Priests in Beta

[vazar_da_priest]

Since i am in the no beta club, im really interested to see how priests are doing in cata.
i just wanna know about priests in genereal (all three specs, pve and pvp)

so basically, are we nerfed...or buffed?

[Kelesti]

We're "fine".

There's nothing to really say about a thread like this, really. People unhappy with the spec, with "Grass is Greener" Disorder will tell you how terrible their chosen spec is, how it will never be balanced and that the end of times are upon us. They will recommend rerolling.

The fanboys will scream that the game has never been better.

The rest of us will take it all in stride, knowing things will work out. For the most part, the play is a little buggy, and needing numbers as well as some kinks worked out, but really it's a long time before December. Level 80 content through 4.0 means nothing.

[Direshadow]

Shadow has some neat abilities in their tree, but other then that, Priests are generally pretty balanced in the Beta. I've heard some horror stories about healing priests running out of mana really quickly, but I'm sure that'll get fixed.

It's almost nice to know that we're not going to have to re-learn our entire class again this expansion.

[Snowulf]

Its nice to know that we are the mages of cata changes lol.

[Ansa]

If your wondering about Discipline healing I would suggest looking up teguildnanda or pettepha
teguildnanda has done half the heroics already and is posting SO FAR, heroic fights every day

[Deleted]

I've heard some horror stories about healing priests running out of mana really quickly, but I'm sure that'll get fixed.

We're not the only healing class with mana issues

[Danner]

All classes have rampant mana issues if using anything else than the basic heals. And if you only use the basic heals, then stuff is going to die. Balancing this is going to be the fun part.

Keep in mind, as you level up, spirit gets progressively worse (just like a rating) while your heals go up in cost, making it a double penalty. On the other hand, intellect remains at least constant absolute value.

I seriously question the spirit rating degradement, it's akin to making tanks go down in HP as they level up. But that's what the devs went with. We better just deal with it. Just remember to stack INT as you level. Spirit sucks until you start T12 raiding

[BishopXQ]

All classes have rampant mana issues if using anything else than the basic heals. And if you only use the basic heals, then stuff is going to die. Balancing this is going to be the fun part.

Keep in mind, as you level up, spirit gets progressively worse (just like a rating) while your heals go up in cost, making it a double penalty. On the other hand, intellect remains at least constant absolute value.

I seriously question the spirit rating degradement, it's akin to making tanks go down in HP as they level up. But that's what the devs went with. We better just deal with it. Just remember to stack INT as you level. Spirit sucks until you start T12 raiding

This is one reason why a lot of people are thinking Disc's +15% int bonus is going to end up out-pacing holy when your raiding.

Time will tell.

[Whister]

I only have tried Shadowpriest....and it's awesome!! the playstyle is a bit changed, but only better imo
now u have to play with the shadow-orbs and also witch archangel-wings :-)
and when u have mana issues then Disperion, but ALWAYS walk when u use that; more shadows of yourself will appear kinda fun to see aswell

[Neichus]

I think what's making the healing woes worse is the massive stat deflation we're going through. Even if Blizzard hadn't decided to change the healing paradigm, nerf mana regen, and increase mana costs we'd all still be experiencing precipitous drops from live. This is just the unfortunate aftermath of having iLevel 277 gear at the end of an expansion that Blizzard expected to end at iLevel 232*. So everybody has their static values increase (health pools, mana pools, spell/attack power) but their ratings are dropping like rocks so that even with the hugely inflated values the raw "power" of many classes/specs has stayed about the same because of their haste/hit/crit/expertise being murdered.

The other thing is that it's really hard to judge how good the rest of the party is from videos. I've not done any heroics, but just doing the normal dungeons on different characters I've noticed the variance in quality. You get a lot of people who really haven't gotten away from the WotLK mentality yet; I've had several Stonecore (level ~83 dungeon) groups fail with predominantly level 85s because of this gungho mentality. I can imagine that even going into Heroics a lot of people are still only begrudgingly using CC and focus fire and still haven't fully adapted to the idea that they can meet the healer halfway.

*I read a Blue post once on this topic, and I thought I recalled them saying they had originally designed the expansion to end at ToC levels of gear. However, I don't have the link on me so don't believe me unless you can find it too!