Priest Changes Coming!

[MongoJerry]

Soo, I think we can just require all of our mages/warlocks to roll priests now and we'd be fine. Both of the -threat talents got improved, which is a little ridiculous because a well geared dps-ing shadow priest is VERY capable of topping damage meters in MC and especially BWL, where threat is even more of a big deal (I know this from experience, talk to LucidityAxel from the Basin). I mean, I'm really happy for the priests, but a little bitter at the same time.

The trouble with shadow damage is that shadow spells only get 42% benefit from +damage gear and other than Mind Blast, they can't crit. In addition, a shadow priest runs into mana difficulties quickly during a long fight that mages and warlocks don't run into. A well geared tier 2 epic mage will always (or at least *should* always) out dps a similarly equiped shadow priest quite easily.

However, the new holy/disc trees look pretty yummy for damage dealing. If I wanted to be a pure priest damage dealer, I'd go with this spec:

Holy Damage Build

This gives +15% damage and +10% crit to all holy spells, reduces the cast time on Holy Smite by .5 seconds, reduces threat by 16%, and gives the priest a boatload of mana. In addition, Holy Reach combined with a three piece ZG priest set would let Holy Smite's range reach to 41 yards -- a range often needed in big ranged fights. With enough +damage and +crit% gear, it's easy to conceive of a holy priest out dps'ing a shadow priest this way -- and oh yes, be able to dispell and heal without changing forms.

Late addition: Ah, Jeez, I guess shadow priests have gotten a good boost when it comes to their mana pools. Just playing around trying to build a shadow damage priest build, I get:

Shadow Damage Build

With Inner Focus and Meditation moved so far down the Discipline tree, shadow priests are going to have a lot more mana to work with than they had before. This build also has -16% threat. Not bad.