Spiritual Guidance: Priest tier 10 examined
Every week (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. Tier 10 stuff is here!
Okay, that shot above is tier 9. But we don't know what the tier 10 stuff looks like yet so I had to pick something! The tier 10 bonuses for healing Priests have recently been updated. We'll compare the before and after versions. They're expected to only be obtainable in Icecrown in patch 3.3.
Previous and old bonuses
2 piece bonus - After your Pain Suppression and Guardian Spirit talents expire on your target, they grant your target 10% increased healing received for 10 sec.
4 piece bonus - Your Flash Heal spell has a 15% chance to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance Spells.
The original 2 piece is mediocre at best. Healing Priests use their defensive cooldowns once or twice a fight. If the abilities are used, you're looking at 20 seconds of bonus healing received on a player (which is usually the tank).
Worded that way, it just doesn't seem as impressive does it? If you have the Glyph of Guardian Spirit, you might be able to get more use out of it since it drops the Guardian Spirit cooldown to a minute. But even that is stretching it a bit much.
Let's move on to the 4-piece now. It offers a chance to cause a cooldown reset on Circle of Healing or Penance. We're not exactly going to go back to the days of Black Temple or Sunwell when Circle of Healing spam reigned supreme. Personally, i miss those days, but the era of the 1 button healer is gone.
Blizzard heard the discontent that Priests had with the set and revamped them accordingly. This is what they look like now:
2 piece bonus - Your Flash Heal critical strikes cause the target to heal for 25% of the healed amount over 9 sec.
4 piece bonus - Your Circle of Healing and Penance spells have a 20% chance to cause your next Flash Heal cast within 6 sec to reset the cooldown on your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.
The updated 2 piece is hands down better than what they had before. In terms of gearing, there might be a slight shift towards crit based gear. Most of the caster items have either crit or haste (some have both). Most healing priests favor haste just so they can get their spells off faster.
This is an effect reminiscent of a Paladin's Flash of Light interaction with Sacred Shield. A Paladin who Flash of Lights a target with Sacred Shield will squeeze an additional 100% of the heal over 12 seconds.
Shadow Priest bonuses
2 Pieces (Damage): The critical strike chance of your Shadow Word: Pain, Devouring Plague, and Vampiric Touch spells is increased by 5%.
4 Pieces (Damage): Reduces the channel duration and period of your Mind Flay spell by 0.5 seconds.
The 2 piece appears marginal at best, but more crit is more crit and everyone loves to have more crit. Now the 4 piece seems to be much stronger. It's basically the same Mind Flay spell, but it will channeled quicker in half a second which allows for more Mind Flay casts during an encounter.
Translation: Yes, it's a decent sized advantage for Shadow Priests.
Want to find more great tips for carrying out your Priestly duties? Spiritual Guidance has you covered with all there is to know! And don't forget to check out our other Leveling Guides as well as our Wrath Guides and Galleries!
