Lacking a bit on defensives as Spriest

We have just 2 real defensives both with downsides

Desperate Prayer/Vamp Embrace both off GCD and same cd so its a decent defensive but its not much even still.

Dispersion which incapacitates you for the duration, is on a long CD, and has 1 charge.

Compare that the the defensive glow-up that Hunters got or the overloaded kit that Mages have and youll see what I mean.

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We also have DR from talented fade and DR from talented flash heal, plus power word shield. They’re small and short, but they help.

Priest has weaker defensives but we do have a very versatile pretty much on demand 20% dr with Flash Heal and Fade. I think priest is okay on defensive, some classes/specs should be on the “weaker” side for some things. As long as the class can feasibly do high, high end keys then its fine imo. And priest can do high end keys currently.

We do have decent self healing, too bad devouring plague is losing the heal portion in midnight. If anything can be changed I’d like blizzard to keep the healing on DP, now SW: Madness, and possibly buff Vampiric Embrace back up.

Also true, we almost always have the highest healing below tanks (sometimes above them) which frankly doesn’t get the credit it deserves.

Priest has many options and small utilities that frequently go underappreciated.

Shadow is the squishiest spec in the game in PvE. Warcraft logs statistics show it pretty clearly.

Blizzard does seem to be doing a bit of scaling back on defensives for other classes like mages in Midnight Alpha so we may see raids/dungeons more scaled to doing proper amounts of damage for our defenses.

You mean it shows people don’t use most of the defensives over dpsing?

I guarantee you most priests don’t even realize they can get that 20% Dr

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No it’s literally the DPS with the highest deaths during raid combat by a hilarious margin, even in the hands of the most skilled players in the world.

The thing is 20% DR doesn’t save you from the types of damage events that are problematic in raids during progress. Not to mention how many specs have that DR effectively passively from their stats or talents, on top of having more stamina. You can absolutely have the 20% DR up for most pre emptive damage, but it doesn’t change the fact that priests can’t handle a lot of damage events (Avoidable or not) that other DPS can.

When we were progging Salhadaar I was the only one who couldn’t handle getting clipped by a P1 beam under any circumstance. Sure you’re not supposed to get hit by the beams, but mistakes happen especially on prog, and other specs got to live their mistakes a statistically significant percentage of the time.

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No, it shows that the top shadow priest players are dying significantly more than any other spec in the game.

I’m pretty sure top 10% players know Flash Heal gives a 10% DR.

Top 10% isn’t most, and I never said our kit was great.

rolls eyes at another pointlessly argumentative troll

Youd think people would have better things to do with their time than deny objective reality on a game forum. Whats the goal here? Lol.

Anyhow, priest defense has been inexplicably bad for a long time. And again i ask: why the f*** do we have less max hp than others? Isnt that supposed to be standardized among dps and healers?

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I haven’t messed around with points or anything for the next expansion, but those of you who have, have you found it hard to gather up all of the defensives on the priest tree?

I mean, angelic bulwark is on the left side end, fade giving 10% is on the right side end and deprecate prayer as well as the flash heal dr are each pretty low as well and kind of spread out on the tree as well.

Are there enough points to grab them all?

Yes. It’s very disparate.

“most skilled players in the world”

Proceeds to get hit by the easiest to dodge, slowest avoidable beam in the whole raid that is supposed to kill you.

Hpellipsis: :eye: :lips: :eye:

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You can grab the defensives quite well. Probably about the same as before, the only thing I dislike about the potential new tree is having to go pick up fade and desperate prayer. We are getting more points to spend in every tree, so it isn’t a big deal picking them all up still. I think shadow has an easier time getting to all the defensive nodes than disc/holy.

All in all, I think its just about the same as before for access, maybe slightly more efficient now.

Comments like this really make me question if someone has any experience at all.

It is a statistical fact that amongst the top 10% of Mythic raiders Shadow sits a significant difference above every other spec besides devastation evoker on deaths.

My anecdotal evidence to attempt to explain said fact is that Shadow lacks the passive survivability (Stamina, Mitigation, Panic mobility) to survive minor mistakes in the way that the majority of other specs can in the current game.

At the very least I have enough experience to not get hit by a slow beam that you can see coming from a mile away.

Statistics must be taken with a grain of salt, Evokers are dying more and they have crazy strong defensives, so that already tells you that defensives are not the problem.

You can’t just take a number you clearly don’t understand and swing it to ask for buffs.

Your anecdotal evidence only proves that you have a lot to improve as a player, and by the way, SP is one of the few specs that can actualy survive getting hit by the beam with a single defensive (Dispersion).

You can cover big mistakes with Dispersion, and then passive healing + Fade/Protective Light/Desperate Prayer/Vampiric Embrace will keep you alive against everything else. SP is tanky as hell.

Yes all those terrible players in the race to world first dying to avoidable damage during progress.

Dying to player mistakes doesn’t translate into a class being squishy.

Start by not getting hit by avoidable mechanics and then come back.

You can’t recover mistakes that 1 shot you with proactive cds…

That is the entire point. Shadow is dying more on average because when they make a mistake, they straight up die. And when other specs make mistakes they have enough innate defensiveness that they maybe live on a couple percent.

I’d much rather specs be less innately tanky and surviving be more about proactive cd usage, and that is the direction the game is going, but the disparity very much exists right now.

What? Of course you can, taking Salhadaar as an example, if you are soaking and you accidentally position yourself at the wrong place, you can use Dispersion and survive the soak+beam tick.

Everyone dies when they make a mistake. How does a Warrior survive getting hit by the beam? Or a Shaman? or a DH?