Proposed Priest changes in Cataclysm

WIN!

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or "Life Grip") is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

MEGA OMGWTF Win!

All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately. Hasted HoTs and DoTs will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks (meaning they will gain extra ticks to fill in the duration as appropriate).

FAIL! For everyone, not just priests. Maybe it will do what they are saying, but it feels to me like it is just going to be a PITA.

Mana will be a bigger consideration for all healers. We aren't trying to make healing more painful; we're trying to make it more fun. When the cost of a spell isn't an issue, then casting the right spell for the job is less of an issue because you might as well just use your most powerful spell all of the time. We are, however, getting rid of the five-second rule, because we don't want to encourage standing around doing nothing. We're also going to cut back on the benefits of buffs such as Replenishment so priests (and all healers) don't feel as penalized when those buffs aren't available.

EDIT: Made my own thread about the mana changes, http://new.natural-order-guild.com/?q=content/proposed-mana-changes

New Priest Spells

Heal (available at level 16): While priests already have a spell called Heal, the existing version becomes obsolete at higher levels, which is something we intend to change in Cataclysm. Introduced at a low level, the "new" Heal spell will functionally work much like a down-ranked Greater Heal did in the past, adding more granularity to your direct-healing arsenal. If you need to heal someone a moderate amount and efficiency is an issue (making Flash Heal the incorrect spell for the job), then Heal is what you want to use. Heal is intended to be the priest's go-to direct-healing spell unless they need something bigger (Greater Heal) or faster (Flash Heal). We will be following a similar philosophy with all the healing classes.

One of the things that's been an annoyance is having these spells that you get at early levels, and then stopped using once you got a little higher because they because they became inefficient and obsolete. Also, Priests have a limited arsenal of direct heals - Flash Heal, Greater Heal, and (for Disc) Penance. Flash Heal becomes the spell we use the most since it's a fast cast, can crit for a decent amount, and is mana-efficient. Greater Heal is a powerful heal, but is infrequently used because of the high mana cost/long cast time. Penance is as powerful a heal as Greater Heal, costs half the mana, and is as fast as Flash Heal. I like that they're adding a third heal by re-vamping our old Heal spell, so that we have more choices for what heals we use in certain situations, but as a Disc priest, I still don't see myself using Greater heal much unless Penance is on cooldown, I have a lot of mana to spare, and the person I need to heal is stable.

Mind Spike (level 81): Deals Shadowfrost damage and puts a debuff on the target that improves subsequent Mind Spike damage. The intent of Mind Spike is to fill a niche missing in Shadow DPS, though it may be occasionally useful for healers as well. Mind Spike provides a quick nuke to use in situations where the priest doesn't have time to set up the normal rotation, such as when adds are dying too fast or you have to swap targets a lot. Spamming Mind Spike will do about as much damage as casting Mind Flay on a target afflicted with Shadow Word: Pain. The idea behind the debuff is that when you cast Mind Spike, we expect you to cast a lot of them; we don't intend you to fit it into an already full Shadow rotation. It also provides Shadow with a spell to cast when locked out of the Shadow school. (School lockouts will no longer affect both schools for multi-school spells.) 1.5-second cast. 30-yard range. No cooldown.

I really like the idea of having a third school of magic as a Shadow DPS so that we have a spell to use if we get locked out of our shadow spells. I also like the idea of having a quick cast mini-nuke to use in heroics where the mobs often die too fast for us to effectively use our DoT's. The comment about Mind Spike doing as much damage as casting Mind Flay on a target with SW:Pain leads me to think that this will be a pretty powerful nuke, so I'm hoping they scale the damage appropriately otherwise I see Shadow Priests going the way of Arcane Mages and becoming 1-2 button spammers. Also, they say that they intend for Mind Spike to be spammed, so the mana cost of Mind Spike is of huge interest.

Inner Will (level 83): Increases movement speed by 12% and reduces the mana cost of instant-cast spells by 10%. This buff will be exclusive with Inner Fire, meaning you can't have both up at once. Inner Fire provides a spell power and Armor buff; Inner Will should be useful on a more situational basis.

This, coupled with the fact that they are removing the charges from Inner Fire, is pure awesome. It'll be like a Warlock's Demon Armor and Fel Armor. I still see us mainly using Inner Fire for the spellpower boost, however I can also see where using Inner Will will be preferred (PvP, shield spamming in raids).

Leap of Faith (level 85): Pull a party or raid member to your location. Leap of Faith (or "Life Grip") is intended to give priests a tool to help rescue fellow players who have pulled aggro, are being focused on in PvP, or just can't seem to get out of the fire in time. Instant. 30-yard range. 45-second cooldown.

My first reaction to this was "omg awesome!" I lov the idea of a reverse Death Grip that can be used on party members. I have to confess I don't understand this whole drama on the forums about it being used for griefing. Why the hell would I want to grief my own side? I can already think of a couple of practical applications for it though. Like on Festergut for example, if two melee get the spores and one of them needs to get to the ranged group quickly. *yoink* Or pulling someone out of a void zone/fire/the bad/etc. I really hope this makes it to the PTR because I'd love to see it being used in practical application.

Changes to Abilities and Mechanics

In addition to introducing new spells, we're planning to make changes to some of the other abilities and mechanics you're familiar with. This list and the summary of talent changes below it are by no means comprehensive, but they should give you a good sense of what we intend for each spec.

• All HoTs and DoTs will benefit from Haste and Crit innately. Hasted HoTs and DoTs will not have a shorter duration, just a shorter period in between ticks (meaning they will gain extra ticks to fill in the duration as appropriate).
• We want to bring back Shadow Word: Death as an "execute" -- something you do when the target is at 25% health.
• While we want to keep the priest's role as a well-rounded healer, we also want to make sure the class is a viable tank healer, which is something priests moved away from a little in Wrath of the Lich King. Greater Heal will probably be the tank-healing spell of choice, though we've also discussed giving Discipline a second shield so that they have a small shield to cast on lots of different targets, and a big, more expensive shield to cast on a tank or anyone else taking a ton of damage.
• Divine Spirit and Prayer of Spirit will be removed from the game. As Spirit will be the primary mana-regeneration stat, we don't want it to vary as much between solo, small group, and raid play. Blessing of Kings and Mark of the Wild will not boost Spirit either.
• Mana will be a bigger consideration for all healers. We aren't trying to make healing more painful; we're trying to make it more fun. When the cost of a spell isn't an issue, then casting the right spell for the job is less of an issue because you might as well just use your most powerful spell all of the time. We are, however, getting rid of the five-second rule, because we don't want to encourage standing around doing nothing. We're also going to cut back on the benefits of buffs such as Replenishment so priests (and all healers) don't feel as penalized when those buffs aren't available.

Hasted HoTs and DoTs - I like that the overall duration will not change, but rather the number of "ticks" that occur during that duration is affected. So where I might normally get 5 ticks of Renew at 1600 per tick, now I might get 6 or 7 ticks in the same amount of time. Same with DoTs like Devouring Plague, Vampiric Touch, Mind Flay and hopefully SW:Pain.

I like the proposed change to SW:Death. I remember in the past trying to use it as an "insta-kill" button, and now I use it as a quick nuke to grab a mob's attention, or as a quick nuke to slip into my Shadow rotation when other spells are on cooldown. I'm hoping that with the changes, they decide to remove the damage factor as well.

The idea of making Priests more of a tank healer is kind of funny, since that's what I do now anyway. I guess I wasn't aware that Priests, at least Disc priests, weren't considered the foremost tank healers. As for the second shield idea, I can see the use of it. Right now in raids, I use PW:Shield on the tanks a LOT. I also spam it around the raid to help with stabilization. For example I might see someone low on health, so I hit them with PW:S, which stablizes their health until a raid healer can bring them back up. I'm not sure what the point of of a "smaller" shield would be, unless it has a reduced mana cost to go along with it, making it more mana efficient to use for raid stabilization than PW:S.

Removing our Spirit buffs - it looks like Spirit is going back to being the preferred mana regen stat, and something we'll get mainly from gear as opposed to class buffs. Wondering if they'll replace it with a different type of group buff? Like maybe a group Power Infusion or something?

The mana changes I commented on in Fiermi's thread here, but basically what I see them trying to do is make healing more about performing triage instead of just spamming your "best" spell(s), plus making group/raid composition more about bringing along people that want to play, over certain classes/specs because of one buff or ability.

New Talents and Talent Changes

• We want to improve Discipline's single-target healing capacity. One key is to make sure shielding isn't always a more attractive option than healing.
• We want to improve Holy for PvP healing. One way to do this is to make sure that Heal's throughput is similar between both specs.
• We want to improve Shadow for short fights and reduce its susceptibility to school lockouts.
• Discipline will finally be getting Power Word: Barrier as a talented ability. Think of it like a group Power Word: Shield.
• We want to make Holy a little bit more interesting to play. One new talent will push the Holy priest into an improved healing state when he or she casts Prayer of Healing, Heal, or Renew three times in a row. The empowered state varies depending on the heals cast.
• Since the Shadow tree has a lot of passive damage-boosting abilities -- something we're trying to avoid in Cataclysm -- we will need to replace several of the tree's talents. One idea is to play off of the new Shadow Orbs mechanic (see Mastery section below), possibly allowing you to consume an orb to increase damage from Mind Blast or reduce Mind Spike's cast time.
• Misery will no longer affect spell Hit chance. We want players to be able to gear themselves around a Hit cap that isn't variable depending on group composition.

I like the idea of giving Disc priests more "heal" ability, but I hope that means we don't see a reduction in our shielding ability, since I feel that's what makes us unique. I definitely like the direction they're going with Shadow, making it more useful in short fights (ie. heroics, trash) and less likely to suffer from school lockouts. This is one of my biggest issues with playing Shadow at the moment, especially in how it relates to my DPS output.

Power Word: Barrier? HELL YES! According to Ghostcrawler, it will work like a DK's Anti-Magic ability, so I'm guessing we'll get a big bubble to cast that players stand inside of. I think that's cool! Reminds me of the drakes in the Kil'Jaedan fight in Sunwell. :D

I definitely like the idea of making Holy more dynamic and thoughtful and less heal-spam. One reason I made the switch from Holy to Disc was that it was simply more exciting to play. So definietly interested in seeing where they go with this.

The Shadow Orbs sound like an interesting concept, and it sounds like the Shadow tree is going to have a big overhaul since they're moving away from passive abilities in Cataclysm. So no more passive healing/passive mana regen, etc.?

And removing Misery - definitely an interesting change. I like the hit increase being removed, but I hope they find a way to keep the spellpower boost. I'm thinking they'll also remove similar talents from other classes (Hunter, Warlock, etc. come to mind) so that we don't have to worry about other players' talent compositions and can just gear for ourselves.

Mastery Passive Talent Tree Bonuses

Discipline
Healing
Meditation
Absorption

Holy
Healing
Meditation
Radiance

Shadow
Spell damage
Spell Crit
Shadow Orbs

Absorption: Improves the strength of shields such as Power Word: Shield, Divine Aegis, and Power Word: Barrier.

Radiance: Your direct heals add a small heal-over-time component to the target.

Shadow Orbs: Casting spells grants a chance for Shadow Orbs to be created that fly around you and increase your shadow damage. This will help lower-level characters feel more like "Shadow priests" before they obtain Shadowform.

Absorption - awesome! So it looks like shielding will still be a major part of what makes a Disc priest unique. I like that.

Radiance - this is interesting. It seems like the effect of the "Prayer of Healing" glyph being applied to ALL heals, making Holy priests even better at raid/group healing perhaps?

Shadow Orbs - I think this is a neat idea, though I'd like to hear more about the "consume" mechanic that was mentioned above.

Overall, I am excited about these changes! These are BIG, and it's definitely going to affect the way we play Priests. :)