Duct Tape and a Prayer » Glyphs for Priests

February 8, 2009
1 comment

Originally posted here on 11/2/08.

Now that we’ve had a few weeks to get adjusted to patch 3.0.2 – and now that Christian Belt’s posted a piece on WoW Insider about Mages and Inscription, and inspired me – here are my thoughts on the available Priest glyphs. Note that these are just my opinions, and you’re welcome to disagree. I’m not trying to dispense holy writ.

Major Glyphs

Glyph of Dispel Magic – Dispel Magic also heals your target for 6% of his/her maximum health. This is a nice bonus to a situational spell, but keep in mind that it can’t be used as a normal heal – Dispel Magic only works if the target has magic to dispel. On the other hand, the heal can crit, and it’s the only Discipline heal in the priest’s repertoire, meaning that it won’t pull you out of Shadowform. It also doesn’t affect hostile targets, so you can still dispel enemy players and mobs with impunity.
Glyph of Fade – Increases the duration and cooldown of Fade by 50%. On the one hand, this gives the tank more time to re-establish aggro. On the other hand, it means you can’t use it as often. Also, it’s not going to be particularly useful for soloing priests. On the balance, I can’t recommend this glyph.
Glyph of Fear Ward – Reduces the cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 30 seconds. This is not a glyph for using. This is a glyph for laying down and avoiding. It’s the only glyph I can think of that will increase your mana expenditure without providing a return, since you’ll have to cast Fear Ward more often in situations that require it. It’s also the only glyph I wish I could un-learn.
Glyph of Flash Heal – Reduces the cost of your Flash Heal by 10%. Unmitigated good news, considering that downranking has been abolished. At level 70, this knocks nearly 50 mana off Flash Heal’s cost, dropping it from 472 mana to 425. It’s still not as efficient as Greater Heal (2.8 health per mana to GH’s 5.1), but your mana consumption will go way down when you’re trying to conserve overhealing too.
Glyph of Holy Nova – Holy Nova gets +40% healing, but -40% damage. This would be great if anybody used Holy Nova for healing, but as it is, most of the use it sees is as a priest’s only AOE spell. (That’ll change with Mind Sear in the expansion, but still.)
Glyph of Inner Fire – Increases the number of charges on Inner Fire by 20. This is great for the solo priest, but in groups you shouldn’t be getting hit, so the number of charges Inner Fire has shouldn’t matter. It’s a toss-up.
Glyph of Mind Flay – Increases the range of Mind Flay by 10 yards, but removes the slowing effect entirely. This is the inverse of the Glyph of Inner Fire – fabulous in groups, where you don’t care about the slowing effect and the extra reach is great (especially for fights like Prince in Karazhan), but awful while soloing, since the slowing effect is half the reason to use Mind Flay in the first place. Also, now that Holy Nova is baseline, this is the only Priest glyph to modify a spell that’s only available through talents.
Glyph of Power Word: Shield – Power Word: Shield heals the target for 20% of the potential absorption amount, when the shield is cast. Be aware that this isn’t an over-time heal that depends on how much damage the shield takes, as can be easily inferred from the wording; when you cast Power Word: Shield, your target will be healed for 20% of what the shield can absorb. Great for Holy and Discipline priests, and fantastic for Shadow priests (who can cast PW:S without leaving Shadowform), this is one of the must-have glyphs for priests.
Glyph of Psychic Scream – Increases the duration of Psychic Scream by 1 second. On the one hand, this is one more second with the mobs off you (two, actually, since they have to add the extra second to their return time too). On the other hand, this is one more second with the mobs out of range of your spells, and one more second in which they can grab adds. It’s a toss-up, and depends on your play style. (If you’re primarily a grouper, this is a waste of a glyph slot.)
Glyph of Renew – Renew’s duration is cut by 3 seconds, but its healing per tick is increased by 25%. The way this works out, your Renew will heal for exactly the same amount, it’ll just do it faster. Unlike Fear Ward above, this is actually a useful glyph; although you’ll have to cast Renew more often, it’ll be much more effective when you do cast it, and its HPS will go up even as its HPM goes down.
Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain – Reduces SW:P’s mana cost by 20%. Another unmitigated benefit no matter what you’re situation, since it saves you mana. Especially good for Holy- or Shadow-heavy priests, who may not have the talent points to buy Meditation (which lets some of your mana regen continue while casting). Edit: Cae points out in the comments that many Shadow priests have the Pain and Suffering talent, which refreshes your SW:P’s duration when you successfully cast Mind Flay. This talent is much less useful for those priests, who will be casting SW:P much less often.
Glyph of Smite – Increases your chance to resist spell interruption while casting Smite by 50%. Largely a solo-only glyph, since you won’t be getting spell interruption in a group (and unless you’re Smite-DPS spec, you won’t be casting Smite much either), and even then it’s not great considering the changes to spell pushback. Don’t avoid this glyph, but don’t use it unless it doesn’t cost you anything and you can’t find a different one.

Minor Glyphs

Glyph of Fading – Reduces the mana cost of your Fade spell by 30%. Now this one I can get behind. It reduces Fade’s cost by nearly 100 mana at level 70, and that’s 100 more mana you can use to heal the tank or melt faces.
Glyph of Fortitude – Reduces the mana cost of Power Word: Fortitude and Prayer of Fortitude by 50%. This is only really useful in PVP (since PW:F can be dispelled) or when someone uses a combat rez. Otherwise it’s really just a convenience glyph, and should be passed over if you can find something better.
Glyph of Levitate – Levitate no longer requires a reagent. Take this glyph. Levitate goes from being situational to being whenever-the-hell-you-feel-like-it-ational, and you don’t have to go to Darkshore and kill moonkin for two hours to get enough Light Feathers to last you the week. Also, you’ll never die from accidentally using your ground mount and then running off the Aldor tier again. (…am I the only one who does that?) Edit: The lovely Holly has pointed out that Levitate has combat applications too, notably in fights where characters are lifted into the air and can take falling damage. This glyph means never having to farm Light Feathers before you go into Zul’Aman.
Glyph of Shackle Undead – increases the range of Shackle Undead by 5 yards. Are you, currently, in either Duskwood or Karazhan? This glyph might come in handy. Otherwise, pass it over.
Glyph of Shadow Protection – increases the duration of Shadow Protection and Prayer of Shadow Protection by 10 minutes. Great; now Shadow Protection is only ten minutes less in duration than the rest of my buffs, and Prayer of Shadow Protection is only half the duration of my other prayers instead of a third. If they’d brought SP and PSP in line with the other priest buffs, this would be understandable, but as it stands… well, it’s not worth it.
Glyph of Shadowfiend – You receive 5% of your maximum mana if your Shadowfiend dies from damage. And honestly, how often does that happen? A lot. This glyph guarantees you at least a little return on your Shadowfiend investment; with my stats the way they are now, if my Shadowfiend dies the instant it hits the ground, I receive a net increase of about 350 mana (500 from Shadowfiend’s death – 157 to summon the fiend). It would have been nice if it reduced the cooldown instead, but I guess that would have been a major glyph. This also isn’t particularly useful to the leveling priest, since you don’t get Shadowfiend until 66.

Here are my recommendations on glyphs to pick:

Major: Renew (Holy/Discipline) or Shadow Word: Pain (Shadow), Flash Heal (Holy) or Power Word: Shield (Discipline/Shadow)
Minor: Levitate (all), Fading, Shadowfiend

Comments are welcome in the form below.

Share and Enjoy: