By now you've seen that Eyonix has started
announcing some class changes for the upcoming
patch 3.1. Priests were actually the first class up to bat this time around, and there are a handful of really cool changes in there. Some of them way cooler than they really need to be, so we'll see how things work out. Let's take a look, eh?
- Divine Spirit - this spell is now a core ability available to all Priests.
Adding Divine Spirit to every Priest's repertoire is, by itself, a pretty fantastic change. Now that Spirit is used by more classes than just the Priests themselves, Divine Spirit has awesome group utility. I suspect Improved Divine Spirit will remain a talent, but even without the improved version of the spell, it's a great little boost. I love this change so much that I'm actively looking for problems with it, so I can curb my enthusiasm. Hmm. Oh, I know! This will make me spend more money on reagents. Ugh, clearly this is just another money sink. How dare they! Slap in the face!
Nah, it's pretty cool.
- Discipline has access to a new talent: Power Word: Barrier, which is similar to a group-wide Power Word: Shield.
This is a really awesome addition, essentially a Discipline-esque Circle of Healing. This should strengthen the Discipline niche very nicely, though we will need to see the numbers and cooldown on the spell. It's a great concept, and one that our very own Matticus actually recommended previously on another blog, though in a slightly overpowered iteration.
- Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova's mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
This was sorely needed, and I'm pretty happy to see this change. The cooldown on Circle of Healing was needed, but it left the spell in a sort of awkward position. Now that you can weave targeted Prayers of Healing in between your Circle of Healing cooldowns, Priests are going to be absolute powerhouse AOE Healers again. That playstyle should be much more interesting that it was before. I honestly don't really care about Holy Nova though, it still won't be that great with a lower mana cost. I think the only legitimate use for it is killing Snake Trap snakes these days.
- Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
This is super nice, but I hope it's not the only PvP buff to Shadow that we'll see. They're great changes, but I don't think they'll be enough. I call this a start, and not much more than that.
- Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
This is huge. Huge huge huge. If you don't have much experience playing a Discipline Priest this likely doesn't seem like a big deal, but it's going to be really amazing. One of the harder to kill Healers in the game right now just became a little tougher. Penance has a weakness in that it's a channeled spell, but a little bit of instant, up-front healing goes a long way when you're being focus fired.
Flash Heals are great, but nothing beats a little bit of instant healing when you're in a bind. I fully expect to see Discipline Priests practicing a stutter-cast of the spell so they can hit themselves with a tick or two of healing, then stop the channeling before they get nailed with an interrupt, and then going back to their shields and such while Penance is on cooldown.
- Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
I'm not sure if this replaces its previous effect or is added on to it, but I'm going to assume it's a replacement. It'd be pretty absurdly powerful otherwise. I'm not really broken up about this change, because Priests are one of the classes that really do not give a crap about mana regen right now. You do in some situations, but not in most. Serendipity could have used a little change.
I like seeing this change because it does a little bit of what I love about my Resto Shaman alt's talents (and glyphs). By the time you hit the top of the talent tree, every spell you cast enhances some other spell that you cast regularly. It all flows together, and encourages you to weave different spells together to maximize how effective you are. A lot of raid encounters might dull that down, but in 5-mans it's a pretty beautiful flow that I enjoy a lot. Seeing more of that in the Priest trees is exciting, much moreso than "10% more healing" or "5% more mana regen" and things like that. I love this change... for now. I'll make up my mind for sure when we see numbers.
- We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.
Looking forward to seeing this, though Holy is not really my favorite thing in the world. I'd like to see what they do regardless.
Overall, this patch is looking very interesting so far. Discipline is getting a whole lot of love, and Holy isn't far behind at all. I'm really hoping that we'll see more Shadow changes in the near future, but only time will tell.
Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.Tags: binding-heal, circle-of-healing, discipline, discipline-priest, divine-spirit, flash-heal, holy, holy-priest, improved-divine-spirit, mana-regen, matticus, patch-3.1, penance, power-word-barrier, power-word-shield, prayer-of-healing, priest-class-changes, resto, serendipity, shadow, shadow-priest, wow-patch-3.1
Filed under: Priest, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, PvP, Buffs
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Feb 5th 2009 at 2:00AM 
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Hokuto Feb 5th 2009 10:01AM
Priests are going from prime AoE healing class to "required" AoE healing class, that's what worries me.
And no, I'm not a jealous non-priest healer, I just think it's going to be a problem if we have more Malygos encounters and only one class capable of handling it.
Jon Do Feb 5th 2009 10:04AM
Actually, I'm kind of with people who are underwhelmed. A re-spec (Holy, with a Disc feel again due to Divine Spirit... just like back in TBC) and reload and reset Healbot. I would have welcomed such changes as part of the 3.0 / Wrath expansion, but felt like priest got tossed a few situational tools and turned generic with the changes to racials.
After playing my warrior to 80 and seeing the extensive, and fun, changes to the warrior class, my holy priest at 80 seemed like TBC + 10 levels & a few weak / situational PvP-oriented abilities (not too exciting for someone burned out on WoW PvP). Now it seems that they are getting around to giving priests some design time in 3.1. Finally! But I'm having trouble getting excited about something I think is way overdue.
And every time my interest is perked up, PvP balancing comes up. There are already three sets of rules - PvE, PvP, and Arena, so why not just leave PvE alone and not break it trying (yet again) to "balance" PvP / Arena?
bobpriest Feb 5th 2009 10:20AM
As a shadow priest, I'm very happy to cast Divine Spirit even if it's not improved. 10mans with 2 priests aren't always possible.
15% spell dmg reduction (if they make it the same as physical reduction) is awesome!
Now if I can get my dream of making dispersion able to be cast on a friendly party member and aoe from them. I love that we can AOE now like a lock/mage, but we always miss our target other than starting with some dots on it. At least I can dream!
Omicron Feb 5th 2009 10:51AM
I am not sure why everyone's talking about a buff to Disc and a nerf to Holy. At least in PvE terms, I sort of worried. Nowadays you pretty much either spec Holy or you can't heal efficiently in raids. Maybe in 25mans there's one token slot available for Disc, but in 10mans, I've seen every single Disc priest who tried it respec eventually because they couldn't do their job otherwise. Yes, even AFTER the CoH nerf.
And now? With Divine Spirit baseline, there's one less reason to spec Disc, and one more reason to spec Holy. Circle of Healing heals more, another reason to spec Holy. PoH has greater utility, another reason to spec Holy (who can improve PoH while Disc cannot), with the same counting for Holy Nova.
Penance being self-targetable is a fully PvP centric change. I'll admit it's nice though!
So far it seems that for PvE, the worse tree got worse and the better tree got better. The question now remains is, how much is this tendency affected by the ominous Serendipity change, and the new Disc talent. The first thing that immediately jumps out is the fact that Disc and Holy are now massively separated by mana economy. Disc spells efficiently employed refund a ton of mana due to the returns from Rapture, while Holy loses its big mana saver. It remains to be seen how long a Holy priest can keep it up in a spam-situation after the patch. Though from personal experience, where I've seen a single 10man-geared Holy priest solo-heal an entire 10man Gluth encounter for over 5 minutes without running out of mana (no innervate, no replenishment), I think they'll be fine still.
Then there's Power Word: Barrier. I am really ambivalent about this. As mentioned before, it completely ruins synergy effects via Borrowed Time in case it procs Weakened Soul (admittedly, we don't know that, but it seems logical). Also, does it work with Rapture? Does it gain the same absorption bonuses from talents as PW:S does? If yes, does it proc Borrowed Time after all? How much damage absorption does it even have, how much does it scale, and how much does it cost - especially in comparison with the newly buffed Holy Nova? If it does proc Weakened Soul, does that mean you can only cast this spell once every 15 seconds, because Weakened Soul will prevent another shield from applying for that long? If yes, is it even worth it to ruin your chance to single-target shield any person at all for that long?
These are all questions that need to be answered before I am willing to like this change.
(Yes, I have a Disc Priest, and I won't respec it no matter what... but I can still be happy or unhappy about changes :p)
Loathed Feb 5th 2009 11:20AM
I am sitting here smiling so big!
For the past few weeks several long time gamer friends and I have been going over the past games we've played, with special focus on how healing builds work in other games.
I've always been made to mention a certain "bubble" defender I had in CoX. And how it was always a PITA to explain to groups, "If your party is not taking damage, you do not need huge heals."
While clearly these changes are not entirely bringing that type of "spec" to WoW, I think it is an amazing twist to bring to the healing game. I'll never say it is the best way to heal, but being able to mitigate damage as opposed to Single Target heal (Pali) or "Set it and Forget it) heals (Druid) sure seems to add a twist.
I am all for making each "healing" type of class diverse, in the long run anything to make the tedium less, is a plus.
Even though I am not "Forlorn Legacy" geared, (I play on Windrunner) healing almost entire heroics with nothing more then single stacks of LB, the occasional LB, and bosses with a Regrowth, does get tiresome. Oh wait, I forgot telling people to just group up so my druid can heal group with Wild Growth. Yeah, healing is just so....very exciting.
Loathed Feb 5th 2009 11:26AM
What I meant to say was....
Healing entire Heroics with single Lb's, maybe a Rejuv (If certain Mages I know don't control their pew-pew), Regrowth, on occasion. Come on now, you get the idea...
My priest I was "Old School" with, holy for 62 lvls, even leveled Holy. Ahh, the olden days when some healers would only rotate in to MT heal on occasion, and even a lot of the time depend on the kindness of Rogues and Hunters to bandage them to save mana.
Oh the lovely things Blizz has visited upon us!
JustSomeGuy Feb 5th 2009 1:05PM
These changes are a tale full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.
Oooh... a group shield. Big deal.
Divine Shield... big deal as far as Disc goes. If this new changes goes in line with every other "improvement" Blizz has done for the priest, they are going to give it to everyone... make it worthless. Just like they did with Fear Ward, etc.
The only maybe-good changes are a lowered cost for Holy Nova and a self-cast for Penance.
But as far as PvP, lettting the priest survive 5 seconds instead of 3 isn't anything to get excited about.
JustSomeGuy Feb 5th 2009 1:06PM
* meant Divine Spirt, not "divine shield".
Drkstrider Feb 5th 2009 1:50PM
I play a shadow priest and this is str8 up BS. There is no way those changes and the changes in the last patch are anything good. BTW: Don't give me that crap about rolling a lock...they have the shadow spec in the game and I choose to play that, so like every other class respect my right to bitch about making my class/spec better.
Anyway, Blizzard why don't you try working on giving us back decent health and mana when we apply VT and VE. Let everything depend on Mind Flay, so we can get a decent tick of mana back instead of hoping for some mana back by casting mind blast.
I have been hoping for a change to the shadow tree forever and we are still getting the shaft.
Ok, I have vented.
Note: the above is solely my opinion and if you don't like it...then tough, so save the flaming.
angel Feb 5th 2009 1:56PM
omfg these changes are orgasmic, probably the best changes they had given us in a very big big time! i will love my 2 priests more!! disc and holy ftw
Cedra Feb 5th 2009 2:34PM
I still don't understand why Inner Fire can be dispelled when similar self-buffs for warlocks and mages can not.
JustSomeGuy Feb 5th 2009 3:28PM
Because everything priest-related has to be weak.
Look at our glyphs- 75% of them have a downside to them. If we were warriors, any penalties would have been removed long ago, and we'd be able to cast two spells at the same time.
Amilialight Feb 5th 2009 5:15PM
I tried tears of joy... Really in real life.
I always loved my priest, even through nerf bat of CoH, even through when it was claimed as the jack of all trade healer, even when double DPS would take 0.5 seconds to kill me in arena.
But 3.1 are exciting changes for priests.
I'm eager to see how priests will do with the changed PoH, serendipity and penance.
Lupius Feb 7th 2009 2:49AM
I really think they should fix Holy Nova to do exactly as it is worded: "heal ALL friendly players within a radius", as opposed to a limit of 5 players.
JP Feb 17th 2009 3:35PM
I play a shadow priest. I guess I'm just a masochist...
These aren't the changes we're looking for ... move along ....
:(
Shadow priest = useless in raid
Shadow priest = poor in PvP/Arena
Shadow priest = Middling for levelling PvE (yawn)
Help us out Blizz! If we all wore grey hoodies do you think they'd mistake us for Druids?
whiterquick Feb 20th 2009 6:05PM
i would trade all of the changes for a battle rez like the druid. I mean seriously. Druid can battle rez and shamans can reincarnate. Priest get spirit healer for when they die only to die again in 10 seconds. Lame. A holy preist is supposed to be the utmost healer in the game yet they are not a druid with a good swiftmend can do everything a holy can. Give the holies something worth having. even the end 51 point talent is useful only if you failed as a healer, nd there are no others present, and it has a cool down. if i could spam it constintly to count as my battle rez i would be happy enough.