Discipline Priests & Arcane Mages

Something discussed on the SoL forums well over a month ago now, and now also on wowinsider, cooperation between a disc priest and arcane mage to increase their respective healing and dps: http://www.wowinsider.com/2009/04/26/spiritual-guidance-disc-priest-gives-arcane-mages-600-spellpow/

The maths haven't all been done, clearly, but it's definately increasing numbers to a good extent and imo worth looking into on heavy aoe fights.

Edit: obviously this'll also work with Holy priests, just that Disc priests apparently have more talents which increase the damage absorbed, and thus the dps of the mage.
Edit2: for the priests this will become interesting with the 4P T8 bonus, granting 250 spellpower for 5sec after casting PW:S (don't know why that wasn't mentioned on wowinsider, doh)

in the aoe fights, I think the priests are more concerned with keeping people alive ^^

Not shielded, the mage would take damage which would have to be healed. Shielding someone is preventing having to heal the amount absorbed, while increasing dps. Win-win, especially once the 4p T8 comes into play and the healer heals for alot more after using 1 global cd, which also grants extra haste.

In a situation where theres huge aoe damage, mimiron p2 or tantrums for example, why would a priest use a global on a sheild when he can say, cast prayer of healing, healing the 5 lowest health people in range for a large amount.

Becaus the shield can be casted before the Tantrum? I don't know Mimiron p2 yet, and i'd definately not recommend it for all fights nor all aoe damage, but in general, if the aoe is predictable, the shield cd can be used before the healing is necessary. The shield holds for 15 seconds, during which it can absorb ~6 to ~12k damage. 15% of that damage absorbed converts into spell damage, lasting 10 secs, and stacks up to a maximum of 5% of the mage's health (whch was way underestimatedin the linked article, they assumed ~15 - 16k hp, i got that unbuffed :p) Taking the lowest of what the average shield absorbs, that's +900 spelldamage for 10 secs, it can be refreshed every 15 secs with the priest's shield (or if the manapool can take it, kept up the entire time with a mana shield inbetween). Alot of dps gain, which will get the raid through a healing intensive phase quicker.

Again though, presheilding is just taking healing away from where it needs to be. I do see the merits of this, I just dont think its fair and practical to ask a priest to maintain a PWS on one particular ranged dps when in reality he'll have so many other things to be thinking about.

i'd rather take slow for some control in a raid atm, and i havent seen too many shields on myself throughout ulduar!