ive heard some spriest players say that spriest is very disconnected from the other 2 priest specs and needs to have more abilities become classwide. the unpruning mostly gave shadow abilities like mindblast to the entire class, but shadow did not get much in return. i heavily agree and really wish blizz would consider bringing more things back to help keep spriest viable and connected with it’s priest roots. off the top of my head i can think of renew, angelic feather and fear ward for classwide abilities. in terms of spriest specific abilities, id like to see the return of void shift and psychic horror baseline. then in the talent tree, void tendrils could take psychic horror’s spot. i’m not a long-time priest player though and i’d love to hear others thoughts/criticisms.
We have a lot of buttons now. As much as I would like to see a return of those abilities, we need to be careful as to which abilities to bring back.
I think we DEFINITELY need to bring back Flash Heal and remove Shadowmend. We should have another spell school to use if we get locked out of the other.
Mages = Fire/Frost/Arcane
Warlocks = Shadow/Fire
Druid = Nature/Arcane
Shaman = Nature/Fire/Frost
Priests = Holy/Shadow
Besides that… here is my list of wants.
- Dominate Mind (Talent)
- Spectral Guise
- Prayer of mending (useful to drop out of shadow and bounce around via SW:D)
Passives
- Masochism (I liked the ability to both flash heal my group, shield, PROM and SW:D prom to bounce around. but when I get low on mana, I like that i can SW:D backlash myself to get a tiny chunk to keep at it. So I would like Masochism to become either baseline or rolled into just SW:D.
After that I will take or not take w/e else comes out way, but I want 100% Flash heal and Prayer of Mending and then getting Spectral Guise is just a cherry on top.
This is what I missed the most about my old spriest. Loved popping that in pvp.
Spectral guise over greater fade or life swap (I know swap is iconic but it also kinda sucks to be forced to hold your trinket in 3s because this ability exists and that’s the only place you ever use it)
PoM baseline for all specs.
Fear ward baseline for all specs.
They could totally bring back mind spike. In its original form it was just a useful little ability for killing dots on a target to stop damage, or quickly bursting down a target that wouldn’t live very long.
I would like Mind Spike but only if it interacted with the spec in a meaning and fun way. Having said that, I think with the way the spec is playing out on beta currently, I don’t really see a place for Mind Spike. So I think we should get utility unpruning more so then DPS ability unpruning.
Was the dot killing not a meaningful interaction? Being able to instantly kill your dots on a target was a valuable tool for raids or other forms of progression content.
I mean interaction with the specs rotation and damage potential like with Cata Orbs or WoD CoP or MoP & WoD From Darkness comes Light talents.
As it stands now, the spec would have to change further in order to fit Mind Spike in any meaningful way. On top of adding another button which I think we have too many now. So we would need to remove something. My first choice is remove Void Bolt OR have Mind Spike outside of Void Form and it becomes Void Bolt while in Void Form.
as a utility button, there are many more valuable spells that could serve spriest better if they were returned. the healthswap of void shift, fear protection of fear ward, or extra healing capabilites of PoM are far more likely to increase spriest’s viability than the dot purge of mindspike. as a rotational/damage button its unnecessary in the current spriest design. i’d totally agree with bringing mindspike back if they got rid of voidform and voidbolt though. then maybe have mindspike attached to dark thoughts passive instead in that case.
Throwing this out there, I’m all for spectral Guise!, be great in M+ and PvE content and amazing in PvP!
I’m really torn about this subject… Because priest is the only class in WoW, with specs that deal thematically with opposite power sources. Holy & Shadow.
To me, it’s the - only - class where it doesn’t make a lot of sense Holy having access to a lot of shadow spells and Shadow having access to a lot of holy spells. Dunno, it kind of feels wrong, but that’s just a personal pov.
It already feels a bit jarring as a spriest having some light effects mixed with our shadowness.
the solution to that is just shadow-ifying the spells. for example, back in MoP, the final talent row for all priest specs was cascade, divine star and halo. for holy and disc these abilities were visually light spells that dealt holy damage. for shadow, they were visually shadow spells that dealt shadow damage. this could be applied to any holy/light based spells that become classwide. prayer of mending? boom, its now just called “dark mending” for shadow and has a shadow visual.
At the end of the day, we are still a Priest.
I think of it like this…
Holy has 2/1 Holy + Shadow Spells
Disc has 1/1 Holy + Shadow Spells
Shadow has 2/1 Shadow + Holy spells
They each use both, but Holy and Shadow use 1/2 as much of the opposite side.
Obviously don’t count the number of spells etc. This is just an concept, not actual representation of the game spells.
Flash, renew, pom, binding heal. Any would be great so I can keep myself alive in arena. Something to bait out kicks or something to do when kicked.
Back in MoP I could play with nearly anything in 2s and had the tools to keep myself alive.
I’d like to add the old Dominate Mind talent to modify Mind Control to the list of unpruning abilities. But in this case it should be a talent as having normal Mind Control is still useful in things like throwing people off cliffs or move them away from a control node or FC in CTF or MC the FC itself.
https://www.wowhead.com/spell=205367/dominant-mind
Dominate Mind: You may also control your own character while Mind Control is active, but Mind Control has a 2 min cooldown, and it may not be used against players.
I think we can fit that in our CC talent row by replacing one of the ones currently there.
- Last Word - This cant be made baseline as it would be way to strong in PvP. So if Dominate Mind replaces this, then Last word needs to be removed entirely and we have to stick with a 45sec CD silence (I am okay with this).
- Mind Bomb - Dominate Mind can replace this IF it doesn’t get buffed to become a stun again as its just pretty useless as a disorient / aoe interrupt as it were.
- Physic Horror - Dominate Mind can replace this and Physic horror can be moved to a PvP talent. I love this ability but I think it really shines in PvP and as such should move over there.
With having the option of picking Dominate Mind, Priests can then be a solid pick for 5 mans as they can shackle undead, fear a pack of mobs for an interrupt, Dominate Mind a Humanoid (This would be the Warlocks version of Enslave Demon) and should become a very useful ability as you can basically remove a DPS mob and add his to your DPS while you still free to cast/dps yourself & you could also possible grab a healer or tank mob to fit/fill those roles as needed. As long as blizzard allows a decent amount of mobs to be controlled in this fashion instead of blanket IMMMUNE everything from MC.
I think having access to Dominate Mind will be THE REASON people would want to bring a Priest to a group as we would be very strong in that regard and its very unique (aside from the Demon Enslave from Warlock).
Edit:
Legendary Idea
- Legendary: Mind Control duration increased by 50% and Dominate Minds CD reduced by 50%. (Mind Control duration affects Dominate Mind as well).
Conclusion:
Having Dominate Mind will be useful in 5 man situations where a Priest can hard CC up to 2 targets with Shackle Undead and Dominate Mind).
Undead & Humanoids
i would rather see mind bomb removed/relegated to a pvp talent in that case. having a 4sec stun on a 45s CD is very valuable in all content and not having that option would definitely be a blow to us.
What I am saying is, if Mind Bomb gets “fixed” and gets its “stun” back then great, it can stay. But if it STAY’s as it currently is (Disorient) then its useless and needs to be removed outright.
If its the former then Mind Bomb stays.
If its the later then replace Mind Bomb with Dominate Mind.
Edit:
To be clear, I want the choice of Dominate Mind regardless what talent it replaces.
Best/ideal case would be to keep Last Word as is, Fix Mind Bomb to make it a stun and replace Physic Horror with Dominate Mind and move Physic Horror to a PvP talent.
That would result in the following (most cases).
PvP - Last Word and Mind bomb are both good.
M+ - all 3 are good, leaning more so on Dominate Mind for hard hitting single target weeks and Mind Bomb for AOE control weeks.
Raid - Last Word would be the leaning go to choice.
Solo - Whatever your flavor is.