How would you like to see Priests change in WoD?

[Darkener]

There's nothing unique to being Holy. CoH, DH, EoL and GS do not define and differentiate us at all. Holy Words are boring and not special enough. Chakra gimps Holy instead of making it feel different, special, and fun. I have no idea how to fix Holy because it is the one true healer that really has no special way that it heals that makes Holy unique like all the other healing specs have. Nothing. Oh, I forgot about Lightwell, which is exactly what I do when I place it, I forget about it. Might as well call it Forgetwell.

[Xesu]

Oh, I forgot about Lightwell, which is exactly what I do when I place it, I forget about it. Might as well call it Forgetwell.

Yeah, Blizzard tried to make it some type of minor Raid CD, where it wasn't as strong as say a PW:B, Tranq, DH, etc. But now it just seems like something that might as well not even be there because the situations in which it would be beneficial to use during an encounter are so sparse.

What I don't think Blizz has noticed is that healing in MoP is spammier than it has ever been, and with Smart Healing, it's not even "skilled spam" (I know, an oxymoron), like in Wrath where you at least had to have SOME idea of where to through your heals. Now for most classes they're just throwing down their "set and forget" spells: Sanc, HR, Efflo, Healing Stream, then pressing whatever the hell they feel like, because so many heals have smart-healing functionality baked in to where picking the proper target is really not terribly necessary.
I'd like them to either return to the Cata model of highly-reactive healing, or the Wrath model of highly-proactive healing. Right now it's in a weird middle ground where all healers are spamming with no regard, and it often feels like any healing-based wipe is because of some type of screw-up from a raid member (pulling aggro, one-shot mechanic, standing in fire), rather than a lack of output/skill from the healers. Feels like old school tanking where you just spammed Sunder as a Warrior and hoped the rest of the group did everything right, because that's all your class needed/could do.

(Edit: Addition) I also think Blizzard needs to bring back the idea of some healers being best at tank/single target while others are better at AoE, and some are better at mitigation. In every raid I'm in, I find myself seeing people take damage, and knowing that I don't have to do anything, because one of the heals from someone else in the raid will pop them back up before I can even get my mouse over their grid frame. They moved away from healing niches/assignments in MoP, and instead brought in the "DPS-Healer" hybrid (FW and Disc), but to me that's just stupid. I play a healer to heal, not to DPS. If you want a hybrid role, make new classes that fit that specification. In Mythic I'd like to see the return of healing niches, a HUGE nerf to smart heals (both in efficiency and number of heals that have said functionality), and a return to Blizzard dictating "what's best for the players" in Raid content, rather than making every class in a role so homogenized.

With the new raid tier system, Blizzard can EASILY reverse a lot of the homogenization, because if you want to raid on the highest level, you're going to (allegedly) need extreme class balance, and (supposedly) utilize specific class abilities to overcome mechanics. As such they can differentiate within roles again, because everything under Mythic mode is going to be--let's face it--a joke. "Heroic" (new normal) utiilizing the flexible raid size system means that while the bosses may be just as hard as they are now, they will feel nerfed because raids will no longer have the problem of "Oh, this is so anti-melee/ranged/caster", or super healing/threat intensive, because a group can simply pick up an extra healer or tank, or grab another melee or ranged DPS to compensate. Encounters that used to make groups struggle in normal modes can now be worked around by cherry-picking additional raiders to come in and help circumvent encounter design. As such, Blizzard can finally tailor Mythic mode to be a real S.O.B, and quite difficult without seeming filled with "cockblock mechanics" like before. It also means that guilds shouldn't be able to trivialize encounters simply by stacking the flavor of the month class. Hopefully Blizzard can also find a way to bring some minor consequence to having too many of one class or spec, to not only promote class diversity in Mythic, but to make it the most optimal raid setup.

Sorry for the wall of text (end edit)

[Deleted]

For shadow i would like to have the cataclysm mastery back. Instead of generating orbs randomly you still generate them with mindblasts, but activate your mastery with spending orbs. The more orbs you spend-> the longer the mastery buff is active. This Mastery will still be snapshotable if they implement mastery procc trinkets and will benefit the new 1 dot spike spam playstyle and the old school dot one. I'd also love to see either Mindbender or Divine Insight being baseline, or just a straight up buff for shadowfiend to make it an actually worthwile dps cd ( Maybe implement a temporary buff while the fiend is active etc etc.)

I actually like disc the way it is, i dunno why people bitch about it. To me it just sounds like holy needs to be tuned instead of disc being nerfed. All the holy fanboys have been crying about disc being too good all expac long. Just be glad you have a viable healing specc and stop complaining, shadow priests can't just respecc into a better performing specc and have to deal with them being mediocre/shit the whole expansion. Same with warlocks. Afflocks crying because their specc gets nerfed when they can just respecc to destro and own the world. Luxury Problems.

[Onus]

Permanent healing wings: arch angel form similar to shadow form. Any shadow spell breaks the form. Removes need to use atonement to proc archangel.

[AmiDK]

I've played disc priest since LK and love them. I don't think they are broken anymore than any other class in a certain situation. Spamming atone will work to make a dpriest on top during low damage phases, but spamming atone when the whole raid is taking massive damage will make you look like a bad healer with poor thru-put. Thats why you have to balance when to PoH with atone. I picked up atone the minute it went live and havent looked back. I can basically tank and heal any dungeon or old raid content easily as disc. Its incredibly fun to play and I wouldnt change away from its basic concept as it is right now.

How is disc NOT broken any more than any other healer you ask?
Holy pally can still shield the entire raid (unlike we can now), which makes their thruput outrageous
MW can keep hots on atleast half of a 25m raid and the hot ticks for an enormous amount when it comes to talking about hots.
Shaman mastery is OP. If you stack in a rain during periods of high damage and throw out a healing tide, its not hard to top charts.
Druids - their efflorescence -nuff said
Holy priest - not really special actually. Tried to make them unique by adding chakra's but they're basically a druid with disc spells.

You talk about cata as if it were a priests empire period. All I did was spam PoH for DA build up after getting archangel. People bitched how boring it was, so bliz nerfed DA considerably. You want to essentially continue to nerf disc's ability to reduce damage seen and make the healing more reaction based than its become - aka, take away atone. But don't you see that this is what makes disc different than all the other classes? This is what draws certain players to play disc. It's fun for me to see 300k HF crits on the boss but still play a healer role. If you dont like it, then dont atone. No one is making you atone the boss if you don't want to.

If you'd like more reaction based and heal required role, then go play a pally. But if you switched disc to be this way, then pally and disc would be too similar imo.

I'm also not sure where you're coming from in regards to shadow priests being unhappy with where they are on charts. The shadowpriest in our guild is pretty consistently in our top 5-10 (in a 25m team), and frequently number 1 or 2 on meters. We have a 9/14 heroic progression (not bragging at all, in fact its nothing to brag about, but its not terrible prog either). I do agree theres a dps loss during high movement fights. Maybe they could make mind flay castable while moving like lightning bolt is for shamans.

[Drye]

Would love for them to remove mindflay. So that way, people would stop thinking if it got buffed we would magically be fixed

On a serious note:
- new mastery much like destro lock. Direct increase to mind blast/mind spike/mind flay/swd. That way out scaling would be fairly strong. It would also be significantly easier to balance shadow on multi dot fights, in comparison to now.

- would like mindflay to be a longer channel closer to 5 ticks.

- wouldn't mind an aoe based orb usage. Something that spreads dots, kinda like impact.

- I wouldn't mind a rework of the lvl 15 talents from a PvE perspective.

- now that SAs have been fixed, I wouldn't mind seeing something added to them. Something along the lines of giving you a buff or the target a debuff that increases.

I don't think shadow needs some big overhaul other than our mastery, I think making some QoL changes and tweeting a few things and shadow would be fine.

[Nzete]

Holy: Chakra removed. Holy words: serenity and chastise can stay. I don't see a reason to keep holy word: sanctuary. Surge of light returns to holy to provide interaction with serendipity. Holy gets to share the +10% health from healing with resto shaman (as we once shared the inspiration +armor buff on crits). This is a shared spell id and stacks and refreshes with healing from both the priest and shaman.

Discipline: the potency of absorbs is decreased, but the potency of direct healing is increased. Grace is removed, and all healing is increased to compensate. Atonement remains but just goes to targets who lack health rather than the person who lacks the most health.

All "smart" healing needs to become less smart. Atonement, CoH, PoM, and divine hymn should all just target people missing health. In the case of PoM, this would be a buff to the spell with more than one priest in the raid group (PoM overwrite prevention).

[PhillieB]

Holy: Chakra gone and so are the penelties. Keep serenity and Chastise, Sanc is just bloat currently DS can do that job for stacked fights 9/10. Tune mana costs or give Divine Spirit back to holy only as a self-buff. Give Holy a raid-util CD. I keep comparing Holy to my resto which is just depressing.

Disc: Attonement is too effcient, especially in 10s tone it down, but add something to the mix and/or make renew viable for disc perhaps with ticking into absorbtion or alike. Something has to be done to PoH (goes for Holy as well) Group based is a clunky mechanic. I'd love a larger AoE toolkit - but it's a tricky balancing act.