OK heres the the real deal on CoH. Prior to 3.0 CoH was an awesome spell for good priests, and one that a lot of bad priests didnt spec into becasue they didnt understand the power of the spell when used correctly. For that reason (ofcourse there are also good dicipline priests) many priests chose divine spirit because that was a very popular raid spec simply becasue of the buff they gave. CoH was misunderstood by the tarded masses, and not very popular, therefor blizz made it a "smart heal" on 3.o. This is the root cause of the OP-ness of current CoH. Blizzes own improvement. Why? because wheresas before a CoH priest had to wisely use their GCDs on the correct party that needed the most healing while also spot healing more hurt players, NOW we only have to target some random shmoe or even ourselves and every heal will automatically go the closest HURT players. You see, this doubles or even triples the efficiency of the spell, negating a TON of overhealing and eliminating the need to choose diffent targets constanty. In other words, ITS MAD OP. Add on the new surge of light talent which affects flash heal now in addition to smite, and with a measly 10 percent crit and the base holy talent for 5 extra crit and u can proc flash of light with COH like every time it is available. I'd appreciate your positive attitude about the nerf if it wasnt a problem of blizzards own stupid making. As for the "smart heal" mechanics, where is my smart prayer of healing? Or will u make that one smart and then give it 10 second CD a month later..? Thank you blizz for buffing my favorite spell and then destroying it. I feel liek a frikkin pally. 41 point talent? Blizz pleaze, you must have a mental disease, assume the position and get back down on yur knees.
-Pyo

Over-reaction much? :) I understand it definitely IS a nerf reducing it to a 6-second cooldown, but in relation to "I feel liek a frikkin pally. " - I *am* a pally. We have *no* group heal. We have *no* spammable instant heal (only Holy Shock on a cooldown, but its very rarely used as it's so mana-hungry). We have *no* HoT (except glyph'd flash of light, which still isn't an instant, so fairly useless - especially when priests/druids/shamans are all stomping all over it with their group heals).

There's a number of people in this thread saying "we need CoH on demand!" or "there are fights that are virtually impossible without spamming CoH". Try doing those fights with ONLY lesser and greater heal. Welcome to pally.

yea, but try healing in your nightgown!

THAT was modded up? Healing pallys in raids only take magic damage, which ignores our armour. We're in exactly the same boat as you, but without the heals. NEXT!

I for one haven't played a priest....

shut up then. That spell is not the reason we run oom. It's from dps thinking they can tank, its from tanks in greens, its from people standing places they shouldn't. one spell is not responsible for us going oom and if you haven't played a priest than why are you commenting on one?

I said I haven't played a priest, not I haven't played a healer. One of my mains is a holy pally, and pre-Illumination we had much much worse mana problems than you do. Thankfully they've fixed that a bit with Illumination and Divine Plea.

However scrub, I don't accept for a second the "it's everyone else's fault" for priests OOMing 2 minutes into a raid boss fight. If it's happening to you (seems to be the case since you're on the devensive) either a) you heal badly, b) every other healer in your raid heals badly, or c) your raid leader/heal assigner doesn't know how to do his job.

Merry Xmas!

Besides Marty, you seem to be taking offense for all the wrong reasons. I'm not criticising priests in general. I'm not saying they're bad healers. I'm saying there *are* bad priests who *are* OOMing from using CoH to the exclusion of everything else, and therefore I welcome this change (as in my original post) because it'll give them an opportunity to learn to use other healing spells.

I've got one of these priests in my guild. She's absolutely terrible. She can't heal through heroic TRASH MOBS. Anything that teaches her to heal better is a good thing in my book.

It's interesting, I''ve always been a 20/41 priest in BC, and now 21/40 in LK. I'm the most powerful healer in my guild by far, and over 75% of my healing on every fight comes from PoM and G heal, CoH is a situational spell, it's not very strong, if you had 10 priests spamming CoH on the main tank for patchwerk, your tank would die.

I can recall a lot of times where I've seen priests spamming CoH and nothing else though, even for the tiniest bit of damage done by trash, instead of putting on a renew and laying back to enjoy the mana returns from not casting.

All in all, I'm very happy this nerf is comming, I'm a holy priest, and I top the meters and I NEVER get an innervate. It's always the other one or two priests, that low on the meter spamming CoH.

What's funnier is that they don't even look to see if there are Druid HoT's on players taking minimal damage, they just spam CoH to steal their heals. I comment on vent a lot about it, they just don't care.

Here's my healing cycle for 90% of the boss fights.

PoM, G heal, renew, inner focus + gheal, PoM. At level 80 and with 16k mana, you're over 98% mana with that rotation already. Not bad, two PoMs, two G heals, and a renew at 2010 spellpower, that's over (2)(6 PoM jumps tier bonus)(3k) + (5)(2.1k on renew, no renew glyph) + 9k(2) on g heals. So how much healing with only 2% of my mana, 36k+ 10k +18k, 64k healing overall? wow and with ~20% crit chance (moonkin buff) close, 80-90k healing with 2% of my mana right at the start of fight.

That's certainly beats spamming CoH anyday and it always has.

I'm so happy you f*c*tard priests are taking this nerf, maybe I won't even have to roll of priest gear against you anymore, because you'll get g kicked.

Thank You for your time!