The PTR: 19 Resto Druid

Figured I'd knock out Priest and RDruid at the same time just because I know that if I put it off I probably won't get around to it for a while. Copied over an old druid Drood to the PTR and updated him with clothie BoA's, the mace and a pair of Magefist Gloves so his current stats are 1838 HP, 550 Mana, 63 in combat MP5, 172 SP and 13.38% Spell Crit. All forms are 6 Mana or less so powershifting won't be too much of a mana drain. 

	Mana Cost	Normal Dmg/Healing	Crit Dmg/Healing
Entangling Roots	7	N/A	N/A
Wrath	9	291	582
Moonfire	9	73, 58 ticks	144
Nourish	11	350, 400 with Regrowth	690
Swiftmend	9	714
Regrowth	33	530, 40 ticks	1050
Rejuvenation	18	216

One of the other things that I said within five minutes of logging on was holy shit I'm a deer. Apparently they changed Tauren travel form. 

Although Druid healing looks quite nice right now I do think it will remain the least powerful out of the three heals. I also think that there's still a potential danger of their heals becoming even weaker in comparison to others healers' if they do a general healing scale back. Only time will tell. 

The PTR: 19 Priests

This is really long delayed and I'm sorry for those of you who have been waiting. I've been busy with irl stuff the past few days so didn't get around to doing this write up. Btw for anyone who wants to get on the PTR to check things out but was discouraged by the Locked realm populations, now would be a great time to try it out. The only locked realm is Anasterian and the others are all either Low or Medium. 


The first general thing to note is, for those of you who don't know, priests lose wands in MoP so this might affect those of you that use it to hit cap. On the PTR I've been using my brother's priest Taken. 1829 Health, 550 Mana (The standard), 59 in combat MP5, 194 SP and 15.52% Spell crit are his current stats.

	Mana Cost	Normal Dmg/Healing	Crit Dmg/Healing
Penance	19	311 Dmg/Healing	652 Dmg/Healing
Flash Heal	36	800	Mid 1600s
Power Word: Shield	37	900 or 1.134*	N/A
Smite	16	232	480
Holy Fire	11	250	500
Power Word: Pain	24	82 Ticks and Instant	164
Psychic Scream	16	N/A	N/A
Psyfiend	22	N/A	N/A

*The spellbook tooltip says 1,134 while the buff tooltip says 900. I currently don't have anyone to test duel to find out which is correct.

Right now priests are looking as strong as ever. They still keep a lot of their utility, I like the idea of Psyfiend/Mind Control in the bracket and although they probably have a weaker heal than Pallys and Shamans, Penance and Shield are both still very nice. 

The PTR: 19 Holy Pallys

The paladin that I'll be basing all the information I provide off of is Billowqt. To start, the paladin is sitting at 2129 HP, 550 Mana (which seems to be the standard for 19 healers), 53 in combat MP5 and 17.74% spell crit. With nine hit rating I'm still hit capped but with seven I drop down to about 4%. Here's a breakdown of the spells:

• Hammer of Justice (4 Mana): Pretty much the same thing as retail. Just wanted to show mana cost. 
• Crusader Strike (3 mana): Hits 70 normally and crits for 170. 
• Judgement (6 Mana): Hits for 140 normally and crits for 340. 
• Holy Shock (18 Mana): This is probably going to be one of the most powerful spells in the bracket. Offensively, it hits normally in the high 600s (a lot have been 666, perhaps an eerie foreboding the chaos that awaits 19s and F2P's due to outrageous healing) and crits for 1400+. As of now this is probably the highest damaging spell that I've seen in the bracket. The healing portion is about the same. As far as I've seen it almost always crits, making the move even more dangerous. 
• Word of Glory (with three charges): Heals for 400 normally and crits for around 800. The heal really isn't significant and I see most pallys avoiding the spell for the most part  to keep the speed increase. 
• Flash of Light (42 Mana): Healing for 900 normally and critting for 1800+. 

If you can't already tell from my lack of enthusiasm in the post, I'm not at all liking how healing is looking in this Xpac. Right now it seems like PuGs will be almost unplayable with all the FoTM Healers and premades might need to go to such lengths to make a two healer rule. Hopefully things get fixed before this goes live. I have a premade tonight but hopefully I'll still be able to get coverage on Priests and possibly Druids, even though Drayner has some great coverage on both Boomkin and Resto that you should definitely check out. 

The PTR: 19 Shamans

So I totally take back what I said about waiting a week before I get onto the PTR. I couldn't resist the urge so downloaded it, joined the Korean server, and my comp is now running fine without lag. I currently have a 19 Druid, Priest, Shaman, and Paladin on the PTR so will be testing those one at a time. Then my plan is to copy over my F2P's and get some coverage on mage, feral, and, depending on if there are any major changes from 19, Shaman.

General Changes:

• Lightning Shield is now a one hour buff instead of having three charges and needing to be constantly redone. 
• Gift of the Naaru is ticking for 77.
• Wrangler's of the Eagle have been changed to 2/2 rather than 3/3. This leads me to believe that other greens may have had similar changes. 

Restoration:

Firstly, the shaman that I'll be basing all of these stats off of is Bìllòw. My current stats on the PTR are 1929 Health, 550 Mana (this does not change no matter what you do), 16.09% Spell crit and 55 mana per 5 seconds in combat. 

• Earth Shock (16 Mana): Hitting for 160 normally and 325 crit. Something to note is that it also has "Demoralizing Blows" attached to it which weakens physical damage dealt by 10% for thirty seconds.  
• Flame Shock (13 Mana): Hitting for 75 normally, 150 crit. With 30 dot damage normally, 60 crit. 
• Lightning Bolt (8 Mana): Hitting for 220 normally, 440 crit. 
• Primal Strike (10 Mana): Hitting for 90 normally, 150 crit. 
• Searing Totem (6 Mana): Hitting for 30 normally, 65 crit. 
• Lightning Shield: 68 normally, 130 crit. 
• Healing Surge (35 Mana, 1.47 cast): Hitting 850 normally, 1700 is an average crit although I've seen as high as 1900. I can spam healing surge in combat for about 47 seconds before running oom. 
• Riptide (18 Mana): 250 instant normally. I've used it about 200 times now and it hasn't crit. Judging by everything else I think it's pretty safe to assume it will crit around 500. 120 hot normally, 240 crit). 

Right now from what I've heard about the current dps it will take four of five players to bring a good healer down. To quote Veinte: "The damage feels like Hamcake Land and the healing is double what retail is right now."

Elemental: 

The only real changes I see as Ele is increased Lightning Bolt damage (330 normally, 800+ crits) and slight increases in flame and earth shocks. Healing Surge is hitting for 700 normally and 1400 crit. Thunderstorm is hitting 175 normally and 440 crit. 

Enhancement:

First big change with enhancement is that unlike Ele and Resto, the base mana pool is 110 instead of 550. This really only allows you three or four healing surges before ooming. Primal Strike and Lava Lash both only hit for 110 with 180 crits. As it is currently, you may as well just spam lightning bolt instead of wasting time with LL and Primal. 

Honestly, I'm not liking what I'm seeing so far. Although I'm glad shamans at 19 finally have a viable heal and riptide as a bonus, the healing on all classes is out of hand. Considering that you can turret heal in combat for 47 seconds before you oom, healers will most likely never oom. On top of the outrageous healing across the board, Enhance damage is absolutely horrible and although the crits with ele seem nice, the normal spell damage isn't as high as it is on retail where there is much lower healing. There's no way I can see the current damage being viable in a bracket with this kind of healing.

If you're looking for a TL;DR version of this post, here it is: big heals, bigger disappointment. 

PTR Coverage coming soon!

The title really says it all here but in about a week or so I should be on the PTR. Not downloading it immediately because I'm waiting for the servers to die down a bit from the immediate rush. The characters I'm planning on bringing are a 19 HPally, Priest and Shaman. With the shaman and priest I'll be able to test all three specs but holy is my only real gear set on my pally. I might try to throw together a quick dps set though to test prot and ret. For all you F2P, I'll try to throw together some non-enchanted sets to get a feel for what the heals will be like in that bracket. 


In the meantime, if anyone has any requests for things that they'd like me to check out feel free to comment. I'll try my best and will hopefully be able to answer some of your questions soon enough. 

Even though this is the completely wrong PTR picture :P