[Priest] 5.2 PTR notes

[Venaliter]

I'm guessing that the initial portion will not benefit from mastery, but yes, the fact that the others are bigger will give a slight benefit to mastery.

I'm not even sure why this is still being discussed. Obvious PvE buff (albeit slight) and huge pvp nerf. That's the end of it. Move on.

[Flaubertlives]

I'm not even sure why this is still being discussed. Obvious PvE buff (albeit slight) and huge pvp nerf. That's the end of it. Move on.

Thanks for your constructive input on this matter.

Back on topic, having had chance to get onto the PTR. It does in fact like we all expected, however, mastery ticks are currently only hitting for 58.3% of normal ticks. This means mastery ticks are currently using the old DoT co-efficient so damage should (when fixed) be slighly higher overall than we are seeing.

[Meaks]

Yep. 26,951 SP for me.
Current PTR: [187.1% of 26,951 + 19,428]*1.3074 Mastery -> 91376
Expected: [321.1% of 26,951 + 33,338*]*1.3074 Mastery -> 156728 (Which seems outrageous, tooltip says 130k)

Correction:
Expected should be: [267.6% of 26,951 + 27,782*]*1.3074 Mastery -> 130613

Explained on previous page.

[Clebane]

Correction:
Expected should be: [267.6% of 26,951 + 27,782*]*1.3074 Mastery -> 130613

Explained on previous page.

Depends if it's a tooltip error then, the disc SP coefficient for PW:S is supposed to be 321.1%

Edit: I see the 20% mastery thing now, seems like it's lined up.

[Deleted]

Today I tested healing as Spriest (full malovent gear) on the PTR. I was doing 37k Flashheals in pve environment. Did they still keep the 30% healing debuff when playing BG/Arena? This would be rediculous... and finally this forces me to give up on the game.

[vanityking]

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

[scandore8472]

Today I tested healing as Spriest (full malovent gear) on the PTR. I was doing 37k Flashheals in pve environment. Did they still keep the 30% healing debuff when playing BG/Arena? This would be rediculous... and finally this forces me to give up on the game.

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...

[Darth-Piekus]

The whole Nerf thing happened because lower than average pvpers instead of working their own classes and weaknesses they demand for nerfs. This nerf was not really needed.

I really do not understand the Logic of the Shadow Priest developers. Do they exist at all? Don't they have any voice at all to make a stand? Or what is going on with the Shadow Priest players. Aren't they fed up with the unnessesary nerfs? They are not even providing a serious excuse for every nerf they may take.

[Deleted]

The whole Nerf thing happened because lower than average pvpers instead of working their own classes and weaknesses they demand for nerfs. This nerf was not really needed.

I really do not understand the Logic of the Shadow Priest developers. Do they exist at all? Don't they have any voice at all to make a stand? Or what is going on with the Shadow Priest players. Aren't they fed up with the unnessesary nerfs? They are not even providing a serious excuse for every nerf they may take.

I'm very curious who is doing the shadow priest class design. Who is the lead designer here? Ghostcrawler and Ghostcrawler alone? Or is there someone who is working on priest class design who's under his responsibility? I mean, if Xelnath was warlock lead designer, who's ours?

[Revolutions]

The whole Nerf thing happened because lower than average pvpers instead of working their own classes and weaknesses they demand for nerfs. This nerf was not really needed.

I really do not understand the Logic of the Shadow Priest developers. Do they exist at all? Don't they have any voice at all to make a stand? Or what is going on with the Shadow Priest players. Aren't they fed up with the unnessesary nerfs? They are not even providing a serious excuse for every nerf they may take.

Not really a nerf, but a preventative move to make sure Flash Heal for Shadow isn't OP. It already does a crap load of healing and with 5.2 Hybrids get 25% more healing in Pvp. The buff and nerf counteract each other effectively.

[Yvaelle]

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...

No it doesn't, not anywhere close. A healing nerf was totally needed, but don't make up nonsense like that - the only dps spec that can burst heal like a healer is ret procs. Shadow flash heals need to remain relevant in PvP - it's something we're being balanced around having - I think this nerf will keep them relevant. With that said, the only triple DPS comp that uses a shadowpriest above 2200 (the cutoff for serious PvP in my opinion) is shadow/boomy/fmage - and while flash heals are an important part of that comps healing strategy, that comp is the only one because the boomkin has full and comparable HPS to shadow, and the fmage has Healing Touch via symbiosis (effectively they have 3 healers).

The overwhelming majority of triple DPS comps use ret healers, and the majority of 2200+ ret comps are triple DPS comps - unlike shadow/boomkin/fmage - rets are frequently the only healer on their team. Now, that's perfectly fine so long as its balanced - and generally it is (rets really don't need this new pvp power hybrid healing buff though) - that same logic is equally true for when shadow heals are balanced, right now they are a little too strong, soon they will be nerfed fairly hard - hopefully they remain relevant. Until you see triple DPS comps using shadowpriests as the solo healer on the team though, suggesting that we're any sort of replacement for a heal spec is misinformation.

[Copulatingduck]

I just wish they'd let us build shadow orbs beyond 3 like they did with Ret Pallies. Not very fun or interesting having to DP at 3 orbs to avoid wasted Orbs when you have no trinkets procced. If we could buildup 5 orbs, it would give us a little bit more freedom with when/where to DP. Would help quite a bit with the "burst on-demand" issue, as well as allow us to fully utilize trinket procs and result in what I think would be a reasonable single-target buff without worry of overbuffing.

I tweeted GC before about how the synergy between Epidemic+procs+haunt makes for compelling gameplay. Being forced to DP at 3orbs without procs because mind blast is about to come off CD just isn't fun or interesting. Not sure if he caught it though :\

[Deleted]

I just wish they'd let us build shadow orbs beyond 3 like they did with Ret Pallies. Not very fun or interesting having to DP at 3 orbs to avoid wasted Orbs when you have no trinkets procced. If we could buildup 5 orbs, it would give us a little bit more freedom with when/where to DP. Would help quite a bit with the "burst on-demand" issue, as well as allow us to fully utilize trinket procs and result in what I think would be a reasonable single-target buff without worry of overbuffing.

I tweeted GC before about how the synergy between Epidemic+procs+haunt makes for compelling gameplay. Being forced to DP at 3orbs without procs because mind blast is about to come off CD just isn't fun or interesting. Not sure if he caught it though :\

I don't know how it works with ret palas. AFAIK they simply added 2 more power, so max is 5, but resource uses 3? I think moonkin is a better compare. Astral Communion or whatever it is called. But the poor, poor moonkins. Have they suffered in Cata, and before, with their eclispe pre-fight.

(Priest getting a way to get 3 orbs before every fight is something we discussed and gave various solutions for before, in various other threads.)

[VanillaO]

Would be a lot cooler if the tier 3 talent we chose varied how many shadow orbs we could build, and what we could do with them... at least to me. Maybe not how many orbs we build, but how many DP consumes?

For example:

Mind Flay: Insanity allows one orb to be built, OR allows 3 orbs to be built, but only consumes one at a time - that way we could at least have potentially 20 seconds of minorly interrupted single target increased damage.

Mindbender would make it so that during Mindbinder's uptime, Mind Blast is unusable, and every hit from the Mindbender causes an orb to generate.

FDCL - every 2 instant mind spikes used generates an orb, with a maximum of 5 allowed (only 3 may be consumed at once).



I realize there are a lot of holes with what I've done here, but I'm just throwing ideas out there that some math-smarter people could maybe take to GC?

[Copulatingduck]

I don't know how it works with ret palas. AFAIK they simply added 2 more power, so max is 5, but resource uses 3? I think moonkin is a better compare. Astral Communion or whatever it is called. But the poor, poor moonkins. Have they suffered in Cata, and before, with their eclispe pre-fight.

(Priest getting a way to get 3 orbs before every fight is something we discussed and gave various solutions for before, in various other threads.)

I meant going with same model as pally where abilities still use a max of 3 resource (in this case, shadow orb), but can have a pool of 5 max. This would open up the window for when to use a 3orb DP from the ~9seconds before a 4th Mind Blasts to ~27seconds before a 6th Mind Blast. That extra ~18ish seconds would give priest ample opportunity to align 3orb DPs with procs, and perhaps even allow us to get 2 DPs off with most procs up, if you were willing to sit on orbs for a bit. I had made this suggestion as something to make our sustained dps a bit more interesting, and give it a small buff.


The Astral Communion stuff is something people have discussed time and again to help our opener, not really related to what I was suggesting.

[Deleted]

That would be a small pve buff and a massive pvp buff, I doubt that's what blizzard is looking for with shadow atm:/

[Venaliter]

That would be a small pve buff and a massive pvp buff, I doubt that's what blizzard is looking for with shadow atm:/

I'd be happy if we could actually cast Mind Spike without dispelling our DoTs. COme on, does mindspike *really* need to dispel our dots if it's DET is lower then Mindflay?

[Deleted]

I'd be happy if we could actually cast Mind Spike without dispelling our DoTs. COme on, does mindspike *really* need to dispel our dots if it's DET is lower then Mindflay?

Doesn't need to, but the only time you'd actually want to cast mind spike even in that scenario would be if you're locked, so just another (albeit small) pvp buff which blizzard seemingly tries to avoid (personally I don't really feel that shadow is over the top in pvp now that players are geared, but the spec definitely doesn't need buffs).

[Venaliter]

Doesn't need to, but the only time you'd actually want to cast mind spike even in that scenario would be if you're locked, so just another (albeit small) pvp buff (personally I don't really feel that shadow is over the top in pvp now that players are geared, but the spec definitely doesn't need buffs).

Shadow does very well against casters, but very terrible against melee. I'd be totally fine with a small Silence nerf to compete against melee, who we roll over and show our bellies too without frost nova/df and roots.

[Deleted]

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.