Just wondering how ya’ll are holding up? I am about to level my priest up, just wondering how the xpac is treating you. HONESTLY, are you having fun?
anys pros/cons to look out for? disc/shad is the plan
I always have fun with shadow, but things are rough rn in terms of public perception and just overall usefulness for the class, we’re still here, we still do things, we’re not useless, but we struggle, a lot, to get the same results many other classes get from just slamming their head against the keyboard blindly.
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Shadow is underperforming at the top end of content. If you plan on CE raiding or pushing M+ as shadow, now is not a great time.
You can generally look at resources like Warcraftlogs and Raider io to see how damage classes are performing, and class representation in various content
Edit: Regarding how “fun” shadow is – If you enjoyed Dragonflight rotation you will probably enjoy TWW rotation. Archon is the spec of choice for all content and it doesn’t change much for the rotation
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Feels like pugging into any key above a +6 as a healing priest is impossible, even with the pre-reqs and ranking.
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Not big into keys, mainly delves right now on my warr and this guy. Just wanting something fresh to kill time with basically
if you’re just looking to do solo content, like delves, we’re reasonably well suited, we can scoop up a big boi and bring him through for extra dps and abilities, and our sustain/dr is pretty damn swanky too, just dont expect to do group endgame stuff rn without pulling extra weight
Well I don’t play disc so can’t say anything about it, but I play holy for raiding and dungeons. Holy has been a lot of fun to me. Although, I’m a casual player so I’m not pushing into difficult group content. Shadow is good to me for delves
Been only playing holy this season and I am enjoying it ok. Achieved my main goal of KSM pretty quickly for the token and now just doing a lot of profession farming/crafting/etc with occasional guild key runs and a few pug runs specifically for certain pieces of gear.
Trying to master one dungeon or maybe 2 so I can put that on farm for crests. I usually pick one and run it mainly for just that. Waycrest manor was one, shadowmoon was another. Maybe this season will be mists.
Have enjoyed raid as well. Though, I am in a less serious guild and we are working through heroic right now.
Playing Disc/Holy in hardcore content like m+ are very frustating. We need to do a lot to kinda suits a mid-healer, and the good’old problems: lack of mobility, lack of an interrupt/cc’s, our single dispel is GARBAGE and MD is even more garbage.
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Priest is essentially completely unchanged from Dragonflight, but the game is currently not well-suited to Dragonflight priest. If you enjoyed playing Dragonflight priest, you’ll probably enjoy it now as long as you don’t start doing high-end content.
It works, but everything it does worse than any other class that does the same thing.
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Want to play Disc just for Fun and giggles? Don’t care about M+ that much? Go ahead.
I am disc main. Idc what position it stands or how garbage it is. I always find it fun.
Prevoker might be strong but I find Disc way more fun. I can heal Tier 8 Delves with little effort and no deaths lol
I love being a priest, so I would say Disc will suit you right and totally worth the shot.
I’m holding up OK. I had a lot of hype entering the expansion with Voidweaver, I expected buffs for it to be as competitive as Archon, they came, but didn’t fix it. I am having fun, but I wish it could be more fun. I’m lucky enough to be one of the “better” players in my guild and am always wanted in their keys. We’re just an AOTC and push for 3K until burned out type of players. I play VW for low keys, and Archon for higher keys. I went on a vacation past week and half, and the guildies saved me a +10 keys for completion for vault. I have a lot of catching up to do. I cannot imagine pugging as a SP when we are not in the Meta like in DF.
As far as Disc, I feel it’s superior to Holy in M+. The damage mitigation is just way too important. I like Holy in Raids as well. I mainly play Shadow, but Heal when needed.
That being said about Shadow.
Pros - Provides lots of group Healing as DPS. The healing that VE provides so super good in high damaging keys.
Pros - You provide PI to the Mages, Locks, DKs, and Warriors. >_>
Cons - VERY mid/mediocre damage. In Raid, I can parse in the 90-99%, but then still be 3-4th in damage with 50-60% parse compared to Mages and Warriors. That simply means there’s a numerical disparity in the tuning. I can play my lock at a very average level and do the same damage as my SP with lesser effort.
Cons 2 - When mobs spawn after Shadow Crashing, you have ONLY one choice, and that’s to DOT them up manually. I do not understand Blizz’s stubbornness in not giving Shadow Crash +2 charges…
Con 3 - Voidweaver is realistically far weaker than Archon. The notion that its 1% difference in Sims is the grain of salt I no longer believe. Archon is the only way to go IF you care about squeezing out the damage in M+ and Raid, and I dislike that.
Con 4 - Defensive weaving. I’m constantly doing the Flash Heal + Fade + PW:S dance as Shadow… The dmg is pretty insane in M+. They’ve been nerfing the M+ dmg like constantly. I’m usually a tanky playstyle SP, but I found myself dying a lot more than usual.
Con 5 - Mobility. There’s some mechanics like cones, and slows, that you simply just “W” out of. Taking reduced CD on Dispersion helps, but feels bad not taking Mental Fortitude. Fade helps on snares but not roots. Last boss of CoT or AK.
It’s only Week 3 of the Season. I missed like 1.5 weeks of it bc of vacation. It’s already being discussed hard switching my toon to something that fits our M+ push comp before I fully invest into it. Bear, Rsham, FDK, Mage, and Priest/Lock/Aug. Though the skill is respected, fleshing out a good comp would just be more fun and a good use of my time being a new dad and their time to not constantly fail.
Out of Priest, Lock, Aug… Priest would be ranked 3rd. Probably be even better if I went Disc and the RSham went Elemental, but RSham is also too strong rn.
There’s no scenario in my guild were SP is needed unless it’s because I’m the carry helping out other lowbie geared clothies or I’m the PI for a super strong DPS
In summary - I think Shadow/Disc is a good alt toon route in Season 1. 
Thanks for making me reflect on the season thus far!
Thank you for this reply! I respect the time and effort put in to actually care! I got on my priest, did a couple quests and was like “nope” didnt feel good.
I main a FDK and Fury warr. I Got on my warlock and was like “Yup, I’m home” I mained a lock from classic to panda. came back in bfa for a minute, then back in SL to current. Probably will stick with my lock, DK and warr this xpac.
thanks for the input everyone!
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I’ve been thinking of getting back into the game. And Priest has been my bae for a long time. As such, I have been reading a lot of posts here and on Reddit, and watching videos on where Priest is currently… And the consensus seems to be pretty typical for Priest. The class is harder to learn than most, but has a high skill cap. On top of this, it is currently under-tuned and without much flexibility where talents are concerned… Which makes the relatively complex nature of playing the class feel underwhelming. Poor mobility continues to be an issue that curses the priest, since dodging mechanics severely undermines the ability to do damage. And few AOE options paired with long CDs make mistakes highly punishing in ways that other classes don’t really have to deal with…
I don’t really care to push keys or get into Mythic raiding anymore, so the class fantasy still sells for me. Even still, it can be frustrating to Shadow Crash at the wrong time (or tank pulls mobs away) and having to attempt DOTing up adds one by one. Or having to dodge mechanics during a ramp up window and being unable to deliver DPS for the rest of the fight. The class is still fun to play… but I think it could use some love. It doesn’t help that the last blue post re: Priest was back in February.
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Pretty bad. Devs haven’t looked at the Priest class since 10.2 when they reworked us significantly.
Then decided they didn’t like it and abandoned all 3 specs instead of fixing it.
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Numerically fine.
Rotation is dull and uninspired (keep everything on CD nothing interacts with anything).
Put dots up first i guess. Void Blast hitting like a truck is funny thought. It sadly lacks any interaction beside dealing absurd amounts of damage. Pretty much every button has this problem to be honest.
It wasn’t a significant rework. They replaced Light’s Wrath with Ultimate Penitence, which is a worse ability in every practical sense, they turned Mind Blast into Schism, and rolled Shadow Covenant into Shadowfiend.
Blizzard hasn’t done any significant reworks to any part of priest since Legion. Even shadow, which has been routinely “reworked” has only ever had one part of Voidform removed per expansion to have that power put elsewhere in the kit (haste removed because of PI, damage boost removed because of Twins, Hysteria turned into Chorus turned into DP).
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Miserable, I log into Raid and fill my Delves. M+ is trash.
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For Disc, rolling Mind Blast, Schism and Shadow Covenant together completely eliminated Twilight Equilibrium and Expiation. Both are dead nodes, so there’s 3 right there. They then created a Tier set around always being in Shadow Covenant and made the tier set double our uptime of it. It also substantially increased our Atonement duration. They literally designed the spec around the tier set then removed the tier set. Which removing the Tier Set also changed the stat value of Crit vs Mastery, so we use more mastery now which means Divine Aegis and Aegis of Wrath of aren’t used. So there’s 5 dead talent points for PvE. Ultimate Penitence should be a PvP talent, it’s useless in PvE and will unalive you and your teammates more often than not. So there’s another 3 dead talents.
So they basically reworked the spec around one Tier set, and as a result we lost several spells, half our final talents, atonement duration changes, and stat weight changes.
I don’t know what your definition of significant is but if it’s not that I’m not really sure what is.
Everything you said was true, but I don’t qualify the rework as “significant” because the long list of things that changed because of the rework (different stat priorities, loads of dead talents) weren’t deliberate design choices. They were collateral damage from changing a few minor things without considering the way those things impacted the rest of the kit.
Take Twilight Equilibrium, for example. Twilight Equilibrium isn’t dead because Schism got renamed Mind Blast and Old Mind Blast was removed, though it does dig a big chunk of the grave; it’s dead because the Amirdrassil tier made Smite shadow damage and, now, Void Blast replaces Smite during Entropic Rift. You are always doing all holy or all shadow damage at any given point as discipline, so there’s no way for it to even potentially provide meaningful value right now.
But that wasn’t part of the rework - it’s a problem born from the “rework” being cooked up during a coffee break and shipped.
The 10.2 rework was this: Old Mind Blast was removed, Shadow Covenant was merged with Shadowfiend, and the Light’s Wrath branch was replaced with a dead branch. That’s it. It didn’t change or expand discipline’s capabilities in any way. All it did was reduce the button presses for the ramp and kill half the talent tree by accident.
So, for summary, the 10.2 rework itself, and the effort Blizzard put into it, was as minor as it could possibly be. Half the talent tree dying as a result of the rework was an accident born from Blizzard’s pattern of dedicating 5 minutes of dev time to priest every expansion.