Patch 5.4 patch notes
Virtual Realms feature revealed
The Proving Grounds are coming
The latest patch 5.4 newsPriest 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 2 of 2)
Balasan Oct 1st 2008 10:00AM
Grass is greener, yada yada
The newest patch took away the holy paladin mobility (no more instacast holy light).
Resto druid's lifebloom have been nerfed to hell and back, and their wild growth is a lame excuse for an AoE heal.
Really, if you love to heal, these changes shouldn't bother you at all. Though if these nerfs keep coming Blizz better be planning a new epic healer class.
unbreakabullhordesargeras Oct 1st 2008 10:33PM
not a mana regen spell? what do you call shadow fiend?? i mean come on man know the class before you bitch about it.. really
Wibble Oct 1st 2008 10:03AM
Brilliant decision! Can you please increase the CoH cooldown and nerf Guardian Spirit back to 10% while you are at it ? :-s
Miharu Oct 1st 2008 10:26AM
Terrible change. Holy priests are the only pve healing class who are supposed to put a lot of points in a second tree. I was fine with 14 points in disc but this means every priest has to put at least 16 points there instead. Also many guilds force at least one priest to go spirit buff.
Tyvitty Oct 1st 2008 10:37AM
Where are the druid glyphs? We want to see the new forms from the polar bear and the red lynx glyph.
Fletch Oct 1st 2008 10:44AM
The nerf to the spirit of redemption glyph was inevitable as the twenty second duration meant you could persist in angel form almost indefinitely casting free spells. I'm still slightly confused by the wording of it however - it seems to imply that the five second extensions stack throughout the duration. If this is so, you may still be able to get extend the time significantly by casting instant HoTs and CoH.
Sarem Oct 1st 2008 10:44AM
Can we stop ignoring the important factor here.
That is NOT a WoW screenshot, where did that come from?
Alex Ziebart Oct 1st 2008 11:19AM
It's a WoW screenshot with very minor touchups. It's a screenshot of my character taken in the Lordaeron throne room in Undercity.
A good friend of mine took it for me, she does a lot of photography type stuff in WoW for people's characters. Lisa Poisso actually did an interview with her right here on WoW Insider, if you'd like to read it. You can see more of her art there, too.
http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/05/20/15-minutes-of-fame-character-art-inspires-cenarion-circle-raide/
Kaelyss Oct 1st 2008 10:49AM
I started playing this game almost three years ago and have loved my holy priest since the first day. It just seems that Blizzard is completely gimping the healers in favor of PvP. Seriously, Blizz, give us tools to progress with, not better ways of annoying other players!
Candina@WH Oct 1st 2008 10:49AM
Other than 'we fear change' reactions. Lets try to figure out a rational reason for the buff/nerfs that Blizz is throwing about.
From everything I've read about healing abilities across the board, the rational thought that Blizz is having is that Healing is too easy and plentiful in PVP and Endgame.
Is this true? I am not sure, but I saw a PVP geared Holy Pally tank Lootreaver with no healer so I can maybe see their point. (And don't get me started about how hard it is to kill resto druids in PVP...).
I think they are scaling back ALL healing class' abilities. And they are improving many classes DPS and survivability.
We are all going to have to learn how to play game at a new 'equilibrium' (balance between survivability, DPS and Healing).
At this point, I will withhold judgment until patch 3.1 (I was going to say 3.03, but 3.1 seems safer now :-) ).
and until I can play a level or three of Wrath.
superfrank Oct 1st 2008 11:23AM
healing is OP in PVP but my experience is that its always hard for guilds to find good (skilled/geared) healers that actually enjoy healing for PVE.
If as you say it is true that healing overall is being nerfed a bit, then it will be harder for guilds to find the healers they need for 25 man raids.
Candina@WH Oct 1st 2008 11:46AM
It has always been hard to recruit healers, but with the changes to DPS, Tanking and survivability, I think it MAY balance out. Who knows, you may need fewer 'pure' healers and more hybrid/spot healers.
Again -- withholding judgment until I can play.
Pfooti Oct 1st 2008 11:17AM
I'm definitely frustrated with the changes to Imp PW:F, as most other people are, but not as much as I really should be. Thinking mainly in terms of 10-man raiding (which I'm very likely to do in LK), both Imp PW:F and Divine Spirit are very important buffs that I probably can't rely on anyone else to bring. Maybe if we have an afflock, we can get a smaller spirit buff. The regen from Divine Spirit is nontrivial in terms of MP5 from Meditation.
It's frustrating that as a healing priest, I have to choose between a capstone talent (either circle of healing or guardian spirit, depending on the level) and Divine Spirit. Very frustrating indeed. What with all the talk of "moving away from required talent points", it's hard to justify a priest without at least 23 points in disc.
Theavengingknee Oct 1st 2008 11:55AM
the change to improved power word shield is horrible i would rather have improved power word fort like they had it.
Bremic Oct 1st 2008 4:44PM
I think the change to Imp:PWF moving it out of the reach of holy priests is very very stupid. Most 10-man raid groups wont have a Disc-priest, and to be honest, the same will probably be true about 25-man.
The thing to remember however, is this does not nerf the priest that much. It nerfs the whole raid. Fights where people need to lift their health means that everyone will need to go farm a stamina trinket and wear that instead of their nice dps/heal trinket. Of course there will be pressure for a Holy/Shadow priest to respec to get Imp:PWF for one fight, but as long as we refuse, the nerf is not to us as much as to everyone else.
Trolling through combat logs, the extra 290 health from Imp:PWF at L70 has saved our raid tanks about once every 2 weeks. We only raid 4 times a fortnight, so that is one extra wipe every 10 hours of raiding. And that is not taking into consideration other classes that might have died to cause us to lose important dps/healing. Slows down PvE progression, that is all this change does.
Nick Oct 2nd 2008 3:37PM
Come on, if you're relying on the 290 health from Imp:PWF to save your raid, you're doing it wrong. I'm a BT priest, and our tanks run at about 20-24k HP. An extra 290 is barely noticeable. Nice, but hardly game breaking if you didn't have it. Same with Imp Spirit; I love having a Disc priest in our raids (well, partial Disc) but on nights we don't have one it's again not game breaking. In fact, we sometimes have our Disc healer (was me for a long time) respec to CoH just because AoE healing is so critical it's worth the loss of a bit of healing power and regen.
I know that priests haven't got a lot of earth-moving changes, but we're still the most versatile healers around, able to do every type of healing (AoE[CoH/PoH/HolyNova], HoT[Renew], fast[Flash], big[GHeal], preventative[ProM], mitigation[PwS], on-the-move[instants]). No other healing class has the deep toolbox a priest does. And the few new spells we did get only provide more options. Our standout ability (AoE healing) got buffed in multiple ways (a talent to boost output for all of them, removal of party restriction for CoH, ability to Glyph CoH to hit 6 people, ability to Glyph Holy Nova to be a decent heal, Glyph to add a HoT to PoH, more I'm probably forgetting). Sure, I'd love a couple more wiz-bang new talents, but I sure don't think we've lost anything. We're solid healers today, and I only see increases in 3.0. I won't be re-rolling any time soon.