Adventures of a Dwarf Priest

I noticed a small patch yesterday morning when I started up WoW (forgetting it was Tuesday) and didn’t think much of it.  It didn’t show any new patch notes, I assumed it was fixing some insignificant thing.

Just before bed I happen to browse the healing forums on my blackberry and noticed it wasn’t insignificant, it was a stab at the Priests…Boo!  It consisted of 3 nerfs to the Priest class.

• The effectiveness of the Priest spell Divine Hymn has been reduced.

This seems unnecessary to me for because of the cooldown on Divine Hymn.  Yes it was powerful but it also had a 10 minute cooldown and significant mana costs.  A lot of priests would avoid the mana costs with Inner Focus, but still you had to make a choice to hold on to Inner Focus for this spell.  In the grand scheme of things it doesn’t effect me a whole ton because I haven’t been using it much yet, but I did think it was fine.  Oh well

• The Priest ability Soul Warding now only reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Shield by 15% instead of 30%. The tooltip for this spell will be updated at a later date.

This nerf is exactly what my title is referring too.  When we first got the ability to remove the cooldown a lot of people said it was the new circle of healing.  That Priests were indiscriminately spamming shields on everyone.  Partly this is because of the incredibly lame way the new Rapture works, the other because they could. Ghostcrawler said:

“Power Word: Shield is a really useful tool for Disc priests in particular. We want them using it. However, its utility is balanced by a high cost. If we get to the point where they are spamming it constantly to the exclusion of other spells and without it ever being a decision, that suggests mana regen is still too high.”

So basically people disregarded what he said, and continued to spam because they could, so they decided to nerf the reduced costs.  I imagine if it continues to be a problem they might remove the other 15% I don’t think the nerf will change people’s minds much about spamming it though, we’ll see I guess.

• Glyph of Mass dispel will now reduce the cost of the spell by only 35%.

This is a funny nerf everyone has been laughing at because this Glyph was never used.  Everyone has just been saying they might as well remove it from the game.

I never got a chance to play yesterday.  I was doing too many RL life things.  I probably wouldn’t have even noticed the change.  I did sneak on just before heading to bed to do the fishing daily.  I had to parachute into WG for the terror fish.  Managed to do it and not get bothered even though WG was horde controlled.

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.