Mobility kinda isnt a much of a problem like it used to be, for disc anyways. ( I rolled off priest back early Legion because mobility was really bad )
Body and soul, Feather’s+Divine Feathers in the Oracle Tree, and Blaze of Light are all useful for going zoom. Not to mention we have a lot of instant casts.
Just matching your tone. You came into the thread dismissive of the very real issue of priest mobility because they have very high uptime on Angelic Feather. You disregard that priest has no displacement, no resistance to roots, the worst slow resistance in the game, and no natural CC resistance. Claiming that priest is the 2nd most mobile class in the game is wild.
I know you won’t read the following but, for I’m still going to post it for posterity.
Your proposed buff to Leap of Faith is terrible. Not only is a single 5%hp shield on 90s cooldown extremely weak, but Blizzard implementing that would be potentially the most shameful addition to a long tradition of Blizzard making a token change to priest to shut people up about the class being a design outlier.
Priest has a long history of Blizzard giving its unique abilities to other classes and then doing one of the following:
Removing the priest ability, as was done with Shining Force, and Rapture. High Explosive/Implosive Trap, current Tunderstorm, and Mass Barrier are derivative of these abilities and are also strictly superior to the priest versions, as are…
Ensuring the derivative ability is stronger than the priest version, as was done with Leap of Faith, Rapture (in PvE), Vampiric Embrace, Shackle Undead, Dispersion, and Mass Dispel.
Rescue is many times more powerful than Leap of Faith, with complete freedom of movement for two players, a massive shield on both players, and a tiny 60s cooldown. Mass Barrier is far more valuable as a group defensive than Rapture was in PvE, and Nature’s Vigil and Ancestral Guidance were strictly superior to Vampiric Embrace. Improved Banish broadened Banish’s already impressive selection of targets to undead and cannot be broken, while Shackle Undead remains the narrowest Sap effect in the game. Ice Cold is Dispersion without the self-silence, a longer duration, and a more powerful heal. Mass Dispel, post nerf, is a greatly inferior version of Revival or Arcane Torrent depending on the situation and its ability to cleanse allies and purge enemies is almost never utilized in PvE.
Before universal magic dispels were the design, only priest and paladin could cleanse magic debuffs. Blizzard decided a universal dispel type made sense, and it does, and expanded magic dispel to all classes, but did not expand priest’s dispel options, leaving it with the narrowest and, by the numbers, least useful cleanse in the game.
And kicks? It’s no secret that priests are the only class without a kick on every spec, but Silence also boasts an impressive 45s cooldown because it prevents spell casting for 5s rather than only locking the specific spell school. Silence was a standard ranged kick with near double the cooldown with a tiny upside that mattered in maybe one encounter an expansion if you’re lucky and as of TWW it’s a standard ranged kick with near double the cooldown with no upside at all because of mob casting cooldowns.
Blizzard loves designing things for priest that simply do not work and refusing to abandon them. See Cauterizing Shadows, mechanically, and Power Infusion, socially. They also refuse to rework the class’s core kit so that it’s not two completely different animals in PvP and PvE, which leads to the class having extremely limited and, generally weak, options in PvE because the options it does have are extremely powerful in PvP. The class needs a full core rework to reconcile these issues, but Blizzard is too busy spending all their time fully reworking a mage talent tree every patch to spend enough time on priest to change more than 5 talents per expansion or iterate on their expansion feature after the alpha cycle.
Shadowlands had some good features and a lot of terrible ones.
I don’t know why the covenant abilities were scrapped because they brought new life to the class.
If Hero Talents were essentially new Covenant abilities, I would like them more.
My feather! You no take feather!
Priest is literally the fastest class in the game if you’re discipline priest (if you take feathers and also the power word shield = faster movement talent and the talent that makes penance increase your speed)
I regularly beat every other class to wherever we’re running —
Even if you aren’t disc — you’re still one of the fastest classes in a pinch.
I literally have no issues with movement EVER.
I even swapped from Goblin to another race because I felt like it and I have not missed goblin jump at all.
Speed when you are running back after a wipe is not useful.
What is useful is instant displacement.
Death Knight = N/A
Demon Hunter = Fel Rush / Infernal Strike
Druid = Wild Charge
Evoker = Rescue
Hunter = Disengage
Mage = Blink
Monk = Transcendence
Paladin = N/A
Priest = N/A
Rogue = Shadow Step / Grappling Hook
Shaman = Gust of Wind
Warlock = Demonic Circle
Warrior = Heroic Leap
So only 3 classes that don’t have a displacement ability. Funny enough you always hear about Paladins and Death Knights complaining about being slow.
Death Knights are supposed to be slow and tanky which I think it’s true enough.
Paladins have Divine Shield to be immune which makes up for not having a Displacement.
Meanwhile Priests can fill in for both Paladin and Death Knights to move them with Leap of Faith but can’t help themselves like Evoker can. Also from my experience when playing with random, Priests (especially the healing priests) seem to die often to things that never seem to kill any other character I am playing as it with. More Holy Priests vs Discipline Priests.
So unless I forgot something, only 3 classes can’t self displace themselves with Priest being the only caster that is already immobile more so than the other 2 because of the fact we have to root yourself to hard cast spells where as Paladin and Death Knight can at least move while doing what they need to do (less so with Holy Paladin).
People that think priest mobility is fine probably don’t do BGs and spend most of the game with a 60%+ slow on them. You are roleplay walking around the map. Then you get death gripped farther than you are able to move your character during the cooldown of deathgrip, making negative progress. Have fun staying in range of a flag carrier or getting to a node objective with that going on.
I’m sure in PVE when you rarely have a slow on your character it doesn’t seem that bad. Just position smart and use feathers.
This is another reason why I like oracle tbh.
People cant steal my feathers because it gives me the buff anyways :3