Spiritual Guidance: A first look at healing priest talents in Mists of Pandaria
by Dawn Moore 
Oct 31st 2011 at 5:00PM
Just over a week ago, Blizzard unveiled its plans for the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria, and with it will comes a new talent system to simplify things dramatically. In the case of healing priests, it looks like we might be changing the way we view ourselves from now on, since only our spells will distinguish us from one another, not our talents. Before you know it, discipline priests will be tank healing with Serendipity and holy priests will be casting Power Infusion on themselves to call down torrents of healing. It's ... [Pandemonium joke goes here].
We better take a look at the talents before things get too furry.
Our first set of talent points offers three options for crowd control. I know many healers don't think it's their place to CC, but what many healers also don't think about is that CC is another way to protect our allies. So let's really look at these talents, shall we?
First, the familiar Psychic Scream will send five targets within 8 yards of the priest running off in different directions for 8 seconds. Void Tendrils roots all enemy targets within 10 yards for 20 seconds, which actually seems like a much more powerful rendition of Psychic Scream when paired with the Glyph of Psychic Scream. The difference is that now your stationary CC won't be limited to five targets and will last for way longer (Glyph of Psychic Scream was 3 seconds), and you can keep damaging your enemies since breaking CC requires damage to the tendril. Finally, Psyfiend lets you summon a ... well, a Psyfiend, which will cast Psychic Scream (which I assume will follow the same rules as our own) on one target every 2 seconds over 10 seconds within 40 yards, preferring anything that is attacking you or your companions. It's like having your own hunter to cast Scatter Shot on anything that is trying to eat your face.
Now the reason I've spelled out all these talents for you when they're clearly written above is so you can really see how different they all are -- the range and area of the CC, the duration, how they can be broken. Now, I want you to think of Cho'gall in the Bastion of Twilight. Do you remember how when your allies started to Worshipping Cho'gall, the best CC to hit them with was Psychic Scream? Back then, even we healing priests were encouraged to help out. The reason for that was because of how Psychic Scream works mechanically. Lots of friendly allies all clustered on top of each other would suddenly be under Cho'galls control and at risk of stacking the Twisted Devotion buff on him. Psychic Scream was perfect because it was an AOE CC with no targeting was required. Just hit the spell, and anyone afflicted with Cho'gall's Mind Control would be interrupted.
What's brilliant about these new talents options is that we now have three distinctly different ways to CC our enemies, which allows us to pick something optimal for the fight instead of hoping the right class and the right CC exists inside the raid. From a healing standpoint, maybe this isn't a big deal, but I think it will be called upon as another way to increase the survivability of our raid in the near future. A healing priest who knows how to quickly and accurately CC will be the most valuable and versatile.
Level 30 brings movement changes, which again offers us three different ways to increase our movement in and out of combat. Phantasm will finally give us healing priests a way to escape movement-impairing effects -- great for both PVP and PVE. Path of the Devout will let us get around 25% faster, provided we aren't taking damage. Finally, Body and Soul will work just like it does now, sans the poison and disease clear.
Personally, I think this is the most exciting change of the new talents. Being able to use any of these abilities regardless of specialization is so huge. No longer do disc priests have to sigh woefully as their holy brothers sprint by. No longer is the Glyph of Levitate "useless" in combat. Rejoice!
Going back to being serious again, though, I can think of a bunch of fights where I'd have preferred Phantasm to Body and Soul simply because shedding the debuff I had would have removed the need to move faster. In fights where I needed neither, Path of the Devout would have been a nice way to get around. Having options means you can better tailor your abilities to each fight, making you like some sort of customized, pimped-out priest with a blue, crushed velvet interior ... or something.
This talent tier restores a bunch of existing talents that are usually situational in their usage, making this a sort of weird, throwaway tier if you're a healer. (Shadow priests have a lot more to get excited about here.) Surge of Light remains unchanged, though now it looks like you'll never have to choose between it and all those X percentage to Y abilities talents again. Archangel is mostly unchanged, only losing the mana restoration component in this new version. Both these abilities are sort of dependent on what type of healing you're dong or what you're up against, so I'm guessing the cookie-cutter route will be taking this new talent, Divine Star.
This new area-based ability heals and damaging targets in some sort of projectile path. It's like a Holy Nova boomerang, which I guess is cute since we already have a healing Frisbee (Prayer of Mending). Depending on how the ability is cast, I think it could be quite successful just based on how Light of Dawn has worked out for pallies. I guess we'll have to wait until beta to see exactly how it works, though.
This tier is unquestionably dedicated to self-preservation. First, Desperate Prayer makes a comeback without any changes. After that, we've got two new options to keep ourselves alive. Angelic Bulwark makes us more resilient when we shield ourselves, and Final Prayer is some sort of Ardent Defender-inspired shield that will automatically protect priests when they get too low. Looking at both, I like that you can again pick one or the other based on the fight. A fight that has constant raid damage would lend itself to Angelic Bulwark, while Final Prayer is ideal for a fight that periodically has one big ability that your raid might try to combat with a raid cooldown. Mind you, Angelic Bulwark may not be so great for holy priests, since a 30% increased effectiveness to a teeny-tiny shield doesn't mean much.
As far as new content goes, this tier isn't all that exciting, since we've seen most of these talents before in some fashion or another. What's exciting is basically what I said in my intro: holy priests casting Power Infusion on themselves to dish out Prayers of Healing at top speed ... discipline tank healers utilizing Serendipity alongside Penance to kick pally tank healing in the face for the first time ever. Being able to have one or the other is phenomenal, and that's really all there is to it.
Priests are becoming more and more like holy paladins, it seems.
We're also getting an interesting new sort of defensive cooldown called Void Shift, which allows us to swap health percentages with an ally. So if you're one of those pro priests who never take damage, you can instantly bring the tank up to 100% if he's at 10%. If you know how to use it right, it will basically allow healing priests two tank cooldowns every 3 minutes -- that is, if Blizzard allows us keep Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit and doesn't force them to share a timer. I'd still fancy Void Shift inferior to either of those abilities.
It should also go without saying that Void Shift also has endless potential for antagonizing anyone in your raid you don't like. It really makes me wonder, though. Between this and Leap of Faith, the developers are giving priests a considerable toolbox for troublemaking. It's like they think we're upstanding and responsible members of a party or something.
End of the line
Well, it looks like we're out of time this week, but we'll be back to discuss more MoP content next week. After looking at all of this, I think Oestrus fielded the most interesting question to me thus far: Will we be keeping Chakra, or will it simply be a one-expansion wonder? Hmm ... That's definitely something to consider, given the consolidation.
If you have anything you think needs some discussion for next week or want to flesh out some thoughts on what we've talked about today, leave a comment.
Spiritual Guidance has the inside line on pre-raid, valor point and raid gear for patch 4.2, as well as priest healing guides for the early and final bosses of The Firelands. Newcomer to the priest class? Look into leveling a healing priest, plus our guides to Discipline Priest 101 and Holy Priest 101.
Filed under: Priest, (Priest) Spiritual Guidance
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Boobah Oct 31st 2011 5:20PM
On Chakra: If it stays in, it'd be nice if it just uses the stance bar. Partially because it annoys me having to set up my chakra stance after a death, but mostly because I'd never have to listen to that 'ready-to-pick' noise around town again. Worse than the worgen sniffling, if less common.
Notsoscary1 Oct 31st 2011 10:40PM
For the love, (or hate) of pandas, get rid of chakra.
SINisterWyvern Oct 31st 2011 5:21PM
I don't know about void shift, if you consider someone at a very low percentage, say 10%. Well as soon as you hit it, you switch to 10%, but take a 25% heal so 35%, then if you took desperate prayer you can hit that and instantly be at 65% health.
Situational of course, if no one is taking that kind of damage it's horrible, for those times it is it could be amazing.
sharlatan Oct 31st 2011 5:43PM
No.....
What you do, is when you accidentally stand in aoe, you use this on someone who is on full health (try not to make it the tank), so they die to the next tick of unavoidable raid dmg, rather than you. lets face it, keeping a healer (yourself) alive is generally more important.
Though be careful, that annoying arcane mage who keeps dying for no apparant reason may start to get suspicious if you use it too often....
jonas Oct 31st 2011 8:27PM
Nonono - you stand in the AoE, then void shift to your warrior, and then life grip him into the AoE with you. He dies, you blame him for leaping into the AoE, and everyone celebrates!
Hih Nov 1st 2011 1:15AM
Void Shift+Leap of Faith will be almost as much fun in pug raids as Hand of Protection'ing the tank!
George Oct 31st 2011 5:27PM
As a raiding disc priest, most of the choices here are fairly obvious, unfortunately.
15: Pretty much nothing in raids can be feared, so go snare.
30: B&S for most fights, maybe Phantasm for fights that have slow puddles.
45: Divine Star, unless it's about as useful as holy nova, in which case SoL, because smite healing is generally bad.
60: Probably angelic bulwark.
75: Obviously PI
90: Probably VD (because who doesn't want VD?)
I don't really mind, but the idea that this would ever stop cookie cutter builds is just silly.
Bellajtok Oct 31st 2011 6:00PM
I have a hard time believing you read the whole article. Dawn clearly and thoroughly explained that these talents are situational by the fight. You will use a different set of talents depending on whether you're fighting, say, Rhyolith or Staghelm.
Redielin Oct 31st 2011 6:21PM
@George
If you went into a fight without any of these abilities, for the most part you would be fine, unless you had a specific assignment that required a particular utility talent. Only a few choices, like level 45 and level 75, are in danger of becoming set in stone choices, and even then the choices would be different from fight to fight. PI, for instance, is going to be the most useful in AE situations, so you'd pick it for fights that you will be raid healing for, whereas Serendipity is better for tank healing. Twist of fate would be useful for any fight that regularly knocks people down below 25% health (like Chimaeron, for instance).
The point is, none of these talents might be absolutely necessary. You may look at them, and say "of course, this is the only talent you should choose", but someone else will look at the same talents and come up with a different answer.
And unlike the current system, there's not really a mathematical way to say one answer or the other is correct (again, for the most part). It's like currently - Body and Soul isn't strictly required for anything, neither is Blessed resilience. Even Lightwell is pretty much optional. Basically, they're taking all those talents that nobody with half a brain skipped, like Chakra, or Guardian Spirit, or Empowered Healing, and are just automatically giving them to every Holy Priest, leaving the optional talents there for us to make choices with.
Revynn Oct 31st 2011 6:54PM
- "15: Pretty much nothing in raids can be feared, so go snare."
Which is why Cho'Gall is such a great example. For 10M raids, one comp may not have a reliable way to deal with Worship, making the Fear bomb extremlely valuable. However, others (like mine during T11) may not have a strong option for dealing with Bloods, making the snare a good choice. Comp, gear levels, fight and playstyle are going to dictate a lot of these choices, which is precisely the point.
- "30: B&S for most fights, maybe Phantasm for fights that have slow puddles."
Exactly. Some fights will make one choice better than the other. What blizzard is trying to do is make people think about their talents rather than just mindlessly plugging in whatever "Top DPS/HPS" spec from EJ and not thinking about it again until the next patch.
- "45: Divine Star, unless it's about as useful as holy nova, in which case SoL, because smite healing is generally bad."
It's hard to say what will be better since it's still so early and these talent trees are more like mock-ups with possible examples rather than "this is what they'll look like". I imagine that SoL will be extended to other spells to make it more appealing to Disc during Beta (PW:S, perhaps?). Divine Star would be pretty frigging worthless on fights like Baleroc that have very little widespread raid damage or Staghelm when people would be too spread out to hit more than one or two. AA would be far more appealing to me if I were tank healing.
- "60: Probably angelic bulwark."
Depends on the final numbers. If they reduce the CD and increase the self heal, I can see it being far more appealing than the others. Blizzard is likely going to be tweaking these numbers a lot to make sure that people are actually making personal decisions rather than just taking "the best one".
- "75: Obviously PI"
Maybe as a geared raid healer. What about when you're first starting heroics after hitting 90 and we're all back to healing people that are half-dead with little to no mana? As a Resto Shaman, I've actually come to love our Mastery (Deep Healing). If the increase in heals to low health players is significant enough, I imagine it will be a very popular choice when people are gearing up.
90: Probably VD (because who doesn't want VD?)
I think VoU needs some tweaking, but I think VD and VS will be switched out depending on the fight and if you're tank or raid healing.
PvP healers are also going to see a lot of these in completely different lights and as a DPS I'd have a really hard time deciding between Twisted Fate and PI, depending on the fight. An increase to damage done while in the SW:D-spam execute phase? That's pretty nice if the increase is big enough.
There are actual choices here. I'm sure there will be certain talents that end up worthless and that one spec or another will end up always taking 1 talent (I can't imagine why a SPriest wouldn't take VD 90% of the time and someone will crunch the numbers to decide if Bladestorm is better than Avatar), but most players are going to be able to switch these around based on their playstyle without consequence. And that's pretty cool, imo.
George Oct 31st 2011 8:56PM
Well, for example, PI is just plain so good that all 3 specs would prefer to have it. The limiting factor right now is that only disc can get it.
VoU just seems like a really bad version of beacon. The power of beacon is that you can put it on a tank and even when you heal someone else, you're still healing the tank. If there are 2 tanks, you can heal both at the same time. VoU is a weak beacon that you can only cast on yourself, hurts you, has a long cooldown and is quickly broken if you put it on a tank, which means it's probably better for PvP than raiding. Swapping your health with someone with void shift is generally going to be a bad idea too, if there's any chance that you can take any incoming damage afterwards. You usually don't want to sacrifice a healer to save a DPS, and fights where you aren't going to take any raid damage at all, such as Baleroc, are incredibly few and far between. On the other hand, VD is a constant, free smart heal that is useful whenever more than one person is taking any damage, and is probably even more significant when you're balled up raid healing, depending on how they tweak it before release. Even as shadow, VD is probably better for your raid than VoU or VS.
Path of the Devout will be useless as long as levitate is broken by any amount of damage, and the moment boost from body and soul can be very useful, particularly when you're casting a lot of shields as a disc priest anyway.
While they aren't absolute numbers that can be crunched by theorycrafting, there are some which are just clearly superior to others and there always will be, because you can't make all 3 talents in a group equally good for all 3 specs at the same time.
I don't want to go into too much detail on every choice I gave, because we just don't have the final numbers yet and things will almost certainly change before release.
Minstrel Oct 31st 2011 5:32PM
Divine Star is an interesting spell. I wonder if, when it returns, it returns to your original location (where you cast it) or your *current* location. If it's the latter, that opens up some fascinating ability to use positioning to maximize its value. Throw it on one vector to maximize its outbound healing and then run to a new location to allow it to carve a completely new healing path on its way back in.
Further, perhaps pop some movement enhancement (Body & Soul, goblin rocket boost, etc) and "kite" the boomerang around the raid, healing even more people.
Who knows how it will actually end up working, but it has some interesting possibilities, IMO.
Nadia Oct 31st 2011 6:02PM
This is exactly what I hope Divine Star will do!
Thanks for saying it better than I could have. 8)
Dawn Moore Oct 31st 2011 6:03PM
Now THAT is a cool idea. It'd also work well considering monk healing is going to be so location specific. Must forward to Blizzard asap. Major props to you for that idea. =D
Minstrel Oct 31st 2011 6:10PM
Aw, thanks. I love thinking about abilities with interesting mechanics...abilities that give direct boosts are solid and powerful, but aren't the things that make different classes *fun*.
Johnzim Oct 31st 2011 8:05PM
I love the ability because it's just copied straight out of League of Legends:
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Lux_the_Lady_of_Luminosity
Curiously enough from the very character I play ;) Woo!
Twill Oct 31st 2011 8:10PM
I can see it now...
Fight going on. Priest running around the room, fleeing as fast as possible from her own Divine Star, which in turn spews out healing on everyone the priest runs past.
Mario Kart is definitely a whole new healing mode that I think we should try :P
Bellajtok Oct 31st 2011 5:49PM
Priests? Messing with the party? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.......
El Oct 31st 2011 6:08PM
Other than my long term desire to be a melee healer (monk!! /squeeeee!) for some twisted reason, I am looking forward to the priest the most in the expansion. I guess I'll have to dust her off here soon to get spells feeling comfy again, lol.
carzet Oct 31st 2011 6:51PM
Sorry, but at this oint I don't like what I see, sorry for my priest.