With the announcement of the new expansion, I'm quite excited to see what the class designers have in mind for the priest class. Well...actually I just have nothing to write at the moment so I thought I'll make up my own. The idea here is to favour Holy DPS but not to the point of destroying class balance - ie. nothing too overpowered.
Glyph of Holy Fire - Reduce the cooldown of Holy Fire by 3 seconds and increase its damage over time component by 15%.
Holy Fire cooldown ruins smite rotation, so remove it.
Glyph of Surge of Light - Your Surge of Light will automatically fire a non-critical Smite at the enemy when triggered. This effect costs no mana and does not consume a global cooldown. However, your Surge of Light no longer affects your Flash Heal spell.
GCD of Surge of Light ruins smite rotation, remove it, but not let it affect Flash Heal so that healing priest won't go into god mode.
Talent Fix:
Searing Light 3/3 - Increase the damage of your Smite, Holy Fire, Holy Nova, and Penance spell by 5/10/15%
10% damage increase is not enough, let's increase it slightly.
Holy Precision 3/3 - Increase your chance to hit with offensive holy spells by 1/2/3% and reduce the mana cost of your Smite, Holy Fire, and Holy Nova spell by 5/10/15%
No one wants to carry 600 spell hit rating on their gear at level 85, don't leave us out with the heavy duty gear please.
Improved Spirit Tap 2/2 - Your harmful spells have a 3/5 % chance to grand you the effect of Spirit Tap during combat.
This will benefit our mana regeneration. It's also great for leveling and the talent is still beneficial to shadow priests. I see this as a build in mana trinket.
NEW* Martyrdom 1/1 (Replacing Lightwell) - Activate Spirit of Redemption at will. When the effect ends, the priest's health is reduced by 50%. 3 minutes cooldown.
Lightwell sucks, no one knows how to use it. Priests have been crying about it for years now. I figure it's only logical to have a talent related to Spirit of Redemption, why would you set it as the prerequisite otherwise? I added in the side effect because the talent is overpowered in pvp otherwise. But it is still useful in pvp, just pop guardian spirit after this, heal up and your guardian spirit will reset to 1 minute cooldown.
So what do you think? Feel free to post ideas on your own blog. Let me know and I will link your post back to here.
Response Posts:
Smite Priests and the Mastery System by Kourtnie McKenzie
Oooo. These sound very interesting! Hope blizzard will take a look at them xD
ReplyDeleteI like it, especially the glyph of Surge of Light.
ReplyDeleteI'm not really sure about the change to Lightwell. I agree that it doesn't make sense as a follow-up talent to Spirit of Redemption but I'd like to keep it. I'm probably one of the few priests who actually uses Lightwell on a lot of fights.
I've noticed too that the Holy Fire cooldown/Smite rotation is just a bit off. But instead of doing an auto SoL Smite hit, I think it would be neat if a Surge of Light smite was still unable to crit, but would reset the Holy Fire cooldown.
ReplyDeleteHoly Precision is absolutely needed. The number one reason Holy DPS lacks viability, IMO, is a complete lack of any hit talents.
Instead of seeing Lightwell removed entirely, I would rather see it become more like the ToC variety. Random bouncing happy heals. They don't need to be smart heals, since we already have Prayer of Mending for that, but something that is somewhat automated. I do see your point though... why is Spirit of Redemption a pre-req for Lightwell? That never made sense to me either.
Yes, dear Blizz, PLEASE fix Spirit Tap! It's not fair that it doesn't count for Holy damage spells either :(
I would also like to see us get another holy offensive spell. Holy Fire + Smite gets old... even if it were something along the lines of the Pally exorcism. Even if it were effective against undead or demons only. It would still be something new and fun!
I like the thought of plugging the odd 3 second hole in the rotation. i think i'd rather have a longer dot than a shorter cooldown, but that's just me. as is, we have three bad options: cast shadow dots in the gully and let them expire for reduced uptime. cast shadow dots in the gully but clip a few ticks for more total dot ticks and bad mana efficiency. recast dots during the holy-fire dot, loosing some glyphed smites and also having fewer spells to cast in that 3-second ditch at the end. they get us no mater which way we go.
ReplyDeleteglyph of surge of light already has a precedent: lightning overload. it'd probably be a fair addition, and would effectively grant us the double-damage-crits we lack, without giving us the same boring double damage crits as everyone else.
as to new talents, i'd love something in the holy tree, seeing as there are 5 wasted points in the first three tiers. however, i would be happy if the change was as minor as to just add Holy Fire to Imp Spirit Tap, and Shadow Focus was broadened to add hit to all spells and reduce Smite and Holy Fire mana costs.
my main goals for a holy fire build would be for blizzard to fix the hit problem, give us something practical to do with those 5 spare talents points in the front of holy (add the Holy Fire dot to Imp Renew?), and some quality-of-life improvements w/r/t mana.
I might be a bit of a heretic about it, but even thought i love smite build, i don't want full raid-viability. our damage has to stay lower than shadow due to our vastly improved healing utility. a good parallel would be the relationship between elemental and restoration shaman. you can heal as elemental or fling the same spells as resto (the exact same rotation!) but it really won't be as good, and it shouldn't. elemental's heals and mana efficiency are a lot worse, and resto lacks the major crit increasing talents and the cast speed reductions to make dps work. we must stay 10% behind shadow in damage for balance reasons, i just want to be able to do it with the same levels of hit rating a shadow priest does, and a bit better mana efficiency.
Hey! I enjoyed reading your post about this. Since you mentioned blogging about it, I went ahead and wrote about my take on smite priests, Cataclysm, and the Mastery system at my smite priest blog, www.johannah.kourtnie.net.
ReplyDeleteI agree with thebitterfig about how I enjoy the 3 second cooldown of Holy Fire in my rotation, and I also agree that Lightning Overload is the sister to Surge of Light (with shaman and priest happening to be my two characters!). I think if Surge of Light was more on the lines of Lightning Overload, it would be phenomenal, even if they made it affect Flash Heal that way; it'd be like turning Flash Heal into Greater Heal with how much it hit on proc.
Lastly, I do agree that smite priests should never have the ability of shadow priests. I think the comparison of smite priests/holy priests to elemental shamans/resto shamans is rather justified.
Just give us hit and slightly more mana efficiency and I'd be set!
It'd be wonderful if you could link to my blog. I'm trying hard to offer something else to the smite priest community. :o)
There is already a talent called called Matyrdom or whatever in Disc if I remeber right. That said most of the changes sound reasonable. Turning SoL into the Deathknight moves that automatically procs Death Coils. The fact is they already fixed light well and they rub our faces in it constantly in ToC. IE the mobs that cast light wells that automaticly heal them. Give priests that. They can drop it in the middle of melee and watch it rain hots from the heavens! Another idea though is "Holy Form" as a direct play of Shadow Form, doing much the same thing increasing holy damage and healing or some such thing but not being able to cast shadow spells. Or some variation.
ReplyDeleteDisc priest should be equivelant to that of Shadow priest for pvp.. Holy fire colld down should be Reset.. And about the shadow form.. there Disc priest should have Holy Form. But just like Shadow has DOT .. Disc should have Holy over time spells. and the mind spike for shadow.. Disc should have something like it. not sure what name.. but i would think it be some kinf of Golden fire or lighting bolt of some sort. I mean Disc should be the equevalent of shadow but every damage heals wth a kick just like shadow. and Holy should be as is purely healing but with a more way to avoid damage donno just saying as i thnk it.. Priest specs shold be redone.. why have 2 pecs that heal.and one dps. even if Disc heals with the shields. it should have more of a damage point
ReplyDelete