WoD Alpha patch notes

[Deleted]

Innervate has been removed. Mana costs for Druids have been adjusted accordingly.

Divine Plea has been removed. Mana costs for Paladins have been adjusted accordingly.

Rapture has been removed.

I don't understand. Why didn't disc priests get their mana costs "adjusted accordingly"? I haven't found disc to be OP when it comes to mana management.

I noticed this too...i hope it doesn´t mean we wont be on par with mana regen compared to other healers.

As do I. However over half of the disc priest's I've spoken to asked wtf I was on about when I mentioned rapture, and I had to actually link it to them from my spellbook.

I met alot of these too, and they are just bad disc priests and there are alot bad disc priest out there. Ive seen priests with 15k mana going oom or even one with 18k mana who both never heard of or monitored rapture.

Im gonna miss rapture, i think it was a nice way of getting mana back instead of just popping a spell on yourself. I wouldn´t have minded if they nerfed it instead.

[Deleted]

As a Disc priest my thoughts of the entire patch notes is pretty much.

Yup. It does feel a little bit like that. I was also slightly miffed on seeing Renew become Holy only but Power Word: Shield remains available to all. I'm also ready to admit that I was wrong about Prayer of Healing. I was convinced that it would be redesigned to better work with flexible group sizes and that Discipline would receive a bit of a Spirit Shell makeover to compensate.

Apparently, this isn't happening. Discipline will be lumped with group-limited Prayer of Healing while Holy gets the option to choose a talent which fixes the spell to actually work within the new model of raiding and healing! Instead, we get a 20 second duration cast-time single target shield.

Word of Mending might be nice for getting out effectively free Prayer of Mending during damage lulls so long as it works with Atonement. I doubt it will. Speaking of Atonement, can we have the 50% healing for the priest limitation removed now that the spell is baseline 65% of damage? Pretty annoyed to see Saving Grace still existing. I hate the very idea behind that talent.

Then again, multiple Prayer of Mending being possible from the one priest? I like that change. We can use that along with Holy Nova for some interesting means of AoE healing.

I noticed this too...i hope it doesn´t mean we wont be on par with mana regen compared to other healers.

We haven't been on par with other healers this expansion in terms of mana regeneration. We actively seek pieces that have less spirit after all! Shadowfiend still exists by the looks of things to boot. Rapture can go.

[Deleted]

So, let's sum it up.

Our mana regeneration:
-Hymn of Hope has been removed.
-Rapture has been removed.
-Inner Focus no longer provides any mana cost reduction.
While Shamans keep their Water Shield and Glyph of Telluric Currents.

In PvP:
Holy Word: Chastise and Mind Control are on the same DR, together with Psychic Scream, that you have to take a talent for and has increased cooldown. No longer Chastise into Mind Control or Mind Control into Psychic Scream, making our landing of CC again useless, as it was before.
Void Tendrils, while the only CC that a player don't need a dispeller for, is nerfed even more (20% of priest's hp > 10% of priest's hp).
Renew removed for disc, Prayer of Mending has a cast time, Divine Star has a cast time, Void Shift removed, making Power Word: Shield the only instant heal for discipline priests. Don't forget that absorbs are nerfed. Disc will move from a trash can that is now in (0.5% representation) into total nonexistence.

For PvE:
READ THIS
There's nothing more to add. We won't longer create shields to snipe non-critical healing, making our absorb spec really useless. Enjoy playing Whac-A-Mole. And welcome our HoT overlords.

[muto]

This expansion already looks good

Getting rid of all the "chore" abilities like Rapture, and getting rid of some big cd abilities.

[Deleted]

There's nothing more to add. We won't longer create shields to snipe non-critical healing, making our absorb spec really useless. Enjoy playing Whac-A-Mole. And welcome our HoT overlords.

Our absorbs won't be useless. HoTs will be filling in unhealed damage, and we will be providing a buffer. There isn't much wrong with such a design.

We will still be playing Whack-a-Mole more then before (that is triage after all), only now with the fun option to track the shield from Clarity of Will and press the frame that doesn't have such a shield. A bit like a less engaging Eternal Flame. There is no avoiding this change in play style since one of the things which allowed us not to play Whack-a-Mole was the passive shielding of Atonement and excess of Divine Star.

[MoanaLisa]

Kind of sad they say no word about addressing the 3vs0 orbs at start of fight problem, in fact the word Shadow Orb is never even used in the blog.. I guess so much for hoping for new orb consumers.

It's in the leveling perks part:

Enhanced Shadow Orbs - You may have a maximum of 5 Shadow Orbs. No spell or ability will consume more than 3 orbs.

So there you go.

[manybadgers]

<-Disc
Guess our fun ended, that cat gif is perfect for next expansion. Void shift is gone and I'm assuming shifted appearances will be gone too

[Deleted]

We haven't been on par with other healers this expansion in terms of mana regeneration. We actively seek pieces that have less spirit after all! Shadowfiend still exists by the looks of things to boot. Rapture can go.

Thats true, but isn´t that what made us special? But i guess its ok to be on par spirit/mana wise, just fearing the mana regen will be lower then the rest. But guess we have to wait and see



Other then that its just early patch notes guys, some changes might sound rash but turn out good. You won´t know anything until beta and there is still room for changes. Saying u wont be playing disc or priest already is a bit to soon.

Im happy about the changes in atonement and overpowered shields, as long as it doesn´t affect us in a bad way compared to other healers. I can´t judge much without results.

[aviectus]

i loved how last night ( at least here in EU ) some of us stayed until REALLY late waiting for them to be posted. To be honest, i loved them even if most of them was already know to us, except class changes and very specific ability removals. I guess patch notes + info from Alpha testers would be the ultimate stream. Until then we should not get into assumptions.

[Deleted]

Thats true, but isn´t that what made us special? But i guess its ok to be on par spirit/mana wise, just fearing the mana regen will be lower then the rest. But guess we have to wait and see



Other then that its just early patch notes guys, some changes might sound rash but turn out good. You won´t know anything until beta and there is still room for changes. Saying u wont be playing disc or priest already is a bit to soon.

Im happy about the changes in atonement and overpowered shields, as long as it doesn´t affect us in a bad way compared to other healers. I can´t judge much without results.

One of the reasons we have had Atonement appearing as too powerful and shields being complained about is related to our ability to perform with lower amounts of mana regeneration. Instead of spirit, we've been able to stack crit and mastery which both function as powerful throughput (and overheal decreasing) stats for us and result in more sniping of healing from other sources. If our spirit requirements had been kept in check, we might not have reached the position of needing to see Atonement neutered.

We do need to see how we stack up before people can make personal decisions about what they play. However, I am very jealous of the far more interesting looking L100 talents that other healers are getting.

[Danner]

That's a lot of info at once.

Hit rating is gone, so Divine Fury / Spiritual Precision is gone
Eh, no impact whatsoever for anyone. Bye bye!

Binding Heal is no longer available to Shadow Priests.
I cannot say I am too surprised. I'm more surprised they didn't merge this with flash heal.

Hymn of Hope has been removed.
Bye bye. Good riddance. One less reason to leave priest spells as horribly expensive for no good reason.

Heal has been removed.
Old but very welcome news.

Greater Heal has been renamed Heal.
Daaw. 'Heal' is a loaded spell name at this point :/

Inner Focus no longer provides any mana cost reduction.
Rapture has been removed.
It's not a bad deal... assuming spell costs are adjusted accordingly. Just means less "maintenance" for casting.
If not, I'm not really sure where they are going.

Renew is now available only to Holy Priests.
Highly overdue. But it seems they copped out on the "Renew replacing PWS" part.

Shadow Word: Death is now available only to Shadow Priests.
Farewell, my finisher spell. I'll just have to use Holy Fire instead then. I'll live.

Void Shift has been removed.
Situational spell is too situational?
Guardian Spirit tended to fill that niche for me, making it a less used ability. I must admit this does not really bother me. While I had some spectacular tank saves with this one, it never really did much for me.

Inner Fire has been removed.
Inner Will has been removed.
And this certainly does not. Farewell, good riddance, won't really be missed.
Or rather... I guess noone will really get the reference when I say I have an inner fire buff in RL when I walk around without a jacket in the middle of winter.
Kinda melancholic, but not really sad.

Dominate Mind now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Mesmerize effects.
Holy Word: Chastise now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Mesmerize effects.
Psychic Horror now shares Diminishing Returns with all other Mesmerize effects.
Uh.. sure. I don't think anyone uses Mind Control anyway, but this is basically how they prevent the holypriest from having double CC.
Or something? Not a PvPer so I can't really comment on this.

Psychic Scream is now a level-15 talent, replacing Psyfiend, and has a 45-second cooldown (up from 30 seconds).
I really really like this change, and I think there are many people who think the same.
But I don't see anyone NOT taking Psychic Scream out of these alternatives.

Rapture no longer has any effect beyond removing the cooldown of Power Word: Shield.
Uh. I thought it was removed? *confused*

Void Tendrils' Root effect now has a chance to break if the target takes sufficient damage.
Sure. I like CC breaking on damage.

Prayer of Mending now has a 1.5-second cast time (up from instant cast).
I really hate this change. It's wrecking the instant spell in the priest toolbox.
I'd rather put a cast time on renew and PWS to be honest. Though discpriests may heavily disagree on that one

Cascade now has a 1.5-second cast time (up from instant cast).
Divine Star now has a 1.5-second cast time (up from instant cast).
Halo now has a 1.5-second cast time (up from instant cast).
While these don't really bother me.
Except maybe that it's not at all true for the shadow spec, but more on that later.

Atonement now heals for 25% less than before.
Atonement, nerfed to the ground, as announced.
Well, it could be okay. If disc had a real single target heal that wasn't on a cooldown. We'll have to see what they come up with!

Halo and Divine Star now follow standard AoE capping rules.
And hello, world of craptastic aoe healing. It was good while it lasted. Probably needed for disc, will hurt holy bad. But I guess that's too early to tell.

We decided to move more of the effectiveness of Chakras from their raw throughput buff (which felt like a penalty for being in the wrong chakra, rather than a bonus for being in the right Chakra) into the Holy Word spells that they grant.
YES! AMAZING! I LOVE YOU!

Chakra: Serenity now increases healing of single-target spells by 10% (down from 25%).
Chakra: Sanctuary now increases healing of area-of-effect spells by 10% (down from 25%).
That is not what you said just above! I retract my declaration of love, and will prepare myself for another expansion of Chakra being a kludge. Thanks for absolutely nothing.

Holy Word: Serenity now heals for 40% more than before.
Not really sure that is needed, but sure... It's not exactly going to replace the current strength of renew + serenity rolling, but numbers can be adjusted.

Holy Word: Sanctuary now heals for 60% more than before.
Oh boy... Sanctuary used to heal for 1400 / tick, now that is upped to 2200? Excuse me while I look for my apathy facial gesture.
On the other hand, it's good to see it's not exactly turning into a Healing Rain. On the other hand, this spell is really crappy, and I hope noone thinks that this will make up for a 20% loss of HPS.
Numbers can and will be adjusted though. But we all know how blizzard adjusts Holypriest numbers.
Repeat after me: increase the potency of chakra.

Rapid Renewal no longer reduces the global cooldown of Renew.
Aaw.. I guess they really don't want us to be in the serenity chakra state anyway.


New shadowpriest mastery
Hm. I remain mildly skeptical that this will solve the issues of spriests.

Prayer of Mending from multiple Priests can now be on the same target, and can be on multiple targets from the same Priest.
YES!
Now, if only someone hadn't neutered this spell completely...

Void Tendrils now have 10% of the Priest's health (down from 20%), and damage dealt to the rooted target is now also dealt to the Void Tendril itself.
So, more break on CC damage. That's fine. But nerfing this ability, when it now has to compete with Psychic scream? Yeah... not getting that.

Angelic Feather, if cast on players, will always prefer the casting priest over others, then pick the player closest to the targeted location. If there are no players where it is targeted, it will still create a feather that can be picked up, as before. Additionally, when collecting multiple feathers, the duration will be extended, instead of replaced.
I like this change a lot. Body & Soul may soon get a competitor.

Holy Nova is no longer available via a Major Glyph, and is instead a Discipline specialization spell. Its mana cost has been lowered and its healing increased. It is intended as the efficient area-of-effect (AoE) healing spell for Discipline Priests.
Faith in this going live: 0%
If CoH needed a 6 then 10 then 12 minus 2 seconds cooldown, the holy Nova will need it too. For the exact same reasons. TBC/WoTLK/Cata cycle for this spell will repeat.

Cascade, Divine Star, and Halo no longer heal allies but are instant cast for Shadow Priests, or damage enemies for Discipline or Holy Priests.
So... spriest can't heal anymore. I guess that's fair... if we get real damage capabilities to back that up.
Healing priests can't damage anymore. That's gonna be a bit sad. I will miss attacking the L90 spells... so much more FUN than the silly Mind Sear spell.

L100 talent: left one
Clarity of Will (Discipline) - Shields the target with a protective ward, absorbing XXXX damage within 20 sec. 5,600 Mana, 40 yd range, 2.5 sec cast
Clarity of Purpose (Holy) - Heals allies within 10 yards of the target for XXXX, split such that more injured targets will receive a larger portion of the healing. Replaces Prayer of Healing. 5,600 Mana, 40 yd range, 2.5 sec cast
Clarity of Power (Shadow) - Your Mind Spike, Mind Sear, and Shadow Word: Death deal 40% additional damage to targets not affected by your Shadow Word: Pain or Vampiric Touch. Casting Mind Spike also restores 5% mana and reduces the cooldown of Mind Blast by 1 sec.
Disc got another shield. Yay?
Gheal is longer a splash heal for Holy. Instead PoH is?
Shadow one is ... pretty silly. It's a trash mob talent?

L100 talent: middle one
Words of Mending (Discipline, Holy) - Your healing and shielding spell casts grant you a stack of Word of Mending. When you gain 5 stacks of Word of Mending, your next targeted healing or shielding spell also casts a Prayer of Mending at them.
Void Entropy (Shadow) - Consumes up to 3 Shadow Orbs to deal up to XXXX Shadow damage every 3 sec for 1 min. Up to 3 Shadow Orbs, 40 yd range, 1.5 sec cast
I really like the free ProM. But don't we like have that already as an existing talent? At least Holy does...
The shadow one is a 1 minute duration dot? I have zero faith this won't be nerfed to 12 seconds before the end of beta.

L100 talent: right one
Saving Grace (Discipline, Holy) - Instantly heals a friendly target for XXXX. Reduces your healing done by 10% for 10 sec, stacking up to 10 times. 14,160 Mana, 40 yd range, Instant
Auspicious Spirits (Shadow) - Your Shadowy Apparitions grant you 1 Shadow Orb instead of dealing damage.
Yeah, the healing one has already been established to be OP. I don't think blizzard has really touched these much.
Not really impressed with the shadow one, but maybe... ?

I'd comment on the class perks too, but those seemed so horribly buggy (no, holypriests does not have penance, strength of soul) that I don't really want to go there. The Chakra CD reduction feat makes me hulk smash angry though. It's wrong on many levels.

[Frmercury]

It's in the leveling perks part:

Enhanced Shadow Orbs - You may have a maximum of 5 Shadow Orbs. No spell or ability will consume more than 3 orbs.

So there you go.

Well more to what they were getting at: Opening burst DPS meaning so much over a given fight. That needs to be addressed as well, and hopefully we hear about that before too long.

[Deleted]

Our absorbs won't be useless. HoTs will be filling in unhealed damage, and we will be providing a buffer. There isn't much wrong with such a design.

We will still be playing Whack-a-Mole more then before (that is triage after all), only now with the fun option to track the shield from Clarity of Will and press the frame that doesn't have such a shield. A bit like a less engaging Eternal Flame. There is no avoiding this change in play style since one of the things which allowed us not to play Whack-a-Mole was the passive shielding of Atonement and excess of Divine Star.

In the current system maybe, but not in the future. People won't die in 3 seconds like right now if you don't heal them immediately. In the future system you might put a shield on someone and it will just simply expire. While HoTs will snipe everything.

[Overdispersion]

We haven't been on par with other healers this expansion in terms of mana regeneration. We actively seek pieces that have less spirit after all! Shadowfiend still exists by the looks of things to boot. Rapture can go.

So does every resto druid, resto shaman and mistweaver. The legendary meta gem made our rapture give mp5, now I'm not even sure I'll use PW:S on tanks regularly w/o the rapture mana return.

[Deleted]

I'd comment on the class perks too, but those seemed so horribly buggy (no, holypriests does not have penance, strength of soul) that I don't really want to go there. The Chakra CD reduction feat makes me hulk smash angry though. It's wrong on many levels.

There are separate perks for Holy and Discipline but it looks like tooltips were muddled up with their effect. I'm sure Improved Heal wouldn't make Penance stronger for Holy!

- - - Updated - - -

In the current system maybe, but not in the future. People won't die in 3 seconds like right now if you don't heal them immediately. In the future system you might put a shield on someone and it will just simply expire. While HoTs will snipe everything.

HoTs can't snipe at shields. They also have have a duration that is for the most part exhibiting parity with that of the shields we can generate. So, in a typical damage pattern a tank might take some damage, we reactively shield so that the next blow doesn't kill them and while our shield is consumed, HoTs can get to work.

It is worth mentioning that you might put a HoT on someone and it could also simply expire.

So does every resto druid, resto shaman and mistweaver. The legendary meta gem made our rapture give mp5, now I'm not even sure I'll use PW:S on tanks regularly w/o the rapture mana return.

Apologies, I wasn't aware that was the case. Comparing myself to a druid friend who is of similar progress, they run about 4k more spirit than I do. I would also be dropping an additional 2k or so if the items I wanted actually dropped. This is where the basis of my statement is coming from.

[Larynx]

I'm not sure what they expect us to use Power Word: Shield on if we don't have rapture anymore.

Anyways, reading the totality of these changes basically tells me Disc is going to be terrible next tier without some wild card thrown. Guess I'll start playing Holy.

They directly nerf absorbs, and have a healing environment that is fundamentally not as strong for absorbs. They nerf our only useful triage (atonement) and then implement a tier 11-style raid triage model. I don't get it. On paper there's no reason to be a Disc priest over a Holy priest, especially with the changes in this new blog post.

[Deleted]

I'm not sure what they expect us to use Power Word: Shield on if we don't have rapture anymore.

Tanks would be my guess.

[MoanaLisa]

Well more to what they were getting at: Opening burst DPS meaning so much over a given fight. That needs to be addressed as well, and hopefully we hear about that before too long.

Maybe. I was just answering the guy who said that nothing had been said at all about orbs and starting at zero for every fight. That seemed relevant. Orbs are mentioned and apparently with management you can start a fight with two orbs. Too many changes to parse out what it means and how it works out versus other classes.

[PhillieB]

Disc/Holy here. Well tbh I wasnt exactly surprised to see disc being hit with the nerf bat and in all fairness it is justified. It doesnt really get me excited for the new expansion though. Taking eyes off the meters disc has always lacked throughput which has been offset by being very efficient and the whole nature of absorbs. To me the designintent now feels more like a healing version of shadow priests in BC more of hybrid utility class. You go ahead and pad the raid while the real healers take care of the healing, a bit exaggerated yes but I struggle to find anything in those patchnotes that makes me feel "oh this looks fun, I'm looking forward to this".

Holy looks more interesting at this point from the two, the chakra change is definatly an improvement in my view but I had to giggle at the iconic comment. It still feels that they have no clue whatsoever what to do with chakra so they slap a couple of changes onto it, call it iconic and hope the holy priests put down their pitchforks. It's still very early but at this point for me, I think it's either gonna be Holy come WoD or more likely resto dudu.

[Danner]

The holypriest pitchforks will remain raised until the walls fall.