PW:S nerf?

[Esperz]

Why the Power Word Shield nerf? was it too much or what?

[Isheria]

Power Word shield was never buffed to begin with, this is a mere tooltip correction from a previous ptr build.

[Yetiman]

Power Word shield was never buffed to begin with, this is a mere tooltip correction from a previous ptr build.

Seconded. In fact, if you scroll down to earlier news, there's a blue post commenting on this very issue:

"The tooltip for PW:S on the PTR was recently updated to show it shielding for 40% more than on live. However, the actual numbers for PW:S on the PTR do not reflect the 40% buff. Can you confirm if this is just a tooltip error or if there is an intended buff to PW:S in the pipeline?"

We did not make a change to PW:S points nor is there anything in the patch notes or in one of my posts as far as I can recollect.
I will add that so far on our PTR raid testing, Disc priests are using PW:S along with PoH and not having abnormal HPS or mana problems. Heroic testing will tell more.

[Deleted]

I understood the whole 40% buff was a tooltip oddity, was just wondering about some notes from mmo the other day

Power Word: Shield (Discipline) absorb and SP scaling reduced by 13%.
Power Word: Shield (Holy) absorb and SP scaling reduced by 13%.
Renew healing and SP scaling reduced by 20%.

[Danner]

Most of this is just balancing against the new Spiritual Healing passive that Holy and Disc gets.

For a healing priest:
- Renew is now 20% less effective.
- But Spiritual Healing gives it another 25%.

These two buffs counter eachother completely.

X healing from renew * 0.8 (applying the 20% nerf) * 1.25 (applying the 25% buff) is still X.

As for PWS, I'm actually a bit confused as well. I believe it's actually being buffed a little, but that buff happened a few weeks back. The reason this has such weird playout is because they changed the implementation of how to apply this change halfway through the ptr phase, by introducing the healing-spec-only passive buff.

It's the dev's way of nerfing shadow healing, really. That's all that really matters here: shadow healing is being nerfed. For the rest of us, these changes are far less dramatic than they look.

[Deleted]

I understood the shadow balance, I was just confused by the fact that PWS change is specified for discipline/holy. If the 25% buff also applies to PWS, then it still looks like a buff.