This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
To clarify the changes to Soul Warding: This is a nerf to prevent shield spamming!The GCD can be pushed by Spell Haste down to 0.5sec, which often happens when you spam PW:S (because of Burrowed Time). With this change, PW:S is practically independent from spell haste and always stays on 1sec CD - even WITH Burrowed Time.
#Mind Melt (2 points) - Redesigned! * Cataclysm: Increases the additional damage done with your Shadow Word: Death by 5/10% on targets at or below 25% health, and and when you deal damage with Mind Spike, the cast time of your next Mind Blast is reduced by 11/33% lasting 6 seconds. Mind Melt can stack up to 3 times.This sounds suspiciously like the Missile Barrage proc that arcane mages get. Which is the reason I'm playing a Spriest and NOT a goddam annoying mage with their bloody popup "OMG MISSILE BARRAGE."I LOVE the even predictability of a spriest's "rotation."Thanks for ruining my fun Blizzard. I wonder what my account is worth on eBay...
The opposition to the smite-based talents in Discipline and Holy boggles my mind. I can't imagine anyone is going to expect a healing priest to put out substantial DPS. It is a *tool*, and an *awesome* tool.1. Given the importance of managing mana in Cataclysm, naturally we are going to need to recover mana during a fight. Blizzard, displaying a supernatural amount of wisdom, realized that sitting around watching a blue bar refill is *boring*. Rather than just making mana regeneration easy (thus defeating the whole point), they gave us something to do *while* we're low on mana, that in fact *helps us* regain mana (in the case of Evangelism/Archangel) and get back to healing quickly once we have. Thus, less boredom. Thus, more awesome.2. This gives us a bit of flexibility. I know that during some stages of some bosses (Saurfang, Anub'arak) I would find myself DPSing, and only start healing at the end when things get messy. Terrible as my DPS was, my healing wasn't necessary at first, and at least I was contributing a *little*. Talents like these would be nice for these situations! Also for when we outgear content and don't need to heal so readily.3. I have both my specs tied up in healing (holy/disc yayyy). For solo work, having more dps talents woven into my healing spec would be useful and very welcome. What is not to like here?
From a resto druid point of view, these changes paired with the raiding changes seems to me like Blizzard is trying to make healing a little more "interesting". However, I don't think the bonuses from dps moves will be a huge factor in end game raiding. I view it more as it is now. Healers dps all the time in their random daily and occasionally in some 25 man bosses. Like normal and heroic marrowgar and blood princes, and most of all, Gunship healers are able to dps even when the raid has some of the healers respec dps. So these 'healer dps' changes I think are mostly to speed up heroic randoms and make them a little more interesting.
My understanding of the reading of Chakra from page one is that the only way a Chakra state ends is if it expires after 20 seconds, or if it is replaced by another Chakra state. So, casting Renew three times would get you the Renew Chakra buff; if the spell you cast next was Heal, you would still have the Renew Chakra buff, and continue to have it until twenty seconds had passed from the time you cast that third Renew *or* until you cast Heal, PoH, Smite or Renew three times in a row (though in that last case it'd be reapplication).Is that how others are reading it?