I have been maining a priest since vanilla and the biggest concern I have for the class is that we don’t have a defensive or base movement cooldown.
Priests and warlocks are the only two classes without a base movement cooldown. Some warlocks don’t take burning rush and take teleport instead but for priests 90+% of all healing priests take feather and shadow priests take body and soul. What’s the point of having these as talents when you’re required to take them? Would you really want to take a 10% dr on renew as holy but not be able to get out of a mechanic? No.
Our defensive is even worse, at least for healing priests. Dispersion is a great cooldown for shadow I believe. Desperate prayer is not a real defensive. The only use for it really is to try to not get 1 shot by the next ability. Outside of that, it’s worthless. Even on fights like M Za’qul or M Azshara with massive raidwide hits, I would rather have had a 10-20% DR vs 25% max health. In M+, max health is equally terrible a defensive. Why should I have to use my tank cooldown to survive? Sky captain or the KR council axe bleed make desperate prayer worthless, any DR would be worth more.
These are my two biggest asks for the class, what does everyone else think?
Not great, even talented. Shadow school, can be locked out. Not able to cast spells, and the other two defensive like that are immunities. Can be stunned. Can be death gripped.
Can be cast while stunned, removes snares, heals when talented, can move while dispersed.
It is OK, it’s not great. It doesn’t make sense thematically (you can stun a cloud?), and pretty lackluster in pvp where we need it most.
It does remove the movement debuff in mythic wrathion so there’s that…
You also have to give up body and soul to talent into the improved dispersion. Which, in classic blizzard fashion, makes dispersion work how it USED to work baseline in previous expacs lol.
If we’re comparing things to immunities there’s no real point. Immunities are miles ahead of any other cooldown, let alone a 25% health increase. Compared to no DR, a 60% one if amazing. Disperson vs ice block? Sure its bad. But compared to other DR, its stronger than most, and they seem to balance that by silencing the user.
Every class doesnt need everything. Speaking from pvp perspective shadow priest is in my opinion well designed. They could use more of an offensive CD if anything (voidform is the worst thing ever), and less reliance on having forbidden obsidian claw.
Totally agree, we’ve been asking that for years now.
I get that from a class fantasy perspective Priest is not supposed to be tanky or fast, but with just a little bit of creativity they could at least give us some tools to stay alive that don’t rely on big Damage Reductions or face tanking stuff, for example maybe trough something like bringing greater fade or spirit of the redeemer to the main talent tree.
Also agree feathers as our only mobility should be baseline, it’s just basic QoL, they don’t make us a mobile class, it’s just the bare minimum so we can at least try to keep up with a group or avoid a mechanic. I’ve had to take Masochism a couple of times as Disc for a key and it feels miserable to have absolutely nothing for mobility.
Anyway I’ve honestly lost hope that they will do something about it.
Yeah, it’s a bit funny but I think this is ultimately the reason behind us having so little in terms of both mobility and defensives.
I honestly don’t know what we have from a class fantasy perspective that is a positive, I would guess probably superior throughput but that ultimately gets normalized based on Raid performance so everyone is fairly close to each other so… Yeah nothing really going for us from our class fantasy perspective.
Yeah I guess so, which could actually be turned into a positive (going back to the idea about bringing spirit of the redeemer to the main talent tree).
For holy something like spirit of the redeemer would be good but probably too strong. Every single other class and spec besides holy and disc has baseline personal DR. I’m not sure why 2/3 of priests are left out in the rain.
That’s not a problem in and of itself. The problem is, what strength offsets this obvious weakness? And I can’t think of one. One of the biggest problems i have with the game is there are too many classes have a bunch of strengths that are in high demand and weaknesses that don’t matter. And classes with niche strengths and weaknesses that really hurt
I agree so much with that. Feathers is just the obvious choice and it feels really bad that you even have do do that choice of basic mobility X some not that interactive defensives ( I play mainly holy but i feel like that is a problem shared amongst all 3 specs).
Imo they should just rework that whole tier with us having feathers baseline (everyone already choses it anyway) and put some intresting options there like the old Spectral Guise that gave us a lot of flexibility do dodge some mechanics/escape on both pvp and pve, maybe one that buffs feather and one that gives an extra effect to fade like Pandaria.
They should just replace the effect of Afterlife for this. Really thematic to priest and it would help with class fantasy while making one of our core passives into an extremly usefull spell. Honestly when me or any other priest dies and turns into spirit form it is more sad than inspiring to the group and that could change that perception. We joke in my raid group is that holy priest defensive cd is dying and have a brrezz cast on him after Spirit expires.
I’m not a fan of Arena, and I think its one of the worst things to happen to WoW in terms of Design space. M+ is taking a firm 2nd place right behind it.
M+ is as crucial now as Raiding or PvP, and Priest just has so many pitfalls that have been unaddressed for over 4 years now.
Mobility is more important in M+ than in raid. If you are good on your spriest, you’re constantly stutterstepping when you can, inching towards the next pack even if your tank is not. Its a lot of work, but it makes a big difference in performance. Some ranged classes can get away with it (BM, Boomkin in particular) and can spam out a few instant casts on the next pack while they reposition. Shadow doesn’t becsides PWS (I mostly run Misery in dungeons).
Destro locks have a problem with it as well, the heavy turret specs have to spend more time repositioning, and time moving without DPS= time loss. Body and Soul is the only way you can remotely keep up on a spriest.
Theres little headaches like the Awakened mob that leaves the slow tumors on the ground. Every other class in the game can pop a movement CD and get over them quick, but if you’re playing a priest and your group ignores the tumors, you’re just kindof screwed in certain dungeons (like ToS).
Its baffling to me how different spriest functions in PvP compared to PvE. Their central mechanic, Void Form, is reliant on staying active and casting and minimizing open globals. But in PvP, all it takes is like 4 second stun at the wrong time and your void form is only 15-20 stacks. Blizzard can tune PvP damage to keep spriest relevant, but the class doesn’t function as intended. Void Bolt is the only real advantage of void form in PvP. Hell, Shadow’s not the only one with this PvP problem. Fire mages who spend a majority of their time CCing and trying to line up greater pyroblasts is also a problem.
3rd is control.
If you cant tank damage and cant move fast and escape it. Then to apply control so you don’t have to do either.
For priests, we had Physic Scream and Mind Control that worked quite well in wow’s early days. But as the years moved on, Scream at least became less and less reliable.
That’s true, control could be the thing, sadly we are pretty bad at that too (in PvE at least). From the many M+ runs I did earlier in BFA I always felt very limited compared to other classes in terms of what I call “disruption” which is basically to stop enemies from doing what they are trying to do.
I think this is probably the most important type of utility for M+, and the reason why tools like Ring of Peace, Solarbeam, AOE stuns are so valuable.
All we have is Psychic scream which mostly serves as an AOE interrupt, well and Shadow gets Silence (which in PvE is just the worst interrupt).
Should bring Void Tendrils back and make it so they “disarm” your enemy while affected so they cant cast or attack. Its like a stun but not?
Meh all I got for now.
I think of this working like the darkshore warfront cinematic where Malfurion is pulling the orc down into the earth with roots.
So our tendrils would basically “knock” the enemies down for a a bit causing them unable to attack.
This needs significantly more attention. I went Goblin in order to get a solid movement ability (and they look awful in mog) for Mythic raiding. And any DR CD is infinitely better than than Desperate Prayer. It feels really bad to use my tank CD on myself.