Priest Concern Summary

[Professor Frink]

Priests are finally getting their love in 1.10.
(snip)
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I can only imagine that I'm not playing my priest "right" (that is, in the roles people usually play priests) because I've never felt particularly unloved. I can't comment on the high-end healing situation, since I'm shadow-specced and haven't done any large-scale raiding, but the PVP-heavy complaint list on the blue post just leaves me baffled--I hit 60 and went into battlegrounds wearing single-player quest rewards, a few tailored items, and any 'of shadow wrath' equipment i could get from the AH at reasonable price, and had no particular difficulty holding my own. Now that I have AV rep rewards and the lower bits of PVP rank rewards (bringing my stamina out of the comedy one-hit-kill range) I generally appear in the top 3 or so killing-blow ranks in AB.

I don't feel particularly exceptional, in particular I generally lose to horde priests in anything resembling a fair fight (and often when I get the drop on them) so I assume that once I gather some purples and a better understanding of my class I'll be rather devastating.

...

Random beefs with the blue post, and a defense of the priest class as it stands, or at least changes in an entirely different nature than the blue post suggests:

Shadow vs. Holy is cool. It's a defining characteristic of the class that there's actually two distinct and incompatible paths. Without it, the priest would just be the cloth version of yet another dps/heal hybrid class.

If they think holy tree isn't viable outside of endgame raid healing, might I suggest tweaking the game mechanics so that the 'possess' effect of mind control still allows the priest to cast spells on the possessee? (ie, casting a petbar ability causes the possessed pet to do the action, but casting a regular spell acts as if the pet were targeted, instead of breaking channel). Not treating possessee kills as NPC kills (in the manner of a kill performed solely by a hunter's pet not granting XP or loot) would help too. You could go crazy with this, removing the timelimt and/or 100% break on damage, and allowing the priest to move to follow the possessee, turning the holy priest into some sort of crazy reverse hunter, if you didn't mind radically altering solo priest play.

Some method of converting mana to melee damage (perhaps as a on-next-attack buff you could put on yourself or others) would go along way towards fixing the "so what do I do when there's nobody to heal" situation.

"the lack of [PVP] escaping abilities, entrapment/snaring abilities or crowd control abilities."... except AOE fear, silence, heal-over-time, dispel and a damageshield, all of which can be cast while running and have short cooldowns; 10% chance to stun on attack; Mind flay to snare; a instacast dot that keeps people in combat and out of stealth; and the rather helpful ability to completly stun a player while inspiring them to leap from the nearest cliff.

"they feel that it is actually only the Undead and the Dwarf racial spells that are useful in the game". I can't speak for the trolls and humans, but shadowmeld comes in handy, both for opting out of a bad pull and PvP ambushing. Being invisible while you eat/drink/answer the phone is a nice bonus too. Elune's grace is handy, if highly situational. I haven't tried starshards, but it might be a viable DPS option for holy nightelves (batman)

"For an example change some of the spells so that they have a shorter casting time or even an instant casting time" bleh. Must every class have everything? Lack of instant DPS and AoE is one of those things that makes priests priests and not shamans that can't wear mail.

"Power Word Shield should have a certain time in the beginning in which it can not be dispelled" Can anyone but other priests and shammies dispel PW:S? This would actually make priests weaker, since it's removing a useful priest ability (dispel) and adding yet more safety to the plate-wearing set.

"Shorter Cooldown for AoE Fear" Getting 2 fears off while being double-teamed by melee classes is not uncommon. I didn't think "not entirely immune to melee" was considered a class-breaking bug.

"Give the Priest an ability to cast spells while moving." What, greater heal? Mind Blast? Most priest skills are already instants.

"Create more talents which will make spells more powerful, thus giving the target a smaller chance to resist a spell. In some cases even make some spells unable to be resisted" I respecced away from 5/5 shadow focus because it was massive overkill. I can dispell most spell-based shadow resistance. Silence is the only thing I notice popping resist a lot, due to silence-specific resistance being commonplace. Even if someone managed total shadow resitance, AFAIK there's no such thing as holy resist at all--smite isn't exactly the biggest DPS on the block but it's something. +dmg to all magic works for smite, right?

"Many Priests have a hard time conserving mana, and they empty their manapool too fast. This is especially a problem if the Priest is not Shadow specced and therefore doesn’t have the spirit tab talent. " You don't have to be shadow specced; spirit tap requires no other shadow points.

"Chance the racial spells so that they become faction spells instead. That way there will be difference between Horde and Alliance Priests, but the difference between races will be ironed out." Both the Races and the Factions are artifical distinctions handed down from our so-called game "masters" to pit us against one another. Until the Workers of Warcraft rise up and throw off their oppressive chains of item acquisition and meaningless bourgeoisie "questing" we will be nothing but the pawns of Blizzard's corporate machine!

My vote for a useful 31st holy talent: make overheals do something useful! Pop another damageshield worth 20% of the overheal, simply give the target more health than max (but can't be healed again until below max), refund all or some of the mana, give the excess heal to any partymember, something. Would instantly make greater heal viable again, and put the holy priest back on top for group healing. (assuming they're not already)

... so, yeah, I hope most of those changes never see the light of day. I shall resume lurking now that I got my rant off...

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frink