Divine Aegis: Divine Aegis effects will now stack, however the amount absorbed cannot exceed 125*level (of the target). It will also now take into account total healing including overhealing.

I haven’t tested this on the PTR, so take this with a grain of salt, but my impression is that what happens is that when Divine Aegis is already up on a target, and another heal crits, the duration of Divine Aegis is refreshed, and 30% of the heal amount is added to the absorption amount, except that a single Divine Aegis can’t absorb more than 125*targetlevel damage no matter how many times it’s refreshed. At level 80, that’s 10,000 health.

So here’s the thought: with Discipline priests stacking crit like they are currently, it seems like it’ll be awfully easy to reach that 10k absorption cap on a single Divine Aegis, which means that further crit heals on the target, until DA runs out, aren’t useful (at best, they refresh the duration of the maxed-out DA). I know this isn’t likely to be an issue on boss fights – but then, with tanks stacking avoidance lately, it might.

And here’s the question: does DA work in 3.1 like I think it does? Specifically, do crit heals that don’t increase the total amount healed (because the absorption cap has been reached) still refresh the duration of DA?

(HT: WOW Insider)

In a break with Blizzard tradition, Ghostcrawler spoke on the official forums today to give us specifics about the upcoming mana regen changes. As it stands now, Spirit-based mana regeneration is being reduced by 40%, and the various talents (like Meditation in the priests’ Discipline tree and Spirit Tap in the Shadow tree) are being buffed by 67% to compensate. The end result is that casting mana regen – within 5 seconds of casting a spell – will remain roughly the same, and non-casting regen – more than 5 seconds after casting a spell – will be reduced by almost half. (X non-casting regen:0.3X casting regen::0.6X non-casting regen:0.5*0.6 = 0.3X casting regen, for those of you who remember the SATs.)

For many priests, this won’t really make much of a difference. Non-Shadow priests who don’t have Spirit Tap will see a slight increase in downtime between fights when they’re soloing, but other than that, nearly every build I’ve seen relies on Meditation, Spirit Tap, or both to preserve mana regeneration – unlike druids, who have had to dance in and out of the FSR for a while now in order to keep up their mana regeneration. Some priests do the same gimmicking of the mechanics to get as much non-casting time as possible during a fight so that they can hammer people who are taking damage with Greater Heal, but I suspect that that’s a tactic to allow priests to continue a BC healing strategy that simply isn’t as good in LK.

Will this make Spirit a weaker stat, and +mp5 and Intellect stronger? Not really. Anyone who insists on gimmicking the FSR as mentioned above might think it is, since the difference between non-casting and casting regeneration has been lessened, but part of the point of the change was to make it so that healers would stop cast-dancing. Players who insist on continuing to game the system in that fashion may, in fact, continue to find that Spirit is better for their staying power – I haven’t done the math, to be honest – but I actually still prefer +mp5 to Spirit. Here’s why:

At the moment, with 984 Intellect and 697 Spirit, I gain 609 non-casting mp5 (183 casting) from my Spirit. My Spirit therefore gives me about 0.27 casting mp5 per point of Spirit. (I talk in terms of casting mp5 because that’s where straight +mp5 shines and Spirit can be compared directly, and because it’s not changing at all in 3.1.) Straight +mp5′s item budget is 2.5 times that of Spirit (2.5 points per mp5, 1 point per Spirit); therefore, Spirit needs to give me 0.4 casting mp5 (1/2.5) before it reaches the item-budget efficiency of pure +mp5.

This is, of course, as a Discipline priest. Holy priests can take Spiritual Guidance, a talent that gives them up to 25% of their Spirit as spell power, which may modify their preferences somewhat. Without the added benefit of the Holy talent, though, give me mp5 over Spirit any day. (The same is true, incidentally, of food buffs; the best Spirit food (Cuttlesteak) gives me +40 Spirit, which works out to about 11 mp5; the second-best mp5 food (Rhino Dogs or Pickled Fangtooth) give me 12 mp5 and don’t even require Northern Spices.

Woo, tangent.

The WOW developers have let us know about some of the changes they’re planning in patch 3.1. Priests in particular are getting a couple of significant buffs:

• Divine Spirit is now a baseline skill. I’ve wondered for a while why Divine Spirit wasn’t a baseline skill; it complements Power Word: Fortitude so well. Historically, it’s also been in the “buff tree”, which happens to be the one talent tree that doesn’t gain very much benefit from Spirit, meaning that Holy and Shadow priests either had to go 21 points into Discipline or sacrifice some of their spell power. Given the utility of Guardian Spirit and Dispersal, I’m surprised to see Holy and Shadow priests with Divine Spirit since the talent revamp last fall. Now that it’s a baseline skill, the specs that actually get significant use out of Spirit will be able to use it without giving up their tree-defining skills.
• Discipline priests receive Power Word: Barrier, which is effectively a Power Word: Shield for the whole group. We don’t really have very much detail on this yet. It’s easy to assume that it will take the place of Divine Spirit in the Discipline tree, especially since we haven’t heard about a talent rework for Disc priests, but there’s no confirmation for that yet. There’s also no word on the actual mechanics of the spell; will it be a dome over the whole party, or a bunch of individual bubbles? (I’m guessing the former.) If it’s a dome, will it move with the party? (Perhaps it’ll be centered on the target of the spell.) If it’s a dome, will it block damage that originates from inside the dome, or from a character’s own abilities? I can see this being very useful for fights that involve lots of AOE damage, but we’ll have to see how it works and what it costs before we make any final judgments on it.
• Prayer of Healing can now be cast on any group in your raid. I suspect that this means that it’s targetable, and will heal the target’s group members. The only drawback I can see to this is that I’m used to having it affect me, but it won’t be that hard to re-learn to press Alt-2 instead of just 2.
• Holy Nova’s mana cost has been reduced. This will be a blessing for Holy and Discipline priests who are trying to solo lower-level content. Now if only they’d make Mind Sear do damage to the primary target, we’d be set. (The problem with Mind Sear is that it’s channeled and does no damage to the priest’s actual target, so it’s worthless against a single mob and unfortunately limited when the priest faces several mobs. Although, actually, when I think about it what comes to mind is to allow priests to cast Mind Sear on friendly targets…)
• The amount healed by Circle of Healing is increased. Given the spell’s mana cost and cooldown, this is entirely warranted.
• Shadowform reduces magic damage as well as physical damage. Conceptually I can see why Shadowform has been the way it has for so long, but in terms of game play, this is a much-needed revision of the ability, especially considering how many creatures deal magic damage in Northrend. (Oh, and for Holy priests clamoring for Holyform: you have one. It’s called Spirit of Redemption. Don’t forget to glyph it up.)
• Dispersion removes snares. This would be great if you could move while you were Dispersed. Ghostangel tells me that you can move and act while Dispersed – I guess I was just bugged or super-lagged when I tried it out, because I was locked in place. In that case, this is actually a useful (and conceptually appropriate) change.
• Penance can now target the casting priest. Aside from Alex Ziebart’s observations on its uses in PVP, I can also easily see priests using Penance on themselves in AOE fights to triple-stack Grace on themselves, since each of Penance’s three “strikes” counts as an application of the spell for Grace’s purposes. (This is part of how I use Penance on tanks already.) Also, before this Penance was useless in solo play except as a damage spell; after 3.1 it will be a useful, quick heal, especially if you’ve stacked Haste to reduce its channel time.
• Serendipity reduces the cast time of Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing when Binding Heal or Flash Heal is cast. I’m going to want to see how much it reduces the cast time. Currently Serendipity is a three-point talent, so I suspect that it’s going to be either 3%/6%/10% or 8%/17%/25%. (Given that both Greater Heal and Prayer of Healing have a base 3-second cast time, though, it might be 11%/22%/33% or something similar.) This talent might actually make Greater Heal worth casting again, especially combined with the 4-piece Tier 7 set.
• Holy priests will have additional PVP utility. I’ll wait to see what they do to the Holy spec before I say any more.

In general, 3.1 looks like it’s going to be a nice patch for priests. I’m looking forward to seeing how Power Word: Barrier and the Holy changes work out.

Patch 3.0.9 goes live tomorrow with the extended (?) maintenance. I’m looking forward to a 30-minute Inner Fire, even though there aren’t any LK fights long enough to require its reapplication (yet!), but I wonder what’s coming up.

3.2: Inner Fire is now castable on others.
3.4: Priests receive a new spell at level 80, Prayer of Fire, which costs 1 Devout Candle and provides the benefit of Inner Fire to the friendly target’s entire party.
4.0: Inner Fire and Prayer of Fire have been removed from the game. Instead, priests can now wear leather armor and have a permanent Aura of Fire which grants them and all raid members within 20 yards an additional 150 spell power.

(Yes, I’m being silly. … I hope.)

Originally posted here on 12/11/08.

Supposedly, the notes from patch 3.0.8 have been leaked. If they’re real, they include my favorite change to the game so far:

• Racial restrictions on mounts have now been lifted. Night elves on mechanostrider? Tauren on raptor? You’re not seeing things.

Finally, Theande can have her mechanostrider!