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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsSpiritual Guidance: More 3.1 thoughts
by Matt Low 
Mar 4th 2009 at 6:00PM
That's a picture of the upgraded Penance! It looks really weird when you cast it on yourself. I imagined that the bolts would fly forward before arcing skyward and back down towards the original caster. Too much to hope for sadly. Maybe in a future patch!
Hymn of Hope makes its triumphant return back to the Priest arsenal! For the past week, I've been receiving emails and DMs on Twitter asking me the same question:
Why put in a Hymn of Hope glyph if Hymn of Hope is going to be removed?
My personal theory is that it was just a general brain fart. Upon closer inspection and reflection, the motive's a bit different. We know Resto Shaman mana regeneration is the new standard that all healing classes are going to reach. Perhaps the theory is to nuke certain Priestly mana regenerative capabilities and then start from there.
Last week, Alex wrote up a nice summary of Priest glyphs. One glyph he did not mention (because we both thought it was pointless since the spell was removed) is the Hymn of Hope glyph.
Your Hymn of Hope provides 2 times the normal amount of mana per time, but the duration is 50% shorter.
Twice the mana per tick, but half the channeling time, right? Looks like this might be another mandatory glyph for Discipline and Holy Priests. So here's what my updated glyphs will look like (I think):
Disc PvE
- Glyph of Hymn of Hope
- Glyph of Penance
- Glyph of Power Word: Shield
- Glyph of Renew (I may swap this with Glyph of Guardian Spirit depending on encounters)
- Glyph of Circle of Healing
- Glyph of Hymn of Hope
What about the Flash Heal glyph? I do want to fit that in somewhere. I haven't quite figured it out yet. I still use the spell a lot. On the other hand, maybe Hymn of Hope with the glyph isn't really that good after all compared to the other glyphs around it. Decisions, decisions! I supposed I could set aside my dual specs for now. I could set one for single target healing and the other for pure mana efficiency and regen.
Speaking of mana efficiency, I did spend some time on the PTR last week. I was able to get in on some of the Hodir testing before my live raids took over. This was normal Hodir not heroic Hodir, mind you. I didn't run into significant problems with mana. On the flip side, I didn't last longer than 2 and a half minutes so saying that I didn't have significant mana problems isn't saying much.
Speaking of mana, some of you might be curious as to how severe the 3.1 nerf actually is. Here's a quick before and after screenshot of my mana regeneration from the PTR and from live servers.
So the above shot is two screenshots mashed together. The top screenshot is my current regeneration on live. The second half below is a shot on the PTR. These values are all before raid buffs. Remember that I'm also a Disc Priest here so my out of combat regen is going to be much lower than a Holy Priest. My mana regeneration while casting remains largely unchanged. Note that it also doesn't take into account abilities like Rapture.So as a Disc Priest, I don't feel like I'm going to be too affected by the changes.
Now as a Holy Priest, some things are going to be slightly different. I've read some of the stuff out there in terms of blog posts and forum posts. Everything points out that haste is superior than crit. But the new Holy Concentration says that your mana regen from Spirit increases by 16/32/50% for 8 seconds. I think this might change things a little bit. I've been predominantly Discipline on the PTR. I haven't had a chance to go Holy yet (and ugh, my gear's not suited for it since I don't have Spirit gems loaded).
More wait and seeing will have to be done. More PTR time is going to be needed.
Priest grouping
This is another topic that I'll address another time on Raid Rx. It has to do with where you group your healers. Right now, some of the healers and raid leaders I've surveyed stagger their healers across different groups. This is to maximize spells like Prayer of Healing and Tranquility. Resto Shaman's Mana Tide totem and any Priest's Hymn of Hope are reasons to combine healers together. But since we currently don't have mana problems, there's no mana-riffic reason to stack together. Sure we can group together for totems and stuff. But other than that, there's not much else. Even then, totem changes are upcoming where that isn't as necessary anymore.
With the mana regen nerf, this presents some interesting opportunities. It might be time to gather up the healers again into a single group.
Remember that Prayer of Healing is raid wide targetable spell now. It's no longer exclusive to the group of the Priest that casts it. This means Holy Nova is now the only party wide heal remaining among Priests.
Now if only the PTR can just remain stable for longer periods of time. My guildie wasn't kidding when he called it the Patience Test Realm.
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries!Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 2)
martymcfly Mar 5th 2009 9:05AM
Hymn of hope mandatory?
You do undertand that something x2 with a channel time divided by two = THE SAME THING!?!?!?
This spell is worth about 24-2700 mana which is pretty much worthless. For the writer to get so excited about it purely shows how worthless the priest column is on this page. At 5 minutes for a CD it was worthless before and even if you remove your 10% FH glyph, you're sacrificing way too much for it. I love this page but holy priests are just not represented. We always get "I'll spec into this and see" or AWESOME PRIEST CHANGES IN 3.1 just to find out the column is about shadow priests. Resto Druids and Holy priests are getting boned pretty big in this patch but from the healing class columnists at this webpage, you'd think everything was still coming up roses. Write about how greater heal is just worthless at the moment, write about how a nerf to replenishment is probably more worthy than nerfing the individual, write about how holy priests still don't have something unique in WotLK. Getting excited about a glyph that no one but you will use is pretty much just wasting our voice and our time.
Zusterke Mar 5th 2009 11:02AM
I don't get it.. How exactly did we get "boned"? Holy priests get:
- more AoE healing power
- more single target healing
- better HoT
- more spirit
- more IFSR regen
We lose:
- occasional 25% mana cut on 2 spells of which 1 was never used and the other one overhealed half the time, while the manacut was after a 10% mana reduction thus effectively reducing the talent itself.
- OFSR regen, but this is compensated by a spirit buff for holies which grants, say, 7-8% of your spirit and scales with BoK and a proc effect that's more reliable than the old HC that further boosts this.
Did Blizzard the double RNG which holies complained about? Yes
Did Blizzard see HoH was bad and needed work? Yes
Did Blizzard see GHeal was being punked and needed help? Yes
Did they actually fix it (not always a given ehhe)? Yes
Did they compensate for nerfing CoH? Hell yes! 1 more raid spell and increased healing on CoH
Did they make PoH usable? Hell yes!
The only limitation you're going to run into is your mana which has received merely a 11% reduction on your spirit regen if you take into account FSR time and which works out to be roughly 5-6% of your total manaregen if you take into account all manapool based regeneration factors. And that's not even taking into account your new Holy Concentration and the fact you get a spirit buff for free.
If you add the fact that the new gear level is likely to introduce a 9% increase in mana regen simply because your regen scales by a higher factor than the linear nerf they introduced, then you should see a better performance than we have now.
We got boned? I think not.
Mike Mar 5th 2009 11:06AM
now martymcfly, that's just not fair. Mr Low has gone through a revolution in the last 6 months. From a one time die hard holy priest, who was, to quote on the subject of COH nerf, "For me personally, my goal is to not be lazy and use a wider variety of spells instead of just Circle of Healing and Prayer of Mending." He's now had a road to Damascus conversion to discipline once holy was nerfed. It's not that holy is under-represented, it's that Matt Low is a little uncomfortable and embarrassed being reminded about his Holy past, since it doesn't fit too well with his flight to discipline once the going got tough. He even had the audacity to write this a few weeks back "I am proud to be a Discipline Priest. It is not just a style. It is not a simple technique. It is a way of life"
So Matt - time to come back to the fold, admit you were wrong about some of the holy changes and/or sucked up to Bliz when you should be saying it as it is for your readers?
crsh Mar 5th 2009 9:57AM
I know this is the PTR, nothing is final and they may just add the stuff that's missing/unchanged/very crappy.
Where's Power Word: Barrier? There's been absolutely no word on it since the PTR went live, yet it was announced as part of the official priest changes.
No word on how hymns will be reworked into something more useful either.
Priest glyphs still very much suck. The OO5SR mana regen is up in the air right now, some holy priests say they're in bad shape mana wise.
I'm keeping my hopes up until stuff is finalized, otherwise ladies & gents, we've been had once again.
Oh, and honestly, I'm getting very tired of Ghostcrawler's blatant "PR tone", the guy would do well at selling second-hand cars.
zappo Mar 5th 2009 10:03AM
The hymn of hope glyph can't be a major one - or Blizzard seriously needs to put down the crack pipe. As martymcfly says, all that glyph does is cut down the time, it does NOT give you more mana. To be honest I never see much of a return from Hymn of Hope anyway, I just use it when I'm not full on mana and have nothing else to do... and cuz it looks cool. Even if it was a minor glyph I doubt I'd replace my existing ones with it.
Richard Mar 5th 2009 11:46AM
I don't get all the doom and gloom. Things look pretty good for priests.
Disc priests due to not having a smart heal will be responsible for maintaining constant bubbles around the tanks. Do you forget that we can keep a constant 10k shield up?
If you don't take the FH glyph, you are just silly. The hardest part will be deciding the rest of the glyphs. One would assume penance and PW:S, but I bet some will want to change depending on the fight. The one large change will be that I will no longer take MP5 gear. With meditation providing back 50% while casting, Spirit is far better. (Not even counting enlightenment.)
Holy priests just wow. The throughput on healing is going to be pretty epic. It actually scares me. If blizzard is providing these tools it means that the battles are going to require it. Being able to FH for massive haste bonus on GH or PoH is going to provide the priest with a ton of healing throughput. Stack spirit like mad and get a Greatness trinket of Spirt.
Don't get all this QQ. I'm very excited for the changes to priests. I felt nerfed like crazy before. Now as disc, my mana-free 40% overheals will actually go to something. No longer will I be sad about smart heals sniping my effectiveness. Finally our role is better defined. Still don't need more than 1 per Tank, but that's what dual spec is for.
Moral: Spirit ~ Intellect > Crit ~ Haste > MP5 > Strength
hedyd Mar 6th 2009 11:04AM
I have really enjoyed playing with priest mana regen for the past few years. It has been a major focus of my gear, my playstyle, my pride... But, all things change, and we adapt. That's fine.
But, I am not thrilled about the new Serendipity... I have stacked haste, and it's great, but this just seems to add more haste, where once we had a nice mana plop.
My suggestion (anyone listening to us?) is to make Serendipity work so that Flash/Binding Heal would "increase the critical chance of your next Greater Heal" by X%. This would give you a chance to proc Holy Concentration, which triggers a mana regen cycle. Now THAT is serendipitous!
( It also sort of makes up for the removed effect of Test of Faith)
It just seems that the Holy style has gone from a Clearcasting/FiveSecond Cheat mechanic to a fast casting, high crit reliant healer.