Changes for Priests in patch 2.3 and beyond [Updated]
by Elizabeth Harper 
Sep 26th 2007 at 5:40PM
- Circle of Healing, Prayer of Healing, and Holy Nova (healing side) will receive additional benefit from +damage/healing.
- Circle of Healing's base healing will be reduced, but the amount of benefit it gains from +healing will be increased. (If you have more than 1338 healing, it will heal for more. If you have less than 1338 healing, it will heal for less.) Update: Related, Power Word: Shield's base absorbtion is being reduced for ranks 10, 11, and 12, but the effect of damage/healing gear on it will be increased. Though Nethaera didn't give us exact numbers, I'm hoping this equates to at least a small buff to the ability.
- Pain Suppression being reworked. It will be castable on any friendly target and it will reduce their threat by 5% and reduce their damage taken by 40%. Update: Nethaera clarifies that this reduces the target's current threat and not their threat generation.
- Meditation to be increased from 5/10/15% mana regeneration while in combat to 10/20/30% mana regeneration while in combat.
- A change to the +healing stat to also give healers an amount of +damage. Most recently, Nethaera mentioned that they were considering adding 1/3rd of total +healing on an item as +damage as well (though this could still change). This has to be the change I'm looking forward to more than anything else.
- Unknown changes to spirit to make it a more viable tool for mana regeneration were mentioned at BlizzCon, saying that "The Spirit stat in general will be improved for WotLK."
- Possible changes to the discipline tree to give it more focus. We don't have any detailed information about this, but it was mentioned at BlizzCon. (Says Nethaera: big discipline revamps are likely to come in the expansion.)
- Fear Ward to be "spread around," again, not likely until the expansion.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Epiny Sep 26th 2007 6:02PM
Today has been great in the Priest forums. Lots of blue activity.
All the changes are good but the 1/3 of healing converted to damage has the potential for being OP. Most healing gear comes packed with alot of mana regen aswell. Often 2X damage gear.
Mellisande Sep 26th 2007 6:06PM
Does anyone else want something to be done about Divine Spirit? I feel like I have to take it for the good of the raid, but it really limits the builds that I can use and still be an effective healer.
I'd love it if they did something along the lines of making the holy tree the healing tree and the discipline tree the "aggro healing" tree. I think that could be a really interesting and unique tree for the priest class!
Melli
Epiny Sep 26th 2007 6:25PM
@2
It has been discussed alot and it seems that Spirit isn't going to move. I would like to see it moved lower on the tree though so you don't have to waste as many points.
I also forgot to mention that the general consensus I've seen is that any Undead with Fear Ward is gonna be OP. :(
Bodarim Sep 26th 2007 6:15PM
@1
i totally agree that the 1/3 of the healing will be OP. thats the point of dmg/heal gear or just dmg gear. if the 1/3 dmg of healing becomes the case then the dmg/heal gear would do more dmg for a priest than a mage or lock because they would get another 1/3 bonus. it would throw a monkey wrench into the whole item levels when it comes to these stats.
my2cents Sep 26th 2007 6:19PM
I am SO psyched for these changes. I recently went disc/holy with my priest and I'm not one who thinks they're "broken" but there is room for improvement.
The change to meditation is HUGE imo. Going oom too quickly is the only problem I currently have on my priest, but I do have a decent amount of mp5 through meditation (I have just over 500 spir with my prayer of spir buff up) This will increase my mp5 quite a bit.
The new pain suppression will make a deep Disc build more popular and viable now outside of the arena, although the threat reduction aspect will cause it to still be rather situational in PvE as you won't want to use it on the tank. Still pretty cool though.
As for the change to Circle of Healing, sounds great! As it is, you only want to spec far enough into Holy for that if you're well-geared for the raids/instances you are doing, because you need to give up Divine Spirit to get it, which can help make up for slightly sub-par mana regen and healing and the talent just above CoH is much better to grab if you have lots of +healing (The more +healing you have, the more beneficial Empowered Healing is, which is right above CoH in the Holy tree.) You don't want to give up Divine Spirit unless you have plenty of mana regen already in relation to the encounters you will be healing through. Even with all that, most people say CoH isn't worth spending a point on. But with the change to meditation, mana regen shouldn't be as big of a problem and the buff to +healing benefit for CoH should make it more viable.
All in all, looks like there might be more than one "proper" healing spec soon =)
Natt Sep 26th 2007 6:32PM
Meditation revamp will make PMC set bonus of less importance, unless they scale that up as well. I hope they reevaluate that, maybe change it for something completely different.
Scruffy Sep 26th 2007 6:37PM
But remember, everything is working as intended! Blizz will continue to tweak (+25 healing to circle of LOL!) talents and no make major changes (fear ward for all! Pain Suppression can be cast on other players!).[/snerk]
All seriousness aside (heh), the second comment on CoH leaves me confused. I mean, duh, more +healing = more healing. Or are they talking non-linear increase in healing from +healing (X +healing = X healing, 2X +healing = 3X healing, etc.)?
Liel Sep 26th 2007 7:17PM
@3 I see your point but I bet they would make it only effect items that have a +heal to them and not count towards +heal and damage items.
annynomus Sep 27th 2007 12:54PM
well priest in my opinion well do not scale aswell as other class's in utility was and raid benefits and thier survival is pretty much zero, thier threat reduction is nothing compared to other class's.
i think the holy / disc tree need to be revamped i do agree with that and priest healing needs to be buffed some how to scale with the other healing class's
a few suggestions and why?
fade - make it drop 10% threat and gives you invaunerablity like a pally bubble in a way basically ( last for 6 seconds and has a 2 minute cooldown ) fade threat reduction is so horrible 900-1000 threat reduction and comes back after 6 seconds or was it 8? its a joke compared to warlock / mage / hunter / rogue threat reductions
power word shield - unlike pre bc power word shield was able to save you in a life or death situation i still feel the spell has not scaled with bc damage. 1 white attack and its off so in a way it is kinda waste of mana but not really.
and well it would be nice to have an area of effect spell like shadow nova or death and decay. shadow nova would just knock back but do like no damage like frost nova dose, death and decay well just be like a normal channel spell like blizzard, rain of fire etc.
this is more pvp in my opinion it would be nice to have Brittle as a spell ( reduces target speed by 70% for 10 seconds 1 minute cooldown ) unlike other class's that have plenty abilities to get away from a player meele whatever and recover priest dont have any of that its pretty much blow your fear they pvp trinket or will of the forsaken and your a free HK. by other ablities im talking about ( blink, trap, more than 1 fear (warlock) ice block, bubble, sprint, vanish, blind ) no ability's like that to recover compared to other class's they got more than atleast 2 skills to get out of a tough spot
and yes priest are good but when they are in high resilience we shouldent need to work hard to beat a certian class when other class's can do half the work and still live....thats one of the biggest issues i had with priest. even though i love them to death.
as far as shadow talent tree gose yes i do belive thier is too little to choose from your pretty much the same skill talent build as any other shadow priest a good variety more wouldent hurt and take out useless talents. ( improved fade, shadow resilience and such ) and this gose as earlier in my post healing / discipline aswell.
as far as racials / fear ward go from the topic above i think its a good idea but not just given all at once through a trainer i think some should be given from the trainer and others be obtainable through talents, and others maybe a priest quest? just like other class's got htier class quests ?
if blizzard dose somthing similiar to that priest would be fixed in pvp / hopefully in pve ( raiding too ) might open up some raid spots for them since they got more spells now atm. i belive they got too few skills compared to other class's that are casters.
to fix healing.. i have no idea to be honest i thought about it for awhile can't come up with any ideas but i do belive priest healing dose need to be buffed to scale with other healing class's that make them viable pve / pvp wise.
people might flame these idea's and say priest are already over powered but try playing one you'll find out its not as easy, its really hard to play a priest compared to other class's its not so easy and half the time we get lucky in pvp tbh most of the time
and no im not a noob ive actually done alot of the BC raiding content
but these are my idea's see and rate them as you wish
Shadowlyn Sep 27th 2007 3:32AM
Meditation buff is the bigtime. Like omg. If I hadn't retired my holy priest, I'd be ecstatic.
The whole healing 1/3 of dmg thing is pointless tho. if i have 1800 healing in epics i'll only have 600 spelldmg? I can get that in blue dps gear. What is the point of that? And don't say regen, because thats bs, i don't need regen to kill something. It should be more like half of healing gear (ding ding, the same way aggro is calculated, where 2 points of healing = 1 point of aggro because one point of dmg = one point of aggro). That way when I'm wearing my epic 1900 healing set, i have 950 spell dmg which is what a similarly geared (tailoring) shadow priest/mage/lock is pushing. That may be a little OP but holy priests still won't have the damage modifier talents to even reach comparable dps. At least make it 40% or something, jeez.
Greeneyed Sep 27th 2007 3:39AM
Priests are gonna be extremely overpowered in PvP now. Great. Why did they buff healers solo grinding but gave no love to prot warriors?
HumbleOpinion Nov 2nd 2007 1:05PM
After leveling a Pally to 70 and Holy spec and a 70 Priest Holy spec, this is my thoughts.
Pally healing = boring but almost unstoppable healing (PvP or PvE because of survival.) No problems with mana.
Priest healing = Fun healing; challenging fun but can get owned much faster both PvE and PvP. (No mana problems.)
I love healing as a priest. More fun, more utility. Pally healing, easy mode. Too easy. But the fact Blizz doesn't see a important part that priest need some better surviving abilities boggles the mind. Think about it, you can survive good but compared to a pally bubble, plus shield block talent (awesome for survival), and wearing PLATE so your armor is wildly high, makes the priest look like a second choice for arena or raiding. With my pally healing, I have no problems with mana or agro or living through the toughest fights and saved many a wipes (love that DI). With my priest, the best for wipe protection is your HoT's and becoming a "spirit" for a limited amount of time but far from wipe preventing. Fade isn't always a tool thats useful (can be resisted or not work at all) and priest bubble is not scaled with the amount you can get hit by in PvP or PvE in BC now. (It saved my butt many times pre-BC!) I don't need to do all the brainiac math or complex formulas to say its just looking at the problem of priest survival and being second (a weird concept that I still cannot rap my head around seeing as how priest have almost always been seen as a top choice for healing since RPG's were around.)
With that, I always look to my priest to heal in raids than my pally. I love healing as a priest and I still can make other "primary" healing classes run for their money. Just as have to watch my agro much more than any other classes.
Just my 2 copper.