Chorus of hymns

v3.1

There is discordant chatter about the revised hymns for priests in 3.1.  In case you don’t read any other WoW related material here are the hymns in tune (copy+paste from Matticus – hope he’s got them right):

Divine Hymn redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, summoning the power of the Divine to assist you in your time of need. Heals 3 nearby lowest-health friendly party or raid targets for 4960-5208 every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and increases healing done to them by 15% for 8 seconds. Maximum of 12 heals. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.

Hymn of Hope redesigned: You recite a Holy hymn, restoring hope to those in despair. Restores 3% mana to 3 nearby low mana friendly party or raid targets every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, and temporarily increases their total maximum mana by 20% for 8 seconds. After the effect expires, the mana is lost. Maximum of 12 mana restorations. The Priest must channel to maintain the spell. Cooldown increased to 6 minutes, up from 5.

The general melody of discussion, regarding these changes, seems to be the blues.  Why bother? We hate channelling, etc.

Personally I agree with what HolyDueg commented on Matticus’ post.  No priest stacking will not be mandatory.  Yes these are good changes but not earth shattering.

Lets have a look at the spells…

Hymn of Hope

The current Hymn of Hope is pretty average.  Many priests don’t use it.  It’s channelled, its pretty weak, and it prevents you healing.  I use the current Hymn of Hope in two circumstances.

Firstly when clearing trash I sometimes have trouble finding people to heal, so to help trash go faster I use this to return some small amount of mana to those that use it, hopefully reducing downtime.  This often occurs when there is only a mob or two of a trash pull left.

Secondly for some bosses who have a quiet period (e.g. Noth before phase 1 restarts) I sometimes use it then.  Or for bosses who ramp up over time (e.g. Gothik) I use it about one minute into the fight when I can afford the 8 seconds of not healing.

Notice I never use it as part of my shadowfiend/mana pot mana-return cycle. As the other posters above pointed out, you can’t usually afford to use it then unless completely out of options and without mana.  At which point your desperate anyway.  The trick is to use it at any point people have used some mana and you can afford the 8 seconds.

So far i’m planning on using the new version exactly the same as I currently do.  Especially for the boss fights 3.1 is just making a weak spell better.  It restores quite a bit more mana, but to fewer targets.  If this affected Turkelife during a raid it would return about: 23,000 (raid mana pool) x 1.2 (+20%) x 0.03 (3%) x 4 (4 ticks) = 3313 mana.

Another thing is the potential new Glyph of Hymn of Hope.  I have no idea if this glyph is in or out of 3.1, or if its a minor or major glyph, but lets be optimistic and assume its in and its a minor glyph.

Glyph of Hymn of Hope (new) - Your Hymn of hope provides 3 times the normal amount of mana per time, but its duration is 50% shorter.

This now makes Hymn of Hope a 4 second channel and it returns 50% more mana (23,000 (raid mana pool) x 1.2 (+20%) x 0.03 (3%) x 2 (2 ticks) X 3 = 4968 mana).  4 seconds not healing for almost 5k mana return, I like it.  Unfortunately even if the glyph is in sure they’ll make it a major glyph 😦

Divine Hymn

The current Divine Hymn is useless (I think).  I’ve wanted to use it but the reduced damage component appears to out-weight the other benefits in most situations.  I currently use this hymn from time-to-time to make a pretty music symbol appear above raiders when I get bored…

The new one is, interesting exciting.  A 8 second channel for healing three raiders for 20k+ each (!) and increasing healing on them by 15%.  Ok, so its an 8 second channel, but whats not to like about this spell?  It heals a base of 60k plus whatever spell power co-efficient it has.  7,500+ healing per second seems pretty good to me.  This is approaching twice the HPS of any other healing spell!  Sure its channelled so you might lose half this but it is still a huge heal on a long timer and a huge buff over the old version.

If I make a few assumptions, like that it heals the target with the greatest health loss (percent or absolute I don’t care, yet) and that it re-targets each tick, this will be Circle of Healing on steroids.

I’ll be using this for sure.

Change isn’t always bad fellow bloggers 😉