When i saw these changes i thought i wanna gonna die laughing at my friend druid sitting right next to me.
Anyways gonna talk from the PvP perspective of a discipline priest about these changes
Lets go through every point here
* Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
For raids this spell was useless as it was over-written by Totem of Wrath (and some warlock abilities i THINK) so disc priests rarely took it unless for heroics.
From the PvP perspective, this change... changes nearly nothing. Imp DS will probably remain in the disc tree while the base skill will be given to all priests.
Holy priests never use spirit regen, since holy=survival (dont even try arguing with me if u havent played both holy and disc).Holy priests will directly benefit because their spirit turns directly into healing with some talents. Dont see this being big buff to shadow either
* Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
This is about the most perfect spell i could imagine for 5v5. Currently in 5v5, Shaman>priest simply because of heroism and more healing capabilities. From now on the priest will actually be able to compare to the shaman on healing thanks to this thing absorbing damage on all 5 party members (hopefully)
Nice PvE utility, but thats not my area of interest.
I'm just hoping a different CD then PWS otherwise weve been screwed over AGAIN (read: divine hymn-fear)
* Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
Maybe PoH will become effective heal for 5v5/3v3? :O holy nova remains something holy priests spam when theyve got no CDs so this is nice for them. CoH is mostly PvE so i wont bother
* Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
They deserved it
* Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
the biggest problem right now for disc priests is mobility (read: rogues) - giving it to us would make all other healing classes fall behind us bigtime.
Instead of giving us mobility Blizz gives us an extra big heal on ourselves. On one side, thats nice i finally dont have to spam heal, on the other hand though this spell wont help me for shit vs rogues and fury warriors (which are the two worst classes for priests) since its not like i can actually cast with one of them on me.
Hopefully power word barrier will help us out here by giving enough absorption (PWS+barrier) to be able to cast without pushback (wouldnt it be awesome is PWS absorbed interupts aswell? :O and say 1 interupt = 2000-3000 less absorption on shield)
* Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
Good for PvE and PvP - nice buff overall
* We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.
Some more mana regen to these guys and they are fine! currently they are just imba tanks.... for about 1 minute till theyre OOM