I am getting rescued by two evokers on cd during Rashanan just so I can keep up with all the moving intermissions and actually have the time to top up the raid before the big 4 million damage per raider soak.
Every time my raid leader explains a mechanic that remotely involves movement and mobility, he has to emphasise that everyone has to play around the only priest in the raid(namely me) because priests get uniquely screwed if the rest competes with them for a safe spot for dropping puddles/avoiding mechanics.
That’s how bad our mobility is, and it’s unreal some people have the gall to unironically say priest mobility is remotely acceptable when encounter design have repeatedly been balanced aggressively around every other classes’ mobilty creep.
8 Likes
Yeah it’s really sad how they design the game around you being able to instantly reposition your character and refuse to give exactly priest the ability to do so.
We need door of shadows (without a cast time) and we need it now.
I would be fine with a delay in placing the rectangle and being teleported of 1-2 GCD.
Maybe reactivate to take the door once it has build itself up over 2 GCD.
One can dream
2 Likes
Priest does feel slower than most. Definitely would like that fixed.
But if you’re having to be “rescued on cd” you should look at how you’re playing. Because at some point personal responsibility plays a part.
Little Mr Toxic Positivity strikes again.
3 Likes
I mean, I could just say “get good.” If you need to get carried by your team, that’s a you issue. But my first impulse isn’t to be rude so… 
I’m not sure how much of a fan of having 20ish% of my (holy archon) healing being tied up in a spell I cast once a minute (combine it with an on-use power trinket for big green numbers). It seems like the rest of the toolkit, especially aoe heals, is weak to make up for the insane healing of halo (which is 50% overheal in normal raid).
If it’s nerfed, all other AOE spells will need to be compensated. Or, make it heal less and put it on a shorter cool down, so I can hit the button and use it more meaningfully.
4 Likes
Were pretty much stuck in a box right now. If Halo is nerfed say 50% - they would have to give Holy a baseline healing increase of at least 15% just to compensate it. It then makes Halo pretty undervalued and not that much stronger than Divine Hymn or Holy Word Salvation.
Holy just scales way stronger in bigger group sizes so it’s going to pop off in Heroics, but Mythic is really where everyone is supposed to be tuned at.
Also, in regards to Priest mobility: at least with Holy. I’m already fairly mobile because I play a hard-casting Renew playstyle so fights where I have to move around I’m just casting instant cast spells.
3 Likes
You and I have always been proponents of hard casting renew, whereas so many don’t ever cast it. My mobility seemed to be fine for the most part as well, I didn’t have a dragon carry me anywhere at least lol.
I wanted to dip my toes into heroic this week, but spent 3 days without power starting Monday night. (Goodbye $3300 on a new power pole)
Overall, I’m pretty happy with archon holy, it plays similar to Dragonflight, which I already enjoyed. Timing the cool downs right and watching the raid health jump is very rewarding. I kept commenting in discord “watch that c-tier priest go!”.
I’m also a pretty big fan of lightwell, it’s pretty clutch when learning fights. I liked it after it’s rework last time, but I’ve found it even better now that people aren’t always topped off. I’m sure it’s use will go down as everything is more familiar and more gear is required. It’s just nice that after 18 years, it’s not lolwell anymore.
There is a difference in “absolutely must be rescued ke can’t do the fight” which was M Raza and “my guild is making sure I don’t have a chance to fall behind” which is what is going on above.
The issue isn’t that rescue is needed to do the content, hopefully blozz learned from their DF mistake, it is that priest mobility is so bad their margin for error os dramatically lower than other classes. A monk getting displaced or getting an AoE bad can immediately get to a safe spot with the press of a button and then return to where they need to be.
A priest getting the same has to manually run the distance which takes time, results in times not spent casting only weaker insta-casts, which means people can more easily fall.
Other healers don’t have to deal with this, only the priest really does, and if the priest is unlucky enough to eat a chain of these requiring constant movement it gets pretty bad.
1 Like
It is true that mobility creep is insane in everyone that isnt priest. Priest feels like playing a class from several expansions ago while most of the others( except maybe DK) have been modernised.
That aside, the same issues remain. And the lack of attention, especially in a big midseason patch is at least worrying.
2 Likes
I’m aware of the mobility issues priest has. It’s definitely a frustrating weakness that should be addressed. There are ways to mitigate for the time being until more substantial changes can come in.
Utilizing team mobility, conscientious positioning and stacking instant spells for when movement is required. It’s not perfect, but it’s what we have in the current version of the game.
That said I’m not inclined to be charitable toward someone who sees my mild positivity as disingenuous or something to use as an attack on my character.
1 Like
Yes thats despicable. Attack the argument not the person unless that person is a piece of human digestion byproduct
Priest isn’t slower than most - priest is slower than all. And by a lot.
The only comparably slow classes are death knight and paladin. Let’s look at the movement options available to these three classes.
Priest:
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Body and Soul and Angelic Feather: Grant 40% movement speed 3/5 seconds respectively. 50% if you’re oracle. Functionally no cooldown most of the time.
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Phantasm: Allows the removal of a single slow effect once when casting Fade (30/20 second cd).
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Voidweaver moves 20% faster while Entropic Rift is active (~33% of the time).
Paladin:
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Divine Steed: 100% increased movement speed for 5 seconds with two charges on a 45 second cooldown.
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Herald of the Sun: 5% increased movement passive while healthy and 40% increased movement speed for 5 seconds when unhealthy with a one minute cooldown.
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Templar: 40% increased Steed duration and extra speed for the first half of the effect.
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Blessing of Freedom: Immunity from all movement impairment for 8 seconds with a 25 second cooldown. In 11.0.5, Blessing of Freedom also comes with a 30% increased movement speed and is basically oracle’s Angelic Feather if it were a good ability.
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Lead the Charge: In 11.0.5, +3% passive movement speed and Divine Steed reduces the cooldown on movement abilities for 4 allies by 3 seconds unless that ally is a priest.
Death Knight:
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Death’s Advance: +35% movement speed (+25% for the first 3 seconds) for 10 seconds and immunity to forced movement, immunity from roots, and you can’t be slowed below normal movement speed on a 45 second cooldown. Also immunity to being slowed below 70% passively. Option for 2 charges and has +100% movement speed for rider of the apocalypse.
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Wraith Walk: +70% increased movement speed and immunity to movement impairing effects and slows for 4 seconds on a 1 minute cooldown.
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Sanlayn: Gets +10% extra movement speed on Death’s Advance and Wraith Walk and gives +20% to 4 allies.
So what do we have here? Both paladin and death knight have immunity to movement impairment on short cooldowns and their movement speed boosts are either comparably fast or significantly faster than priest’s options. Both of them can move freely during combat without issue on any spec and can freely reposition in anticipation of upcoming mechanics.
Priest, by comparison, has functionally no resistance to movement impairment and is a turret caster on all three specs. +40% movement speed can be maintained most of the time, but that’s severely undercut by being a turret caster and any movement impairment instantly renders priest helpless. What’s more is that
The only place priest isn’t the slowest class in the game by far is when you’re running back to a boss after a wipe, and Blizzard’s implementation of speed buffs in raids has even removed that marginal benefit.
8 Likes
I play both Priest and Paladin and the biggest difference is this.
Paladin: You get 2 charges of the pony and can zoom fast, but then it’s on a 45s cooldown. Once that’s on cd you’re rolling uphill on your wheelchair.
Priest: Doesn’t have a quick burst of speed like the pony, but can chain cast movement speed bonuses one after another pretty much infinitely.
I just wish Priests had one movement speed ability instead of needing to chain 2 in a row (3 if you’re Oracle).
3 Likes
What do you want me to say? Was my previous comment not doomer enough?
Yes. We’re slow.
But I’d also remind you that some of the bonuses you listed are exclusive. They can’t all be taken by Paladin or DK at the same time. Not to mention were ranged which gives us a lot of freedom as to how we position in a fight.
I chose to be a Worgen for both my Warrior and my Death Knight because they look cool to me and because I get a built in Sprint like racial that gives just that little extra speed burst at times that feels great to have.
Having increased movement speed on melee classes is really good because you can take full advantage of it in continuing doing your gameplay role while moving faster to avoid and collapse onto things quicker.
But having increased movement for ranged classes that spend the majority amount of time manually casting spells is more of a hindrance as the entire time you are casting a spell, your wasting your movement buff and if you decide to move while the buff is active, you waste time playing your gameplay role.
An exception to this is when mages for example can cast on the move with Scorch or Shamans with their cast while moving cooldown or any other caster that has some form of casting while moving.
But Priest (Shadow at least) does not have this option which makes our only form of movement speed boost to be null and void if you want to continue your gameplay role.
However having a displacement ability like Blink or Gateway or Demonic Circle: Teleport etc. allows you to almost continuous casting and even then these class/specs have multiple forms to instant cast on the move where as Shadow needs either procs or cooldowns (Voidbolt) to do anything similar.
That means pure movement speed boosts are less impactful on classes that need to manually cast more often than for others who don’t have to cast at all like melee or manually cast rarely due to just instant cast procs or built in displacement capability or more useful instant casts that are inherit within the spec.
For Shadow, you really only have Shadow Word: Death that can be used on the move instantly as needed without needing to go cast to go into Voidform to gain Void Bolt or get Shadowy Insight proc for Mind Blast and build up enough insanity prior for Devouring Plague. Even then, Shadow Word: Death is often not useful enough unless the target is already low health or you got a Deathspeaker proc.
So this makes Shadow very limited in taking advantage of things like Angelic Feather and Body and Soul since we would more often than not have to make the choice of move faster or do damage… we can’t do both.
This is the crux and core issue regarding Priest mobility. We have plentiful access to it… when you don’t need it or when it doesn’t matter but when we do need it, we are starved for it.
6 Likes
Definitely a frustrating design choice.
My issue with your post isn’t that you’re not doomer enough. Lots of people can calmly detail the problems in a truthful and level-headed manner, but you’re just downplaying the gravity of the situation. Maybe you just don’t know the movement options other classes have and thought that every class was just a little faster than priest with two or three really fast outliers? I don’t know.
Regardless, having exactly one class in the game that needs to be rescued routinely in raids, or exactly one class that is uniquely disadvantaged in significant ways, is not acceptable.
This would be great in raids - if it applied to all classes. We get moments like this where Wind Rush type abilities or warlock gates are used to rapidly reposition the whole raid. Having more mechanics that required some classes to rescue others, and mixing those types of vulnerabilities and “rescue” abilities across the classes would be pretty cool.
But, as it stands, priest is the only class that routinely needs rescuing. Every other class can handle mechanics that priests are helpless against. It’s so bad that Leap of Faith essentially used only for convenience or to rescue another priest.
Blizzard designs mechanics to disrupt ranged positioning just as they design mechanics to disrupt melee positioning. Melee classes don’t need to stand perfectly still to do their jobs, relying on single globals every few casts to shimmy slightly.
Every ranged class needs to shimmy like this (except BM hunter and fire mage), but warlock has Demonic Circle and Burning Rush is twice as powerful as what priest has, shaman has Spirit Wolf and Gust of Wind, druid has Wild Charge (literally just Vault of Heavens with a 15 second cd while priests are begging for that with a 90 second cd), hunter has Disengage, monk has Roll/Chi Torpedo/Transcendence, and evoker and mage have everything.
Priest’s top speed is nearly half the slowest option of any other ranged class and is also more of a turret than any other ranged class. Death knight and paladin used to suffer just like priest and Blizzard made them functionally immune to movement impairment to make up for it. They’ve not done the same for priest and have actually reduced priest’s movement speed relative to other classes in the last four years while steadily increasing the movement options for every other class.
8 Likes
I don’t feel I’m downplaying anything. I acknowledge that our movement is a major sore spot, one that needs addressing. I don’t think I’ve ever denied that reality.
My primary thesis is this: Right now any change is we need isn’t coming for, at minimum, the next couple months. So while discussion of our pain points and advocating for change is important, it’s also important to discuss the ways we can play around how we are designed right now.
Thinking about ways we can mitigate our weaknesses isn’t downplaying those weaknesses.
By all means, keep pushing for better class design. But I don’t need people jumping down my throat any time they see a post I make as not angry enough or ignorant.
So now Boomkins are getting a largescale set of changes in 11.0.5.
is everyone just gonna get reworks except us at this rate?