Whats Blizz Going to Do?

[blee732]

What is also dumb is that priest is actually not excelling in anything, I really don't see why they can't make up their mind what classes are for. I really hate it to have an utility class, and it used to be the best one in healing at least.

Well I think Blizz's thinking is that priests excel at being a utility healer =P

In my experience, I'm almost always in the top 2 in healing with relatively low overhealing so I don't think we're underpowered necessarily. But it does "feel" like we don't excel or stand out in anyway, which takes away from the enjoyability factor.

I mean, think about baseball. How many people really want to be the utility infielder? Just b/c you're capable of playing multiple positions doesn't mean you want to...

[Sausagefan]

I'd settle for Dispersion actually working as a damage reducer (for all the rogue/paladin stories above, DoTs just killing you six seconds later, etc.) and Divine Hymn being an instant and taken off the shared cooldown. Fade being a Priest Blink seems like the wrong philosophy; every class shouldn't have the same ability. I'm not exactly sure why the HP regen component of Dispersion was phased out; it has extremely minimal PvE implications and could at least prevent Dispersion from being a complete joke in Arena.

[Devstah]

Simple.. Dispersion should regen health too and poss make yo immune to cc and silences for 5 secs after ?? or if imp fade didnt just take away a movement impairing effect but kept any off you for 7 secs... are they gonna fix blackout though.. thats what im haering, they might take it out

[Knf]

Patch 3.1 unofficial notes say:
Keep in mind that this is with the dual spec incoming:

"Any shadow priest trying to enter the arena will have his spec auto-changed to Disc, since he is clearly making a mistake, and we (blizzard) will do anything in our power to prevent them being owned (too hard atleast) by a rogue. If the priest does not (for some reason beyond our understanding) not have a Disc (or Holy) spec, his talent points will be reset and put in Disc/Holy by our NEW TALENTING system, that analises the top Disc/Holy priest arena builds. The talents will be random, but most of them (about 80%) will be put into the most popular "gladiator" talents of choice. After the arena match the shadow talents will be restored as they where before the match started."

Alternative patch notes say something about turning the priest into an Arcaine Mage for 1 minute, but those are probably fake.

[syanid]

Your comment is so blunt and not funny that I have no words to describe it, but then again - thanks for contributing with nothing to a nice discussion.

Since Blackout is getting removed, I assume we can expect to get another form of controlable CC, maybe 1 second stun on 30 sec cooldown. And again, even if dispersion regens hp and removes snares, it's still utter shit if we can't dps when under it. Then again, it's "overbudget" if they allow the hp regen component. Self silence vs opponents that can mitigate or even remove our 3 dots within 1 GCD is utter shit and until they change it, we're not looking into a good pvp performance.

[fireshadow]

honestly tbc pvp was fine for shadowpriest is you knew what the heck you were doing , but from a post from noxn not to long ago his ideas seemed very good, buffing DP to heal the 100% damage dealt(what it used to be), giving the old shadowweaving back(helps protect vs dispells), a lil tweak to the 51 point talent would be nice, and making shadowform reduce all damage taken by 20% this includes magic, and a buff into shadow word pain, and i think we would be set, truthfully, being a shadowpriest if your not set up with classes with a good ablility to peel your playing with the wrong class, complain about someone trinketing a fear if your playing with a rogue, trinketing fear is what you want, leads to blind into sap into fear once again or with a mage trinekt fear into poly rotation into fear again. playing with classes with little ways to peel seems to be what alot of ppl are doing atm

[Ananan]

being a shadowpriest if your not set up with classes with a good ablility to peel your playing with the wrong class

And if you are one of those classes and you are spending your time babysitting a shadowpriest you might want to consider how much more you could get out of playing with someone else.

I think that what should be done, and will be done to some extent, is that shadowpriests should get increased staying power (that will certainly happen), and most importantly increased ability to still dish out some pain when focused (god I hope that will happen).

That's what we can hope for I think. If we can get it to where are are not dependant on peels all the time but only well-timed peels once in a while to heal up we're in a good spot.

Dot protection and someone looking into our pvp mana situation would be a nice bonus, but less likely to happen since they plan to go over both those whole systems.

[syanid]

honestly tbc pvp was fine for shadowpriest is you knew what the heck you were doing

First off, arena for spriest worked only in 2s, if your partner was an exceptional rogue.
Shadowpriest had to know how to kite, and had to do it exceptionally for that combo to work, not to say mashing dispel like nuts to win vs druid + x, which was what 2s was about.

It was 90% the rogue that made up that team. Also, the one and only setup that worked was spriest + rogue. 3v3, 5v5 = shadowpriest is a waste and free kill.

So no, it wasn't ok back then, but exceptional players made it to the top as shadow. And they had their insane rogue teammates to thank for that.

[hannibaal]

Patch 3.1 unofficial notes say:
Keep in mind that this is with the dual spec incoming:

"Any shadow priest trying to enter the arena will have his spec auto-changed to Disc, since he is clearly making a mistake, and we (blizzard) will do anything in our power to prevent them being owned (too hard atleast) by a rogue. If the priest does not (for some reason beyond our understanding) not have a Disc (or Holy) spec, his talent points will be reset and put in Disc/Holy by our NEW TALENTING system, that analises the top Disc/Holy priest arena builds. The talents will be random, but most of them (about 80%) will be put into the most popular "gladiator" talents of choice. After the arena match the shadow talents will be restored as they where before the match started."

Alternative patch notes say something about turning the priest into an Arcaine Mage for 1 minute, but those are probably fake.

LOL. OMFG. Now that is funny!

[Devstah]

First off, arena for spriest worked only in 2s, if your partner was an exceptional rogue.
Shadowpriest had to know how to kite, and had to do it exceptionally for that combo to work, not to say mashing dispel like nuts to win vs druid + x, which was what 2s was about.

It was 90% the rogue that made up that team. Also, the one and only setup that worked was spriest + rogue. 3v3, 5v5 = shadowpriest is a waste and free kill.

So no, it wasn't ok back then, but exceptional players made it to the top as shadow. And they had their insane rogue teammates to thank for that.

exactly^^... now im not hoping that bliz would make us the most amazing 1v1 class but if we were a bit better to go along with other people and able to do SOMETHING against melee that would help alot..

[fireshadow]

First off, arena for spriest worked only in 2s, if your partner was an exceptional rogue.
Shadowpriest had to know how to kite, and had to do it exceptionally for that combo to work, not to say mashing dispel like nuts to win vs druid + x, which was what 2s was about.

It was 90% the rogue that made up that team. Also, the one and only setup that worked was spriest + rogue. 3v3, 5v5 = shadowpriest is a waste and free kill.

So no, it wasn't ok back then, but exceptional players made it to the top as shadow. And they had their insane rogue teammates to thank for that.

honestly as long as your rogue listened it was pretty simple :-\, and yes ppl want it to be the way it was prebc becuase a well geared spriest just railed anything, wanting your class to be decent and viable is different then wanting it to be op again which is something it seems alot of you want, and to add on to what i said before, also making VT a faster cast will help

[Yvaelle]

I don't think most people realize what a massive mitigation buff would be necessary for us to have 'any' actual staying power in PvP currently. A lot of you are talking about this like if they would just stick 10% more melee mitigation on shadowform we'd be good to go - that's not the case.

The reality is if they stuck 50% more melee mitigation on shadowform, we'd still get chain CC'd to death, it'd just take twice as long. (let's see, 6s becomes 12s).

The ONLY way to make shadow viable right now in Arenas is to give us a way to get back to range once we are in melee - something like blink seems the only real option. It escapes us from the chain-CC/instagib and allows us to actually put up some dots again (which, remember are easy as hell to dispel since we have zero dispel protection).

If they gave us 30% dispel protection on our dots, what we're really saying is the 3 seconds it takes to apply 3 dots for us currently, can be removed in 3 seconds - before a single one of our dots actually ticks, if they're dispeller has my reaction speed. A good heal partner sees you casting VT and starts fingering their dispel key - if they do - even with 30% dispel protection we won't deal any damage for the 2k mana we burn putting them up (not to mention effectively stunning us for the duration since we can't move while casting and we aren't accomplishing anything like dispelling our partner or selves for that period).

The whole reason mages are any threat in melee where we are not is because they have nova, chill, and blink - escaping that they have ice block - all of which allow them to get back to range from melee where they can resume whooping ass. What's more, mage dps is instant, it's not easily-anticipated, dispellable dots which would require an absolute moron on the enemy team to ignore for their full duration. We need movement, not mitigation, not protection - movement is king - movement so we can flay something or blast something or dispel something without getting gibbed by the rogue up our ass or the paladin who views Dispersion and shield, merely as us silencing ourselves because they don't stop their damage anyways.

[fireshadow]

I don't think most people realize what a massive mitigation buff would be necessary for us to have 'any' actual staying power in PvP currently. A lot of you are talking about this like if they would just stick 10% more melee mitigation on shadowform we'd be good to go - that's not the case.

The reality is if they stuck 50% more melee mitigation on shadowform, we'd still get chain CC'd to death, it'd just take twice as long. (let's see, 6s becomes 12s).

The ONLY way to make shadow viable right now in Arenas is to give us a way to get back to range once we are in melee - something like blink seems the only real option. It escapes us from the chain-CC/instagib and allows us to actually put up some dots again (which, remember are easy as hell to dispel since we have zero dispel protection).

If they gave us 30% dispel protection on our dots, what we're really saying is the 3 seconds it takes to apply 3 dots for us currently, can be removed in 3 seconds - before a single one of our dots actually ticks, if they're dispeller has my reaction speed. A good heal partner sees you casting VT and starts fingering their dispel key - if they do - even with 30% dispel protection we won't deal any damage for the 2k mana we burn putting them up (not to mention effectively stunning us for the duration since we can't move while casting and we aren't accomplishing anything like dispelling our partner or selves for that period).

The whole reason mages are any threat in melee where we are not is because they have nova, chill, and blink - escaping that they have ice block - all of which allow them to get back to range from melee where they can resume whooping ass. What's more, mage dps is instant, it's not easily-anticipated, dispellable dots which would require an absolute moron on the enemy team to ignore for their full duration. We need movement, not mitigation, not protection - movement is king - movement so we can flay something or blast something or dispel something without getting gibbed by the rogue up our ass or the paladin who views Dispersion and shield, merely as us silencing ourselves because they don't stop their damage anyways.

very good point yet spriest havn't had that ever =/ i dont think we going to get it now

[Afliction]

The biggest issue we have is the fact that every one of our damage spells is in the same spell tree. But there are other issues as well.

When we go into shadowform, all we can cast is shadow spells. If a class with a spell lock hits us during any cast, we can literally cast nothing. The only thing we can cast is a holy spell which pulls us out of our 15% mitigation buff. And seeing how rogues can chain kick us, mages can lock us for 10 sec etc. It not going to be possible for us to get off a cast. And if we do, we have to be with an Affliction lock or our dots will be dispelled and our damage is then LOL.

Dispersion is a joke, I see a lot of people refer to is as "Delay the Inevitable" and that is exactly what this spell is. Unless we are grouped with a healer, it does nothing for us. Shadowpriests don't have mana problems, unless they can't keep up thier VT well.

Another major issue is that casters in genral are hurting for PvP unless you have crazt burst dps. As a caster, we have to get up our dots before we can do high damage, assuming the dots are not dispelled -.- Whereas a melee can just charge in and start wailing on us. The melee have no prep time and few 1 sec+ casts. As well melee will not get mana exhausted like a caster can.

Melee having little prep time and no casts is a huge issue for all casters. When a mage start using arcane missiles, for example, a rogue kicks him. When a rogue is about to eviserate for 8k+ what can we do to stop him? There are no interupts for the melee.

As far as fixing theese issues, there are too many factors for me to take into consideration. But if casters had a way to interupt melee trees for a few seconds, it would definatly make us more competative.

[Anglarana]

Oke I have the answer right here:

Give us plate armor in pvp. Problems solved :P



Oke on a serieus note now:

-Make our armor spell undispelable
-Change Dispersion. This can be done by removing the self silence and being able to keep casting, Remove all means of being cc'ed in disperion, Grant complete immunity and only be able to heal (will require to leave shd form though).
- Let MF give a debuff on the target that sticks on them for 5 seconds after the initial cast or so. (we could finally kite again then).
- And most important fuck off with only shd dmging spells. 1 kick from a rogue and we can just strip naked and dance or w/e .....

[Afliction]

- And most important fuck off with only shd dmging spells. 1 kick from a rogue and we can just strip naked and dance or w/e .....

AMEN to that!!!

[Ananan]

They don't want all ranged classes to have mage-like mobility.

And if you give the super-mobility of frost mages to all ranged classes it will lead to retri paladins getting Hamstring and enhancement shamans getting Death Grip and warriors getting Hand of Freedom to counter it and you see where it's all going from there.

I think Blizzard recognizes the needs of the casters who must spend most of their time tanking meleers. I don't think they can look at how poorly elemental shamans and shadowpriests and warlocks do in arena and not see the connection. They are forced to do something about the interrupts and cast-slowing effect that are now more rampart than ever. Quite simply spells with a casting time must become much much more viable in PvP.

[Whole]

I hope that whatever changes they have in store don't have any effect on our PVE position. If they'd just change dispersion to regen health and not mana, they'd help us out a lot. You can still use it as an 'OH SHIT' button and mana regen is never an issue anyway. In raids I only ever use it when I'm about to die, not because I'm running out of mana.

[Whole]

I hope that whatever changes they have in store don't have any effect on our PVE position. If they'd just change dispersion to regen health and not mana, they'd help us out a lot. You can still use it as an 'OH SHIT' button and mana regen is never an issue anyway. In raids I only ever use it when I'm about to die, not because I'm running out of mana.

Even better would be have it regen health and give it an AOE damage while it is in effect. Or remove the CD on fade and allow us to cast it while stunned. I don't think either of these would cause us to be OP'd

[Rymezz]

They should make VE Passive.