Death of the priest?

[Saier]

Your class is safe just like everyone elses. I love my lil clothie buddies, except in pvp, you can be a tad annoying. I haven't looked over your talents or new spells but the only drawback I saw with a holy priest was them dying...alot. Dis and SP are fine. Just gotta sit back and wait, you'll be happy when expansion comes and forget about all the complaining everyone does here.

[jhemfl]

If they wanna fix us, they can easily do it.

Take Mind Blast off of a cooldown. Simple as that.

[Reju]

Once again someone who has no concept of who AWESOME the changes are going to be, the last talent in holy is kinda crappy but in general priests are going to be uber, regardless of spec. Spriest even more viable in pvp than they are now, disc even better but with the added bonus of being able to be a respected healer in pve. Holy, what can i say, the new inscription is gonna make dying SOOOOOOOO worthwhile. If you don't know, Inscribe Spirit of Redemption, while in SoR form every crit heal you get extend the duration by 4s. Can you say stack crit and spam CoH?

[Lionne]

Spriest even more viable in pvp than they are now

<cough>

[Calaba]

The way I see it, shadow priests will still have a spot in 25-man raids. Misery is too important a debuff to NOT have, the same goes for VT in longer fights. Shadow priests won't be going OOM in Wrath because of the new talents, the VT nerf is happening because of the DPS increase, and also changes in other classes such as raid-wide mana totems, fewer blessings, etc.
So, shadow priests role in raid will stay how it is now. And yes, there's plenty of complaining about dps scaling badly with gear, but then shadow priests are still taken to sunwell because they're too useful to not have. No-one knows if this will continue into the new 25-mans though.

Holy / Disc priests also look like they'll be staying about the same. Spirit looks like it's becoming a more important stat for many classes, so it's likely that you'd want at least 1 priest with this in a 25-man raid. Holy priests will remain good-at-everything healers.

So for 25-mans, you'll want at least 1 holy/disc, 1 shadow. Which is about how it should be, there are 10 classes and only 25 raid spots.

For 10 mans, let's put together a nice setup - 2 shadow priests, 2 holy/disc, 1 prot pala, 1 holy pala (all blessings, auras) 1 enhancement shaman, 1 ele (all totems, 2 bloodlust/heroism), 1 boomkin (for the ele shaman! critcrit!pewpew!), 1 feral druid (in case of offtank)
This group setup would allow you to cut through ANY 10-man they could come up with, REALLY fast. Any boss which requires AoE healing would be a joke, your healers would never go OOM, even with VT nerfed, it's still giving 50% of its current mana, so 2 shadow priests will still give back tons. And you've got enough heroisms there to beat any DPS race.
Just about every class there has some form of AoE by lvl80.
Oh, and you've got a ton of CC there too. So far it looks like the first raids are Naxx(shackle undead) and dragons (druids hibernate).

So, no problem with priests in 10-mans either then. But pity the hunters, rogues, deathknights, warriors, mages and warlocks. I mean, why would anyone want to take them to a 10-man? Why have "real" DPS when you can take a raid full of healers and hybrids? This is the balance Blizzard have to get right, making sure all specs and classes get 10-man raid spots as well as 25-man ones.

[Sthiles]

Why wouldnt anyone want to take those "real" dps classes to 10 man raids just cuz of the healers/hybrids?
Kara for example can be done with 2 "real" healers and still be rushed, and not only because of tier 6 / sunwell equip.

And those "real" dps classes are needed in 25man raids so they also need to be taken to 10man raids because of the equip.

[Worshaka]

P.S. To the people praising the 30% threat reduction in the shadow tree consider that Blessing of Salvation will be removed so there won't be any difference in our threat generation in raids.

Which other class is getting an inane 30% threat reduction + talented threat reduction? Remember tanks TPS is increasing. The argument that we no longer have salvation is redudant because no-one does... so basically we have 30% less threat than any other class as it stands.

[Twiggly]

holy priests will be fine come xpac, you just dont know how to maximize your potential in a raid.

[greenmasheen]

I feel like Blizz is killing off the priest. Why you ask? read on...

quote edited for length.


while the 51 point talent kinda looks like meh, the other talents before it look much better. one which i noticed gave more crit and or healing to targets below 50% health

priests are getting much more "...and your XXXX heal/healing spells gain an additional XX% of your healing"

while i wish divine spirit would be avail to CoH priests who also want to invest in the deeper down +healing talents in holy, the talents we priests are getting arnt that bad. to top it off, CoH will benefit those who need healing more now, so that is a huge plus imo.



and holy concentration + imp holy concentration = 16 % chance to enter clearcasting + 60% spell haste for greater heal after going into holy concentration, also a talent that reduces mana inefficiency of overhealing.


http://talent.mmo-champion.com/?prie...00000000000000

[Clay]

I guess the only positive thing I see for priests in that the discipline spec seems to be a lot more useful for PVE and PVP.

This I find very interesting. Taken from the information about DK's and their tanking mechanism I'm positive there will be alot of timed, incredibly strong attacks from the end game bosses. Such as Boss X hits player Z (with the highest threat) with superduperattack every 30 seconds.
This is where disc priests will come in very handy (pain suppression and all that) as well as the anti-magic zone from DKs in some cases.

[Elicium]

First just want to thank everyone that's been involved in this thread it's still really interesting. Special thanks to the mighty Nogi and Karpalo!!

There's another post called:
"Wotlk 2.8k healing priest-1.3k spell power (u can ask questions) "
A few really interesting statements, including the person that started the thread: "My priest has full sunwell gear with 2.8k healing and im doing flash heal's for 1.5k and gh crits for 7k (speced disc)".

Nogi wrote:

"well as you see my stats on signiture, have 2724 healing unbuffed atm, 1400 +/- spelldamage depends on which specc. and i tried about every specc since its 1 copper respec cost.

on disci MT healing specc (with spiritual guidance) heals were really low: 5.4k normal hits 8k crits
on the holy specc with gaurdian spirit and twins discipline: CoH hits for 850-900 (no hits for 1k-1.1k), Gheal heals for 6k-6.5 (usually heals for 7k +/-)

i would say a nerf, hopefully will be fixed
did check flash, call me emo"


Ouch. The healing seems to be pretty low (of course it might change as you hit 80 and start getting WotLK epic gear) but its really interesting.

[Mandible]

Healing shouldn't changed from 70 -> 80 other than up from where we are now, and not back to normal conditions.

Its allready been said by blizzard that healing spells take spellpower differently than damage spells, so this is 100% a bug - unless ofc. blizzard is outright lying.

[Nogi]

the reduced healing on priest spells was already a issue on many priest forums.even this one.
priests were nerfed on their spells and benifit from +healing has been nerfed compared to the other classes.

the fact that all classes get rly nice buff that buff their healing and the priest doesn't really get "raid support" talent just a gimiky i prevent death talent. they should and i hope they will even between healing classes, and fix the priest nerf in the healing spells.

i assume it will happen anytime soon. or wotlk will come out and well priests won't be that usefull since, would rather have a good healer that gives additional "buffing" to the raid (such as Blood Lust, totems, CombatRess, inervate etc), other then a priest that doesn't rly, when they can heal just like the priest (and even better when a shaman heals with healing wave or lesser healing wave a "spirit" spawns and heals lowest hp target - and thats not even the 51 talent point). But, it will be changed, i am sure. Already some talents have been changed on other healers classes.

to even it up i'd say another nerf to shamans and druids or a buff to holy priests (not paladin form but also change abit the paladin talents also. although they were proply buffed to my veiw).

i will repeat incase: i dont have a problem with the talents of priest, i think they are good and nice - except gaurdian spirit which makes me go "bleh", its when i compare to shaman and druid new abilities (spells) and new talents that i feel like the priest has been forgotten (i mean: shaman gets 3 min CD on t3 that give 60% crit, gets a spirit that heals lowest hp target when he heals with lhw or hw, and a 51 talent spirit link. druid gets improved forms, new spell, now aoe spell, replenish - which they can easly give a priest aswell not only a druid, and more). if i dont compare to other classes, i'd say holy tree is nice except gaurdian spirit (and i rly thought they will do something with lolwell, on sw was totally useless with the aoe raid dmg going on not even worth to open one, though maybe change mechanics or something - ppl don't rly know how to click it, and with all the aoe raid dmg going on in sunwell i just droped it - besides marking conflage spot on twins it wasn't really usefull on the sunwell encounters - well on brutallus for sw:d of the shadowpriests).

changes will be made, just need to wait patiently and read...

[Myzrael]

Top end shadowpriests with 1500+ spell damage right now turn out well over 2000 DPS in raid boss encounters.

WWS pls...

[Karpalo]

Isint sp dps world record something like 1700 on brut? well over 2k sounds way off ^^

[Sonic018]

the fact is, that the high end DPS limit for a shadow priest on a single target is about 1500 DPS Game Over! Anyone denying this should go back to school and take some mathematic lessons. But, actually nearby any Sunwell Raid uses at least 2 SP's or more. They use also at least 2 Holy Priest, --> 4 Priests per Raid min.

Why?

1. Shadows are the best Caster support class. (healer included) Up to 460 mp5 is quite a lot, the 15% for locks and the 5% for ereryone else including even retri pallies and shamans, not even talking about the heal gives us a predominant role in a raid.

2. holy priests are the best Raid Healers because of circle of Healing. If you can play your holy priest you will easily bash every shaman pally or druid in healmeters. The priest is the only one able to respond immediately to an AoE attack with the only instant AOE Heal ingame. While shamies are casting around, the priest has already healed the entire damage taken. See Najentus for example...

Conclusion: Blizzard tries to estabslish equality between classes, so the priest has to give away some of his qualities, but as holy priest I wouln't worry too much, you might still be the best Healer in the Raid.
As Shadow, even if the DPS increase gives you about 25-30% more dmg (in a 25 people raid) than now, it will be difficult to compete with hunters mages wl's...

[Karpalo]

Been raiding at lvl 80 already? Had 6 priests there?

[Mandible]

lol.... Priests have it bad.... ROFL.......

Maybe its time to figure out that removing downranking makes Priests and Druids the only healing classes in the game cause of hots.

If I have ever heard a QQ its when a class that gets 5-6 spots in 25 man raid is crying cause they are not good enough....

Just shut it.

You have some really crappy dps or very few paladins / shamans in guild then if you let 5-6 priests into the raid. The max I have heard of is 3 sp and MAYBE 1 healing priest, and then its only due to the mana they can give back to dps.

[cryogenic]

What bs, raids will still want a shadow priest having more then one of the same spec in a raid of 25 is knocking people 30 specs in game do not fit into 25
2 of one spec is rather bad raid stacking especially if new classes are to be added.

There in no way should be a concern to only make one shadow priest viable as if they are not raid wide more then one will be over stacking for one purpose only. Honestly their debuffs are something they are brought for more in a raid where players are mana efficient as well WotLK has other mana batteries now.

S priest has a spot, disc priest has healing synergy holy needs some work but really there are spots int he raids for healers beyond one healer of each spec.

[Sonic018]

You have some really crappy dps or very few paladins / shamans in guild then if you let 5-6 priests into the raid. The max I have heard of is 3 sp and MAYBE 1 healing priest, and then its only due to the mana they can give back to dps.

If you raid with only one healing priest atm, you should review your setup^^ (at least in SWP)