So what’s the verdict for priest in DF?

Does priest look good going into DF?

I primarily play holy right now, but have been an enjoyer of disc and shadow.

Anyone have any hands on time with it in beta?

Edit-I’m asking more for raid M+

TIA

we havent begun M+ testing 5 man heroics are kinda a face roll so theres not much to test atm raids they felt fine.

edit* also tuning hasnt really started happening well have to re evaluate in 2-3 weeks

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For M+ Holy is going to play largely the same as it does now: a single target heal pumper with decent damage output. Flash Concentration is swapped for Lightweaver which is basically FC 2.0. Empyreal Blaze is our new damage ability that every 30s cd makes your next 3 Holy Fires instant cast with no cd and the DoT stacks. There’s also another talent that makes your Smite do +50% damage against targets with your Holy Fire dot. Overall we can do more single target damage than we could with Boon, but less AOE damage. So give and take.

Shining Force is gone. We now have Void Tendrils (aoe root) and you can take Chastise stun. On the flip side were the only healer class without an interrupt coming into the expansion, but we have a new ability called Dominate Mind that we can use. It lets you for 30s turn non-undead/mechanical into a pet that you can re-MC every 30s.

Lastly, Twin Suns is now a Priest talent so you get PI on yourself as well as the person you cast it on.

For raid Holy is getting nerfed and buffed at the same time. The loss of Fae Guardians means no more 2 minute divine hymns. The two competing playstyles is going to be Lightweaver vs the new Prayer of Healing build. There’s several new talents that buff up Prayer of Healing to do basically double the healing it did in Shadowlands.

I don’t know how Holy is going to do performance wise or which build is going to be better, but that’s a matter of tuning. We could have strong throughput or mediocre. Some fights playing Lightweaver might be better than PoH and vice versa.

Also, we have new talents like Divine Word which are really strong…

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Blizzard made it very clear they don’t care about priests, so I wouldn’t get too excited. Genuinely surprised they haven’t just deleted the class and justified it by saying “other classes already exist”. Going to be an awful experience considering we aren’t really getting anything new and disc/holy play literally the exact same way, except somehow worse.

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It’s not all doom and gloom: we keep all the buffs holy priest received from 9.0.5 to 9.2 (stronger divine hymn, improved Symbol of Hope, buffed Guardian Angel, a lot of DPS buffs, etc.)

Losing covenants is unfortunate but we have new toys to play with: Empyreal Blaze/Mind Games/holy fire buffs for DPS, a lot of passive single target healing buffs, Divine Word as a new buff window, a bunch of CoH/PoH buffs, shield might actually be useful, and a ridiculous number of PoM buffs which is just free smart healing, etc. etc.

And as tuning plays itself out, hpriest might play very differently in DF. I’m curious if CoH/PoH spam makes a comeback by e.g. taking Miracle Worker with 2 charges of Sanctify, then Sanctify Your Prayers to buff PoH, then Prayer Circle-buffed CoH->multiple PoHs or the like. That would be very different than live.

I’d be more doom and gloom but I remember how sad hpriest felt at the beginning of BFA. It’s taken 2 expansions but I feel like the spec is crawling out of the hole that pruning left it in.

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Nobody really knows because tuning isn’t in.

If I were to just take their current tuning, pretending that the current patch went to live:

Disc is looking weak in damage, largely tuning issues there. Their healing is looking much better, and their raid playstyle is still intact and working well.

Holy is a damage monster because their damage talents are all fairly low investment for significant return currently. They’re bursting harder than Paladin at the start of a pull right now, which I can’t imagine stays. Their healing definitely took a hit, but they have multiple playstyles now focused around either spot healing or raid healing.

Shadow feels half-baked in a totally new way. Some of the talents are likely to carry it and make it playable, but realistically they need more design work, too.

I hope that hpriest’s new damage profile is Blizz’s answer to priests lacking utility, i.e. more damage is the utility that priest should bring, both indirectly through PI and more directly through either atonement or a burst window for holy.

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mindspike build looks f-ing awesome for shadow, holy is the same as it always has been, disc is falling apart and will feel horribly clunky

I could not disagree more, disc feels 100x better on beta than it does on live

I have high hopes that disc priest for pvp is still a top tier healer. I have a paladin and a whammy and a Druid on deck if priest sucks. But I love priest it would break
My heart to watch them struggle (big hugs to miatweavers who powered through s1 and 2 of this terrible xpac)

i think its going to be tough for priest in pvp cuz were lacking a kick and now every team will have 3 but any team that takes a priest will always be down one kick.

I’d settle for silence in a 40 sec rotation! Disc priests shoul have silence like spriests

that feeling is shared across the community it should be on our class tree where VE is cuz that spell doesn’t do anything, for 2/3 specs.

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