I posted this on the official WoW ptr forums and was hoping it would spark some feedback/support from fellow priests on here
http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2227682754
There are so many nerfs & buffs coming to priests with 4.1 and some things need to be addressed.
First and foremost is the change to Chakra into a "stance" of sorts. Believe it or not this is not a QQ about that as I like the change. What needs to be addressed is the fact that Chakra (and Inner Focus) play that god aweful sound while its active. This has never made sense to me as other spells that have the same effect have no sound when activated. Nature's Swiftness (both from shaman and druids) only have a sound when activated that only lasts a faction of a second. Presence of Mind only plays a sound when activated that lasts only a fraction of a second. All of these spells have their special animations that go along with their respective spells while Chakra and Inner Focus have a constant humming spell while they are active. The sound played from Inner Focus has always been an annoyance to me since I first started playing my priest in vanilla. When holy became the only effective healing spec for priests in Cata (until disc got the much needed buff last patch) I made my priests healing offspec into holy instead of disc and had to deal with that same humming sound that Inner Focus had. As a player who actually enjoys the game with sound on (something that as game designers you should be able to appreciate utalizing your game fully the way it was made) you are forcing me and others to turn our sound off or put up with what is a huge headache. Basically what this all boils down to is saying that the sound attached with Chakra and Inner Focus needs to be removed or made similar to the other spells where it only plays a sound when activated not the entire time its active.
Balance druids can remove curses and poisons while in moonkin form. Shaman & pallies don't have forms to knock them out of when they remove curses. With the release of the 4.0 patch, priests get knocked out of shadow form when they remove diseases. In pve this is a mild annoyance and most priests don't even bother removing diseases (if any) in pve and just leave it up to the healers (or any pally since they also can remove diseases). In pvp removing diseases for a shadow priest means A LOT as we lose our 15% mitigation (the same 15% mitigation that druids have and keep when they remove curses and poisons) and have to spend a great amount of mana just to go back into our dps form. Shadow priests already have major mana issues in pvp and this unjustified tax just compounds those issues. The fix to this is to either make cure disease not knock shadow priests out of form (the best & smartest balance/fix) or to make all dispels knock the caster out of form (ie balance druids get kicked out of moonkin form when they remove poisons and curses which is a bad idea overall).
Finally we get to priests losing their ability to dispel friendly targets of magic effects. This PVP BASED CHANGE has major implications in pve. In situations where the healer is silenced, charmed, or sheeped the only person who can remove it off of them is another healer. In a 5 man setting that means nobody else is going to remove those magic effects off the healer which means the possibility of a wipe (or death of a dps or the tank) is much higher because of this unnecessary nerf. Yes I understand that a warlock with their imp out can remove magic effects but the majority of warlocks do not use their imp for dps. The nerf to priest defensive dispelling came about because of pvp reasons because shadow priests were a viable choice for arena because of that utility. Taking away that utility will mean that again priests will only have one viable spec for arena and that spec will be disc (a healer) instead of being able to go into arena as a healer or a damage dealer. You are essentially killing the viability of one spec in pvp. This change does not need to be implimented in the game.
Ok just because I may have the eyes of a Blizzard employee I'm going to suggest a change to the joke that is known as "priest crowd control". No this is not saying to buff our fears or give us something like hex/sheep (eventhough priests all across WoW would love you deeply if you were to finally give us some sort of spammable CC). What I'm suggesting is to make our Mind Control work just like engineering's mind control does & give us the target as a pet like it happens with engineering. Our only spammable CC takes the priest out of comission completely. In a pve setting its a powerful tool as we gain the majority of the mob's spells. In a pvp setting we can do nothing but auto attack (contray to Ghostcrawler's statement not too long ago that the priest gains all of the other player's spells which he later recanted) and move somebody....very weak.