Cataclysm Beta: Holy and discipline priest talents
by Dawn Moore 
Jul 16th 2010 at 9:00AM
The changes came as quite a shock to me, as it was not terribly long ago that Blizzard released a very thorough 71-point talent tree preview for priests and a few other classes. The new trees seem to have taken that preview, beaten it with blunt objects, and buried it somewhere in the Tanaris desert. Tragic, but let's take a look at what's left.
If you're a priest who has been keeping up with Cataclysm news, the first thing you'll probably notice is that a lot of things are missing. Where is discipline's Power Infusion? Where did holy's Spiritual Guidance go? (It had been tagged on to Chakra previously.) What happened to that new holy talent, Divine Accuracy? And why, good goblins, are we no longer being allowed to cross talent at early levels after we saw all that potential for holy/discipline hybrid DPS? It's a lot to digest for priests, but as I have said in the past: don't panic.
Discipline
From a PvE perspective, the overall feel of disc's talent tree is intact. Absorption focused talents are still a predominant feature. Signature game play talents like Borrowed Time and Pain Suppression are still there, and yet another, Power Infusion has vanished without a trace. The offensive talents we saw previously remain, meaning we will still have access to extra fire power while soloing or PvPing.
What's missing is the variety of defensive PvP talents. If you want a self-defense talent for PvP, you now have one option for passive defense, Focused Will. Instead of taking talents to make you a priest tank, you will now find talents which buff your healing - meaning that you are going to have to be relying largely on getting casts off on yourself if you want to survive. Let's hope Blizzard is serious when they said they want to reduce chained stuns and disables in PvP.
Disciplines raid utility also takes another choke by losing out on the raid wide aura that Renewed Hope once offered, and has instead created a talent similar to Grace: the buff now only really works for the targets you cast heals onto. Further, Rapture has changed and discipline priests no longer provide energy return to their shielded allies when Power Word: Shield breaks. When I look at this lack of granted raid utility, I think about the loss of Power Infusion and wonder if they are connected. In Blizzard's desire to have us bring the player and not the class, are they trying to reduce the contribution individual players bring to a group?
Masteries
- Penance -- Could we possibly unlock Penance at level 10? I can't be sure as of this moment, but if it does this could make Smite spam a little less redundant while leveling.
- Discipline Priest (pushback resistance) -- At first I thought this was a direct response to my remarks about having to cast to survive in PvP, but holy shares an almost identical mastery bonus. Great for PvP, but how much utility and advantage will this give us in PvE?
- Meditation -- Mana regeneration, as boring as it ever was.
- Soul Warding -- Previously, I complained about the possibility of Soul Warding no longer providing a full removal to the current 4-second cooldown of Power Word: Shield. After I made those complaints, my ninja spies infiltrated alpha and alerted me that Power Word: Shield had its cooldown reduced to 3-seconds, thus making Soul Warding cooperate perfectly again. Now I'm finally making a note about that to you, my fine readers (you look good today, by the way.) Soul Warding being pushed down deep into the tree is ideal since the impact it has on low level priests is microscopic.
- Archangel -- This Cataclysm talent, which once promised us Penance while running, has changed. No longer can we run along side our shaman allies and heal. Sigh.
- The Greater Heal Dismay -- Both Grace and Renewed Hope do not buff Heal, the supposed "new" addition to priest healing. With the loss of discipline's Flash Heal bonuses, and no buffs to Heal, I suspect Blizzard wants to have discipline priests cast Greater Heal quite a lot more. They have said this, of course, but now I am seeing exactly how and why. Even with careful application of Borrowed Time, I think this will slow down the existing fast paced feel of discipline and instead create an even "burstier" style to discipline's single-target healing since Penance's cooldown will probably remain intact. I'm interested to see how healadins and disc priests will compare to each other now. This could prove interesting, though it will be very different from what we are currently used to.
- Upper tier accessibility -- When I look at the top of the tree from the perspective of a holy or shadow priest I don't see a lot of going on. There are some buffs, but no utility. Talents like Focused Power are gone, which in the last preview, reduced the cast time on Mind Control and Mass Dispel. I guess those spells will be receiving baseline reductions. Inner Focus, even though it is in the third tier, now seems like it may be too deep for holy and shadow to access, which makes me wonder how willing shadow and holy priests will be to use Divine Hymn in the future.
- Power Word: Barrier -- I actually have little to say about this as our 31-point ability. It does seems quite appropriate but I think it's funny that the whole tree is so focused on single target healing and defense and then this talent is group oriented. Right now I want to know how it will interact with glyphs (I assume it must, since Guardian Spirit and Dispersion both have decent glyphs attached to them.)
You remember how holy was always considered the tree for healing, and then in Wrath it became slightly hazy as discipline jumped on stage? Well, I think that feeling has returned. Just the fact that Desperate Prayer, a pure healing ability, is the mastery bonus. The fact that shadow priests still have no reason to look here is further indication.
All those clear PvP talents we'd seen coming out of the alpha previews? They've completely vanished, unless you see the new Surge of Light (which no longer seems to grant instant Flash Heals) is what you'd call a PvP talent. In that sense (the offensive sense) holy certainly still has solo fire power, but without self-defense talents this tree now seems completely oriented around PvE. But with PvP changing so much, maybe we won't need those defensive talents anymore?
We still have a lot going for us as healers. Strong HoT healing early on, Deliverance (or Serendipity, as I like to think of it still) is ideal for early 5-man healing. There is a lot of focus on mana return and mana cost reduction, making me think that holy priests will continue to be good at restoring the mana they burn through.
Now, let's talk Spiritual Guidance. As you know, Spiritual Guidance currently buffs holy priests' spellpower by 25% of their spirit. In the talent preview, this talent was appropriated by Chakra (I am aware of the absurdity of that statement) and I made a remark about how this made Chakra unquestionably mandatory. Now that is no longer the case, but the 25% buff is completely absent. This means holy priests will not longer tower over this discipline counterparts in raw power, and I'm honestly curious if holy will get hurt in the process. Not hurt when compared to disc, but other healers. I have theorized that disc's shortcomings are from poor scaling, and to see holy lose a major scaling talent concerns me. I hope that Blizzard will pay careful attention to the growth of healers, and balance between them, not just at the start of Cataclysm, but throughout it. Something can be balanced at the beginning and not be at the end, something us priests (particularly shadow priests) know a lot about.
Odds and ends
- Lightwell -- You may all recall that I was pleased with Lightwell being made into a prerequisite for Chakra. While nothing really appears to have changed about this fact in the talent preview, I wanted you guys to read this quote, which addresses the complaint of clicking Lightwell dropping target:
GhostcrawlerIn the current beta build (or possibly the next one), clicking Lightwell no longer switches your target to it. That was one of the changes we've been waiting for to reevaluate the talent. (Enemies can still target it normally.).
How's about them apples? (Obligatory Goodwill Hunting link. NSFW, sort of.) - Inspiration -- I was concerned after the last preview that disc priests were losing ways to proc Inspiration, since the tooltip did not list Prayer of Mending or Penance. That has been corrected in the latest tooltip, so no concerns for disc priests anymore.
- Spirit of Redemption -- On a similar note, I don't think disc priests will be seeing this talent anymore. It's too far deep. Farewell, my dreams. No pew pew Penance lasers.
- Divine Accuracy -- No really, where is it? That was one of the coolest things about the preview Blizzard. I was excited that healing priests would no longer need to gem for hit in PvP. Maybe that is dead.
Masteries
- Desperate Prayer -- Blizzard has already responded to the outcry that this spell in it's current form is rather lackluster to be a mastery bonus. They state that Desperate Prayer will be entirely different in Cataclysm. See if for yourself:
GhostcrawlerDesperate Prayer is a pretty different ability. They really only have the name in common. In Cataclysm, Desperate Prayer has a 45 sec cooldown (down from 2 min). The lower cooldown will let you use it often as leveling.
Holy also has a talent that when you use Desperate Prayer (to heal yourself), it also heals the most injured ally (a portion of the healing done to you), turning it into an instant, smart Binding Heal.
- Holy Priest (pushback reduction on disc/holy spells) -- As I said before, I was a bit disappointed when I saw that both discipline and holy share this as a mastery talent. I know mastery is supposed to suck up all the boring talents and grant them to us automatically, but pushback reduction as healers was previously a talent we could take at level 10. It's not like it was something we had to put much time or thought into.
- Meditation -- Again, I yawn, even if I fully understand the necessity of this talent. Can you really blame me? (I'm sure you could, so don't answer.)
Conclusions
I am most surprised about Blizzard no longer allowing players to freely cross talent. I foresee this impacting the ability for priests to easily build a Smite spec, but at the same time I think leveling will still be effective in different ways for both holy and discipline. There are a lot of losses I think healing priests have to be sad about, but the game is changing, and we'll have to accept that. We do have a ton of great new changes too. This new talent preview didn't change a lot of things for holy compared to our last two or three previews, which I think is probably a good thing. I think Blizzard has a very strong vision for where they want holy to go, at least in PvE, and that's far better than the alternative. It's too early to know if they're going to come up short on their promises for holy PvP, by the way, but let's cross our fingers. As for disc, the future seems very different, and that can lead to uncertainty, but it also seems the development team has a good idea where they're taking it.
Just remember: don't panic.
World of Warcraft: Cataclysm will destroy Azeroth as we know it. Nothing will be the same. In WoW.com's Guide to Cataclysm you can find out everything you need to know about WoW's third expansion. From Goblins and Worgens to Mastery and Guild changes, it's all there for your cataclysmic enjoyment.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Ken Jul 16th 2010 9:17AM
Power Infusion is still in the talent tree but it's buggy to see. It's in the third tier and occupies the same space as Inner Focus, so when you click that spot you see one talent light up and the other stay at 0 points. Thus far for me it's been Power Infusion that gets the point, but hopefully we'll see them resolve the issue with both of them trying to sit in the same spot on the tree in the next build.
Dawn Moore Jul 16th 2010 3:03PM
I'll do some investigation on this. Thanks for the heads up!
Now if I could just get into the beta...
Ken Richardson Jul 16th 2010 3:07PM
I got lucky early. Happy to answer questions about specifics if you have questions!
Sharvis Jul 16th 2010 9:42AM
I hope more people notice the Lightwell change, it's exciting.
I find it interesting that Blizzard is keeping some of the boring and passive talents at the top tier of the tree so as not to confuse new players. At the same time, they removed some of the new abilities to do that, namely the +hit in Holy. It's far too early to say whether I like the trees or not so I'm waiting to see the iterations upon them. I do remember a mention of the Empowered Healing as it is previewed now going the way of the dodo at least.
Sunabubus Jul 16th 2010 9:58AM
I am sad how blizz look at the discipline priests. :s They dont want us to spam shields with infinite mana. In wotlk disc priest CAN go OOM if they use their abilities not so smart. If they use smart, they can keep up their manapool and they can make wonder. But discipline can be the worst specc out there, lot of ppl pick discipline to get in raid and slack around... its sad but true.
Correct me if im wrong but holy is the omghealer specc and disc is the omgabsorb specc. We dont heal much, but our shields absorbs 10-12k damage (2k effective heal - in icc - and 8-9 k damage absorb). this is what this specc about this is why i started my priest, and she has only this specc. :S
Disc priests heals with PoM, Penance (every 6 sec, in icc 4-5k / tick) i think its enough for us. Renew is not that effective but can help to lower damage spikes.
Our signature is the shield itself, nerfing that (no manaregen if shield breakes) is jsut nonsense :S
Sunabubus Jul 16th 2010 10:00AM
wtb edit button *penance evey 8sec :)
Overhead Jul 16th 2010 10:02AM
I'm concerned about gearing as discipline. For a gheal spec to really be viable, you need to stack haste. For shield spam, you barely need any haste. They're basically forcing us to pick a style of healing (tank for raid), and gear for it. We'll need to re-gear for the other. At least now disc has stupidly efficient flash heals, so they can tank heal without haste...
Caz Jul 16th 2010 10:25AM
I'm not normally a grammar-guy, but it's "intact" when referring to keeping something whole - not "in tact".
Boobah Jul 16th 2010 10:45AM
Apparently it's important that discipline abilities not give offense.
Also, tree passives =/= masteries. The abilities you get at level ten are NOT the tree mastery (which isn't trained until your seventies) and are not affected by the mastery stat.
Dawn Moore Jul 16th 2010 2:58PM
Hmmm! interesting. I will fix that. I haven't been using a word processor with a grammar checker, so I wouldn't have caught that, but it's good to now be conscious about it. Thank you!
Dave Jul 16th 2010 10:48AM
"(you look good today, by the way.)"
I knew I was having a good hair day.
zdave Jul 16th 2010 11:27AM
i'd like to point out that borrowed time is down to 15% haste from 25%. let's hope that changes, but i doubt it.
Dawn Moore Jul 16th 2010 3:10PM
It probably won't, but the game is changing and haste with it. Enlightenment's removal from the disc tree, and slight changes to Borrowed Time and Serendipity make me feel like this is going to be a universally applied change. I think they made some comments about wanting to take haste back a little from where it had come in Wrath, but I don't recall the exactly.
zdave Jul 16th 2010 5:12PM
that's a shame. currently in beta, it's still 25%, which is an automatic extra 'tick' from penance.
still, i'm very excited about extra penance ticks lol.
Parker Jul 16th 2010 11:48AM
Awwwww. I had a neat little Power Infusion macro :(
"I have no time for games. Power Infusion has been cast on %t!"
Philster043 Jul 16th 2010 1:36PM
Wow! So much changing.
As a holy/disc priest I was initially excited about the changes, but I suppose not as much anymore (no running and healing again... sigh!) but I suppose I can see why Blizzard is incorporating all these changes.
If you stop and think a little ahead to the future, they are going to want to continue to improve on WoW (such it's turned into such a phenomenally popular game) by adding more expansions, and the only way they can do that without the classes becoming too overly complicated in the long run is to trim down the talent trees to make room for more new skills to be added later. Since they're going to do that, they might as well take the opportunity to make the classes feel more instantly recognizable and easier to understand for new players.
But this is going to take some using to. I'm definitely going to have to take a break away from WoW a little before Cata comes out and come back to it a little more fresh and more open-minded to re-learning my classes all over again.
Sciarc Jul 16th 2010 2:13PM
I'm rather excited about holy nova being raid wide with a 50%+ crit chance. Lightwell seems more useful now too. Interesting changes for sure.
Valdin Jul 16th 2010 2:58PM
Personally I'm most interested by the possibility of a 1 second GCD Holy Nova with a 50% crit chance boost.
With HN critting more than half the time and each crit having a 50% chance to proc the new Surge of Light, if you're hitting enough people, you could just spam Holy Nova and get almost half of them free.
Alternately get Evangelism/Archangel from Disc and rotate Holy Nova with free Smites to build up Evangelism and get 15% mana back every ~15 seconds. Hopefully more mana than you spent, especially as Evangelism makes HN cheaper, and you get to keep the 15% Archangel buff up almost all the time.
I have no idea if that would add up to any sort of reasonable amount of healing but I think it would be fun to try.
sareehaase Jul 16th 2010 3:04PM
I'm not pleased at all with the disc changes. I've been looking forward to healing as disc in Cata (changing from Resto Shaman). I liked it because it's an entirely different style of healing - proactive vs. reactive. As it stands, they've pretty much nuked that difference.
Xaklo Jul 16th 2010 5:54PM
I'm only pretty annoyed with the mastery bonus of pushback resistance in the Discipline tree. I never took any pushback resistance talents in wrath on my disc priest cause WE ALREADY HAVE IT in our more distinctive spell. It seems a major waste in PvE, and only a slight gain in PvP.