You might (or might not, Shindig!) heard about a lil’ patch to the PTR servers. There’s a bunch of changes to the different classes but it’s pretty obvious I don’t care about them. I do want to review the priest changes though.
We have the official changes (and then I’ll go over the datamined stuff).
Official Change
Data Mined Change
The duration of Levitate has been increased to 10 minutes, up from 2.
Nothing crazy about this change. I like how it lasts the same duration as say… a fishing lure. Will be a lot easier to remember when to rebuff it.
The mana cost of Shadow Protection has been reduced by approximately 65%, making it roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.
The mana cost of Power Word: Fortitude has been reduced by approximately 68%, making it roughly equal to the cost of Mark of the Wild.
Power Word: Fortitude now costs 22% of base mana, down from 69%.
That is a HUGE change in terms of raiding. There’s been several times someone has died, been battle rez’d, and I wouldn’t cast fort on them simply because the mana cost was ridiculous. I actually miss single target buffs in these situations.
The mana cost of Power Word: Shield has been increased by approximately 31%, but its effect has been increased by 208%.
Power Word: Shield now scales from 87% of spell power, up from 41.8%. Base absorb increased by 110%, from 3906 to 8136. Now costs 25% of base mana, up from 19% of base mana.
This is a change worth checking into when it goes live. I’ve tried disc out once doing heroics and I simply couldn’t keep up with the damage. Even as disc the shields felt very paltry, not even absorbing one hit. If anyone is on the PTR would you let me know what your shield is absorbing there and on live?
The mana cost of Renew has been reduced by 24%.
It should bring renew down to about 15 or 16% cost for base mana. The change is probably in correlation to our Holy Concentration nerf (will talk about it more in a minute).
Discipline
Focused Will now procs when the priest is critically hit, in addition to its current effect.
Focused Will now reduces all damage taken by 5/10%, up from 4/6%.
I haven’t read that talent since pre-4.0 but I thought it was only attacks received from other players? It’s reading like it effects ANY hits. Hell, 10% of my HP is only 10k at the moment. Most boss AEs hit for 10k or more. It is really far down in the talent tree though which makes it sad even if it does work because of what you’d be giving up. Note to self, do some research /nod.
Improved Power Word: Shield now also increases the amount absorbed by an additional 15/30% when cast on oneself.
Even with the big buff to PW:S I can’t imagine taking this in a raid situation. Seems like a very interesting talent for pvp and leveling though.
Pain Suppression is no longer dispellable.
Pain Suppression no longer increases resistance to Dispel mechanics.
Ok. Irrelevant to me.
Grace can now be active on multiple targets at a time.
It’s about time they reverted that back to how it USED to be along time ago. It’s only activated by heal, g.heal, and penance but lasts for 15 seconds. While disc priests are probably not raid healing now they could do quite a bit by tossing grace buffs around (since it increases ALL healing on the target).
Strength of Soul now also procs from Greater Heal and Flash Heal.
I had to lookup that ability LOL. Strength of Soul is the disc ability that reduces the weakened soul debuff timer on whoever you are healing. It only procs off of heal currently so this will be a pretty nice addition to healing a main tank. Especially when you take into account the larger shields we’ll be tossing out.
Rapture now energizes you with 2/4/6% of your total mana, up from 1.5/2/2.5%.
Hasn’t this already been announced awhile back? Maybe it is a further increase in it (but I don’t think so). ANY increase to our mana regen capabilities is nice though so kudos to this.
Atonement now affects a friendly party or raid target within 15 yards, up from 8 yards.
I know this was already announced so no surprise here on finding this in the datamining.
Now, we check on my current favorite (cuz I’m fickle and it changes often), Holy.
Holy
Blessed Resilience will now proc when the priest is critically hit, in addition to its current effect.
Blessed Resilience now increases all healing received by 15/30%, up from 5/10%.
Again, this talent reads as if it would activate if a boss attack (or AE) hit you. That being said, it is still pretty useless. It’s so high in the talent tree that spending points in it would be a great detriment to your ability to raid heal.
Chakra states now last 1 minute, up from 30 seconds.
HOLLA AT YA BOY! Sorry, this makes me silly happy. This should read a bit different though, “Chakra now lasts 1 min, up from 30 secs… at least until we rename it Holyform… because ya know it’s coming!” I know it’s not a real buff but this takes a lot of the micromanagement out of being in a chakra.
Desperate Prayer now heals the priest for 30% of their total health, up from a very subpar value.
Super awesome for this talent. It’s been absolutely dead weight since Cata released. Is it good enough to get picked back up now though? I’m not sure. I’ve learned to live without it so continuing to do so probably won’t be that difficult. I could only see myself using it every chance I got to get max use out it, a free heal is a free heal right?
Holy Concentration now increases the amount of mana regeneration from Spirit while in combat by an additional 15/30%, down from 20/40%.
Holy Concentration now increases mana regeneration by 15/30%, up from 10/20%.
You’ll notice some disparity between the official and the datamined information. I’m pretty sure it was buffed via a hotfix a week or so ago that brought us to the current 20/40%. That would mean the official patch notes are correct and our mana regen is actually getting nerf’d. It’s also very likely it’s true since they are lowering the cost of Renew (the spell that does 30% of my healing… srsly).
Holy Word: Chastise now has a 30-second cooldown, up from 25. In addition, it properly breaks from damage.
Awww… really breaks my heart to see that damage breaks it. I use this all the time in heroics to temp CC mobs or interrupt those nasty nukes.
Lightwell’s health has been increased by 50% (for PvP purposes).
You can deal damage to a lightwell? I can’t even target the stupid thing.
Serendipity now has Spell Alert and Floating Combat Text feedback support.
Your face!
Surge of Light can now also proc from Flash Heal and Greater Heal, and can now also critically hit.
I hate thinking something is insignificant and then doing some math to find out it’s actually not so bad. I started out thinking the buff to Surge of Light was just that but some numbers have changed my mind a bit.
Our last raid, 2 hrs long, consisted of 12 boss attempts (3 Omnitron & 9 Magmaw, both turned into kills). I cast 31 heals… for a total of 2, that’s right, TWO Surge of Light procs. I cast 86 G.Heals for all of those attempts which would turn into about 6 additional Flash’s. That’s a lot of bonus mana right there, almost 35,000.
Now, it can be argued that this could proc at times you don’t need it… that’s true, if you aren’t fighting a boss. Because someone could always use a bonus 15k hp back… just sayin’.
Glyphs
Glyph of Mind Flay no longer requires Shadow Word: Pain to be on the target.
I heal… irrelevant.
Glyph of Pain Suppression has been renamed Glyph of Desperation and now allows Guardian Spirit to be cast while stunned, in addition to Pain Suppression.
PVP ANGERS THE XEO!
Glyph of Psychic Horror now reduces the cooldown of Psychic Horror by 30 seconds, down from 60.
I’d argue that it makes this glyph useless. I’m assuming this is a pvp change because I can’t say it was overpowered in PVE. Maybe they should make it last as long as a CC and add dispel mechanics to it.
Glyph of Spirit of Redemption has been converted into Glyph of Prayer of Mending, which increases the healing done by the first charge of Prayer of Mending by 60%.
This is a pretty neat change. Currently there’s not a whole lot of good choices for our major glyphs so I could see this easily fitting into one of the slots. This bumps my PoM from 6200 to 10k for that first hit and since it’s usually going on the tank I can’t complain about that. I wouldn’t mind if they had simply changed it to having an extra jump though like our old t7. Then it would really be wicked.
Speaking of does anyone know a good POM addon? I use power auras to show when the cooldown is up but would be awesome if I could know how many stacks were left jumping around so I was prematurely popping another one out.
All-n-All
The mana regen nerf sucks a bit (especially since I’m always OOM but that’s gonna be the way for awhile since I’m raid healing). I think overall we got a good set of buffs and balance changes.
Posted by Xeonio 
I like to flip flop spec a lot, it keeps things interesting. I enjoyed being disc but the reality is the sheer raw healing power needed for raid healing just wasn’t possible as discipline, especially when you are only running 5 healers in your raid group.
