Priest Changes Coming!

[Gurnsey]

...The only thing that makes Dwarves cool is Desperate Prayer and Fear Ward.  Gun Specialization?  Stoneform?  Treasure Finding?  Uh, yeah.  :)  All useless racial abilities for Priests....

Stoneform? I'd love to be able to dump poisons :P I'd love to be Human for the spirit boost, or Dwarven for the Fear Ward, but I like my Shadowmeld. We'll have to see how the racials pan out when we can look at the Starshards and Elune's.

Hopefully the talent changes will come out soon!

[Xanthix]

Most Priests in the Avarice Alliance are Night Elves, despite the advantages that Dwarves get.
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In my guild, out of about 20 priests, 2 are dwarves, 1 is human, and the rest are night elves. Some of them were unaware of racials when the created their characters but not all. It amazes me how much of a difference aesthetics makes.

[Kevin]

Many people think Trolls "look cooler" than Undead but you'd have to be nuts or unaware of racial abilities to roll a Troll Priest in the past.
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What are you saying about me that the first priest that I rolled in early december was a troll!?! :P ;)

[lfd]

In my guild, out of about 20 priests, 2 are dwarves, 1 is human, and the rest are night elves. Some of them were unaware of racials when the created their characters but not all. It amazes me how much of a difference aesthetics makes.
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On the horde side, you get a choice of either undead or troll. I didn't really look at the troll racials when I picked my race (and even if I had, berserking has now been changed twice since the uk release), and I didn't even know that priests got different racial skills - I thought, like _every other class_, we'd all have the same. I wish Blizzard would just realise that racial skills were a failed experiment, and stop inflicting them on us.

I picked troll because the starting area was the same as my friend's Orc Warrior.

[Gurnsey]

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...27915&p=1&tmp=1

I just wanted to give everyone an update that more than likely, by the middle of next week, we'll have the talent calculator ready to preview the changes being made to the priest talents for patch 1.10.

We focused primarily on the Holy and Discipline trees, however, we did visit the Shadow tree as well (no, that doesn't mean nerf - so don't troll my post). I had already commented that the focus of Holy would be in providing throughput improvement, that Discipline would focus on staying-power and that Shadow would focus primarily on damage. I believe this statement caused a slight bit of confusion, and I wish to make two points of clarification.

First, this has always been the case. This isn't a new direction for these trees.

Second, don't overanalyze "focus". All talent trees (for all classes) have a focus. The focus of a tree isn't necessarily all it has to offer. For instance, just because I stated the focus of Holy was in throughput improvement, doesn't mean you wont find staying-power or damage. One of our goals in streamlining the priest talents was to ensure that the class was viable in both PvE and PvP, despite a given build. Granted, certain builds are always going to be optimal for certain avenues of the game, as such is what occurs when you specialize your character.

But I ramble...

The changes look good, and I'm fairly excited to see your reaction when they are unveiled, although I don't expect the best feedback to come until the PTRs are live. In any case, /cheers - to priests. ;)

And another tidbit:

There is no Holy Form.

Bah, can't wait another part of a week! Must....know....now!

[Gurnsey]

Another priestly update:

It looks as though the interactive talent preview will be ready tomorrow. The teams involved with making this happen have been working on this task full time. I'm pretty optimistic that even if it's delayed it will still be out before the weekend.

In any case, I'll keep you updated.

Talent calculator before the end of the week. The 'delay' now is that they are regionalizing it (read: translating); last time, they did the release in only one language and got a huge uproar.

Just so you understand, the interactive aspect of the talent update isn't the hold up. We're in the process of localization, which is a necessary element to production because it's important that all regions of the world are able to release the update simultaneously.

Hang in there. :)

Probably tomorrow.

I don't want Blizz's bandwidth bill for the priest forums these two days.

[Lissa]

Here's a post by Eyonix from the Priest forums. It's amazing the changes...when I read through it my mouth just dropped open. The changes are extrodinary.

Minor Note: The Talent Calculator will be up momentariry.

So the priest talent changes have been unveiled through the interactive calculator and I thought it would be a good idea to discuss what was revealed. My goal is only to outline a most of the changes, so it's likely that I might have left out something small here or there. I encourage players to take an extensive pass using the calculator which has been linked in the news post I created on the front page of our website. After reading my comments, please feel free to use this thread to discuss of any aspect of the priest talents.

Going from left to right, I'll start the discussion off with the Discipline tree. You'll immediately notice that Wand Specialization has been made a first tier talent. I feel that this is great for two reasons. First, previously neither available tier 1 Discipline talents felt very exciting or rewarding when investing your points into them at early levels. I feel this is no longer the case. Second, you won't have to compete with Improved Power Word: Shield or Fortitude to receive this talent. Moving on to tier 2 talents, Silent Resolve will now reduce the threat caused by all spells, rather than simply damage spells. You're probably also noticing that Improved Power Word: Shield no longer reduces the duration of the weakened soul effect and I'm sure you're freaking out.

Worry not, this is because the core ability, Power Word: Shield has been improved to only cause a weakened soul effect of 15 seconds, which previously required three talent points, hence the change detailed below.

The Improved Power Word: Shield talent will now increase the damage absorbed by 15%. The new focused casting effect of Martyrdom increases resistance to Interrupt effects by 20%, in addition to preventing the caster from losing casting time when taking damage. Inner Focus as you can see is no longer a 21-point talent, and now available by investing only a mere ten points into the tree. Also, the cooldown has been reduced to three minutes. Competing with the ability is Meditation, also previously a 21-point talent. This still offers an increase to mana regeneration while casting by 15%, however, now only costs three points.

Moving onto the 15-point talents, you can see that Improved Inner Fire remains the same. What we changed is the core ability. Next patch Inner Fire will provide 50% more armor than before. The duration will also be increased to ten minutes but now the effect will be removed when the caster endures twenty successful damaging melee or ranged hits. We've also increased the mana cost and removed the melee attack power boost from the ability as such offers the priest very little benefit.

The new 21-point talents are Divine Spirit and Mental Strength.

Finally, the new 31-point talent for the Discipline tree is called Power Infusion. This ability infuses the target with power, increasing spell damage and healing by 20% for 15 seconds, and can be used every three minutes. This spell is very similar to Arcane Power, however it can be cast on other players, enhances healing as well as damage, and doesn't increase the mana cost of spells cast while under its effect.

This is a long thread, so bear with me... ;)

I have a feeling most priests have been really curious to see what we've done with the Holy Tree. Well, fortunately the wait is over. You'll notice two things right off the bat. Improved Renew offers the same level of improvement for only three points, and a brand new talent is immediately available - Healing Focus. This talent, for only two points will gives players a 70% chance of avoiding interruption caused by damage when casting any healing spell.

Next at the five-point mark you'll notice another brand new talent - Spell Warding, which reduces all damage taken by 10%. That which was previously a 21-point talent now stands next to it, Divine Fury. In addition to being available much sooner, this talent now reduces the casting time of Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.1 sec.

Remember, with this talent (available very early in the tree) Greater Heal will cast in 2.5 seconds!

I'm actually pretty excited about what's next. Holy Nova is now an eleven-point talent and has no cooldown whatsoever (of course universal global cooldown is still in-effect). This means that much like Improved Arcane Explosion, priests can spam small bursts of threatless holy goodness which both damages foes and heals friends. The mana cost has been increased, so it's not as efficient as before. We actually had alot of fun testing this spell in both PvE and PvP, and I'm excited to read through player feedback when this is live on the PTRs.

Moving on to the competing eleven-point talents, another new ability is revealed, Blessed Recovery. This passive ability will heal 25% of the damage received over 6 seconds after being struck by a melee or critical ranged hit. Lastly, take a look at Inspiration. This talent now only costs three points.

Holy Reach is another new talent available to the priests. For two points, players can increases the range of their Smite and Holy Fire spells and the radius of their Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova spells by 20%. Improved Healing has the same effect and is found in the same place, however, only three points need to be invested in order to gain the 15% mana cost reduction to those healing spells. The last talent on this tier is called Searing Light which increases the damage of Holy Fire and Smite by 10%.

Don't forget, Holy Fire is now a core ability and the casting time reduced to 3.5 seconds. Which of course becomes 3 seconds with the appropriate talent (the same talent which also benefits the casting time of Heal and Greater Heal.

Another great new passive ability talent - Spiritual Guidance, is located at the 21-point mark. This talent will permanently improve the priests spell damage and healing by up to 25% of their total spirit. Pretty nice boost, if I do say so myself.

I must admit, the next improvement has me awfully excited. Spirit of Redemption, (you know that angel that lets everyone know you've died and that their probably about to die as well:), will now allow the priest to become the angel, upon death. For ten seconds, the priest can cast any healing spell completely free! This allows the strategic player much better control in preventing a wipe.

As you can see the new 26-point talent is Spiritual Healing, which as before offers the priest a 10% increase to all healing spells. Placing points this far into the tree, assuming you've picked up Improved Renew and Spiritual Guidance will most definitely make the Holy Priest's heals stand out.

It should be no surprise that the final rank Holy talent is brand new, seeing that Holy Nova is now an 11-point talent. This new spell, called Lightwell will create a holy lightwell near the priest. At final rank, friendly targets can click the lightwell to restore 1600 health over a period of ten seconds. The lightwell has five charges, meaning, up to five players can use the lightwell before it expires. Our testing has shown that this ability works great in both smaller dungeons and raids, often times allowing the lower maintenance party members to take advantage of the healing properties of this well, while the priest and other healing classes focused on the main tank or whomever was taking heavy damage.

One other thing I'd like to mention before moving on to the Shadow tree is the fact that Focus Casting has been removed completely. Essentially, with the improvements to Martyrdom and the new talent Healing Focus, it wasn't as valuable a talent as before.

So, what improvements have we made to Shadow you ask? You'll actually notice that very little changes were made, so fortunately, you're almost done reading my post. :)

Shadow Affinity only costs three points now, instead of five. Improved Fade will no longer increase the duration of the spell, but rather decrease the cooldown by a total of six seconds. Shadow Weaving is available for 16-points. While Vampiric Embrace remains the same, a new talent is available called Improved Vampiric Embrace. For two points, the amount healed by Vampiric Embrace will be increased by 10%.

Well, this pretty much sums up the changes. It's likely we'll make some more adjustments and tweaks based upon what's revealed through testing on the PTRs. As a priest, I'm excited. How about you guys? Post your thoughts...

Sidenote: Try not to quote my entire thread, if possible please. Threads break much sooner that way, and I'd like to get as much out of this discussion thread as possible, before creating a "part 2".[right][snapback]100732[/snapback][/right]

[Krossandra]

Here's a post by Eyonix from the Priest forums.  It's amazing the changes...when I read through it my mouth just dropped open.  The changes are extrodinary.
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Heh, I was just wondering if I should post this here or start a new (not five pages) thread ;)



GO HOLY PRIESTS! I'm disappointed though. No Holy Fiyar Ponee. /cry

[Quark]

Two quick notes:

1) After this patch, I'm never dueling Cleoboltra again.

2)

It should be no surprise that the final rank Holy talent is brand new, seeing that Holy Nova is now an 11-point talent. This new spell, called Lightwell will create a holy lightwell near the priest. At final rank, friendly targets can click the lightwell to restore 1600 health over a period of ten seconds. The lightwell has five charges, meaning, up to five players can use the lightwell before it expires. Our testing has shown that this ability works great in both smaller dungeons and raids, often times allowing the lower maintenance party members to take advantage of the healing properties of this well, while the priest and other healing classes focused on the main tank or whomever was taking heavy damage.

Rogues call dibs! Hehe.

And for more commentary, I'm gonna take this from a PvP vs Priests perspective only. Yell at me if I don't remain too objective, I'm going to try to state simply how these change the game, not whether or not the change is good or bad.

The new focused casting effect of Martyrdom increases resistance to Interrupt effects by 20%, in addition to preventing the caster from losing casting time when taking damage.

Priests with this can be much more likely to get that one (or two) more heals they needed to beat Rogues, Mages, and (Felhunter) Warlocks. It's a thin line Priests tread between death and life when healing in PvP, this just means they stay alive more often.

Moving onto the 15-point talents, you can see that Improved Inner Fire remains the same. What we changed is the core ability. Next patch Inner Fire will provide 50% more armor than before. The duration will also be increased to ten minutes but now the effect will be removed when the caster endures twenty successful damaging melee or ranged hits. We've also increased the mana cost and removed the melee attack power boost from the ability as such offers the priest very little benefit.

For comparison, I think my Rogue's armor is about 1650. I'd have to check that, though. Going just off a full set of Nightslayer, armor (1152) + agility (189*2) is showing as 1530 total armor. The rest would come from cloak and agility bonuses.

A full set of Transcendence give 666. 930*1.5 (new Inner Fire) = 1395, so that's 2061 armor for a Inner Fired Priest. Get the talent maxed, it's now 2022 + 666 = 2688. Wow. This is screaming as a PvP talent now.

Duration increase is nice, with the compromise that a priest that ends up fighting more than one opponent will typically lose the buff along the way.

Finally, the new 31-point talent for the Discipline tree is called Power Infusion. This ability infuses the target with power, increasing spell damage and healing by 20% for 15 seconds, and can be used every three minutes. This spell is very similar to Arcane Power, however it can be cast on other players, enhances healing as well as damage, and doesn't increase the mana cost of spells cast while under its effect.

That sounds incredible, PvE and PvP. So many cases where a 20% difference is all it takes ... And since it's targettable, it's that much more powerful. Mage Bombs just got another boost in AV, too.

and a brand new talent is immediately available - Healing Focus. This talent, for only two points will gives players a 70% chance of avoiding interruption caused by damage when casting any healing spell.

Priests finally given talents other healers already have. A little miffed that it takes 2 points for a priest and 5 for a druid to get the same effect, though. Again, this just makes it more likely that the priest gets off the heal that saves a life in PvP.

Next at the five-point mark you'll notice another brand new talent - Spell Warding, which reduces all damage taken by 10%.

Hello innate Defensive Stance ... 10% is all that matters sometimes. On a PvE note, I think it's time a priest tanked Baron Geddon :P

I'm actually pretty excited about what's next. Holy Nova is now an eleven-point talent and has no cooldown whatsoever (of course universal global cooldown is still in-effect). This means that much like Improved Arcane Explosion, priests can spam small bursts of threatless holy goodness which both damages foes and heals friends. The mana cost has been increased, so it's not as efficient as before. We actually had alot of fun testing this spell in both PvE and PvP, and I'm excited to read through player feedback when this is live on the PTRs.

My new nightmare: 20 Priest 20 Mage AV. 20 Fears, 20 Arcane Explosioners, and a ton of priests healing and damaging while their fear is on cooldown. Warriors, you're no longer needed to push the pile :P

Moving on to the competing eleven-point talents, another new ability is revealed, Blessed Recovery. This passive ability will heal 25% of the damage received over 6 seconds after being struck by a melee or critical ranged hit. Lastly, take a look at Inspiration. This talent now only costs three points.

As a Rogue this would scare me, but I'd probably overwhelm it anyway. Wonder if the healing stacks or overwrites itself, mainly. More worrisome for classes that don't crit as often if it overwrites.

Another great new passive ability talent - Spiritual Guidance, is located at the 21-point mark. This talent will permanently improve the priests spell damage and healing by up to 25% of their total spirit. Pretty nice boost, if I do say so myself.

Oh ... oh man. Wow. Spirit is now even more useful for the class that benefits the most from it.

I must admit, the next improvement has me awfully excited. Spirit of Redemption, (you know that angel that lets everyone know you've died and that their probably about to die as well:), will now allow the priest to become the angel, upon death. For ten seconds, the priest can cast any healing spell completely free! This allows the strategic player much better control in preventing a wipe.

Again ... wow. Killed the healer helping out that flag carrier? Too bad, he's still healing!

Overall, Shadow still seems to be the tree if you want to kill in PvP. If you want to support in PvP, Discipline is like a new god. A Discipline priest would be a great boost to any team, anywhere, in PvP.

[Kevin]

In case the links aren't there yet, a talent calculator that has the changes appears to be here:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...s2/talents.html


Obviously the druid and hunter people were working on the priests, not the paladin people.

[Quark]

New Thought!

Holy Nova. Vaelestrasz.

[Tal]

Here's a post by Eyonix from the Priest forums.  It's amazing the changes...when I read through it my mouth just dropped open.  The changes are extrodinary.
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:blink:

Paladins got robbed yo.

[Kevin]

New Thought!

Holy Nova.  Vaelestrasz.
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Not new, Treesh has used it on Vael already. Now it will just be even better. :)

[Quark]

Not new, Treesh has used it on Vael already.  Now it will just be even better.  :)
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Difference is, now it may be able to keep up your party without the help of Prayer of Healing or other spells. If that's so, that's a decent amount of extra DPS on Vael.

[TheLuminaire]

I kinda think Shadow got nerfed in some respects, even though it didn't change. Disc and Holy have some really amazing talents now, that really just look to outperform my shadowform-priest. Blessed Recovery? Power Infusion? No cooldown Holy Nova? The list goes on; I'm not finding a whole lot of reasons to stay shadowform. :(

I'll wait until I can get on the PTR to check 'em out, but I have a feeling I'm going to have an even harder time finding a group that wants a shadow priest given these changes.

Still, all said and done, there's some amazing work in these trees, and I can't wait to see how all the skills line up. This is probably the best class reveiw any class has gotten. Priests are going to be a powerhouse, regardless of spec.

*Edit* Bleh, the also wrecked my favorite build by moving the Disc threat talent to the second tier. Have to give up a little more to get full threat reduction.

[Gurnsey]

Worry not, this is because the core ability, Power Word: Shield has been improved to only cause a weakened soul effect of 15 seconds, which previously required three talent points, hence the change detailed below.

The Improved Power Word: Shield talent will now increase the damage absorbed by 15%.

Cool. The 15 second Weakened Soul by default removes the threat of those without the talent accidentally "nerfing" say, the flag carrier in WSG. 15% overal absorb still doesn't really add up to very much vs. epic/legendary weapons/bosses. Ah well.


The new focused casting effect of Martyrdom increases resistance to Interrupt effects by 20%, in addition to preventing the caster from losing casting time when taking damage.

Interrupt resistance. Note that this requires a melee crit so it is really for vs. Rogues (kick) and Warriors (shield bash, pummel). The casting time saver is still a good thing!


Inner Focus as you can see is no longer a 21-point talent, and now available by investing only a mere ten points into the tree. Also, the cooldown has been reduced to three minutes. Competing with the ability is Meditation, also previously a 21-point talent. This still offers an increase to mana regeneration while casting by 15%, however, now only costs three points.

Inner Focus is...there. Now obainable with Shadow Form. Also possibly useable for Smite/Holy Fire, I guess. Mostly a PVP or levelling talent, or Shadowform PVE. Mana while casting for cheaper is always good, especially combined with the Spirit-related Holy talent (PVE talent for sure).


Moving onto the 15-point talents, you can see that Improved Inner Fire remains the same. What we changed is the core ability. Next patch Inner Fire will provide 50% more armor than before. The duration will also be increased to ten minutes but now the effect will be removed when the caster endures twenty successful damaging melee or ranged hits. We've also increased the mana cost and removed the melee attack power boost from the ability as such offers the priest very little benefit.

Hopefully, 20 hits worth of +armor will be worth it. You can get quite a lot from this talent, for sure! Probably beat out the leatherwearers.


The new 21-point talents are Divine Spirit and Mental Strength.

Woo? If you aren't enamored with either 31pt talent, you can get some good stuff from both Holy and Disc trees.


Finally, the new 31-point talent for the Discipline tree is called Power Infusion. This ability infuses the target with power, increasing spell damage and healing by 20% for 15 seconds, and can be used every three minutes. This spell is very similar to Arcane Power, however it can be cast on other players, enhances healing as well as damage, and doesn't increase the mana cost of spells cast while under its effect.

This will get a lot of WTF's as well as anger from the other DPS classes (mostly mages). We could always cast it on them! I'm not sure 15 seconds of +healing is worth spending 31pts to get to, but then again I'm not an endgame raider so...I see this more as a PVP support buff than anything. Perhaps a disc/shadow build to team with a mage or lock?


I have a feeling most priests have been really curious to see what we've done with the Holy Tree. Well, fortunately the wait is over. You'll notice two things right off the bat. Improved Renew offers the same level of improvement for only three points, and a brand new talent is immediately available - Healing Focus. This talent, for only two points will gives players a 70% chance of avoiding interruption caused by damage when casting any healing spell.

Much less chance of cast-time loss on any healing spell?! And for less points? And first tier? Sign me up! Also a great boon to early/mid-game priests.


Next at the five-point mark you'll notice another brand new talent - Spell Warding, which reduces all damage taken by 10%. That which was previously a 21-point talent now stands next to it, Divine Fury. In addition to being available much sooner, this talent now reduces the casting time of Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.1 sec.

Spell warding (note the name, SPELL) reduces SPELL damage by 10% (not all damage). Could be useful again for a PVP/dueling build, though if you are going for shadowform you'll have to waste some points on a first-tier holy to get this. Divine Fury = 2.5s Greater Heal. Yay! Reduces damage-spell time too. Non shadow-spec damage/utility builds might actually work, and this (and other changes) will help the raiding priest with the solo grinding game a lot.


I'm actually pretty excited about what's next. Holy Nova is now an eleven-point talent and has no cooldown whatsoever (of course universal global cooldown is still in-effect). This means that much like Improved Arcane Explosion, priests can spam small bursts of threatless holy goodness which both damages foes and heals friends. The mana cost has been increased, so it's not as efficient as before. We actually had alot of fun testing this spell in both PvE and PvP, and I'm excited to read through player feedback when this is live on the PTRs.

OMGWTFNURF!!1111

Just kidding. Though I think people will complain about this, the healing is not huge and I bet the mana cost will prohibit this from being used very long. Time for some Mathcraft, Lurkers! HPS, HPM, MPS?


Moving on to the competing eleven-point talents, another new ability is revealed, Blessed Recovery. This passive ability will heal 25% of the damage received over 6 seconds after being struck by a melee or critical ranged hit. Lastly, take a look at Inspiration. This talent now only costs three points.

If blessed recovery stacks, Blessed Recovery will suck to be a rogue vs priest in PVP. If it doesn't, it's pretty useless - kinda like the warrior talent that does a similar thing. I have my doubts that anyone will take this.

Inspiration is still a good main-tank talent. Less point-cost is always good!


Holy Reach is another new talent available to the priests. For two points, players can increases the range of their Smite and Holy Fire spells and the radius of their Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova spells by 20%.

Holy Nova from 10 yards to 12 yards. Note my excitement. Not sure the range on Prayer of Healing - this might help considerably if the range is large, in healing your party if they are scattered around.


Improved Healing has the same effect and is found in the same place, however, only three points need to be invested in order to gain the 15% mana cost reduction to those healing spells. The last talent on this tier is called Searing Light which increases the damage of Holy Fire and Smite by 10%.

Less talent points is again good, and decreased mana cost on the new Greater Heal is also far more useful than before.

Searing Light for all those Holy-Damage priests. I wonder if such a build could work, gotta try it out. At least you wouldn't have to worry if your opponent has high Holy-resist ;)


Another great new passive ability talent - Spiritual Guidance, is located at the 21-point mark. This talent will permanently improve the priests spell damage and healing by up to 25% of their total spirit. Pretty nice boost, if I do say so myself.

Spirit buff! Human-Priest buff too, really. Wish I hadn't rolled NE :P


I must admit, the next improvement has me awfully excited. Spirit of Redemption, (you know that angel that lets everyone know you've died and that their probably about to die as well:), will now allow the priest to become the angel, upon death. For ten seconds, the priest can cast any healing spell completely free! This allows the strategic player much better control in preventing a wipe.

The old Spirit of Redemption was good for me (my wife is a 'lock so I'd die, pop back up, and get some healing from my own angel). The new one sounds better. You could get 3 GH's and a flash in that time if you are super-quick. Also, if you can use Troll Berserking, well, you have no health. Super-fast, free heals!


As you can see the new 26-point talent is Spiritual Healing, which as before offers the priest a 10% increase to all healing spells. Placing points this far into the tree, assuming you've picked up Improved Renew and Spiritual Guidance will most definitely make the Holy Priest's heals stand out.

Agreed.


It should be no surprise that the final rank Holy talent is brand new, seeing that Holy Nova is now an 11-point talent. This new spell, called Lightwell will create a holy lightwell near the priest. At final rank, friendly targets can click the lightwell to restore 1600 health over a period of ten seconds. The lightwell has five charges, meaning, up to five players can use the lightwell before it expires. Our testing has shown that this ability works great in both smaller dungeons and raids, often times allowing the lower maintenance party members to take advantage of the healing properties of this well, while the priest and other healing classes focused on the main tank or whomever was taking heavy damage.

Errr, I don't know if I'd take this. Go go test server!


Shadow Affinity only costs three points now, instead of five.

Buff for the PVE Shadow Priest, I guess.


Improved Fade will no longer increase the duration of the spell, but rather decrease the cooldown by a total of six seconds.

Ouch nerf. Less faded time and more mana cost (since you'll have to cast it more often).


Shadow Weaving is available for 16-points. While Vampiric Embrace remains the same, a new talent is available called Improved Vampiric Embrace. For two points, the amount healed by Vampiric Embrace will be increased by 10%.

Shadow weaving sooner is really just a buff for those levelling up. I'm not sure I'd ever see someone taking Shadow Weaving without going further in the tree. The IVE talent sounds worthless until you read it on the calculator - really, instead of increasing 10% of the 20% that VE heals, it increases VE to heal for 30%. Now, if only they could fix it so your +damage worked into VE....

Really, if you look at the Shadow tree, the biggest buff I can see is the change in placement and dependancies - the only bad tradeoff you have to make now is that to get Silence, you still have to get the marginally useful Improved Psychic Scream.

Now I have no idea where to go with my build! I'm thinking of a balanced Disc/Holy build, ignoring either of the 31pt'rs, but we'll see. I'm sure we'll have lots of time to play with it before 1.10 comes out.

Edit - hard to read! Hopefully this helps.

[lemekim]

Worry not, this is because the core ability, Power Word: Shield has been improved to only cause a weakened soul effect of 15 seconds, which previously required three talent points, hence the change detailed below.

The Improved Power Word: Shield talent will now increase the damage absorbed by 15%.

Cool.  The 15 second Weakened Soul by default removes the threat of those without the talent accidentally "nerfing" say, the flag carrier in WSG.  15% overal absorb still doesn't really add up to very much vs. epic/legendary weapons/bosses.  Ah well.


The new focused casting effect of Martyrdom increases resistance to Interrupt effects by 20%, in addition to preventing the caster from losing casting time when taking damage.

Interrupt resistance.  Note that this requires a melee crit so it is really for vs. Rogues (kick) and Warriors (shield bash, pummel).  The casting time saver is still a good thing!


Inner Focus as you can see is no longer a 21-point talent, and now available by investing only a mere ten points into the tree. Also, the cooldown has been reduced to three minutes. Competing with the ability is Meditation, also previously a 21-point talent. This still offers an increase to mana regeneration while casting by 15%, however, now only costs three points.

Inner Focus is...there.  Now obainable with Shadow Form.  Also possibly useable for Smite/Holy Fire, I guess.  Mostly a PVP or levelling talent, or Shadowform PVE.  Mana while casting for cheaper is always good, especially combined with the Spirit-related Holy talent (PVE talent for sure).


Moving onto the 15-point talents, you can see that Improved Inner Fire remains the same. What we changed is the core ability. Next patch Inner Fire will provide 50% more armor than before. The duration will also be increased to ten minutes but now the effect will be removed when the caster endures twenty successful damaging melee or ranged hits. We've also increased the mana cost and removed the melee attack power boost from the ability as such offers the priest very little benefit.

Hopefully, 20 hits worth of +armor will be worth it.  You can get quite a lot from this talent, for sure!  Probably beat out the leatherwearers.


The new 21-point talents are Divine Spirit and Mental Strength.

Woo?  If you aren't enamored with either 31pt talent, you can get some good stuff from both Holy and Disc trees.


Finally, the new 31-point talent for the Discipline tree is called Power Infusion. This ability infuses the target with power, increasing spell damage and healing by 20% for 15 seconds, and can be used every three minutes. This spell is very similar to Arcane Power, however it can be cast on other players, enhances healing as well as damage, and doesn't increase the mana cost of spells cast while under its effect.

This will get a lot of WTF's as well as anger from the other DPS classes (mostly mages).  We could always cast it on them!  I'm not sure 15 seconds of +healing is worth spending 31pts to get to, but then again I'm not an endgame raider so...I see this more as a PVP support buff than anything.  Perhaps a disc/shadow build to team with a mage or lock?


I have a feeling most priests have been really curious to see what we've done with the Holy Tree. Well, fortunately the wait is over. You'll notice two things right off the bat. Improved Renew offers the same level of improvement for only three points, and a brand new talent is immediately available - Healing Focus. This talent, for only two points will gives players a 70% chance of avoiding interruption caused by damage when casting any healing spell.

Much less chance of cast-time loss on any healing spell?!  And for less points?  And first tier?  Sign me up!  Also a great boon to early/mid-game priests.


Next at the five-point mark you'll notice another brand new talent - Spell Warding, which reduces all damage taken by 10%. That which was previously a 21-point talent now stands next to it, Divine Fury. In addition to being available much sooner, this talent now reduces the casting time of Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.1 sec.

Spell warding (note the name, SPELL) reduces SPELL damage by 10% (not all damage).  Could be useful again for a PVP/dueling build, though if you are going for shadowform you'll have to waste some points on a first-tier holy to get this.  Divine Fury = 2.5s Greater Heal.  Yay!  Reduces damage-spell time too.  Non shadow-spec damage/utility builds might actually work, and this (and other changes) will help the raiding priest with the solo grinding game a lot.


I'm actually pretty excited about what's next. Holy Nova is now an eleven-point talent and has no cooldown whatsoever (of course universal global cooldown is still in-effect). This means that much like Improved Arcane Explosion, priests can spam small bursts of threatless holy goodness which both damages foes and heals friends. The mana cost has been increased, so it's not as efficient as before. We actually had alot of fun testing this spell in both PvE and PvP, and I'm excited to read through player feedback when this is live on the PTRs.

OMGWTFNURF!!1111

Just kidding.  Though I think people will complain about this, the healing is not huge and I bet the mana cost will prohibit this from being used very long.  Time for some Mathcraft, Lurkers!  HPS, HPM, MPS?


Moving on to the competing eleven-point talents, another new ability is revealed, Blessed Recovery. This passive ability will heal 25% of the damage received over 6 seconds after being struck by a melee or critical ranged hit. Lastly, take a look at Inspiration. This talent now only costs three points.

If blessed recovery stacks, Blessed Recovery will suck to be a rogue vs priest in PVP.  If it doesn't, it's pretty useless - kinda like the warrior talent that does a similar thing.  I have my doubts that anyone will take this.

Inspiration is still a good main-tank talent.  Less point-cost is always good!


Holy Reach is another new talent available to the priests. For two points, players can increases the range of their Smite and Holy Fire spells and the radius of their Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova spells by 20%.

Holy Nova from 10 yards to 12 yards.  Note my excitement.  Not sure the range on Prayer of Healing - this might help considerably if the range is large, in healing your party if they are scattered around.


Improved Healing has the same effect and is found in the same place, however, only three points need to be invested in order to gain the 15% mana cost reduction to those healing spells. The last talent on this tier is called Searing Light which increases the damage of Holy Fire and Smite by 10%.

Less talent points is again good, and decreased mana cost on the new Greater Heal is also far more useful than before.

Searing Light for all those Holy-Damage priests.  I wonder if such a build could work, gotta try it out.  At least you wouldn't have to worry if your opponent has high Holy-resist ;)


Another great new passive ability talent - Spiritual Guidance, is located at the 21-point mark. This talent will permanently improve the priests spell damage and healing by up to 25% of their total spirit. Pretty nice boost, if I do say so myself.

Spirit buff!  Human-Priest buff too, really.  Wish I hadn't rolled NE :P


I must admit, the next improvement has me awfully excited. Spirit of Redemption, (you know that angel that lets everyone know you've died and that their probably about to die as well:), will now allow the priest to become the angel, upon death. For ten seconds, the priest can cast any healing spell completely free! This allows the strategic player much better control in preventing a wipe.

The old Spirit of Redemption was good for me (my wife is a 'lock so I'd die, pop back up, and get some healing from my own angel).  The new one sounds better.  You could get 3 GH's and a flash in that time if you are super-quick.  Also, if you can use Troll Berserking, well, you have no health.  Super-fast, free heals!


As you can see the new 26-point talent is Spiritual Healing, which as before offers the priest a 10% increase to all healing spells. Placing points this far into the tree, assuming you've picked up Improved Renew and Spiritual Guidance will most definitely make the Holy Priest's heals stand out.

Agreed.


It should be no surprise that the final rank Holy talent is brand new, seeing that Holy Nova is now an 11-point talent. This new spell, called Lightwell will create a holy lightwell near the priest. At final rank, friendly targets can click the lightwell to restore 1600 health over a period of ten seconds. The lightwell has five charges, meaning, up to five players can use the lightwell before it expires. Our testing has shown that this ability works great in both smaller dungeons and raids, often times allowing the lower maintenance party members to take advantage of the healing properties of this well, while the priest and other healing classes focused on the main tank or whomever was taking heavy damage.

Errr, I don't know if I'd take this.  Go go test server!


Shadow Affinity only costs three points now, instead of five.

Buff for the PVE Shadow Priest, I guess.


Improved Fade will no longer increase the duration of the spell, but rather decrease the cooldown by a total of six seconds.

Ouch nerf.  Less faded time and more mana cost (since you'll have to cast it more often).


Shadow Weaving is available for 16-points. While Vampiric Embrace remains the same, a new talent is available called Improved Vampiric Embrace. For two points, the amount healed by Vampiric Embrace will be increased by 10%.

Shadow weaving sooner is really just a buff for those levelling up.  I'm not sure I'd ever see someone taking Shadow Weaving without going further in the tree.  The IVE talent sounds worthless until you read it on the calculator - really, instead of increasing 10% of the 20% that VE heals, it increases VE to heal for 30%.  Now, if only they could fix it so your +damage worked into VE....

Really, if you look at the Shadow tree, the biggest buff I can see is the change in placement and dependancies - the only bad tradeoff you have to make now is that to get Silence, you still have to get the marginally useful Improved Psychic Scream.

Now I have no idea where to go with my build!  I'm thinking of a balanced Disc/Holy build, ignoring either of the 31pt'rs, but we'll see.  I'm sure we'll have lots of time to play with it before 1.10 comes out.

Edit - hard to read!  Hopefully this helps.
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My eyes! The blue color makes your quotes hard to read =( So I changed them to yellow for ease of reading!

[Warlock]

That's an impressive list. Grats Priests!

[Pantalaimon]

Hello innate Defensive Stance ... 10% is all that matters sometimes.  On a PvE note, I think it's time a priest tanked Baron Geddon :P

Again ... wow.  Killed the healer helping out that flag carrier?  Too bad, he's still healing!
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Unfortunately, spell warding only works against spell damage. Eyonix worded it wrong.

Also, the angel can't move. Too bad :P

[Concillian]

Priests finally given talents other healers already have.  A little miffed that it takes 2 points for a priest and 5 for a druid to get the same effect, though.  Again, this just makes it more likely that the priest gets off the heal that saves a life in PvP.

Priests had this before, it was called 'Improved Flash Heal' and was 15 points deep. It's a 2 pointer, and since flash was what you were generally casting, served the basic purpose of working for heals in general. The change to all heals was probably deemed necessary because Greater Heal was seeing so little use, that they would have to significantly boost it for people to not simply complain and continue to ignore GH.

It was a great talent at 15 points and it's a great talent at Tier 1. I would generally consider it more valuable than Tier 1, but I think they're trying to encourage people to dip into the holy tree, especially with holy nova at 11 points. I see a 32 shadow / 8 discipline / 11 holy build as a possible PvP build with the benefits of current shadow priests + the biggest PvP benefits of holy (70% uninterruption on heals, 20% less spell damage tanke and the situationally useful holy nova.)

As a Rogue this would scare me, but I'd probably overwhelm it anyway.  Wonder if the healing stacks or overwrites itself, mainly.  More worrisome for classes that don't crit as often if it overwrites.

It will almost certainly overwrite. My guess is it will be nearly completely worthless. Warriors have Blood Craze that is almost entirely useless. It's supposed to heal x% life over 6 seconds when crit, however the real functionality is that it heals x% life in one big chunk at the 6 second mark. If you get crit again in that 6 second window the timer gets reset and you lose out on the healing from the first one... oh well! I would have to guess functionality of the priest version of this will be very similar.