New changes to Holy!

[Ashleycakez]

Hello there! This is a compliation of changes I've noticed to Holy Priests in Mists. Going to try to avoid covering the obvious too much - I'm sure everyone has checked out the talents and the abilites all Holy Priests gained.

Feel free to post other things you have noticed :)

On the off chance you haven't, have a look at them here: http://mop.wowhead.com/mists-of-pandari ... culator#px

One of the most interesting things I've noticed is the change to Chakra. You no longer have to activate "Chakra" and then cast a spell to enter the state you want to be in. Chakra now functions as a dropdown menu (like Warlock pets or Mage portals on live).



Pretty cool, but also clunky to deal with. Don't worry, from the spellbook you can drag out each stance and place on your bar.

The Chakra states still don't consume a GCD so you can make a macro like:

Code: Select all

#showtooltip
/cast chakra: sanctuary
/cast prayer of mending

However, macros like the following do not seem to work in a single GCD. You'd have to press the action button twice:

Code: Select all

#showtooltip
/cast Chakra: Chastise
/cast Holy Word: Chastise

Code: Select all

#showtooltip
/cast Chakra: Serenity
/cast Holy Word: Chastise

Other than that there doesn't seem to be much different. I've yet to poke around healing something with the new talents, but I'll find out how Holy fares with AA and PI soon!

This is the spec I'm trying out for Holy: http://mop.wowhead.com/mists-of-pandari ... lator#pxd9



In terms of mana regen, we no longer have Holy Concentration at this point. We do keep Meditation though, as does Discipline. Shadowfiend and Hymn of Hope still restore mana but Archangel does not have a mana regen feature.

Holy doesn't have the Test of Faith talent/effect as a baseline. So sad!


Now to figure out what ate my Maw that I had enchanted with Power Torrent... :(


So many cooldowns!

[Blackmorgrim]

Holy with power infusion kind of scares me a little.

[Ashleycakez]

I am so excited to try it out! Can't wait!

[Ashleycakez]

Holy Word: Sanctuary now has diminishing returns when there are many players in the effect (not sure on the number, its not on the tooltip).

1 player = ticks for 1,100
10 players = ticks for 650

[Ashleycakez]

Alright, I got the chance to head into the Temple of the Jade Serpent this evening. This is just a first glance at healing in Mists. Please remember that it is still VERY early beta and Priests should be getting some more loving (or so we hope).

Observations

1. Holy hasn't changed much. I was easily familiar with spells and when they should be used.
2. Power Infusion was nice to use on myself when mana was tight.
3. Lightwell is still amazing... well when people click it. I noticed tank monk statues also suffer the "do not click lol" syndrome.
4. Archangel/Atonement: It feels clunky with Chakra: Serenity. I take the time to Holy Fire, and perhaps Smite a mob and then I notice Renew falling off the tank. However, I could see this being quite potent in a raiding environment should additional dps be needed and Holy spec desired - which is great!
5. Glyph of Renew: The duration on it makes it difficult to simply use HW: Serenity to refresh Renew before it falls twice in a row, but this could have also just been an oversight on my part and better usage would have yielded better results.
6. Renew: Still has that weird lag/whatever problem where if a direct heal lands and Renew is about to fall off it doesn't get refreshed.
7. Mana Regen: While the first boss went fine, the second boss was quite lengthy for my group. I felt my mana hurting and poorly timed a Shadowfiend/HoH when the boss placed a debuff on a party member. I did have the option of using 2 Spirit trinkets, but I ran with 2 Intellect trinkets just to see how it would go. I do think that with better awareness of boss abilities, and better management of Evangelism stacks on my part, it should be easy to heal without running oom.

I'm specced into Void Shift but didn't really get an opportunity to use it. I did, however, try mashing my keybind for Desperate Prayer ... which did nothing!

I'll head back in some more this weekend, hopefully with stronger groups and probably Surge of Light in place of Archangel.

[Blackmorgrim]

Ashleycakez, there's a similar issue that would happen with SW:P in wrath. (Not actually sure if it still happens)

Basically, a normal SW:P (without haste) will have 6 ticks.

The ticks will occur at 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, and 18 seconds respectively.

However, if you refresh SW:P at say, 16.5 seconds...
Starting from when the SW:P was refreshed, the new ticks will occur at 1.5, 4.5, 7.5, 10.5, 13.5, and 16.5 seconds. If you refreshed during that last 1.5 seconds, SW:P would fail to refresh. So, you have to refresh before the last tick occurs for it to be 100% successful. In this case it would have to be when there's more than 1.5 seconds remaining. Refresh at 17 seconds... and SW:P would still fall off.

For raid healing keeping track of that would be almost impossible, but for main tank healing, I'm sure there's got to be a mod that can track the actual ticks.

[Ashleycakez]

Is that what it is? Because Blood and Thunder on my Prot Warrior is just fine. I can hit Thunderclap when Rend is about to fall off and it will reapply.

On my Resto Druid I can easily refresh Lifebloom if the heal was about to land with 1 second left on Lifebloom stacks. On a Holy Priest you can't do this though. At least this is something I observed all of Cata.

[Blackmorgrim]

All depends on how they program it. Its depends on how its being refreshed. If you refresh a dot with the same dot, its usually not an issue.

The issue tends to occur when a dot/hot is refresh with another spell, like SW:P being refreshed by mind flay.

[Ashleycakez]

But it doesn't happen with Rend or Lifebloom. Not sure why it happens with Renew. :/

[possibry]

Archangel is now 25% instead of 15 though. I don't mind losing the mana return for that.

I am also quite dismayed at the new test of faith. Not being baseline aside, how often are people really going to be sitting 20% or below vs 50%. I feel it is a vital talent, and is where a lot of a holy priest's burst capability comes from. 20% is just meh. :(

I also did the 5 man a couple times, and mana felt okay. I did use a spirit trinket though. Also, void shift = amazing.

It seems they have a major pass planned for healing priests, so it will be interesting to see where they go with them.