way through the night I even bagged my 277 trinkets and reverted to double solaces.

On a beta t-11 pre-made, most heroic fights (and a couple normal modes) had me ooming — granted it was LFD pugs — but this latest change has me a bit worried about how it will play out at 85.

Any one else notice the mouse over tooltip for spirit based regen not matching the displayed regen? Mine is off by like 500 while casting, and more while not casting.

~Kara

Those numbers sound awesome. I’ll definitely have to switch it.

Anyway, I never had any mana problems on the one LK fight I’ve healed since 4.0.1, and chalk me up with the people who blame in on the disc priest – more than the Snowflake, I suspect that a lot of the reason I did fine on mana was because I have good healer friends who handled Infest nearly all the time. How did you deal with it? With Rejuvenation? Nourish? Regrowth?

I agree that Rejuvenation is expensive now if you want to keep it rolling on everyone. On many fights now I actually feel I do better healing reactively with it – heresy I know, but with haste and Gift of the Earthmother it’s much, much better at it than it used to be, and it’s significantly more efficient when used that way.

I’m gonna reforge for spirit, drink mojo, and generally be in a regen mode come Friday.

The druid in our Uldy run last night was having all kinds of mana problems as well. And that was just Uldy … we did a couple of minor achievements but that’s it, no real hard modes.

On the flip side, I noticed absolutely no problems on my paladin, other than the fact that holy shock now heals like I’m a ret pally. Fortunately for Blizz, the new Light of Dawn is full of so much awesomesauce that I don’t care. :p