Priest Talent Calculator Update (Feb 15th)

[Felade]

Theoretically, the orb change should result in no difference except how often you hit the button. We all know a 0 orb MB does a lot less damage than a 3 orb MB, basically Blizz is saving us the trouble of actually hitting MB on those no-orb situations, and helping us not waste orbs during high-proc situations (by giving MB no CD). I'm just worried it might tie us closer to the RNG. One of the big, BIG selling points of Shadow for me was that it was most definitely NOT a fire mage, and I hope they don't turn us into fire mages in this process of making orbs matter.

Did I mention I hate fire's RNG with a burning passion, so much it means I will never play my mage ever again if I can possibly avoid it?

Anyone notice how much the base mana cost of our spells got adjusted (according to the MMO champ post which I'm assuming Kelesti helped clean up for Priests)? Did any of the other healers see such adjustments or did we just see a numerical admission by Blizz that perhaps Priest spells cost a tad too much mana?

Also, Holy Nova for AE healing? First atonement, now this. Every expansion makes me more and more glad I don't play Disc. Of course, then there's Chakra...

[Kelesti]

None of the other healers really changed more than 1%, because....... well, we're the only healing class that doesn't get +400% to max mana. Meaning they can still go off ridiculously small base mana. Our mana pool is large (we don't have a tank/melee spec) so going off a smaller percentage of base mana doesn't really change anything.

I wanted to not bother, but because our section was so small (read: nonexistant) basically to make it "feel" like we had changes, tada here's "changes".

[Kaesebrezen]

Anyone notice how much the base mana cost of our spells got adjusted (according to the MMO champ post which I'm assuming Kelesti helped clean up for Priests)?

Int is supposed to no longer increase your manapool... So basemana = total mana.
And that's the reason why druids/holy palas get the 400% mana pool increase in their casting roles.

I wanted to not bother, but because our section was so small (read: nonexistant) basically to make it "feel" like we had changes, tada here's "changes".

You should have gone with "do not bother".

[Irielle]

It was a joke, lighten up. Seriously, look at how the end of Wrath was handled, content was nerfed to the point that if a spec was no longer able to do something, it generally didn't matter (except heroic Anub'arak, but who cared?).

Again though, future fights can be planned around this. It's hardly a reason to be up in arms

I don't think anyone was acting like the sky was falling. We were simply pointing out the fights in which this wouldn't be ideal. Also, humor/sarcasm doesn't translate well in text :P

[Kelesti]

You should have gone with "do not bother".

Hey, last time I didn't get to do anything except get yelled at by Bibi.

This time was me actually pretending to have relevance, I'll take that bone.

I don't think anyone was acting like the sky was falling.

Spend time on the Paladin boards. Then everything looks like the sky is falling.

[Felade]

Well, with Paladins its basically "Okay, how were they overpowered THIS expansion, and how can we (completely, totally) change the class to prevent this in the future?"

...only to just keep making them overpowered. At something.

[Kelesti]

Well, with Paladins its basically "Okay, how were they overpowered THIS expansion, and how can we (completely, totally) change the class to prevent this in the future?"

...only to just keep making them overpowered. At something.

Comparing them in-game to anything you read on the forums however, and you'd get a completely different story. >.>

Also, why am I not playing Tales of Abyss right now?

[Felade]

I kept wondering why Rets kept complaining about gap closers, so I leveled my Ret and discovered Long Arm of the Law. I thought "wait, what is the problem they keep talking on the forums again?"

[Annesh]

One thing that worries me, and maybe I am missing something but Mind Blast now requires at least one orb? So they want to change orbs from being a damage buff with a chance to proc to being a resource like holy power or combo points.... ok cool but those classes all have an ability that will generate holypower/combo points but its on a certain cooldown to limit how often you can use it, but mindblast is on a cd already. Then on top of that there is a chance to proc holy power as well. If they do that they need to give a spell to guarantee activating an orb just the same as holy power or combo points. Tieing our main nuke spell which already has a relatively long cooldown to a resource that relies on an rng proc?

Then they still have the talent where mind spike lowers the cd on mindblast.... but it doesn't remove the requirement for mb to need an orb... but ms would have just consumed any orbs you may have had... wtf?

So you have to wait for MB to be off cd and have an orb, or take a chance with a talent that has an rng proc to make mb not consume an orb and lose out on archangel.

yeah the spec is a MESS right now, and i'm not actually confident it will be done by the time the xpac is released.

[Venteus]

In summary, for shadow our tree looks like shit.

- Loss of PoM and Renew for shadow: Less survivability. You can only heal with flash heal, basically, which you can rarely do vs Melee and it seems every other caster now has at least 2 new CCs to keep you from casting anything.
- Not a single new CC. Not one. You can trade in Psychic scream for any of 2 blatantly WORSE CCs. Psyfiend has an obnoxious cooldown with a range impractical vs casters. Void tendrils = Casters will laugh at you. So you stick with psychic scream, which is still garbage because 80% of the time it will break if you refresh devouring plague or get a lucky dot crit.
- Any and all "new" DPS cool downs (Power infusion, seredipigarbage, whatever) are blatantly stupid choices for shadow PvP. You're basically an idiot if you take anything other than what is already in our talent trees in cataclysm.

The new mind blast now costs shadow combo points crap is terrible. To build shadow orbs you need to be either extremely lucky (4%) with a shadow word pain tick, or be using mind flay - which is not a common sight in PvP unless you're using up one tick to juke. To make matters worse, they made most talents cater to mind flay spam, making them (even more) useless.

All in all, in their present state, this is a spit in the face to shadow priests. I don't see a single tier. Not one. Where I have a conflict in which talent to take in PvP. Not even the level 90 tier.

Embarrassing effort, all I see here is them taking every talent amongst the priest trees, and giving every spec access to them as though it gives shadow some alternatives. Let's hope they just trash the entire thing and give us a brand new tree, along with a new mastery.

Edit: To make matters even worse (Who thought Blizzard could mange making it even worse o.O..), dispel now has an 8 second CD. We can no longer passively heal with dispel. Even less survivability. I really, really hope they make mounts and achievements BoA, that way I can just play a new character and call it my main.

[Derpyhooves]

Mind Blast has no cooldown in this iteration. And they've already said they plan on smoothing out some of the RNG reliance on its generation, but not all.

There are 2 talents that make mindblast instant cast, kinda implies it still does have a cd.

[Stefy]

What I'm really wondering is where DP is for shadow. It seems like Blizzard is going to dumb down the spec even further by removing a huge amount of spells, reducing the skillcap drastically. If these changes goes through, I'm not going to play shadow. Shadow is getting more and more like an arcane/fire mage caster and I do not like what I see. Making spells glyphs is also a huge mistake, and makes classes/specs lose identity. If DP is not put back, I'm going to be very unsatisfied. I would also like my healing spell reinstated, because shadow will be a completely boring/dull/dumbed down spec without utility and healing spells. You can't remove signature/key abilities to make the spec more boring just because you buff other things.

Tbh, shadow is looking so dull right now that I have no words. All my good spells are gone. PoM, Renew etc, we need those spells in PvP, and they can save the day in PvE.

[Kelesti]

There are 2 talents that make mindblast instant cast, kinda implies it still does have a cd.

Mind Blast has a 1.5 second cast time.

Making it instant does not mean that it has a cooldown, it means that it doesn't have a cast-time. The two are completely independent mechanics.

[Derpyhooves]

Mind Blast has a 1.5 second cast time.

Making it instant does not mean that it has a cooldown, it means that it doesn't have a cast-time. The two are completely independent mechanics.

Ah my bad I just assumed it still had the current cd. I just hope they increase the proc chance for orbs or something.

[Kelesti]

Ah my bad I just assumed it still had the current cd. I just hope they increase the proc chance for orbs or something.

That is the idea! Well, they want to smooth them out a bit. Whether it's better or worse than old-fire, couldn't tell you.

[Derpyhooves]

That is the idea! Well, they want to smooth them out a bit. Whether it's better or worse than old-fire, couldn't tell you.

If you always have to mind blast with an orb and they improve the rng... kinda makes empowered shadows buff redundant?

[Felade]

If you always have to mind blast with an orb and they improve the rng... kinda makes empowered shadows buff redundant?

On the flip side, with a 15sec buff and DOTs that are around the same amount of time, it doesn't take much RNG to mess things up pretty royally. Kinda like how it is now if you don't have 4pc t13. Not saying our RNG is bad, because imo it isn't atm, just saying that you can't assume you're always going to have an Orb around when you need it.

[femur68]

Ok, so does anyone else agree with me here? Atonement + Divine Star + Vampiric Dominance = crazy insane? With atonement and divine star you're doing damage AND healing at the same time, so vampiric dominance will proc twice as much. And with divine star being a 30sec CD, if lined up properly and your raid is grouped up, you can do one hell of a heal on a fairly constant basis. Same goes for a buffed holy nova.

[Anprionsa]

I don't think they are going to leave VD like it currently is. Personally I see them moving that to the shadow spec permanently.

[Kraide]

So atonement looks even more interesting in MoP with it now being able to partner with Vampiric Dominance to not only heal the lowest health target but splash heal more of the group while DPSing, but atonement will now be a glyph it looks like and Vamp Dominance a talent available to everybody.

So the question that arises from this: will holy or disc be likely to be the best atonement spec now? Holy has a chakra for a 15 percent damage boost, and disc has evangelism which looks to stick at 20 percent at max stacks in it's current MoP talent incarnation. Holy mastery looks better for it than disc mastery, however.

Disc is the only spec that would be able to utilize archangel with smite spec, but Divine Star (depending on its numbers) looks great for atonement as well so archangel might not even matter there. Another question that arises is which would perform better when partnered with atonement: renew or power word: shield? Holy nova, if it continues to work similarly to its current mechanic, perhaps "meshes" better with the playstyle than Prayer of Healing, but perhaps the mechanic will be changing to no longer cause damage when it gets its big buff that Blizz says is coming.