Yesterday we discussed the Discipline changes, today we will go over the Holy Changes that are currently up on the PTR. I did make some edits to my post from yesterday regarding Rapture (forgot to mention that Aegis doesn’t return mana anymore) and Focused Will (gives a total of 12% crit with all talents).
Skills
- Prayer of Healing is now a targeted spell that heals the target’s party.
Nice, since I always ask to have myself moved to the MT group for Loetheb. Handy dandy. Conclusion: Buff - Holy Nova mana cost reduced from 27% base mana to 22% base mana.
I should spend some time crunching the numbers seeing the HPM with this with and without glyph. Could be quite handy. Conclusion: Buff - Hymn of Hope: This spell has been removed.
Confirmed that is is no longer in the spellbook, however the question about the new Glyph is still out there. I have to admit I am a little disappointed that they are REMOVING Hymns since Blue stated they wanted to try to introduce more Hymns. Conclusion: Unknown
Talents
- Circle of Healing (Tier 9) healing increased across all ranks.
Some compensation for the Cooldown. Conclusion: Buff - Test of Faith (Tier 9) now increases healing by 4/8/12% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.
Crit chance removed. For this deep in the Holy Tree, and considering “how often your target should be points being freed up, and you now can max out other “nice to have” talents over this. (Healing Prayers and Lolwell come to mind). Conclusion: Nerf - Serendipity (Tier 8 ) changed to: When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 6/12/20%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 sec.
Quite similar to the Tier 4 four-piece set bonus. It will certainly help priests rotate GHeal back into their arsenal since it’s not as prohibitively slow. But the reduction in ProH is nice too. Queue up a fast and big group heal before predictable damage comes in and you’re good to go! - Holy Concentration (Tier 7) changed to: Your mana regeneration is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 sec after you critically heal with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal or Renew. (Previously had a chance to grant clearcasting effect)
I’m not sure how I feel about this. Chaining HC was nice. However a stactic mana regen increase does allow us to not have to worry abotu doing the Out of Combat MP5 “dance”. Some dungeon testing will be needed. Conclusion: Unknown - Blessed Resilience (Tier 7) increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 1/2/3% along with its previous effect.
Holy PVP Talent. Conclusion: Buff to the PVPers - Improved Holy Concentration (Tier 9) removed from the game.
See Holy Concentration. - *New Talent* Empowered Renew, Tier 9, 3 point talent – Your Renew spell gains an additional 5/10/15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew will instantly heal the target for 5/10/15% of the total periodic effect.
For 3 points, this does seem quite nice, it puts it pretty much equal with a Druid’s Regrowth. (but instant) If you can free up points, this likely will be worth grabbing- perhaps using the points from Test of Faith? Coupling this with the Glyph of Renew is a pretty heavy hitting HoT!
Holy Glyphs
- Glyph of Smite — Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Smite by 100%. (Old: 50%)
I never understood this glyph for anything aside from Holy/Disc Leveling, and maybe PVP. Conclusion: Buff - Glyph of Guardian Spirit *new* — If you Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec.
Interesting one here. Basically allows the priest to cast GS a bit more often and not really need to only cast it in situations where its immediately dire. Proactive protection… and if you don’t need it, you only are on cooldown for 60 seconds. Not a bad glyph – if you don’t find yourself using renew (with Empowered Renew and the Glyph of Renew). I would use this Glyph along side of the COH and Flash Heal Glyphs.
Overall, a lot of changes on the Discipline and Holy fronts. We do however need to take a minute to look at talent trees as a whole. I will shortly be providing talent spec’s that I plan on testing on the PTR both Discipline and Holy. Stay tuned.
Don’t miss a single post! Remember to sign up for my RSS feed.
