3.1 PTR
 

Surprised nobody's started a thread on here yet...here are the priest changes including the undocumented ones (from MMO Champion):

Priest
Discipline
Skills

* Divine Spirit is now a baseline spell.

Talents

* Penance (Tier 11) Damage increased slightly across all ranks.
* Grace (Tier 9) now lasts 15 sec. (Previously lasted 8 sec)
* Rapture (Tier 8 ) revamped. Now a 3 point talent. When your Power Word: Shield is completely absorbed or dispelled you are instantly energized with 1.5% of your total mana, and you have a 33% chance to energize your shielded target with 2% total mana, 8 rage, 16 energy or 32 runic power. This effect cannot occur once every 12 seconds.
* Focused Will (Tier 7) now increases spell critical strike chance by 1/2/3% in addition to its previous effect.
* Reflective Shield has been moved from Tier 7 to Tier 5. It is now a 2 point talent and causes 22/45% of the damage you absorb with Power Word: Shield to reflect back at the attacker.
* Enlightenment (Tier 6) is now a 3 point talent and now increases your total Spirit by 2/4/6% and increases your spell haste by 2/4/6%. (Previously a 5 point talent)
* Meditation (Tier 3) now increases mana regeneration by 17/33/50%. (Previously 10/20/30%)
* Improved Power Word: Fortitude (Tier 2) now also increases your personal stamina by 2/4%.
* Unbreakable Will (Tier 1) now reduces the duration of Stun, Fear, and Silence effects done to you by an additional 6/12/18/24/30%. (Previously 3/6/9/12/15%)
* *New Talent* Improved Flash Heal, Tier 7, 3 point talent - Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal by 5/10/15%, and increases the critical effect chance of your Flash Heal by 4/7/10% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.
* *New Talent* Soul Warding, Tier 5, 1 point talent - Reduces the cooldown of your Power Word: Shield ability by 4 sec, and reduces the mana cost of your Power Word: Shield by 30%.


Holy
Skills

* Prayer of Healing is now a targeted spell that heals the target's party.
* Holy Nova mana cost reduced from 27% base mana to 22% base mana.

Talents

* Circle of Healing (Tier 9) healing increased across all ranks.
* Test of Faith (Tier 9) now increases healing by 4/8/12% on friendly targets at or below 50% health.
* Serendipity (Tier 8 ) changed to: When you heal with Binding Heal or Flash Heal, the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell is reduced by 6/12/20%. Stacks up to 3 times. Lasts 20 sec.
* Holy Concentration (Tier 7) changed to: Your mana regeneration is increased by 16/32/50% for 8 sec after you critically heal with Flash Heal, Greater Heal, Binding Heal or Renew. (Previously had a chance to grant clearcasting effect)
* Blessed Resilience (Tier 7) increases the effectiveness of your healing spells by 1/2/3% along with its previous effect.
* Improved Holy Concentration (Tier 9) removed from the game.
* *New Talent* Empowered Renew, Tier 9, 3 point talent - Your Renew spell gains an additional 5/10/15% of your bonus healing effects, and your Renew will instantly heal the target for 5/10/15% of the total periodic effect.


Shadow
Skills

* Shadowfiend now creates a shadowy fiend to attack the target. Caster receives 5% mana when the Shadowfiend attacks. Damage taken by area of effect attacks is reduced, and the Shadowfiend has a reduced chance to be hit by spells and melee attacks. Lasts 15 sec.

Talents

* Dispersion (Tier 11) now clears all snare and movement impairing effects when cast, and makes you immune to them while dispersed.
* Shadowform (Tier 7) now gives your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells the ability to critically hit.
* Darkness moved from Tier 6 to Tier 1.
* Silence (Tier 5) range increased to 30 yards. (Previously was 20 yards)
* Vampiric Embrace (Tier 5) now lasts 5 mins. (Previously lasted 1 min)
* Spirit Tap (Tier 1) now increases mana regeneration while casting by 87%. (Previously 50%)
* Improved Spirit Tap (Tier 1) increases mana regeneration while casting by 17/33%. (Previously 10/20%)
* *New Talent* Improved Devouring Plague, Tier 6, 3 point talent - Increases the periodic damage done by your Devouring Plague by 5/10/15%, and when you cast Devouring Plague you instantly deal damage equal to 5/10/15% of its total periodic effect.

Also new glyphs:

* Glyph of Psychic Scream -- Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 2 sec. and increases its cooldown by 8 sec. (Old: Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 1 sec.)
* Glyph of Fear Ward -- Reduces cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 60 sec. (Old: 30 sec.)
* Glyph of Fade -- Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 15 sec. (Old: Increases the duration and cooldown of your Fade spell by 50%.)
* Glyph of Inner Fire -- Increases the armor from your Inner Fire spell by 50%. (Old: Increases the charges on your Inner Fire spell by 20.)
* Glyph of Mind Control -- Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec. (Old: 12 sec.)
* Glyph of Smite -- Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Smite by 100%. (Old: 50%)
* Glyph of Dispersion -- Your Dispersion ability now also clears movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for its duration.
* Glyph of Guardian Spirit *new* -- If you Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec.
* Glyph of Penance *new* -- Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec.
* Glyph of Mind Sear *new* -- Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards.
* Glyph of Hymn of Hope *new* -- Your Hymn of hope provides 3 times the normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter.
* Glyph of Pain Suppression *new* -- Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned.

--

My thoughts:

I don't think Disc got quite as big a buff as I was hoping (and I wanted it to get one, cause I love disc). The obvious standouts are a reduced CD on PW:S, Imp Flash Heal, increased duration on Grace, and Divine Aegis stacking. They're all good changes, to be sure. What I'm most unhappy about is the change to Rapture, as it looks to me to be a fairly clear nerf to disc mana regen, since it will only return mana on PW:S damage absorption. That seems like a silly mechanic to me - as a disc priest we use shields a lot on tanks, and it'll work fine in that situation. But shielding dps often results in a shield not fully used up, meaning we get no mana back. The FHeal mana cost reduction will make up for this somewhat, but I still don't like the Rapture change.

Shadow got a straight-up buff with the DP talent, and the fact that dots can crit - that's going to be a hell of a lot of fun to play with. Otherwise, not a whole lot to say there.

Holy I think got the biggest buffs of all. Even though I feel like Disc got buffed overall, I'm not sure it was enough to outweigh the buffs Holy got. I thought after the last CoH nerf (adding a CD) that Disc was clearly the superior healing spec, but now I think the balance might shift back to Holy.

Holy Concentration got a nice change - personally I hated the old mechanic, I like the new one much better (not having to time heals around procs = very nice). A stronger Renew gives Holy priests a better HoT, and the buff to CoH's healing makes up for the CD that it got. Serendipity and Test of Faith also got really nice buffs.

What will possibly set Holy apart even more is the combination of Holy Reach and Healing Prayers. PoH is going to become a pretty awesome AoE healing tool now that it will be targeted by group, but the problem with PoH has always been its heinous mana usage. If PoH really does become a very important Priest healing spell, that 20% mana reduction will make it very hard for many to justify going Disc, which will pretty much be all about FHeal/PW:S/Penance spam. Great for keeping a tank up, no doubt, but I think Disc's niche will get even smaller. Holy has always had more all-around utility, and I think the gap might get a little too wide.

Dots being able to crit is awesome, especially in a raid. I've gotten my VT with raid buffs/trinket/sundial proc to tick for over 4k (though that might have been on loatheb, I can't remember). I don't really see much by way of shadow pvp buffs (getting out of stuns and potentially snares with dispersion is nice, but a health regen on it like in beta would rock)

Disc got a pretty nice buff imo. Since I usually go disc for pvp, I'm liking the changes so far. Of course, I haven't gotten on the PTR yet (hopefully I can tonight or something), but on paper I'm quite pleased.

The DoT crit change in its current state is a nerf to PvE damage unless they change Shadow Power to include VT, Pain, and DP. It would probably be a slight buff to PvP dots since it seems to remove the double resilience tax.

I am still unclear if Dispersion would make you immune to stuns. If not, it still leaves the talent very lackluster against rogues, one of the SP's hardest counters.

The CD removal from VE is great, and I guess the 5 min PvE duration is cool, at best? But no dispel resist and a GCD still makes it very lackluster in PvP.

Moving Darkness so far down in the tree, while adding another 3 points in its place makes little sense to me, and will force some choices on the SP build. Mana and/or health regen will be the likely sacrafices in Meditation or Imp VE.

I REALLY like the DP change - a little bit of extra burst is nice, though the extremely long CD still isn't justified.

I would like to think these are still going to change quite a bit, especially with respect to the DoT crit mechanism, because I can't see why they would nerf our PvE damage. Survivability and/or kiting needs a lot of improvement still, especially since Blackout is just gone now, with no replacement.

I don't think the Darkness move will change shadow specs much - here's what I'm looking at:

http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...0&version=9614

Basically, the only change is that 3 points had to come from somewhere to take the Imp DP talent. I chose Veiled Shadows and Inner Focus. To be honest, in a PvE situation, those were both very mediocre talents anyway. I never have mana issues - the only reason I ever had points in those talents in the first place was because I had nowhere else to put them (and more threat reduction for raiding is almost completely useless).

I do agree about Shadow Power needing to include our dots now, though - I didn't catch that at first glance. Right now, with say a 20% crit rate, our dots are doing 20% more damage. But with no 100% crit damage bonus, a 20% crit rate will only net you a 10% damage increase on dots. Probably a change Blizz didn't think through properly (which is what a lot of these changes feel like). If Shadow Power doesn't get changed though...bummer.

Good point, feedback this - I doubt they intended to nerf shadowpriest damage.

Correct me if something is wrong. Some calculations on new DP damage assuming 25% crit chance


currently it does dmg * 1


On 3.1
{
[dmg*0.75] /* base damage of the spell */

+

[dmg*1.5*0.75*0.1875] /* dmg from critting ticks*/

-

[dmg *0.75 * 0.25] /* base dmg of critted ticks */

+

15% of total damage /*imp DP "burst" effect*/ = y = 0.15*dmg*0.75

}

* 1.15 /* improved DP */




= [0.75dmg + 0.2109 dmg - 0.1875 dmg + y ] * 1.15 = (0.7734 + 0.1125) *1.15 dmg = 1.01875dmg

DP is going to do around 1,8 % more damage over its duration assuming 25% crit chance on your char

Is it just me or did they totally fail to address the requirement that we all put 13 points in Discipline? I thought changing that was a priority.

No, I don't think they've ever said that changing it was a priority. Usually when they talk about things like this they say that having some mandatory talents is ok. No arms warrior should skip Mortal Strike, etc.

The problem there, and with the "mandatory talents" issue, is that not all Warriors are Arms. *All* specs of Priests want Meditation. It's just too good to skip, even for PvP specs.

It's not just a mandatory talent. It's a mandatory 13 points that we have to allot for any spec. What would alleviate things would be to bring it down to tier 1 Discipline. But I'll keep dreaming.

And yes, Blizzard did explicitly say that they're OK with having these mandatory talents.

Meditation rant:
I can't think of another class where ALL specs go 13 into one specific tree. Usually those are Tier 1 talents (Shaman go for Int in Enhancement tree, now Paladins will go for the +heal in the Prot tree, Warriors go for +crit in Fury tree, Hunters for +damage in SV tree, etc.) So all specs might dip only 5 points in one specific tree rather than 13.

Typical Disc build may look like this:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...0&version=9614

I'm almost wondering if it's not a good idea to buff your PW:S since you almost WANT it to get taken off anyway. :) But if you're shielding a tank, it pretty much doesn't matter how big your Shield is. Again, not very pleased with the Rapture change. With a 25k mana pool, 2.5% is going to give you 625 mana every 12 seconds. At 30k mana, that goes up to 750 mana (312.5 mana 5 if it's perfectly every 12 seconds).
Divine Aegis stacking up to 125*80 = 10k sounds pretty good, from a mitigation standpoint. I'm rather concerned with mana regen, though.
I imagine Blizzard can play around with the cooldown on Rapture though to get us wherever they want. (Probably the easiest knob to turn)

Holy looks rather cookie cutter now:
http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...0&version=9614
It looks fun, though - cast FHeal to give yourself some fast Prayer of Healing or GHeal and then go to town. It's going to be a VERY powerful spec in that regard.

On Glyphs:
Guardian Spirit is almost "spammable" - going from 3 min to 1 min should make it more attractive to cast on non "Oh Shit" moments
Penance looks nice, but with the nerf to Rapture, not AS good as before. :) Going from 10 to 8 seconds on the Glyph then 20% less would yield 6.4 sec CD. But if the Glyph gets applied after Aspiration, that CD goes to 6 seconds instead.

Blizzard has mentioned Omen of Clarity and Ruin as other spec-neutral mandatory talents. This isn't a priest-exclusive complaint. Personally, I just don't see 13 points in discipline being a big deal.

Would we be a stronger class if meditation were moved to tier 1? Sure, a little bit. Would it suddenly make raid leaders go, "Wow, I want 4 priests in my raid instead of 3?" No.

Inner Focus
 

Seems like the Inner Focus Disc talent will be a nice PvE increase now that DoTs can crit.

Cast on first SW:P, then recast 3 minutes later on DP

I'm a bit more concerned with the fact that there's now 60 PvE non-useless points in the shadow tree, leaving you with a choice of either not having 3/3 meditation or dropping something. At the outset I'd probably drop imp VE and go 13/0/58.

I also don't get why imp devo plague has 3 talent points. It's a nice spell, but outside of trash pulls it's not a massive portion of my damage and 3 points to give it a ~30% damage boost seems like under budgeted points. Also it might not be that huge on trash pulls any more because pestilence explicitly states it only works on 2 DK diseases now.

I've never raided shadow, but I've always thought that DP's scaling came from synergy with Pestilence. Will the Improved DP buff affect newly affected targets that get DP from Pestilence? If not, then the overall damage increase will only be this dramatic on single targets.

[EDIT: I didn't see the Pestilence Nerf in the DK talent section. NM]

In general I like the priest holy/disc changes, but the fact that "Improved Flash Heal" is a 7th tier disc talent is just indicative of the lack of direction the two trees have had through all of WOTLK, and goes against all the feedback that was given to them from Const's thread way back when.

While the GS glyph is interesting, I still think it will require complicated UI watching to know if your GS cooldown got reset or not. It seems like almost more of a headache than it's worth. While It is definitely a nice one, I don't think it's worth giving up Flash Heal, PoH, or CoH glyphs for.

I've run though the math independently and am figuring a 20% increase in DP damage with the new talent. This math is figured with the current dot+crit behavior of only a 50% bonus to damage.

Overall it looks like a 19% damage boost to DP with the current dot/crit behavior. If we assume Blizzard didn't intend to nerf the crit bonus, the numbers work out to around 32% increase.