Feedback: Priests

In Development Guardians of the Dream PTR
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In this thread, please discuss ongoing changes to the Priest class in the Guardians of the Dream PTR.

Changes are coming in Guardians of the Dream that will have an impact on Haste in group play. Power Infusion grants you and another target 25% bonus Haste for 20 seconds, with a 2-minute cooldown. This injection of Haste significantly amplifies a few specs by a large amount when combined with their own personal cooldowns. We don’t want to take away the noticeable gameplay feel of Power Infusion, but we feel that we should reduce the value and duration of it slightly.

A few specs can stack multiple cooldowns and bonuses that really increase their damage during cooldown windows, and they also scale very well with Haste. We’re making changes to Demonology Warlocks and Unholy Death Knight talents and cooldowns to lessen the combined value of stacking everything together. This should reduce the peaks of damage output during cooldown windows, and should increase their sustained damage over the duration of a fight.

  • Power Infusion Haste reduced to 20% (was 25%) and duration reduced to 15 seconds (was 20 seconds).
  • Shadow Word: Death now deals 8% of the Priest’s maximum health in damage when it fails to kill a target instead of the backlash damage being based on damage dealt.
  • Tithe Evasion now reduces Shadow Word: Death damage dealt to the Priest by 50% (was 75%).
  • Shadow Word: Death backlash damage is now reduced by damage reduction effects.
  • Mass Dispel cooldown is now 2 minutes (was 45 seconds).
    • Developers’ note: We’re reducing the frequency that Priests have access to Mass Dispel as the value of the spell is exceeding the value of other utility at its current power level and cooldown. We’re looking to allow for more situations where magic debuffs are applied to multiple players without having a Priest trivializing the intended difficulty of the mechanics.
  • Improved Mass Dispel is now a PvP Talent and reduces the cooldown of Mass Dispel by 60 seconds (was 20 seconds).
  • Improved Mass Dispel no longer reduces the cast time of Mass Dispel.
  • Improved Mass Dispel has been replaced with Mental Agility in the Priest talent tree.
  • New Talent: Mental Agility – Reduces the mana cost of Purify, Purify Disease, and Mass Dispel by 50% and Dispel Magic by 10%.
  • Rhapsody now only highlights Holy Nova at max stacks while in combat.

Discipline

The goal of these changes is to simplify Discipline’s damage rotation as well as the number of stacking modifiers used when ramping up for burst healing. This should make it smoother to play by reducing the number of abilities pressed in sequence, allowing players to focus on managing Atonement and triaging their allies instead.

  • Schism has been redesigned to be a passive talent – Now causes Mind Blast to fracture the enemy’s mind, increasing your spell damage to the target by 10% for 9 seconds.
  • Shadow Covenant has been redesigned to be a passive talent – Shadowfiend or Mindbender enters you into a shadowy pact, transforming Halo, Divine Star, and Penance into Shadow spells and increasing the damage and healing of your Shadow spells by 25% for 15 seconds (7 seconds with Mindbender).
    • Developers’ note: Shadow Covenant is another ability that must be sequenced correctly and is usually stacked with other damage modifiers. By merging this effect with Shadowfiend, we can streamline the damage rotation and make Shadowfiend a more exciting cooldown at the same time.
  • Mind Blast now has a 24 second cooldown (was 9 seconds).
  • Mind Blast damage has been increased by 30%.
  • Dark Indulgence no longer grants an additional charge of Mind Blast. Instead, Mind Blast has a 100% chance to grant Power of the Dark Side.
  • Inescapable Torment damage increased by 60%.
  • Inescapable Torment now triggers from Penance in addition to Mind Blast and Shadow Word: Death.
  • Inescapable Torment is now a 1-point talent (was 2).
  • Power Word: Solace has been removed.
    • Developers’ note: Power Word: Solace has a long history, but it was another example of a short cooldown damage button that cramped the rotation, so we’re removing it.
  • Harsh Discipline no longer triggers after 4 spell casts of Smite, Mind Blast, or Power Word: Solace. Instead, Power Word: Radiance has a 30/60% chance to cause your next Penance to be free and fire 3 extra bolts.
    • Developers’ note: While Harsh Discipline was fun to play with, it added another thing you had to do before paying off on your Atonements. By triggering from Power Word: Radiance, this will now automatically happen after applying your Atonements. This will also reduce the frequency of Harsh Discipline procs, and allow regular Penance to deal more damage and healing.
  • New Talent: Sanctuary – Smite prevents the next 80% damage dealt by the enemy.
  • New Talent: Ultimate Penitence – Ascend into the air and unleash a massive barrage of Penance bolts, causing Holy damage to enemies or healing to allies over 6 seconds. While ascended, gain a shield for 50% of your health. In addition, you are unaffected by knockbacks or crowd control effects.
  • New Talent: Heaven’s Wrath – Each Penance bolt you fire reduces the cooldown of Ultimate Penitence by 2 seconds.
  • New Talent: Overloaded with Light – Ultimate Penitence emits an explosion of light, healing up to 10 allies around you and applying Atonement at 50% of normal duration.
  • Penance damage increased by 15%.
  • Penance healing increased by 30%.
  • Power Word: Barrier now reduces 20% of all damage taken (was 25%).
  • Atonement now heals for 32% of damage done (was 40%).
  • Atonement healing is now increased by 50% when not in a raid.
  • Flash Heal healing increased by 40%.
  • Power Word: Shield absorption increased by 10%.
  • Divine Aegis is now a 1-point talent (was 2).
  • Light’s Wrath, Resplendent Light, Wrath Unleashed, and Make Amends have been removed.

Holy

  • Holy Word: Serenity healing increased by 30%.
  • Flash Heal healing increased by 40%.
  • Holy Word: Salvation’s cooldown is now reduced by 15 seconds (was 30 seconds) by Holy Word: Serenity and Holy Word: Sanctify.
  • Symbol of Hope now restores 10% of missing mana (was 15%).
  • Symbol of Hope recovers 40 seconds of cooldown for a major defensive ability (was 60 seconds).
  • Holy Word: Sanctify now heals up to 5 allies (was 6).
  • Divine Star healing decreased by 25%.
  • Halo healing decreased by 15%.

Shadow

  • Shadow Crash damage is now reduced beyond 5 targets.
  • Surge of Insanity now triggers from every 3 casts of Devouring Plague instead of every cast of Devouring Plague.
    • Developers’ note: The rotation has a lot going on and much of that is due to the frequency that Mind Flay: Insanity and Mind Spike: Insanity are available, so we’re adjusting the frequency of the effect.
  • Mind Flay damage increased by 10%.
  • Mind Flay: Insanity damage increased by 30%.
  • Mind Spike: Insanity damage increased by 20%.
2 Likes
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Do not nerf my fun because other classes have ludicrous scaling with haste.

If you want to address Power Infusion issue, make it 50% effective on targeted player, it’s not hard.

81 Likes
4

So your nerfing Power Infusion because of other classes…what world are we living in…just make it personal or reduce its affect on a target thats not you.

edit: also wth is that surge change??? 3 plagues for 1 insanity lol? and does shadow crash initial damage even do anything isnt it like half a mind blast lol

41 Likes
5

Hilarious you added a tier set which forces us to cast SWP and SW:D since you’ve designed a tree that makes the spells irrelevant. That’s not fun, that’s tedium.

Not to mention the set shoehorning us into Dark Ascension build. Where’s the choice that the spec tree is supposed to offer?

34 Likes
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So you’re nerfing shadow’s major dps cooldown, capping shadow crash, and nerf mf/ms:insanity proc chance and all you give in return is paltry buffs to our filler?

We’re already hurting in raid. Losing our current tier set is going to make our aoe suck even more.

Please please buff shadow somewhere to compensate for these losses. You’ve basically thrown the spec in the dumpster over utility.

22 Likes
8

If you’re gonna nerf PI, at least buff Twins so our own Haste is unchanged or something. This change nerfs PI for the Priest when PI on the Priest is not the problem with PI; giving it to an Unholy DK or Demonology Warlock is the problem with PI.

This is a gigantic nerf to this entire class in M+ and has implications in a raid setting as well. I’m gonna assume you’re gonna avoid designing bosses like Remnant of Ner’zhul, Sylvanas, or Forgotten Experiments (which heavily incentivize running at least two Priests) going forward? If you’re gonna keep designing fights like that, this kinda just guts the class’s viability.

But why?

…Umm… no, sorry, this is a horrible change. Please rethink this; this directly hurts our Insanity generation and most SPriest players really don’t enjoy spamming naked Mind Spikes or Mind Flays.

I’m sure there will be a place to give feedback on tier sets, but on the topic of tier sets:

Please rethink this one as well. I’m all for an SW:D focused tier set bonus, but I think that tying this to hardcasting SW:P isn’t the most interesting gameplay loop.

My bigger issue than this questionable set bonus is that this heavily pigeonholes us into a Deathspeaker/Mindbender/Dark Ascension build. Some of the other set bonuses here seem to be problematic because of how they pigeonhole players into very specific builds (see: Enhancement), but I think this one’s particularly egregious. I feel like this needs to return to the drawing board.

TL:DR: I’m personally not very happy with these changes and I feel like pretty much all of them, plus our tier set bonus, misses the mark and this amounts to a bunch of nerfs to a class that already struggles IMMENSELY in single-target situations.

40 Likes
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Every single Shadow change here makes no sense.
The PI change is the incorrect nerf, 100%. Please rethink all of this.

32 Likes
10

Nerf to pi sucks why should it reduce our own haste? Holy word salvation nerfs also suck that spell will be difficult to use twice now in a fight. Not to mention it’s really only worth taking if you have a large raid size. Why are we not buffing divine hymn? It’s like the worse healing cool-down in the game. It’s so bad I usually don’t even press it.

8 Likes
11

Simple solution to Power Infusion that hits two birds with one stone:

  • Power Infusion Baseline can’t be shared.
  • Twins allows you to give PI to someone else and yourself at the same time.
  • The buffs applied are different: The PI applied to the priest is unpurgable 25% haste buff, the one shared is a 20% purgable haste buff.

PI is the only major CD purgable in the game and it has less of an impact than Combust does yet you made that immune to purges. This solves the issue of priests having the only purgable CD and the issue that shared PI is too strong.

13 Likes
12

How is this even a reasonable change? MD’s strength is 100% determined by encounter design. Design less encounters that require MD, MD’s value will go down. Nerfing the spell is not how you fix encounter design problems.

The change to Mind Soothe is the correct way to address a problem like this. It didnt nerf the spell, it just made it less valuable because its less effective due to the dungeon design, not a spell nerf.

33 Likes
15

Did you forget Heal and Renew on purpose? Flash Heal on the PTR does more healing than Heal now.

Heal: 48,457
Flash Heal: 53,317
Renew: 33,725

You’ve also made Flash Heal more powerful than Renew + Empowered Renew talent and Prayer of Healing talented. It’s going to be the no brainer go-to filler spell for raid healing.

Also, you did not address the spot healing issues with Holy for M+

  • Holy only has Apotheosis and Answered Prayers for spot healing. We need something else in-between that. You can make Apotheosis a 1 minute cd or let us get Divine Word as well.
  • Holy has no passive AOE heal like Tyr’s Deliverance. It makes healing RoT aura fights pure tedium having to manually heal 1 person at a time.

I’m sorry, but why did you nerf this? Why can’t you just put Holy Word Salvation on flat 5 minute cooldown. You’ve effectively made this ability only able to used once a raid boss fight now and you have to use it very early on.

It’s literally going to be a 5~ minute reset unless our tier set is proccing nonstop.

More of our raid utility is nerfed on-top of Power Infusion + Mass Dispel.

Why did you nerf these? Also, Divine Star does 60% less damage than Rhapsody and Burning Vehemence.

My Thoughts

You’ve giga nerfed Holy Priests in raid for no reason and gave them nothing to compensate for it. We can only use Holy Word Salvation probably 1 time a boss fight, Symbol of Hope is weaker, Mass Dispel on 2 minute cooldown, and Power Infusion is weaker.

Also, you did NOT address the talent bloat problems around there being 8 Prayer of Mending talents that are mandatory to pick for raid. You also make Holy Priests even worse for M+ by not giving them the tools they needed and stripped away all their utility.

We’re literally going to be a D-tier healer after this for raid and M+. There’s 0 reason not to play Disc for M+.

And I come to you as a top 10 Holy Priest for IO in NA.

30 Likes
16

Absolutely terrible change, nerfing the Priest when the Priest isn’t the issue. Just make PI self cast only already. We’ve been begging for that for literal years as you continue to balance around it.

Also, the nerf to barrier? Why? It was already an INCREDIBLY weak cooldown thanks to how the past few raids have been set up, and you’re making it even worse?

The rest of the Discipline changes are just a disaster - you’re turning Harsh Discipline from referencing the Venthyr legendary into just outright being the Venthyr legendary. That’s boring. The overall nerfs to Mind Blast also don’t make sense - Disc has been nerfed in the past for being “degenerate” due to low cast diversity, so you’re now reducing our cast diversity? Nevermind the fact that guaranteeing PotDS is semi-meaningless with how easy it was to have up before, only now we’re going to have to fish for Harsh Discipline procs rather than be able to line it up nicely.

Then there’s the Shadow Covenant change - unless you’re drastically reducing the cooldown on Shadowfiend, it’s a dead-on-arrival talent that no one will take unless they absolutely have to for filler reasons. At 15sec every 3min, that’s an almost 66% uptime nerf with no buff to the increase (and that’s just baseline. with the Embrace Shadow talent taken it’s an even bigger nerf to the uptime).

I’m assuming the wording for Sanctuary means that 80% of the damage done by Smite is prevented on the enemies next damage dealing attack / ability (akin to the way it worked back in legion). Not bad, but that in combination with the proposed 2pc set bonus will effectively make Smite the only damaging spell we cast (or else we lose perma uptime on atonements).

11 Likes
17

After trying the disc changes I absolutely hate the mind blast, shadow covenant and harsh discipline changes. They feel absolutely awful. Just devolves into smite spam. I’d rather you keep schism as a button and just let it grant the effect of shadow covenant. Also, Heaven’s Wrath reducing ultimate Penitence’s cooldown by each penance bolt just inspires you to spam radiance even if you dont need it so the extra bolts reduce UP’s CD. You guys are on the right track but oh, please refine this before putting this on live.

8 Likes
18

You forgot to buff Heal and Lightweaver, they both barely do more than Flash Heal right now :\

Lightweaver is my favorite playstyle right now, but the 40% flash heal buff makes Lightweaver pointless.

4 Likes
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Lightweaver has been pointless since they buffed Divine Image because Divine Image + Miracle Worker is overall more hps/dps and you have far less mana issues. They need to overhaul the talent.

1 Like
20

So, we were told we can’t have an interrupt or a knockback because, well, other classes have those, and now we’ve had: Mind Soothe nerfed, Mass Dispel nerfed, Power Infusion nerfed. Any compensatory buffs or is the class, and particularly the healing specs, not supposed to bring anything significant to the table?

Nerfing Holy in raids while doing nothing for its M+ performance just murders it compared to Discipline. Some Lightweaver changes and no longer forcing Holy to spend quite so many points into ProM talents would be super helpful here.

21 Likes
21

Twins of the Sun Priestess - Casting Power Infusion on an ally grants you 25% haste for 20s. That’s it, done, fixed, it’s so simple… please!

10 Likes
22

The holy priest tier set is another “sigh” for me…Why does it feel like holy priest NEVER is in touch what it means to play holy priest. Prayer of mending, renew…PLEASE blizzard make a set that IMPROVES the experience as a holy priest! Allow us to interact more with our holy words more! Random rng sets over and over get dull…PLEASE allow us to show off skill and not relay on rng over and over…

I would also say the nerfs to devine star and halo is way too harsh! Holy priest single target is already really good. Please do not take away our AOE when M+ is 99% aoe going out. Please rethink this and rethink the RNG focus on holy priest tier sets :frowning:

2 Likes
23

Pretty sure most shadow priests will agree that they’d rather just see twins die than have their own CD get nerfed. It’s beyond dumb that PI gets nerfed because it’s too strong on other people.

Better yet, just give a worse version of PI to the ally so it can be tuned separately from what we give ourselves.

34 Likes
24

When i was a priest, i disliked pi because others wanted it.
When i was a warlock, i disliked pi because thats where our damage came from.

Id love pi to become personal use only and stay as it is otherwise.

14 Likes