Divine Providence buffed, still worthless
by Eliah Hecht 
Oct 16th 2008 at 4:00PM
Many classes have interesting five-point talents immediately preceding their 51-point talents. Heck, two out of the three Priest ones are pretty good. Discipline has Borrowed Time, which brilliantly capitalizes on the new Power Word: Shield-centric healing method of that tree. Shadow has Twisted Faith which, alright, is not the most exciting, but at least it improves Shadow's main damage spells considerably, as well as letting them get a bit more out of spirit.
In Holy, we're stuck with something called Divine Providence. Basically, every heal that can hit more than one target is up by +2/4/6/8/10%. Not only is this boring as heck, but it's not even good. For it to meet the benchmark of 1% improvement per talent point, fully half of your healing would have to come from these heals. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm willing to bet that at least 70% of my healing will come from Greater Heal, Flash Heal, and Renew, gimmick fights aside. These are heals that this talent does absolutely nothing for.
The devs "are sympathetic to the notion that Divine Providence feels like a second Spritual Healing but with less effect" (which is exactly what it is), so they're buffing it. It will now, in addition to its previous effect, reduce the cooldown of Prayer of Mending by 6/12/18/24/30%. 30% off is 3 seconds, so PoM will be on a 7-second cooldown with 5/5 in Divine Providence. This is...nice, I guess, but I'm in agreement with the Dwarf Priest here: I'm still not taking it. 3 seconds off PoM's CD and a 10% boost to 30% of my healing is not worth 5 points at the deep end of my tree; this is the sort of stuff I expect from a tier 4 talent, not tier 10.
Filed under: Priest, Talents, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
skajake Oct 16th 2008 4:07PM
Divine Providence is exactly why i decided to make the leap from Guardian Spirit to Imp Divine Spirit.
Tinwhisker Oct 16th 2008 4:08PM
I really don't think you appreciate just how effective CoH is in PvE.
Nightfright Oct 16th 2008 8:29PM
Yea I did a full Sunwell clear last night and I don't think I cast a single Gheal. I was mostly using CoH all night depending on my roll and fights. I am going to go for a more heavy CoH beneficial build. Maybe things are different if you are at a lower tier of raiding but at the top CoH is king. The other holy priest in my raid was pulling well over 4000hps last night.
Shadiix Oct 16th 2008 4:12PM
I'm pretty sure in most raids way more than 50% of my healing come from CoH
tenbones Oct 16th 2008 4:17PM
Yet another post on Wow Insider from someone who has no idea what they are talking about. Having raided Naxx and Obsidium Sanctum on beta, I can tell you Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending account for a little over half my healing on a normal run. Renew and Greater Heal typically flip flop in third place.
pantear Oct 16th 2008 4:19PM
Everyone in WoW raids, amirite?
-D Oct 16th 2008 4:52PM
Nearly a month of playing Warhammer. Two months of being unsubbed from WoW. When the forum community for a game starts complaining--which happened here on wowinsider weeks ago--it's surely a bad sign.
People just aren't happy with Blizzard. The more transparent their design and development process becomes, the more hate they get. Maybe it's cause--I dunno--their design and development process sucks? Could be. Call me crazy.
They seemingly make changes without rhyme or reason and have said as much on several occasions. At least for my part I just can't respect that. They're not interested in how the players want to experience their game. They want their players to line up and enjoy it they way THEY want the players to.
Total garbage.
I'll be enjoying Warhammer while everyone and their mother gripes and moans about WoW (rightly so).
webrunner Oct 16th 2008 5:15PM
"When the forum community for a game starts complaining" - that happens during original beta for any hotly anticipated game.
Hell, the forum community for Starcraft 2 is already complaining.
People always complain. It isn't a metric to determine if there's something actually wrong.
Matt Oct 16th 2008 5:46PM
From Warhammer Online FAQ:
Q: Can you point me to the game's official forum?
A: Mythic does not run its own forums, but we strongly support the efforts of the community and their many forums and fan sites. We will regularly check-in with these sites to share news and information about the development process, and hear from the community regarding their hopes and desires for the game. Please visit our Forums & Fansites page for a list of sites.
nufemasta Oct 16th 2008 4:28PM
Goodness, I respect people's opinions, however, it seems many of the bloggers at wow insider are using their "voice" to complain rather then inform like they used to. Please stop complaining! If I wanted to listen to complaints and whiners, I could visit the official wow forums.
Thx...
-D Oct 17th 2008 12:32PM
I meant to reply to this comment.
I should have been more specific and said "When the bloggers that depend on a portion of their income coming from evangelizing a game start complaining..."
Even the "die-hard" fans are hating this game. The friends I have that are still holding on to WoW (not many) are not impressed. A buddy of mine downloaded the patch, played for 20 minutes and just sighed and turned it off. WoW is played out. Done. Over. Jank. My only regret is waiting this long to quit.
Don't wait! Just do it. It's terrible. The designers and devs are terrible.
The recent surge of dev to player relations feels hollow and desperate. Like McCain when he started using "My friends" before and/or after every d@mn sentence.
nufemasta Oct 19th 2008 3:23AM
@D
Everyone I play with thinks quite the contrary, we love the changes and very much look forward to the expansion. Many of my friends, I work with and that play on different servers, have come back from WAR and other MMOs to play WoW again because of the new changes. Shame you have not had the same experience.
Good luck to ya...
Matt Oct 16th 2008 4:29PM
Since CoH takes such a small amount from spell power, this may still be pretty nice. I have yet to raid since CoH became a raid-wide heal..
With the Glyph of CoH, you increase throughput by 20%. You then do an additional 10% on top of it with these talents.
The usefulness will depend on how much raid damage we see and how many other healers come with us. In some raids, I was seeing >50% overheal with CoH trash, and still pretty high on bosses where I followed a strict assignment.
Sloegin Oct 16th 2008 4:30PM
Similar to Shaman resto, the bulk of the improvements land on lesser (or never) used spells instead of the 'bread-and-butter' heals.
Annoying to anyone who doesn't want to learn a new playstyle, but if its an improvement people will adjust.
Pfooti Oct 16th 2008 4:39PM
Right now, it's still useless to my priest. I can't seem to get my head around how people are able to skip over Meditation at least, and maybe even inner focus (especially extending clearcasting strings for better spirit regen). With 14 points nearly-mandatory in discipline, I don't see much in the upper tiers of holy. I'm looking at 14/47/0 right now, and really enjoying it, but there are (I think) better places to spend my points still in the lower tiers.
Would you place this talent above empowered healing or test of faith? Right now, all the leftover points in my 47 points of holy go into empowered healing. But I also picked up lightwell (the numbers ARE impressive, and I think I can train my raid to use it, since we're just in Kara / ZA) and Surge of Light (mainly for the free Flash Heals after a Circle of Healing).
Linkage Oct 16th 2008 4:56PM
Last night, I was healing in a group for ZA. Pretty much all my time was spent CoH + Instant Flash Heal. Even in the boss fights I wasn't using Greater Heal very much.
Granted, every fight was over in 3 minutes, but still.
amasen Oct 16th 2008 5:57PM
I did Black Temple last night.
Here is link to all the wowmeter (the new WWS) reports. I decimated the healing charts all because of circle of healing.
http://wmo.ngacn.cc/guild/7627
Naj: CoH=68%, ProM=16%
Supremus: CoH=13%, ProM=24%
Shade (boss only, not adds): CoH=73%, ProM=4%
Teron (lol, I used CoH to proc surge for more smites): CoH=78%, ProM=17%
Bloodboil: CoH=73%, ProM=15%
WWS from the entire run (trash+bosses):
http://wowwebstats.com/pci6xtponzkxw
CoH:73%
Prom: 14%
Renew: 6%
Flash: 4%
GHeal: 2%
Glyph of PW:S - 1%
Seems to me like AoE healing is essential for raiding (at least currantly). But I don't believe a 3 second reduction on Prom is enough. I think it needs to be a drastic reduction (5+ seconds) which would give holy the ability not only to heal better in PvE, but give them viability in PvP.
Chamual Oct 16th 2008 6:21PM
So like, the best group healers in the game are getting a 10% buff to their group heals? That's like, totally awful!!!
Why don't they get more single target heal buffs, cause like, healing the tank is more fun!!!!
Hurode Oct 16th 2008 7:00PM
Prayer of Mending used to account for a significant portion of my heals, then they changed it so it generates aggro for me instead of the person healed. With the old PoM I might have taken this talent, but thanks blizz, for doing way too little too late at buffing a once-great-now-shitty heal.
daniel Oct 17th 2008 8:56AM
you should know that threat has already or will be reworked for wrath so that the super careful aggro management we're used to during boss pulls won't be a problem anymore. this means that you shouldn't have to think twice about PoMing even during threat sensitive fights.