Priest Changes Coming!

[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.
[right][snapback]102759[/snapback][/right]

My eyes! The blue color makes your quotes hard to read =( So I changed them to yellow for ease of reading!