With the new Blessing formula, at skill lvl 15, you have extra 3 * (SPR ^ 0.9) + 405 damage per line of hit.
The function f(x) = x ^ 0.9 is roughly a division by 2 (check wolfram alpha if you’re in doubt).
This means the new Blessing adds 3 * SPR / 2 damage (let’s ignore the constant value of 405).
It also has an enchantment that increases Blessing’s final damage by 50%, meaning the ratio is around 2.25 damage per one point of SPR.
This means that, skills with a lower damage % than 225% will actually benefit more from SPR than other stats. This happens for skills like Cure, Carnivory (up to lvl 8), Incineration, Black Death, and Zaibas.
I’m not considering the damage enchantment for these skills, as this enchantment would apply to the INT base but not to the SPR base (due to Blessing being applied after enchantment multiplications, I believe?).
However, this leaves us in an interesting situation. Skills like Zaibas and Cure have too low damage % which doesn’t increase as skill level goes up, meaning even if you had lvl 100 damage enchantment with these skills, investing in SPR with Blessing would still be better than investing INT. Cure would have 206% per point of INT, which still does not exceed our baseline of 225% per point of SPR, and Zaibas would have a mere 164% (not considering Storm Calling from Taoist).
Feel free to correct me on this, but I just thought a SPR Priest 3 would be great for a PD 2 build. Incineration and Black Death needs at least level 55 damage enchantment to exceed the 225% baseline, which then the INT build would be better. But then again, let’s remember you still have a scaling Sacrament (which scales by 1 point of damage per 1 SPR, which brings up our baseline to 325%). So if you consider both Blessing + Sacra together in a SPR build, you have better damage scaling on these skills than if you were an INT build (even at skill damage enchantment lvl 100!).
Sure you need to fit in Priest 3 to do all that, but I feel like the % damage on these skills may be a bit too low (or the Blessing scaling a bit too high), which makes INT builds definitely less desireable. And if you do get Priest 3 in your build, going for INT feels like a waste of character points.
And after all that being said, let’s remember those scalings from SPR would also apply to your party members (Sacra + Blessing), which wouldn’t happen in an INT build.
I know there are tons of topics about SPR Chaplain being a great class now, but I’m more concerned as to how this new Blessing affects other INT classes rather than Chaplain itself.
Just a thought I’d like to share.