I also agree with this, but I think we need to consider what we know of how Blizzard looks at priest in this context.
During Dragonflight beta, Blizzard said that Mind Soothe was all priest needed to have reasonable utility, which implies that theoretical strength of Mass Dispel and Power Infusion justified priest having no other basic tools. And, as we saw, the dungeon design was so well suited to priest that, for the first time ever, priest did have valuable utility.
But then priest was so unhealthy in their dungeon paradigm that they significantly nerfed or removed every bit of utility priest brought, and then the designed their dungeons for TWW to require true kicks, more stops, have less skippable trash, almost no impactful diseases, and almost no AoE magic debuffs.
So while I do agree with your logic, I disagree that priest wasn’t having problems - they simply addressed those problems by lazily pruning back priest’s capabilities because of the Dragonflight dungeon environment instead of giving it the attention they’ve given most other classes at this point.
They did this before the beta - and Priest wasn’t a god tier in the first season. That was all later stuff.
I don’t think that was their thought process at all. I’m FAIRLY sure they looked at PI and giving us a free twins of the sun priestess in DF’s talents as a “wow we should really reduce some utility here.” And I still think the only reason Priest doesn’t have an interrupt is that they’re afraid of PvP since Priest is so good in setup comps that they don’t want to let them have more control. When it came to Mass Dispel nerfs? Yeah those were in response to a set of dungeons where MD was incredible. Similarly, PCT for Shamans is getting the same treatment the second a set of dungeons favored poison/curse dispel (it’s not just the affix, here).
But really, the vast majority of priests changes happened before S1, and priest was NOT the god of S1. If anything they were sleeper. Season 2 was when Spriest took off into the stratosphere and the utility they still had was deemed too much.
But make no mistake Priest was a mainstay in M+ all of DF starting from S2 because of Shadow. And while they had issues with raid/ST through the xpac, they weren’t really excluded there. Holy even became very popular late into the xpac in raid.
I’m not talking about losing Shining Force and not gaining any new abilities going into Dragonflight - I’m talking about Mind Soothe becoming Bad Shroud of Concealment, Mass Dispel becoming Bad Revival, and PI losing 25% of its duration and 20% of its haste bonus. We went into Dragonflight with essentially no utility likely because Twins was baselined, as you speculate, but nerfing what little utility priest had happened during Dragonflight because Blizzard accidentally designed most of the dungeons in such a way that priest trivialized many of the most difficult problems.
Blizzard accidentally designed the dungeon environment to suit priest perfectly and priest utility was gutted as a result, but the dungeon environment now has almost nothing that priest can do other than damage or heal. There’s what, two, diseases to dispel in the whole game right now? There’s nothing worth casting Shackle on. Skips aren’t really a thing, so Mind Soothe has dubious value. There’s no group-wide magic debuffs, so Mass Dispel is there for the first pull of Mists and for the affix every few weeks.
Priest was in a bad state during Dragonflight despite its power. It had a negative influence on the game, and Blizzard’s response wasn’t to rework priest to make it a healthier design, but leave it unhealthy and nerf it to limit its damage on the game environment.
Mass Dispel that was nerfed from 45 seconds to 2 minutes and still dispels less debuffs than other classes? Not just that, but half the time you pop Mass Dispel, you’re killing your entire group because Magic effects don’t typically want to be removed at once without some kind of AoE going off.
Mind Control is used in very niche PvP-only circumstances, and even then can be broken out of. Otherwise, if you love the idea of putting a leash on a mob in a dungeon to be your pet, then congrats I guess.
Power Infusion is a dreaded, hated cooldown that has literally been our version of Rune of Power for years, preventing Priests from getting any sort of meaningful changes to other support spells. It’s (almost) universally hated.
I can’t in good faith say I appreciate anything about Priests right now aside from our visuals.
I can kind of see what you’re saying but I’m mostly talking about
I don’t think this is true - I think they thought twins was too good to add more back to the spec and were pruning control because of setup comps. I don’t think it was like an intentional “these are enough” more “man PI is scary, what can we take away without highly impacting the class too much,”
And all of this was in 10.2 post-xpac drop. Blizzard’s balance is reactionary, is what I’m getting at. They made some changes to the class then went ‘oopsie better turn that back!’ and are sitting on it to evaluate. Priest hasn’t fallen off the map yet, so they’re not a priority to them. Hence I’m not expecting anything before a major patch.
This isn’t to say this is the best course of action for them or anything. Just I think it’s what’s been going through their heads.
Mass Dispel has actually been nerfed from no CD with a .5 second cast to a 2 minute CD with a 1.5 second cast. They have not been gentle with their gutting of this spell.
I agree this was likely their motivation, but they never should’ve baseline Twins or made PI ally-cast if they thought that they needed to keep the class super lopsided as a result. It’s an even worse idea after reducing the value of that tool dramatically in 10.2. The proper approach to that situation would be to rework priest’s utility kit, but instead they just nerfed it and left it barren.
Priest has never been a priority. BFA, SL, DF all promised attention only to “run out of time” after doing no design until the month before release. I do think priest is getting a massive overhaul in 11.1 because it was so problematic in Dragonflight that they just nerfed its utility kit and left it with no unique strengths to justify its numerous unique weaknesses. There’s no excuse for them leaving it as it is - it’s an outlier in design and its impact on the game has been overwhelming negative ever since they neglected it in DF development.
Mass Dispel has negligible value, Mind Control was useful in the Jaina fight but not before or since, and Power Infusion is possibly the most reviled ability in the history of the game. Arguably, these three abilities are more responsible for the class being so lopsided simply due to the theoretical value these abilities used to provide.
Ah yes, Power Infusion, the dps cooldown that priests are regularly blackmailed to use for the sake of everyone else other than the casting priest themselves.
I can never use it at my own convenience to boost my own healing or dps output, no siree, I can only ever use this when my assigned dps pops their dps cooldown or whispers me for PI.
And what do priests get in return for sacrificing their personal output? They move so much slower than every other spec, have the worst personal defensives, have the least crowd control and their healing specs remain the only specs in the game with no interrupt for a game mode that is balanced around both interrupts and crowd control.
Then don’t play a priest. I don’t understand why you’re playing the class if you don’t like what it provides. If you keep playing it, then there must be something you like that it has that other classes do not right?
Because many of us have a long history of playing this class. We like the lore, we like the visuals, we like different pieces of the limited toolkit that are unique to us.
This doesn’t mean priest is fine, we want our class to be on par with every other class in the game. Again, it’s baffling to me you are, with your whole chest, suggesting that priest should not be improved.
Amen. It drives me quite nutty to play this single target whackamole spec to provide far more efficient aoe healing than using my actual aoe heals and talents.
Someone’s lack of enjoyment with Priest does not invalidate another’s enjoyment with it. I hate arguing with Blizzard apologists. They are too narrow-minded to recognize that even if they enjoy Priest the class can still be improved.
That being said, Priest’s design is objectively antiquated. If you think it has no flaws then go play Classic where every class is designed with friction in mind.
Fun story… Mass dispel is useless in these new dungeons. I literally run without the talent lmao. So yea… nobody cares a 2min talent that is useless in the current season.
Mind control has no play in PvE 99% of the time.
PI is nice, hated and loved. But today’s PI is nowhere near the power this buff used to do in Shadowlands. Nobody cares about PI anymore in M+.
btw, all these things are shared between 3 specs so that makes a conflict too.
If shadow is meta → Disc and Holy suffer because you already bring a shadow for PI/MD.
If healer is meta → Shadow suffers because you already bring a priest healer.
Priest need utilities tied to their specs instead of their class tree.
So that over the next 2 weeks they can get nerfs (I’m kidding, but only kind of).
Nobody knows why specific classes get what they get specifically - all we can do is guess based on their history. But as it’s a talent implementation patch, most the classes in it are going to get buffs (quite like happened in DF several times). But they’re still on the block for tuesday to roll around and get a sudden tuning adjustment. Which might happen, might not, but it definitely happened in DF, and that seems to be the patch cadence we’re on now.
Thank you for answering like this, Mifa. This is exactly it.
When I was a Mythic raider, I played Resto Shaman. The last time I did that was Legion. Got Cutting Edge Titanslayer, and then my guild fell apart in BfA.
I had a baby and picked up Priest to play casually for a change of pace. I fell in love with it, and ever since I’ve been playing one as my main because Resto Shaman just got too boring for me (Earth Shield no longer being permanent and Chain Heal spam for a whole expansion).
I love Priest, but that doesn’t mean I can’t also hate things about it.
I hate watching every other class get updates and reworks every patch.
I hate that I feel so limited in my Talent choices because we have the most 2-point talents out of every class (FYI, it’s 18 for Holy).
I hate that Archon was a completely missed opportunity that is thematically one of the worst in the whole game compared to its description.
I hate that I need to spend 11 Talent Points to make Prayer of Mending feel good enough to use.
I hate that we have no real mobility and rely on other classes to save us.
I hate that I can’t do the minimal task and dispel more debuffs despite being a healer.
I hate that they give our spells away to other classes, while saying “You can’t have X because everyone else does.”
I hate a lot of things about Priest, but at the end of the day I still love it and want it to be better. The fact that you’re arguing and disagreeing with quite literally everybody in this thread tells me that you intentionally want Priest to be left in a poor state of play, or are just trolling us for kicks.
