Post Mortem: Priest Legion Experience

[KaPe]

1. Holy is somewhat problematic to judge. On the one hand, this is finally the expansion where they haven't been outshined by Disc, especially in final tier. They bring respectable hps, that's useful in pretty much any encounter and ... well, that's it. It feels a little too basic, you charge your Holy Words with filler spells, use them, go back to spamming filler. It's also the only spec with non-smart AOE heal and the only stationary channeled raid cooldown in the game. Also, our Artifact ability is... well, it exists. I think. It's hard to tell at times, since it's too random and doesn't really do much.

The spec is largely the same as it always was - no utility, just hps. Symbol of Hope was supposed to be that, but its' horrible placement in talent tree makes it useless. About the only "utility" we get is the Legendary Cloak, as it allows for some weird "soaking" or bypassing of certain mechanics. I'm going to miss that thing in the future.

Still, it's the big winner here. You could reasonably choose between two healing specs and not feel like you're holding your raid back - outside of some niche bosses that "need" Barrier, like Il'gynoth or Immonar.

2. I have mixed feelings about Disc. They finally dealt with absorbs being a "must have" and "too unique for their own good", by pretty much limiting it to PW:S on cooldown. On the other hand, the spec is frustrating for new players or without knowing the bosses. It relies on huge bursts of healing through massive cooldowns - which are bigger than any other spec has - followed by tediously reapplying your buffs one by one. Also, it took them quite a while to fix Disc reliance on Innervate.

3. Shadow... I find it the worst it has ever been outside of Vanilla. The numbers weren't the problem - it was absurdly overpowered early on and still does pretty well nowadays. But the design is horrendous. It's the slowest and most punishing ramp up in the game. Zero cooldowns outside of StM, which is too situational to count as such. One of the worst AOEs in game - and that's despite it being buffed by a huge amount, several times. Questing is a nuisance, as Voidform drops far too quickly to be useful in outside content - except for Argus elites. The fact that it's more efficient to respec and spam Holy Nova to complete some quests is both hilarious and sad at the same time.

Honestly, Shadow annoys me so much, because it's the first expansion where all three specs were open at the same time, so I thought I could *finally* have a decent questing/spare time raiding option. Instead, there's abomination like Mass Hysteria that cripples the spec outside of high end raiding and makes it a chore to play.

[kaid]

My problem with my new void priest is when soloing by the time you void eruption to go into void form it pretty much just killed what you were fighting. So your insanity drains out and you start from scratch again. It feels decent when you are fighting bosses in a dungeon but for solo it feels a lot like demo warlocks. A ton of ramp up time on nearly every fight so it just feels a bit tedious.

[Nasuuna]

Shadow:

Am I the only one that likes the ramp style?

starting at the bottom and climbing up eventually overtaking near everybody at around the 75second mark?

Holy:

The changes to PoH were my only issue, else I adore the changes.

But wow do I hate the PoH changes

Disc:

Is interesting, as somebody who likes traditional healers I've kind of strayed from it for the most part, but its alright.

[davesignal]

You must feel silly now then switching from top 5 DPS specc to the bottom one

You know what? I don't. I feel great about it. Several people in my raid group have told me I sound much happier, even. Y'wanna know why?

Because I'm not in constant physical pain trying to play this garbage fire of a spec. Playing a top 5 spec is only useful if it doesn't drive you to stop playing the fucking game with how poorly it's designed and how pointlessly high the APM is.

So now I play arcane, and I use my utility to make up for loss damage. I handle mobility gimmicks with Blink and Displacement, I soak stuff with Greater Invisibility/Ice Block/Prismatic Barrier, I handle priority add gimmicks with Arcane's truly ludicrous burst DPS (and make no mistake, even if the sustained DPS isn't great, the burst DPS is amazingly, hilariously strong). I make up the difference on fights where I can't be a turret 24/7, because even with Rune of Power Arcane isn't punished by movement anywhere nearly as much as Shadow is..

And then sometimes a fight is Portal Keeper and you get to do good DPS anyway.

So yeah, I don't feel silly at all. Maybe if somebody who plays Shadow ends up designing Shadow in BFA, I'll switch back.

[Kilee25]

@davesignal

It’s my opinion that Legion’s design for shadow was heavily influenced by people who favor twitch hotkey style gameplay. I think that this group of players sees it as a high skill gap style of play, and they were seeking to champion shadow as a home for those sorts of players. WoW over the years has been edging more towards the struggle for world firsts and mythic raiding. World of Logs has been a contributor as well, pushing the narrative that there are players of incomparable skill and that these sorts of players should be viewed as celebrities and rock stars. It feeds into the growing YouTube culture that our society has been moving towards over the past few years as well. I think that the design of shadow has been influenced by all of these things, and the players who are representative of the “rock star” status had some influence on the direction that shadow went in, even if only by virtue of the employee base at Blizzard cycling into a new generation of designers and workers. I think this is why more “hand-friendly” gameplay options have disappeared from the class. The younger “twitch” gamer generation sees hand dexterity and split second reactions as a measure of skill and worth.

[Mazzeric]

1. Holy is somewhat problematic to judge. On the one hand, this is finally the expansion where they haven't been outshined by Disc

Can you define "outshined"? Because Disc has been outright the superior spec throughout Tomb and Antorus. Don't get me wrong, I want Holy to be good, but as a min-maxing player I haven't been able to justify playing it for quite some time.

Holy needs utility to be relevant in the meta as a whole, but also something to make us want to play it over Disc, which as a spec currently brings (1) raid DR via Atonement, (2) raid DR via Barrier, (3) ~500k innate DPS , (4) raid-topping burst healing every minute-ish (disclaimer: we don't really know what BFA Disc will be like).

Holy needs a lot to outshine Disc in a world where they are doing the same HPS. The "meta" healers right now all have "invisible HPS" benefits to the raid. Holy brings... Guardian Spirit? It just feels bad to play Holy right now when I could be bringing much more to the raid as Disc and doing about the same HPS (and more often than not, more than Holy on hard fights like M Aggramar and M Argus).

The design problem for Holy is, with the current amount of thinking and pre-planning required to play Disc, Disc will continue to be unpopular amongst the larger playerbase, and will always get buffed to bring up player participation. As a result, Disc will never be "bad" in throughput nor in utility, if it keeps everything it has now. This is a problem for Holy for min-maxing players if Holy does not get a clear edge in HPS or in utility ever in BFA.

[davesignal]

If I had a choice between one priest in my raid, Discipline or Holy.. I'd pick Holy.

But I'd pick Discipline if I could give him Holy's legendary cloak.

[somebodyz]

Holy is nice, the Holy word system works well.

Disc is extremely notoriously ridiculously undeniably clunky. The whole useaspelltoapplyatonementontheteammatethendpsthemonstertoheal mechanic needs to go (the extra effort put to read this line for no substantial gain is exactly the state of Disc in legion).
Seriously, previous iteration which emphasizes on damage mitigation and absorption is much better. Plus, no one actually expects a healer to dps, let alone negligible dps.

Shadow is weak. Weak at AOE, weak at mobility, weak at utility, weak at pvp... the list goes on and on.

[Deleted]

You must feel silly now then switching from top 5 DPS specc to the bottom one

Yes, playing spriest for a decade most definitely tells you he cared about being a top dps spec, we had our moments in a few raids/bosses but until legion we were never really considered a proper top dps spec

[Kilee25]

Yes, playing spriest for a decade most definitely tells you he cared about being a top dps spec, we had our moments in a few raids/bosses but until legion we were never really considered a proper top dps spec

We were pretty good throughout all of Cata imo.

[Alfryd]

Holy is nice, the Holy word system works well.

Disc is extremely notoriously ridiculously undeniably clunky. The whole useaspelltoapplyatonementontheteammatethendpsthemonstertoheal mechanic needs to go (the extra effort put to read this line for no substantial gain is exactly the state of Disc in legion).
Seriously, previous iteration which emphasizes on damage mitigation and absorption is much better. Plus, no one actually expects a healer to dps, let alone negligible dps.

Shadow is weak. Weak at AOE, weak at mobility, weak at utility, weak at pvp... the list goes on and on.

lol?

Healer dps has been a thing since Cata, really. The moment mana transitioned from a resource which was sparse to plentiful, meant healers were GCD locked. This became even more pressing with the introduction of 'challenge' modes in MoP. Basically, you're about 8 years too late with that statement.

And shadow is a top tier range spec in PvP (especially RBGs). It's hampered by the meleemongloidtrain of Legion, but that's applicable to all casters.

[Deleted]

We were pretty good throughout all of Cata imo.

Yeah cata was pretty decent for us but we were never in a spot where we had people flocking to play spriest like we have had in legion imo which was a bit surprising because it was when we were losing the whole mana battery niche.

[KaPe]

Can you define "outshined"? Because Disc has been outright the superior spec throughout Tomb and Antorus. Don't get me wrong, I want Holy to be good, but as a min-maxing player I haven't been able to justify playing it for quite some time.

Unlike previous expansions, Disc superiority is either debatable, or at very least requires quite a bit of effort. It's no longer about bubble spam or Atonement being smart heal you just cast without thought. It's a lot of work and depends on your knowledge of both the spec and the encounter in question. Not only that, but since absorbs have been severely nerfed, you no longer "need" Disc giving multiple people another health bar, so they don't get destroyed by boss damage.

Holy numbers are also pretty good, which was rarely the case throughout the entire expansion. We'd usually start out decent, but then drop down to bottom - with bad itemization being part of that. Granted, our final set is pretty bad, but at least there's no Archimonde trinket to be the true humiliation.

Utility is an issue, sure, but that's nothing new. It's still better than before, since you don't feel like you're crippling your raid by not covering them in shields... seeing how it's impossible outside of Rapture. We'll see if Symbol of Hope or our new Holy Word will solve it. I have my doubts, but at least it will be *something* new.

In general, I'm more satisfied with finally having a working "chakra" system than class itself being in great spot. Paladins and Shamans are still THE healers, not much has changed, but at least I don't feel like I'm trying to play around a stupid gimmick, that's some designers' love child (which also includes old Lightwell).

Either way, out of all three specs, I feel like Holy was "the winner" here. Not necessarily because it's the best, but because it didn't require significant rework like the other two. Disc has its' niche, but its' popularity has plummeted. Shadow... with how they're pushing M+, you'd think they'd put more attention to its' performance outside of raids, but nah.

[twistedmynd]

Similar feels here. I made a priest when I bought the game in 2006. And here I am. I explored "maining" other classes for the first time in warlords. But I come back to priest eventually.

For Legion, I started with Arcane Mage. Quickening was 'kind of' like voidform so it was pretty cool. I switched to fire (tomb) when the quickening talent was deleted from Arcane. That was a fun tier to blaze but Fire is simple. Orb build Frost for MLD 3s, but nothing serious.

So I picked up my trusty main for this last stretch:

====

SHADOW:

• World quests: are a struggle bus. But still easy after you outrageously outgear. I respecced holy for all the aoe ones, lol. Nobody has mentioned that the pvp towers are really good for shadow because the pvp talents are super good.
• M+: like, we suck, haha. It's just no contest. People that loved running with me, eager to invite me on my mage haven't run an m+ with me since october. sadface
• Raids: rotation is so much more engaging than 99% of the other specs. This was my most pleasant surprise. However! Any mechanic and I hate my life for dropping out of voidform and desynching my 1 min rotation. Also, I had an average, not just one off, but average orange rank on every fight as fire in tomb. It was a brutal climb. I found out shadow just sucks if you don't have bis legendaries and there's no point in even trying if you don't have sephuz yet.
• PVP: yes, you're a punching bag. But you're also THE MOST DAMAGE IN THE GAME CURRENTLY. So if you haven't pushed 3s or destroyed plebs in bg's yet, do it before the end of xpac. Because shadow is the best glass cannon in the game. I personally can't do 3s without someone peeling for me though, and unfortunately the shadow meta is pairing with destro lock, so you're just going to have to get shit on for this last season.

====

HOLY:

• WQs: Ironically the best spec. Holy nova is so dumb, it's actually better than arcane explosion.
• M+: It was fun the few times I tried it. I slapped it on for grievous and bursting weeks. I also played other healers and holy doesn't have great group tools. Like a shaman is better in all ways because wind shear and cap totem. Resto druid knockbacks and mobility is better. Paladins have better cd's and tank heals. Monks have the all powerful sweep. Holy is lacking.
• Raid: I didn't think I'd like the rework but it's actually pretty cool. Smashing through your cooldowns is fun, and I felt like I could stretch Holy Mana further, but that's just me. The cooldowns being locked behind other spells to make them come up sooner is restrictive, but you can figure out the damage patterns after a few pulls.
• PVP: Omg it's silly how holy turned into the grandpa spec in pvp. Like, it's supposed to have all these cool "saves" and "counterplays". But it's basically just old shaman, rotate through all 6 billion immunities and insta-crit your friends from the brink of death back to life while never ooming. If you rarely purge, you can even go deep into dampening (so yay, you can play with locks now). It's also fun to play jungle or kfc. Also no more dr with moonkins because holy doesn't have fear.

====

DISCIPLINE:

• WQs: I think I've only done maybe 3 world quests and they were killing elites by myself when shadow survivability wouldn't work. And hopefully within the 15 minutes of smiting, someone would come along and help.
• M+: I miss shields terribly. That's what made this spec main bae for me for 10+ years. But it's still a fun challenge. I wish it could actually work on bursting week though. Like Holy, it needs a utility spell badly.
• Raids: Super fun. Hard, complicated, and rewarding. I wish all specs were like this, but only hipsters get to be high risk, high reward, which is okay for the class that has 2 healing specs.
• PVP: If you macro target switching (like you should be), this spec is super brainless and fun. Comp restrictive though (for me, just RMP or WWMP). Also, this spec sucks at bg's, haha. Play the other 2 if you want to be a bg hero.

====

Nobody is going to read that wall of text, but I feel like I had to get it off my chest. Overall, legion was solid. I rolled with the changes. Now I get to decide which new flavor to try to main that I haven't tried for a raid tier in BFA. Warlock, Monk, Warrior, or Hunter. On paper, monk would be wise. After playing it though, warlocks are dope.

[Grumpy Old Man]

Shackle Undead: Was this even used in the entire expansion?

Only in the Mage Tower challenge and that's it.

[Nurasu]

Holy is nice, the Holy word system works well.

Disc is extremely notoriously ridiculously undeniably clunky. The whole useaspelltoapplyatonementontheteammatethendpsthemonstertoheal mechanic needs to go (the extra effort put to read this line for no substantial gain is exactly the state of Disc in legion).

I still don't get this. Plea heals more than Rejuv upfront, PtW or SWP start ticking on them immediately, and then your actual healing starts whenever you hit your damage abilities. At worst you're more efficient than a Resto Druid applying HoTs, but in reality you're also applying a 2% damage reduction, increasing your damage by 1%, and increasing your Penance and DoT healing exponentially.

[Mazzeric]

The fundamental problem Holy Priest has is that if they continue to balance HPS between healers (which they have been doing a pretty damn good job with lately), it will always have the problem of having its utility compared to all the other specs. It doesn't seem like there will ever be a healer utility "tax" on healing output again, as you could argue there has been in the past. With this healing model they really need to take a serious look at both Holy Priest and Mistweaver utility in order for those specs to feel more useful to their raids.

I hate to say it but I don't think baseline Symbol of Hope actually helps Holy that much in the utility dept, assuming they aren't going to balance mana around having a Holy Priest in the raid, and that mana continues to be something we care about, but not necessarily that we need a ton more of. If the spell did make a large impact you probably would have seen Holy Priests on live taking it as a talent at least some of the time. As it is right now, healers have the option to leytorrent if they need the mana, and the more mana-restrained healers (Druid, Mistweaver, Priest sometimes) have access to innervates and wisdom which remove their mana problems. On most fights you are able to find time to leytorrent in the same way you'd find time to channel Symbol of Hope; you're basically just leytorrenting for everyone else (assumes all healers have enough mana missing to benefit).

Having Holy Word: Salvation is nice, but does it really add that much to your raid when you have a plethora of other cooldowns to choose from? It's another button to add to the list of cooldowns the raid has at its disposal, and for sure it will be a satisfying button for Holy to press, but it doesn't scream "hey awesome thank god we have a holy priest in the raid" like spells like Aura Mastery, Spirit Link, and Ancestral Protection Totem do. It's a raw throughput spell that will pump HPS for a while and not much more. Its niche is very similar to Revival, which is a "nice to have, not amazing" button. It will depend a bit on how much the up-front healing portion of the spell heals for in a 20-player raid.

[Deleted]

Hi, OP here, been gone on business travel so sorry for not supporting the thread (also.. I'm forgetful) hope this isn't considered necroing.

I just want to clarify that I do not want to be nr1, I am happy if priest performs well in the middle somewhere or the upper echelons of the overall balance.
What I do want is that priest gets the same "thing" that others have. I do not feel I excel at anything when I am on my priest, and most of the game outside of raid isn't really favouring our class design either, unlike a lot of melee who can just cleave their way forward in a non-trivial matter until everything is ash. In raid, for healing you will never hear anyone say "lets bring a priest" because why would they, bringing paladin or druid is just so much more beneficial in every facet of raiding.

An idea I have been thinking of would be to make holy be the first healer not using mana and instead utilize somewhat similar system to shadow where we enter an ascended form to put out more healing, so you have an ebb-flow kind of play style. Having a lot of CDs is already a paladin thing, hots is a druid thing, don't really know about monk but I am sure they got something, disc got absorbs. This could be holy's thing, to be an infinite healing battery but have the challenge that you need to manage your ebb and flow particularly well to whatever is coming to make a difference. Mana in most instances of this game is just outdated anyway and if you are a healer and run oom, usually just means something went wrong anyway.

[Kilee25]

Personally I would like to see holy priests be the premier all-rounded healer, versatile and able to fill every role, but not as specialized as the other healers, and lacking in utility. Basically a return to Vanilla and perhaps early BC mindset. I also think they need their armor bonus ability back for healing targets with crit heals. Additionally I think they need some whizz-bang spell that feels like a game-changer, and makes people say, “We need at least one holy priest for that thing they have.” Of course, I am a big proponent of, “Bring the class, not the player.” So enh...

[Mazzeric]

I think the Priest community as a whole, regardless of the content they engage in, Mythic, Heroic, or Normal, is looking for that something extra. We have a decent set of core mechanics in Serendipity, Void Form, and Atonement, but I think all three specs are still looking for an extra "layer" of usefulness that many other specs brought in Legion.

Disc admittedly does not really need anything, but the community at large still feels uncomfortable with its playstyle for whatever reason, and as a result its audience is pretty niche. The players that are getting the most out of the spec are raiding Mythic. Disc can be very frustrating to play for people that don't dedicate a good amount of time to mastering it, or players who simply want to play reactively and not have to anticipate incoming damage all the time. I guess it remains to be seen if Blizzard will try to iterate once more on the spec to try and draw in new players. I hope not, but it's a real possibility.

Shadow had its moments in Legion and overall it's a good spec even if it pales in comparison to Warlock in the current tier. On the fights Shadow excelled at, Affliction was just better; they need to re-evaluate the DoT classes in particular to make sure each one is doing something unique, since it will always feel bad to be 2nd or 3rd best within your spec's niche with no other advantages. Vampiric Embrace is nice to have, but it rarely matters. You need to be in void form in the moment it's needed in order for it to do much, so it's not as flexible a healing cooldown as we would like.

I've talked about Holy a lot already so I'll leave that alone. There are some decent ideas popping up. Inspiration was a nice side effect of crit healing, but if Holy got it, it would effectively be "stealing" from Disc, which currently has damage reduction on Atonement application (remains to be seen if that's coming back for Disc). It could be one step towards bridging the gap between the two specs in terms of utility. It really could just be one additional thing they give to Holy to make it feel good (or "less useless").

"Bring the player not the class" is of course a dated philosophy, that as Ion recently described gave way to too much homogenization, and I think that's where Priest lots its identity, at least for Shadow and Holy. Disc on the other hand has a strong, but ultimately unpopular spec identity. Legion as an expansion was ultimately about spec flavor and not spec identity. We got an artifact that served as a vehicle for story and game systems (AP, NLC) rather than gameplay mechanics. We got loaded up on a ton of passive effects through artifact traits and legendaries. We got nice new animations that made us feel in tune with our spec. Ultimately it will come down to having more spells, spell synergies, and utilities that will really help round out class design in BFA.