1. #1
    Puts the "Super" in Supermod Venara's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Cork, Ireland
    Posts
    3,709

    [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    Hello my fellow priests!

    Since it's been asked for and some other class forums already have it:

    Here's a compiled list of all priest changes that are currently to come with 3.1. If you think that i have missed something please let me know. Also feel free to use this thread (and this thread only) for further discussions that concerning the priest changes in general (meaning that you can still create topics on one thing in particular but should use this when talking in general).

    (The [Priest] tag in the subject is just a simple way of making sure that people looking at the forum ticker know that this is a topic that only concerns priests.)


    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Races: General
    • Gift of the Naaru (Draenei Racial): The heal has been changed to an instant-cast direct heal instead of a heal-over-time.
    • Stoneform (Dwarf Racial): No longer makes you immune to poison, disease and bleed effects for 8 seconds. Instead, using Stoneform will clear those effects when cast. Cooldown reduced to 2 minutes from 3 minutes.

    Classes: General
    • Spirit: The amount of mana regeneration granted by this stat has been reduced by 40%.

    Miscellanous
    • Divine Hymn will now trigger Illustration of the Dragon Soul.

    Priest (Skills List / Talent + Glyph Calc.)
    • Abolish Disease: Now cleanses a disease every 3 seconds, down from 5. Duration reduced from 20 seconds down to 12 seconds.
    • Devouring Plague: This spell now has a new icon.
    • Divine Hymn redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, summoning the power of the Divine to assist you in your time of need. Heals 3 nearby lowest-health friendly party or raid targets for 4960-5208 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and increases healing done to them by 15% for 8 seconds. Maximum of 12 heals. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.
    • Divine Spirit is now trainable at level 31.
    • Holy Nova: Mana cost reduced approximately 20%.
    • Improved Holy Concentration removed.
    • Hymn of Hope redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, restoring hope to those in despair. Restores 3% mana to 3 nearby low mana friendly party or raid targets every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and temporarily increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 seconds. After the effect expires, the mana is lost. Maximum of 12 mana restorations. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.
    • Mental Agility, Inner Focus, Shadow Reach, Shadow Focus and Shadow Affinity now all affect Psychic Horror.
    • Prayer of Healing: This spell now heals the target's party, rather than being limited to just your direct party.
    • Shadowfiend: Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master's spell power. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now returns mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. No longer has a 75% reduced chance to be hit by melee, ranged and spells. Movement speed normalized to player movement speed. Tooltip revised.
    Discipline
    • Divine Aegis: Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target). It will also now take into account total healing including overhealing.
    • Improved Divine Spirit: This talent has been removed.
    • New Talent: Improved Flash Heal: Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal by 5/10/15%, and increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal by 4/7/10% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.
    • Grace: This talent no longer decreases damage done to the target, but the duration has increased to 15 seconds and the healing bonus has increased from 2% to 3%. This affect now cannot be applied to more than one target at a time.
    • Improved Power Word: Fortitude: Now also increases your total stamina by 2/4%.
    • Meditation and Improved Power: Word shield have changed locations with each other.
    • Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.
    • Mental Agility: Reduced to 3 points (4/7/10%), down from 5.
    • New Talent: Soul Warding: Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 seconds, and reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Shield by 30%.
    • Penance: Damage increased approximately 30%.This spell can now be cast on yourself.
    • Power Infusion: This effect now has a new spell effect.
    • Renewed Hope: This talent also now allows you to proc the Renewed Hope buff on all party/raid members every time you cast Power Word: Shield, reducing damage taken by 3%. Lasts 20 seconds.
    • Unbreakable Will:Increased from 3/6/9/12/15% to 6/12/18/24/30%.
    Holy
    • Circle of Healing: Healing increased by approximately 40%.
    • Holy Concentration redesigned: Mana regeneration is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 seconds after you critically heal with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal or Renew.
    • New Talent: Empowered Renew: Your Renew spell gains an additional 5/10/15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew will instantly heal the target for 5/10/15% of the total periodic effect.
    • Serendipity redesigned: When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 4/8/12%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 seconds.
    • Test of Faith: No longer increases critical effect chance of your heals, but healing done on targets lower than 50% health is increased from 2/4/6% to 4/8/12%.
    Shadow
    • Blackout: This talent has been removed.
    • Darkness: This talent is now in tier-1, moved up from tier-6.
    • Dispersion: Now clears all snare and movement-impairing effects and makes you immune to them while dispersed.
    • New Talent: Improved Devouring Plague: Increases the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 5/10/15% of its total periodic effect.
    • Mind Melt: Now also increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch spells by 3/6%.
    • Psychic Horror: Has been redesigned and is now a 1-point talent. You terrify the target, causing them to tremble in horror for 3 seconds and drop all weapons (disarm effect: including bows) for 10 seconds. 1 minute cooldown. Instant cast. The horror effect can be dispelled, but the disarm cannot.
    • Improved Spirit Tap: Now grants 17/33% of mana regeneration while casting.
    • Shadow Affinity: Now also causes you to receive 5/10/15% of your base mana when your Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch spells are dispelled.
    • Shadowform: Now reduces all damage taken by 15%, not just physical damage. Bonus damage from critical strike chance removed and replaced by the ability of those periodic damage spells to generate critical strikes.
    • Silence: Range increased to 30 yards.
    • Spirit Tap: Now grants 83% of mana regeneration while casting.
    • Vampiric Embrace duration increased to 5 minutes, up from 1 minute. PvP duration is now 60 seconds. Cooldown removed.
    • Vampiric Touch: When dispelled, Vampiric Touch will deal damage to the afflicted target.
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Glyphs
    • Glyph of Dispersion: Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 45 seconds.
    • Glyph of Fade: Now reduces cooldown by 9 seconds.
    • Glyph of Fear Ward: Now reduces duration and cooldown by 1 minute.
    • Glyph of Guardian Spirit: If your Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 seconds.
    • Glyph of Hymn of Hope: Your Hymn of Hope provides 2 times the normal amount of mana-per-time, but its duration is 50% shorter.
    • Glyph of Inner Fire: Increases bonus armor by 50%.
    • Glyph of Mind Control: Increases duration by 30 seconds.
    • Glyph of Mind Sear: Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.
    • Glyph of Pain Suppression: Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.
    • Glyph of Penance: Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 seconds.
    • Glyph of Psychic Scream: Increases duration by 2 seconds, but increases cooldown by 8 seconds.
    Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment
    Healers - Spirit regeneration and healing in Ulduar
    That was partially because OFSR was so potent back then. Honestly, we're not trying to recreate the MC days or healer rotations, though I can understand if some of you are nostalgic for them.

    In Ulduar, you should run out of mana if...

    1) You don't have enough gear for the instance.
    2) You aren't playing the encounter well enough.

    If you have good enough gear and good enough skill and aren't standing in fires and are kiting adds correctly and doing all the right things, then you aren't designed to run OOM.

    The reason we wanted to nerf regen is that having infinite mana was allowing too much of a buffer on those two factors (it allowed for too much "slop" in organization and execution). Take Saphiron as an example. When mana regen is very high, the dps can sit in the blizzards for a little while because the healers can just heal through it and make up enough mana when they get a clearcasting proc or are running for ice blocks (because OFSR regen was so good). In previous tiers of content, the guild probably would have had to farm the earlier bosses for several weeks to get enough gear to have a chance at the final few.

    Now Naxx was designed to be easy, and Ulduar isn't going to be a lot harder. Hard modes on the bosses though are designed to be very hard. That means being inefficient with mana has to be a liability instead of a tool used to make the content less challenging. (Source)

    Healing in Ulduar
    We don't generally throw out raid damage so severe that you have to heal multiple targets within one GCD or risk losing them all. If you are finding that to be the case then it's possible your group is not sufficiently geared for the encounter. If players are dying a lot during Vortex, their health may just be too low. After the Vortex had ended, you should have plenty of time to heal someone, target someone else to heal them, etc.

    We still intend for you to be able to take any 3 healers (it will probably be closer to 3 for Ulduar) in a 10 player group and be good to go. However, as you start to try hard modes there is going to be more pressure to have every player in the role that most emphasizes their strengths. You may want a mix of healers. (Source)

    Replenishment
    I think at this point the discussion is less about clarifying our position and more about some players just not liking the concept of Replenishment or wanting even more flexibility in who they invite. I’m not sure logical arguments are going to sway anyone’s position. Nevertheless, I will attempt to outline the design from our point of view:

    • We want you to group.
    • We want you to be more powerful when you group.
    • One way we do that is by letting you benefit from buffs that other players bring.
    • We can’t give everyone a unique buff that guarantees them a raid slot. We tried this in BC. What happens is that the classes with necessary buffs are brought and the others are ignored. There are 10 classes and 30 specs in the game. You can’t bring them all to a 25-player raid or certainly a 10-player raid.
    • We asked some cutting-edge raiders during LK development: How many balance druids, ret paladins or death knights are you going to bring? The answer was probably none. They didn’t have any space.
    • So our solution was to give you multiple ways to get the buffs. Different specs bring different versions of the same benefit that do not stack. Hopefully those specs will be attractive, but not so attractive that you want to stack the raid with them. You have more flexibility. You can make decisions about which players to bring.
    • In BC, Shadow priests brought the buff that we now call Replenishment. As a result, Shadow priests were pretty much mandatory to raid in BC. Great for Shadow priests. Bad for other dps classes. Our solution was not to cut the mechanic but to offer it to more specs to give you more flexibility.
    • Now we could have cut the mechanic. We could have tried to come up with another cool benefit that Shadow priests, Retribution paladins and the others bring. But the mechanic worked. Groups were happy when they had a Shadow priest. Shadow priests were happy that their groups were happy.
    • Depending on who you ask, there are other buffs that are mandatory. Bloodlust / Heroism and battle rez get brought up a lot. Kings and Fort are pretty huge. We don’t assume you have any of those, except Replenishment. We assume you have a tank, healer, dps, some form of crowd control, and a mana battery in your raids.
    • As a hedge on that bet, we also made the introductory content easier. Far more players have experienced Naxxramas compared to Karazhan, and we think that is a big win.
    • If you didn’t raid a lot in BC, you may not remember how bad it was then. Perhaps you want even more flexibility than we offer today. That is a valid standpoint to take, but it definitely does get harder for us to offer content of an appropriate challenge (meaning neither too high nor too low) when your group can literally be of any composition with any medley of raid buffs.
    • Similarly, if you are skilled and organized, you can likely get by even without essential buffs like Replenishment. Some of you will probably beat hard modes without Replenishment. Others of you won’t dream of trying without it, Bloodlust, Prayer of Fortitude, Blessing of Kings, Mark of the Wild and so on. We are not at all guaranteeing every group will be able to beat the hard modes. Remember, Algalon feeds on your tears.
    • We don’t think you need Replenishment (or any buff) to do heroic 5-player content. You do need a tank and a healer. You probably don’t even need a tank or healing spec, depending on your skill and gear (meaning an Arms warrior and Ret healer could do fine).
    • We don’t think you need Replenishment to do a 5-player Arena team, but it can be a nice bonus.
    • We don’t think you need Replenishment to solo. The issue of how often various classes or specs should have to take a break while soloing (i.e. drink for mana-users) is something we discuss a lot. Some specs don’t have to do it at all, such as any priest with Spirit Tap. Classes with healing spells, especially druids, can top themselves off and keep going. Other classes without mana, especially warriors, have a lot of down time to eat or bandage. It’s a larger discussion, but you can certainly make a compelling argument that every spec should have around the same down time. (Source)

    Replenishment and healers
    That argues healers are stronger than other classes when solo since it is not your output that is diminished when alone. It is only your regeneration and I haven’t seen too many arguments from healers that say they are OOM after healing themselves from a typical solo encounter.

    Put another way, here are the common concerns I see:

    1) We don't want to rely on other classes for superior mana regen when grouping.
    2) We won't have enough mana regen in 5-player content.
    3) We won't have enough mana regen when soloing.
    4) We will have too much downtime when soloing.

    1 is just the design of the game. 4 is a concern. We aren't convinved 2 and 3 are going to be a big deal. Actually, I will add a 5th, which is that Replenishment makes Int much better than Spirit. There is some validity to that point, but at the same time, Spirit still does something for casters (it is rarely wasted) and you are not often choosing directly between Int and Spirit. But mana regen stats are something we are taking a bigger look at. Either Spirit or Int or mp5 always feels like the queen stat and it is probably not tenable to have so many regen stats in the long term. (Source)

    Warrior rage generation while Power Word: Shield is active in 3.1
    This is a buff to warriors versus priests. However, warriors also received a pretty hefty nerf versus priests that not many players are talking about. Specifically, you will no longer be at zero armor in PvP situations. (Source)

    Power Word: Barrier (Power Word: Shield for the whole group) and Hymns revamp
    We'd still like to do Barrier, but some of the revamps ended up more extensive than we planned. At this point we'd rather make what we have taste good instead of throwing new ingredients into the stew, but it's an idea we still like.

    Believe it or not, hymns are still being worked on. Now that the squid works a little better, Hymn of Hope has even less of a role. (Source)

    No Abolish Poison for priests
    As a few players have suggested, we think the solution here is just to make sure that hunters and rogues aren't so good versus priests simply because of the lack of poison removal. We don't think that needs to be giving Abolish Poison or the like to priests. (Source)
    For Moderation Concerns, please contact a Global:
    TzivaRadux SimcaElysiaZaelsinoxskarmaVenara

  2. #2

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    So now the forum gods bless us with consolidated info! Huzzah! Thanks for saving us all a bit of time, Venara.
    ~Former Priest/Guild Wars 2 Moderator~
    Now TESTING: ArcheAge (Alpha)
    Now PLAYING: MonoRed Burn (MtG Standard)
    Twitter: @KelestiMMO come say hi!
    ~When you speak, I hear silence. Every word a defiance~

  3. #3

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    WOW Thank you very Much!
    Make the most of your self, for that's all there is of you.

  4. #4

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    Thank you Venara!

    (however id like a small request...dunno if its been written anywhere, but is there any chance u could post the type of glyph for each one? i mean major or minor.)

    Thanks again!

  5. #5
    Puts the "Super" in Supermod Venara's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Cork, Ireland
    Posts
    3,709

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    Quote Originally Posted by dsmet
    Thank you Venara!

    (however id like a small request...dunno if its been written anywhere, but is there any chance u could post the type of glyph for each one? i mean major or minor.)

    Thanks again!
    I'll have a look at it.
    For Moderation Concerns, please contact a Global:
    TzivaRadux SimcaElysiaZaelsinoxskarmaVenara

  6. #6

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    Thanks a bunch for doing this!

    You may want to add the new Glyph of Hymn of Hope change as much as I hate it. =(

  7. #7
    Scarab Lord AetherMcLoud's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Wandering Isles
    Posts
    4,492

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    Is this (the bolded part)

    Shadowfiend: Health scaling increased. Now receives 30% of the master's spell power. Mana return increased to 5%, up from 4%. The Shadowfiend now returns mana when its melee attacks land, rather than when it deals damage. No longer has a 75% reduced chance to be hit by melee, ranged and spells. Movement speed normalized to player movement speed. Tooltip revised.
    still active? I remember a post from Ghostcrawler saying they added standard pet avoidance (which is 70% to all aoe resistance) to all temporary pets (he was talking about shaman ghost wolfs but said that every temporary pet benefitted from it, and it was a slight nerf for warriors against them pets).

    Or does it mean, the fiend lost 75% avoidance against regular attacks and spells, but still has / or got 70% avoidance to aoe effect like Frost Nova and so on?
    You know what is better than drinking a beer? Brewing your own beer. And then drinking it. And then... Drinking another beer. And then, punching somebody in the snout! That's what!

  8. #8

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    The Shadowfiend now has avoidance for AoE attacks, but itno longer has avoidance for direct attacks.
    I shall die here. Every inch of me shall perish. Every inch, but one. An inch. It is small and it is fragile and it is the only thing in the world worth having. We must never lose it or give it away. We must never let them take it from us.

  9. #9

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    Im lovin my Priest even more now!

  10. #10
    Scarab Lord AetherMcLoud's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Sep 2008
    Location
    Wandering Isles
    Posts
    4,492

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    I'm hating my shadowpriest in pvp even more now.

    Again Blizzard forces me into the disc spec (and healing that is) if I want to live longer than 6 seconds in PVP.

    All I wanted was to pew pew like I was able to at level 60, is that too much to ask?
    You know what is better than drinking a beer? Brewing your own beer. And then drinking it. And then... Drinking another beer. And then, punching somebody in the snout! That's what!

  11. #11
    Puts the "Super" in Supermod Venara's Avatar
    15+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Location
    Cork, Ireland
    Posts
    3,709

    Re: [Priest] 3.1 Changes, Blue Posts, etc.

    Sticky removed.

    3.1 is live for a while now. This thread is probably not needed anymore, though i will create a new sticky to preserve a few things that are worth keeping. Look out for that one!

    Cheers,
    Venara
    For Moderation Concerns, please contact a Global:
    TzivaRadux SimcaElysiaZaelsinoxskarmaVenara

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •