A Dwarf Priest

Updated: 08/29/08, for changes and additions to priest glyphs.

Some of the priest spell inscriptions went live with the latest patch on the WotLK beta.

What Are Inscriptions?

Inscriptions are items crafted with the new profession in WotLK called …. Inscription.  Every player will have six open Inscription “sockets” in their spell book (2 for major inscriptions, 2 for minor inscriptions, and 2 for lesser inscriptions).  You will be able to purchase inscriptions scrolls (called “glyphs”) on the auction house and put them in your spellbook sockets.  Similar to gems, they last until they are replaced.

Priest Glyphs

More to come soon.  Most of the listed glyphs below are major and minor glyphs.

The Good

• Glyph of Renew – Reduces the duration of your Renew by 3 sec. but increases the amount healed per time by 40%.
  It comes at a cost, but this is an overall increase HPS (healing per second). Healing damage fast will be instrumental in certain encounters. This is a big jump in throughput.

• Glyph of Circle of Healing – Your Circle of Healing spell heals 1 additional target.
  Tremendous increase to priest healing ability in raids, provided CoH isn’t given too long a cooldown.

• Glyph of Prayer of Healing – Your Prayer of Healing spell also heals an additional 20% of its initial heal over 6 sec.
  As not all priests will be specced for CoH, it is important that there is a strong AoE heal all priests can have access to.  This glyph really ups the group healing potential of Prayer of Healing, especially in predictive damage situations.

• Glyph of Spirit of Redemption – All heals cast while Spirit of Redemption is active have a 20% chance to increase the remaining duration of Spirit of Redemption by 20 sec.
  How awesome would it be to CoH spam forever?  Now’s your chance!  Holy PvP, anyone?

• Glyph of Dispel Magic – Your Dispel Magic also heals your target for 6% of maximum health if it removes a damaging effect.
  There seems to be a good amount of dispelling being done in raids.  Free heals! Awesome for PvP, too.

• Glyph of Mass Dispel – Reduces the mana cost of Mass Dispel by 20%.
  Awesome for PvP.

• Glyph of Mind Flay – Increases the range of your Mind Flay spell by 10 yards, but it no longer reduces the target’s movement speed.
  There’s been no word on if Blizzard intends to adjust the spellpower coefficient, but an increase of 10 yards puts Mind Flay at 34 yards with talents.  Getting over that 30 yard threshold in raids is going to be extremely helpful to shadow priests.
  

• Glyph of Shadow Word: Pain – Reduces the mana cost of your Shadow Word: Pain spell by 20%.
  SW:P is still the costliest spell a shadow priest will typically cast, but the Pain and Suffering talent will be refreshing this spell for you in raids.  This glyph is aimed toward soloing/grinding.
  

• Glyph of Smite – Increases the chance you’ll resist spell interruption when casting your Smite spell by 50%.
  Laugh if you must, but this is a godsend for priests who insist on leveling/soloing holy/disc.

• Glyph of Psychic Scream – Increases the duration of your Psychic Scream by 3 sec.
  Another bonus for shadow PvP.  Thank goodness for horrify effects!  It won’t always be full duration in PvP, but hey, it’s better than nothing.

• Glyph of Levitate – Your Levitate spell no longer requires a reagent.
  This is our cosmetic glyph.  It will likely be just a lesser glyph, and exists solely for the sake of letting us look cool.

The Bad

• Glyph of Shadow Word: Death – Targets below 35% health take an additional 5% damage from your Shadow Word: Death spell.
  So, this is a DPS bonus of *drumroll* … less than 0.5%. This could be a lot better.

• Glyph of Lightwell – Increases the amount healed by your Lightwell by 20%.
  This is bad simply because the positioning of Lightwell is the limiting factor.  if you can’t get players to click on it, it does zero healing.  A 20% increase of zero healing is … *drumroll* … zero healing!  Fancy that!

• Glyph of Fear Ward – Reduces cooldown and duration of Fear Ward by 30 sec.
  There are better options for PvP glyphs, and this has little use in soloing/raids.

• Glyph of Flash Heal – Reduces the mana cost of your Flash Heal by 10%.
  With this glyph, Flash Heal will still be a little over 25% less efficient mana-wise than Greater Heal.  While the healing done per mana is the limiting factor of Flash of Heal, this change doesn’t do enough to level the playing field of the two spells.

• Glyph of Shackle Undead – Increases the range on Shackle Undead by 5 yards.
  The range was never the issue on this spell.  Spell hit was, especially for healers.  Why can’t this just increase the hit on the spell?

• Glyph of Mind Control - Increases the duration of your Mind Control spell by 12 sec.
  This doesn’t appear to work in PvP (doh!) and CC with Mind Control in PvE is usually not much of a problem at its current length.  This glyph will have situation use in certain WotLK dungeons, but not very frequently.

• Glyph of Inner Fire – Increases the duration of Inner Fire by 100%.
  Inner Fire is so cheap mana-wise, is it really that much trouble to cast?  Are we expecting PvE encounters to frequently last more than 10 minutes?

• Glyph of Holy Nova – Your Holy Nova spell heals for an additional 40%, but deals 40% less damage.
  Holy Nova will cost 33% of your base mana to cast.  Even with the glyph, it is still too expensive for what you get out of it.

• Glyph of Fortitude – Reduce the mana cost of your Power Word: Fortitude and Prayer of Fortitude spells by 5%.
  We’re typically casting this out of combat, so mana isn’t really a problem…

• Glyph of Shadow Protection – Increases the duration of your Shadow Protection and Prayer of Shadow Protection spells by 10 min.
  Not significantly useful…  No encounter lasts longer than the spell.

The Ugly

• Glyph of Fade – Reduce the mana cost of your Fade spell by 50%.
  I suppose the aim is to use this in shadow PvP, but this was never a costly spell to begin with. Plus, there are better inscription options for PvP.
  

• Glyph of Mind Soothe – Increases the duration of your Mind Soothe spell by 5 sec. and reduces the range at which the victim will attack by an additional 100%.
  I think this one leaves me speechless.

Standard disclaimer: We have not seen all of our glyphs yet.  Changes and additions are suirely on the way.  I will try to update this post when new information is released.