Patch 1.10 talent calculator and discussion

Lurchington · 02/23/06, 1:00 PM

this has been up for around 45 minutes and it's something like 20 pages at WoW.net, and I don't feel like discussing it there.

ost and removed the melee attack power boost from the ability as such offers the priest very little benefit.

The new 21-point talents are Divine Spirit and Mental Strength.

Finally, the new 31-point talent for the Discipline tree is called Power Infusion. This ability infuses the target with power, increasing spell damage and healing by 20% for 15 seconds, and can be used every three minutes. This spell is very similar to Arcane Power, however it can be cast on other players, enhances healing as well as damage, and doesn't increase the mana cost of spells cast while under its effect.

This is a long thread, so bear with me... ;)

I have a feeling most priests have been really curious to see what we've done with the Holy Tree. Well, fortunately the wait is over. You'll notice two things right off the bat. Improved Renew offers the same level of improvement for only three points, and a brand new talent is immediately available - Healing Focus. This talent, for only two points will gives players a 70% chance of avoiding interruption caused by damage when casting any healing spell.

Next at the five-point mark you'll notice another brand new talent - Spell Warding, which reduces all damage taken by 10%. That which was previously a 21-point talent now stands next to it, Divine Fury. In addition to being available much sooner, this talent now reduces the casting time of Smite, Holy Fire, Heal and Greater Heal spells by 0.1 sec.

Remember, with this talent (available very early in the tree) Greater Heal will cast in 2.5 seconds!

I'm actually pretty excited about what's next. Holy Nova is now an eleven-point talent and has no cooldown whatsoever (of course universal global cooldown is still in-effect). This means that much like Improved Arcane Explosion, priests can spam small bursts of threatless holy goodness which both damages foes and heals friends. The mana cost has been increased, so it's not as efficient as before. We actually had alot of fun testing this spell in both PvE and PvP, and I'm excited to read through player feedback when this is live on the PTRs.

Moving on to the competing eleven-point talents, another new ability is revealed, Blessed Recovery. This passive ability will heal 25% of the damage received over 6 seconds after being struck by a melee or critical ranged hit. Lastly, take a look at Inspiration. This talent now only costs three points.

Holy Reach is another new talent available to the priests. For two points, players can increases the range of their Smite and Holy Fire spells and the radius of their Prayer of Healing and Holy Nova spells by 20%. Improved Healing has the same effect and is found in the same place, however, only three points need to be invested in order to gain the 15% mana cost reduction to those healing spells. The last talent on this tier is called Searing Light which increases the damage of Holy Fire and Smite by 10%.

Don't forget, Holy Fire is now a core ability and the casting time reduced to 3.5 seconds. Which of course becomes 3 seconds with the appropriate talent (the same talent which also benefits the casting time of Heal and Greater Heal.

Another great new passive ability talent - Spiritual Guidance, is located at the 21-point mark. This talent will permanently improve the priests spell damage and healing by up to 25% of their total spirit. Pretty nice boost, if I do say so myself.

I must admit, the next improvement has me awfully excited. Spirit of Redemption, (you know that angel that lets everyone know you've died and that their probably about to die as well:), will now allow the priest to become the angel, upon death. For ten seconds, the priest can cast any healing spell completely free! This allows the strategic player much better control in preventing a wipe.

As you can see the new 26-point talent is Spiritual Healing, which as before offers the priest a 10% increase to all healing spells. Placing points this far into the tree, assuming you've picked up Improved Renew and Spiritual Guidance will most definitely make the Holy Priest's heals stand out.

It should be no surprise that the final rank Holy talent is brand new, seeing that Holy Nova is now an 11-point talent. This new spell, called Lightwell will create a holy lightwell near the priest. At final rank, friendly targets can click the lightwell to restore 1600 health over a period of ten seconds. The lightwell has five charges, meaning, up to five players can use the lightwell before it expires. Our testing has shown that this ability works great in both smaller dungeons and raids, often times allowing the lower maintenance party members to take advantage of the healing properties of this well, while the priest and other healing classes focused on the main tank or whomever was taking heavy damage.

One other thing I'd like to mention before moving on to the Shadow tree is the fact that Focus Casting has been removed completely. Essentially, with the improvements to Martyrdom and the new talent Healing Focus, it wasn't as valuable a talent as before.

So, what improvements have we made to Shadow you ask? You'll actually notice that very little changes were made, so fortunately, you're almost done reading my post. :)

Shadow Affinity only costs three points now, instead of five. Improved Fade will no longer increase the duration of the spell, but rather decrease the cooldown by a total of six seconds. Shadow Weaving is available for 16-points. While Vampiric Embrace remains the same, a new talent is available called Improved Vampiric Embrace. For two points, the amount healed by Vampiric Embrace will be increased by 10%.

Well, this pretty much sums up the changes. It's likely we'll make some more adjustments and tweaks based upon what's revealed through testing on the PTRs. As a priest, I'm excited. How about you guys? Post your thoughts...

Sidenote: Try not to quote my entire thread, if possible please. Threads break much sooner that way, and I'd like to get as much out of this discussion thread as possible, before creating a "part 2".

straight copy and paste.

The 31 point talents for Disc and Holy both look interesting, and I'm curious to see what you all feel about it.

♦ Praetorian · 02/23/06, 1:03 PM

Need to see how the Lightwells work in practice. Will they get the benefit of +heal? What cooldown? Can you cast it at range? How mana efficient or inefficient? And so forth.

The 31pt Disc talent is, again, nice, but I just can't see giving up Spiritual Guidance to get it. I think we'll see a lot of 2X/2X/0 Holy/Disc builds.

• Hamlet · 02/23/06, 1:08 PM

You can find the full description in a variety of places.

The long and the short of it is that I am veyr surprised by the overall increase in power level of the class (as regards PvE healing). They've basically subscribed to the "Priests must feel like the healing kings, over Druids, Paladins, and Shamans" notion.

It's interesting for raid balance. It will be very tempting to bring more than 5 Priests along for main healing, which is not something I really wanted to see happen (I've always like the idea of the flat class distribution). A short cast-time GH now outdoes everyone else for sheer power-healing, and is mana-efficient to boot.

I'm not saying Druids are going to be completely marginalized, just that Priests seem to have huge advantages right now. In raids where performance/endurance is a serious factor, it will be hard to avoid the temptation to stack them.

Runnybabbit · 02/23/06, 1:09 PM

Hmmm, maybe I'll finish leveling up that priest alt after all...

Lurchington · 02/23/06, 1:14 PM

new talent calculator up at:

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...s2/talents.html

Torael_7 · 02/23/06, 1:21 PM

This almost makes me wish that rogues had lots of things wrong with us so that they'd do lots of nifty things to fix us when the time comes, instead of (most likely) do almost nothing.

Awesome changes, though. I wonder how Spiritual Healing (10% healing effectiveness) and Spiritual Guidance (+dmg/healing increased by up to 25% of spirit) stack.

♦ Praetorian · 02/23/06, 1:25 PM

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...000000000000000

I think this is the best PvE healing spec.

thevidon · 02/23/06, 1:31 PM

Holy crap. Im playing my priest again soon! He will arise from his lvl 60 grave and holy nova everyone to death.

I don't really know how lightwell will be that usefull. It breaks the heal on damage taken :(

Edit: Seems like priests are gonna blow away everyone else in terms of healing ability now (which was what I wanted and why I quit my priest). I wonder if this will affect raid slots for druids and or shaman?

hamlet_the_lesser · 02/23/06, 1:53 PM

well now shaman are worthless if you can get enough priests :-/. Luckily priests still are hard to find.

♦ Praetorian · 02/23/06, 2:03 PM

Merged the other thread into this one.

And as a raid leader, I don't see why this would make me want to bring fewer shamans or druids. I see it as a net healing increase for the raid, and a net happiness increase for my priests.

If anyone is going to bitch about how this change marginalizes their class, take it to the WoW forums where it'll fit in with the rest of the bullshit.

Somnambulist · 02/23/06, 2:10 PM

Originally Posted by hamlet,February 23rd, 2006 @ 1:53PM

well now shaman are worthless if you can get enough priests :-/. Luckily priests still are hard to find.

I think you're going to continue to see a lot of this knee-jerk reaction in response to this. I know the druid forums have been plagued with it for months since the plans for the upcoming changes were announced.

The bottom line is druids / shamans / paladins are hybrid classes that can fill a multitude of roles in a pinch in a raid and I think you'll see guilds more willing to allow hybrids to spec. to fill hybrid roles vs. the typical druid mana battery role or pally buff / dispell / healbot roles.

I don't think by any means resto druids and shamans or holy paladins are going to be without jobs now. We still have incredibly powerful talents (druids still have amazing mana efficient heals and even more-so after 1.10 not to mention innervate and nature's swiftness, paladins have divine favor and free heals on crit., and I am sure Shamans have some kind of uber talents to make them amazingly useful as well...) that will make us invaluable to a raid.

The main point it seems people fail to realize is a hybrid class is supposed to be a jack of all trades and master of none that can fill in for a class specialized in a role if needed. Priests were hardly the masters of healing that they should be IMO before these changes.

I am very interested to see how Power Infusion and Lightwell work out in practice. They sound pretty cool.

Torael_7 · 02/23/06, 2:11 PM

Originally Posted by hamlet,February 23rd, 2006 @ 1:53PM

well now shaman are worthless if you can get enough priests :-/. Luckily priests still are hard to find.

Yes and rogues are useless in the light of the feral druid changes and geared out fury warriors!

:rolleyes:

Originally Posted by Somnambulist,February 23rd, 2006 @ 2:10PM

and I am sure Shamans have some kind of uber talents to make them amazingly useful as well...

:unsure:

Healing-wise, or in general? Totems are amazingly useful but Shaman dont typically stand out as a healer, certainly in comparison to the 'new' priest.

hamlet_the_lesser · 02/23/06, 2:18 PM

Call it jealousy more than anything else. I am excited to see how this will change the raid also. Seeing wells dropped in front of the tank so he can heal himself and priests trying to AOE down mobs should be fascinating.

This makes me really excited for the potential of the shaman review but it also makes me very impatient.

Juice · 02/23/06, 2:23 PM

Originally Posted by hamlet,February 23rd, 2006 @ 1:18PM

This makes me really excited for the potential of the shaman review but it also makes me very impatient.

If there's one thing WoW needs, it's finally a fix to the Shaman class to make it viable in PvP and PvE.

• Zoid · 02/23/06, 2:28 PM

Spiritual Guidance looks pretty amazing for a healing and soloing ability. Using it with DS looks like a good way to actually do some damage with the priest.

The biggest issue I had with my priest is I really couldn't farm with him at all while being spec'd for raiding. Now that I have passive damage increasing abilities and talents that improve my offense I have more damage output as well. It's no shadow burst, but I may not be so completely gimped in my ability to do damage.

Gurg: I'd rather split the five points between Spell Warding and Blessed Recovery. That way I take less damage for both spells and melee.

My initial build reaction is something like this, http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classe...000000000000000

But I'd love to try out a build with Power Infusion as well. Ugh, now we actually have choices!