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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria news8885 is not entirely kind to Priests
by Eliah Hecht 
Aug 30th 2008 at 7:00PM
My favorite class was certainly not left out of the party when it came to this beta build. The most interesting changes to me:
- Inner Fire works on spell power now, not just healing spell power as was the case in previous builds. This only makes sense, given that spell power is unified now.
- Penance has been buffed for all ranks, but I need to see proper numbers before I can make any conclusions. MMO-Champion is noting that it now ticks twice instead of thrice; I'm hoping that's a bug related to lowering the channel time to 2 sec.
- The new Disc talent Grace got the stuffing nerfed out of it. It now reads as follows: Your Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and Penance spells have a 50/100% chance to bless the target with Grace, reducing damage done to the target by 1%. This effect will stack up to 3 times. Effect lasts 8 sec. Yikes. It was a very strong talent, but I'm not sure it deserved to be hit quite this hard.
- Focused Power reworked to increase your total spell damage and healing by 2/4%, and reduce the cast time of Mass Dispel by 0.5 sec. Anything that makes you 2% more Priest per talent point is practically a must-have talent.
- New Disc talent: Renewed Hope (Tier 8): Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal, Greater Heal and Penance spells by 3% on targets afflicted by the Weakened Soul effect.
- Vampiric Touch changed to implement the new mana battery model ("cause up to 10 party or raid members to gain 0.5% of their maximum mana per second while you are dealing shadow damage").
- Misery changed to 3 ranks, now gives 1/2/3% spell hit.
- Shadow Weaving changed to 3 ranks, and now only increases the shadow damage you deal.
Definitely a bittersweet moment in the Priest development cycle. I really hope Shadow gets some major buffs soon.
[via MMO-Champion]
Filed under: Priest, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
Jack Spicer Aug 30th 2008 10:08PM
That's exactly it, everyone in a high end raid will hit cap themselves, making this entirely useless.
Worse, they'll probably hit cap themselves without having to use enchants, gems, or inscriptions.
Piebunion Aug 30th 2008 9:37PM
Here I was, so excited to get into the beta on thursday. The NEXT DAY this is released and suddenly I'm much less excited to take my priest through Northrend.
Deb Aug 30th 2008 10:15PM
I can understand the desire to simplify raiding, but I'm beginning to feel like that oddball cousin who hangs around at the family gathering and no one really knows what to do with me.
Zarhym notes our concerns about "the changes to buffs, debuffs, and raid stacking" and encourages those who can to "copy over characters when the test realms are available and give us some good feedback about your raid experiences."
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9336456423&pageNo=13&sid=1#258
Juliah Aug 30th 2008 10:27PM
Well said, Deb. I'm not sure they have a clue what to do with mages, either.
BaronSoosdon Aug 30th 2008 10:44PM
Guess history will repeat itself again, I retired my warlock and chose a shadowpriest as my main when TBC hit.
After reading this, there is not much interest to level up a useless and underpowered class (I have zero interest in healing).
The history repeating part comes with the possible changing of mains: WotlK made retribution paladins enjoyable.
Testing anything is a bit hard, the EU Beta server (Coldarra) is down almost all the time and crashes every 10 minutes.
crsh Aug 30th 2008 11:08PM
When does it get better? This sounds so frickin' bad right now, and every new build makes priests a little worse.
SixTwoSixFour Aug 31st 2008 12:20AM
You know? This almost makes me optimistic. Right now, Blizz is screwing us through our pants with no lube. That sucks the big one. But this has a different feeling than the Shadow Weaving molestation... it feels like "we want you guys to cry about this, and about how we've abandoned you, so that when we pull out the amazing new Priest buffs, you will be struck silent."
Then again, all this despair about how after a month of WoW and finally getting my Priest getting up to the early 60s, we are being raped, could quite possibly have driven me insane. I guess we'll find out.
viator Aug 31st 2008 2:02AM
Both misery and imp FF increase spell hit by 3%. Fairly certain you can recruit a balance druid or SP without too much difficulty. I'd say you could take that 3% hit into account while gearing/gemming, especially in a serious guild.
Also, the way blizzard is going on with the "no class left behind" mentality (see ret pally's, moonkin, ect), I doubt SP won't be getting some major buffs soon. The only thing that truly separates a raid spot from the bench atm is DPS, and they want every spec to have a shot at a raid spot. The DPS buff to shadow priests is coming.
DirtyPriest Aug 31st 2008 2:37PM
I like to be pessimistic as to not be disappointed later. In other news, my DK is halfway through Northrend.
YòuOTSS Aug 31st 2008 2:45AM
Though you're right about the probability of DPS buffs coming (one must hope) I find it hard to sit by idly when priests keep getting nerfed, where they aren't even updated to begin with. It is hard to see that priests are often overlooked in the class updates on sites like WoW insider or world of raids, and when i do see them, i often wince anyway, wishing they had released nothing.
The largest "changes" i see are nerfing skills to allow for talent points in other places. This means that a shadow priest will have the same skills now, with talent points to spec further into discipline. Call me crazy, but I actually prefer the system the way it is now. Where a shadow priest is shadow, because they want to be DPS and utilized in raid wide setting, as well as debuff and dispel, with healing ability in PVP.
IMHO, blizzard is becoming lazy with the "make all classes cookie cutter copies of each other by removing differences per person." A fine example of this laziness is the fact that they are making armor sets usable by anyone by armor rating rather than specific sets.
Spriests need more than a buff, they need an overhaul. Glad I recruited a friend and got lock and hunter up near 60 to go into northrend instead of my spriest and hpriest. Might as well spec them both holy and sideline them the way things look.
Muse Aug 31st 2008 4:03AM
I'm less concerned with the (apparent) nerfs to Priests than I am with sharing my beloved class with all these faithless whiners. Currently the fastest way to get sick of being a Priest is to read comments about the class, rather than actually playing with these changes.
When Wrath comes, we will be fine.
Tridus Aug 31st 2008 6:58AM
Holy will be fine, yeah. Quite possibly fairly boring due to the lack of anything new (unlike a lot of other classes), but what we did get is at least pretty good.
Shadow is getting hammered hard though.
Micho Aug 31st 2008 8:54AM
I just realized something; in the original WotLK trailer (when they announced the expansion), we saw a female priest and a male pally journey through Northrend, and the priest got one-shotted by a Wendigo.
There we have it, Blizzard is the Wendigo, the plan was announced way back. :(
Ligea Aug 31st 2008 4:52PM
SP's are taking it roughly from behind. No sign of any buffs (Thus Far) just nerf after nerf after nerf. I love my SP, it's the most fun I've had in WoW. If these new changes go through then I'll have to back to my 'lock or Mage.
Really unimpressed...........
Geoff Tracy Aug 31st 2008 6:39PM
Okay. That's it...
I've had enough.
Either they fix Shadow Priests, or I'm quitting wow.
I don't want to pay $15 a month to suck at wow.
Priests were my favorite class, but WotLK is treating us shadow priests like crap.
I'm done. Good luck, fellow Priests.
Jewbanks Aug 31st 2008 7:37PM
is this disc talent the thing they promised would penance more interesting.. because it doesnt