Duct Tape and a Prayer » Quick thoughts on glyph changes in 3.1

February 24, 2009
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As you may have suspected, I have some comments on the changes to priest glyphs in Patch 3.1. The effects are as listed on WOW Insider.

Glyph of Psychic Scream – Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 2 sec. and increases its cooldown by 8 sec. Not a particularly good glyph. I don’t think anyone is saying “gosh, I wish Psychic Scream lasted longer and I couldn’t cast it as often”.
Glyph of Fear Ward – Reduces cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 60 sec. I’ve railed against this glyph before. The change just makes it suck more.
Glyph of Fade – Reduces the cooldown of your Fade spell by 15 sec. With LK tanks’ ability to generate massive threat, this is rarely needed, but it’s still a good standby if you run with PUGs a lot. Removing the duration aspect was good too.
Glyph of Inner Fire – Increases the armor from your Inner Fire spell by 50%. This might be good for hardcore PVPers, but I suspect that they can find better glyphs. Outside of that demographic, I don’t know anyone who uses Inner Fire for the armor
Glyph of Mind Control – Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 30 sec. This is either going to be mandatory for DPS priests running heroic Naxx, or it’s going to be banned.
Glyph of Smite – Reduces the pushback suffered from damaging attacks while casting Smite by 100%. I hope this is a minor glyph. It’s good for a minor glyph, but awful for a major one.
Glyph of Dispersion – Your Dispersion ability now also clears movement impairing effects and makes you immune to them for its duration. Wasn’t this supposed to be a baseline component of Dispersion in the patch? Or has that been changed?
Glyph of Guardian Spirit – If you Guardian Spirit lasts its entire duration without being triggered, your Guardian Spirit cooldown is reset to 60 sec. Holy priests and tanks will love this one.
Glyph of Penance – Reduces the cooldown of Penance by 2 sec. Addresses a common complaint. Practically required for Discipline priests.
Glyph of Mind Sear – Increases the radius of effect on Mind Sear by 5 yards. This is not what people wanted from a Mind Sear glyph. Glyph of Mind Sear should deal some damage to the primary target or allow Mind Sear to be cast on friendly targets (but still harm only hostile targets)
Glyph of Hymn of Hope – Your Hymn of hope provides 3 times the normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter. I can only imagine that the developers working on glyphs and the developers working on skills don’t actually talk very much. If this stays live, it’s very much in line with the Renew glyph. PVPers will shun it; it’ll be a nice holdout in PVE.
Glyph of Pain Suppression – Allows Pain Suppression to be cast while stunned. The Discipline priest’s answer to rogues. Au revoir, stunlock.