One of the things Patch 3.1 is supplying in spades is glyphs and glyph changes. Every class is getting a ton of them, and it's really hard to keep up with them there are so many. Priests are coming out alright so far through the whole process, with a lot of our current glyphs being improved and our new glyphs being legitimately useful, if situational. Let's see what's new, shall we?

Glyph of Fade - Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 9 sec. (Old: Increases the duration and cooldown of your Fade spell by 50%.)

This is massively better than what it was previously, and I suspect that this will become a popular Shadow Priest glyph in PvP. Two points in Veiled Shadows plus this glyph means a 15 second cooldown on Fade. Every 15 seconds, a Shadow Priest will be able to clear all movement impairing effects, assuming they have Improved Shadowform. That's pretty friggin' sweet.

Glyph of Psychic Scream - Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 2 sec. and increases its cooldown by 8 sec. (Old: Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 1 sec.)

I don't think anybody used this glyph previously, and I don't expect that'll change any. The previous version is arguably better because it doesn't increase the cooldown on one of your primary escape tools, even if the increase is smaller. Bad glyph remains bad.

Glyph of Fear Ward - Reduces cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 60 sec. (Old: 30 sec.)

This is a glyph that I imagine we'll see used, if only situationally. One of those glyphs you'll slot in just for a single boss encounter in a raid setting. Typically you'll use Fear Ward right before you want it to Ward a Fear, so the duration hardly matters. Reducing the cooldown is the good part. This would bring the cooldown to 2 minutes rather than 3. Maybe Ulduar will have a Fear-heavy encounter? Tremor Totems definitely trump Fear Ward in a raid setting through, so we may not actually see any use out of this Glyph anyway. Still, it's a straight buff that makes the glyph a little stronger for what it is.

Glyph of Inner Fire - Increases the armor from your Inner Fire spell by 50%. (Old: Increases the charges on your Inner Fire spell by 20.)

This glyph would supply an extra 1220 Armor while Inner Fire is up, which is a pretty substantial buff to the spell. It does mean that you need to continue to babysit Inner Fire again, but players have been doing that successfully for a long time already. I'll take the armor bonus, thanks! This is going to be great for all specs in PvP, because Inner Fire is just a massive part of our defense, and this makes it even better. Fantastic.

Glyph of Mind Control -- Reduces the chance targets will resist or break your Mind Control spell by an additional 17%. (Old - Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec.)

Glyph of Mind Control? More like Glyph of Healing Priests Fighting Razuvious. This is another situational glyph like the new Glyph of Fear Ward. A Holy or Disc Priest will toss it on when they're doing something that requires Mind Control, but it will otherwise see very little use. I'm a pretty big fan of this glyph, actually. It would've been nice if it were there at launch, but better late than never, gith?

Glyph of Smite -- Your Smite spell inflicts an additional 20% damage against targets afflicted by Holy Fire. (Old - Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Smite by 100%.)

I'm not sure the new version of this glyph will see much use considering the addition of Dual Specs. I suppose that there's a portion of the Priest playerbase that likes leveling as Holy or Discipline, but that's pretty niche. I guess we'll see those few diehard Holy players who absolutely will not spec Shadow to quest or level using this, but that's the extent of it.

Glyph of Dispersion - Your Dispersion ability now also clears movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for its duration.

This is a baseline component of the spell now (as of patch 3.1), so this glyph is probably going to change sometime soon. Maybe it even has changed already and I haven't seen that yet. Boy, wouldn't I look silly?

Glyph of Guardian Spirit (new) - If you Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec.

Hmm. I like the idea of this glyph, but I don't know how many people will actually use it. It's a solid concept, but will Priests glyph an ability that's on a 3 minute cooldown? I don't think they will, even if it will guarantee getting more use out of something as powerful as Guardian Spirit. More likely they'd prefer to glyph their bread and butter abilities, rather than the toaster.

I don't think that made sense, but let's pretend it did.

Glyph of Penance (new) - Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.

Anything that lets a Discipline Priest cast Penance more completely rules, in my opinion. It's such a great spell. Even if a lower cooldown messes up some wonky rotation that some Priests think they've worked out, having Penance off cooldown more often is a beautiful thing. Even if you don't use it every single cooldown, having it available is fantastic. I think we're going to see a lot of Discipline Priests with this glyph.

Glyph of Mind Sear (new) - Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.

This is another situational one, I'll bet. Mind Sear is a powerhouse spell on its own, but only in situations where there is heavy AOE, obviously. Shadow Priests will use this on AOE/add based boss fights, but I don't think you'll see it as part of their usual arsenal. They'll stock up on them, switch it in for a boss, then afterwards go back to their usual glyphs. Really though, only min-maxing Priests will do that, because it's like burning money. Stocking up on all sorts of different glyphs just for one or two encounters is crazy crazy crazy. We may not see very widespread use of these situational glyphs.

Glyph of Pain Suppression (new) - Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.

This will see a lot of use in PvP, but none in PvE, for obvious reasons. This is actually probably one of those glyphs that will see a lot of use in early arena seasons, but will slowly taper off in the higher seasons when the Priest can easily survive a stunlock without it. Only time will tell.

Glyph of Mass Dispel -- Reduces the mana cost of Mass Dispel by 50%.

If this were a Minor Glyph, I could see every Priest using it. Since it's a Major Glyph, very few Priests will use it. Pretty simple to see, I think. It just doesn't have enough kick to be worth a Major slot with all of the other options out there.

Glyph of Scourge Imprisonment -- Reduces the cast time of your Shackle Undead by 0.5 sec. (Old - Increases the chance of success for your Shackle Undead spell by 8%.)

Cool concept, but I don't foresee it being used at all until the next big Undead-centric raid zone. Icecrown, probably. It also needs to be a minor glyph, not a major glyph. Making it a Major glyph just guarantees it won't get used, because its only real use is for CCing trash in a dungeon or a Death Knight who thinks they're slick. That doesn't justify using a Major slot for this glyph. Not at all. It needs to be a minor glyph, or made way, way more awesome.

And that's most of them... for now. There's potentially a few I missed, and many of these will likely change in future iterations of the patch on the PTR. Glyphs are one of those things that are changing constantly over the course of a Test Realm period, so don't get your heart set on any of these, and don't rage out either. We'll try to keep up with the changes as best we can, but holy cow are there a lot of changes.

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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: discipline, dispersion, fade, fear-ward, glyph-of-dispersion, glyph-of-fade, glyph-of-fear-ward, glyph-of-guardian-spirit, glyph-of-inner-fire, glyph-of-mass-dispel, glyph-of-mind-control, glyph-of-mind-sear, glyph-of-pain-suppression, glyph-of-penance, glyph-of-psychic-scream, glyph-of-scourge-imprisonment, glyph-of-smite, glyphs, guardian-spirit, holy, holy-fire, icecrown, improved-shadowform, lexicon, major, mass-dispel, mind-control, mind-sear, minor, naxxramas, pain-suppression, patch-3.1, penance, priest-glyphs, psychic-scream, ptr, ptr-3.1, ptr-patch-3.1, public-test-realm, razuvious, shackle-undead, shadow, shadowform, smite, tremor-totem, wow-patch-3.1, wow-ptr

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Wrath of the Lich King, Inscription