3.0.8 for Priests

I thought we'd be getting the 3.0.8 patch last week. I guess I need a new magic 8 ball. Hopefully it will come out this week instead. In any case, here's several of the big changes you can expect along with a list of bug fixes. Mind you, most of these aren't game or class breaking type changes.

At least, not to me. You may feel otherwise.

Holy

• Circle of Healing has a 6 second cooldown

Yep. I've wrote about this at length. We shouldn't be surprised at that.

Discipline

• Silent Resolve now reduces the chance your helpful spells and damage over time effects will be dispelled by 10/20/30%. (Old - Affected all spells)

You can more in detail about the Silent Resolve changes in Daniel's post regarding Dispel resistances and their changes. But in a nutshell, Fear will not be protected with Silent Resolve whereas Renew or Shadow Word: Pain will continue to be.

Shadow

• You can now cast Cure Disease and Abolish Disease while in Shadowform.

This will help out on certain cleanse happy fights. A great example of this would be on Heigan. Raid leaders can now task Paladins, Shamans, and Priests of both specs to help cleanse, if necessary.

• Shadowform: You can now shift into Shadowform while mounted or sitting.


• Vampiric Embrace: Mana cost of this spell has been removed.

The Shadow brothers can switch to their dark forms at any time. Hooray for increased flexibility. It's also nice to see VE being free.
Glyphs

• Glyph of Spirit Redemption - Increases the duration of Spirit of Redemption by 6 seconds. (Old - All heals cast while Spirit of Redemption is active have a 20% chance to increase the remaining duration of Spirit of Redemption by 4sec.

Heh, this might make a few Priests feel all sad panda like. There's an interesting PvP spec for Priests that involves stretching down to Spirit of Redemption. The theory is that if the Priest dies, there is a chance that the Priest can continue to heal non-stop with this glyph active and keep their partners alive.

With this change, that strategy will no longer be possible.

Bug Fixes

This patch introduces some bug fixes for Priests.

• Dispersion: This ability can no longer be cast while affected by Cyclone; doing so consumed the cooldown to no effect.


• Guardian Spirit: It is no longer possible for simultaneous killing blows to trigger the heal from this ability multiple times.


• Improved Holy Concentration: The tooltip has been rewritten to indicate that this talent reduces cast time rather than providing haste.


• Mind Flay - Fixed a bug with targeting where you would not deal damage if not facing the target while channeling. Also corrected an issue where the damage from this ability was slightly delayed.


• Prayer of Mending: Will now only benefit from the healing talents of the priest who cast the original spell.


• Rapture: This talent will now correctly return mana for Power Word: Shield based on the caster's mana poll instead of the target's mana pool.


• Shadow Weaving: Shadow Word: Death: Will now only apply one copy of this buff per cast.


• Shadow Word: Pain now will gain the correct damage modifiers for the creature type of the target.


• Surge of Light: Prayer of Mending will no longer sometimes cause Surge of Light to trigger on Priests who do not have that talent.

That last bug was an interesting one. I wondered why I'd get a Surge of Light proc when I was full Discipline. I guess that's going the way of the dodo.

The fix to Rapture will help us a lot. When shielding Warriors or Feral Druids, it was disappointing to see minor gains in mana until I read about this bug. Nice to see that's been fixed!

So when I was asked on Twitter if this patch will change Priests to become worth playing again, there wasn't much I could add. If Wrath wasn't enough to make you play a Priest, then this patch isn't going to change your mind much. We will still be renowned for our versatility and ability to adapt.