WoW Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Priest changes

WoW Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Priest changes
As I'm sure many of you have heard already, another build has hit the PTR this afternoon. Information on what's contained within is still slowly filtering in, but many of the class changes are already known thanks to Boubouille. Most of the Priest changes are just number tweaks, but there's some good stuff in there for potential Holy Priest PvP viability. Yes, Holy PvP! Let's dig into what we've got.

Shadow

• Shadowform now gives the the periodic damage from your Shadow Word: Pain , Devouring Plague , and Vampiric Touch spells the ability to critically hit for 100% increased damage.

This is a result of the change that came through awhile ago that allowed DoTs to crit via Shadowform. It was actually a DPS loss , so this is just a numbers thing so we should scale properly with crit again, back to where we were or potentially a little higher in some situations.

• Mind Melt now also increases the periodic critical strike chance of your Vampiric Touch, Devouring Plague and Shadow Word: Pain spells by 3/6%.

Again, this seems like just a numbers thing to get our DPS up to where it should be with all of these patch 3.1 changes. Sure, I'll take an extra 6% crit on my DoTs. Why not?

Discipline

• Mental Agility changed from 5 to 3 Ranks. Now Reduces the mana cost of your instant cast spells by 4/7/10%. (Old - 2/4/6/8/10%)

This looks like it's just streamlining the Discipline tree a little bit, freeing up a couple of talent points. It also brings the talent a little closer to being in line with similar talents. Again, not a huge world-breaking change, but it's pretty nice!

Holy

• Serendipity now reduces the cast time of your next Greater Heal or Prayer of Healing spell by 4/8/12%. (Down from 6/12/20%)

Serendipity is still heavily in flux, its mechanic has changed completely from what it is on live realms. Now the numbers are being tinkered with to get things balanced properly. This heal-haste nerf is hitting more than just Priests, too. Infusion of Light s haste on Holy Light is getting hit with a nerfbat for Paladins. I think Serendipity will come out alright in the end, once all of the numbers are where the developers think they should be.

• New talent: Body and Soul - When you cast Power Word: Shield , you increase the target's movement speed by 30/60% for 4 sec, and you have a 50% chance when you cast Abolish Disease on yourself to also cleanse 1 poison effect in addition to diseases.

Here's the possible PvP viability tweak I mentioned. Power Word: Shield becomes not only a defense, but also an escape. 4 seconds is a pretty short duration, but it's enough to get a little space between you and whatever melee is currently rocking your face.

The Poison removal component is... well, it's something. It doesn't look like dropping the second point into this talent brings that up to a 100% chance, it stays at 50%, so I suspect many Priests won't be fond of this talent due to the RNG nature. If you're trying to remove a Rogue's poison from yourself, the last thing you want is to get an unlucky streak of Abolish Disease not removing the Poison at all. You'd probably rather be trying to heal yourself or escape with your GCDs. If the second point does make it a 100% chance to remove the poison, well, then it's pretty awesome. Note that the Poison removal only works on yourself, so this won't be a must-have talent in PvE.

And that's all that this build (WoW Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Priest changes) brings us. I think that Holy is the only spec of the three that might be a little unhappy due to that Serendipity nerf, but it's all pretty good and simple stuff beyond that.