MMO-Champion is reporting some class changes in this new build. I’m sure I’ll have more stuff to say later on, but the basics:
1) Healing Hands renamed to Holy Radiance. I approve. This is very descriptive of the spell. Also, the less confusion with all the Hand spells the better. I still don’t understand why our single-target taunt is called Hand of Reckoning…
2) Illumination has moved in our tree. It’s now Tier 5, instead of 3, and only requires two points to get 30% of our mana back on a critical spell. I’m okay with this; this is less bloaty. It was one thing to pay 5 talent points for 100% mana return or even 60% mana return, but 5 points for 30% mana return was lame. I believe it’s switching places with Denounce, which grants you an instant, free Exorcism whenever you get a crit on a Holy spell. (To which I say, “feh.”)
3) One of the fun reasons for speccing into ret has been nerfed. Eternal Glory previously gave you a 20/40% chance to not lose Holy Power when using Word of Glory. It’s now a 10/20% (assuming it’s still two talent points – MMO-Champion just says 20%) chance. I think that dropping this from nearly half the time to a fifth of the time is sort of making this a blah talent. Of course, we’ll still want it, because saving Holy Power means another free heal through WoG or another boost to Light of Dawn, but it will happen even more unpredictably, which will mean one of two things.
a) We’ll ignore it almost entirely and actually make use of the proc only occasionally. Sort of like today’s Infusion of Light procs. I sometimes force a crit Holy Shock to get me that instant Flash of Light, but most of the time, when Infusion of Light goes off, I don’t even notice and just continue to heal. I’m not sure I like this, because while it’s nice on occasion, I like to talent for things that I can sort of use and rely on.
b) If mana conservation is as huge a deal as the devs are making it out to be, we’re going to be glued to our buff bar/Power Auras/in-game Power Auras to watch for those procs and do our very best to use them smartly. I’m not sure I like this idea. Prioritizing Word of Glory may not always be the best case, even if we have the proc go off, giving us another WoG heal. Perhaps we’ll then choose that time to cast Light of Dawn, but… I don’t know. I’ll have to play with it.
That’s about it with regards to holy changes thus far. I’ll try to get a couple videos up this weekend. Assuming things on the beta aren’t broken. ;)
Even with this nerf to Eternal Glory I’m still afraid Word of Glory will be nerfed when it comes to raid time. Won’t it just add up to way too much free healing?
I don’t mind watching for a Eternal Glory to proc though because right now Holy Pallies don’t watch for anything to proc at all.
I can definitely see your concern though that Word of Glory is what we will prioritize because it’s free. I am sadly not in the beta so I don’t really know how much holy power generation limits when we can use Word of Glory. Will the smartest move you can make to use Word of Glory the moment it comes out in order to avoid waisting Holy Power generation? Or is generation so slow/so fast that you can save a Word of Glory for about 10 seconds to use when you need it?
Wasselin – A 3-stack WoG crits for about as much as a Divine Light hits, if I’m remembering right. That said, as it stands, I almost ALWAYS have at least one stack of Holy Power up. It’s not very hard to generate, not with Tower of Radiance. It’s been pretty rare that I’ve gone to hit my WoG button and not been able to cast it.
You CAN save it for up to 30 seconds without even trying to generate any (any Holy Shock, any heal to a beacon with 3/3 Tower of Radiance) but with Light of Dawn consuming it, you might not be able to. It’s a bit of a ramp up time, too, especially if you’re starved for mana.
It’ll be interesting at the least to see how Holy Power and Word of Glory get shaken up between now and launch.
Just throwin’ this out there:
Hand of Reckoning Bombs.