Spiritual Guidance: Tier 9 healing bonuses
by Matt Low 
Jun 29th 2009 at 7:50PM
Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. A brief look at the tier 9 sets and the origins of those who it is named after: Velen and Zabra Hexx.
We're getting more news as the weeks go by. Last week, tier 9 information was released. As some of you may know, the upcoming Crusader's Coliseum is slated to drop tier 9 items. All classes are getting three levels of the latest tier. I'm assuming one set drops from normal (10-man), heroic (25-man), and heroic hard mode.
Our current tier 8 bonuses feel lackluster. It's difficult to cater towards a Holy Priest and a Disc Priest as they both favor different approaches to healing. Check out our tier 9 gallery if you're interested in seeing the specifics along with the other set bonuses.
Here's what the tier 9 bonuses are:
Old
- 2 set: Decreases the cooldown on your Prayer of Mending spell by 2 seconds.
- 4 set: Increases the critical strike chance of your Prayer of healing by 5%.
New
- 2 set: Increases the healing done by your Prayer of Mending spell by 20%.
- 4 set: Increases the shield from your Divine Aegis and the instant healing from your Empowered Renew by 10%.
I'm enjoying the direction that this 4-piece bonus is taking. It offers bonuses to to both Holy and Discipline Priests. The Discipline bonus is the Divine Aegis buff. The strength of the shields have increased by 10% but don't forget that Divine Aegis can stack. The other side of the 4-piece bonus is an effect to Empowered Renew. I've got some mixed feelings about this. I guess they're offering more incentive for Empowered Renew to get picked up.
Looking at the current tier 8 for a moment, it's obvious that the four piece bonus has Discipline written all over it. Every time a shield is cast, gain 250 spell power for 5 seconds. It's obviously not the most ideal for Holy Priests as it's difficult for them to shield with other Discipline Priests in the same raid group. Not to mention having a 4 second cooldown means constantly using the shield on cooldown to maintain that spell power. Doesn't seem like the cost/benefit ratio is in its favor.
So with tier 8 and (soon) tier 9 available, this presents some interesting gearing options for Priests. As Holy, I would probably be satisfied by snagging a 2-piece tier 8 and a 2-piece tier 9 and call it a day. This gets me the 10% increased Prayer of Healing chance and the increased Prayer of Mending healing. As Discipline however, I'd probably shoot for the tier 9 as quick as possible.
Of course, that could change at any time. None of this stuff is finalized yet, so who knows?
Who the heck?
There are two faction versions of our tier 9 sets. They're named after prominent Priests in the game. Bear with me as while I do have a great interest in lore, I may not be the most qualified as the other columnists we have on the team.
For the Alliance
Velen the Divine is the leader of the Draenei. He has a rather storied history. He was there when Sargeras tempted Archimonde and Kil'Jaden. Of the three, Velen was the only one who managed to figure out what Sargeras' true plans were (since the title Destroyer of Worlds does kind of give that away). Leading the rest of his followers, Velen managed to escape and eventually land on the Orc homeworld of Draenor. The relationship between Draenei and Orc were not hostile initially. Kil'Jaden managed to influence Ner'zhul enough for him to start going after the Draenei. Soon after that, Velen and his followers were on the run again. They managed to hide out in Zangarmarsh for many years. This was during the time of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal. During the time period of Warcraft III, Velen led an assault on Tempest Keep and commandeered the Exodar. The Blood Elves managed to sabotage it resulting in a crash landing into Azeroth when they fired up the engines.
He now leads the rest of his people from within the Exodar. Read more about Velen here.
For the Horde
I wasn't familiar with the name Zabra. He certainly wasn't in either Warcraft II or Warcraft III. Zabra Hexx is a Troll Priest. His background isn't quite as illustrious as Velen but he's the closest Priest Hero the Horde have. It's a rather intriguing story. Zabra managed to seek shelter and resided within the Scarlet Monastery. He learned about the light reading by various books and tomes. That must have been a lot of reading. He was almost killed by Brigette Abbendis until Mograine verified that he had a connection to the light. Not much is known about him after that. Zabra appears to Darion Mograine during the time that he is mourning the death of his father. Zabra leaves and disappears after relaying to Darion the idea that the spirit of his father had not yet passed on. You can read more about Zabra here.
I'd like to see Zabra make a return at some point in the future. Even though I'm Alliance at heart, I still have a strong respect for Troll Priests.
More 3.2 changes?
Some other minor additions were made to the Priest notes.
- Levitate now only affects a friendly party or raid target.
I guess some pranks were being played or something. I never tried casting Levitate on the opposing faction before! Nothing absolutely class breaking with this change here.
- Holy Concentration now procs from Empowered Renew instead of Renew.
It looks like the Renew ticks will not be activating Holy Concentration anymore. Even more of a reason to snag Empowered Renew!
Remember that not everything is finalized yet! Check out more patch 3.2 stuff!
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, Raiding, Lore, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Aedaron Jun 29th 2009 8:01PM
I feel cheated. Tyrande is much more heroic and dynamic than Velen. The priest set for alliance should have been named for her.
yokumgang Jun 29th 2009 8:43PM
The problem is that Tyrande is not just a priestess, she's also a huntress.
clanserved Sep 1st 2009 5:29AM
It's not hard to cater to both holy and disc.
Change t8 bonus to, "increases sp by 250 for 5 sec after casting pws or CoH." done
Zamn Jun 29th 2009 8:26PM
I think you're misunderstanding the Levitate change, the operative part of the sentence is the 'party or raid' target bit, not the 'friendly' bit, you never could cast Levitate on the opposite faction. I think you're probably right that it's because of some kind of pranking it's being changed.
melsana Jun 30th 2009 11:55AM
I don't get this, because I've never been able to cast it on anybody except people I'm grouped with. Iv'e tried casting it on players I'm not grouped with and it doesn't work, so I'm just wondering if this is one of those notes that is coming out after the fact?
Cal Jun 29th 2009 8:27PM
World of Logs usually has both Prayer of Mending and Divine Aegis hovering around 10% in my Ulduar raids (most 10-man hard modes and full 25-man clears), so this puts the 2-piece as really nice with the 4-piece as mediocre.
An overall 3% extra healing along with 19-32 item levels worth of stats certainly make T9 worth getting if not the most exciting upgrade.
Jack Spicer Jun 29th 2009 9:19PM
I think the change to Holy Concentration is more of a "cleaning up the text" change than anything else.
Holy Concentration only procs off crits, right? So unless you have Empowered Renew, you can't crit off renew.
Zusterke Jun 30th 2009 5:10AM
Indeed. It's a tooltip fix. Only the initial heal from Empowered Renew can crit, thus proc HC. The current tooltip is confusing.
Absoli Jun 29th 2009 10:02PM
"I'm assuming one set drops from normal (10-man), heroic (25-man), and heroic hard mode. "
This is not exactly how it works apparently.
Now there are 4 lockouts: 10 man normal, 25 man normal, 10 man Heroic, and 25 man Heroic. Not sure exactly how the loot will be distributed but it seems that the "Heroic" no longer means 25 man, it means Hard mode instead.
Bruce Jun 29th 2009 11:01PM
click the link for the teir 9 sets for all the classes, anyone notice that the set 4 bonus for moonkins is worse than the set 4 in teir 7? teir 7 gave +5% crit chance to starfire and wrath, and now teir 9 gives +5% crit chance to starfire...kinda weird. but the set 2 bonus is nice i guess...i still think instant starfire rules
Truami Jun 30th 2009 6:14AM
I don't think the +10% effectiveness to empowered renew is that bad at all. However, I would rather have the overall renew be increased by 10% but then it takes away from the "unique" aspect to holy. Maybe they should have considered Circle of Healing. Maybe add a reduce cooldown to penance and circle of healing.
Renny Jun 30th 2009 8:18AM
As for levitate you would mind control the target and then press levitate and it would cast it on the mind controlled target thus you could cast it on the opposite faction.