Cataclysm Priest Changes - Page 11

Overhead · 06/14/10, 9:49 AM

Originally Posted by ildon

Another thing anyone hoping for some kind of "real" smite spec needs to remember is that you're going to be missing something like 20% of the DPS of a pure class due to lack of Mastery bonuses (educated guess based on the alpha leaked mastery/passive values).

While the (current values) 6.5k smites that grayrest claims certainly won't put you in a viable raid dps slot, don't forget that every one of those tosses out a 2.9k smart heal, and you're gear/spec is still great for healing. The healing is what validates your raid spot. One spec I put together gives every smite buff, but still has circle of healing and a bunch of improved PoM talents. Basically you'd cast those 2 on CD, and smite the rest, keeping smart heals always going everywhere.

providentaim · 06/15/10, 3:56 PM

Originally Posted by Frmercury

I think you guys are getting the wrong idea as the blood is rushing out of your head to your Smite stiffie:

The occasional Smiting should happen during lulls in healing needed, but you should think about dual specing Shadow if a fight won't require you to heal at all.

Current Desirable talents for a smite build.

Holy tree talents:

5* Holy Specialization
5* Divine Fury
2* Searing Light
2* Holy Reach
2* Surge of Light

16 pts

Discipline tree talents:

5* ??? Twin Disciplines affect the free smite?
1* Inner Focus
2* Focused Power
3* Enlightenment
3* Focused Will
1* Power Infusion

15 pts
______total
31pts

Future talents for a smite build.

Holy Tree talents:

3* Searing Light
2* Divine Accuracy
2* Holy Reach
2* Surge of Light,
5* Chakra
2* (Optional) Improved Holy Nova, Increases Crit 50% & reduces gcd .5 on Nova

16 pts even if u count Holy Nova and all 5 pts for Chakra which you would get for healing anyway.

Discipline talents for smite build.

5* ??? Twin Disciplines affect the free smite?
3* Penitence
1* Inner Focus
2* Atonement
1* Power Infusion

12 pts
______total
28 pts ~counting an optional nova; plus Chakra which would likely be used for healing builds.

The smite build is going down in cost
We are getting 5 more levels worth of points

For the people worried priests smite over shadow for dps - obviously shadow will be more damage, but overall many of our healing abilities now help our damage: Atonement for example and we are using less points than currently with 5 more levels of points to spend.
I see a focus on rotations. CoH > Smite, Nova > Smite

something also tells me that
#showtooltip Smite
/cast [harm][target=targettarget,harm] Smite
will be a more important macro.

spathos · 06/15/10, 7:59 PM

It's hard to say without looking into the numbers and the hearing more from Blizzard, but my guess is that a smite build is going to still be a gimmick for raiding, though I can see it doing alot more for arena/BG play. Unless they add an "Empowered Smite" talent, it won't have nearly enough scaling to be worth the talents, at least on the holy side. But who knows what will happen before release.

Also, I was wondering whether anyone knows for sure whether you are required to have stacks of evangelism built up in order to have both the mana refund and the "cast penance while moving" part of the Archangel talent come into play. From reading the tooltip, it seems as if the penance part, at least, could be separate from the smite refund portion.

Here's my first crack at a PvE Discipline build: http://www.wowtal.com/#k=dIuN7RH4RhfTzz.9dw.priest though there are four or five points that could be moved around from the tier 5 holy into more discipline builds depending on what the player wants.

It looks like holy has a choice between either a PW: Barrier build or an Improved Holy Nova build with a few "free" points at the end of that. I won't bother linking my build, as it's nearly the same as the other ones here, but it looks like it should be a fun spec, assuming they make holy nova do more than it does now.

Amoenitas · 06/16/10, 10:50 AM

my guess is that a smite build is going to still be a gimmick for raiding

Maybe we're going to see more encounters like Leotheras where healers sometimes have to dps. I also imagine a situation where immense amounts of burstdamage is needed and healers have to support by doing damage.

Blizzards philosophy of making healing slower could also mean that there are phases where healing is less stressful and we can dps instead of being bored.

Elimbras · 06/16/10, 1:06 PM

Assuming that they manage their design, we have a lot of information.
We'll be mana constraints, meaning that we won't spam the fast or big hps heal most of the time.
But fast heals and big hps heals will still be useful (otherwise, it's a #FAIL to introduce the new spell HEAL and let us never use flash heal).
I can see only 3 options for it :
1/ Some "sustainable but heavy" regular damage : we mostly heal it throught heal spamm, but sometimes require more throughput to catch up, and go to great / flash heal to catch up
2/ Multi-phase fights, as in Ulduar, where damages are light most of the time and can be healed with heal, and heavy during some other points (think Tantrum on XT for example), needing bigger hps or quicker heal (Ice tombs on KT / 1st boss of Hyjal).
3/ Similar to above, multi-phase fights where we have free-time for dps at some points ( Saurfang / deathwisper / Sartharion 3D fights), and need big hps at other time to cover heavy damage.

I'm pretty sure we won't have only the first scenario. That would be boring in long term.
Scenario 2/ and 3/ are similar, and that might be tactical options for guilds to go for 1 more healer during heavy phase trying to help dps on lull phases, or going for 1 less healer, and no security net, for 1 more efficient dps.

KalistraMerged · 06/20/10, 9:16 AM

Personally I would look more at:

Talent Calculator - World of Warcraft

for a disc PvE build.

I think, personally, from a raiding POV, having the disc priest throwing a few smart-bomb heals, whilst MT healing would work quite nicely. Makes the 'rotations' a bit more involved to.

One thing I have noticed is the talents do not refer to 'heal' or 'PWB' deep in our trees, hoping that will change.

Ellyh · 06/20/10, 4:12 PM

While tinkering with the talent calculator and cursing having to take lightwell to get chakra I started wondering if the chakra ability was really worth it, especially for a 10 man raiding priest who will be covering all roles all the time. I then put together a no-chakra build and was plesantly supprised that it was possible to do so without having to invest massivly in the dps or pvp only talents.

So my next qestion is, do we need to get chakra? it's 5 talent points for a fairly limited payback with only the renew chakra really seeming to give good value for money.

PoH chakra an extra 10% range on a spell which is already capable of being 36 yards with a 2 talent point investment coupled with a 2.5 sec reduction in coh cooldown is as we all agree rather lackluster and hard to imagine ever entering given the current implimentation of PoH.

Renew Chakra, obviously good for renew spam with 15% periodic haste and a natural 1 sec gcd at 0 haste is obviously good and for a 25 man renew bot is probably worth the 5 points.

Heal state, 5% crit to heal and refreshing renew is very underwhelming and unlikely to make any real savings. I firmly believe the Heal specific talents and test of faith are far more important for any holy priest doing any tank healing. It is probable that early on even in this state you will only have about 20-25% crit rate, again leaving the 5 point investment looking rather lackluster. It also does little to counter the fact that on single target healing disc will be much stronger with a 12% bigger heal once grace is up + shields.

If I was to go back to holy I would be tempted to pass on both lightwell and chakra unless playing renew bot.

Hegen · 06/20/10, 6:20 PM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

PoH chakra an extra 10% range on a spell which is already capable of being 36 yards with a 2 talent point investment coupled with a 2.5 sec reduction in coh cooldown is as we all agree rather lackluster and hard to imagine ever entering given the current implimentation of PoH.

To me, the wording from the class preview would suggest that it doesn't enhance range by 10% but the amount healed. Also, it suggests to me that not only further PoH, but also CoH and HN are affected for 20s. Now, I don't have access to the alpha, but for now I will assume that's what is intended.

Xtian · 06/21/10, 3:33 PM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

While tinkering with the talent calculator and cursing having to take lightwell to get chakra I started wondering if the chakra ability was really worth it, especially for a 10 man raiding priest who will be covering all roles all the time...

Chakra also includes the 25% spirit > spellpower conversion that Holy is used to, so forgoing Chakra is likely significant nerf to your own throughput. If you'd pay 5 points for Spiritual Guidance, you'll want to pay 6 for Lightwell + Chakra.

Ellyh · 06/21/10, 3:48 PM

Where are you getting the spell conversion for spirit from? None of the builds I have seen have included that ability and the talent tooltip is long enough as it is.

Elimbras · 06/21/10, 4:59 PM

They put a lot of emphasis on Chakra during previews, and it seems deemed to play a key role in priest gameplay.
Even if it seems a lackbuster currently as stated by MMO, it is likely to be buffed if it really happens to be a lackluster.

Xtian · 06/23/10, 10:51 AM

Originally Posted by Ellyh

Where are you getting the spell conversion for spirit from? None of the builds I have seen have included that ability and the talent tooltip is long enough as it is.

It's beginning to look like Shadowform. I don't see it in the tooltip at Wowhead, but it's in the blue post describing the priest talents.

Priest Cataclysm Talent Preview

Starting at Rank 2 - Increases spell power by 10% of your total spirit. Rank 3 changes the talent to Spiritual Guidance - Increases spell power by 15/20/25% of your total spirit.

Erdluf · 06/23/10, 12:06 PM

A lot of the NYI talents have left-over text from talents in the live trees. For instance on wowhead, the Resto Druid's new talent Efflorescence, has new text for level 1/3, but 2/3 and 3/3 have left-over text from the old talent, Living Spirit.

The Spiritual Guidance stuff is almost certainly just a bug in the preview text.

Liriel · 06/23/10, 1:50 PM

Not every priest will use chakra everywhere. Especially in 10man you have to learn how you could use it and where it is better ignored. But if you play a holy priest regulary, you should be able to get much out of it. As it is today, you can choose each spell seperatly or you can think about how to combine them in the best way. I do not think that you will try to enter or stay inside of a chakra all the time. But if you know how the damage pattern will look like for the near future you could try to plan ahead and try to enter the acording chakra if it does not matter which spells you use now. Holy priests have done similare things before. Even if it was only a chance to get a buff or you had to use something reactively.

It may not be a good talent for priests who do not play holy very much, especially in raids. I think it needs some time to get used to all the options it gives one and to think about using spells accordingly with everything else happening around one. But it can have a great potential for players who know their toolbox and the encounter.

You can buff yourself before entering an encounter by empowering your HoTs. Than you can switch over to heal-chakra and hold those HoTs up on all tanks while healing them or others. You do not have to heal only tanks and you do not need to always use heal to do this. If everything is fine for a while you can drop your chakra and heal randomly what is needed but if there is a big aoe-dmg situation incoming you may or may not switch to a chakra again (whichever suits the situation best that can be renew or PoH). If your raid dares to fail an enrage timer you can switch to smite and buff your little dmg without hurting your healing too much. You don't have to invest any points for it and the switch will happen automatically. If enrage timers or hero timers are hard it even may end as your "needed" build combined with all the smite stuff from disc. We do not know how the encounters will be designed. And we do not know the actual numbers of all our spells. Maybe since neither priest tree will be a holy-dmg tree they decide to buff the holy dmg spells a little bit. (Even if I do not think that will happen.)

The thing with chakra is: it is an additional option. You CAN boost one kind of your spells to serve your needs. It will be very good for leveling, farming and 5mans. It may be nice for BG-PVP (wich will be more important). It could be helpful to fill a role that is not realy covered by the other healers in your raid/BG/arena without re-talenting or re-glyphing. You can do this switch even while fighting if another healer dies or is incapable to heal!

Contrary to many earlier priest talents you enter most chakras nearly automatically by using those spells that are needed most in the situations the chakra suits best. So even priests who do not know how to make the best of the talent can profit from them.

Chakra will be situational but it covers many situations. If non of them applie it does not help you. But if you take Body & Soul, Choir Leader, PW:Barrier and Atonement you take spells that are much more situational. All of them are in your build. (I don't say this are bad talents.) Nearly every talent you can buy by skipping Chakra is mostly situational (maybe with the exception of more health and mana).

I even do not mind the point in lightwell. We do not use it now, because we have too much other options in the holy tree that we would like to cover. In Cata we will have more points and need less points to cover the healing talents of the holy tree. Since mana shall matter more and people will not die instantly, lightwell may be a good idea again. Or at least a viable choice.

Btw: I hope Holy Concentration will also cover Heal. Since it seams to cover all other options to heal one person directly that a holy priest has.

spathos · 06/24/10, 4:36 PM

I'm starting to agree with Ellyh: Chakra doesn't do all that much for me either. However, it's probably something that I'll try and see if I like or not before making the final decision. And I actually like lolwell for flavor reasons, so I will probably end up taking that even if I skip Chakra. It might be one of those issues where if they make the talent too powerful, it ends up overshadowing everything else, but the way they have you "switching Chakras" still seems clunky for something that only temporarily boosts one spell at a time. In 10 mans, you've already healed 30% of the raid before the talent even kicks in. Something closer to how Tidal waves works with Shaman healing where a cooldown heal boosts your next two heals makes more sense.

But as Elimbras mentioned, if it doesn't work very well now, they'll probably fix it, unless it's Lightwell...