Priest Changes Coming!

[Concillian]

I kinda think Shadow got nerfed in some respects, even though it didn't change.

It brings about new options for Shadow Priests. Other talents getting buffed while shadow staying the same is, in effect nerfing shadow. This is a good thing in my opinion, as you previously pretty much had 1 good option for builds to PvP with.

This will bring more diversity to priests, they can choose the 'classic' option (which is still very good) for ideal single target DPS, it will probably still be the primary 'damage build' or they can get some okay damage benefit in the other trees along with support / healing benefits.

[Rinnhart]

:blink:

Paladins got robbed yo.
[right][snapback]102755[/snapback][/right]

Don't say that too loudly. We're supposed to be happy we're gimp at everything except buffing.

[Concillian]

Obviously the druid and hunter people were working on the priests, not the paladin people.
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Yeah, I think there are two teams---

A team: Druid, Hunter, Priest, Warlock

B team: Warrior, Paladin

Mages are next, which seems a bit odd to me, but Rogues should fear for your life. Melee class + talent revamp doesn't seem to go together very well.

[Quark]

Mages are next, which seems a bit odd to me, but Rogues should fear for your life.  Melee class + talent revamp doesn't seem to go together very well.
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This may strike you as suprising, but the Warriors didn't get a big change because they didn't need one.

[MongoJerry]

I gave the priest talent calculator a good shakedown today to create a new "battle healer" build that would be designed to be a healer for group PvP. This is what I came up with:

Neriad's battle healer build

It's designed for maximum survivability combined with maximum healing power.

The benefits are:

• It allows for maximum survivability with talents to mitigate damage -- Improved Inner Fire, Spell Warding, Blessed Recovery, and to some extent Inspiration. It also allows for survivability with methods to avoid spell cast interruptions with Healing Focus, Silent Resolve, and one point in Martyrdom.<>
  
• It fully maximizes the power of all healing spells, so it allows for the maximum amount of healing to be dealt in the shortest amount of time.<>
  
• It has Holy Nova, which should be awesome to prevent flag taps in PvP and might even work decently well as a secondary way to heal teammates in a crowded fight.<>
  
• The new Spirit of Redemption will rock in PvP.<>
  [st]The downsides are:
  • Mana could be an issue. Inner Focus and Meditation will help, but the lack of any talents that reduce the mana cost of spells will hurt.<>
    
  • The build doesn't take advantage of the talents that improve the new and improved Greater Heal. Basically, the assumption here is that the primary method of healing in PvP will still be Flash Heal. This could be a dinosaur philosophy. In addition, if raids switch to using Greater Heals in PvE, then this build will be at a disadvantage in this situation. However, this build does have Inspiration combined with Holy Specialization (+5% crit chance to holy spells), so a player specialized this way could take the role of casting low rank Flash Heals constantly on the main tank to keep Inspiration up, while other priests, druids, paladins, and shamans do the bulk of the healing.<>
    
  • I would love to have Holy Reach to extend the range of Holy Nova and Prayer of Healing. Plus, I'd like to have Improved Prayer of Healing, since PoH is one of my favorite spells. However, I just couldn't find the points to spend in those talents. I'm tempted to take points away from Improved Renew to spend in those talents, though.<>
    
  • I'll miss a lot of the talents in the shadow tree. In particular, Silence and Shadow Focus (which to me might as well have been named "Improved Mind Control," because it extends the length of Mind Control so much).<>
    
  • Some people are drooling over the idea of throwing Power Infusion onto mages in PvP. However, other than temporary bragging rights, I can't justify giving up so many of the talents in the holy tree to get it. In particuar, I just can't imagine going into a group PvP setting without Spirit of Redemption. That talent is just going to rock.<>
    [st]All in all, I'm really happy about the priest talent changes. I would have liked to have seen a crowd control or an escape spell added (e.g. making Fade give four seconds of invisibility in PvP). However, these new talents are quite amazing. It's a good sign when I find myself looking at the talent trees and saying, "Oh, I want this. Oh, no! In order to get this, I'd have to give up that!" At one point, I was willing to throw up my hands and throw all 51 points into the Holy tree. At the same time, I could also see why someone would want to put 31+ points into the Discipline tree. And, oh yes, the Shadow Tree is still quite good. I'm very happy with these talent changes, and it'll be fun to see the different kinds of priest builds that people come up in the next few weeks.
    
    Late addition: Here's a stab at a Power Infusion (Discipline) PvP build that also lowers the casting time on Greater Heal. It has a lot of the survivability benefits of the above build (without Inspiration). Mana should definitely not be a problem for this build. The main problem it misses out on some of the later talents that provide extra healing power. And, of course, it doesn't have Spirit of Redemption.
    
    Even later addition: Another Power Infusion Build. I like this build more. It gives up the Greater Heal improvements for Inspiration.

[MongoJerry]

Another tidbit from Eyonix:

Well, since you've invested so much thought into this matter, I figure I might as well use this thread as an avenue to reveal another positive improvement concerning this ability. Next patch, Power Word: Shield will gain an additional damage mitigation based upon 10% of the player's +damage/healing gear.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...&tmp=1#blizzard

It's interesting that it's based on +damage/healing gear rather than on +healing gear. So, a healbot equipment setup won't seem to help, if I'm reading this correctly. It's a nice change nonetheless.

[Gurnsey]

I gave the priest talent calculator a good shakedown today to create a new "battle healer" build that would be designed to be a healer for group PvP.&nbsp; This is what I came up with:

Neriad's battle healer build

It's designed for maximum survivability combined with maximum healing power.

[right][snapback]102790[/snapback][/right]

I'm interested that you chose Blessed Recovery - this will have to see some testing but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Let us know how is goes.

[Artega]

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

/target Priest 1
/cast Purge II
/chuckle

Assuming it doesn't get dispelled (which it will, especially if it's an Alliance priest), that's a pretty massive Armor increase. Should definitely help Priests survive PUGs with bad tanks :)

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

Making my Protection Warrior just that much more necessary in Warsong, apparently. I like these changes :)

[Artega]

This may strike you as suprising, but the Warriors didn't get a big change because they didn't need one.
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Comes from being the most gear-dependant class in the game. Changes to Warriors come more from the changes to what weapons and armor we can get our grubby little mitts on and less from changes to our talents and skills :)

[Concillian]

This may strike you as suprising, but the Warriors didn't get a big change because they didn't need one.
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Right, becuase talents like Improved Thunderclap, improved disarm, and my favorite talent, improved Slam (global cooldown 1.5 seconds, cast time 1.5 seconds, let's lower cast time by 0.5 seconds to 1.0 seconds /boggle ) are all of tremendous use.

A talent re-vamp isn't necessarily about class balance, but about diversity. Currently for PvP there is ONE obvious warrior build (with slight variation depending on whether you use a sword or axe or whatever), for PvE damage there is ONE obvious warrior build and for pure tanking there is a small amount of diversity. There isn't a single great warrior build without a 31 point talent. None of the 21 point talents warrant skipping a 31 point talent.

What the priest talent re-vamp seems to have opened up is diversity within the class. It also addressed a balance issue at the same time, in that priests were pretty much SOL for healing in PvP before the revamp. They seem to have buffed that in the trees to some extent. But most importantly, the options in the 11 point and 21 point slots of both discipline and holy are so interesting that you go "hmm....," indicating to me that there will likely be a decent amount of diversity in good and viable priest builds.

I always held up the rogue trees as an ideal at launch. There are plenty of great rogue builds with 2x 21 point talents, 1x 31 point talent and even 2x 11 point talents. "It's tough to build a bad rogue". Some great options in all the trees. To some extent all the talent revamps have added this kind of diversity to the other classes except the warrior re-vamp

I assume youre comment comes from class balance issues, which I feel are largely impossible to rectify within the current game design. Warriors are (arguably) the most gear dependent class, which means they gain the most from good gear. Having gone through gear upgrading for several classes at 60 (including rogue and warrior) I think I'm qualified in saying that warriors undergo the largest change of all the classes between green and purple gear. Such itemization and game design pretty much defines class imbalance. I don't necessarily see talent re-vamps changing that, so that was not the basis of my comments regarding the re-vamps in general.

[lfd]

Another tidbit from Eyonix:
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.a...&tmp=1#blizzard

It's interesting that it's based on +damage/healing gear rather than on +healing gear.&nbsp; So, a healbot equipment setup won't seem to help, if I'm reading this correctly.&nbsp; It's a nice change nonetheless.
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The same thread has Eyonix confirming that it will also including +healing.

[Quark]

:blink:

Paladins got robbed yo.
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Let there be light!

I'm posting here today in an attempt to initiate an improved relationship with those playing the Paladin class. The class specific forums have always been the number one source of information for me when attempting to gather player feedback. Moving forward however, I'd like for these boards to become the number one source of information for you when attempting to gather news and information.

It should be a relationship of mutual benefit.

I'm not going to dance around any issue. In patch 1.9 you had an extensive review which resulted in many changes to the makeup of your class. Many of you aren't happy with some of the changes, and some of you aren't happy with many of the changes.

Overall, we are happy with the majority of changes introduced for the paladin in patch 1.9. It definitely brought the class much closer to what our original design goals were when creating the Paladin. With that being said, we're still not completely satisfied with class and intend to review specific elements of the class over the next few patches.

Next patch for instance, we've made a few tweaks. Holy Shock will work with Divine Favor and Illumination. We're also reducing its mana cost. Holy Shield's mana cost will be reduced by approximately 15% and the effect will have a small bonus coefficient from spell damage items and effects. Seal of Command will be able to proc when the Paladin is silenced.

We're also increasing the damage per swing and the contribution from +spell dmg gear on Seal of Righteousness when using a 2-handed weapon in order to make it more competitive with Seal of Command with a 2-handed weapon.

Lastly, we're also increasing the range of Lay on Hands, Divine Intervention and all Greater Blessings.

These changes are all fairly minor and don't address your major concerns, I'm aware. I'm sharing them with you because this is how I'd like things to work from here on out. I gather feedback from this forum and provide you with information, both big and small as soon as it's available.

Some of the other items which we're going to focus on over the next few patches relate specifically to the Paladin's ability to tank in groups, and the overall interactivity of the Paladin in raids.

I find it quite funny that they claim they are overall happy with the Paladin changes from 1.9 all the while admitting that there's more changing in 1.10 (and later). Because, you know, every other class got changes after it's review. They're admitting they screwed up, but they don't want to completely admit it.

[Treesh]

Difference is, now it may be able to keep up your party without the help of Prayer of Healing or other spells.&nbsp; If that's so, that's a decent amount of extra DPS on Vael.
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Keep in mind that holy nova doesn't trigger inspiration.

[Quark]

Keep in mind that holy nova doesn't trigger inspiration.
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Well, for Vael our Prayer of Healing is typically to keep non-tank groups alive. Since Vael's raid-wide damage is Fire based, that's no big loss in the one case where Holy Nova can be spammed without concern for mana.

[Professor Frink]

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.

Are there a lot of level 11 characters running around wanding? If you're soloing you tend to be at melee range anyway, and I don't think i've ever had a wand that did more DPS than my melee weapon...

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.

Some very nice toys for the disc side of shadow/disc in particular. I rarely do big-number damage like a mage, so seeing more mind blast crits in PvP will be fun. Also a way to finish off a hunter that's mana-burn-shotted you down to nothing.

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.

Big giant nerf.

I already have 2072 armor with the 1.9 improved inner fire. The current inner fire costs almost nothing but remembering to cast it every three minutes, which I do religiously. An extra 700 or so armor would be handy, but only working for 20 hits... wtf? Right now the only class that can remove my armor buff and cares how much armor i have is shammies, and being dispelled in PvE generally doesn't happen, right? Now any class that i get an inner fire benefit against, and every physical damage mob try to solo, has the ability to remove said buff for no extra effort in the process of killing me, and the increased mana cost will prevent me from re-applying it like I do after being purged. The increased duration is a cruel joke--with the 20-hit rule, it won't last 3 minutes, let alone 10. Now I'll probably spend most of my time with 644 armor, and having made a lot of enemies on the horde's rogue squad, i see a lot of being jumped and killed before getting out of stunlock in my future.

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.

Attention raid leader: I am holding the power infusion hostage. I will recieve an innervate and a healthstone in the next 30 seconds or so help me I'm going to infuse the paladin.

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.

Wait, I was supposed to be healing those people?

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.

I'd just discovered how incredibly useful this spell is about a week ago. I mostly use it with damage spells, so the improvements to martyrdom/uninterupted healing don't mean much to me.

Shadow Weaving is available for 16-points.

Since the current consensus seems to be that in raids a fully-shadow specced priest wearing a reasonably nice set of int/sta/+shadow gear should be applying weaving, then acting as a gimped healer, this will permit a half-shadowpriest/inferior healer spec to match the playstyle.

--frink

[Treesh]

Well, for Vael our Prayer of Healing is typically to keep non-tank groups alive.&nbsp; [right][snapback]102815[/snapback][/right]

Pretty much thought it was used in both non-tank and tank groups to keep folks alive. That's what Aleri did when I was brought in however many times to help "inspire" all the warriors. But of course there's always the possibility that Bolty has tweaked the healing strats since then. ;)

[Concillian]

Are there a lot of level 11 characters running around wanding? If you're soloing you tend to be at melee range anyway, and I don't think i've ever had a wand that did more DPS than my melee weapon...
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Wands generally do signficantly more damage than an equivalent level melee weapon for a priest.

case in point:
item level 60 wand:
http://www.thottbot.com/?i=20923
59.7 DPS -- Talented is 74.6 DPS

item level 60 staff:
http://www.thottbot.com/?i=52121
51.4 DPS -- needs 116 STR to equal wand, needs 324 STR to equal DPS of wand + wand spec.

A holy / disc priest does a decent amount of wanding when solo. At least I did when I was soloing as holy/disc. 25% increase in that damage is pretty significant.

[MongoJerry]

I'm interested that you chose Blessed Recovery - this will have to see some testing but I'm not sure it's worth it.

Let us know how is goes.

I'm curious to see how it goes, too. I chose to go with it under the theory that anything that improves survivability is good. Also, since players tend to wear a lot of +crit% gear in PvP -- like on the order of 40% in many cases for rogues and warriors -- one gets crit in PvP a lot. I'll have to try it out to see.

Another interesting build is this one:

Holy Damage Build

This build maximizes the damage that can be dealt with Holy Smite and Holy Fire. It gets +15% damage and +10% crit% and reduces their cast times by .5 seconds. In addition, it has Power Infusion and Inner Focus to provide burst damage (and healing). The idea here is that because Holy Smite gets more benefit from +damage gear than does any of the shadow damage spells and because it can crit, Holy Smite becomes a higher dps spell than comparable shadow spells with enough +damage gear. In addition, it's a pretty good PvE build, since it has plenty of mana, has the reduced cast time on Greater Heal, and has Inspiration.

The downside is that its healing power isn't the same as a holy build and it doesn't quite have the same survivability in PvP that the Battle Healer build described previously has.

[Warlock]

Wands generally do signficantly more damage than an equivalent level melee weapon for a priest.

case in point:
item level 60 wand:
http://www.thottbot.com/?i=20923
59.7 DPS&nbsp; -- Talented is 74.6 DPS

item level 60 staff:
http://www.thottbot.com/?i=52121
51.4 DPS -- needs 116 STR to equal wand, needs 324 STR to equal DPS of wand + wand spec.

A holy / disc priest does a decent amount of wanding when solo.&nbsp; At least I did when I was soloing as holy/disc.&nbsp; 25% increase in that damage is pretty significant.
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Wands also ignore armour, can't be dodged, blocked or parried and work on runners. I never got very high as a priest but the difference between levelling with and without an up to date wand was dramatic. The downside is having to manually stop wand use and wait for cooldown before being able to cast spells.

[Quark]

Big giant nerf.
...
Now I'll probably spend most of my time with 644 armor, and having made a lot of enemies on the horde's rogue squad, i see a lot of being jumped and killed before getting out of stunlock in my future.[right][snapback]102821[/snapback][/right]

Why don't you exaggerate some more? Killed before getting out of stunlock? Rogues, which are the fastest attackers in the game, could get rid of this buff in 20 seconds in the best case scenario. That won't happen that often, especially since executing a proper stunlock means not attacking at times. I've never seen a stunlock last 20 seconds, so guess what, when you get out of the stuns, you'll have more life now.