Priest Design/Wishlist: 5.4 and Beyond!

[CalamityPM]

I love these threads! I think they encourage the sharing of some fabulous ideas. So... simple enough, what ideas do you have? What changes would you like to see? Here are a few to kick off discussion:

Discipline:

• New: Power Word: Fortify - Bolsters all absorption effects currently active on all nearby party or raid members, instantly increasing those effects by X% of your mastery. Does not affect Spirit Shell beyond the absorption limit. Instant cast. 3 minute cooldown. 40yd range.

• New: Divine Redoubt - Envelops up to 5 friendly party or raid members within 30 yards of the target in a protective bulwark for 6 seconds, absorbing X damage. If any absorption remains after 6 seconds, the bulwark dissipates, healing all nearby friendly targets for 100% the remaning absorption amount, divided evenly among all nearby targets within 10 yards. Prioritizes most injured party or raid members. Instant cast. 10 second cooldown. 40yd range.

• Mastery seems poorly thought out. +Absorption was obviously fitting for the spec, but pure +healing on top of it seems clunky to me. Any ideas?

• Less reliance on Atonement, should be more of a choice to use than your go-to filler.

• More interesting glyph choices that affect core gameplay.

Holy:

• Chakra's +healing modifiers removed, making Chakra stances strictly mechanical (raw healing buffed to compensate).

• Holy Word: Sanctuary either redesigned or buffed to be worth using (we won't have T17 4pc to carry it forever):

• Holy Word: Sanctuary - Blesses the ground with divine light, allies within the sanctuary receive an additional 10% healing from all sources for 10 seconds. 1.5 second cast. 1 minute cooldown.

• More interesting glyph choices that affect core gameplay.

Holy + Discipline Misc:

• Prayer of Healing party-based restrictions removed, somehow redesigned to work in a practical way with Spirit Shell. Any ideas? Or perhaps remove Prayer of Healing from Discipline and take another look at Holy Nova becoming the core AoE heal. Again, ideas? Further differentiation between Discipline and Holy is much needed.

Shadow:

• Mind Blast cooldown reduced by haste.

• More spells to generate and spend shadow orbs on as well as a way to generate them out of combat.

• More interesting glyph choices that affect core gameplay.

[Coraulten]

I would like to see serenity be able to proc Divine insight and From darkness comes light.

Personally i like the idea of chakras but i feel like they need a lower cd, the pvp bonus for holy is perfect. It gives them a 5 second cd.

Would also like some kinda of secondary mechanic to tie in with renew to make it worth throwing in every so often. For holy that is.

New Holy Word: Patience - Causes all direct healing spells to instead put a heal over time effect on the target for the amount healed over 20 seconds, the healing is increased by your mastery. While this effect is active, your renew instant heals the target for its full duration, lasts 15 seconds.. Instant cast. 3 minute cd. 40yd Range.

The eff would stack and have a cap similar to spirit shell

New Holy Word: Link - Links you and 6 other party or raid members, all damage you take is reduced by 70%. The remaining damage is turned into a damage over time effect which ticks on the highest health target (percent based) every 3 seconds for 30 seconds. The damage over time effect continues to switch to the highest linked target every 3 seconds. The damage over time effect can not exceed 20% of the targets health. Instant Cast. 3 minute cd. 40yd Range.

[Kuniku]

I definitely agree with being less reliant on atonement. It should be a choice (on an standard non +damage fights anyway) Do you heal 'traditionally' or do you use atonement and fill with shields and SS as needed?

I'd like some masteries (generally not just priest) to be more interesting. while straight up +absorbsion is great for disc, I don't find it very interesting...

[Macanam]

Discipline:

• New: Power Word: Fortify - Not sure I like this for disc. The resto druid version is kind of cool as it's burst healing, but I don't think we really need this.

• New: Divine Redoubt - Very much like this. Smart heal AoE absorb please.

• Mastery seems poorly thought out. +Absorption was obviously fitting for the spec, but pure +healing on top of it seems clunky to me. Any ideas?
+Healing was necessary, we were incapable of healing people up effectively after they took damage. I don't think it needs changing. Also, Masteries don't need to be interesting. Most are boring flat throughput increases, while a few (MW Monk) attempt to be interactive but are bad in most situations.

• Less reliance on Atonement, should be more of a choice to use than your go-to filler.
Probably true. I think limiting the range of Atonement may make the difference. If it only healed melee/tanks, it would be a lot less useful than it is now unless the raid can stack. Actual numbers don't need nerfing all that much.

• More interesting glyph choices that affect core gameplay.
Please yes.

Holy:

• Chakra's +healing modifiers removed, making Chakra stances strictly mechanical (raw healing buffed to compensate).
Definitely yes. Reduced CD as well, cause getting locked in the wrong stance for 30s can be devastating.

• Holy Word: Sanctuary - Blesses the ground with divine light, allies within the sanctuary receive an additional 10% healing from all sources for 10 seconds. 1.5 second cast. 1 minute cooldown.
I think this is a good idea. Maybe more like 20% healing, 0.5s cast, 1 min cd. 10% is a bit small for an area people have to stand in I think. Consider Power Word: Barrier is 25% damage reduction, 20% healing received is actually pretty weak in comparison.

Holy + Discipline Misc:

• Prayer of Healing party-based restrictions removed, somehow redesigned to work in a practical way with Spirit Shell. Any ideas? Or perhaps remove Prayer of Healing from Discipline and take another look at Holy Nova becoming the core AoE heal. Again, ideas? Further differentiation between Discipline and Holy is much needed.
Would hate to have Holy Nova as Disc's main AoE heal. PoH does need a redesign though.

Shadow:

• Mind Blast cooldown reduced by haste.
Not sure if a good idea or not. Spending too much time Mind Blasting could be annoying when you have dots to refresh and things.

• More spells to generate and spend shadow orbs on as well as a way to generate them out of combat.
Out of Combat wouldn't happen. Starting in PvP with 3 orbs would cause all sorts of QQ. But more ways to generate/spend would be nice.

My thoughts.

[Deleted]

However nice some of these ideas are, more absorbs is not an option for disc.
Atm the only reason disc is winning so hard over other classes (especially in 10s) is because absorbs are too powerful. They should tone down the absorbs so disc has to compete with other healers, not just make it boring for them. Atonement isn't in a good spot aswell atm (and I mean it's too strong/too obvious) so I'd like to see that change aswell, as long as we get to keep AA, the only interesting part about atonement.

(I am a disc priest btw, not some kind of angry druid/shaman :P)

I completely back up your idea of removing the throughput buffs on Chakra, this would make holy way less clunky and punishing. And PoH does indeed needs a change, although it will probably be quite hard to come up with an idea that won't affect Spirit Shell.

[snaxattax]

mind blast cooldown scaling with haste is less of an issue now than mind flay scaling past the ~18k haste rating point where mindflay goes under a gcd in full procs. if mind flay, or at least insanity, were changed to be 4 ticks over 4 seconds instead of 3 over 3, we'd have no immediate stat scaling problems going into next tier. as it is, we are going to scale quite poorly as orb generators are not a major source of damage right now (4 piece), and unless the legendary and trinkets are basically specifically tailored to our 2 piece, mastery crits are not a major source of our damage. so we're still going to be trying to squeeze as much damage out of insanity cycles to maintain our dps, but we won't be able to use what is otherwise the best stat (haste) to do it.

on top of this, we still have the worst mobility dps of all ranged, and we're the only ranged caster with actual mana problems (which is downright retarded).

one thing that could make our 4 piece more of an actual bonus would be instead of having your next blast/death do 20% damage per orb, you could have your DP have a 20% chance per orb to make your next shadow word death be castable as if the target were in execute range and generate one additional orb. due to the fact this proc would happen after a DP, it would be unlikely to be a wasted orb, and could be something we could use during short movement to reduce some of the sting of losing insanity uptime to movement.

also, as far as orbs out of combat go, orgrimmar has tons of respawning critters. put respawning critters inside the instance and the orbs for pull issue completely goes away without impacting PVP at all.

[Floopa]

The only thing Disc should be "wishing" for in 5.4 is to not get nerfed.

[Outofmana]

For me, Holy priests would be complete by just having that awful Chakra removed (I remember my raidleader calling on me to watch the tank during a heavy aoe damage boss, I was like errrrrr can't do shit in this Chakra dude, this is in 25man).
I like how the Holy priest still feels like a proper healer without all of those gimmicks some other healers have gotten, monks with their chi and paladin with their holy power etc. I just hope we never get a system with like 3 Holy Orbs, I'd rather have this Chakra if it was a choice between those two things ;x.

All in all I'm quite happy but the Chakra thing just has to go. Ever since WotLK Blizzard designed stuff around every healing being able to do every role (In vanilla paladins spammed the tank, do it or reroll), but we are still having small problems just because of our Chakra states and it's long cooldown; AoE damage phases and 2/3-getting nuked-phases alternating every 20 seconds are a nightmare for us atm. Removing the cooldown or lower it significantly won't be a great option for me, I'd rather not stance dance the whole fight.

Don't like your idea/suggestion of making PoH a smart heal though, it would be another CoH we just spam away and hope for the best. In 25man, It's perfect as it is, in 10man though it's kinda iffy I agree.

[CalamityPM]

Group-based PoH places too much reliance on Atonement

[Vargur]

The only thing Disc should be "wishing" for in 5.4 is to not get nerfed.

We're near the bottom half anyway (middle best case scenario), we deserve a nerf?


And yes, wtb "Shadow Communion".

[Deleted]

The only thing Disc should be "wishing" for in 5.4 is to not get nerfed.

Things like this, along with your posts in other topics just make it seem like you hold a grudge against the spec, atleast try to be constructive to the topic, however hard that may be for you.

And yeah Calamity, without atonement disc would have trouble raid healing right now. T6 talent is on a cooldown and PoH isn't reliable in all encounters. I vaguely remember GC saying that they would change PoH, although not in MoP.

[Szer]

We're near the bottom half anyway (middle best case scenario), we deserve a nerf?

When did you last time checked RaidBots?
I check it for you:
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/#00000000...00000000111111

And yes, Disc are tremendous overpowered in overgear.

[Anastacy]

When did you last time checked RaidBots?
I check it for you:
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/#00000000...00000000111111

And yes, Disc are tremendous overpowered in overgear.

Ah, the good old Raidbots graphs.

They never explain anomalies such as (in your graph) Resto Druids spiking, while other healers dip (my guess? alt raids, and fickle people, which hardly leads to any credible information).

[Nightstorm]

The biggest complaint from people is holy doesn't give dps like disc so please play disc. So:


Holy passive
Your healing spell crits smite a nearby enemy.

Bam , dps for holy now it's balanced.

[veiledy0]

The biggest complaint from people is holy doesn't give dps like disc so please play disc. So:


Holy passive
Your healing spell crits smite a nearby enemy.

Bam , dps for holy now it's balanced.

Should just make Holy a DPS spec, so priests aren't the only class stuck with a single spec to DPS with.

[Dekki]

Should just make Holy a DPS spec, so priests aren't the only class stuck with a single spec to DPS with.

Holy monkey elbows, THIS. I've always wanted a way to do Holy dps - it's so flavorful and appealing to me!

[Danthon]

Shadow Word: Anger
Shadow Word: Despair
Shadow Word: Doubt
Shadow Word: Fear
Shadow Word: Hatred
Shadow Word: Pride
Shadow Word: Violence

I don't even know what they'd do, but goddammit sha themed shadow priest spells would be so cool. ;_;

[Vargur]

When did you last time checked RaidBots?
I check it for you:
http://raidbots.com/dpsbot/#00000000...00000000111111

And yes, Disc are tremendous overpowered in overgear.

What? I was talking about DPS.
And definitely not Top 100 parses.

[Blachshma]

Should just make Holy a DPS spec, so priests aren't the only class stuck with a single spec to DPS with.

NO. Go away and leave my spec alone. Holy should be fixed as a healing spec, its not a dps spec and should not become one.

[Vargur]

NO. Go away and leave my spec alone. Holy should be fixed as a healing spec, its not a dps spec and should not become one.

I agree with veiledy0, but have it 2 heal specs, 2 DPS specs.
Did someone say 4-spec?