So I’ve read the updated patch notes published today, and have around 90 minutes to write something while sitting in my University Library … a few minor changes and adjustments here and there, so I’ll just do this in one go.
Body and Soul change reverted.
Body and soul is now back at 4 seconds 60% speed buff, which is fair in my opinion. However, I have considered this to be weaker with the new Angelic Feather talent. But this is debatable, since you have to give and take a few things. The feathers can allow you to permanently live inside a 60% speed buff, but this would take some effort and practise in implementing effectively.
I have not properly tried out Angelic Feathers really, to see how viable it is. In theory, however it seems extremely powerful considering priests can roam around 60% faster, permanently. Phantasm is equally powerful considering the fact that the cool down on Fade is at 5 seconds. I am still unsure if this is a mistake on Blizzard’s end or they have intentionally reduced Fade’s cool down to 5 seconds (initially 30 seconds), since this is not mentioned in the Patch Notes.
I have read a couple of forum posts where priests complain about mobility, which I agree with … and if these changes actually do go live, priests will probably be better in the mobility department.
Holy Fire is now instant
This change is simply perfect. Another silent change not mentioned in the patch notes, but working on the PTR, is that atonement heals ignore resilience. This means if you hit an opponent with Penance, then each healing effect will work exactly like in a PVE environment (but the 30% healing PVP debuff). I was doing 2s yesterday with a hunter and healed him with atonement for at least 20k heal hit on Penance, Smite and Holy Fire.
This greatly encourages all Disc Priests to go offensive, dealing moderate damage and healing even higher, I can really go on and on about this, but I guess I’ll wait for it to go live.
The instant Holy Fire, would help us to be even more offensive, making us work around Evangelism, and possibly Archangel. This personally makes me think of a priest entering into different forms: Normal, Evangelism and Archangel. From my experience on the PTR, the only way to beat a team with a disc priest is to control and lock the priest out or not allow him to cast. Discipline priests are nearly impossible to kill. But this story may be different on live since many players on PTR are just experimenting with classes they never play with at all.
Mind Blast damage increased by 20%.
I do not play shadow, and really bad at it. But my opinion on this change is that Shadow Priests can somewhat burst with a Mind Blast and Devouring Plague in one global. This puts the shadow priest in a good position, I would assume, and a combination with Power Word: Insanity would actually allow the Priest to burst every 15 – 30 seconds. So we healing priests need to be aware of this.
I believe Patch 5.2 is definitely an improvement for discipline priest gameplay in PVP, and allows us to do so much more then just healing and cc. We have to make decisions such as: when to DPS or heal, whether healing or damage with penance is better, to damage an opponent to heal our partner if he is out of our line of sight, and so much more.
Discipline/Holy Priest Pvp 