Looks like updated Hymns were snuck in with the recent PTR build. The big news? Hymn of Hope is back and flashier than ever!
Divine Hymn redesigned: 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 4960-5208 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and increases healing done to them by 15% for 8 seconds. Maximum of 12 heals. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.
Hymn of Hope redesigned: 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 seconds for 8 seconds, and temporarily increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 seconds. After the effect expires, the mana is lost. Maximum of 12 mana restorations. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.
Well? What do you think?
Nice!
Divine Hymn will come in handy for raid healers, I’m sure.
Does the effect of Hymn of Hope also include yourself?
If it does effect yourself that would seem to not be a good thing? With the mana disappearing after the 8 seconds of the channel and the priest not being able to use it when channeling. Unless the effect lasts longer than the channel. Haven’t slept in a while so I mightn’t be reading it right. Divine hymn looks much more viable.
The +20% Max Mana effect is essentially “Receives 20% more mana from %-based effects” (like HoH or Replishment).
It’s a bit awkward but matches up with Divine Hymm’s +15% Healing Received.
Cals last blog post..Where did this thing come from?
“Maximum of 12 mana restorations”
Is it 12 restorations total for the Raid as a whole, or 12 from that Priest, or 12 to any particular player? The obvious risk, especially with Hymn of Hope, is that in a mana-starved environment stacking Priests is encouraged or even becomes mandatory. It’s obviously a fantastic spell, especially for raids with high-quality healers than can cope with a Priest taking time out for 8 seconds, but I think I’d need to know more before I can judge it fairly.
Would be appreciated if anyone with access to test server could clarify:
– Does % increase stay for full 8 seconds even if you start channeling and interrupt immediately? Great pvp potential if so.
– Does Hymn of Hope also increase your current mana (along with maximum)? I assume yes.
Thanks!
I use Divine hymn as is, channeled spells are cool dont’ get me wrong, but if they’re trying to change the mechanics, why not just add new spells, and let us choose which one is right for the situation. Old divine hymn, prevortex maly, new divine hymn, tons of uses, and I’m sure I ‘ll love it, I just don’t see the point in removing the old function. Excited for new healing toys though! would the new Divine do a smart target switch, say healing lots of different folks during a Gluth decimate? or just 3 folks total? seems to me this is a middle ground between PoH and the current Divine hymn. would like to have all 3 tools in my toolbox.
Doesn’t Spam channel sound like a bad cable show?
Sorry, but I don’t get it…
I do understand that, yes, you’re as useful as a totem for 8 seconds but, raid wise, this could mean the difference between a wipe and not on progress nights, with almost-oom priests bringing up a few people to over 1/4 mana… and that doesn’t even count the boosted effects replenishment will have on them in that time due to the boosted max mana pool. It trades off fewer targets for less time and healing/dpsing for mana regen… but is still better, to my mind, than something I (as a shammy) have to spend 4 talent points to get.
The BoW/MS change was in part supposedly to do with the fact that shamans ‘would be stacked for ulduar for totems’ but now I see no reason why the groups who would have done that will not now stack priests.
Really, I wish I knew why they picked the things they picked to change, it all seems rather confusing at the moment.
/hug
@Aurik:
You beat me to the punch here. I couldn’t agree more. It just seems incredibly random the things they pick to change, and I am pretty darn confused with some of the choices. Guess we’ll see how it works.
I have to agree 100% with Aurik. It doesn’t seem that they’re being consistent in their design philosophy. To me, it is no better to be pressured to stack priests than to stack shamans!
It seems like maybe they realized they had cut sources of mana renewal so strongly that when we’re out, we’ll just be out. Still, can they please have a meeting before they put in new stuff so that they make sure that all of the changes work together?
I’m happy for priests though. These look like two very good spells, channeling and all. Can I have two very good spells? Ha.
I don’t think you’re going to see a lot of people who’ll be “zomg, we have to stack priests now!” because of these changes. These add to our utility and will make us a more attractive option as a healer, but only for endurance fights really. And even then I’d say that our utility isn’t going to be substantially more attractive than other mana boosting classes.
I do like the change to Divine Hymn though. Always excited to see a spell going from ass backwards useless to something I might start using. At least when the occasion calls for it.
Review: Good changes to the spells, makes priests slightly more attractive, but won’t be a case of people stacking priests.
Holy Duegs last blog post..Friday Strats – Noth the Plaguebringer
Singularly unimpressed. I don’t see much, if any, improvement to either spell, but Divine Hymn, especially, seems to be much LESS useful than currently, and the increase in CDs for both abilities only adds insult to injury, in my opinion.
Kestrels last blog post..Hiatus
Like Kestrel I am very unimpressed with these changes. Considering how frustrated the community was about 8 second channeled spells, it’s a bit of a slap in the face to change our other Hymn to an 8 seconds channel.
Also, I really do hope that the HoH always gives mana to the Priest channeling it. The way I read it, both effects intelligently choose the 3 people who are lowest in health or mana and give them 3% health/mana back plus the 8 secondary effect, then on the next tick (@ 4 seconds) chooses the three lowest people (and could be the same people it picked before if they still lowest). All in all the the +20% mana pool/+15% healing could be applied to 12 different people, but it’s a very poor effect for the Priest casting it as they may never get any of the effects :(.
With this type of effect – the randomness of it, I can’t see a raid leader wanting to stack Priests like they would with Resto Shaman’s Mana Tide, as it is inherently uncontrollable, i.e. I can stack my healers in a group with the Resto Shaman, I can’t use the Priests’ Hymns to definitely give mana back to VIP A, B and C.
> The Priest must channel to maintain the spell.
This is the biggest problem that I see. In a typical raid fight there is rarely if ever such a long period of time to stop healing. So using the HoH will be very problematic.
As for DH, if you’re in a situation where you need to heal several people, likely it is because they (and you) are taking splash-damage. With DH being a channeled spell every interruption due to splash damage taken by the priest will shorten the channel and make it less useful.
So to summarize, these spells in my eyes are still very problematic in terms of general usability. Better than the current incarnation, but not by much.
Solidstates last blog post..Enchanters on Strike
After reading the other comments I have to say Jesinta makes an excellent point. Not only is HoH problematic in terms of being channeled as I posted above. The additional problem as he points out is that it could “choose” to boost the mana of e.g. the Boomkin who was soon going to use his Innervate on himself, the ret-paladin, the DPS shaman…
Bah 🙁
Quick update: Does not appear the new version of Hymn of Hope is active yet. It’s been restored to the game. But it’s a placeholder. It’s a shadow of its former self.
Matticuss last blog post..More Shaman 3.1 Changes
Old hymn of hope was better. New Divine Hymn is better. Overall two spells at least partially useful, on long timers and not OP.
Not bad.
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I find that they are odd changes, but I’ll take them as they come.
Divine Hymn was always an odd spell since it lowered the dps on mobs, but it had its uses. With the change, it is less restricted in viable situations but it’s also less usefull. It generates 3 big heals on targets we cannot select. This leaves me wondering when we can use it: on stressy AoE moments where we need big heals without being too selective, we cannot permit channeling an 8s cast. On times where we can permit it, it’s unlikely that we need this much healing.
And yet… this spell will prove usefull IMO. The mere fact that it costs 0 mana and still produces large healing makes it a strong support spell when you’re outside the FSR. Despite our OFSR regen nerf, this may still prove welcome.
I’m glad Hymn of Hope is no longer party based but I find it sad it doesn’t target more than 3 people. Still.. the increase in mana is a nice treat. Rather than a mediocre help on 5 people it will become a nice support for 3 people. Imagine a Mage evocating when he gets that buff, and they are the ones complaining the most about mana in our guild 🙂
Again, no mana cost… My bet is that it will not be a gamemaking/breaking spell on its own but is a valuable piece in a mini managed spell cycle that can yield great mana returns.
I almost need to hear how much spellpower will add to divine hymn before I can say anythogn about it. Lets face it, if spellpower co-efficent is different on a spell it changes how useful it is. If DH scales really well, I will stop my QQ and send thank you cards as appropriate to blizzard — if it scales like I imagine it will… applying 1/12 of the coeffecnient to each tick — I think I might not cast it.
Of couse even if it isn’t the spell I was hoping for… one that doesn’t take 8 seconds to cast, it sounds like (from the doom and gloom all seem to forsee in killing mana regen) I will be casting HoH every 6 minutes… starting with the first time I go OOM each fight. I can evey see where people above may be right abou the issue of stacking, but honestly the big thing there is that since it’s not talented etc, a Shadow Priest can do it a while giving replenishment too. Suddenly it’s all about the shadow priests for mana again.
VT->MB->Hymn of Hope->Shadowform->MB->MF->VT or some similar
I do like the new divine hymn as a raiding priest, but as a pvp priest it makes me a sad panda. You’d be surprised how useful it could be in bgs, but I felt it needed a little help to make it a better pvp utility (reduce cd or take it off the shared physic scream cd)
This change makes it somewhat more useful for raids which is 😀
But it’s another slap to the face for surviviability which is 🙁
I hope we’ll get something to replace it in pvp, cause I rather thought it was a handy spell to have at times.
I am a little confused by the change to HoH… it restores something like 12% of 120% mana, what happens when that extra 20% mana goes away at the end? Can you end up with less mana than before if the person in question spammed the crap out of his extra mana pool while you were channeling? What does that maximum of 12 restorations refer to? I think I prefer the old one; simple is best.
Another thing about the spriests: currently in raid our spriests don’t cast HoH cause it will shift them out of form and changing back costs them more mana at the end. Are they going to change it so HoH is castable in shadow form?
The reason I don’t use the current hymns is because they effectively take me out of commission for their channeling duration. In 8 seconds I could be healing people using Flash Heal and watch Divine Aegis proc about 35% of the time. So at the moment I don’t find many opportunities (or necessity) to cast either of the current hymns.
The new HoH is attractive, though. 12% mana is a pretty big deal, and if I happen to find myself out of mana I’ll probably use it in combination with Shadowfiend for a ridiculous amount of mana regen.
What concerns me is if I were to take any damage during the spell channeling, I’d probably suffer a pushback and it would essentially be a waste of the 6 minute cooldown. I’m not sure it’s worth putting points into Healing Focus for the sake of 1 hymn per boss fight though.
When my mage hit 80, I loved Mirror Image. When my priest hit 80…i got a spell that I couldn’t use….huh? I’m a raiding shadow priest. I still dont get why the devs would provide a spell that supposed to be so cool but not all the trees could use it. (confused)
I’m curious to see if by “nearby lowest-health” and “nearby low mana” friendlies, we’re talking, 3 nearest to the caster, or if its capped at a particular range, say 15 yards as with current Divine Hymn.
If thats the case then positioning relative to ranged dps for HoH is going to be essential to get the most from this spell.
Exciting stuff can’t wait to see how it plays 😀