Protectors of Moonglow

After a long discussion with the class designers concerning Priests, yesterday, as a Blizzard employee whose function is to provide news, I smiled at the information I was provided. As a Priest player, I giggled to myself for hours. The changes are impressive, although like any change to the game, specifically a class, the outcome of such is most often times subjective.

The changes are being tested, and finalized.

My goal, if possible, is to provide an update, as comprehensive as possible concerning the upcoming Priest changes, by this Friday. Please note, this may not be possible due to a number of variables, however, it's at least a reasonable possibility.

My Priest has invested talents into Holy and Discipline. I have another Priest that I've been playing lately to explore the Shadow tree a little more, as previously I'd only tested Shadow on internal realms with a cheated character.

Thus far, my new Shadow specced Priest is only level 17.

The changes that were revealed to me yesterday focused primarily on the Holy and Discipline trees, however, some minor improvements to Shadow are being explored as well. Beyond the talent changes, we're making some improvements to certain core spells/abilities, some of which were especially exciting.

Priests, are you done melting faces yet? - Eyonix

As has been stated many times in recent posts, a number of improvements are being made to several priest talents and core abilities for the next content patch. Several of these changes are still in the testing process, and in some cases, under discussion - especially those relating to talents. What this means to the players is, the following details pertaining to upcoming change is not comprehensive, and intended primarily to serve as a sneak preview, and in a perfect world, satisfy some of your curiosity.

Too bad this world isn't perfect...

Greater Heal (and Heal starting from rank2) will receive a reduction to its casting time. Currently the spell is a 4 second cast. However, once patch 1.10 releases, the spell, from start to finish will cast in 3 seconds - (2.5 with talent improvement). This spell, along with the Druid's Healing Touch and the Shaman's Healing Wave will all receive an approximate 10% improvement to mana efficiency.

Holy Fire will no longer be a talent required ability. All priests, upon reaching the appropriate level will receive this spell as a core ability. In addition, this spell's casting time has been reduced from 4 seconds to 3.5. The appropriate talent improvement would bring this spell to a 3 second cast. This spell will also be considered holy damage, meaning, effects which improve holy damage will increase the damage of this spell.

Inner Fire is another core ability we're reworking. With the prevalence of wand-use amongst casters, we're not very pleased with the increase of attack power this spell provides and are looking to change Inner Fire so that it is more in line with the original concept behind the ability, i.e. a defensive/soloing spell.

Power Word: Shield is still undergoing testing. Basically, we're running the numbers of the final spell ranks and will likely make changes to its damage mitigation scaling.

Talents are where we're making the most significant changes, however, until the changes have been finalized there is little I'm going to be able to reveal. What I will state is that we're reorganizing and streamlining all three trees, with a particular emphasis on Holy and Discipline. Each tree will have anywhere from 1 to 4 brand new talents available. The focus of Holy will be in providing throughput improvement, such as offering benefits to healing and spell damage. Discipline will focus on staying-power, such as what you see from abilities that improve mana and mana regeneration. Shadow of course, will focus primarily on damage.

Priest class racial improvements are for the most part, complete yet undergoing testing. Until all of them are ready to be unveiled, I'm going to avoid providing specifics. I will try very hard to push out concrete details late next week, if possible.

A number of minor improvements and tweaks continue to be made as well, such as the increase we're making to Prayer of Fortitude's range and radius, the overall reduction to Smite's mana cost, the addition of group buff versions for Divine Spirit and Shadow Protection, and much more. In addition, I can promise that I'll push for the talents to go live on the talent calculator the moment that they've been finalized, which hopefully won't be long now.

I've gathered information regarding upcoming design changes for the Priest racial specific abilities, and as I had hoped am able to share with each of you the specifics. Other changes to the Priest class have been outlined in the sticky thread entitled "Priests, it's Friday!", and we're hoping to unveil the changes to the talents through the interactive calculator soon.

These changes will go live upon the release of patch 1.10.

When using Feedback, the human priest will surround himself with anti-magical energy. Any successful spell cast against the priest will burn mana from the attacker and deal Shadow damage.

The Night Elf will notice that Starshards has been redesigned to work similar to Curse of Agony, dealing lower initial damage which increases as the duration continues. The mana cost will drop substantially for all ranks, and the spell damage will be increased .

All ranks of this spell will have a 6 second channeling duration.

The ranged damage reduction from Elune's Grace will be increased, both its duration and mana cost will decrease, and the spell will also increases the priest's chance to dodge.

This spell now has a cooldown.

The Troll's Shadowguard will become an instant cast ability. The tooltip will also be updated to reflect that damage caused by the spell causes no threat. Such is already the case, however, is not currently documented.

Hex of Weakness will apply a -20% healing modifier in addition to its normal effect. The healing debuff does not stack with the warrior's Mortal Strike ability, although the damage penalty will stack with either Touch or Curse of Weakness.

The Undead's Touch of Weakness will become a 10 minute self buff which is triggered when the caster become struck by a melee attack. The effect will otherwise remain the same.

Fear Ward, Desperate Prayer and Devouring Plague will remain unchanged.

Fear Ward wird wohl also doch Dwarf only bleiben, aber Feedback und Elunes Grace werden verbessert.