priest

Priests are not a jack of all trades, master of none healer. Priests are strong and versatile healers and the only trade off is knowing how to manage the many spells that priests have since a lot of them have these small niches.

Shadow priests used to just a leveling spec which didn’t do enough damage. Then in TBC they were better damage dealers but traded damage for utility. Now shadow priests can do comparable dps to other dps classes.

Blizzard would probably want to change/add shadow talents so that they affect all damage spells and not just DoTs. This should help solve the problem of their damage needing some time to get the ball rolling dps-wise.

They think vampiric embrace damage is fine but could look into the threat even if it isn’t something they think is a problem.

They could look into changing the Mind Flay glyph to increase range without losing the snare.

Reducing the mana cost of shadowform so that it’s easier to pop out of it to heal or do holy damage is an idea they’ve been discussing.

Blizzard is considering changing shadow word: death so that it doesn’t have a backlash when the target is in execute range. They’re also thinking of changing it so that the backlash damage isn’t affected by things that would increase your damage.

Blizzard would want to improve on the mana efficiency and burst healing of the Holy tree.

Their intention is that Greater heal is the default heal while flash heal would be the heal to use for emergency since it’s fast. Such really isn’t the case now with flash heal being valued for its speed over greater heal.

They will not collapse dispel magic and cure disease into one spell. They feel that would make the dispelling game too easy. They have also expressed that dispels missing isn’t something they want in the game but would need a code fix to solve.

Inner fire will not have its charges removed unless they can think of alternatives for it just like mages have molten armor, mage armor etc. Removing the charges would make it a passive armor buff that would essentially make a cloth wearer have the armor of a leather wearer. At least mages have to make a choice.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

The latest patch build not only has a bunch of changes (both buffs and nerfs) to existing abilities but it also has a few new abilities/talents as well, further increasing the count of new stuff in this patch. This is mainly a result of the drastic changes that is happening many talent trees, with certain talents reducing in ranks and even moving up and down and even going poof or baseline. Below are the new skills/talents that came with the latest patch build.

Priests

Body and Soul (Holy tree talent) – When you cast Power Word: Shield, you increase the target’s movement speed by 30/60% for 4 sec, and you have a 50% chance when you cast Abolish Disease on yourself to also cleanse 1 poison effect in addition to diseases.

This talent isn’t really great but I guess it’s one of those talents where it’s nice to know you have it if you want to use it. The movement speed bonus for shielded targets could be useful in certain occasions like when you need to move fast past the annoying mobs between Heigan the Unclean and Loatheb in Naxx. The dispel bonus isn’t really a big deal since it only worked on yourself. It also doesn’t help that it’s a bit deep down the holy tree.

Paladin

Divine Sacrifice (Protection tree) – 30% of all damage taken by party or raid members within 30 yards is redirected to the Paladin (up to a maximum of 150% of the Paladin’s health). Instant, 2 min cooldown

I never got why Divine Guardian did what it did since the only way I could think it was useful is if you’re an off tank or a holy or ret pally. I mean who bubbles while tanking? Guess that’s why it was changed to enhance this new talent.Tthis makes sense since you don’t need to bubble and you can help your raid in some AoE encounters by taking a bit more of a beating to ease the load on others. You’re already taking a beating anyway so there might be times when taking a bit more to help out can be useful.

Warrior

Shattering Throw (baseline skill) – Throws your weapon at the enemy causing [ 50% of AP + 12 ] damage (based on attack power), reducing the armor on the target by 20% for 10 sec, and removing any invulnerabilities. 25 Rage, 30 yd range, 1.5 sec cast, 5 min cooldown

Does Iceblock and pally bubble annoy you in PvP? Well once every 5 minutes, this is every warriors answer to both those abilities. If I’m not mistaken, the priest mass dispel ability was the only one that could take those out but now warriors can too. I guess the armor reduction of this ability could also help in both PvE and PvP but the real gem of this new skill is the invulnerability removal.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Ghostcrawler came up with more details about this nerf in a post in the official forums. Based on what he wrote, there’s some cause for celebration since the nerfs don’t seem to be as bad as we all thought. I won’t go into detail with what he says but if you want to see the details then you can go ahead and read his post. The long and short of what he wrote is this:

Mana regen while not casting will be reduced by 40%

Mana regen while casting remains unchanged.

Talents that provide mana regen while casting (spirit tap, arcane meditation etc) will be increased by 67%

Paladins will have their Divine Plea healing penalty reduced to -50% and spiritual attunement mana gains decreased for non tanks.

It’s still sad for us healers to see our regen get nerfed but as you can see from the details, it’s not as bad as we thought. Sure we won’t be able to take much advantage of those big regen ticks when we’re not casting but at least the regen while casting still remains the same. In fights where we’re constantly casting our heals, this nerf won’t make a difference.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Druid

* Ferocious Bite: This ability now only uses up to 30 energy in addition to its base cost.

Hunter

* Kindred Spirits (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet damage at max rank.
* Serpent’s Swiftness (Beast Mastery): This talent now grants 20% pet attack speed at max rank.

Pets

* Lava Breath now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.
* Poison Spit now reduces the target’s casting speed by 25%, down from 50%.

Mage

* Arcane Power now increases damage and mana cost by 10%, cooldown reduced to 1 minute. (Note: The spell is actually different in game and increases damage and mana costs by 20% with a 2 minutes cooldown. However it would probably be better to wait until servers are online to confirm that.)
* Arcane Power and Presence of Mind now share a category cooldown. Arcane Power causes a 15 second cooldown. Presence of Mind, once consumed, causes a 1.5 second cooldown.
* Arcane Flows now reduces the cooldown of Presence of Mind, Arcane Power and Invisibility by 15/30%.
* Presence of Mind: The cooldown has been reduced to 2 minutes, (down from 3.)
* Slow (Arcane): now increases cast time by 30%, down from 60%.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Arcane Missiles — Increases the critical strike damage bonus of Arcane Missiles by 25%. (Old – Increases the range of Arcane Missiles by 5 yards.)
* Glyph of Mana Gem — Increases the mana recieved from using a mana gem by 40%. (Up from 10%)
* Glyph of Arcane Blast — Increases the damage from your Arcane Blast buff by 3%. (Down from 5%)

Paladin

* The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.
* Divine Plea: The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.
* Sanctified Seals: This talent no longer affects dispel resistance, but continues to affect crit chance.

Glyphs

* Glyph of Holy Light — Your Holy Light grants 10% of its heal amount to up to 5 friendly targets within 8 yards of the initial target. (Down from 20 yards, Tooltip text fix, was already hotfixed to 8 yards in game)
* Glyph of Seal of Righteousness — Increases the damage done by Seal of Righteousness by 10%. (Old – Reduces the cost of your Judgement spells by 10% while Seal of Righteousness is active.)

Priest

* Inner Fire duration has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.

Rogue

* Hunger for Blood (Assassination): Now increases damage 5% per stack, (up from 3%.)
* Mind Numbing Poison now reduces cast time by 30%, down from 60%.
* Mutilate damage will now do 20% increased damage against poisoned targets, down from 50%.
* Slice and Dice: This ability now increases melee attack speed by 40%, up from 30%.

Shaman

Glyphs

* Glyph of Windfury Weapon — Increases the chance per swing for Windfury Weapon to trigger by 2%. (Down from 5%)

Warlock

* Curse of Tongues: Now increases the casting time of all spells by 25% (Rank 1) and 30% (Rank 2), down from 50% and 60%.

Dungeons and Raids

The Obsidian Sanctum

Changed the color of the fissure in the Obsidian Sanctum to be more visually distinct.

User Interface

* The “GM wishes to speak with you” alert/button, at the top of the screen, has been changed so that addons do not obscure it.
* A clickable chat message has been added that duplicates the GM alert/button.
* When a GM wishes to speak with you the Help Request minibar button will glow.
* For additional notes on Lua and XML changes please visit the UI & Macros forum .

Bug Fixes

* Fixed an issue where players using nVidia 3D glasses were unable to see spell cooldowns.
* Fixed a software mouse cursor bug that was causing the mouse curser to disappear from view when over certain UI elements.
* Fixed a player movement error in which other players were appearing to move erratically when traveling beside them.

taken from MMO Champion

If these changes are true then that means that we generally have a good mix of nerfs and buffs coming. Unfortunately the nerfs and buss aren’t spread out across the classes. But I guess hat’s ok since it’s not about the number of nerfs and buffs you get but about what Blizz thinks has to be changed. The winner here is hands down the Paladin since they didn’t get any nerfs at all and the buffs they got are pretty awesome if you’re playing a Ret pally. I guess everyone else will just have to wait for patch 3.1 to get their awesome buffs.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

According to CM Eyonix, they’ll be announcing the class changes in a three part series. This first one happens to be for priests, rogues and shamans. The changes are listed below and are subject to change as per Eyonix’s note.

PRIEST

# Divine Spirit – this spell is now a core ability available to all priests.
# Discipline has access to a new talent, Power Word: Barrier. (Think of it as Power Word: Shield for your whole group).
# Several area of effect (AOE) heal spells have been improved: Prayer of Healing can be cast on any groups in your raid party. Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. Circle of Healing now heals for more.
# Shadow priest PvP survivability has been improved: Shadow Form now reduces magic as well as physical damage. Dispersion now removes snares.
# Penance – this spell can now be targeted on the priest.
# Serendipity – this talent now reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal are cast.
# We are also working to give Holy additional PvP utility.

ROGUE

# Hunger for Blood – instead of a self-buff, this ability can only be used when there is a bleed effect on the target. However, it has no stacks and grants a 15% damage bonus.
# Adrenaline Rush – the cooldown on this ability has been lowered.
# Lightning Reflexes – reduced to 3 ranks. In addition to 2/4/6% dodge, this talent now also grants 4/7/10% passive melee haste.
# Killing Spree – while this ability is active, the rogue does 20% additional damage.
# Savage Combat – now causes 2/4% physical damage done.
# Mace Specialization – this talent now grants haste in addition to armor penetration.

SHAMAN

# Chain Lightning – now jumps to 4 targets but does less damage. We wanted to make the distinction between Lightning Bolt and Chain Lightning more clear.
# Storm, Earth and Fire – this talent now increases all damage done by Flame Shock, not just periodic damage.
# Spirit Weapons – now reduces all threat, not just melee threat.
# Unleashed Rage – reduced to 2 ranks, now also increases your critical strike chance with melee attacks by 1/2%.
# Totem streamlining: The Mana Spring and Healing Stream Totems have been combined. The Disease Cleansing and Poison Cleansing Totems have been combined.
# We are also working on giving Enhancement and Elemental more PvP utility.

source

Originally, I thought that most of the changes will be for PvP but after seeing the changes so far, it seems like there are a lot of cool changes that aren’t just for PvP. The discipline priest talent power word: barrier looks like a very fun spell to use and the buffing of some of their AoE heals will definitely benefit raiders. There are also some changes that could be taken the wrong way by some players like the change to chain lightning for shamans and the change to hunger for blood for rogues but I think they’re seen as buffs by most people. After seeing nature of the changes in this first edition of announcements, I feel quite optimistic for the classes that I play whose changes will still be announced.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Perhaps the most glaring example that I have seen (at least in my experience) is the Protection Paladin. In TBC, they were very popular for their EZ-Mode tanking ability because of their mastery at AoE tanking. If you ran dungeons often, especially with a PuGs, then you would definitely have run into a Prot Pally back in the day. But with the introduction of Death Knights in the expansion and the recent rise of Retribution Paladins, it seems like Protection Paladins are a very rare sight nowadays. Holy paladins, in my experience, are also quite rarer than they used to for some reason.

In TBC, feral druids were also very popular because of their sudden viability as tanks, especially as off-tanks. Because of Death Knights and the improvements to the balance and resto tree and the not so impressive changes to the feral tree, it seems like ferals have also pretty much suffered losses to their numbers. In fact I have a friend who played a feral druid for all of TBC but suddenly decided to be a tree for this expansion.

The shadow priest is another example of a spec I haven’t seen much of. In TBC, they were very useful as mana batteries – a niche that gave them some importance in raids. Perhaps because of their mediocre dps compared to other dps classes and the fact that the mana battery role has been made available to others like Ret pallies, the shadow priest isn’t as popular as they used to be. In fact, I’ve only encountered a shadow priest in a dungeon run just today!

It’s amazing how much things can change in just a small amount of time. I’m sure these vary from server to server but I’m sure at least some of these observations are true for some of you. What kind of changes to the class spec landscape have you experienced so far?

Post from: WOW Obsessed

If implemented, this change would affect Circle of Healing more than Wild Growth since the it makes sense to spam the former because it heals it’s full amount right away while the latter does it over time. This would make healing AoE encounters harder to do in the future. Would this decrease the value of both the Holy Priest and the Resto Druid to the raid in the future? Only time will tell I guess. While it might increase the value of the Chain Heal spamming Restoration Shaman to the raid, it might not necessarily lower that of the other two based on what Ghostcrawler said. He mentioned in the same post that if this change pushes through, they will have to tweak encounters keeping in mind that Circle of Healing will no longer be spammable.

Of course, a nerf is a nerf so if this pushes through it’s still going to suck. I just hope that it’s not going to suck too much.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Dizeh of the Northrend-US server tells of having a healer shortage within their guild since they want to be something else. Cipher from the same server says that he has a hard time finding healers for instances. It seems that the culprit is a combination of different things.

One reason I can think of is the one mentioned above, players wanting to be something else. With the introduction of the Death Knight class and the cool stuff that many of the dps classes are getting, it seems like a lot of players want to try them out. Right now in fact, some of my very own friends who play tanks as doing some last minute leveling before the expansion comes out and the popular choices are mage and warlock but there are some rogues and hunters as well. Only a few of my friends who have dps or tanks as their mains are leveling healers.

Another reason I can think of the removal of downranking and its effect on healer efficiency. A lot of healers have relied on downranking to be more efficient and stay effective in longer fights. With its removal, the fear of going OOM and possibly causing wipes because of it has scared away a lot of players. Not being able to heal properly makes a job that some already find boring annoying as well.

Personally, I liked my relatively short stint healing as a holy paladin so much that I’ve decided to level a druid and try healing as a Tree in the expansion. It was part of my backup plan to have another healing class in case holy paladins weren’t going to be great in the expansion. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with having two healer toons if both turn out to be great. So if there will indeed be a healer shortage, my friends can count on me if they need one.

What do you think? Do you see a healer shortage looming in your server?

Post from: WOW Obsessed

assuming you are a Shadow priest, the answer is you are a dps class. We’re trying to back off the whole utility class thing, which is absolutely what you were in BC. While the mana battery functionality is still something every group is going to want, there are more ways to provide it now. The tradeoff for losing that unique niche is your dps going up. source

So shadow priests, cross your fingers and hope that by the time the devs are “done” with tweaking your class, the above mentioned statement will come true. I wish the same for all dps trees so that even the off specs can be viable and decent in PvE, especially raids.

Post from: WOW Obsessed

Blizzard poster Koraa popped in the Priest forum to make this announcement:

In an upcoming build all Priest racials have been retired, except the following:

- Desperate Prayer – This is now the 11-point talent in Holy, Holy Nova is now a base ability. Cooldown also reduced to 30 seconds.
- Devouring Plague – Now a base ability. Cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, mana cost greatly reduced.
- Symbol of Hope – Now a base ability. Now restores 5% base mana every 2 seconds for 8 seconds to your party. Renamed “Hymn of Hope.”

While this change does reduce the “uniqueness” of different Priests, we feel game balance as a whole will benefit.

Note: These new “racials” are not racials, they are trainable to all Priests.

So for those people who are fans of racials like Starshards, Consume Magic, Hex of Weakness and all the other soon to be retired racials, it’s best you cherish the last few moments you’re gonna have them.

Post from: WOW Obsessed