Talent Review: Test of Faith

I thought I might do some quick posts reviewing Holy talent choices. As I said in my post on 3.1's viable talent specs, I feel the Disc tree really offers a best path, but the Holy tree offers a number of different options for talenting.

Test of Faith

This interesting talent increases your healing by 4/8/12% on targets below 50% health. 12% is a large bonus for 3 points, but is the 50% health requirement a good thing or a bad thing?

I think there's two ways to look at this talent. One the one hand, you could say Test of Faith is a bad talent if people are doing what they're supposed to, because if they don't stand in the fire or botch their abilities, they will rarely be below half health. On the other hand, you might say Test of Faith kicks in when you need it most, when people are in dire need of healing. And should you really pick your talents to help when everything is going fine, or to help you most when the raid needs all the healing it can get?

I think that both arguments are valid, but that there are two extenuating factors. First is that many of us are learning new bosses and new hard modes in Ulduar. This means that everyone is still learning where to stand, what to click, and how to avoid damage. People will be taking more damage as guilds learn encounters, so Test of Faith can be a good safety net. Also, there is a lot of raid damage in Ulduar, much of it nontrivial. Ignis's Flame Jets and Kologarn's Shockwave are two examples of raid-wide abilities that will bring many people below 50% health. Test of Faith can add a lot of oomph to the CoH's, PoH's, and PoM's that will be flying around.

Of course, the decision to invest in any talent comes down to what else the points could be spent on. This may be a number of other Holy talents but for me, I was comparing it to Blessed Resilience, which gives a flat 1% boost to all healing per point. Test of Faith gives 4 times the bonus per point, so you could look at total throughput and ask if Test of Faith will proc on your heals at least 25% of the time. If so, then it will affect your bottom line more than Blessed Resilience. Of course, the times Test of Faith procs are times when people need healing most, and when heals are least likely to overheal. So even if it only procs on 15-20% of your heals, perhaps it is still better overall.

Although I was skeptical of this talent early on, I have decided to use it. The +12% healing is a strong bonus, and given all the damage flying around in Ulduar, and the fact that our smart heals (CoH, PoM, DH) seek out injured players, it seems a good investment to me.

Razorscale: graceful swan or lame duck?

Razorscale, skybound
Now she descends gracefully
To melt our faces

Dark Rune adds pop up
Like gophers on a golf course
Let's play Whack-A-Mole!

An ode to Ignis the Furnace Master

Ignis is a mean Furnace Master
And you must be aware, as a caster
Casting through Flame Jet
Could cause you regret
Resulting in fiery disaster!

The off-tanks get all of the fun
As they pick up their adds on the run
If it's one of their lot
To ride the Slag Pot
The raid'll be roasted, well-done!

PW:Shield in the news

A few weeks ago I wondered if Power Word: Shield was overpowered, what with all the stacking bonuses it gets in the Disc tree. My reason for saying it might be "too good" was really just wondering if it made sense to base so much of Disc's benefits on one situational spell. It'd be like if 20 talent points in Holy affected Renew.

This week, others are noticing and pointing out how good PW:Shield is. Matt Low (of World of Matticus) posted on WoWInsider about how Disc can use preemptive shields as AOE mitigation. Disc has come a long way if what was once a panic button spell can now be used to pre-shield whole chunks of the raid against upcoming damage. Matt makes a good point that, thanks to Soul Warding making PW:Shield cheap and quickly recastable, this is a very viable strategy. I honestly think that in some encounters, you could do more "effective healing" this way than through Penance and Flash Heal.

There was also a post this week on the WoW forums, by a paladin who was comparing Disc's shielding to pally offerings. Most of the replies were critical of the analysis, but I think the paladin had some good points. Fully talented PW:Shield is a big instant-cast low-cost "heal" that also comes with an energize effect and a haste buff. Plus, frequent pre-shielding (as the WoWInsider post discussed) is clearly helpful in many places in Ulduar. I think Disc as a spec, and Shield as a spell, are very unique and powerful.

The Blizzard reply began, "Power Word: Shield is a really useful tool for Disc priests in particular. We want them using it." It's fortunate that Ghostcrawler said this, instead of, say, "We think Shield is a little too good and we're looking at scaling it back!" I do still wonder if Disc has a little too much invested in one spell, but on the balancing side, Weakened Soul keeps it from monopolizing our repertoire. And I do have to say, now that I've tried it, that the Glyph of Penance does give us a very attractive alternative spell to cast every six seconds!

Flame Leviathan: a bird's eye view

The catapult my friend commandeered;
He said "I need one volunteer!"
I said "I'll ride with you,
But what's this button do?
And why's my seat say "Ammunition goes here?'"

I've decided to write some poetry about each encounter in Ulduar as I come to them. So far it's been going well; you could say we've been flying through the instance! Whatever happened to "Nobody tosses a dwarf?!"