Healer CDs - Healing in World of Warcraft
Helping Raid Leaders & Their Healing Team
Looks like the 25M healing buff has also reached shadow priests. Their Vampiric Embrace will now heal up to 15 raid members, up from 6 members on 25M only in 5.3.
This could up a shadow priests healing significantly for 25M, and will definitely help healers out, especially when under-healing content.
This change was a late addition to the 25M healing CD buffs from a few weeks ago that saw Divine Hymn, Tranquility and Revival all get buffed when used in 25M instances.
Holy priests have just received a significant buff on the 5.3 PTR to Divine Hymn in 25M raiding (goes along with the Tranquility buff and the Revival buff) that sees Divine Hymn healing 12 members, up from 5 members, when used in a 25M raid.
Divine Hymn now targets 12 raid members (up from 5) each time it heals when used in a 25-player instance.
A nice buff to holy and might get some of the multitudes of Discs out there trying Holy again, which has been very competitive this tier, after being completely outshined by Disc earlier in this expansion.
Glyph of Smite has been an almost mandatory glyph for Disc Priests who use Atonement healing as a significant portion of their overall healing. While we saw Atonement nerfed by 10% on PTR, the bigger news is the nerf to Glyph of Smite.
On 5.3 PTR, the Glyph of Smite has been updated to:
Your Smite spell inflicts an additional 20% damage against targets afflicted by Holy Fire, but that additional damage does not get transferred by Atonement.
The original glyph was:
Your Smite spell inflicts an additional 20% damage against targets afflicted by Holy Fire.
So this is technically a huge nerf to Disc Priests, even if it isn’t wrapped up in a huge nerf to Atonement itself. And Discs will be digging into their glyph books to decide what should replace it.
Ghostcrawler also weighed in on the changes:
First came the complaints from non-Pally and non-Priest healers that Disc Priests were phenomenally overpowered in 5.2 (and really, for this entire expansion).
Then we saw Atonement nerfed by 20%, when they reduced atonement healing to 80% of damage dealt, down from 100%. Next came Ghostcrawler’s tweet that the reduction might only be a reduction to 90% instead of the 80% on PTR.
Well, Disc Priests can breathe a sigh of relief because Ghostcrawler’s tweet is a reality.
Atonement now heals for 90% of the damage dealt, up from 80%.
However, Disc should be aware that Glyph of Smite was nerfed to no longer transfer the additional damage to Atonement.
One of the 5.3 nerfs that had many disc priests crying was the nerf of Atonement by 20%. Currently on the PTR, the notes state:
Atonement now heals for 80% of the damage dealt, down from 100%.
However, a tweet from Ghostcrawler has given discs some hope that the nerf might only be 10% instead of the 20% currently seen on the PTR.
Great potential news for discs, although I am sure some non-disc healers that are trying to keep up with overpowered priests right now will be a bit disappointed.
Now that Stage 5 of the Isle of Thunder is available and people have now been able to kill the new world boss Nalak, we are starting to see some data coming from the new healer legendary meta gem.
First, the new Courageous Primal Diamond, the healer meta gem from the legendary questline, is one of the RPPM (Real PPM) procs. It has no ICD (internal proc rate) and has a 1.40 RealPPM on a beneficial spell.
The proc itself is called Clearcasting Trigger (spell ID # 137248 for those making a weak aura for it) – Chance on casting a helpful spell to make your spells cost no mana for 4 seconds.
The biggest problem with this meta gem is that the 4 second proc is very short in practice. Chances are extremely high that you will be moving or mid-cast when it first procs, meaning you likely can only get off one or two mana-intensive heals off before it expires. It does make a proc sound, and you can also use weak auras to track it – and you might want to start with an annoying sound for procs until you get used to reacting to the proc.
Passive heals do not seem to make the meta gem proc. You do need to have a 502 ilevel or higher helm, although there are reports that those with helms from T14 that are upgraded above 502 cannot be used with the new meta, it is only for helms added in 5.2.
If you need to buy a new legendary meta gem, either for offspec or for a new healing helm, you can purchase one from the Blacktalon Quartermaster in the Tavern in the Mists (Veiled Stairs) for the cost of 5 Primal Diamonds – if you have been wondering why the cost of Primal Diamonds shot up on the auction house, this is why.
Oh, and this meta gem procs when you drop a guild bank and swap talents… and I am sure many other “helpful” spells 🙂
You can track the proc with this weak aura. And there is also an addon that tracks the amount of saved mana while in combat.
Here is information on the new meta gem for each healing class.
Priests:
For Priests, it is worth noting that the legendary meta gem does NOT proc from Smite or Holy Fire, however it does proc on Penance (with Atonement, Penance Atonement is procing while Smite and HF Atonement is not). So those healing through Atonement will need to make sure they are including Penance in their rotation in order to benefit from the meta. It is currently procing on spells such as Levitate and Power Word: Fortitude.
Due to Atonement, however, some disc are debating over the Courageous Primal Diamond versus the Sinister Primal Diamond (proc is called Tempus Repit). Will update when more data is out from discs trialing both options.
Shamans:
It only procs from direct casts, so it will not proc off of healing stream totem ticks, riptide ticks, or healing rain ticks. Earth Shield procs will not proc meta either. However, because Shamans lack quick spammable 1GCD spells, there could be more benefits to prioritizing haste in order to be able to take better advantage of the 4 seconds of mana-free heals. Puupi (raids in heroic 10M guild Gifu) on MMO-Champion has a great post about better utilizing haste with close to 1GCD spells with the meta. (Shamans should real the entire thread, very interesting).
Uptime for Shamans is about 10%, with regen of about 3200 mp5, according to Tiberria from Incarnate in this thread, who states this is an extremely strong regen gem, equivelant to 2 resto shamans dropping mana tide on CD with 15,000 spirit. It procs of Earthliving.
Druids:
Unfortunately for druids, it can be difficult to track the meta gem proc versus the Omen of Clarity proc which is also Clearcasting. And worse, the procs will overwrite each other, meaning druids will currently get a lot less benefits from this meta gem unless the spell is renamed or Blizzard corrects the spell interaction. Bug report here. UPDATE: This has now been hotfixed.
On the PTR, the name has been changed to Lucidity (as someone noted in the bug report it was supposed to be named), however there could still be issues prior to the 5.3 patch being released unless they are able to hotfix it.
Monks:
Eminence will not proc the meta gem. There was a bug using the meta with Surging Mists glyphed, which appears to be hotfixed.
Paladins:
Some discussion over whether this meta is worth using or not, due to the timing of the mana-intensive healing spells not lining up with the 4 second proc. MMO-Champion thread here. Not a lot of data from pallies yet, will update as more info is available.
