Patch 5.2 interview with Dave Kosak
Inside an old alt's vault
The latest patch 5.2 news
All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsCataclysm Beta: Build 12942 for healing priests
by Dawn Moore 
Sep 10th 2010 at 9:00PM
- Power Word: Barrier has had the amount it absorbs increased. It will now absorb a total of 6 percent of spellpower plus 21,225 damage (up from 5 percent of SP plus 11,000.) It will still only absorb a portion of incoming damage if the damage exceeds 20 percent of the total absorb value.
- Borrowed Time will no longer increase the amount absorbed by Power Word: Shield. It will just increase your spell haste.
- Renewed Hope will now apply to targets with Grace. This means any target you heal with more than one spell (or more than one tick of Penance) will gain an additional 10 percent chance to be hit with a critical Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Heal or Penance.
- Inner Focus no longer costs mana.
- Improved Inner Fire has been renamed to Inner Sanctum. The new talent will no longer increase the overall effects of your Inner Fire, instead it will cause your Inner Fire to reduce all spell damage taken by 5/10/15 percent. The talent will now also affect Inner Will by increasing the movement speed bonus by 2/4/6 percent.
- Improved Healing will no longer affect Lesser Heal. This is just a tweak to the language of the tooltip for consistency.
This is what the new glyph interface looks like, in case you haven't seen it already. With the new system, glyphs are no longer consumable and are instead learned. The learned glyphs appear in the right-hand column of your glyphs panel and can be dragged and dropped at the cost of a reagent called Vanishing Powder. This new system will allow easier customization before particular dungeons or fights. For example, if your party or raid needs more crowd control, you could take the Glyph of Psychic Scream in place of a glyph that doesn't suit the fight as much (perhaps Glyph of Holy Nova).
- Flash Heal Changed -- Increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal on targets at or below 25% health by 10%.
- Guardian Spirit Changed -- Reduces the cooldown of your Guardian Spirit by 30 sec.
- Lightwell Changed -- Increases the total amount of charges of your Lightwell by 5.
- Penance Same -- Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.
- Power Word: Barrier New -- Increases the healing received while under the Barrier by 10%.
- Power Word: Shield Same -- Your Power Word: Shield also heals the target for 20% of the absorption amount.
- Prayer of Healing Same -- Your Prayer of Healing spell also heals an additional 20% of its initial heal over 6 sec.
- Renew Same -- Reduces the duration of your renew by 3 sec, but increases the amount healed each tick by 25%.
- Shadow Word: Death Changed -- If your Shadow Word: Death fails to kill the target at or below 25% health, your Shadow Word: Death's cooldown is instantly reset.
- Shadow Word: Pain Changed -- Increases the periodic damage of your Shadow Word: Pain by 10%.
- Circle of Healing Same -- Your Circle of Healing spell heals 1 additional target.
- Dispel Magic Same -- Your Dispel Magic spell also heals your target for 3% of maximum health.
- Divine Accuracy New -- Increases you chance to hit with your Smite by 18%.
- Fade Same -- Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 9 sec.
- Fear Ward Same -- Reduces cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 60 sec.
- Holy Nova Changed -- Reduces the global cooldown of your Holy Nova by .5 sec.
- Inner Fire Same -- Increases the armor from your Inner fire spell by 50%.
- Mass Dispel Changed -- Reduces the cast time of Mass Dispel by 1 sec.
- Pain Suppression Same -- Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.
- Psychic Scream Changed -- Cause your Psychic Scream to tremble targets in place instead of fleeing in fear, but increases the cooldown of your Psychic Scream by 3 sec.
- Scourge Imprisonment Same -- Reduces the cast time of your Shackle Undead by 1.0 sec.
- Smite Same -- Your Smite spell inflicts an additional 20% damage against targets afflicted by Holy Fire.
- Spirit of Redemption Same -- Increases the duration of Spirit of Redemption by 6 sec.
- Fading Same -- Reduces the mana cost of your Fade spell by 30%.
- Fortitude Same -- Reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Fortitude spell by 50%
- Levitate Same -- Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent.
- Shackle Undead Same -- Increases the range of your Shackle Undead spell by 5 yards.
- Shadow Protection Same -- Increases the duration of your Shadow Protection spell by 10 min.
- Shadowfiend Same -- Receive 5% of your maximum mana if your Shadowfiend dies from damage.
In addition to the handful of class changes priest have received, we also have a preview of our tier 11 set bonuses to pick apart. The bonuses are as follows:
- 2-piece Increases the critical strike chance of your Heal spell by 5%. Instant
- 4-piece Each time your Penance spell heals a target with Weakened Soul, you gain 540 Spirit for 10 sec, and being in a Chakra state grants you 540 Spirit for the duration of the Chakra. Instant
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 brand new races to revamped quests and zones. Visit our Cataclysm news category for the most recent posts having to do with the Cataclysm expansion.
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
Richolivo Sep 11th 2010 11:01AM
the last post was @ Krko. My bad
babylon_AD Sep 11th 2010 11:49AM
wait...so if my guardian spirit effect isn't consumed...i have to wait 2 minutes 30 seconds? or is there something i'm missing? =(
Stilhelm Sep 11th 2010 9:54PM
Thanks for doing the math for me, I should have thought about doing that myself.
I had looked at the absorbs on the tanks for both the holy priest and myself since they usually get hit hard enough to 1-shot the bubble. I'll have to double-check with him to make sure he's using max-rank PW:S. Both our priests are our Alts, which was why he was bubbling people as holy anyway with a disc priest in the raid. In our 10-mans we don't usually assign specific tank/raid healers anyway, and I much prefer bubbling the raid on my priest, I love preventing damage as much as possible. A festergut kill had me at 2500 hps in heals, and 3500 hps in absorbs.
In any case, raid-bubbling is probably dead due to mana costs, except for sudden raid-wide predictable damage for the rapture trick, at least early in the expansion. To be fair, I don't know if it was possible or worthwhile early in wrath either. Put another way, while today a good disc priest can do a lot of "healing" purely with absorbs, it appears in cata that disc priest will spend a lot of time casting Heal just like holy priests.