Hey Blizzard, the Priest Class actually still exists (11.0.5)

Community General Discussion
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Underwhelming is a bit of an understatement. Both Disc and Shadow are in pretty rough shape coming into Season 1, and as a community I think we were all expecting some attention to address our more glaring issues. Instead, we get an improvement to Power Word: Fortitude’s mana cost. Yay. For an expansion centered around a broad, climactic showdown between the forces of light and darkness, you would think Priest would be given slightly more attention.

Shadow is in a particularly thorny situation, with increasingly concerning single-target damage, some clunky rotational elements and some out-dated mechanics. Among the more common and pressing Shadow Priest concerns:

Shadow Crash changes (lower CD, more effected targets, two charges etc)

  • We are woefully reliant on Shadow Crash to apply our DoTs to mob packs, but it has a relatively small area of effect, only effects 8 targets and has a CD that precludes reapplication to new adds in the pull. It requires a mandatory 2 talent point investment, which gives the illusion of choice, and clutters an already 2-node-laden talent tree (this was just addressed for Enhancement). The general consensus is a desire for Shadow Crash to have about a 30% larger area of effect, hit 10 targets (up from 8) and either have two charges, or a cooldown that can be lowered by some combat mechanic. An elegant solution to this problem would be to make the spell baseline apply both of our primary DoTs and have the follow-up node increase radius and give an additional charge.

Instant cast CDs (Dark Ascension, Void Eruption, Halo)

  • Our rotational cooldowns all having 1.5sec casts is a little jarring, and isn’t really reflected in a lot of other spec’s cooldowns. Halo feels especially out of place with a cast time, but both Void Eruption and Dark Ascension too. These have been instant-cast in the past. Why are they not currently?

Substantial increases to our DoT damage

  • Our VT and SW:P currently feel like maintenance debuffs purely to activate our mastery. The damage they do (in PvE) is so wildly inconsequential that it is borderline laughable. Granted, you’ve made it quite clear you do not want Spriest to function as a DoT class anymore, which is fine. But there’s definitely a desire in the community for these two DoTs to have a little more bite to them.

Substantial increases to Mind Flay / Mind Spike damage

  • Our current filler spell feels anemic. It really feels like a “filler”. Lightning Bolt, Shadow Bolt etc feel more consequential than this.

Voidweaver parity with Archon

  • Somewhat self-explanatory, we’re dealing with the same problem that many other classes are dealing with in that one of our Hero Talents is 100% better for all content than the other. Archon is a neat idea, but a little boring mechanically, and it’s a shame I feel compelled to play it for anything remotely competitive because Voidweaver is objectively 15-20% behind in both AoE and ST. In line with this conversation, making the Echoing Rift have a faster travel speed would help.

An interrupt (24sec silence CD for example)

  • Our lack of consistent interrupt and AoE stop are hurting us in Mythic+. We’re still very much chained to Mind Soothe skips and PI for viability. Please consider giving us a 24sec interrupt in some capacity. Mind Bomb was a good AoE stop for us, essentially a capacitor totem. I’d love to see this make a return.

PvP Cast Reliance

  • Self-explanatory as well. Our damage wildly suffers when trained. This should be true of most casters but actually doesn’t feel the case today. Arcane, Frost, Balance, Dev Evoker all feel pretty mobile with a lot of instant cast options. Food for thought. Void Eruption can easily serve to address this if it were instant cast, with more reliable Void Bolts and a way to lower the CD specifically for PvP content.

The last concern is sims. We’re struggling. I know they’re not necessarily perfectly accurate but they’re the best we have (23sec duration heroic dungeon bosses aren’t it). And on our current ~i585 and i639 sims we’re dogwater. Like, seriously, 150,000 behind at current gear levels and like 500,000 behind at i639. We’re literally the lowest simming ST DPS at i639 in the game, racing some tanks. I do not need to be the top DPS in WoW to be satisfied, but being dead last for the rotational complexity we have feels unfair. It’s a difficult spec to play. Please address?

Disc has a TON of issues too, but I’m not as familiar with them as a Spriest main. If a Disc priest wants to add to this discussion, feel free. The HPS does feel terrifyingly low outside of our Mindbender-EchoingRift-Dark Reprimand cycle.

Thanks for listening (if you are, Blizz). I don’t want to sit my Spriest for progression.

15 Likes
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I’d like to add that Disc always has to rely on shadow. And it feels wrong. It’s thematic I know, but that’s all I got.

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I don’t mind the theme, but I do mind the tuning.

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I’d just like to point out that these cooldowns are currently actively fighting against their respective theme in terms of Hero Talents.

Void Eruption is the best choice for Archon, and Dark Ascension is the go-to for Voidweaver.
Why does the angel hero tree, with the visual icon of an angel, focusing on angelic halos, take the talent that consumes themselves with the void?
And the void-weaving hero tree, that open rifts to the void to disintegrate enemies, uses angel wings?

Please fix this. They should both be instant cast and be buffed properly by their respective Hero Tree theme.
This is just as awkward as if Frost Mages had Combustion and Fire had Icy Veins.

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Don’t worry. We will get a mid expansion half baked rework disguised as a fix to all our problems only to find out it’s more bandaides on an already broken class.

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This isn’t the class forums.

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I exists? I think therefor I Shadow?

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Just chiming that the specific reason why Voidform is detrimental to Voidweaver is that adding Void Bolt to the Voidweaver rotation is a hindrance to the already crowded requirement to cast 3 Void Blasts during Entropic Rift’s active window to proc all 3 Darkening Horizons successfully. There’s just no space to add Void Bolts to that mix.

And yes, this is a huge design fail.

I would like to add that even if nothing else changed, buffing Shadow Crash to 2 charges would be a tremendous QoL buff that would smooth out our entire AoE profile. Like OP mentioned, currently, we’re caught with our pants down on trash/adds pretty much half the time because our Shadow Crash CD doesn’t line up with pulls or adds spawn, at all. Please take Shadow Crash to 2 charges. I beg you. Or make enemies dying while dotted lower its CD. Anything.

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Don’t worry, Paladins are getting another early expac tree rework

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So just …
damage buff across the board.

I do not want to go back to the agonizing ramp-up days. That sucked so bad. Heavy dot damage is outrageously hard to balance on any class without target limiting them and that sucks too.

AOE spender. We need an AOE spender. We’ve always needed an AOE spender. Unfurling Nightmares was close but no cigar.

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I have two problems with Priest right now.

  1. Mobility.

  2. Shadow. Literally the whole spec.

We need some juice

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the impression I’ve gotten clearly from the responses is that both Blizzard themselves as well as the playerbase would prefer it we just not play priest, and specifically not play shadow priest, at all.

Even in the class forums, half the time the discussion is derailed by another class poster coming in and telling us all other classes are more important to get attention and to not complain.

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I mean, sort of? We’re currently the second lowest simming ST spec at i585 and THE lowest simming ST spec at i639. We’re not doing much better on AoE.

Yes, we need damage. We could have a literal 30% damage buff to every ability we have and still be under Arcane and Elemental.

We also have this thread on the class forums. Might as well add it to the General Forums. Blizzard actually posts here. I cannot even remember the last time there was a Blue post on the priest forums.

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This must not be buried. Priest deserves better. Its absolutely insane how priest gets nothing in 0.5 when the whole beta got nothing.

Can you please bother and start fixing the myriad of issues/bad gameplay/horrible trees that plague all priest specs?

1 Like