WoW Patch 3.1 PTR Holy and Disc Priest changes
by Matt Low 
Feb 24th 2009 at 3:12AM
A lot of changes are being introduced for both types of healing Priests in the upcoming 3.1 patch. Some of them are expected and others are unexpected! As always, check out the full PTR notes (which are most likely incomplete).
The promised changes to increase Holy's PvP ability don't seem to be here yet. I rubbed my eyes when I saw it because this wasn't the Holy tree I remembered.
As an overall grade, I'd say there are some serious buffs being doled out for healing Priests. Our Area of Effect heals have been ramped up!
Some notable highlights? Rapture has some new additions to it (It grants energy, rage, mana, or runic power to the target when it is removed). Prayer of Healing is no longer restricted to the Priests current party. Renew get's some extra nice bonuses in the form of an instant-application aspect and an overall spellpower bonus.
Keep reading! Disc and Holy changes are after the break!Changes
- Abolish Disease: Now cleanses a disease every 3 sec, down from 5. Duration reduced from 20 seconds, down to 12 sec.
This will help Priests against Death Knights who like to unload every conceivable disease onto us. Will help during the Heigan encounter, too! - Devouring Plague: This spell now has a new icon.
- Divine Spirit is now trainable at level 31.
This will remove Divine Spirit and Improved Divine Spirit from the talent trees. - Holy Nova: Mana cost reduced approximately 20%.
Good change! This makes Holy Nova a much more attractive party wide healing spell. Not sure how it will compare to Prayer of Healing and Circle of Healing yet. The Glyph of Holy Nova heals for an additional 40%. - Hymn of Hope: This spell has been removed.
No more 8 seconds of standing still. This means we lose an avenue of mana regeneration. Surely there will be other talents that increase our mana return? - Improved Holy Concentration removed.
So we're left with Holy Concentration now. - Prayer of Healing: This spell now heals the target's party, rather than being limited to just your direct party.
No longer need to stagger Priests across various groups. Since Prayer of Healing is no longer restricted to the Priest's current party, flexibility of the spell goes up. - Shadowfiend: Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master's spell power. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now receives mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. Movement speed normalized to player movement speed. Tooltip revised.
Sweet! Now it might be able to live long enough to actually restore mana instead of being one or two shot! This should lead to a net increase. Our mana restored goes up when the Shadowfiend hits a target. Doesn't matter if it gets blocked or parried, it seems. Another 1% increase in mana return should help.
- Divine Aegis - Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target).
Nice. A buff to Divine Aegis. Even though Divine Aegis will continue to stack, there's now a ceiling. Seems like the magic number is 10000 for level 80 characters. I can stack Divine Aegis many times on a tank. Each application will absorb 30% of the amount heal. Each time Divine Aegis lands, that number will continue to go up until it reaches 10000. - Grace: Duration increased to 15 seconds, but now is only limited to one target.
I guess we're definitely sticking to tank healing for a while. - Improved Power: Word Fortitude - Now also increases your total Stamina by 2/4%.
Seems like the Priest itself gets an extra 4% overall stamina. - New Talent: Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 sec., and reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Shield by 30%.
Interesting new talent! This essentially removes the cooldown timer on Power Word: Shield! The Weakened Soul debuff will still remain. The lowered mana cost is good. - Penance: Damage increased approximately 30%.This spell can now be cast on yourself.
Forget the damage increase, the fact that Priests can cast this on themselves is pure gold. I wonder what the animation will look like. - Power Infusion: This effect now has a new spell effect and sound.
- Reflective Shield:This talent has been removed.
- Unbreakable Will:Increased from 3/6/9/12/15% to 6/12/18/24/30%.
- Rapture: When Power Word: Shield is absorbed or dispelled, you gain 1.5/2/2.5% of total mana back. Your target has a 33/66/100% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% mana, 8 rage, 16 energy, or 32 runic power.
Taken from the new talent calculator that MMO Champion has provided. This is a big buff. Hopefully this just might silence the tanks who keep asking us not to shield them so they can gain more rage. - Enlightenment: Increases your total spirit by 2/4/6% and increases your spell haste by 2/4/6%.
It's a switch from Stamina to spell haste. Good change. I guess I won't be tanking as much. - Improved Flash Heal: Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal by 15%, and increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal by 10% on friendly targets at or below 50%.
Nice addition! With the Glyph of Flash Heal, this reduces the overall mana cost of Flash Heal by 25%. The critical chance increase should help save lives, too. - Meditation: Allows 17/33/50% of your mana regeneration to continue while casting.
Expected due to the Spirit nerfs. Holy Priests may not be dancing as much anymore.
- Circle of Healing: Healing increased by approximately 40%.
To help make up for the cooldown nerf, they introduce a healing increase. - Holy Concentration re-designed: Mana regeneration is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 sec after you critically heal with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal or Renew.
Start stacking a lot of crit. It might be possible to get it so that Holy Concentration is almost always active. - New Talent: Empowered Renew: Your Renew spell gains an additional 5/10/15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew will instantly heal the target for 5/10/15% of the total periodic effect.
So Renew gains an instant heal component when you cast it. Not only that, it's all overall effect is increased even more. Renew finally gets some love! - Serendipity re-designed: When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 6/12/20%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 sec.
Trying to make healing more fun and less monotonous. I might not go out of my way to set off Serendipity, but it's an interesting change. Will need more time to test it out in game. - Test of Faith: No longer increases critical effect chance of your heals, but healing done on targets lower than 50% health is increased from 2/4/6 to 4/8/12%.
No more crits but the healing is increased on targets below half life.
So yes, not all of these changes or additions will make it to the final cut. But for the time being, they're here and in the patch. Let's see how they'll perform first.
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.Filed under: Priest, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Talents, Wrath of the Lich King
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Narshe Feb 24th 2009 3:25AM
@Holy Nova
Not hard to divide the cost of the spell by 20% and figure out how much more healing it would do with the 40% glyph.
Euphie Feb 24th 2009 3:24AM
What about Power Word:Barrier?
Charlie Feb 24th 2009 8:01AM
New Talent: Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 sec., and reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Shield by 30%.
^^ That's where it went it looks like. You can get 5 shields up in the time it ussualy takes to cast 2 (ish, takes 1 second longer).
Although this talent isn't very flashy, its much better than Power Word: Barrier. PW:B seemed more like a gimmicky spell. When were you going to use it really? In 5s? It would have had a high CD and a high Mana Cost.
Soul Warding allows you to do something simmilar to PW:B (lots of shields in a short amount of time), while also controlling CDs, and improving the worst part of PW:S; the Mana Cost.
Dberg Feb 24th 2009 1:19PM
I'm guessing that the rage/mana/RP generation is to make Blessing of Sanctuary a little less mandatory for heroic raids.
Stitchez9x Feb 24th 2009 3:24AM
Rapture buffed? It actually got nerfed as the mana back only applies to PW:S.
Berylium Feb 24th 2009 3:48AM
Agreed, Stitchez9x. I believe this is a *huge* nerf.
We went from:
"Causes you to gain up to 2.5% of your maximum mana each time you heal with Greater Heal, Flash Heal or Penance, or damage is absorbed by your Power Word: Shield or Divine Aegis. Increasing the amount healed or absorbed increases the mana gained."
To:
"When Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled you are instantly energized with 2.5% of your total mana, and you have a 100% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy or 32 runic power. This effect cannot occur more than once every 12 seconds."
Not only are we losing 4 spells which proc Rapture (G. Heal, F. Heal, Penance, and Divine Aegis) but also the effects on PW: Shield are nerfed. Currently, you're restored mana each time the shield takes damage. In 3.1 your shield will have to be destroyed by damage or dispelled to grant mana returns. Worse, it almost reads as though you can only get the mana return once every 12 seconds, hopefully that's only with regard to your target getting an energy benefit.
We'll have to see how it's implemented but reading this I feel like the entire dynamic of Discipline healing has been tossed aside. Why stack crit now that I get a guaranteed 2.5% return? Still need to stack Intellect to raise the mana pool but with Rapture's mana returns nerfed we'll need to reconsider Spirit and Mana/5 to keep our mana pools up.
Frankly, where once I was extremely excited about 3.1 I'm now extremely displeased. Again, need to see how it all plays out and what gets changed but these changes make it look like I'll need to completely re-gear my priest .
-Berylium
Arith Feb 24th 2009 3:53AM
What he said. Seems that most of our Rapture regen will be gone.
And Enlightenment change isn't switch from stamina to haste. It has haste already. They just took stamina away and bumped spirit and haste by 1% (from 5% to 6%).
Madokachan Feb 24th 2009 3:59AM
yup this is very true.... feels like stuffs still off now...
Eisengel Feb 24th 2009 6:09AM
I think this is to prevent super regen with talented no-CD pw:s. If we didn't have this change, you could tab-target+pw:s the whole raid, and get a boatload of mana back when some raid damage ticked. Besides, Meditation at 50% with reduced pw:s costs and reduced Flash costs, anyone?
Charlie Feb 24th 2009 8:09AM
I see it as a buff. As much our personal regen is nerfed, we gain some added utility in that we are one of the few specs (if not only?) that can give back energy/rage/RP.
With the amount of shields we're throwing up, it should be a noticible improvement in DPS.
I tend to think in terms of group dynamics more. Yeah its prolly a nerf to ourselves, but to the raid/team its solid.
Things to think about when saying buff/nerf. 1) The Soul Warding talent, and how that will affect the rate of rapture popping, and 2) The affect of the new mana regen model. Nobody really knows how it's going to play out. Gotta wait and see.
Vajarra Feb 24th 2009 3:28AM
Yeah, the removal of Hymn of Hope worries me in addition to the 5-second nerf, but on the other hand, since they ripped it away from us Draenei and gave it away, it's been useless.
I am keeping my hooves crossed that we'll get some nice mana-regen ability to replace it but ... things are looking kind of bleak.
Not really happy with the Serendipity change either, I run without replenishment about 90% of the time.
Hagorian Feb 24th 2009 4:18AM
Serendipity re-designed: When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 6/12/20%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 sec.
Trying to make healing more fun and less monotonous. I might not go out of my way to set off Serendipity, but it's an interesting change. Will need more time to test it out in game.
60% reduction on Greater heal or PoH is just great.
This will be the playstyle changing talent. On raid healing a lot of aoe dmg the 'rotation' will change from PoM, CoH, flash, flash, to PoM, flash, flash, CoH, flash, PoH, PoM, CoH, maybe with some renews even.
On tank healing it will be renew, Flash, Flash, Flash, GH if the mana changes allow.
Wyred Feb 24th 2009 4:56AM
@Hagorian
This. Sod the mana return, this is what will make holy viable raid healers again. Personally was thinking more having PoM up at all times (I do already), CoH, instant flash heal, hasted PoH, win. 20% reduced cast time is huge, stack that with some haste and we're looking tasty.
Basically this is a new and interesting form of the old party wide CoH raid-healing, it'll take some getting used to, but there's no way I won't be taking serendipity. Yes, mana looks like it'll be a problem (they removed hymn of hope?!), and disc got a huge nerf to rapture, but overall for the holy tree I am very happy.
Wyred Feb 24th 2009 5:23AM
Edit: didn't notice you needed to stack 3 times to get the entire 20% cast-time reduction, so obviously my proposed rotation isn't ideal, Hagorian had the right idea. However, with all the flash-healing we do these days I don't see this as a problem, still a bad-ass change combined with targettable PoH.
Tsark Feb 24th 2009 4:08AM
Enlightenment: You're saying they switched to spell haste from stamina. This is incorrect, as the talent provided spell haste already. They simply moved the stamina increase down to Imp PW:F, and reduced Enlightenment to a 3pt talent. So basically the stamina increase is available to all priests, and disc priests just gain 2 more talent points.
Benjamin T.E. Feb 24th 2009 4:32AM
Boy howdy, do I love seeing a christian cross on my WoW site! *cough*
Scott Dysart Mar 3rd 2009 10:02AM
Aw, did we offend someone's delicate sensibilities? Here's a tissue. There, it'll be okay.
Booties Feb 24th 2009 4:39AM
I'd personally prefer Penance NOT get the "revitalize" effect if it meant that it being one of the foundations of the Discipline tree wasn't destroyed. The whole "hey, I'll give you some mana/rage/runic power/energy because you're cool" is great and all, but not at the cost of going OOM as fast as a Holy Priest when we're forced to spam heal. Seems more of a huge NERF rather than buff.
I have to agree with Berylium on this matter. And on once being enthused for 3.1. Now I'll be pushing my Druid's leveling more than ever...just in case this sticks, and nothing makes up for it.
Fred Feb 24th 2009 5:05AM
I don't understand why they are just flat out removing spells.
"Hey, congratulations on hitting 80! You don't get any new spells!"
gff321 Feb 24th 2009 5:06AM
Holy Concentration re-designed: Mana regeneration is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 sec after you critically heal with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal or Renew.
Renew can crit now? Pure friggin Awesome!!