For the Priests, I’ll be doing my best to keep track of any significant changes and additions to the Priest class. Drop a comment at the bottom of the page if you spot something not on the list. Any blue posts will be copied here as well.

• Talents
• Spell changes
• Glyphs
• Blue posts

Talents

Tier 1: Level 15 (Crowd control)

• Void Tendrils: If you need to CC anything in raids, I suggest using this.
• Psyfiend
• Dominate Mind

Tier 2: Level 30 (Movement)

• Body and Soul: If you’re one of the few Priests in raid, great! Suggest using this for pickup raids like the raid finder.
• Angelic Feather: Anyone who runs over this will gain the speed benefit. If you need additional precision when it comes to targeting, opt for Body and Soul instead. In practice, I’ve seen cases where the wrong person makes up a feather or someone just strolls near it without realizing it.
• Phantasm: Probably best for PvP. Though there are a few raid encounters which have slowing effects.

Tier 3: Level 45 (Mana)

• From Darkness, Comes Light
• Mindbender: The problem with Mindbender is that I keep forgetting to use it off cooldown. Set up an aura so that it automatically reminds you when it’s available.
• Power Word: Solace: Useful for encounters where there’s idle time.

Tier 4: Level 60 (Defensive)

• Desperate Prayer: This spell has served me perfectly in previous expansions and it’ll continue to do the same. When you get access to Void Shift at level 87, what I like to do is Void Shift a tank who has low health and then immediately use Desperate Prayer to restore health from the inherited pool I took from the tank.
• Spectral Guise: Best for PvP.
• Angelic Bulwark: Neat for not having to worry about your own survivability as much. Think of it as a safety net.

Tier 5: Level 75 (Extra power)

• Twist of Fate: Don’t underestimate this. An additional 15% healing for 10 seconds if you heal someone below 20%? In a raid environment, it’s possible to keep this buff up for long stretches at a time. Heck, Circle of Healing alone should help maintain it on most bosses.
• Power Infusion: Available only to the casting Priest.
• Divine Insight

Tier 6: Level 90 (AoE)

• Cascade: Loving Cascade for raid play.
• Divine Star: Best used if the majority of the raid group is stacked together.
• Halo: Do not use this in dungeons. The potential to unintentionally pull mobs is high (personal experience).

Feathers from Heaven: Place Heavenly Feathers at the target location. Each Heavenly Feather causes a single nearby friendly target to gain 60% movement speed for 4 sec.  Only 3 Feathers can be placed at one time.  Accumulates an additional charge once every 10 sec. (Blog post)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikGj14si3RQ

Mindbender: Creates a Mindbender to attack the target.  Caster receives 6% mana when the Mindbender attacks. Damage taken by area of effect attacks is reduced. Lasts 15 sec. (Blog post)

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIwp5sElqS4

Spell changes

Mass Dispel: Now removes 100 spells from targets, up from 1.
Shadowfiend: Now has a 4 min cooldown, down from 5.
Phantasm: When you Fade, you remove all movement impairing effects from yourself, you become untargetable by ranged attacks, and your movement speed is unhindered for 3 sec.

Holy

Chakra: Chastise: Now has a 30 sec cooldown. Reworked: Increases the damage done by your Shadow and Holy spells by 15% and transforms your Holy Word spell back into Holy Word: Chastise.
Chakra: Sanctuary: Now has a 30 sec cooldown. Reworked: Increases the healing done by your area of effect healing spells and Renew by 15%, reduces the cooldown of your Circle of Healing spell by 2 sec, and transforms your Holy Word: Chastise spell into Holy Word: Sanctuary.
Chakra: Serenity: Now has a 30 sec cooldown. Reworked: Increases the critical effect chance of your direct healing spells by 10%, causes your direct heals to refresh the duration of your Renew on the target, and transforms your Holy Word: Chastise spell into Holy Word: Serenity.
Divine Hymn: Now costs 7% mana, down from 36%. Now has a 3 min cooldown, down from 8 min.
Guardian Spirit: Now costs 1% of base mana, down from 6%.
Lightwell: Now costs 6% of base mana, down from 30%. Now has 15 charges, up from 10.

Discipline

Train of Thought: When you heal with Greater Heal, the cooldown of your Inner Focus is reduced by 5 sec. When you Smite, the cooldown of your Penance is reduced by 0.5 sec.
Evangelism: When you deal direct damage with Smite or Holy Fire you gain Evangelism. Stacks up to 5 times. Lasts for 20 sec. Increases the damage done by your Smite and Holy Fire spells by 4% and reduces the mana cost of those spells by 6%.
Inner Focus: No longer works with Binding Heal.
Penance: Now has a 10 sec cooldown, down from 12 sec. Now costs 3% of base mana, down from 14%.
Grace: Now also works with Spirit Shell. Now increases all healing received from the Priest by 10%, up from 8%.
Pain Suppression: Now costs 1% of base mana, down from 8%.
Purify: Dispels harmful effects on the target, removing all Magic and Disease effects.
Dispel Magic: Now removes 1 Magic effect from enemy targets.
Spirit Shell: Creates an absorption shield on the target for [5231 + 50.3% of SP] damage lasting 8 sec. When the shield expires, the target is healed for 80% of the remaining amount. 40 yd range, 2% of base mana, 2.5 sec cast.
Atonement: Learned at level 60. Baseline Discipline talent.

Glyphs

Glyph of Circle of Healing
Your Circle of Healing spell heals 1 additional target, but its mana cost is increased by 35%.
Glyph of Dark Binding
You can now cast Binding Heal, Flash Heal, and Renew without cancelling Shadowform.
Glyph of Dispersion
Reduces the cooldown on Dispersion by 15 seconds.
Glyph of Enfeeblement
When you critically hit with your Mind Blast, you cause the target to be unable to move for 4 sec.
Glyph of Inner Sanctum
Spell damage taken is reduced by 6% while within Inner Fire, and the movement speed bonus of your Inner Will is increased by 6%.
Glyph of Leap of Faith
Your Leap of Faith spell now also clears all movement impairing effects from your target.
Glyph of Levitate
Increases your movement speed while Levitating and for 10 seconds afterward by 15%.
Glyph of Lightwell
Increases the total amount of charges of your Lightwell by 2.
Glyph of Mass Dispel
Reduces the cast time of Mass Dispel by 1 sec.
Glyph of Penance
Reduces the mana cost of Penance by 20%, but increases the cooldown by 2 sec.
Glyph of Purify
Your Purify spell also heals your target for 3% of maximum health when you successfully dispel a magical effect or disease.
Glyph of Renew
Your Renew heals for 33% more each time it heals, but its duration is reduced by (3000/-1000) sec.
Glyph of Spirit of Redemption
Increases the duration of Spirit of Redemption by 10 sec.
Glyph of Power Word: Shield
20% of the absorb from your Power Word: Shield spell is converted into healing.
Glyph of Dispel Magic
Your Dispel Magic spell also damages your target for 1387 Holy damage when you successfully dispel a magical effect.
Glyph of Holy Fire
Your Holy Fire spell is now instant
Glyph of Prayer of Mending
The first charge of your Prayer of Mending heals for an additional 60% but your Prayer of Mending has 1 fewer charges.
Glyph of Vampiric Embrace
Your Vampiric Embrace converts an additional 50% of the damage you deal into healing, but the duration is reduced by 5 seconds.
Glyph of Vampiric Touch
Your Vampiric Touch ability converts an additional 10% of the damage it deals into healing.

Blue posts

On Discipline

Ghostcrawler wrote:

“Amputation” is a strange word in this context. Is it the new gutted? 🙂

I think you guys can tell what we’re trying to do with Spirit Shell. We want Disc to have a spammable absorb that isn’t as powerful as the instant Power Word: Shield. Spamming an instant absorb is just really hard to balance, which is why we have constantly had to nerf it over the years. We want a model where Disc can cast Spirit Shell often, and use PW: Shield for more critical cases… much like a Flash Heal. Currently on beta, Spirit Shell is lackluster because it’s trying to fill the Heal role, but that’s never going to be a really exciting role for a spell. We are going to try letting it fill the Greater Heal role instead. It should absorb for a lot, and if the absorb expires or is dispelled, then the heal will still kick in.

We agree that Rapture was a cool mechanic for Discipline, and we’d like to add it back, but have it scale with Spirit, so that Disc priests don’t neglect Spirit on their gear (or worse, get mad at us when priest gear that they share with Holy has Spirit on it).

We have already changed PW:Barrier to have a mana cost similar to Divine Hymn. We want to lower the mana cost of Mass Dispel, but it is so potent with the new dispel model that it may require a cooldown to compensate. Mana costs as a whole are something we are going to continue to adjust. I said last week that we thought heal costs were in a good place, but then folks running through dungeons and raids told us they couldn’t cast their big heals, so something isn’t quite right. Remember the goal is for mana management to be more forgiving than it was in early Cataclysm, but not be irrelevant in later tiers. If it doesn’t feel that way yet, then it is just because we still have more work to do.

We still have some other changes to make. We’re not happy with some of the priest talents yet, and the glyphs aren’t finished. The glyph of Penance is pretty unappetizing.

Disc AoE Healing and Holy Nova

Kaivax wrote:

We’ve been following this thread (and others) very closely. Here are a few notes regarding where we currently are in Mists priest development

Prayer of Healing can be used by Holy and Discipline once again. We realized that the goal of making Holy Nova an effective AE healing tool was problematic. It meant that we would have to change Holy Nova so thoroughly, that it was becoming a second Prayer of Healing. Remember: we aren’t even in beta yet, and we want to retain as much opportunity as possible to respond to player feedback throughout the rest of this process. Things will change for priests, and every other class, over the coming weeks.

There is some speculation that Discipline is intended only as a PvP spec or only as a tank-healing spec. Neither of those is our design intent. Both Holy and Discipline should be effective at group healing or single-target healing, and if we do our jobs right, both can have a role in PvP. The main difference between them is that Discipline relies more on absorption mechanics, such as Power Word: Shield, Power Word: Barrier, Divine Aegis and the new Spirit Shell. Holy priests should place more emphasis on heals over time and have more area healing mechanics (e.g. Circle of Healing, Holy Word: Sanctuary), but those are intended to offset the incredible benefit of absorbs and not to make Holy the only option for handling AE damage. We see both in use a lot in PvE in Cataclysm, and we intend for that model to continue.