According to WoW Insider, Blizzard will propagate patch 3.0.9 to live servers this week. My guess is it will occur in conjunction with the regularly scheduled Tuesday maintenance, but who knows? We may not see the actual patch until Wednesday (when Love is in the Air kicks off) or Thursday. That said, there is only one item of interest for priests:
Priest
- Inner Fire duration has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer [be] dispelled.
Not a huge change, but significant: No longer should Inner Fire expire during a boss fight! For the longest time, I had a great deal of difficulty remembering to cast IF, especially before or during combat. Then I installed Power Auras, so I had an audible and visual reminder of when the buff expired. Still, every 10 minutes? (Or less, if mobs were beating on you!)
But now, it’s almost a “fire and forget” spell (or will be, once the patch is live): Cast it before the first trash pull; re-cast before the boss pull. Rinse and repeat. This is the kind of change that is by no means overpowered, but increases (for me, at least) the fun factor of the game.1
I am assuming, until I see otherwise, that the “charges” associated with Inner Fire are to be no more: This is how I understand “…can no longer [be] dispelled.” Makes sense to me; I never really understood the point of that component anyway, and I’m guessing neither did the devs.2
The only other significant change for healers is the previously announced nerf to Divine Plea: “The amount healed by your spells is reduced by 50% (up from 20%) but the effect can no longer be dispelled.” Mana management for healadins is going to become an issue (not necessarily a challenge or a problem, but an issue). I wonder if this change is being made as sort of a test bed for the more widespread changes to mana management announced last week for patch 3.1.
It will certainly be interesting to observe how the Divine Plea change impacts healing over the next few days and weeks. Me? I’m just excited not to have to hear my Inner Fire reminder every. 10. minutes!
Discussion on This Post
Let’s also not forget the HUGE buff that Paladins got in seals.
“The duration on all Seals has been increased to 30 minutes and can no longer dispelled.”
Casting a seal every 2 minutes so that you can judge to keep up the haste buff was really annoying.
Good point; I didn’t highlight it because I don’t speak pally too well.
But of course, that’s every bit as big as (or bigger than) the Inner Fire buff! I only knew Divine Plea is huge for healadins. This is what I get for trying to sound like I know what I’m talking about when it comes to other healing classes! 
(By the way, for everyone else: Brimmstone is the author of Surgeon General, my choice for a healing assignment addon. I’ve been promising Brimm a review here "real soon now" and it IS coming, honest! Until then…trust me, and give it a shot!)
Yeah the Divine Plea nerf sucks, but it’s hard to say it’s unwarranted. With only a 20% penalty I’d hit it when I would hit 80% mana, and every cooldown after that until the fight was over. Now I’ll have to think about whether I can afford the healing penalty or not.
I’m pretty sure they won’t be removing the charges for Inner Fire and mean that it can’t be dispelled by conventional means (like spells and abilities and the likes of which). What alot of people don’t know is that the orginal version of the spell had no charges on it and was just a plain ol’ armor buff that only lasted two minutes. When Blizz changed it to a ten minute spell they added the charges because they felt that without it the spell was now OP for PvP (it pretty much doubles your armor in normal PvE gear). So my recommendation would be to not hold your breath till they remove the charges.
That’s a very insightful point…sure, go ahead and burst my bubble! :p Actually, I suspected this might be more the case, but I indulged a bit of fantasy. A guy can dream, right? (And how often in PvE did anyone have IF dispelled, anyway?)
Ooh it’d be lovely if Inner Fire had its charges removed – mainly because they’d have to do something different to the inner fire glyph (yes I have it because I couldn’t find a better one at 80 for a Shadow Priest)…
But as the OP says anything is better than the small increase in armour it used to give!
Heh, I remember when inner fire didn’t have charges. Basically sounds like standard operation procedures for Priests here. What Blizzard does is nerf the crap out of priests, forget them for awhile until enough people forget about the nerfs, then ‘undo’ the nerfs and call them buffs. Similar stuff happened with VE, and shadow weaving.
Keep in mind, though, the actual buff here is to increase the time to 30 minutes on Inner Fire. Not being dispellable is gravy, IMO: How often (in PvE) did that ever happen anyway? So that part is a sop to the PvP contingent.
This is nice, though I’ve long since just learned to deal with it. I’ve configured my raid frames to just highlight my frame in an absolutely horrible bright pink every time the buff was gone – so I pretty much always have Inner Fire up.
Avonar last blogged about One of my major faults