Mourning Priest T10 4 pieces bonus

Since Icecrown release, the T10 healing bonuses have been controversial. Their usefulness wasn't proved, and thus many priest didn't pick the T10 healing set at all. But in the next patch, the 4 piece bonus will change and improve the favorite spells of both holy and disc specs.

RIP Funny priest T10 bonus

For now, the T10 healing bonuses are the following :

• 2 pieces : You Flash Heal has a 33% chance to make your target to

  heal for another 33% of the healing amount over 9 seconds.

• 4 pieces : Your Penance and Circle of Healing spells have a 20% chance to make your next Flash Heal cast within 6 second to reset the cooldown of your Circle of Healing and Penance spells.

The 2 piece bonus is ok, but it has many imperfections. Many disc or holy priest seldom use Flash Heal. And for the priests who spam Flash Heal on the tank, there is a risk that the hot will never heal (or at least, not heal for a long time). Indeed, when the hot is applied for the second time on the same target, the next heal is delayed by 3 seconds. If the hot is each time re-applied before the first heal, it will never heal !

Here is an example :

If you only cast one Flash Heal :

• t = 0 : your Flash Heal land and the hot is applied.
• t = 3s : first tick of the hot
• t = 6s : second tick of the hot
• t = 9s : last tick of the hot.

If you spam Flash Heal, assuming a 1.25 seconds cast time, you can have this happen :

• t = 0 : first Flash Heal land, the hot is applied
• t = 1.25s : second Flash Heal land
• t = 2.5s : third Flash Heal land, the hot is reapplied (next tick delayed by 3s)
• t = 3.75s : 4th Flash Heal land
• t = 5s : 5th Flash Heal land, the hot is reapplied (next tick delayed by 3s)

Etc.

In this short period of time, the hot is applied once every 2 Flash Heal. Thus it'll be a moment where your hot will finally heal the target. And at this moment, it'll heal for a lot. But the hot didn't tick for more than 8 seconds !

As you can see, the 2 pieces bonus isn't absolutely awesome.

And it is the same for the 4 pieces bonus. If you cast Penance every cd, once every 5 Penance, you'll have a cd reduced to your Penance + Flash Heal cast time. Assuming 20% haste raid buffed, that's a 2.75 cd. That means you can cast 5 Penance in 34.75 seconds instead of 40 seconds. That's 5 more Penance on a 5 minutes fight (43 instead of 37). If you cast Penance every cd, that's ok. And it becomes a great bonus if you take into account the fact that Penance is often a life-saver spell, unlike Flash Heal. But a lot of these shield-spamming priests out there found this bonus pretty useless.

That's why many priest didn't pick the T10 healing set at all, and preferred some off-set items, or even the shadow set !

Personally, I didn't have enough frost emblems to buy the full set, but couldn't wait to try the 4 pieces bonus. Even if it wasn't a great healing increased, it would have add some changes and, most probably, some fun to my gameplay.

But today, as I read the updates to the 3.3.3 patch, I was a bit sad. The 4 piece bonus will change ! And I don't even have the time to try it ! (I have 2 pieces by now, and as I don't raid I'm far away from the 4th piece bonus)

The new bonus is far better for most priest: it increases the healing done by Renew and the absorption done by Power Word: Shield by 5%.

But is that fun ? Not at all. It's just healing the same way I healed for the past year, just with bigger numbers. Well, switching gear to T10 already give me bigger numbers, as I have more spell power. I'd better have some fun from my set bonus.

And you, what do you think of the old and new bonuses ? Will you change your gearing strategy with this change ? What to you wait from a set bonus ?