Priests: Here and Now.

So when someone mentions bringing a priest along, what’s your first thought? Like any class, priests went through some major nerfage that us priests weren’t to happy about, be it Shadow, Discipline, or Holy. Well let me be the first to say, with Dual Spec easy to obtain, and new changes with 3.3, being a priest became a whole lot better….Again.
Now you may be asking yourself “How?” Well, for those who don’t really know much about a priest, let’s go straight to Blizzard ourselves and look over the most recent patch notes regarding Priests. I can assure you, you’ll like what you see.

*Divine Hymn: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.

*Power Word: Shield: This spell can now be cast on non-raid/party friendly targets.

*Pet-Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

Ok Ok, so there wasn’t much in the way of changes this last patch, but as an overall game experience, these few changes were major! Let’s review, shall we?

*Divine Hymn: The cooldown on this spell has been reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.

So the first question on someones mind may be, what is this? First off, it’s classified as a “Holy” spell, or a spell that will take you out of shadowform, if you DPS. As a general summarization, Divine Hymn is an 8 second channeled spell that heals 3 of your closest, and lowest health, party or raid members for an X amount every 2 seconds. It also increases healing done to them by 15% for those 8 seconds, with a maximum of 12 heals. So how is this any good? In a raid, you obviously have multiple healers, however, depending on what class you take, depends on how much actual raid healing is going on. For instance, Shaman’s and their chain heal. Similar effects as Divine Hymn, however, it hits the closest 5 targets. Divine Hymn’s benefit is, that it finds your members with the lowest health near you, and focuses on getting them up, with the perks that if another healer heals them, it’s for 15% more than normal. Now, not every fight lasts more than 5-7 minutes maximum, but having the new cool down from 10 minutes to 8, is actually quite beneficial in the long run, especially if you move from boss to boss quickly.

*Power Word: Shield: This spell can now be cast on non-raid/party friendly targets.

Alright, I know this seems minute, but hey. How many times have you come across someone dying while leveling or doing dailes, and you wanted to help out by throwing a quick bubble on them, before realizing you couldn’t? I know I have, and as a healing class, if they noticed me, I know I get yelled at for not healing a random stranger. Sad I know, but it happens. Now, I am fairly certain that all people know what this is, but just incase, it is what it says it is, a shield of sorts. This instant cast spell casts a cute little bubble around your toon or target and aborbs X amount of damage, depending on if the priest is specced into it or not. It’s great, especially as a healer, for those Oh shit moments, when you know you can’t get a heal off quick enough. With Blizzard allowing this spell to be used on anyone, partied or not, it’s a nice feeling to know that you can help out a stranger quickly, and move back on to what you were doing.

*Improved Devouring Plague: This spell now deals 10/20/30% of its total periodic effect instantly, up from 5/10/15%.

As any Shadow Priest would know, Devouring Plague is a part of your DPS rotation. Before, it’s overall damage was small in comparison to say Shadow Word: Pain and your channeled spell, Mind Flay. Furthermore, the perks of this 24 second DoT is that it heals the caster for 15% of the damage caused. With the new damage increase, a Shadow Priest’s overall DPS is much better than it used to be, and we place much higher on the charts. This is a nice factor, and helps with any priest getting into a raid, since we all know, the better the DPS, the better your chances are to get in. The downfall? It’s still a one target only disease.

*Mind Flay: The range of this ability has been increased to 30 yards, up from 20.

Mind Flay was the only Shadow Priest spell that didn’t benefit from the talent Shadow Reach; Which, with 2/2, increases the range of your Shadow Spells by 20%. For fights like Anub’Rhekan in Naxxramas, a Priest was at risk for getting “silenced” or damaged more by having to stand at minimum range to go through their whole DPS rotation. With Mind Flay now receiving the same benefits as all your other Shadow Spells, you can now stand maximum range on any given fight, and still go through your whole rotation without worry of silence effects.

*Shadowform: This talent also now causes Devouring Plague and Vampiric Touch to benefit from haste. Both the period length and the duration of these spells will be reduced by haste. In addition, the mana cost has been reduced from 32% to 13% of base mana.

Now, while the con to this is the DoT Uptime is reduced with the more haste you have, the pro to it is, that your rotation is slightly more solid. As with any DoT, damage ticks per X Seconds, and the more you have to focus on what spell needs to be refreshed or cast, the better your DPS output is going to be. Shadow Priests are build over time casters, where classes such as Mages, are pure burst (spec depending). So the longer you have a DoT up, the higher the chance is that you’re going to forget it needs to be refreshed.

Shadowforms mana cost cut: Beautiful! I know from personal experience in raiding, that if more than one or two healers go down in a raid, they look to any other DPS class with healing abilities to help pick up the slack. The beauty of this cut is knowing that if I do happen to pick up healing, and say a druid Battles Rezzes another healer, I’m not going to be set back in my rotation due to Shadowform costing so much of my mana. This is also nice for anyone -Leveling- a priest as shadow, because lord knows your bubble will give way, and you -Will- have to heal yourself. You can ease back into Shadowform and continue to battle your target(s) with no problems. (We hope.)

*Vampiric Embrace: This ability is now provides a 30-minute buff that cannot be dispelled, instead of a target debuff and only generates healing for single-target shadow damage spells.

I personally jumped for joy about this. Before, Vampiric Embrace, like it says, was a target debuff and only healed the caster. Now, with it being a Priest only buff, similar to Inner Fire, it benefits the entire party or raid as a whole. What this now does, is heal you for 15% of any single target shadow damage and heals your party and raid members for 3% of any single target damage. And if you’re really cool and specc into Improved Vampiric Embrace, the healing bonus of this newly revamped “buff” is increased by 67%. This makes things a tab bit easier on your healers, and we all know, anything to make a healers job is a good thing.

*Pet Avoidance (passive): Now reduces the damage your pet takes from area-of-effect damage by 90%, but no longer applies to area-of-effect damage caused by other players.

While this officially sucks for PvPers, especially going up against a Retribution Paladin, this is a great thing for PvEers. When a Priest, regardless of spec, gets low, we automatically call upon or lovely little pet, the Shadowfiend. He’s kind enough to give us back a percentage of our mana, while doing damage and raising our DPS slightly, which allows us to continue casting spells to be useful to the raid still. With pet avoidance being raised, and AoE damage from bosses and mobs reduced, we now receive the full usage of our Mana Battery friend.

Now that you have received a nice review of the new and improved Priest abilities, let me know what you -Want- to hear about. We’re here for you and your needs, so any feedback on what you want to know helps us communicate with you much easier. Even if you’re an endgame raider, or just starting out, maybe even in the middle of leveling your first priest, there is always plenty to learn. We’ll be sure to get as much information out to you as we can.

Priests: Here and Now.

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