Healing priests & Cataclysm

[Venara]

Hai!

So basically, what they just did is: Make every cloth item that has spirit on it exclusive for healing priests. I like it ;D

Aside from that, other interesting points:

- Haste: They said it will be used to recover resources as energy and runes more quickly / let you do "stuff" more often. So, what does this mean for us? Regenerate mana faster? Decrease global cooldown / spell cooldowns?
- Stamina: So, we will see a lot more stamina, right? "Health pools will be much closer to plate wearers". Hm, what does that mean? 35k HP priests (not in PvP gear)?
- Spell ranks: I think this was a much needed change. Downranking has been dead for quite a while but I'm still seeing priests using "Heal".


As for Int, Crit and Spellpower I gather we won't notice the changes that much.

Please share your thoughts!

Cheers,
Venara

[MushroomBomb]

- Haste: They said it will be used to recover resources as energy and runes more quickly / let you do "stuff" more often. So, what does this mean for us? Regenerate mana faster? Decrease global cooldown / spell cooldowns?

- Stamina: So, we will see a lot more stamina, right? "Health pools will be much closer to plate wearers". Hm, what does that mean? 35k HP priests (not in PvP gear)?

First off, Haste only affects Energy, Runes, Focus and Retribution Paladin/Enhancement Shaman regeneration from what I understood. So I guess it'll work like it does now, reducing spell cast times and possibly the global cooldown.

Secondly, I'll be perfectly honest in that I don't think we'll see that big of an HP increase. Well, at least not until we're in full T11-equivalent gear. From what I understood, only the tanks will jump loads higher. Cloth-, Leather- and Mail-weavers will get more HP, but just to get us a whole lot closer to non-tank Plate-wearers. I just imagine that the health-increase will be smaller since we're only getting 5 more levels.

Thirdly, the roles might now be reversed. What was a Healing-Legendary BiS for Shadow Priests in WotLK might now be a DPS-Legendary BiS for healing Priests in Cataclysm. Suck on that, you shield-spammers with your fancy orange text!

Fourthly, I'm curious in seeing exactly what they do with our healing talents. While I understand that talents such as Holy Specialization, Spiritual Healing, Twin Disciplines, Mental Strength and Enlightenment are probably being removed, I'm curious as to what will be done with talents like Focused Power and Blessed Resilience will do in regards to both affecting gameplay mechanics that aren't 'boring' as well as strictly improving healing done. I'd imagine that the 'less mana cost for X spell' might stay because it'll provide more choice in spell choices, though.

EDIT: Priests use Heal? Really? It has the same cast time and mana cost as Greater Heal :

[Venara]

Our non-tank plate-wearers are at 33-34k HP raidbuffed. I'm close to 29k. I honestly don't think 35k would be that surprising, if not to say that I'm expecting an increase to at least 32-33k.

I found that part about the legendary particularly interesting. There's a good chance that you're right, I guess.

Yeah, I saw some using "Heal" -.-

[fabian]

Mushroom is right on the haste part being regen for those classes, although I could see casters getting a haste regen talent.

35k HP Priests in Cata? I would actually think of it more of a 60k HP priest(at 85) because they want everyone to at least upgrade once before reaching 85.

I think all the 3s cast times "heals" will be consolidated into GH, or morphed into it when you get to the point in which you learn GH.

[MushroomBomb]

Our non-tank plate-wearers are at 33-34k HP raidbuffed. I'm close to 29k. I honestly don't think 35k would be that surprising, if not to say that I'm expecting an increase to at least 32-33k.

Oh, I see. I'm not in any super-awesome raiding guild at the moment, so I only really see casters at 25/26K raidbuffed HP, max. I suppose it might go higher than I was expecting, then. My point was really just that I think a lot of people are expecting way more than we'll be getting in terms of Stamina and HP.

[Coolmatt701]

Grats on Val'anyr! just saw your sig and thought I'd post

[bregtan]

Hai!

So basically, what they just did is: Make every cloth item that has spirit on it exclusive for healing priests. I like it ;D

Not quite. Druids, Shamans and Pallies will also be rolling on it as all the healing classes seem to be wanting the exact same stats, especially since they also announced that the difference between the armor value of different armor types is going to be narrowed down. So pretty much plate/mail/leather/cloth healing gear will be the same gear with different art.

Which will make the whole situation where pallies can use all 4 types, while priests can only use one type completely absurd and utterly unfair, until they will have to say that you can ONLY use your own armor class.

[Azyoulike]

So basically, what they just did is: Make every cloth item that has spirit on it exclusive for healing priests. I like it ;D

I must be missing something on the blue-post. Why will caster druids not still be rolling on spirit cloth?

[rellex]

I must be missing something on the blue-post. Why will caster druids not still be rolling on spirit cloth?

because they have spirit leather

in an ideal world at least

edit: as an aside, i wouldn't be surprised if they add spriests to the list of spi->hit list, so that someone else is readily able to use the gear AND they don't have to be the only healing/casting dps hybrid class that has to make two sets (since resto shaman/druids won't have to)

[Danner]

I think the major change will come with "new spirit".

Intellect is basically just giving spellpower in cataclysm. It's not a big change. I'm sort of annoyed they didn't remove spellpower alltogether as a concept though.

Int will give less maxmana than today, and considering how good int is at the moment, I suspect it to be significantly less. Hopefully around... 5 mana / int. Otherwise I can imagine healers would simply neglect/ignore/avoid spirit in favor of intellect. But this change also opens a new problem. DPS Casters still need mana, but you can't make int the regen stat, or healers would stack it over spirit. Either healers get talents drastically increasing the value of spirit and the cost of heals increase correspondingly, or dpsers get talents giving regen from damage done to the point where regen doesn't matter for them. Which is going to be hell in PVP.

Either way, abilities returning mana based on intellect are going to go away. They can't keep them as-is if spirit is to be taken by healers as a gear substitute for hit.

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Stamina will be increased. This is probably in line with the "health pools will be larger, tanks will not be twoshot" healing strategy. I don't think Blizzard has thought that one quite through. If they want to return to vanilla style healing with healers standing around doing nothing, I would expect raiders everywhere to reduce the amount of healers and bring more innervates. We'll see how it works out I guess.

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I'm very interested in how regen buffs and abilities are going to change. Shadowfiend might get nerfed into just returning a constant mana value / hit (like innervate today). Manatide totem and Hymn of Hope will probably be completely reworked. BoW/manaspring/Prayer of Spirit will likely either vanish or get consolidated into yielding spirit directly.

[Annarion]

They've already stated that they're are going to create benefits for pallies/shams/druids to stick with their own armor class. How that plays out we'll have to see, but they can be surprisingly intelligent and simple.