Friday, May 6, 2011

T12 Set Bonus: A Disappointment

T12 set bonuses were revealed yesterday and I have to say the priest bonuses are currently underwhelming.

First of all:

2-piece Bonus- Your Flash Heal, Heal, and Greater Heal spells cause you to regenerate 2% of your base mana every 5 sec for 15 sec.

Anything that increases our mana regeneration is a worthwhile bonus.  According to Kurn, this ends up being a gain of 412 Mp5 or 1236 every 15 seconds. Sounds great right? For tank healing, yes it's fantastic. For raid healing, it's a letdown.


Priests who tank heal as Holy or Discipline won't see an issue with this bonus. The raid healing Holy Priest will find the bonus underwhelming, mainly because they rarely cast single target heals.  Holy Priests who raid heal mainly utilize Prayer of Healing/Circle of Healing and usually spot-heal with Renew. I can see this being less of a problem in 10-mans where Holy Priests will help out the tanks when needed, but in 25's where their AoE healing specialty is cherished, we don't use single target heals with cast times very much.  Even just casting a "Heal" every 15 seconds would be a waste because the "Heal" spell costs more mana then what you regen back.

Fix: Have the bonus proc off of Penance and Circle of Healing instead.  Good Discipline and Holy Priests will always have Penance and Circle of Healing on cooldown and it makes the bonus more attractive to raid healing Priests.

4-piece Bonus- You have a chance when you cast a helpful spell to summon a Cauterizing Flame. Friendly raid and party members can use the Cauterizing Flame to be instantly healed for 4625 to 5375. Lasts for 45 sec sec or 10 charges. After using the Cauterizing Flame, players cannot benefit from it again for 10 sec.

Anything that requires raid members to "click" something to be healed isn't a good bonus. It's essentially a second Lightwell or Healthstone.  While I like Lightwell and value its addition to raids, it's hard enough to get raid members to click the Lightwell as it is and the mechanic is unreliable depending on how aware your raid is about their own health bars and even what they are carrying in their bags. They don't need to be looking for ANOTHER type of "Healthstone" to be looking for while they are moving out of the fire.  On top of all this, the healing component is pretty low.

Fix: I'd rather have the bonus proc automatically, like Althor's Abacus or something similar. Have it heal 5 party/raid members and make it benefit from our Mastery (similar to a second, weaker Circle of Healing).

As it stands, if the 4-piece is not changed I won't be taking it.  It's too unreliable. On top of this, the Shadow 2-piece set is looking like a tasty option for healing priests.  With the 75 second cooldown reduction on Shadowfiend and with 2 points in the Shadowfiend cooldown reduction talent, we will see a Shadowfiend cooldown of 2 minutes and 45 seconds.  This is a more valuable option over a mediocre "Healthstone" bonus.

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