Sarth 3D Down!

We actually killed him on Saturday I just failed to update.

It also seems that in 3.1 they aren’t removing the Hymn of Hope afterall and are reworking the almost completely useless Divine Hymn.

• 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.
• 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.

Is this a major change?  I don’t think so, but that’s because of what we are currently used to with mana regen.  We could find this to be an amazing source of burst regen.  I’m starting to look forward to the new playstyle the game is going to be bringing about.  How I used to worry about my mana pool and decide what was efficient.

I admit on our Sarth 3D I didn’t pay a lick of attention to my mana pool.  I knew I wasn’t going to go OOM, which is definitely a problem.

The background downloader has started as well.  I’m guessing its things that are certainly finalized but I don’t expect it out for 2-3 weeks.  Here’s to hoping!

3.1 Mana Regen on Disc Priests

My dawg GC was nice enough to clarify more on 3.1 mana regen,

The goal is to have mana last about the same for all healers. We don’t think many players would be that interested in a style where you heal crazy good for a short period and then run OOM. How classes manage their mana varies a lot, and we are making tweaks to it for 3.1 to try and keep them in line. For example, the shadow fiend needs to be more reliable.

I am still not following the logic that Int now trumps Spirit by even more. It may have been a better stat already, but these changes shouldn’t affect it that much unless you A) skip Meditation and Intensity, or B) relied a whole lot more on OOFSR regen than the average raid healer of reasonable skill.

I will break from our normal practice and go ahead and provide the numbers, just to make sure nobody is guessing about the details when doing their estimates:

• The amount of base mana regen granted has been reduced 40%. We called this “Spirit” in the notes, since most players associate OOFSR regen with Spirit, but in reality Int factors into the equation as well and we only lowered the constant, not the relative contributions of Int or Spirit. In retrospect, this probably caused more confusion than it alleviated, but mana regeneration is a fairly technical concept.
• The effects of talents that provide mana regen while casting have been increased by 67%. This includes: Arcane Meditation, Improved Spirit Tap, Intensity, Mage Armor, Meditation, Pyromaniac, and Spirit Tap. For example, Intensity and Meditation are now 17/33/50% mana regen while casting (up from 10/20/30%). For most dps classes who never got much mana from OOFSR in the first place, the results should not be noticeable. Boomkin may be a possible exception because of Innervate, and we’ll take a look at that.
• This should leave mana regeneration while casting (even the contribution of Spirit) relatively unchanged, but reduce mana regeneration while not casting by 40%. (If you don’t understand our logic, I suggest you re-read the excellent post I quoted above.)
• Since paladins don’t rely on any of those abilities for mana regeneration, we lowered the healing penalty of Divine Plea to -50%. We are also likely to make Spiritual Attunement provide less mana for non-tanking paladins. We are not touching Illumination for the moment. Nor are we lowering the effects of Replenishment (though as I have suggested, it would be our likely next target if we aren’t happy with the results of these changes).

This is much more substantial to people who actually get OO5SR.  Disc priests however are rarely OO5SR.  Personally I’m never out of it thanks to the wonder of flash spam and rapture.  Meditation gives you an increase from that ‘overall’ mana you can regen so they are buffing it.  From what they say you shouldn’t see a reduction to your current mana regeneration while casting.  I’ll make sure to get on the PTR and test that once 3.1 comes around.  All in all though this makes me quite happy to know that it only effects my out of casting regen.