Build 13221 - Priest Notes

When I first read about the 13221 build priest changes I made a quick note in my notebook - "Chakra: Renew removed. Good!". Let's look at some of the more interesting recent changes made on the beta servers to priests and some thoughts about them. I know I am talking about these changes like they've already taken place, but they haven't! So don't worry. These are just changes made to the beta servers as of now and can/will probably change again before they go live.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Inner Fire now increases Spell Power by 531, up from 425."

Straight up buff, nice of course. I don't see where this is coming from though. I thought Inner Fire was a nice buff as it was and I haven't noticed that priests were lacking in spellpower when compared to the other healing classes.

"Binding Heal base healing increased by 20%. From 3295-4237 to 3959-5091. Now costs 28% of base mana, down from 29%."

This is great! Binding Heal is one of those utility heals that is awesome when you need it and that I use way too seldom. If there is something I have to practice it is when to use this. Pre-patch I did use it whenever I expected to take alot of damage, like if I was marked on Saurfang or targetted by an ooze on Putricide. But it was very costly and using it too much made me oom even back then. Although they've only changed the mana cost marginally, I am happy to see they're buffing this spell, and I really hope I will learn to use it properly soon.

"Prayer of Healing now costs 26% of base mana, down from 36% of base mana."

If they want us to use anything else than renews, this is definitely the way to go. Thank you Blizzard. PoH is not so overpowered that it deserves to be so costly. It is way too situational, and since it only heals the party members of your target it is only worth casting when you know everyone will be taking alot of damage while standing close together, like during the last phase of sindragosa. This pretty reduction in mana cost really makes me happy as I am trying to increase my usage of PoH for Chakra: PoH. Which of course will be needed less if they make PoM increase the stance duration instead (see below).

"State of Mind no longer affects Renew, affects Prayer of Mending instead."

State of Mind is the talent that increases duration of our Chakra state when we use Renew, PoH or Heal. Well Renew has been replaced with PoM. Will this change anything? Not really, PoM is already a skill we use on every cooldown, so keeping our stance up with PoM instead of Renew should be about as easy.

"Chakra no longer works with Renew. No longer costs mana. Sanctuary (Prayer of Healing, Prayer of Mending) now increases healing done by your AoE spells and Renew by 15%. (Old - Only increased AoE spells by 10%)"

Basically they've removed Chakra: Renew alltogether. When I first read about it I thought "great, so renew will be a little less worth casting, hopefully this means the other two spells (Heal and PoH) will be more worth casting". Then I noticed that Renew will still be buffed, in fact even more so, but by another stance instead. So we didn't get away from the renew-spamming after all. On the bright side this means we actually have a good reason to be in our aoe-heal stance instead. I did feel like I sacrificed too much when I switched to Chakra: Poh, because I lost the bonus from Chakra: Renew. Now I don't have to choose! This is awesome! The loss of Holy Word: Renew is minor, if you read my post on Chakra I wrote a while ago you'll see I didn't feel like it brought much to our healing anyway.

"Revelations now has a 40 sec cooldown."

Aww. It might have a bug on my action bars, but I think that up until now Holy Word: Sanctuary didn't have a cooldown which meant you could move it around as you pleased (although that wasn't very mana efficient). Giving it a 40 second cooldown will mean we have to pick our placing a little more carefully. But we've been practicing on that with Lightwell already, so maybe that shouldn't be a problem. If this also means Holy Word: Heal gets a 40 second cooldown it makes me a little more sad. I already felt like it had a pretty long cooldown (20 seconds), but maybe it would be too good to lower it further. But make it longer? It's not that good!

"Rapid Renewal (Tier 4) *New* - Reduces the global cooldown of your Renew by 0.5 sec."

Since we lost the reduced gcd on renew with the removal of Chakra: Renew, we now get a talent that does this instead. This is awesome since it means we don't have to be in a particular stance to spam our renews!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The 13221 made me go from happy to sad to happy. That is because I don't read to the end and start drawing conclusions way too early. First I was happy that choosing any other stance than renew wouldn't be as punished anymore since they removed the renew-stance alltogether. Then I was sad when I realized we were still going to spam renew, just in another stance. Then I was happy when I realized this meant we could spam renews and other heals. They consolidated the awesomeness of the renew-stance into the aoe-stance so that we could do both at the same time! These are great changes, and I really hope they go live!