The spell maybe helps 1 attack if that during this expansion when in past expansions it helped shield much more. I feel super duper squishy this time.
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For shadow? It’s not much. It’s worth casting still because free mitigation isn’t something we can leave in the table, but it’s not designed to save us sadly.
Shadow does have some decent mitigation though. We’re still a clothie, but dispersion, fade and desperate prayer work decently well. Not to mention self healing with VT is nice to have.
While kiting can help a lot with avoiding damage, sometimes standing your ground and channeling our burst is the best way to make it through a fight.
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What burst?
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It’s a nice meme, but we do have burst. Dots up, Halo into insanity spam does good damage. Add in void eruption to top it all off.
It takes so long to get set up for burst that you’re 90% of the way to dead before you can stabilize.
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Yeah the mit from PW:S is certainly lacking on Shadow, but like Brandybuck said it’s one of those things where it can still be better to press than not if it means giving you an extra second to set up other forms of burst or pop Vampiric Embrace.
I honestly self cast PW:S so often out of habit because I constantly use Body & Soul that it’s just muscle memory for me on all three specs, too.
Curious if Void Shield and Crystalline Reflection are worth talenting into as well? Never given them a whirl so I have no clue what their tuning is like, but they sound interesting.
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Vamp embrace is helpful at times, but I think I’m talking more about questing and doing things in the world, rather than group content. In solo content, mobs tend to die before Vampiric embrace is helpful. I remember PWS helping quite a bit doing solo world stuff but now because of how much health people have and how much damage mobs throw at you PWS does next to nothing. I dont remember it being such a poor mitigator.
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You’re definitely not wrong in that it’s kind of a victim to the aggressive scaling and hp/dmg numbers we’re seeing right now, it’s not what it used to be in terms of a micro-cooldown for active mitigation and I miss that too.
I still find that it’s quite useful for kiting or repositioning in combination with Body & Soul for when I need to move out of a bad situation and eat a hit or two though, or when combined with Fade.
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PW:S has been useless since Shadowlands It’s not scaling that’s making it suck its intentional design on blizzards part.
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I could be misremembering, but is the Mage shield a minute CD?
Part of the balance philosophy around the shield from PWS being small is because we can use it every 6 seconds. In past iterations when it was a bigger absorb when we had the weakened soul debuff. Unable to recast it for 15 seconds.
Now we have it every six, and to compensate, it’s a smaller shield. Personally I don’t think it would be the end of the world to give priest more protection, but eh… I’m not on the balance team.
Would you prefer a bigger shield but a longer CD?
Yes because that would be useful. In its current form, it’s functionally useless unless you can cast it every GCD.
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Fair enough.
I’m usually casting it anyway to move around with Body and Soul, but I can see the merit in a more substantial shield less often.
If I were on the balance team, I’d boost the power of PWS and decouple the speed boost from it, making it its own thing, or tying it to something else.
This just came to mind, but it’d be cool if feather gave a gust of wind effect instead of a raw movement buff. Maybe only personal, cuz that could get VERY trolly. XD
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Absolutely. Power Word: Shield used to be quite satisfying to cast and the priest was able to buy time to apply another shield in PvP fights. The shield was significant and provided a defensive buffer which allowed for some risky offensive plays to be made. Now, I get to cast the shield more often which simply means that I have to expend more gcds on it. The current version of Power Word: Shield is terrible.
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Void shield against casters is alright, but you’re not going to be able to pump enough to be worthwhile against melee, where you really need it
and focused will, and the talent that heals back melee crit or reduces magic by 3%, and the 3% magic absorb or 2% siphon from teammates. Vamp embrace, flash heal and the flash heal 10% damage reduction, and life swap. Prolly missing something. Spriest has a crazy amount of tools to live, what it needs is less casting to push out pressure in return.
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You nailed it. We do have a lot of tools to survive. They just get eaten up quick when getting trained and the necessity of casting means we can’t deter them through counter offense.
It’s not just the necessity to cast. The casts have no impact. You can play through 3 different stops to finally land a VT or Mind Blast, but what did you accomplish? At best, you have finally managed to cast a spell that deals 5% of someone’s HP while you are sitting at 50%.
There are very few abilities that on their own do any serious damage. It’s not the game were in anymore sadly.
Long lists are cool and all, and priest’s tools are better than nothing, but whether the length of that list matches its strength is another thing entirely. Priest has a long list of very weak defensive traits with decent cooldowns. Warlock’s Soul Link is as powerful as that whole list of passives you mentioned by itself.
Dispersion, Desperate Prayer, and Fade are good. Void Shift and Focused Will are useful in PvP. The rest of that stuff you mentioned? Doesn’t add up to the sum of its numerous parts when it’s all comparable to a single talent in most other class trees.
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No it isn’t lol. Focused will is 30% damage reduction alone, fade and flash heal dr is another 20%. That’s more wall than most other class in the game has. Warlocks defensive ability is so much less than spriest they are allotted various mobility tools to make up for it.
SPriests defensive capability is literally one of the best, if not the single best. It’s offensive capability under pressure is worth scrutiny for sure. I know this class forums cause a vacuum of negativity but you guys take it way too far. Priests defensives are insanely strong. Focus on it’s actual weaknesses.
I haven’t even mentioned disperse which is amazing in pvp and pve.
Spriest in pve can output incredible heals by simply spamming PWS on cd.
I was tanking double melee for 5-7 minutes per round in RSS on spriest last season and I don’t even main it. It does plenty well if you push the buttons right defensively. Just needs smoother pressure output while under pressure for pvp.
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