Priest changes and glyphs in Wrath beta patch 9014
by Alex Ziebart 
Oct 1st 2008 at 9:00AM
- Holy Nova's mana cost is now 25% of base mana, originally 33% of base mana.
- Improved Inner Fire has been moved from Tier 3 to Tier 2.
- Improved Power Word: Fortitude has been moved from Tier 2 to Tier 3.
- Guardian Spirit now heals the target of 50% of their maximum health.
- Twisted Faith's typo has been fixed. As stated previously, it will work while Shadow Word: Pain is on the target, not Mind Flay.
- Glyph of Fading - Reduces the mana cost of your Fade spell by 30%, instead of the old 50%.
- Glyph of Spirit of Redemption - All heals cast while Spirit of Redemption is active have a 20% changes to increase the remaining duration of Spirit of Redemption by 5 seconds. Originally 20 seconds.
Overall, I think this patch's changes were pretty decent. Not amazing, but not bad either. Some tough calls, but good and needed ones. Glad to see Guardian Spirit get a bit of a boost most of all, despite my personal affinity to the Shadow. Holy Priests needed more of a reason to use their GCD for that particular button in a pinch, instead of something else.
[ Unofficial patch notes via MMO-Champion ]
Filed under: Priest, Analysis / Opinion, Expansions, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
olsenba Oct 1st 2008 9:10AM
Played a priest thru BC I have to say none of the priest changes are anything to get excited over. I wouldnt be suprised if my priest ends up collecting dust in wrath.
Bean Oct 1st 2008 5:02PM
Both of my 70 Priests are already gathering dust. When I first saw the changes Priests were getting in WOTLK I thought they were pretty solid... but then I looked around and saw that every other class was getting a dose of "FUN" with their class changes, while the Priest class was simply provided the tools they should have always had.
I have 2 toons in the 50's already. Both of those toons are classes that Blizzard seems to favor in terms of development time. So although I LOVE the Priest class, I'm not going to pay Blizzard for the right to play a class they don't care to provide anything fun for.
Sarkli Oct 6th 2008 1:00PM
I personally am quite happy with how the holy tree has turned out w/ the few changes and adds the the tree. My priest has, live 1910 healing and my renew only puts out around 794-824 a tick but in ptr renew is doing 1k+ a tick with only having 1010spell power. A def plus for us. One thing im not happy with is Dispersion still. In raids it serves a bit better purpose though you cant deal damage or anything.. but in pvp its absolute crap. Why would you bother wasting the point in it? If they put the health regen back in it.. it would definately be more pvp viable. Currently i have around 10k HP which with the way it was would give me 3600HP back while in the form. If ppl were QQ about that they can bite the whitest part of my ass. We have no burst damage that doesnt hurt us in return, so the extra HP we get back 'could' turn the tide in our favor 'if' it was CD'd. But with every other classes ability to do burst dps 3600hp ,or as it scales to 80 a bit more, will end up being nothing but a good crit away from death. If your that concerned make its regen 4% for health.
Tridus Oct 1st 2008 9:20AM
What? No. Its not a good change. Its a bloody horrible change. Imp PW:F is pretty important for raiding. Imp PW:S is totally unimportant for Holy builds.
All they've done is send Holy raiding builds even deeper into Disc to pick up Imp PW:F. Moving PW:S was a much better idea. (Or even better, how about moving junk like Martyrdom.)
Clasifyd Oct 1st 2008 9:24AM
I can only assume you don't know that they're adding a spell power aspect to Inner Fire in Wrath?
Clasifyd Oct 1st 2008 9:25AM
http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?spell=48168
Before I get called a liar.
Tridus Oct 1st 2008 9:36AM
I know about it. Its not the moving Imp IF part up that bugs me, its moving Imp PW:F down. Someone in every raid will need that. If there's no full Disc Priest, its going to be the healer. It means Holy builds now have 16 required Disc points, instead of the previous 14. Its made that problem worse.
The original suggestion was to move Imp PW:S down in exchange for Imp IF. That got Shadow what it wanted (easier access to more spell power), and didn't force healers to spend more points in Disc on buff talents.
How we ended up with this is a total mystery.
Balasan Oct 1st 2008 9:56AM
On the other hand, you only ever need one priest in the raid with the improved PW:F; one cast is good for the whole raid. No more dividing groups.
Yes, it's going to make reliance on a disc priest heavier, but with the improvement to the disc tree to be a very good single target healer, it wouldn't be a bad idea to, you know, bring a disc priest instead of a gimped (what I gathered from what you said) holy priest.
Clasifyd Oct 1st 2008 9:58AM
I am, by no means, saying it's a great change, but it's not awful either. Myself, I'd be taking both talents regardless of position, so really there's no change in my mind.
Fletch Oct 1st 2008 11:49AM
Yes, I'm inclined to agree that moving PW:S (a fundamental talent for disc priests given Blizzards aim to make them mitigation healers) to tier three would have been a better move. In all probability I would spec deep enough for the divine spirit talents anyway, so this change may not affect me overly much. It would seem that the only logical explanation for this move is that the developers want to force a hard choice on non-discipline specs as a trade off for getting improved fortitude. I might be tempted to try a full discipline spec when the expansion comes, but I still find it hard to believe that discipline will provide better single target healing than holy (despite Blizzards aim to make it the best tree for single target healing).
L:ytania Oct 1st 2008 11:56AM
While important for raiding, keep in mind that the buff will be raid-wide now (instead of having to cast group-by-group). Cuts down on reagents, and your holy/disc priest will be speccing through that to get further in the tree anyway. Just help offset some of their reagents and voila.
Andreas Oct 1st 2008 9:26AM
I am so tierd of this, will blizzard ever stop nerfing priests? :(
dpak Oct 4th 2008 12:20AM
You are kidding right?
I feel even the reductions (I see no nerfs), are expected. I still think the new talents are awesome, I am excited about the new racials, and the spell power changes (which, they made for us, btw....you think the guild will gear the mages before you? not if you are a good healer).
This stuff is still great.
All classes get adjustments, and while I think I would have done some of the balancing different myself, overall they are good.
Go level more toons, get perspective.
Every class thinks they are getting nerfed! (expect maybe ret pallies....)
timmy! Oct 1st 2008 9:29AM
lol here comes the "sky is falling" priests
crsh Oct 1st 2008 9:41AM
It's been a roller-coaster ride that has brought nothing decent to the table so far; two steps forward, 3 steps back, one forward and two back again.
Whining? Damn right, it seems it's the only way to get anything from Blizzard anyway; aka reversing the honor wipe decision.
Tyrnas Oct 1st 2008 10:00AM
The sky is not falling, it has fallen already and is hobbling around on some lopsided crutches.
In all seriousness though, has there been ANY Priest spec that looks at Wrath and says "YAY!"? To expand on that, is there even a healing class excited for this expansion? I honestly don't know, I'm shadow and always will be, just haven't seen any class excited for their healing spec.
nian Oct 1st 2008 9:39AM
They should really make guardian angel a 30 minute buff instead of a 10 second buff. change the healing effect to a "increase healing from holy priest(caster) by 5%(or 10%)"
holy priests already have enough healing spells to use during fight and with desperate prayer being part of the tree now, i don't see why they would need another emergency heal.
Silkath Oct 1st 2008 9:56AM
Desperate Prayer can only be cast on yourself... not exactly going to save the tank in an emergency is it? Unless you have one of those nightmare pugs where the healer tanks everything...
Silkath Oct 1st 2008 9:54AM
The spellpower boost from Imp IF is rather lackluster to be honest. It's 54 spellpower at level 80, which is going to be equivalent to having your weapon enchanted or not at level 80. Not exactly worth a 3 point investment for a pve priest.
Naix Oct 1st 2008 9:54AM
Not a single good change. Thanks Blizzard for breaking my class. Every healing class gets a mana regen spell, but priests get squat. Why not have the lolwell to area effect mana regen and then it would be decent.
I think I may just retire my priest and start a death knight.