Archangel

[Varaben]

So Im looking at the talent trees and I am curious about Archangel. What the tooltip says is: Consumes evangelism effects, instantly restoring 3% of your mana and increases your healing done by 3% for each stack, can cast penance while moving.

Ok, so we are assuming this is 3% mana and 15% healing increase at 5 stacks right? It reads like it could mean this or it could mean 15% mana back 15% healing. Its like saying I eat a lot of cake and pie. It could mean you eat a LOT of cake and some pie or a lot of both. But we cant get 15% of our mana back on a 15sec cooldown right? Not that you could stack evangelism up that fast...but anyway.

I think the smite and heal specs are gonna be hella fun. Smite 5 times, archangel, toss some heals, smite some more with a build like http://www.wowtal.com/#k=9X8wKydNrbX0t0.9dw.priest

The crappy thing is the smite heals are only within 15 yards so you either have to be in melee or hope people are clumped for the fight for some reason.

[fabian]

I do believe that with each stack, the amount of mana and healing is increased by 3%. I also doubt that smite dps/healing builds will be worth it at the start since your ability to overgear the content is extremely limited by the fact that it is only the first tier of raiding. The dps talents in healing trees are there for when you do not to be entirely focused on healing, which will not happen on the current tier of raiding, at least not right away.

[Kelesti]

That's not necessarily true, fabian. Look at Sartharion, and lolnaxx. There were fights, even phases within healing intensive fights, where healing is stable. You're still brought along because you're needed to be there (things do get rough, afterall), but what do you do between them?

Gluth (25) is a perfect example in the first tier. 3 healers required, 3 healers required, 3 healers req-- Oh shit! All hands on deck! Mop it up, and get back down to your 3. The point of the DPS talents is anyone can now cover that Healer role while not feeling useless between those intense moments, be it Restoration (Druid or Shaman), Discipline, or Holy (Priest or Paladin).

[fabian]

Still, the first time through a new raid, strategies are not finalized and it would be better to go in with a spec that is more healing focused. Once the content is on farm, then a dps/healing spec will be better than a pure(or mostly) healing spec.

[Kelesti]

Given the placement, it won't be hard to have a DPS/Healing spec, granted either way they're looking to be filler talents, similar to the way that Divine Fury/Spell Warding is up to the Priest.

In a pure healing aspect, Divine Fury is still 100% choice to go to, but there are so many outside factors to consider, hence Spell Warding being superior. That's how I view these DPS talents.

[Garrim]

Kelesti, they also said the DPS talents were there so healers don't have to constantly respec/switch specs to do dailies. So you might have a PvE and PvP healing spec. You won't have to slowly trudge your way through dailies or respec just to do them every day. So it was two fold reasoning. Dailies and doing DPS during low healing moments.

[Kelesti]

Threefold if you count that they want all healers to be offensive in PvP, giving time for people to die instead of just "omg one lost GCD means my team lost!"

[Cataclysmpriest]

So Im looking at the talent trees and I am curious about Archangel. What the tooltip says is: Consumes evangelism effects, instantly restoring 3% of your mana and increases your healing done by 3% for each stack, can cast penance while moving.

Ok, so we are assuming this is 3% mana and 15% healing increase at 5 stacks right? It reads like it could mean this or it could mean 15% mana back 15% healing. Its like saying I eat a lot of cake and pie. It could mean you eat a LOT of cake and some pie or a lot of both. But we cant get 15% of our mana back on a 15sec cooldown right? Not that you could stack evangelism up that fast...but anyway.

I think the smite and heal specs are gonna be hella fun. Smite 5 times, archangel, toss some heals, smite some more with a build like.......

The crappy thing is the smite heals are only within 15 yards so you either have to be in melee or hope people are clumped for the fight for some reason.

Actually you can smite the tank target all day and it will heal the tank or a lower health melee because it targets whoever is low health close to the target you are casting smite on and not your personal location... So no it not a crappy thing.

[Thexx]

Archangel is one of the prospective changes I was pretty "meh" about when I read it over originally, but I really like the implementation in the beta.

Ok, so we are assuming this is 3% mana and 15% healing increase at 5 stacks right? It reads like it could mean this or it could mean 15% mana back 15% healing. Its like saying I eat a lot of cake and pie. It could mean you eat a LOT of cake and some pie or a lot of both. But we cant get 15% of our mana back on a 15sec cooldown right? Not that you could stack evangelism up that fast...but anyway.

I tested this out today. It is 3% healing and 3% mana per stack -- topping out at 15% healing and 15% mana back with 5 stacks of Evangelism. Charges of Evangelism last 15 seconds, and Archangel itself lasts 17 seconds. The ability to move and use Penance with Archangel popped is not yet implemented, but my understanding is that adding that capability in is the eventual intent.

I was playing around as both disc and holy in some of the new 5-mans today, and found that I could stack Evangelism and use Archangel rather quickly. The way it works with Atonement is great, and I found that the healing was pretty easy, so I got to weave a lot of smites in in between heals. I've always tossed a little DPS around to speed things up in instance runs, and it was neat having that DPS have such great synergy with my role as a healer.

It's a little hard to comment on the way this'll fit in when Cataclysm comes out. Mana in the beta right now is even less of an issue than it is on live -- I find it very difficult to drop below 80% mana -- so it could be that the need to conserve will make weaving Smite to pop Archangel nearly on cooldown a lot less viable. However, I wouldn't be suprised to see Archangel's cooldown increased a bit.

[Zoros]

That's not necessarily true, fabian. Look at Sartharion, and lolnaxx. There were fights, even phases within healing intensive fights, where healing is stable. You're still brought along because you're needed to be there (things do get rough, afterall), but what do you do between them?

Gluth (25) is a perfect example in the first tier. 3 healers required, 3 healers required, 3 healers req-- Oh shit! All hands on deck! Mop it up, and get back down to your 3. The point of the DPS talents is anyone can now cover that Healer role while not feeling useless between those intense moments, be it Restoration (Druid or Shaman), Discipline, or Holy (Priest or Paladin).

Even in Icecrown hard modes I can cast offensive often. (I'm doing only 10 player modes) For example Saurfang I can keep Shadow Word: Pain and Devouring Plague all the time with no many problems, and even I cast several times smite, holy fire and mind blast before marks. Ofc now mana is endless, but what I pretend to say is that even in a scenario that forces healers to not have enough GCDs there enough chances to cast offensive spells.

FMV priests that cast offensive spells while healing are priests who want more challenge or try to play at 100% their character. So there's no reason for priests designers to focus on just smite and forget the rest of offensive priest spells. I love Mind Sear, and the current cataclysm talent trees force priest to use Holy Nova instead of it. The same can be said for every shadow spell.

I can understand that Blizzard ignore Mind Spike niche issue, it's not a priority. But to intentionally kill offensive spell niches is pointless. Are we suposed to still cast Mind Blast and Mind Spike when Smite heals through Attonement and is far more efficient and even refunds mana thanks to Archangel?

It's really contradictory that Blizzard answer to players that wants more challenge is to reduce their gameplay to boring smite spam.

[Kelesti]

Zoros, the point I was making in that post you quoted was in "entry level raids, in entry level gear" there were times to DPS. And given Holy's chakra (Holy and Shadow damage +15%), I think it's safe to say they haven't thought to make it just smite spam.

I'm not really sure where you're going with the rest of your post though.

[Zoros]

Zoros, the point I was making in that post you quoted was in "entry level raids, in entry level gear" there were times to DPS. And given Holy's chakra (Holy and Shadow damage +15%), I think it's safe to say they haven't thought to make it just smite spam.

I'm not really sure where you're going with the rest of your post though.

Yes, Chakra buff both shadow and holy spells. I won't discuss the fact that you need to spam 3 times smite to get it, because Chakra is already too controversial and I want to focus my post on a more important bad omen.

Could we lose our shadow spells in Cataclysm?

Attonement alone is enough reason to not cast Mind Blast, Mind Spike and even Holy Fire. Evangelism increases even more the difference between our shadow and holy spells, and finally there are other talents like Searing Light or Penitence in the same direction that leave our shadow nukes aside. Maybe it's just a "holy form" nightmare that don't let me sleep. But I don't want to trade my shadow spells for more DPS.

Why not hybrid holy-shadow talents? Would be unbalanced? Test of Faith for example could increase all damage done to targets below 25%, not only with smite and holy fire. Or Searing Light could increase chance to hit on targets affected by holy fire. Even I think that the place for all this offensive healer talents must be in the shadow tree. Darkness could increase all damage done, ofc the name must be changed, but what I want to say is:

-Is not possible to improve our DPS as healers using the shadow tree?
-Is not possible to keep our offensive niches between shadow and holy spells?
-Is not possible to replace smite talents for more healing and utility talents if we put smite talents on the shadow tree?
-Ofc the difference for shadowpriests must be 0, just they will make a bit more DPS with their holy nukes, something unimportant fmv.

I miss some more talents like Choir Leader and Improved Holy Nova that feels optional and make a priest different from another. Maybe Improved Resurrection, or Improved Leap of Faith, or Improved Shackle Undead, Improved Fear Ward, or Improved Prayer of Mending. Ofc the "improved" name must be changed. And merging smite talents with the shadow tree could give us space to add it. Ofc, hybrid Healing-DPS talents like Divine Fury are not a problem.

[Varaben]

Thanks for the beta confirm. I suspect the 15% is to offset the mana cost of smite to make it worthwhile to cast it. I suspect we can smite in dmg luls then when we are about to need healing pop archangel then heal a bit. Should be a fun playstyle I think.

[Lysdexic]

Only issue I see is that it's going to maybe be underpowered at the beginning of the expansion, where the mana regain is not that much more than the cost of the smites.

By the end of the expansion however, any chance to get 15% of your mana back every 20 seconds is IMO a bit over the top. Unfortunately, it's probably implemented with low levels in mind...

[cruxxy]

With the holy damage talents and since smite has a longer base cast time, I'm guessing smite spam damage will be greater than incorporating MB/MSp into the rotation. For pure holy dps, I see smite to get Chakra up, then DoT and back to HF/Smite spam.

Of course there still may be some changes to MB scaling (hopefully?) so who knows.

[Varaben]

Actually you can smite the tank target all day and it will heal the tank or a lower health melee because it targets whoever is low health close to the target you are casting smite on and not your personal location... So no it not a crappy thing.

I missed this post, thanks for the info. Again, the tooltip is unclear, thanks for clearing that up. That does make it uaeful especially for heroics. I hope they make holy fire proc the heal (or maybe it already does? I'm on my phone its hard to look). Would be nice to have another button to hit. Plus then glyph of smite is like a healing cooldown

[Kede]

It's kind of nice for leveling in a group, however I don't need the mana back at this time... since I'm sitting at 40k unbuffed at 81. (But it's still beta... after all.)
I can't wait to try it out at a lower level.

[vertigo12]

With this talent and its prerequisite along with chakra in holy tree, My vision of holy dps is slowly turning to reality.