Priests desperately need mobility. The theming is perfect. I want this so badly. I know it wasn’t JUST a priest ability in Shadowlands, but I think it’s a better thematic and mechanic fit for priest than any other class.
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I so badly want a way to be creative with my movement as a Priest to be able to have a skill expression over displacement. Like how Shamans and Mages have a cast while moving mechanic, Monks and Warlocks have a teleport, Demon Hunters and Warriors have a leap that will override their momentum - even Death’s Advance for DK feels satisfying to counter displacement. I’m struggling to think of a class that doesn’t have some way to do this other than Priests and it’s such a bummer.
Door of Shadows as a Choice Talent with Spectral Guise located in the Class Tree.
I hate that the devs have made it known that they are so against giving Priests fun toys.
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Door of shadows kind of sucked though for having a cast time and being on a target reticle.
Not a very “oh no i need to move” button and more of “i’m going to have to move soon let me stop what i’m doing”
If it were instant cast maybe.
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Void Elf racial is very similar now. Closest you’ll get I think.
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I’m honestly surprised priests can’t cast while moving. Especially shadow since we levitate so much in combat. Seems weird we can’t cast and move while levitating
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same reason why hybrids heal less than none hybrids now.
Why rogue and hunters can even heal.
Why a cow race can be a rogue but no shaman elf.
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A choice node with Life Grip’d be better. Worst designed ability in the game, Life Grip. I will never understand why they continue to double and triple down on it. “If we put a choice node with Life Grip, nobody’d ever take life grip.” It’s INFURIATING. “Nobody’d take it”, no s&%# Sherlock, it’s because life grip straight up solves no legitimate issue, takes a talent point, and does jack for the personal mobility of the slowest moving class in the game.
Screw Life Grip, and the dev that decided that trash was a good idea for a “mobility” ability. To said dev - my brother in Christ, you created an ability that requires you get there first, then put it on the literal slowest class in the game. Honestly, exactly what is wrong with your thought process? What, you gonna grip a melee player when a boss drops something in melee? They’re all fast enough to just get the hell out of melee on their own! It makes literally no sense. How would I reasonably be there before anybody else with a significant enough chunk of time to identify stragglers and grip them? This process makes sense on an Evoker because not only are they reasonably fast moving, but Rescue also has the personal movement component. Do the right thing, delete this ability, then delete your career. Resign, dude. You have no business in game design with how poorly this is designed, and continues to be. Get into accounting or something, I don’t know.
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For me, Life Grip is single-handedly responsible for one prog kill each season and a few timed keys sprinkled in there… but I wouldn’t mind it be off GCD and castable mid cast or channel just due to the criticality of timing it.
Hard agree. If not this then something similar for sure.
I think a good choice node would be
Option A - DOS - 45s CD, instant cast
Option B - DOS - 60s CD, cast time, 2 charges
Retheme it to match current void visuals. And its literal door of SHADOWS . SHADOW PRIEST
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I wish Angelic Feather was a node choice with a spell that buffed levitate.
Maybe making it cast on the move would be fine if it makes it prone to interruption when getting knocked from levitate due to damage? IDK…
Else, they could make so that levitate is not breakable anymore and give it a passive 15-20% speed movement.
My controversial opinion:
the mobility arms race is stupid. Just stop designing twitchy, run-around-the-boss-for-30-seconds encounters. Is this fun for anyone?
Can you imagine what kind of pony show they’d have you run through if everyone had sprint or pally horse?
I don’t really care that priest is slow, but the combination of slow, needing lots of turret casting/channeling, and being squishy is stupid.
Stop designing encounters for insane burst speed and burst damage
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Actually you kinda touched on another possibility even I don’t mention - they could just crank shadow’s tankiness for PvE so mobility’s not as much of an issue.
Problem with that though is it still leaves one of the old annoyances untouched - Life Grip. Most priests I’ve spoken to either don’t use it (I’m in this camp), or use it to kill another player for being a jerk in a raid or dungeon encounter (not gonna lie, I have done this a couple times in the past). It just doesn’t make sense as an ability. I play a bunch of Evoker as well as priest, and let me tell you, Rescue is better than Life Grip in every way. Thing is, with Evoker mobility they could have simply been given a straight up Life Grip copy and still used it better in every way than Priest does. The difference is personal mobility. Life Grip requires you not only get to safety first, when Priest is the slowest class in the game; but also see and recognize a guaranteed faster moving class that somehow, for some reason, did not get to safety before you. How does this make even a slight modicum of sense to anybody on the dev team??
TL;DR - Other classes have updated versions of literally the trash tier garbage the devs keep insisting Priest gets stuck with. It’s well time the class be brought to current standard, either by increased survivability, or increased mobility. But something’s gotta give. 40% movement speed is trash (that’s both Feathers and Body and Soul), Glide for simply picking a Dracthyr on character creation is 43%. No personal mobility, even if sharable, should be below 45%. Full stop. Glide does not need nerfed, trash mobility needs buffed just a little. Life Grip makes zero sense and in almost all circumstances is fully and completely worthless outside of maliciously Yamcha-cratering an a-hole player.
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Nah I love life grip, door of shadow and life grip combo to stick people in weird spots. I love doing that. Plus clutch saves from random things. Choice node with feather would be ok, steady move speed or a teleport could be an interesting choice. But there’s also worse talents to replace. Like the bottom right stuff.
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THIS!
I would delete Life Grip so fast if it meant getting more mobility.
Honestly I wouldn’t even spec into it if I could avoid it, but you’re forced to with the current talent layout.
Your reasoning is totally spot on too. How on earth is a priest getting out of the fire and to a safe spot fast enough to grip someone else out of it and save them? If a priest actually saves you with life grip it’s because you’re not playing right and messed up pretty badly.
The only place it has regular use is PvP.
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This sounds about right, but that also begs the question - is an ability that’s useful only a handful of times per season, almost exclusively when people don’t know encounters, and then is never useful again until the next season an ability that really deserves being part of a class’s power budget?
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I would personally argue a big fat resounding no it should not be part of a class’ power budget. The literal only time you reasonably use Life Grip as a priest (outside of arena) is when somebody has absolutely utterly crapped the bed with their movement, and you as the priest are so familiar with the fight that you get to your spot early. And I don’t think I need to explain to you folks how unusual it is that a priest would get to their spot that significantly earlier than the rest of the raid’s roster.
…Which is a huge problem given how slow Priest mobility is. Somebody really has to screw up pretty bad for Life Grip to be their Obi-Wan Kenobi. Let Evokers save the poorly positioned. They’re better set up for it anyway with their nearly-DH-level mobility, and Rescue’s better than Life Grip in literally every way (to include direct survivability application in a 30% HP bubble).
Door of Shadows pls. It makes perfect sense, Devs. Quit dragging your feet and get it done!
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It does beg the question, but tbh the priest tree feels quite underwhelming so if I were to make some changes to it, an optional choice of grip wouldn’t be on my radar. Tho that could spawn a chain of reactions whereas it’s not easy or worth it to choose that grip talent point in which then we’d want it removed or modified.
For the sake of arguing a bit:
Blizzard may be resisting giving Priests more mobility because, in their eyes, we already have lots of mobility.
Taken together, Body and Soul, Angelic Feathers + Divine Feathers, and Blaze of Light gives Disc Priest access to continuous 40%+ movement speed. We would be top quartile in a marathon among all classes. It’s more options than many classes (I’ve been running so many transmog runs and am getting familiar with every class’s mobility options).
I’m not saying these are sufficient for modern encounters compared to the fast burst mobility of e.g. Rescue, but I can see why Blizzard thinks we’re more than taken care of.
Counterpoint - you could just roll Dracthyr, spam spacebar while you’re moving about on foot, and get a free 43% movement speed. Yes, you read that right. It is a full 3% faster to play a Dracthyr than it is to use your movement increases as a Priest (until you gather a bunch of the Speed tertiary stat, that is). If they want to keep priest mobility as it is, Feathers/Body and Soul require a 10% movement speed increase. I don’t necessarily even mean a bump from 40% to 50%. 40% to 44% would still make you 1% faster than just playing a Dracthyr; which is how it should already be, and it’s weird to me that it isn’t.
I know you’re playing devil’s advocate, so I probably don’t need to explain how bad Priest mobility truly is so I’ll cap it off with this: When simply playing a specific race gives better mobility than literally anything your class could offer, that’s an issue.
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