Man, just reading about disc priests in DF is depressing. I suppose I’m glad the evoker class is coming out it s gonna be so op for a couple seasons. But I love priest but I guess I’ll have to park it.
If you pvp you’ll know what a giant mess everything is. Blizz couldnt balance 1+1 with a nasa scientist. They just can’t balance stuff. Never have. Pvp is even worse. To the point they just let the fiery train go crazy as ozzy would say. Haha look at Druid’s and hunters and warlocks right now it’s so bad.
I just get depressed I have a priest paladin shaman Druid up and coming and an evoker. One of them has to be good in DF because we know blizz can’t balance them. I guess it’s the priests turn to sit on the crappy bench (big hugs to mistweavers who endured season 1, 2, 3 in pvp)
I’m pretty critical in general so I agree that Blizzard have done a good job of making an absolute mess of PvP balancing for Priests, they have done an equally good job of it on other healing specs too which means comparatively Priests likely won’t be as bad as you think.
Some overall thoughts from a noob PvPer who usually chills at 2k or so on every healer and only played enough to get 2400 (2’s) once in BfA.
- Rdruid has managed to keep its entire toolkit and get additional perks like Barkskin absorb and kick. The only impactful loss so far has been Rake stun. But being able to take swiftmend extend, overgrowth, buffed convoke, rejuv spread and extend etc feels very OP. I wish I liked Rdruid more because it has crazy potential in DF. It has every tool you want, good throughput, good mana, good CD’s and for SoloQ stealth opening is very nice. Damage is lacking but that’s pretty normal for 3’s.
- Rsham feels about the same as live but in a more chaotic environment. You can still get away with doing almost nothing but pressing Riptide and dropping totems. Double shields and two Earth Shields feels very good. The days of being able to aggressively push in vs enemy healers for kick/hex and be able to zone them feels over. Every other healer has more buttons to counter CC or kick back.
Unfortunately those are the only two specs I can say feel better for me in DF than SL. They’re also the two healing specs I have the least experience on so take that with a huge grain of salt.
- Holy Priest without Gfade and set bonuses is laughable. You can do infinite throughput for about 30 seconds but once CD’s are down and mana is burned you’re playing from behind for the rest of the match. Even maintenance healing for a minute or so will put you 20-80% behind an enemy MW, Rdruid or Rsham who press nothing. Throughput is now almost entirely gated behind CD’s which makes Holy feel a lot more like Disc; you’re on the clock for mana and you need to constantly trade CD’s to stay in the game. Res talent isn’t even as close to egregious in DF as SL because in SL Holy is a good healer who also has res lego but in DF Holy is a mediocre healer with bad personal defensives that has res as a means to compensate. Losing Gfade is huge.
- Disc without a shadow school and very nerfed PW:R is a bit of a meme. I couldn’t make it feel good at all. Funnily enough Disc now plays a lot like Holy does in SL with “setup” Renews/Atonement and keeping PoM on CD but it doesn’t have any buttons to instantly top people when you come out of CC or during enemy CD’s. You get to press Penance and that’s it and ironically Penance is only strong defensively after using it offensively for Harsh Discipline. Not being able to MD bubble/BoP also feels extremely bad. I can see Disc continuing to be God tier in RBG’s for Dome and Atonement healing but utterly trash in Arena. I don’t know how Blizzard fix it but a Discipline Priest standing around in 3’s spamming Flash Heal asking to get kicked and have no answer to it is possibly the worst PvP iteration of Disc ever. A lot of PvPers think of Disc as the “fun” healer and I think that mentality dies in DF as it currently stands.
- Mistweaver is much better at what it already is good at but still dies to a swap stun. It still has to cast to heal. It still has the Soothing delay. It still does absolutely zero damage and offers nothing offensively to a team. It is no longer the mana king because Rdruid and Rsham can keep people alive for minutes on end while staying above 90% mana just like MW but those other healers can also get aggressive and zone you easily with longer range CC and kicks.
- Hpal felt pretty similar to live but obviously without set bonuses it loses group Lay on Hands. Tuning is going to make or break Hpal because it’s the healer that has gained the least, lost the least and is the most similar to live. LoD hitting for 15k when Dream Breath hits for 45k makes Hpal feel bad but if tuning fixes those sorts of disparities it could be up in the meta with Druid and Sham.
- Preservation has crazy stacked throughput and can do some damage and has decent cooldowns to trade but feels hamstrung by 25 (now 30 and haven’t tested since) yard range. It will take much better players than I to figure out how to play Preservation to its strengths. I do fine healing melee cleaves but struggle to keep casters alive. I also have no idea how to survive vs half the mongo teams I face because defensives are comically weak. Probably needs to play like MW and avoid melee connecting but also 25 yard range makes that borderline impossible to do while healing a team. Casters sitting at 30-40 yards and doing what they want feels bad. Roots and slows are absolute game breakers too. Once Monks used Ring to zone me rather than using it on the DPS or DK’s gripped me away from the team rather than gripping the kill target away I struggled and stopped playing.
All the casual PvP enjoyers know the phrase “kill the Blue” and fall back on that a lot at low MMR. I can see a phrase like “spread the Green” becoming popular. Any team that splits up and hits different targets in different locations on the map is going to absolutely decimate Preservation.
Buddy I totally appreciate your insight on the heal classes! Especially the disc and shammy. I also have a paladin and I hear they are becoming more of a caster type healer? Like in good ol wrath days. I remember palsy healers being THE healer in raids and pvp. So of the tree lineage and talents etc that we get to “create” there will be meta and the rest will suck so I really hope they work on that. We don’t have a designated dev for pvp yet I don’t think. Last one left after season 1 to dreamhaven and they didn’t bother to replace…mind you that was at the pinnacle of the lawsuit so maybe they replaced. But pvp gets no love I mean The Watcher himself said that if he could have his way he would eliminate pvp from the world of Warcraft. So the very guy In charge has no interest in pvp and it shows.
Ya there’s a really good chance that evokers are straight up the worst pvp class in the game lol
They have some neat pvp talents that protect them from cc, but once something gets through they’re going to get absolutely railed because they’re so squishy and can’t go anywhere once they get rooted
there are bug fixes and damage buffs needed in many areas but the tree as it stands if amazing. The new mindspike build is insanely fun.
fingers crossed they stay that way. with their mobility and toolkit they would be a nightmare.