Mists of Pandaria

Druid Symbiosis Abilities and Spells Other Classes Get

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Note: Last updated April 15, 2012.

Shadow Priests get Tranquility.

Healing Priests get… Entangling Roots?!

Since the level cap has been raised to level 87 on the beta, Druids now have access to their level 87 spell, Symbiosis. This is one of the more popular abilities in the game because it’s one of those things where every class has a vested interest in it.

What Druids get from Symbiosis

Guardian Feral Restoration Balance
Death Knight Bone Shield Death Coil Icebound Fortitude Anti-Magic Shell
Hunter Ice Trap Play Dead Deterrence Misdirection
Mage Mage Ward Frost Nova Ice Block Mirror Image
Paladin Consecration Divine Shield Cleanse Hammer of Justice
Priest Fear Ward Dispersion Leap of Faith Mass Dispel
Rogue Feint Redirect Evasion Cloak of Shadows
Shaman Lightning Shield Feral Spirit Spirit Walker’s Grace Purge
Warlock Life Tap Soul Swap Demonic Circle: Teleport Unending Resolve
Warrior Spell Reflection Shattering Blow Intimidating Roar Intervene
Monk TBD TBD TBD TBD

Sources and notes

1: WoWHead Mists of Pandaria Symbiosis Comments
2: http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/4427534745
3: Owlkin | Symbiosis Results
4: http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/1103278-MoP-Symbiosis
5: http://www.wowheadnews.com/blog=202586/symbiosis-breakdown-what-abilities-it-brings-to-each-class 

I did my best to cross reference spells and abilities in the WoWHead Mists database. Certain spells that had key words like “Energy” instead of a different form of energy used naturally by the class and spec, “Druid” or included certain Druid abilities like Rip are almost guaranteed to be the Druid form. Another dead giveaway is the level when the ability is gained (it should say 87). However, Not every ability lists that. In the event of inconsistencies, I deferred to the MMO Champion list as it’s the most recently updated.

What you get from Symbiosis

Death Knight Blood Frost Unholy
Might of Ursoc Wild Mushroom: Plague Wild Mushroom: Plague
Hunter Marksman Beast Mastery Survival
Dash Dash Dash
Mage Frost Arcane Fire
Healing Touch Healing Touch Healing Touch
Paladin Protection Retribution Holy
Barkskin TBD Rebirth
Priest Shadow Holy Discipline
Tranquility Entangling Roots Entangling Roots
Rogue Assassination Subtlety Combat
Growl Growl Growl
Shaman Elemental Enhancement Restoration
Solar Beam Solar Beam Prowl
Warlock Demonology Destruction Affliction
Rejuvenation Rejuvenation Rejuvenation
Warrior Arms Fury Protection
Stampeding Shout Stampeding Shout Frenzied Regeneration
Monk Brewmaster Windwalker Mistweaver
Growl Savage Defense* TBD*

* Speculation based on tooltips. Savage Defense costs 3 Chi. Chi is Monk only energy.
Wrath is listed as a Symbiosis spell but is not attached to a class.

Reactions

I don’t even want to think about how they plan to balance this ability for arena usage. I wouldn’t be surprised if they just disable it entirely, but I’m sure they’ll give it a spirited attempt anyway. The main purpose of Symbiosis is to give classes and specs certain abilities that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to. Mages get a Heal, for example.

Shadow Priests with Tranquility is pretty darn nice. Part of me wishes Holy Priests had it, but the other (sane) part of me knows that if that were to happen, Priests would instantly jump to the top. Divine Hymn/Power Word: Barrier and a Tranquility would be blatantly overpowered.

Wasn’t expecting DPS Shaman to receive Solar Beam, but since they’re all with the elements and stuff, I can see why.

Restoration Druids receiving Leap of Faith? I guess it’s payback time Sad smile.

Curious with the Balance Druids receiving Mass Dispel. Though it could be used as a more offensive ability since you don’t really see Balance Druids whipping out debuff removals as much.

Feral Druids receiving Divine Shield from Paladins. Ho boy.

If you notice a spell that’s in the wrong spot or if an ability’s missed, let me know but make sure you toss in a source (Screenshow, WoWhead link, or something).

Let’s assume you’re a Druid in a raid group with every conceivable class and spec compositions (Let’s say science is thrown out the window and the raid limits are higher than 25). Who do you give Symbiosis to and why?

 

Mists: Further Priest Changes on the Horizon

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Ghostcrawler commented on a Discipline feedback post earlier today.

To summarize the key points:

  • Confirmation that Spirit Shell is a spammable absorb that won’t be as powerful as Power Word: Shield. On beta, it fills the Heal role which is not very satisfactory. They are exploring the option of having it fill the Greater Heal position instead.
  • They’re exploring ways to bring Rapture back in.  However, they want it to scale with Spirit so that Discipline Priests don’t neglect Spirit on their gear.
  • Power Word: Barrier mana costs are comparable to Divine Hymn.
  • They’re exploring ways to reduce the mana cost of Mass Dispel but the spells is quite powerful and they’re considering the inclusion of a cooldown aspect.
  • Players running through dungeons and raids are saying they have problems casting big heals and they are looking into this problem.
  • The priest talents are still not finalized and will be undergoing further refinement.
  • Glyph of Penance sucks. Glyphs as a whole are incomplete and continue to be developed.

Personally, I find it refreshing to see GC back in action again offering glimpses into the world of game balance and the various developer thought processes. Rapture’s a way cool mechanic and all, but with the other changes and such, I’m not sure if finding a way to restore it back in Mists is a real priority.  Do you agree with the problems and solutions that are in the process of being implemented?

Mists: Spirit Shell, Chakra, and Party Healing

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Blizzard issued another 100,000 invites today and I was lucky enough to get in. Derevka from Tales of the Priest also has the Mists beta enabled. I’m sure between the two of us we can help answer any Priest questions you might have (Save all the math and theorycrafting for him).

Biggest grin inducing experience though?

I SMITE FOR OVER 40,000 DAMAGE

On Spirit Shell

On the tanks

Spirit Shell is the new Discipline Priest “heal” (the 2.5 second cast that’s supposed to be mana neutral).

Something feels really off about it. it feels ineffective. I get that it’s used to maintain health of players. It’s the filler spell. But it’s a delayed heal. In a sense, I should feel the same using Heal and using Spirit Shell. But I find that the mobs and bosses just punch through Spirit Shell fairly quick. Since the shield gets broken, the heal aspect never applies (Since 80% of a broken shield is still going to be 0). Tanks aren’t gaining any real health with Spirit Shell.

When using Heal, I can see the physical health bar bounce up and down between heal received and damage taken. Spirit Shell causes the tank health bar to stay around the same or to gradually decrease. I rely heavily on visual bar movement to gauge how much time left before the tank or my party gets smashed. It’s really hard to gauge the buffer I have when using Spirit Shell.

Video of me wiping once on the first boss before taking him out on attempt 2.

 

I’m not sure if that’s a UI thing or just a priest thing (or a Matt thing). 8 seconds seems like an eternity before a heal gets applied. In a way, I feel as if though I get penalized in a heavy damage environment. Holy sees immediate dividends in when those healing spells are used because you can actually seeplayer health bars move. Discipline doesn’t (with the shields) and we’re left wondering if our shields are still active or if they’ve been punched through or not.

Yeah, there’s a spell graphic thats applied on players. But aren’t your eyes glued to your frames?

On the party

I could throw a Renew on players and they’d get enough healing on them or I could also throw a Spirit Shell and wait the 8 seconds for that to expire for the heal component to apply. Renew, I can use on the run. Spirit Shell leaves me vulnerable. I understand that they’re meant for different purposes, but in this sense, Spirit Shell can be used as a fire-and-forget kind of ability on that Mage who took damage but isn’t expected to take damage again for the next 30 seconds or something.

I’m not sure what it is. The spell’s a great idea and all. But in practice, something doesn’t feel right when healing in instances. I think there should be a minimum floor that the heal of Spirit Shell does (Heals for 80% after absorb expires, otherwise it heals for 20% of the initial absorb amount).

Chakra

chakra

Have to free up some more binds somewhere. Chakra: Serenity and Chakra: Sanctuary are separate abilities and need to be key bound separately. No more having to activate Chakra and cast Prayer of Mending to auto switch to Sanctuary.

Party healing

Admirable job with the balancing of regen and throughput. Temple of the Jade Serpent was fairly brisk the first way through after queuing with a group of random players. I’m queuing in with a mix of normal and heroic Dragon Soul gear (395 Item level, give or take). Raid geared players won’t have much of a problem with it all. Just don’t stand in the water and watch out for fires.

For reference, quest rewards in the opening zone are 372 greens.

Explaining Intellect, Mana Pools, and Spell Costs in Mists

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Edit: Fixed comments to allow guests to comment without registering again. Let me know if you run into other bugs.

There’s been some discussion and confusion about mana pools, spell costs, and intellect. I was thrown off when I checked out some of the spell costs. Turns out, I had forgotten about the changes coming up for healers. Here’s a summary of the direction we’re going (all of us healers, not just Priests, mind you).

Even wrote about it in a Raid Rx column a while ago.

  • Every healer gets a static mana pool amount (100k mana).
  • Intellect affects the strength of your spells only. No longer increases mana pool.
  • Spirit still remains a mana regeneration stat. More Spirit, faster regeneration.
  • Many spell costs are being adjusted to account for the change to mana pools.
  • Mana regeneration based on mana pool size is gone.

Here’s a truncated version of the blue post.

With the change we are proposing, Intellect provides bigger heals and Spirit improves longevity. For healers, there should not always be a clear cut answer. Intellect may still be the superior stat, but not by as much as it is today. […] Mana pools can still be large (we are thinking 100,000 mana at level 85) so that it doesn’t feel too bizarre to existing casters and doesn’t feel too much like rage or energy.

What happened to our mana pools?

This is an idea of what the base mana pool of healers will look like. Assume none of these classes have chosen a spec yet.

  • Druid: 20,000 mana
  • Paladin: 20,000 mana
  • Priest: 100,000 mana
  • Monk: 100 Chi (Just a figure I’m using)
  • Shaman: 20,000 mana

Remember, pretend that these are base mana figures.

But there’s more

With the exception of Priests and Monks, each class gains an ability which modifies their mana pool when they select a spec.

Druids, Paladins, and Shaman have their mana pools dramatically increased by 400%. That should then bring everyone’s mana pool up to 100,000. When a Monk switches to Mistweaver, their energy bar will be replaced with mana. As they’re the only monk spec that uses mana, it’s assumed that 100,000 is the base value.

In addition, we think fixed mana pools will help healers scale better with content. Some players seem to be interpreting the 5.0 design as healing 5-player dungeons should be easy but healing raids should be very hard. That is certainly a better situation than dungeons being very hard and raids being easy, but neither is really the goal.

What about the costs?

Let’s use a few of the different healing spells as examples.

Greater Heal ends up costing about 6,000 mana (6% of 100,000). Greater Healing Wave and Divine Light end up being around 8,500 mana (35% of 25,000 mana). Remember that the percentages are centered around base mana which hasn’t been modified by mana boosting talents just yet. This means that their absolute values should be about the same range. Shouldn’t be off by more than a few hundred or a couple thousand. The variance is most likely due to the difference in class mechanics and spells.

So we’re going back to entry-level Cataclysm healing

In a word, yes.

As we were working our way throughout Tier 11, we had to really work on using our mana neutral healing spells (Heal, Healing Wave, etc) as much as possible. As our gear progressively improved, we found ourselves dropping Heal altogether from Firelands and above. Now we’re hitting the big heals and AoE heals more often. You can expect this long term model to stay the same for Mists.

A fight like Phase 2 Beth’tilac on heroic is about as mana-intensive as things get, and that phase doesn’t last very long, so your mana-regen mechanics and cooldowns should be sufficient to keep you going. That won’t change in 5.0.

I still don’t understand

TLDR: Think of mana as energy. It doesn’t scale or increase with gear. Mana regeneration will go up with gear allowing you to cast more spells before running out of mana.