Build 13277 - Priest Notes

I won't comment on how fast the changes are being made, since I'd only be repeating what I said when the last build was being released. This time around no one is getting as much changes done as healing priests however. We should be happy about it since they're mainly buffs, but it also means Blizzard have realized how much healing priests suck and are frantically trying to fix it before the actual launch of Cataclysm. Well I am glad they're fixing it anyway. I'm keeping this post to the priest changes because the other classes didn't get anything too interesting to comment on. And as always, you can check out all the changes over at MMO-Champion.

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

• "Prayer of Healing base healing value has been increased by 20%."

Was PoH really so bad they felt it needed 20% more healing? Base healing doesn't mean you'll suddenly see your PoH do 20% more healing though, we've got spellpower coeffs to take into consideration too. But 20% to base healing is still a siginificant buff and probably another incentive to have us use this skill more than we currently are.

• "Holy Word: Sanctuary's healing effectiveness now diminishes for each player beyond 6 within the area."

My first thoughts on HW: sanctuary noted the great potential in a skill that doesn't have any limit on the amount of target it heals. If you have the whole raid standing in it you could heal for awesome amounts of health. This was true for all the aoe-healing skills like Holy Radiance, Efflorescence and Healing Rains too and they've now seen the same change as we have with this kind of skill. In a way priests are affected the least since Sanctuary was arguably the least good skill among the four. It required us to be in the PoH: Stance and on Live I didn't think it healed nearly as much as Efflorescence anyway (and we're seeing a huge nerf to Efflorescence in this build as well, confirming this). Apparently Holy Radiance was one of the reasons holydins were so awesome on the betas so I can only assume that was better than Sanctuary too. I don't know much about Healing Rains, but I am sure it was outperforming Sanctuary as well. Even when I had alot of people standing in it, it never came high on my healing done, which of course could just be me not handling it correctly. So eventhough we might be affected the least I still think making a skill that wasn't that great even less great will only have us avoid it alltogether. I hope I am wrong.

• "Power Word: Barrier duration reduced to 10 sec, down from 25 sec. No longer absorbs a given amount of damage, now reduces all damage done to friendly targets by 30%. While within the barrier, spellcasting will not be interrupted by damage."

The words on PW: Barrier has been going high and low on the internet. Most people have been saying something along the lines of "boy, this sucks". I was going to make a short post on the small changes they had made to Barrier, such as lowering its cooldown, and how it definitely wasn't enough. Sure, being able to use it twice instead of once each fight was twice as good. But doubling the effectiviness of something really bad will probably still keep it in the bad zone. And then Blizzard goes and does a change like this. It's like "ok guys, this isn't working at all, now let's give them something that will completely make their socks explode". They completely revamped the skill and made into a serious and potentially completely awesome one. Blizzard made Barrier from a spell that I threw for lulz into one of what could be the most powerful healing tools in the priest healing arsenal (counting both holy and disc). It'll outperform most healing skills overall actually when it comes to importance in execution and timing. I really, really, REALLY hope these changes go live.

• "Divine Aegis now also procs from all heals from Prayer of Healing."

It's funny when I read a change and I think "huh, I thought it did that already?". This happened last beta-build as well. If this wasn't the case with PoH I'm very glad they've changed it.

• "Grace now increases all healing received from the Priest by 4/8%, up from 2/4%."

I don't use Grace for varying reasons. One being that I thought it was way too weak (and apparently Blizzard agreed). Secondly the effectiviness of this skill depends completely on your role in the raid. In a 10-man raid I can be expected to be the tank healer, and as such this was a decent talent. In my current 25-man raid I'm never ever the tank healer (they laugh at me when I ask) just because raid-shielding it too powerful to ignore. And as such having some extra healing done on one target has never been very useful to me. Doubling the healing done on one target is a great buff for those tank-healing disc priests out there, but I still don't think I'll have much use for it.