3.1 PTR Notes - Part I

So, I don't know about you guys, but I'm pretty excited about the changes to my class that are currently up on the PTR. Let's look at a couple of the changes that will be affecting holy priests:

Abolish Disease: Now cleanses a disease every 3 sec, down from 5. Duration reduced from 20 seconds, down to 12 sec.

This is interesting. During fights like Heigan I've been keeping this up on the melee, but found that it was reallllly slow sometimes in decursing. On the other hand, the other disease cleansing spell costs the same for just one decurse, so I felt it was worth it to risk the dot ticking one more time in order to keep that up for 20 seconds. Maybe reducing the ticks to 3 seconds apart will help cleanse those diseases faster.

Divine Spirit is now trainable at level 31.

Yay!!!! Do I really have to go any further? Spirit = win as holy. I'm kind of curious about the supposed "changes to ooc mana regen" they have been talking about, but for now, this is super awesome to me. I do kind of worry about the disc priests out there whose guilds are dumb and only take them for that buff without understanding their true value, though...

Hymn of Hope: This spell has been removed.
Improved Holy Concentration removed.

LOL.

Prayer of Healing: This spell now heals the target's party, rather than being limited to just your direct party.

THIS is a big change. Now we don't have to constantly remind the RLs to put the priests in separate groups, especially on fights like Loatheb. This change, combined with the PoH talents and glyph should be on every holy priest's priority list (although you SHOULD be using them already, really). Another good reason to stack haste, too.

Circle of Healing: Healing increased by approximately 40%.

Another big change. I'm hoping this will help on fights like 10-man Malygos, where there very well may be only one healer who can still cast during vortex. I'm happy they implemented the 6 second cooldown, because even before these notes came out, I felt like priests were where they needed to be (people argue with me on this all the time), but this is awesome for, yet again, fights like Loatheb where your casting window is small and you need to get out the most healing you can.

Meditation: Now grants 17/33/50% of mana regeneration while casting.

Ok, Fuyu. Don't get TOO excited. As it stands now, this would put me at 450-500mp5 while casting, self-buffed, without DS. BUT, Blizzard also said they were changing ooc regen from spirit so that it will be lower, while 5SR regen will stay about the same. So essentially, I expect to see my ooc numbers drop to the point where I'm still getting 330mp5 while casting with this talent. So, in a nutshell, if the mana regen changes go through, then expect not to notice this that much. If they don't, enjoy drinking even less in 25 mans.

That's it for now! I'll be back later with some more info on holy changes, as well as glyphs. =)