[Priest] 5.2 PTR notes

[Venaliter]

Agreed, not really sure if mind spike would be enough to solve that issue though (but it definitely wouldn't hurt). I'd rather see horror without the orb requirement back again (or some other way to actually get them off me, tendrils baseline?) and nerfs in other areas to compensate.

Total agreement; Seems pretty obvious Priests lack sufficient CC; something that isn't slated to be corrected in 5.2. Psychic Horror baseline (on a CD, not orbs) and Mindspike might be enough to balance it. You'd probably see nerfs to Silence duration/CD to balance it, but I'd prefer a fair shake against everything rather then a free shot at casters. Interesting that is has no PvE implications, yet wasn't done...

That said, "major" mechanic changes, like anything remotely tied to Shadow Orbs, probably would require an expansion. Not because of development time/tech, it's just one of their little tricks to sell their expansion.

[Yvaelle]

Horror without the orb requirement IMO, nerf the cooldown to whatever it needs to be to allow it back as it was - I thought it would be more interesting this way (shadow orbs as a resource), but it isn't. Psychic Horror is so weak that it's pretty much never the right call at the cost of Devouring Plague (which heals us for a decent chunk of health) - Horror is only really worth it when you absolutely must peel for your healer - and really that's your mages job - so it's not your fault if it isn't available because you DP'd instead of saving orbs for a possible horror.

If I could redesign some parts of shadow, I think I'd make it more like this:

- 5 Shadow Orb maximum, abilities only consume a maximum of 3
- Mind Blast is instant, 8 second cooldown scales with haste, creates 1 Shadow Orb per use - critical hits create an additional orb (2)
- Divine Insight (since it no longer would make Mind Blast instant) causes your next Mind Blast to be a guarenteed critical hit, and increases the damage of your mind blast by your crit chance - this is so it doesn't make crit worse, since it needs to scale better for us)
- Devouring Plague is a 6 second channel that deals colossal damage and heals the priest for 3% of maximum health per tick (ticks every second), consumes 3 orbs
- Psychic Horror is a 10 second disarm with a 60 second cooldown, does not consume orbs, does not apply horror
- Despair - consumes 3 shadow orbs, 1.5s cast time, deals large instant damage (burst) and applies a debuff that absorbs X healing before dissipating (necrotic strike effect)
- when Vampiric Touch is dispelled, heals the lowest health raid member of the spriests group for 15% of their maximum health and silences the dispeller for 3 seconds (not affected by DR schools, the same as VT and UA are already)

So this gives us all sorts of little advantages and disadvantages. The 5 Shadow Orb change is because Shadow Orbs now face exactly the same problem that Holy Power did before the 5 Holy Power change - that was the only solution they found to remedy Holy Power, it clearly needs to be applied to Shadow Orbs as well.

The instant mind blast change means we can't have our resources kicked and shut down and we don't lose our resource regeneration during high movement fights - the haste and crit scaling mean that haste and crit become more valuable for us which is something we really need going into next tier where our damage is lagging behind because our scaling is subpar. It doesn't buff us in pvp though, because of the changes to DP and Despair.

The divine insight change just compensates for the loss of the instant Mind Blasts it procs currently - auto-crits help generate orbs, while the Chaos Bolt treatment means it continues to scale with crit %, since the idea is to buff the pve scaling not nerf it.

Devouring Plague becomes a powerful channel effect that does good PvE damage but is easy to shut down in PvP.

Psychic Horror is a pvp buff versus melee and a nerf versus casters - it should make us more well-rounded without glaring weaknesses or strengths. The orb cost is removed because the horror effect is removed, and no disarm effect carries such a high cost - so it doesn't make sense for ours to (which is why its little used right now).

Despair - a pvp sidegrade, the burst damage and necrotic effect on the surface appears very good, but it comes at the cost of Devouring Plague - which we currently use, has decent burst on the initial hit, heals us pretty well, is instant where this is a cast (and therefore kickable), and because DP's damage comes over a few seconds where this occurs all on the GCD in which it is cast, it doesn't actually lead to as high a burst window as DP (which is saved until we have procs up, then apply dots, DP, then expend all our procs). So effectively our burst window would be much shorter, can be kicked, wouldn't heal us, but on the plus side could be a bit more reliable (partially because its spikier, mostly because it applies necrotic).

- the VT dispel change would at least make it so dispelling our pressure also reduces your own teams pressure (by healing your kill target), swapping it to a silence instead of a horror is a nerf, and swapping it to a single target silence rather than an AoE horror is another nerf - but I don't think you would see any spriests complain about those two nerfs and that buff: it's better for us and less random - which is what we want - we don't want to rely on that the enemy healer isn't stacking on their teammates when they dispel (that's not fun for us or them).

Anyway, just half-baked thoughts. Shadow needs pvp nerfs but the ones they are doing are in the wrong places, and needs pve buffs but seems to be ignored in this department (because they are afraid of it buffing pvp) - I think the above could solve both at once, but I'm sure someone can spot flaws in these ideas.

[HPLathus]

I really hope the buff to power word: shield doesn't make holy priests use it rotationally in PvE. :/

I wouldn't ever think about casting PW:S as holy regardless of if they buffed it a little or not. Holy has better things to do then mindlessly bubble <3

[Deleted]

I wouldn't ever think about casting PW:S as holy regardless of if they buffed it a little or not. Holy has better things to do then mindlessly bubble <3

Makes you wonder why holy had exclusive Body&Soul for an entire expansion, its because no sane priest would ever use it. And evidently putting a shield on a person that needs it is "mindless bubble", regardless of how good it could be.
Doubt that blizzard would ever promote shielding for holy. It happened briefly when they decided to not penalize holy for using PWS when they increased the mana cost for disc in february at the beginning of cata and they killed that style quickly.

[Deleted]

Spriests needed this nerf and you know it. It's a pretty big problem when a DPS spec can function as both a viable healer AND DPS. Shadow quite literally does 2/3rds the healing as Disc...

Shadow has limited burst and control compared to other caster specs. If you took away the healing part, what they already did on the PTR, you're better off with a mage or destro in Arena and PVE.

[Danner]

It's okay. They are nerfing Body and Soul in 5.2, so that there will be less incentive to pick that talent.

That said, B&S is the most popular talent in that tier for both holy and disc priests (source: wowpopular.com).
I for one use it. The main reason: I don't have enough keybinds. The secondary reason is that it is easier to use for "mindlessly running fast in orgrimmar".
Obviously you want phantasm in PVP, but given how few people pick that talent, I guess that just means there aren't a lot of PVP healing priests out there.

To be honest though, the B&S nerf is annoying me. It has always been hailed as "the perfect talent".
Nerfing it to oblivion feels so wrong. I for one will make the switch. 20 seconds of running fast in org sure beats a measly 3 seconds of running fast in org.
But I do wish it had a "self cast" option

[Deleted]

Even with the nerf I'll prolly keep it. For emergency situations in raids I'd rather spend a gcd to shield a person that was a bit slow for getting out of badstuff - providing both a cushion for their health and a boost for them to run out faster than choosing between the cushion and the speed: in the end, you rarely need a really long speed boost in raids (unless specifically kiting), or spending 2 gcds and placing a feather than might even be missed by a person running in panic. The fact that PWS is a targeted guaranteed boost makes it better for me than feathers.

For Orgrimmar running, feathers were always better .

[Deleted]

Its was fun, so it's going to be nerfed -> GC logic!
Of course that wasn't a random nerf! 4 sec. clearly made it imbalanced.

[Forsay]

Instead of changing Angelic Feather into something useful, they are nerfing B&S. A good example showing how deep class disigners understand our gameplay.
Atleast they could change AF so it only lets you take your own feather, and let other raid members take your feathers if glyphed. The current version is just unusable in raids. And for pvp Phantasm is a clear winner and will be in 5.2 if this talent tier stays the same.

[zito]

class disigners understand our gameplay.

It's been like this since wotlk....

[Syenite]

It's been like this forever...

Fixed it for you...

Shadow in tbc: nvm doing competitive damage
shadow in wotlk: return of the joke p.2 till 3.3 buffed our dmg by a metric ton
cataclysm: Good damage on multitarget fights till dots were nerfed by a flat 25% over the course of 2 patches. Singletarget fights being our continuos nemesis.
MoP: Feels like playing a clunky joke, mash procs, do damage beyond the joke as long as no secondary targets are present.

[HPLathus]

Makes you wonder why holy had exclusive Body&Soul for an entire expansion, its because no sane priest would ever use it. And evidently putting a shield on a person that needs it is "mindless bubble", regardless of how good it could be.
Doubt that blizzard would ever promote shielding for holy. It happened briefly when they decided to not penalize holy for using PWS when they increased the mana cost for disc in february at the beginning of cata and they killed that style quickly.

There is a big difference in casting it because you feel like it's a good healing spell to make part of your regular casting...


and casting it when someone is about to die, or they need a speed boost via B&S....

---------- Post added 2013-01-25 at 03:44 PM ----------

I really don't understand priests need on these forums to take something someone says completely out of context in an attempt to troll them.

[Deleted]

I wouldn't ever think about casting PW:S as holy regardless of if they buffed it a little or not. Holy has better things to do then mindlessly bubble <3

Yep, completely out of context. There's no better alternative than PW:S to save someone who's about to die as holy, never using it as holy is just bad.

[HPLathus]

@cookie

It was taken out of context because the person I was replying to originally. They said they hope pw:s doesn't become part of their regular casting sequence as holy.

So my reply was not targeted at not literally using it ever. Just not making it one of your main spells...

[Outofmana]

So I see we are yet again getting a healer mace in the new raid, getting really tired of not being able to use Benediction....

[Venaliter]

Cyclone's DR has been removed, Ring of Peace basically going in "as-is", and Priests still have P.Horror as pretty much their only CC (1.5 if you count Psyfiend that is easily one-shotted AND shares the same DR.)

I'm sorry, but why would you bring a Priest in PvP again? Mana issues still not corrected; and still markedly lower CC, and a reliance on, other classes to function. Long story short, Disc is going to be the weakest healer in PvP and I'm pretty unhappy. I mean, really frigging unhappy.

[Yvaelle]

So I see we are yet again getting a healer mace in the new raid, getting really tired of not being able to use Benediction....

Ya I'm using Kri'tak right now and kind of regretting not getting the staff so I could xmog Anathema.

[snaxattax]

Fixed it for you...

Shadow in tbc: nvm doing competitive damage

? shadow dps in tbc was horrific after the nerf 1-2 weeks in. we went from on par with warlocks to joke dps but amazing utility via sweaving and mana returns. now we just have moderate-to-joke dps and joke utility.

really the only time shadow has ever been actually good was during cata. we had useful but not ultra OP utility through our VE heals and healing/mana channels, lifegrip, and very very strong multidot dps. in DS we had an actual burst combo on top of this and were arguably one of the best dps specs in the entire game for PVE. fire mages had slightly better pure aoe, arc mages had slightly better pure burst, but we could make up for the small differences with our multidot dominance, group heals & healer cooldowns.

now we have passable multidot dps but our single target dps is so terrible that you really can't justify not playing disc for progression. ghostcrawler saying that warlock utility isn't so strong that a raid wouldn't be cancelled w/o a warlock? does anyone have any logs of anyone killing shek or sha 25H without a warlock in the raid? even if they only had healthstones (and not healthstones, portals, aoe 5% debuff, and a death preventing soak so strong they can stay alive 5 seconds after a deathtouch enrage) i can't imagine wanting to bother with not having an extra 3 (or more, if you leave soulwells up on long fights like shek and sha) raidwide 20-40% health heals that's off your healers' GCDs.

[Purpleisbetter]

? shadow dps in tbc was horrific after the nerf 1-2 weeks in. we went from on par with warlocks to joke dps but amazing utility via sweaving and mana returns. now we just have moderate-to-joke dps and joke utility.

really the only time shadow has ever been actually good was during cata. we had useful but not ultra OP utility through our VE heals and healing/mana channels, lifegrip, and very very strong multidot dps. in DS we had an actual burst combo on top of this and were arguably one of the best dps specs in the entire game for PVE. fire mages had slightly better pure aoe, arc mages had slightly better pure burst, but we could make up for the small differences with our multidot dominance, group heals & healer cooldowns.

now we have passable multidot dps but our single target dps is so terrible that you really can't justify not playing disc for progression. ghostcrawler saying that warlock utility isn't so strong that a raid wouldn't be cancelled w/o a warlock? does anyone have any logs of anyone killing shek or sha 25H without a warlock in the raid? even if they only had healthstones (and not healthstones, portals, aoe 5% debuff, and a death preventing soak so strong they can stay alive 5 seconds after a deathtouch enrage) i can't imagine wanting to bother with not having an extra 3 (or more, if you leave soulwells up on long fights like shek and sha) raidwide 20-40% health heals that's off your healers' GCDs.

Oh when i'm symbiotized as warlock i got something not very usefull like 16k hps worth self healing .
Gonna post the screenshot next time i do garalon.
And i got beaten by the other warlock in our raid. Just...lol.

[Venaliter]

Am I the only one seriously pissed Priests are gonna suck in 5.2 as well? We still have the very same mana issues, and the very same lack of CC. I had high hopes they were really going to try. They gave us a 10% bump in survivability, made a few glyphs baseline that other classes already have, and that's it?

Then they went and NERFED our PvP mana regen with the Rapture change to be even lower, and THEN reverted Cyclone's DR and put back in Imp. Counterspell. Meanwhile, P. Terror and Psyfiend share a DR and pretty much every class has fear breaks baseline. I'm sorry, but what?

The worse part is, you just know they are gonna be like "We think Priests are fine." afterwards.