Why are Priests the only healers that have limited CC/Utility spells? It makes no sense to me. If Blizzard wants healers to have less CC than other specs in the game, then it should be like that for all the other healer specs same as Priest healers. Or honestly just tone down the CC for all classes. I can’t tell you how many CC chains I have to sit in on my Priest, while I get to watch everyone else play the game.
Some Priest information below:
Holy Priests have no flat damage reduction spells for their teammates, this gives Holy Priest extremely one dimensional “just spam heals” gameplay, and makes us easily interruptible. Discipline Priest healing output in general is much lower due to being so focused on pure damage reduction. Discipline Priests struggle terribly to top people up when we run out of our damage reduction spells. (This point goes for PvE and PvP.)
I think Atonement should last much longer on teammates.
Priest healers have no interrupt/kick spell.
Priests are one of the last classes left in the game that have awful mobility options.
Our biggest CC is a melee ranged fear (Psychic Scream) which makes it extremely predictable to counter in PvP when you’re running at an enemy to get a fear off.
We have no good spammable CC. (Mind Control hardly counts since its dangerous to not heal for too long.)
Priests can talent into Mind Control which a very risky spell to use when you’re a healer with how bursty the PvP meta has been this whole expansion-- losing control of your own healing can mean death for a teammate. (I really wish Dominate Mind was usable on players so I could still control my character.)
Holy Priests have access to Holy Word: Chastise, which you can spend a talent point to make it go from an incapacitate effect to a stun.
Priests lost Shining Force this expansion which was excellent utility and much better than Void Tendrils (Shining Force was 45 sec CD, Void Tendrils is 1 minute).
Mindgames is easily dispelled by the opposing healer with no dispel protection for healer spec Priests (Shadow Priest at least has dispel protection from Vampiric Touch).
Other healers’ tools for comparison:
Every other healer can talent into an interrupt/kick spell. Restoration Druids have a hard time speccing into Skull Bash, but it is at least POSSIBLE. (Paladin/Rebuke, Mistweaver/Spear Hand Strike, Preservation/Quell, Restoration Shaman/Wind Shear, Restoration Druid/Skull Bash.)
Yet Blizzard’s reason for not letting healer Priests get an interrupt was “not every class should do the same thing…” What?? Okay, so remove the other healer’s ability to have an interrupt then, or just give us Priest healers one already.
Mistweavers can Leg Sweep or Paralysis you into a Crane Song. They also have access to Ring of Peace which pushes around other players in the game similar to what Shining Force used to do in a way. I mentioned they have Spear Hand Strike interrupt.
Restoration Druids have a spammable Cyclone spell, which doesn’t break on damage. So they will Bash/Incapacitating Roar/Prowl-Rake you into a Cyclone. They have an immunity spell with Tranquility/Keeper of the Grove.
Druids have access to a spammable root with Entangling Roots. Ursol’s Vortex/Mass Entanglement.
Restoration Shamans have a 12 second interrupt in Wind Shear which is an outrageously low cooldown. They currently have access to both Earthbind and Earthgrab totem. They can use Grounding Totem/Counterstrike Totem and Tremor Totem. They have access to Hex and Lightning Lasso. This class has insane utility.
Preservation Evokers can cast spells while literally just using their movement ability Hover. They have a very good ranged CC ability in Sleep Walk. They have damage mitigation spells and crazy burst healing all in one. It feels like this class has all the best tools from every other healer, just repackaged. I mentioned they have Quell interrupt.
Holy Paladins have a 1 minute Blessing of Sacrifice. 2 charges of Hand of Freedom and Blessing of Protection. They have an immunity bubble. They can use Aura Mastery for uninterrupted healing casts if they need it. It’s hard to lock them out of their Holy magic school if they play Melee Wings, which means they don’t really have to cast spells. Blizzard decided they’d let Lay on Hands be usable in arenas now. I mentioned they have Rebuke interrupt.
I forgot to add that Holy Paladins are able to Hammer of Justice stun you and follow it up with a Blinding Light disorient.
There’s probably other things I’ve left out, but this was just all off the top of my head.
TL;DR
Healer Priests lack CC and an interrupt. Other healers have many more tools than us. Either remove some CC from other healers (and in general for all classes really), or give healer Priests more CC options and an interrupt spell.
I did some minor PvP in Shadowlands, but I have done absolutely 0 PvP this expansion because of the removal of Greater Fade. They gave every other healer in the game CC and interrupts but removed defensive talents for Priest. I can understand the cooldown reduction talent on fade (which is tweakable in PvP), but outright removal is a heavy burden.
In the end, I just pvp in games built from the ground up to be pvp games.
Mind control is a really strong CC when used properly and so is an aoe fear. Disc is in a really good spot rn especially considering the amount RMP was played in AWC this month. The problem is if you give priest even more cc then RMP will be even more OP.
2100 solo que player here. Disc priests are great and yes you are 100% correct in all of your assessments. We lack all of these things because we can do damage and heal our team at the same time. This creates a huge value for our class and we PUMP much more dps then other healers. We can add burst and sustain damage capabilities to our team all while healing at the same time with atonement. Yes, it’s a different and sometimes difficult play style but it’s fun to me.
Trust me when I say, if you aren’t severely out damaging any other healers class (besides a disc, but yeah let’s try and win those mirror match ups too right?) You will lose the arena match. You have to have pressure onto the other team with your damage(which also heals you and your team) … Throw in your crappy CC when you can but the main objective is to PUMP.
I understand that Disc Priests have high damage. But you’re not doing any damage when you get locked down and chain CC’d by the enemy team, including the opposing healers this expansion, on top of the other two DPS opponents. Some games (honestly most games) are so bursty like I already said, that you have no time to heal through Atonement with DPS. You’re just spamming shields, Penance, and Flash Heal, on top of all of our damage reduction cooldowns.
And I’m pretty sure with the amount of people that are complaining about Discipline Priest damage, I’m expecting Blizzard to nerf it soon.
Also Holy Priests have nowhere near the same damage capabilities as Discipline Priests. They are one of the hardest healers to play in arena because of how easy it is to lock them down and they can’t retaliate as easily due to Priest healers in general having a lack of CC.
My point still stands. Either tone down on the CC in the game for every single class (and ESPECIALLY other healer classes/specializations), and let people actually play the game instead of sitting in 20 second CC chains including interrupts.
Or give Priest healers (that’s Disc AND Holy) more CC options (more ranged CC options please!) and an interrupt to be on par with the other healer specs in the game.
I feel priest may be more mechanically accessible and therefore they don’t want to buff abilities. I recently leveled a monk to max and I also gather stuff with a devoker. Going back to Holy priest is a much more straightforward rotation, which causes a simpler more predictable approach in regards to CC. For you, and the enemy team. Unfortunately the enemy team can take advantage of this.
You may need teammates to peel harder for priest compared to other healers, given the conditions of the CC and movement.
I think the class trees need a complete rework and should actually be more if not completely spec oriented. Particularly when it comes to damage abilities. Leaving MC, fade and fear buffs for the heal specs is acceptable. Shame holy healers have to resort to the shadows though.
Yes. This is a really big problem for us healer Priests. So many people don’t know to peel for us, or even simply use their interrupt spells to stop a Polymorph or a Cyclone. If healer Priests had an interrupt spell, we could just do it ourselves every once in a while. It’s pretty sad when I have to resort to using Shadowmeld, a racial ability, like a pseudo-interrupt spell. All because Blizzard thinks not every class should have the same things… when literally every other healer has an interrupt. Resto Shaman having a 12 second cooldown interrupt makes me want to rip my hair out honestly.
If it were up to me I’d remove shadow word pain and replace it with a holy fire dot with an 8 second CD. Your holy damage adds stacks/duration and has a chance to chastise, but can potentially be 100% chance depending on stacks(probably 20 max). Also spent Holy Nova stacks can transfer to the Holy fire dot of the target(s). On top of that, dispelled holy fire stacks also add to your holy nova stacks. These would most likely be talents and there’s more where those came from.
Simply removing the undead requirement of shackle undead may be what you’re looking for(kinda makes sense for disc imo). My ideas are not as reliable as other CC, but I feel adding another CC to priest that is a one-click done is too much. Whatever the solution is, if one is necessary, has to have some added complexity to make up for how straightforward the healing is for Hpriest.
I played Holy (And have been playing Holy) since the beginning of BfA when I transitioned from Resto Shaman.
I tried Solo Shuffle for a few days, got to 1400~ rating. Not very impressive, but not terrible since I’ve never PvP’d before.
However, just getting chain-CC’d for 20~ seconds is absolutely infuriating. “Why are you always getting CC trained? You’re always in a terrible position!”
Oh… I don’t know… Maybe it’s because I have nothing but a single melee fear and Angelic Feather/Body and Soul for “escapes” and “mobility”?
So, I tried Discipline.
One day. I achieved 1600 in one day, in only a couple of hours. Purely because I could constantly shield (And instantly cast most spells), on top of the fact that I could Pain Suppress allies while I was in some CC’s.
Discipline is in a good spot, that’s obvious.
But Holy? Jeez…
I get that Blizzard wants them to be the most basic of introductory healer, but they could do something to give us a bit of a higher skill ceiling too.
I LOVE that they contradicted themselves by saying “Not every healer should be able to interrupt”, while at the same time giving every healer except for Priests an interrupt.
Disc doesn’t have all those things because it instead brings high damage, for a healer, that also provides decent healing. The ability to put out a ton of pressure forcing enemy healers to heal instead of CC/interrupt/etc themselves is in many ways our form of CC.
I remember back in TBC. Blackout. 10 percent chance to stun off shadow dmg. If you were a troll priest, you had the race specific racial called shadow guard. It was a shadow version of lightning shield. Was awesome when a rogue opened on you, and they get stunned.
Resto Shamans a few patches ago were doing outrageous DPS, then they got nerfed, and will be getting buffed again in 10.0.7.
Preservation Evokers can pump huge DPS burst into the opposing team on top of their already huge HPS and mobility.
Mistweavers and Holy Paladins literally DPS people to heal and they don’t even need an Atonement mechanic to do it.
I think Resto Druids and Holy Priests are the only healers that don’t pull high DPS (for healers) in my experience and from everything I’ve witnessed.
Disc Priest having good DPS doesn’t equate to CC or an interrupt for me. I would GLADLY take a DPS hit if I could have higher Atonement healing and more CC/interrupt spell.
I wouldn’t. What you fail to take into account is all of thise classes did high damage during defined windows and on CD, Faeline/Wings/Stormbreaker, meanwhile disc just does strong damage nonstop with frequent burst windows with Schism and Harsh Discipline.
That is very different than anything the other healers bring, and the other healers don’t get close to the type of constant damage and pressure disc can put out.
Well it’s an agree to disagree situation then. Disc has no actual control compared to other healers. My preference would be less DPS for more control. Priest is my favorite healer otherwise so no I can’t main another healer. All I can do is hope they address the issues I feel the class has. If they don’t then it is what it is-- I’m still going to speak on it.
I mean I never said you couldn’t speak on it or have your preference. My personal preference was BC disc but I know I won’t be getting that back.
Holy might be the best chance for you to get what you want. A spec with much less constant damage, should have higher healing through-put and a holy talent to allow Shackle Undead to just be Shackle and usable on all target would likely give you what you want. Then you have fear, tendrils, shackle, and chastise as your control kit with pure, mass dispel, dispel magic, etc to give you a higher focus on control and less of a focus on damage like disc has.