Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

No energy tonight, tried to play but gave up after one quest.  Was about to log when I chatted a bit with Inien and he mentioned PTR changes.  I loaded up MMO-Champion and noticed Priest changes, oh Shadow I thought.  Then Just below those I saw this!

Power Word: Shield; This spell can now be cast on non-raid/party friendly targets.

I was shocked by this.  They changed this a Loooooong time ago.  In fact I went to my patch.txt and looked.

• Patch 1.2: – Power Word: Shield: Now usable on party members only.

• Patch 1.3: – Power Word: Shield – Now castable on all raid targets.

It originally could be used as freely as any heal spell.  When they changed it I think the reasoning I always heard was someone could cast a rank 1 shield on you, untalented (back when the PW:Shield talent took the cooldown from 30 to 15 seconds) and you would be locked out of using a shield for 30 seconds and the shield was crappy.  It was essentially a griefing  change supposedly.

Well now the cooldown is always 15 seconds so that really doesn’t do it, and they are taking out spell ranks in 4.0 so I guess there is no reason for it anymore?  Plus I’m hoping they find a way for two Disc Priests to be more useful together, i.e. the Weakened Soul is tied to the Priest some how.

This was exciting enough news that I stopped heading off to bed to make this post   I hope this change sticks, not that I am constantly around people I’m not grouped or in a raid with anymore like the olden days.  But it is nice to be able to help out someone with one of my best and favorite spells.

Just saw the 3.2 Patch notes from the PTR on MMO Champion.  Man they hit Priests a few times with the nerf bat, especially Disc Priests!  I’m not sure if the Inspiration is a buff or not.  I’m going to guess it would be for anyone but the tank maybe not.

• Prayer of Healing: The percentage of spell power this spell gains in healing (per target) has been reduced from 80.7% to 52.6%.

I guess Prayer of Healing was too powerful. This will reduce the over all healing of the glyph as well.  People have been saying PoH was too powerful, I guess they got there wish

• Penance: Cooldown increased to 12 seconds, up from 10 seconds.

This really really stinks.  I don’t get it, they decided not to nerf the glyph that let us have the lower cool down, now they increase the base cool down so now you HAVE to have the glyph just to get it back to where it was before the glyph existed.  I hope this change does not go through.

• Inspiration: The buff from this ability now reduces the physical damage taken by the target by 3/7/10% instead of increasing the target’s armor.

I’ve never looked at hard numbers on the current Inspiration version.  Right now it increases your targets armor from items by 25%, so I’m not sure what hat equates out to actual mitigation.  However on anyone but the tank this would be a buff because very few other classes have armor.  So you crit heal a mage being beat on and they take 10% less physical damage.

The changes to PoH and Penance are disapointing enough to override any positive from Inspiration for me.  Especially Penance which is my favorite spell.  I hope there are some more undocumented positives or 3.2 is going to be a sad Patch for the Priest class.  I would say the first change is probably a PvE change while the other two are PvP related.

• Replenishment: This buff now grants 1% of the target’s maximum mana over 5 seconds instead of 0.25% per second. This applies to all 5 sources of Replenishment (Vampiric Touch, Judgements of the Wise, Hunting Party, Enduring Winter Frostbolts and Soul Leech).

I noticed this tidbit too which was basically a small nerf to Replenishment, but would effect me I’m sure.  You basically get .25% less now.

Well it has been many years since the first time I stepped into Naxxramas.  It was a different game back then and a different raid.  On Friday and Saturday I did a full run of Naxx with a PUG group.  Nothing special, but good competent people, who didn’t even use vent (yay).

It was a partial guild run, I think 6 of them were from the same guild, we were mostly plate with 5 Paladins, 2 Deathknights, 2 Warlocks and Me.  We had 3 healers which was the disappointing part of it.  I still enjoyed the run though I don’t really need anything from Naxx 10 aside from some pants upgrade would be fine.

We finished off a lot of bosses many PUGS I had tried before could not.  So as you’ll notice I finally got some achievements.  After many years of wonder I finally got to see the end of Naxx as well.  Though the end is slightly different, than then of course.  The fight with Sapphiron went well, we killed him first try.  It was pretty neat, and with my frost resist gear and the pally aura, I didn’t have to worry much about anything but everyone else.

Of course the final boss eluded me though we just couldn’t kill him.  We gave him one more try last night, after 3 wipes many of us had to go to bed.  Basically we didn’t have enough DPS.  In both the case of last night and the previous 2 nights we only had 2 people who could touch 2k DPS so it was not stellar.  Basically once the adds come out we couldn’t down him fast enough before the adds got too buff and started killing everyone.

To me this is another case where too many healers hurt the raid, even if we had somewhat low DPS if we had one less healer we may have been fine. Dual spec would have come in handy here because I would have just pushed shadow and helped out.  So sadly I did not get to kill him.  I hope before Uldar comes out I can get in the tail end of a Naxx raid and take him down I just don’t have the time or the energy to even be doing what I did this weekend

Speaking of 3.1 looks like we were winding down on the changes.  The last few patches have been small incremental changes.  The Priests are whining because they increased the cooldown of Divine Hymn to 10 minutes from 6 and doubled the mana costs.  Many people don’t recognize how truely awesome it is now.   I don’t really care much about the increase in cooldown, it is sort of an emergency spell anyways, and well I would almost certainly be coupling the spell with Inner Focus so who cares about the mana cost

Ok unless they nerf it our level 80 spell finally got useful!  Given all the other classes got really awesome spells, and ours well was so lame I was really hoping for something like this.  First of all it is now a Heal, not a horrible poor mans CC/heal.

Divine Hymn – You recite a Holy hymn, summoning the power of the Divine to assist you in your time of need. Heals 3 nearby lowest health friendly party or raid targets for 1 to 6 every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases healing done to them by 15% for 8 sec. Maximum of 12 heals. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. 35% of base mana, 40 yd range, Channeled, 6 min cooldown

I didn’t have access to a bunch of people to fully test it, I’m sure someone will though soon.  I did play with it and found out yes it can crit, and yes it has an awesome spell coefficient.  In my tests it was ticking for 8500 on the first tick then each additional one was about 9600 (because it increases healing by 15%), with crits of 14k.   Even more awesome is if you happen to have Grace on  a target (if your Disc) you’ll have even more healing   The other thing to note is at least according to the spell tool type the range is 40 yards.  Given the way the spell is cast I’m assuming it is a 40 yard circle around you.

What I haven’t been able to test is if the smart heal evaluates each tick or not.  I’m assuming it does, as this would make the most sense.  It would also make this spell very awesome, usable, and would be the reason for the 6 minute cooldown.  This would mean Blizzard succeeded in creating a new unique heal for this expansion and I thank them!!!

Hymn of Hope – You recite a Holy hymn, restoring hope to those in despair. Restores 3% mana to 3 nearby low mana friendly party or raid targets every 2 sec for 8 sec, and increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 sec. Maximum of 12 mana restores. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. 40 yd range, Channeled, 6 min cooldown

Hymn of Hope on the other hand is a bit weird, it is applying nearly the same idea as Divine Hymn, works raid wide, only effects 3 targets, also assuming it switches each tick if necessary.  The weird part is the mana increase, it increases your maximum mana by 20%, and you actually get that mana, it is not just empty space. So in my case I got like 4K mana, but in the end it takes it away, so I guess if you had no mana to begin with, things are horrible you cast this people are going to have mana for immediate use.  Only after the 8 seconds that extra mana is removed.  Again it seems like an emergency mana spell for everyone else, you’ll be too busy channeling it to use it

I dunno how useful Hymn of Hope will be, but I look forward to having Divine Hymn.  I occasionally actually use Hymn of Hope now, so maybe I’ll continue to at least use it as much as I do now.  I like the Hymn idea though, kind of a unique Priest ability idea and I hope they continue with it.

I got on today and continued to clean up my inventory and eventually went over to the ZG troll island to turn in some of those coins. Inien went out there to try and turn in one of the armor pieces he got but it turns out he didn’t have enough rep to do that.  We popped back to Dalaran and had been talking about mounts and stuff and happen to stop by the mount vendor.  I didn’t realize there was a mount you bought with Heroic Badges, Inien remembered it being a bear but it was a woolly mammoth.  We were talking about the other mounts and achievements and Inien bought the bear just to see if there was an achievement, and I ended up buying it too just cause he did

After that I headed off to the Basin to get a new Egg, I forgot to do that last time I was on.  While I was there of course I did my dailies.  Eventually I headed off to do my Sons of Hodir dailies as well.

The first one I usually do is the kill the wild proto drake one.  I just ignore everything and just try to kill it as fast as I can.  I start out with a Shield/PoM/Renew which  helps   Of course by the time he dies he has me over a weird spot on the mountain.  I am always ready with Levitate because often you hit the mountain and  when it lets go of you down you slide

Of course if you have been following the PTR you know there was another patch yesterday, a small one.  Not a lot of huge changes on the Priest side.  They put back Hymn of Hope though (Yay?) and also change Psychic Horror making it a new ability that disarms as well as horrifies your foe.  I’m sure PvP shadow Priests will be happy about that one.  Of course they saw fit to squeeze a nerf for me in the patch by changing Stoneform.  It now only removes bleeds/poison/disease but does not provide immunity for its (very short) duration.  I have a hard time understanding how this was so incredibly necessary but all I ever use it for is PvE to remove bleed/poison.  The immunity did still help in PvE though in certain situations because a mobs behavior changes when you are immune.

I think they have been making too many changes for the sake of their silly E-Sport.

Wowhead finally has PTR talent calcs on their site, I hate using MMO’s, great info annoying calculator

I was looking at things and if we went live right now I would probably go with a Disc build looking like this.  And a Dual Spec shadow build looking like this.

I was messing around on the PTR this morning while eating breakfast before work.  I setup my dual spec to be a shadow build, to go with my Disc healing build.  I decided to go try out, my heart was set to Zul’Drak so I was smacking down bad trolls.  I was amazed at how much damage I could do spec that way and I don’t even know what I’m doing.

I’m going to have to read a little on spell rotations and such because you end up with a lot more abilities as shadow than you have other wise.  The mobs were only 76 so they died a little too quick to get a real idea of my DPS.  I guess I could have tried a dummy while I was in IF   I was doing about 1200-1500 on these mobs without even knowing what I’m doing.  It makes me wonder how I come I run into so many terrible shadow priests in groups

The shadow build should definetely make my questing/grinding go much smoother!  So I’m getting kind of OK with dual spec now, though I still don’t know what the long term ramifications of this will be in the future.

Hopefully the server gets a little more stable and I can attempt to do some healing and see how the regen and rapture changes effect my mana management.  I was always careful, and had very low over healing so I’m going to guess I’ll do better than some with the changes.

Two really nifty changes applied to the PTR this evening.

• Grace doesn’t reduce damage dealt to the target anymore but now increases the healing received from the Priest by 3% (Up from 2%)

• Renewed Hope now also give you a 100% chance to reduce all damage taken by 3% for 20 sec to all friendly party and raid targets when you Power Word: Shield a friendly target.

At first I was like WHAT! They nerfed the damage reduction from Grace again (they did it during beta).  Then I read the next line, Renewed Hope changed, now it actually gives us Renewed Hope!  I think that is a way awesome change to the talent.  I hope this one sticks, can’t wait to try it.  Sounds really nifty and way better than the weak sauce it was.  Definetely very Disc appropriate AND powerful enough for the slot it is in the tier.  Of course Grace applying more healing, and lasting a little longer now is also a good thing.

Update!

Wow it is even cooler than I read on MMO.  It retained the 4% crit for Flash/GHeal/Penance on a weakened soul target, in addition to the new raid/group buff of 3% less damage.

Also I confirmed that you get the mana back from Rapture even if the shield dissipates after the 30 seconds without absorbing everything as well.  This is pretty good then, and people should stop complaining.  With the Int I have it basically makes my PW:Shield cost 35 mana. So we should still be able to do some nifty healing and be effecient!  Of course all is subject to change without notice yada yada.

I was going to go mess around on the PTR but it was having major issues so I went ahead and got on live.  I ended up quickly joining a 10 man Vault group and did that.  It was pretty fun, and the other healer was actually another Disc Priest.  Nothing dropped that mattered to me so I left after that.

I was thinking maybe I’d do a 25man vault after that but ended up in a 25man OS.  While I was waiting for that to come together I ran around and made my cloth for the week.  It is so convenient having it all in one place now   Eventually we filled up the group and started on it.  Things went fast and easy.  As usual there were too many healers so I didn’t have much to do

I also ended up looking horrible because I kept getting hit by the stupid fire wall.  I had never been in a group where the tank would move the dragon all the over the place which kept throwing me off.  Of course I can still heal and absorb the damage it isn’t a big deal but someone now always has that stupid mod that makes fun of the people   I think I got hit twice, but again I never seen anyone run around with the dragon before!

After that I ended up logging off live.  I stayed on Skype with Inien to listen to his horrible horrible Heroic HoS run.  After finishing up some non game related stuff I went and got on the PTR which was working only slightly better.  I purchased my Duel Spec and played a little bit with that system.  The way it is right now it doesn’t require anything to switch which is kind of neat.

I was messing with trying to create a smite build, but was really having trouble coming up with something that made sense after all the changes.  With the switch from BC to WOTLK they removed some of the talents in Disc that were useful for it, mainly the +hit for smite/mindblast and the extra damage/crit you could get.  They made some changes to Shadow Form that may allow me to use a lot of my current gear.  Your dots can now crit in Shadow Form which may make things interesting.

I’ve never been shadow in my life, but my smite isn’t looking as viable so perhaps I might actually given in and do a shadow build.  Who knows maybe I’ll like it.  Plus the other advantage is I might be able to speak with more authority about all things Priest, instead of just 2/3rds

The Rapture nerf is the end of all Disc priests!  Yes I’ve been checking the forums for reactions to 3.1.  Yes it is a HUGE nerf, but they intended to nerf all mana regen apparently.  I personally thought they would leave Rapture alone because it was consistent, and controllable.  However I apparently was wrong…

I’m not as freaked out about it as most people.  For one this is the 1st day of the PTR and things are not set in stone. And Two there were several changes that increased our efficiency such as the 30% reduction in the cost of PW:Shield, 15% reduction in the cost of Flash Heal, and the freeing of enough points to get Improved Healing for a 15% reduction in the cost of Penance.  I don’t know if all these things together will make up for the mana loss from Rapture but they certainly lessen the blow.

It isn’t as if Rapture doesn’t give mana anymore at all, they changed Serendipity to have a completely different purpose now.  I think the biggest fault with Rapture is that it requires the entire shield to be absorbed in order to give mana, which means most likely only the one you cast on the tank will ever give you mana AND it can only happen every 12 seconds.  Of course the 12 seconds doesn’t matter much because you still have weakened soul to worry about.

I still like Disc and won’t change over just that.  I am sure there are more changes to come on the PTR.  I’m still wondering where my PW:Barrier is.  Surely they wouldn’t specifically tell us about a new spell then decide not to put it in a week or two later.