Priest Discussion

Discussion about the Priest class.

Discipline: The Cooldown Spec

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Flipping through the various Priest spells in anticipation of MoP, I noticed something about the cooldowns. Discipline has a little more than Holy. Anyone else thinking it’s starting to look a little cooldown heavy?

Both specs

Holy

Discipline

The cooldown on Spirit Shell’s a minute long. DIscipline’s playstyle feels a little different now. I’d feel a little better if Spirit Shell could be switched to a stance akin to Chakra. You could toggle Spirit Shell on and off between healing and absorbs instead.

But I digress.

The main point I wanted to go with is that it feels like we’re starting to juggle a rather high amount of cooldowns now. The game isn’t quite as simple as it was before. Cooldown bloat? Seems like it’s getting there to me. Here’s what the required cooldowns for healers should be (at minimum):

  • A tank save
  • A raid save
  • A mana replenishing save
  • A class specific save

Those are all should be what’s needed. Every healer has something to help protect the tank and the entire raid with. They get an ability to help restore mana (either to themselves or to the raid). Lastly, they get one other cooldown that’s unique to their class (Lightwell, Rebirth, etc). With Discipline, you get one that makes your next spell free. You have another one that increases your healing done and gives back mana. Power Infusion would’ve belonged onto that list if it wasn’t made available to all specs.

Hope they don’t add too many more in the future.

Going to try to heal more instances and such as Discipline though. Really want to try to master that class. But I need to relearn when to use which abilities when (truest of Spirit Shell).

EDIT: I didn’t list any of the CDs accessible via talents. (Power Infusion, Cascade, etc)

Updated Tier 3 Priest Talents – Power Word: Solace

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A big beta update today with changes to classes. Priests received some extra love in the tier 3 section of talents. The tier 3 row consists of abilities that help restore mana.

Archangel has been removed from the talent system and has been folded into Discipline only, so no worries for Disc Priests there.

From Darkness, Comes Light received no changes.

Mindbender

Mindbender receives a slight change to the mana return and cooldown.

Old

Cooldown: 3 minutes
Mana: 4% whenever Mindbender attacks

New

Cooldown: 1 minute
Mana: 1% whenever Mindbender attacks

When I used it on beta, it returned ~40080 mana. Each swing from Mindbender returned 4008 (10 swings). I like the cooldown change the most. Even though we don’t get as mana whenever we use it, the shorter cooldown helps offset that. On an 8 minute encounter, you could use Mindbender 3 times:

0:00
3:00
6:00

But since you can use every minute, you’ll be able to take advantage of it more often. Shadowpriests are going to love it since they’ll get more opportunities to line up their cooldowns in conjunction with it.

Power Word: Solace

This is the new talent replacing Archangel.

Power Word: Solace
Level 90

40 yd range
1.5 sec cast

Strike an enemy with the power of the heavens, dealing 1978 to 2219 (+ 40% of SpellPower) Holy damage and restoring 2% maximum mana.

The damage from that spell is peanuts. You’re not going to be using this spell for DPS, that’s for sure. Reminds me of Telluric Currents. I’d switch to Power Word: Solace if I run into encounters with periods of there being little to no healing being needed. Gives me time to go all out with intense healing before switching to Solace to help restore my mana back.

Apparently, Shadow has a version:

Mind Siphon
Level 90

30 yd range
1.5 sec cast

Call upon the shadows to siphon energy from an enemy, dealing 1978 to 2219 (+ 40% of SpellPower) Shadow damage and restoring 2% maximum mana.

Which is weird because the in game talents say that if you switch to Shadow form, Power Word: Solace actually turns into this:

Shadow Word: Insanity
Level 90

15.0% of base mana
40 yd range

Instant

Blasts the target for 664 to 700 (+ 65% of SpellPower) Shadowfrost damage, and causes your shadow damage-over-time spells to erupt, dealing up to 100% additional damage per damage-over-time spell on the target but removing them in the process.

So I’m not sure what the final word on it is, but I don’t think Shadow needs a mana regeneration spell with the other tools they have available (Shadowfiend, Dispersion, Hymn of Hope). I’m more inclined to think Shadow Word: Insanity is Shadow’s answer to the loss of access to Evangelism and Archangel.

Priest Talent: Divine Star

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We looked at Halo the other day and here’s the other level 90 talent: Divine Star. If you play League of Legends, you’ll notice it’s eerily similar to one of Ahri’s abilities. The Priest shoots out a glowing ball which returns after a short distance. Whenever it passes through someone, it heals or injures them depending.

I haven’t noticed an AoE healing cap on the spell. But then again, I haven’t been able to use it in a raid environment or anything. Still, it’s a way cool spell. Can’t wait to put it through it’s paces.

Pointers

  • This spell connects twice. Make sure you’re close enough to your targets so that Divine Star double-hits. It appears as if only one heal is applied if the target is at the peak of Divine Star (Need to confirm).
  • Divine Star will always follow you on its return path. Work on your movement and strafing.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nMcb5n6lLdM

Level 90 Spell: Halo

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At level 90, you gain access to Beyonce-inspired spell, Halo.

It’s an AoE healing (or DPS) type spell depending on your spec. The healing scales depending on the distance between you and the rest of your targets. The biggest impact occurs to players that are 25 yards away. That’s going to be a little tricky for you to eyeball. Would be nice if AVR was still around so that you had a HuD telling you how far exactly 25 yards away was.

Halo isn’t a spell that’s targetable. It uses you as the main point before emanating outward.

You can see it in action below.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zp10FrESsGE

Preparing for the 8 second Dispel

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If you haven’t been keeping up with the little beta changes and updates that have been going on, there’s something you should know.

Don’t worry, it isn’t as game breaking as Spirit Shell having it’s mechanics reworked or anything.

Our Purify (formerly known as Dispel) now has a a rather large 8 second cooldown attached to it. I get the need to cut down on Dispel’s usage. PvP needs to be made a little more exciting and what not.

The PvE ramifications are just as important.

In a party

Shado-pan Monastary is one of the new instances that opened up with a minimum requirement of level 87. Inside the instance, there was a fair number of mobs that had some sort of magic debuff that would afflict members of my party. On the boss encounters, I noticed any debuffs were applied one or two at a time. I dispelled one quickly and responded with steady, mana neutral Heal to maintain that player’s health. If the party started taking AoE damage, I targeted the debuff affected player and casted Prayer of Healing and would switch between single target and Prayer of Healing as necessary.

I could use Mass Dispel. Technically between Mass Dispel and Dispel, I can rely on them to remove debuffs if they’re applied one after the other. Doing that is going to be costly to your mana. Depending on the debuff duration, it might be better off to dispel one person and then heal the other until their debuffs expire.

Haven’t tried a raid environment yet. All I know is if current boss mechanics were coupled with Mists Dispel mechanics, we’re all in deep trouble. There’d be no way we could blanket  remove negative magic in time without resorting to Mass Dispel.

Blizzard developers would need to scale back and be a little more critical when it comes to any debuff inducing bosses. Ultimately, we just need to play smart with our dispels. The option of not dispelling a player in favor of healing them may well be a necessary strategy to adopt depending on what new raid bosses are like.

Solutions

Let’s classify magic debuffs into two major categories. When responding against debuffs, you need to get a little creative and look at ways to bail out your players. Ideal solution? Simple dispel. But assuming your dispel is now on cooldown, what’s your next choice?

Impairment

This refers to any ability to hinders your character from doing anything. This means any slow, any stun, a freeze, or control loss.

With your allies stuck, they need to get out of a bad situation pronto. Let’s say Jeremy is frozen in place after a Frost Nova. They can’t move and they have no way of breaking themselves out. You, being the smart player that you are, dispelled yourself first. There happens to be a giant shadow underneath Jeremy which indicates a large meteor is about to squish him in half. Mentally, you know that meteor is going to crush him before your Dispel is available for use.

You can use Leap of Faith to extract him. If that’s not available, drop a Pain Suppression and pray that’s enough to ward that meteor.

Find a way to move the player, if possible.

If you can’t give them a movement boost, look for a way to ensure that they survive through it.

Damage

Any debuff that inflicts damage. This could be any DoT, a delayed nuke, etc.

Your allies are about to experience some large dents in their health pool. You can’t get that debuff off of them. Your only option is to brute force heal the players through it until the debuff expires on it’s own. If you don’t think your rate of healing can level off or offset the rate of damage, then resort to a cooldown. Guardian Spirit is a perfect insurance spell.

Speaking of bugs, I’m not sure if this is intended or not. The 8 second cooldown on Purify only triggers if a negative debuff is removed. I can spam Purify on myself without any debuffs without tripping the 8 second cooldown.

Or is that intended? I can’t remember.