"There are Holy Priest changes in the works."

#0 - April 13, 2007, 6:08 p.m.

Here's some damage control from Tigole:

Q u o t e:
There are also Holy Priest changes in the works.

And these are the changes you've been cooking up?

# "Binding Heal": The mana cost has been reduced by 32%. The tooltip has been adjusted to indicate it is a low threat spell, which was already the case.
# "Circle of Healing" (Holy) effect increased.
# "Empowered Healing" and "Holy Concentration" now affect "Binding Heal".
# "Pain Suppression" now reduces damage taken by 65% and increases resistance to Dispel mechanics by 65% for the duration.

The Binding Heal buff has left me shaking my head. I have it on my action bar, but the situation where it is useful arises so infrequently that I often forget that I even have this spell and just use other heals. Buffing this is inconsequential for PvE. And if you think that buffing this makes up for the lost utility of the old Prayer of Mending in PvP... I don't even know what to say to you guys.

25 base healing added to the maximum rank of Circle of Healing...? Are you even reading our forums? Is this some kind of sick joke? This spell scales horribly with gear because it is instant cast and an AoE. It doesn't provide enough HPS to use reliably. You could add 300 to 400 base healing to it and people would still be getting Divine Spirit instead. Can't you just admit that you were wrong and scrap this horrible talent? Just... wow. It was hard to believe that there could be a x1 point talent worse than Lightwell but you guys managed to top yourselves somehow. Can you imagine a Demonology warlock not getting a Felguard? Or an assassin rogue not getting Mutilate? What other class goes 40 points into a tree without picking up the 41 point talent?

Why does Pain Suppression has to be dispellable? You give up Blessed Resilience for it, which is far better at mitigating damage in the long run and scales with your opponents' crit%. Check your own armory data. Most priests in arenas are 28/33/0 spec. You give up a lot of healing throughput to get Pain Suppression. This buff is a step in the right direction but Pain Suppression is still weak compared to Blessed Resilience, which costs no mana, doesn't trigger the global cooldown, and is active far more often.

Edit: Any news on smart targeting for Circle of Healing (like Chain Healing has)? I believe *Kalgan (not Tigole, whoops) brought that up as a possibility several months ago but we haven't heard anything since.

#19 - April 13, 2007, 7:23 p.m.

Q u o t e:
This change to binding heal might get me using it a bit more in arena 2v2. I'm yet to use the spell in combat, becuase like you said its so situational that you forget to use it. But lowering the mana cost might make it a good option in 2v2 arena and will get me more accustomed to using it.

Something I'm wondering though, the hallowed set bonus has been changed for binding heal as follows:

Does this stacked with 2 points in healing focus mean I have 100% to resist spell interuption from damage when casting binding heal?

In addition to being cheaper to cast than two flash heals, generating noticeably less threat, Binding Heal will now also be fully uninterruptible with the first Hallowed Raiment set bonus and talents in focused healing.