Just to really highlight how bad priest mobility is:
Death’s Advance/Wraith Walk: 45s/60s cd, 29.75 yards of movement over 10 seconds, functional slow immunity. Death’s Advance is worth 75.25 yards for RotA.
Fel Rush/Infernal Strike: 10s/20s cd, 20/30 yards of instant movement and damage.
Skull Bash/Wild Charge: 15s/15s cd, 13/25 yards of instant movement
Evoker: Nothing needs to be mentioned here for obvious reasons.
Disengage: 20s cd, 20+ yards instant movement, 14 yards extra movement over 4 seconds
Blink/Shimmer: 15s/25s cd, 20 yards of instant movement.
Roll/Chi Torpedo: 15s/20s cd, 3/2 charges, 20 yards of instant movement or 20 yards of instant movement with 21 yards extra movement over 10 seconds
Divine Steed: 45s cd, 2 charges, 35 yards of movement over 5 seconds.
Rogue: 15-25% baseline faster movement speed, 30s cd 25 yard blink with 70% movement speed boost, Sprint is 84 yards of movement over 12 seconds on a 60s cd.
Ghost Wolf/Gust of Wind: 0s/20s cd, 14 yards over 3 seconds with an extra 2.8 yards per second infinitely thereafter. Gust of Wind is 15(?) yards instantly.
Burning Rush/Demonic Circle: 0s/30s cd, 3.5 yards bonus movement per second. Demonic Circle has infinite range as long as the warlock has previously been there and is instant.
Charge/Intervene/Heroic Leap: 20s/30s cd, 25 yards instant movement. Heroic Leap also grants 14.7 yards movement over 3 seconds.
- Angelic Feather gives you 14 yards of bonus movement over 5 seconds and Body and Soul gives 8.4 yards of bonus movement over 3 seconds. Combine the two of them to get 22 yards of movement over 8 seconds.
What does this mean? Priest can use 100% of their movement skills to match, or fall short of, the movement available to every other class over 8 seconds and Angelic Feather’s cooldown is comparable to most movement skills except for those available to death knight and paladin, both of which are functionally immune to movement impairment.
Other classes that are nearly as slow, such as shaman and warlock, still move at least 25% faster than priest with their slowest options and are also capable of resisting movement impairment in addition to having displacement options.
Every other class has 20-30 yard displacement abilities on 15s-20s cooldowns, often with several charges that allow them to move extreme distances quickly if they know they don’t need to move quickly again until their charges are back.
And just as an extra point of humor, movement ability cooldowns get reduced by 15% for every class except priest and priest receives less benefit from Stampeding Roar and Wind Rush Totem than any class with displacement because its movement speed bonuses are overridden by those abilities while classes with displacement can gain the bonus movement and then use displacement to move even faster if needed.
Conclusion: As a practical matter, priest is a minimum of 25% slower than the other “slow” classes, but can be as much as 80% slower depending on talent choices and the movement demands, and about 86% slower than the “fast” classes regardless of their talent choices.
Warlocks will always have access to Demonic Gateway while Priest can only access such a degree of movement if a Warlock happens to be present in his group.
Do you want to play a paladin with no plate armor, no bres and no reliable interrupt? Do you want to play a druid with less mobility and no leather armor and no interrupt?
Do you want to play a mage with no mobility, no damage, and only decent healing throughput on one spec?
I want door of shadows or wild shape back for my priest, so very much. Or any of the covenant abilities to come back really. They were fun. And the added mobility was great keeping up with zoomy tanks.
Priest utility hasn’t been this low in years tbh…
With the massive nerf to MD, no interrupt, no defensives, mid healing, no mobility, worse dispel ability and clothie…
Blizzard reduced utility across the board when they entered the pruning era, and not only has every class except priest had their utility returned or expanded, but priest’s has actually been pruned even further.
Life Grip should be a choice node where you can grip yourself to someone. Basically that PVP Choice node.
Voidy Door of Shadows/Holy Heaven’s Gate. Basically SL Ravendreth ability updated visuals.
Spectral Guise - Fade into the Shadows. Shadow Clones absorbs dmg. Reduces dmg taken by 30% when in the Shadows, movement speed increased by x% for x secs. Basically like the OG version, maybe a bit longer duration.
Rework Solutions:
Verdant Embrace/Intervene redesign - Turn into a Apotheosis/Dark Apotheosis and fly towards an ally granting them a PW:S/Void Shield.
DeepBreath/Dream Flight redesign - Turn into a Apotheosis/Dark Apotheosis and fly in that direction doing absolutely nothing but actually gaining a good mobility ability.
Void Swap - Swap position with your Mindbender/Shadowfiend’s location. Obviously a high skill node probably more meant for PVP than PVE.
Worth mentioning Apotheosis still triggers GCD which makes no sense considering Serenity is not as strong as it used to be and Sanctify is a joke in 5man content
It wasn’t tho. A well timed Door of shadows was able to negate mechanics. I still remember how useful it was for Nathria for the seeds boss or the ring boss in Sepulcher
Door of shadows could easily save you in last boss of Arakara if you fail the root, could make life simpler when dealing with portals in Stonevault last boss or Tirna last boss to reposition yourself without having to touch green goo.
