I cannot speak for healing priests, but I have been having to play mage for the raid AI buff and all I do is long to play my shadow priest. It feels so much better to play in keys and raid vs. magey bois. I know there are alot of weird talents and stuff, but psychic link is so good and we currently have two viable hero trees. Voidwalker is fun for lower keys and reduces the ramp up time. I have not gotten into Archon keys yet … assuming it is still fine.
Why would I listen to the guy asking for us not to get the same sort of utility as any other class or the guy defending them?
Even in mid level content, you’d still be better off with most other healers, and you’d for sure be better off with just about any DPS. The difference in control is night and day.
You shouldn’t be struggling in +8s, as any appropriately geared class, but that doesn’t mean we have a well designed class, which you seem determined to conflate.
It’s baffling to me you’re specifically asking for our class to not be improved.
4 Likes
What’s your shadow build for BGs? I found a new one from one of the top arena players on murlok io and am enjoying it, but it definitely seems like it’s more geared towards arenas. I hated my S priest in PVE until I changed around a ton of talents and got better gear. Like I literally rerolled a blood DK because delves were so hard.
I found s priest to be insanely dependant on cooldowns to do any real damage. Yes, I know every class has cooldowns but it seems incredibly lackluster if your halo and dark ascension and power infusion and the other 45s CD channel are on CD. Pretty much mind flay mind blast devouring plague.
4 Likes
I’m using the one from the top rated Blitz player. I have seen no issues with Shadow myself, and even right now Spriest are very popular picks in 3s and BGs. I also strictly PvP, so I’m speaking from a PvP perspective only.
Apparently that means I’m a Blizzard simp, according to numerous people on thisnthread lol, because I enjoy playing my priest in PvP and eat through people.
As someone levelling a priest currently (because I’m a sucker for their transmog options) - it really boggles my mind that so much of the kit we do have is just… not fit for purpose outside of raids.
Holy Word: Sanctify doesn’t heal more than 2-3 people and the cooldown reduction might as well be 0 since spending 5 GCDs on Renew for 10s off the cast is a waste. And Prayer of Healing (and thus Circle of Healing)
Prayer of Mending might bounce once or twice, then it falls off wasted.
Renew is… meh, at best.
I leave it up to the people who play it at higher level to figure out what the AoE side needs- but ground-targeting skill-heals are not what I’d use for what is intended to be our core tool.
Honestly, I’d also like to see the option for an offensive holy caster come out somewhere. The idea of someone using the light to offensively purge people has some support (Chastise, Holy Fire, Empyreal Blaze, Burning Vehemence), and topping the DPS charts as the healer has been crazy fun so far. I just know that once I hit 70, my damage will fall off hard due to scaling and it’ll be less enjoyable.
I had a radical idea recently where instead of getting new hero talent trees that are either spec specific or share with your other specs, what if they went a cross class gameplay route?
So how can you do this? Well I was thinking that each class has multiple methods of playing when it comes to spell school types. So I made a list of classes that could have cross damage type (or spell school) talent trees build so that it focuses on specific types that multiple classes can benefit from.
Here is what I put together…
- Nature = Druid, Shaman, Evoker, Rogue, Monk, Warrior
- Arcane = Druid, Mage, Hunter
- Shadow = Death Knight, Demon Hunter, Priest, Warlock, Hunter
- Frost = Death Knight, Mage, Shaman, Evoker
- Fire = Mage, Shaman, Warlock, Evoker
- Holy = Paladin, Priest
- Fel = Demon Hunter, Warlock
- Bleed = Death Knight, Druid, Warrior, Rogue
- Physical = Paladin, Warrior, Hunter, Rogue, Monk
So take Priest and Paladin for example, they both will share a Holy talent tree which could be the opportunity for Priest to tap into being a Holy caster DPS or you can tap into shadow to deal more shadow aligned things that would be shared with Warlocks and other classes.
The idea would be instead of your options changing based on your spec, they are instead set by your class. So Priest regardless of spec will choose to have Holy magic be more potent and do extra fancy things or chose shadow to have your shadow magic be more potent and do some cool things.
Probably never happen and if the chance that it did then most likely be bland increases numbers to spell school stuff or get way to complicated if they were unique per class.
But I do think it was a fun idea to entertain regardless.
Depends on the type of AoE damage. What pull or boss is troubling you?
General rules:
-
Be aggressive with GS. You have it often, and putting it on someone will make a LW heal or holy word immediately push them to full health.
- Along those lines, do not be afraid to GS yourself with fade/protective light and rely on ToL/Binding Heals to do considerable healing to yourself. Your Single target has fairly strong cleave and self healing.
-
The vast majority of the time you’re going to be using Heal/FH/Serenity.
-
Rhapsody holy novas are actually a fairly strong AoE heal. Holy Nova itself is not that good, but if you have rhapsody stacks, it can heal quite a bit for 1 GCD. Even in a boss fight, you can hit this button.
-
You want to PoM pre-damage, not during. If you’re ever casting PoM during heavy damage you’re going to fall behind. It’s OK to not cast it on CD.
-
If you’re running archon
- You simply NEED to save Halo. You can’t use it randomly for damage as you get into higher keys, especially on bosses.
- Halo is not only a healing tool, but it gives you decently strong movement via the ToL procs. If you know you’ll need to be moving for an extended period, it’s also useful to use it then.
- You also should have the raid trinket bursting coagulum if you’re running high key archon - Halo can pretty much pop this on demand - but even if halo is on CD, this is useful and shores up a weakness.
- You simply NEED to save Halo. You can’t use it randomly for damage as you get into higher keys, especially on bosses.
-
If you’re running Oracle
- Similar to halo, you need to save Piety/Clairvoyance for damage events. Don’t just cycle through those two immediately. It is pretty much the strongest group burst healing tool in the game to have Piety/CV and GS yourself for burst. Save it for when you need it.
- Conversely, Insight and Solace are not super strong CDs - it’s OK to cycle through them quickly unless you’re headed into pulsing damage and can set up your PoMs early. Solace’s best use case is not on the tank - you can plop it out on someone you don’t want to worry about, GS another person and have 2 targets that will be relatively stable through stuff like the gatekeeper AoE in NW.
- Similar to halo, you need to save Piety/Clairvoyance for damage events. Don’t just cycle through those two immediately. It is pretty much the strongest group burst healing tool in the game to have Piety/CV and GS yourself for burst. Save it for when you need it.
I’m the only one who said anything about vanilla - I said it in response to someone saying I clearly hadn’t been on priest long - and I also explicitly stated IN THIS THREAD that the class needed some changes for higher keys.
My disagreement was the “we’re not asking for balancing for the 1%” whilst at the same time advocating for balancing for the 1%, and telling a player who said that the class is good casually that they were wrong.
The spec is very good in casual content still, even up to 10s. The class itself? Discipline is a top tier M+ spec, and Holy is a great Raid spec. It’s not exactly struggling unless you’re trying to DPS.
The class needs a rework. since your highest key has been an 8 it looks like and you have ZERO raid progression, YES the class is just fine for you. That is what you should have started with instead of trying to pus hthe blatant problems the priest class has.
1 Like
Yeah, doing an 8 key puts me in the top 20% or higher easy. And its no problem. Priests better then me have cleared +10s without issue and raid doing extremely well. The class isn’t good at the top 1% bleeding edge where people are pushing content that isn’t balanced out for that. So yes, we’re the short end of the stick there. That does NOT require a rework.
We’re not at the bottom in 99% of the content, only not so great on the bleeding edge. One class is always going to be there. Its our turn this expansion. Other than that, we’re a great class. This is a problem of bleeding edge players who have no greater concept of how the game works thinking their problems are everyone else’s. They are not.
Do you not realize that we can be good at both the top ends of content and the rest of it? Shamans aren’t only good in +13s, mages aren’t the worst class in the game until you hit mythic raiding.
You’re view is so asinine and narrow minded that because you and you alone are having fun, nothing should change and nobody should be asking for changes.
There’s a dramatic difference between being middle of the pack and being as poorly designed as we are.
4 Likes
Viability is irrelevant to a discussion of design. Any design can be relevant if you tune the number a higher enough, that doesn’t make the design good, and if anything a spec/class that is only good when its at a high tuned state reflects a need for change as oppose to everythinf is ok. It means the class is just a hammer and it can only work when it has enough brute force.
None of that is good.
5 Likes
I’m not going to read the rest of the thread but what if Renew was removed and made into a passive like how some of the talents have it. Very insightful and new idea I know, thank you. Please continue to clap them cheeks for my brilliance.
Doesn’t change anything tbh.
This doesn’t solve any of the issues or problems that Hpriest has nor adds something new or interesting to the spec.
Actually is a bad change cuz sometimes you roll up son renews to get benefit of the 6% extra healing on targets with renew. So you mostly just let benediction roll the renews but maybe you want to put some manually to get that extra healing.
1 Like
I’m tired of playing like a pre Beacon of Light era Holy Paladin. We actually play like Vanilla and TBC Holy Paladins who pop Halo every 1 minute.
And people wanna die on this hill and say this is good design when the devs were smart enough to walk away from it 15 years ago.
4 Likes
As a shadow priest main, power word shield absorbs almost nothing. It always pops instantly. And it feels like shadow priests are supposed to have a little more leech than other classes due to the lore/rp but it doesn’t really do anything. I was kiting a mob watching my healing and it was a drop in a bucket. Flash heal doesn’t do much either. I’m always casting it like 5 or more times after a fight as mobs beat my squishy cloth armor a**. I don’t pvp much but when i do paychic scream or the tentacle root never last people always break right out. And disc is cool in theory but feels more like a dps than a heals the way it plays. I get better heals out of holy but i have several spells like renew that feel useless and a waste of mana to heal magnitude. I’ll always play priest it just feels like everything is pushing a boulder right now. Also as for the void weaver, I’m not sure summoning a black hole feels as cool rp wise as a class like a fire mage summoning a phoenix or a dk summoning riders of the apocalypse. I get one really old model void entity for a bit. The black hole is useful but kind of odd it explodes at the end
2 Likes
I’m not doing casual content mate lol please do everyone a favor and don’t chip in when you don’t understand higher content. You are world questing not a mythic raider or m+ doer. Stay in your lane and let the folks who actually do the challenging content chip in.
Priest is my OG class since burning crusade but I expanded to playing a lot of other classes casually around legion. At this point in TWW many other classes have been revamped and updated, and now Priest is left feeling really outdated and sloppy. I would like to play priest but I can’t really justify it when I could pick something that actually feels well designed and fresh.
2 Likes
Man, I thought was a useless button still. At least it still has a purpose then. I know what they could add for us! A class designer!
1 Like
This so much. PW:S gets used more as a movement buff than an actual shield.
I agree on the self healing and it’s strange to me when priests and warlocks are both slow that the warlock seems to be more tanky.
1 Like