Game-Changing New Powers

[Kevin]

And there's the nerf to Prayer of Mending. 20 second cooldown.

The fact that a good portion of the Priest community expected a nerf from the get-go is probably more sad than the inevitable nerf that happened. So while our Power Word: Shield continues to scale incredibly badly, they continue to nerf our survivability in PvP.

Yes GG, I know you were referring to the aggro mechanic, but the fact's still there that Blizzard nerfed it. And unlike so many past nerfs, this one's got me pretty upset. PoM was the one spell that helped to separate Priests and make them worth taking on runs over other healers, and now that's getting hit hard.

-Bolty

I find it interesting to hear the holy paladins say they don't feel they are worthwhile because they don't heal as well as priests and if they spec holy they can't do as much damage. I find it interesting to hear the resto shamans say the same things. Now I hear priests thinking they aren't worth taking along. So are druids the only healer class who feel they are any good, though they still have the rez issue. This is a serious question as I've heard it from all classes now. Paladins don't feel they can keep up with all the AoE damage because they have no AoE an they have no HoTs to fire and forget. Shaman are in a somewhat similar boat, though chain heal or the full T1 set helps with that, but they see the DPS that an enh or elemental shaman can dish out and they really feel gimped (a holy priest can still do a LOT of damage, they just have to drink all the time because it burns their mana pool, I've been on runs with holy/disc priest in a DPS roll doing over 450 DPS, that is significant). So really does any healing class feel they are up to par? I'm not sure Blizzard intended anyone to solo heal anything anymore, they seem to have intended that you have VE help, or Imp Leader of the pack help or a paladin or shaman that can help or a druid that can help.

And yeah it was nerfed, even the aggro portion of it. Of course if they cut down the 360 cleaves and other anti-melee stuff that would have nerfed that portion of it as well because it would have bounced less often. Not being spammable cuts it's effectiveness. 20s could very well be too long. I still don't see the aggro portion of it changing beyond the cooldown being added. I dunno I haven't seen enough of the end game content yet, but even a 20s cooldown PoM feels very powerful to me. Sure it becomes more reactionary now, but pretty much all heals are, even lifebloom since it's going off atfter a timer. It's still something no other healer can do, just like your shield (though the scaling issues with that are making that less powerful for sure and something will need to be done). The massive buff to tranquility kinda removes my PoH argument as well.

This does but a lot more value on chain heal though.

I'll agree healing isn't where it should be though. I do feel that a holy priest should be the best healer. Not at the expense of making other healers so weak they aren't viable (as long as they are also spec'd resto or holy or whatever, any class that has a tree like that should be a viable primary healer just not as good as the priest). Just like I still feel a prot warrior should be the best tank, but paladins and druids should be viable. They may have over nerfed druids too. But it was at the point where I did actually prefer a druid tank in 5 mans over warriors. I also preferred a druid for DPS over a rogue and I prefered a priest because they were still the most powerful healers. Now this being me when I say prefered it also means I would have happily gone on a run with an arms warrior, 3 rogues and a paladin/shaman/druid main healer and assumed we were going to beat the instance with no issues because I still believe very strongly in the skill of the player, not the power of the class.

I can't say if the balance is where I feel it should be. But I do think that a holy priest should be the strongest healer, if you have a priest no matter what the fight you should not feel that the priest can't deal with it. Resto druids, resto shaman, and holy paladins should be able to be heal every encounter but it's alright if players feel more nervous about the healing if something goes wrong. I don't think this is too far off. The priests bag of tricks still makes this happen. I don't care if there are some encounters where a druid or shaman or paladin healer may be better (I'm not sure how that could really be) but you should be confident a holy priest can deal with all of them.

I'm in the same boat with a prot warrior. A prot warrior should be able to tank everything you should feel confident and comfortable with them there. Previously when there were several mobs to deal with on a pull I felt better with a druid around. A paladin or a druid should be able to tank everything in the game, and heck even be preferred for some encounters but neither should be the generic preferred choice. I think give T-clap to def stance pretty much fixed that. The issue with druid for me was more the DPS they did in bear form. Cat form is the druid DPS form especially since in general cat DPS talents = bear tanking talents. The heavy armor high DPS roll should be left to the arms and fury warriors. The issue of course is druids were set up to do a majority of their aggro via DPS. This ran into scaling issues. More scaling threat than warriors or paladins. A reduction in bear damage was fine. I don't know about the bear aggro reduction. They had the best aggro control in my experiences, that can be hard to judge as to if it's too much. But I saw DPS warriors end up as off tanks from the damage they did when it was prot warrior tanking but not when it was a druid tanking.

And yes I do believe that when you can change gear (not spec, just gear) and do the job of another class that means you can't be the best at something anymore. A feral druid can put on healer gear and main heal a 5 man at appropriate levels. A feral druid can put on DPS gear and compete with the best DPS classes. A prot warrior can not put on DPS gear and compete with the best DPS classes. Neither can a holy paladin or resto shaman or a resto druid for that matter. Something was broken there. Of course since I've seen a holy priest put on DPS gear and compete with the top DPS classes as well I thought something might be wrong there, but the down time the holy priest in a DPS roll has compared to other classes is a pretty good balance as it is more than anyone else.

Dunno. I got way off track from the PoM thing. The aggro mechanic wasn't nerfed, that doesn't surprise me. The spell itself being nerfed doesn't surprise me a lot, but I admit it could be overboard.