Is it only me, or do priest get the worst treatment from wow devs?

[Niwes]

Honestly, i think that priest is actually in the worst position from any classes; did hear that a dev quit, but why did priest then get the worst treatment of all classes?

All other classes get updates regularly, issues get polished, feedback gets considered and changes are underway, and Priests got: yes, we know, but class fantasy (just because all other healers got it, homogenizing, blabla. And since we got NOTHING. No feedback, nothing. ONE update, and that's it; and nothing got accnowledged, instead we are the ONLY class that got following statement:

WE ARE RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG.
I was so hopeful after we got the first build, but then build over build it got somehow worse, now HOLY PRIESTS HAVE MIND BLAST TALENTS THAT THEY CAN'T EVEN USE BECAUSE THEY NO LONGER HAVE MIND BLAST! And without mind blast, having vampiric embrace as holy is a sick joke. And if a HUNTER somehow shed a tear, there are around 10 wow devs that even holds a hankerchief for him.

Yes, this is a Rant, and i an so fed up with the bad treatment the class i play since vanilla got, that i even cancelled my pre-order of Dragonflight.

Priests were fast done. I agree. But you nonetheless can’t compete with Rets. Nobody can. But you will also loose against „copy/paste talents to tree, move em around, call it a day“ Rogues.

[Polybius]

It's factually true, though. Priests have been a top pvp spec the entire duration of organized PvP in this game. Discipline has been one of the core healers in raiding for over a decade (with holy usually being meh but still not the worst). Discipline has typically been an excellent m+ healer, but now that it isn't, holy has been A/S tier for s3 and s4.

Shadow has certainly had its struggles but it is easily one of the top 5 historical raiding dps specs for the last decade, probably top 3 with warlock and mage (I actually don't think there is a single other hybrid DPS spec in the game that has been consistently better than shadow in raiding). It usually has good pvp comps as well. The worst place historically has been m+, but the changes in DF seem like they will fix that.

There's just no factual reality where priests have been an underperforming class lol.

Historically it's been mediocre, hitting like pasta. They hit a high in WoD, were completely reworked in Legion and neutered before the first tier. Their playstyle has somewhat returned, but time will tell if they have no clunky rotations and are decent DPS in DF. It's rarely been in the top 5 DPS, at most they're average and underperform for some boss fights.

[Biomega]

Priest getting the worst treatment?

Go into the basement sometime. There, in a corner, next to the shit bucket and bowl of half-eaten fish heads, you'll find the cowering, shackled figures of Ret Paladin and Feral Druid.

[tomten]

Shaman would like to say hi and ask if its your first time :P

[Itori]

They don't know how to handle the class of the lord!!

[Raisei]

It's factually true, though. Priests have been a top pvp spec the entire duration of organized PvP in this game. Discipline has been one of the core healers in raiding for over a decade (with holy usually being meh but still not the worst). Discipline has typically been an excellent m+ healer, but now that it isn't, holy has been A/S tier for s3 and s4.

Shadow has certainly had its struggles but it is easily one of the top 5 historical raiding dps specs for the last decade, probably top 3 with warlock and mage (I actually don't think there is a single other hybrid DPS spec in the game that has been consistently better than shadow in raiding). It usually has good pvp comps as well. The worst place historically has been m+, but the changes in DF seem like they will fix that.

There's just no factual reality where priests have been an underperforming class lol.

I agree, I do not feel like im am underperforming in terms of sheer numbers.

But that isn't the big issue. The complaints were generally about Utility (mine were at least). Specifically it targets the fact that almost all healers are getting an interrupt now and another gets a combat rez and Priests get nada, no even worse they loose Utility. And for what reason?

Because other classes have that Utility and PvP. You can probably imagine that this is hard to swallow for a Priest Player that doesn't play PvP at all and would have loved to support his group in M+ better with additional Utility. But nope.

It feels incredibly unfair and it is clear sign that they really couldn't care less about our feedback. Not to mention the fact that it is clearly a lie. There is a system in place that allows for abilities to have different effects in PvP and PvE. If they would just use that, then there would never be any need to nerf a class in PvE just because the PvPers are crying.

So since that is a lie, the only reason is that it doesn't fit the Dev's class fantasy. Which would be okay, if the friggin game wouldn't constantly punish us for these things:

Holy Priests are already on the low end of Utility and suffer in any situation where they cannot plant their feet and chain cast. Shaman have a CD for that, why don't we?

Holy Priests are on the low end of survivability. If a big mob even sneezes in our direction we die and our only "Defensive" is a joke. Shamans have a 40% DR CD, Paladins have like 5 of those with one even being a full immunity, Druid turn into literal bears and have Ironbark, Heck even Monks have better defensives, why do we have none of that?

In DF we will have no Interrupt, no CR, no general CC, no Defensive to speak of. All of the things that are incredibly useful in M+ runs. And all other healers bring at least 1 of those most bring 2 or even 3.

I just don't see how the Priest Dev can justify this bullshit. But he did and since he doesn't care about our feedback this is how Priests will be for at least 1-2 Patches.
The only reason to take a Priest into a higher M+ Group will then be Mass Dispell and that only helps on Bursting weeks. Unless of course the Evoker has gotten something of the sort as well. I would not even be surprised.

[Pregnant Orc]

Holy Priests are on the low end of survivability. If a big mob even sneezes in our direction we die and our only "Defensive" is a joke. Shamans have a 40% DR CD, Paladins have like 5 of those with one even being a full immunity, Druid turn into literal bears and have Ironbark, Heck even Monks have better defensives, why do we have none of that?

While still bad Priests have a 10% DR and a 33% health buffer for defense (Fade and Desperate Prayer) if talented for it but only a 25% buffer if not.
Two buttons to set up our personal defense at the same time where most have only one and we want to dish out pre-emptive PoM, Renews and so on to aid in the recovery.

One alternative is to use Guardian Spirit on ourselves and hope it works and saves us from death, I have no clue if Guardians of the Light will replicate the save from death effect or just the heal increase onto the user.

Another is to use Restitution to come back (10 min CD) from Spirit of Redemption though this one is very unreliable as it can't be guaranteed since you always risk dying to mistakes before your planned use.

Neither defense/recovery option is very appealing and the problem might stem from having access to all three at the same time (horrible opportunity cost though) rather than a more classic robust defensive CD.

[bluesock]

Yes, priest has historically gotten the worst possible treatment from the devs. Especially the past 10 years, starting from Legion it has been nothing but a downwards spiral, not a single positive change has happened in 6 years straight.

And it's looking bleak as well. They posted the last blue post saying how priest players are retarded and the priest dev will do everything opposite of what we say, and right after that Blizz decided that work on talents is over for the whole xpan.

So another 2 years with a dogshit shadow spec, that will make it 8 in a row. Here's hoping that maybe 11.0 will finally do something with the class.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

Historically it's been mediocre, hitting like pasta. They hit a high in WoD, were completely reworked in Legion and neutered before the first tier. Their playstyle has somewhat returned, but time will tell if they have no clunky rotations and are decent DPS in DF. It's rarely been in the top 5 DPS, at most they're average and underperform for some boss fights.

Not talking about clunkiness of rotations or fun or subjective things, talking about measurable performance. This is only through BFA, but it is pretty consistent: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...wiQ/edit#gid=0

And this is just shadow - priest is a class, not a spec, and Disc is historically one of the strongest healing specs in the game for 10+ years running, with only a few mediocre tiers.

But even just for shadow, can you think of a single hybrid dps spec that is consistently better? Balance is often good but also has a lot of bad spots; elemental is almost never better than shadow; Ret/Feral we don't even need to ask; Windwalker/Havoc are brought for the buff, but again aren't super consistent in raids; DPS warrior always gets a slot; DKS...totally depends. Who among those has it consistently better than shadow? Certainly not many, possibly not any!

Shadow is also almost always better than 2/3 of the pure DPS class specs, and often better than all 3 for at least one or two pure dps classes per tier.

Like I'm sorry, but there is no data to support shadow in specific or priests in general being a poorly treated class. It is one of the most consistently good classes in the game across all content for the entire history of the game.

- - - Updated - - -

I agree, I do not feel like im am underperforming in terms of sheer numbers.

But that isn't the big issue. The complaints were generally about Utility (mine were at least). Specifically it targets the fact that almost all healers are getting an interrupt now and another gets a combat rez and Priests get nada, no even worse they loose Utility. And for what reason?

Because other classes have that Utility and PvP. You can probably imagine that this is hard to swallow for a Priest Player that doesn't play PvP at all and would have loved to support his group in M+ better with additional Utility. But nope.

It feels incredibly unfair and it is clear sign that they really couldn't care less about our feedback. Not to mention the fact that it is clearly a lie. There is a system in place that allows for abilities to have different effects in PvP and PvE. If they would just use that, then there would never be any need to nerf a class in PvE just because the PvPers are crying.

So since that is a lie, the only reason is that it doesn't fit the Dev's class fantasy. Which would be okay, if the friggin game wouldn't constantly punish us for these things:

Holy Priests are already on the low end of Utility and suffer in any situation where they cannot plant their feet and chain cast. Shaman have a CD for that, why don't we?

Holy Priests are on the low end of survivability. If a big mob even sneezes in our direction we die and our only "Defensive" is a joke. Shamans have a 40% DR CD, Paladins have like 5 of those with one even being a full immunity, Druid turn into literal bears and have Ironbark, Heck even Monks have better defensives, why do we have none of that?

In DF we will have no Interrupt, no CR, no general CC, no Defensive to speak of. All of the things that are incredibly useful in M+ runs. And all other healers bring at least 1 of those most bring 2 or even 3.

I just don't see how the Priest Dev can justify this bullshit. But he did and since he doesn't care about our feedback this is how Priests will be for at least 1-2 Patches.
The only reason to take a Priest into a higher M+ Group will then be Mass Dispell and that only helps on Bursting weeks. Unless of course the Evoker has gotten something of the sort as well. I would not even be surprised.

Yeah I don't necessarily most with any of this*. I think specific criticisms of the tree are perfectly valid and justified, especially around these issues.

Just this is a separate point than this hilarious whining about being the redheaded stepchild of the developers which is obviously not true.

*The last point I think is completely wrong. Double PI is insanely powerful and priests get it for free, along with MD and no AE mind soothe. Shadow is going to be in a better spot purely because of that.

Healers I think will really depend on tuning. If holy does good damage with Empyreal blaze etc it will probably be fine, since damage is typically what matters for m+ healing.

[Steelangel]

There's just no factual reality where priests have been an underperforming class lol.

And here is where you are both right and wrong.
Priests, in the hands of a capable player (and with a competent group) can do amazing things. Absolutely off-the-charts amazeballs. I play Disc in PvP; I've kept half my RBG team (and myself) alive while running on almost no mana and spinning the flag.

But the learning curve for Disc in PvE is not friendly. Every other healer gets to play the game of "You get a heal!, You get a hot!, Here's some raidwide passive heals!" Disc is like "omg big damage incoming in 3 globals, I have time to radiance twice and then be ready for penance on CD and OMG WHY DID THE HUNTARD STEP IN THAT SANGUINE WTF now I have to shadow mend".

Disc is absolutely terrible at catchup heals. If you fall behind even a bit your mana starts to run out, and affixes like greivous are so difficult to manage that most disc priests just don't -play- on those weeks.

Shadow, on the other hand, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Shadow has certainly not been top-3. It's generically mid-tier, and has been since at least Legion. The last time I saw shadow anywhere near the top 3 was the last week that Wowhead did its DPS breakdown for s4.

[Hedleyazg]

No, they do not. There have been classes ignored completely from beta to mid expansion with problems existing that were reported during beta.

[Ashana Darkmoon]

And here is where you are both right and wrong.
Priests, in the hands of a capable player (and with a competent group) can do amazing things. Absolutely off-the-charts amazeballs. I play Disc in PvP; I've kept half my RBG team (and myself) alive while running on almost no mana and spinning the flag.

But the learning curve for Disc in PvE is not friendly. Every other healer gets to play the game of "You get a heal!, You get a hot!, Here's some raidwide passive heals!" Disc is like "omg big damage incoming in 3 globals, I have time to radiance twice and then be ready for penance on CD and OMG WHY DID THE HUNTARD STEP IN THAT SANGUINE WTF now I have to shadow mend".

Disc is absolutely terrible at catchup heals. If you fall behind even a bit your mana starts to run out, and affixes like greivous are so difficult to manage that most disc priests just don't -play- on those weeks.

Shadow, on the other hand, I'm not sure what you're talking about. Shadow has certainly not been top-3. It's generically mid-tier, and has been since at least Legion. The last time I saw shadow anywhere near the top 3 was the last week that Wowhead did its DPS breakdown for s4.

I don't like the design of Disc either. I've actually hated it for a long time. But that is a different question than whether it has been historically effective!

Also I posted the raid data for Legion and BFA. How many tiers historically has shadow been in the bottom half of raid performance? It's pretty rare. Now compare that to every other dps. And for Dragonflight, add 15% to that number for whoever is getting the second PI.



Holy has actually consistently been the worst priest spec for a long time, with recent seasons being a big exception (and yet still pretty much always better than Mistweaver).

[AlmightyGerkin]

"My class isn't getting as much attention as I want" is kinda childish and quite frankly, pathetic.

This mentality has been going on for years. Ever since wotlk. And it has only acclerated since than

[Wardonis]

The current setup of priest looks really damn good. I'm excited at the mindspike redesign, adds so much mobility to the spec and the rotation feels fast and punchy

[Ravenyx]

This is an issue in general with some of hybrid DPS specs like Shadow, Ret, Enhance etc. I think it stems from Blizzard not really knowing what to do with those specs, they have a strong class fantasy but in some ways a flawed mechanical niche to fulfil. I think a lot of the time they just needlessly over complicate things. This results in huge swings between being poor and very good. I've always thought the pure dps specs like Mage, Rogue, Lock etc just get a lot more positive attention.

[marathal]

I have to agree. Too many years of either we have changes in mind, but they will need to wait, or we feel Priests are in a good place. Dragonflight is the first expansion that I am waiting to try in the PTR before purchasing, and even if I do, I highly doubt I will be buying it for launch day. There really isn't anything they have shown that is enticing for me to spend the money for two basic editions. I pay for two subs, and we have logged maybe 50 hours of game time in the last 6 months.

I will agree that at the higher levels of play, in a skilled players hands, Shadow Priests can be competitive. The big issue lies in the design at the lower end, for those who struggle with the super complex rotations, who cannot get the necessary gear to play at the level the class is designed around.

[ChairmanKaga]

Is it only me, or do priest get the worst treatment from wow devs? .

I think it's you.

[Velerios]

Holy has actually consistently been the worst priest spec for a long time, with recent seasons being a big exception (and yet still pretty much always better than Mistweaver).

Monk have probably another issue, that there is simply not enough data out there. Monk was the only class that blizzard released that was not a hero-class, so leveling one up from level 1 wasn't as enticing as the other classes, and therefore it's still sadly one of the least played classes. And because of this, they also have the lowest priority.

But honestly: This time blizzard seems to be finally started to take things a bit more serious about them, and they actually look a bit better than they did before, especially for mistweaver; meanwhile, holy gets sh*t, and suggestions were put down because of class fantasy blabla (still the only healer without an ability to spec into an interrupt while also being the most squishy one) and other kind of bullshit; priest seems to be the only class that gets the usual blizzard ok, we understand but now, we know it better-treatment that we "loved" in the last couple of expansions.

And yes, Disc was and might be still one of the strongest healers out there, but only for the upper 1% of players.

I think it's you.

OK, but as we saw in this thread, this does not seem to be the case.

[Dejiko]

It's odd that certain baseline talent nodes don't change depending on what spec you're in.
If only 2/3 specs have access to Mind Blast, the class talent tree should reflect that.

They have the means to do so, and have done it in other expansions.
Just have it so any MB talents change to Holy Fire ones when specced as holy.

In some sense it was an inevitable area of design conflict.
Before they ensured everyone had the same basic toolkit when learning spells from an NPC, it more or less made everyone of that class the same prior to applying your talents.

Now they ask you to customize your baseline kit, then add talents ontop.
Greater flexibility sure, but there are also many more factors to consider and possible design headaches.

Does baseline spell ( if talented ) require X number of spec specific talent nodes?
If yes, how many, how much added customization should be offered?
If no, are other talents offered when the baseline spell is not selected?

Rather than being compensated for certain choices you've made, some nodes are just dead or have become irrelevant filler.

[Velerios]

It's odd that certain baseline talent nodes don't change depending on what spec you're in.
If only 2/3 specs have access to Mind Blast, the class talent tree should reflect that.

They have the means to do so, and have done it in other expansions.
Just have it so any MB talents change to Holy Fire ones when specced as holy.

In some sense it was an inevitable area of design conflict.
Before they ensured everyone had the same basic toolkit when learning spells from an NPC, it more or less made everyone of that class the same prior to applying your talents.

Now they ask you to customize your baseline kit, then add talents ontop.
Greater flexibility sure, but there are also many more factors to consider and possible design headaches.

Does baseline spell ( if talented ) require X number of spec specific talent nodes?
If yes, how many, how much added customization should be offered?
If no, are other talents offered when the baseline spell is not selected?

Rather than being compensated for certain choices you've made, some nodes are just dead or have become irrelevant filler.

Vampiric Embrace for Holy is a big pile of sh*t blizzard created and a dead talent point for us. They could have changed it by for example making Holy damage instead do Twilight Damage while Vampiric Embrace is active, but no, because of "button bloat" they simply removed the only constant damage spell we had for it and still keep Vampiric Embrace in the general Tree.

It simply shows that 1-2 people who cried about it get approved to it that we have too many buttons, but balancing everything out when it gets removed, nope, nothing. It shows how lackluster Priest actually gets balanced, and now it's over, we get these shitty unbalanced changes until the next expansion because as it seems the Priest dev disappeared and they replaced them with someone who never played priest at all.

And all stays the same: Holy is shit again this expansion like every expansion except 9.2, Disc is OP again for 1% of players, not for the rest of the 99%, will get nerfed again and again to balance the upper 1%, and shadow... not sure about it at all, don't play enough shadow for it.

But in the end it's again an expansion where the will probably try to somehow say: you get balanced in 10.1 and like before they will change 2-3 talents and say it's fixed, people get even more angry and then they simply buff us to insane levels in 10.2 to keep players shutting up; in reality nothing get changed until the next expansion. It's the same procedure as every (second) year.

And this only happens for priest every fricking expansion. While hunters got what: 40-60 blue posts? It's simply pathetic.