Priests in 2.3Follow

The others are all nice changes, but I would hate this. It would mean only 1 person in a party could have a fear ward! (Unless there are more priests in the party, of course.)

Yeah. The change to Fear Ward is... not quite what some were hoping for. In terms of fear protection on your tank, the result is to require multiple priests to accomplish what a single dwarf or draenei accomplishes now. Note to Blizz: When we said we wanted stacking utility in raids, this isn't what we meant.

The Horde are just happy they got something.

Of course, to keep dwarves and draenei overpowered, Blizzard gave them Chastise. The damage isn't particularly important, but the incapacitate is. Think about it. Unless you're 21 into Shadow, the ONLY tool a priest has to interrupt spells or open distance is Psychic Scream. It's one of the holes in our ******* that keeps us balanced. Chastise literally doubles the number of interrupts a non-shadow priest has, and it's ranged. Unbelievable.

The change to Meditation is awesome, especially given that when I raid my spirit is around 830 fully buffed. This adds in the neighborhood of 60 m/5 while casting for me. With the Bangle of Endless Blessings providing another 15% on proc, spirit regen will be better than ever for me. Meditation was _already_ a talent every priest regardless of spec needed; now it's better.

As for Pain Suppression, I'm not sure I approve. The decrease in the amount of damage reduction drastically curtails its primary usefulness: As a way to survive focused fire in PvP. The reduction in threat is unlikely to help an AoEing mage but might hurt attempts to use it to save a tank. We'll have to see if the 5% reduction applies to threat generated while it's on, or all threat generated thus far.

The Fear Ward is a welcome and necessary change as far as I'm concerned. Too many Alliance players/parties/raids/guilds rely on it as a crutch. Most of the elitest, high-end, harcore raiding guilds will accept only Dwarf or Draenei Priests on the Alliance side.

Balance should happen whether you like it or not.

I'm not happy about the fear ward buff/nerf. No I'm not upset that other priests get fear ward (I"m a Draenei). If every priest got fear ward I think that'd be fine, it's a useful tool and every priest should have it. However sticking a 3 min dura/cd on it pretty much makes it useless outside of /once/ per fight and only on ONE person.

I am VERY happy about the meditation buff though, should help all my fellow mana batteries out :)

still waiting on info about this chastise thing, not going to hold my breathe as it said it was going to be HOLY damage so I'm guessing it will mostly be used as a tool for holy/disc priests in pvp.

Edited, Sep 27th 2007 5:46pm by electricwizard

what i meant by that was that since it's holy damage, it will most likely count as a holy spell and therefore not be usable in shadow form. I can only hope it's counted as a disc spell though ;p

as for the fear ward thing, I definitely understand what you're saying about it becoming a crutch, but honestly it wasn't. How many fights require fear ward on a regular basis? Nightbane, Archimonde ? Even then, fearward is a "plus" if you have it, "oh well" if you don't. Most times I've done nightbane (since my guild isn't even near hyal yet" we didn't even bother to give the tank a fearward even though there was about 2-3 of us that could have done so and we did just fine.

Personally, for me fearward was something I used while running 5 man pugs where I didn't trust the tank to be able to dance correctly. If I knew the tank was a capable person then it wasn't even required.

I'm not unhappy they gave people fear ward, but rather they turned a somewhat useful spell into something I probably wont even keep on my bar.

Now that every priest will get fear ward, all will want to have the chastize thingie. :P

Racials were a bad idea in the beginning, now it will get even worse.

You have officially crossed over into the realm of denial.

Here's the thing about fear ward. It's not that it was "necessary" for an encounter. It's that it _trivialized_ encounters. It took a game mechanic that has the potential to wipe the raid at any moment (if your warrior doesn't hit his macro in time) and nullified it completely.

The value of Fear Ward is that it, by itself, drastically reduced the odds of a wipe on any encounter when Fear was a major mechanic. If you were a raid leader, why on earth would you ever pass that up if it were available? Answer: They wouldn't, and they didn't.

Now, every priest will have a watered-down version of Fear Ward. BUT, _no_ priest will be able to do what Fear Ward did in the past. The ability of dwarf and draenei priests to trivialize encounters with Fear is gone. Equality arrives, sort of.

But Chastise is just terrific. Two of the priest's primary class weaknesses are: Shortage of spell interruption capability, and inability to control the range of the fight. For most priests, Psychic Scream was the only spell that could accomplish either of these tasks, and we all know the restrictions associated with Scream. (Long cooldown, short range, multitude of breaks).

Chastise gives dwarves and draenei a racial solution to a class problem. It can be used on either melee classes to open range and aid kiting, or on a caster as an interrupt. The damage is a bonus. Dwarves in particular are now the kings of PvP on the Alliance side, far and away more survivable than any other race. Chastise, Stoneform, and Desperate Prayer beat any comparable Alliance combo.

That's what I mean when I said that dwarves and draenei were to be kept overpowered. Humans are still saddled with Feedback, and nelves have to make do with Starshards and Elune's Grace. All of these are terrible and have been known to be terrible for quite some time. I'd trade Feedback for Chastise in a heartbeat; I'm ready to bet that nelves would trade Starshards and Elune's Grace together for Chastise.

The Pain Suppression change is a PvP nerf, no two ways about it. Priests are the primary targets in arenas, and so even post-change 95% of PS casts will be on the self, but the power has decreased. Ouch.

There are some potential PvE uses that come to mind. The problem some have raised is that deep Discipline is not an optimal raid spec. I'm inclined to agree. This may seem ironic, since I'm a raiding priest who has a 40 Discipline / 21 Holy spec. It's not. The reason for my spec is to maximize my mana pool and regen, while still possessing a passable PvP spec. It works for me; my spirit is in the 800 region buffed due to the stacking percentages I can take. (Human racial, Spirit of Redemption, Enlightenment.)

It's a ******* spec. It's decent in PvP, decent in PvE. The trouble is that its primary focus is compromised if I take Pain Suppression. That's because I would be forced to abandon Improved Death and its 5% spirit bonus.

I don't know. I just don't know.

While I definitely agree with RRZip, there's the major problem of pretty much every talent beyond IF/Med and maybe Mental Agility is "meh" at best. Getting the 41 into Disc severely hurts other abilities, delegating such priests to single-target group healing for the most part, a realm better covered by resto druids or pallies.

Racials need looked at, hard. They've needed looked at hard since release. D/d priests will remain the strongest for PvP healing because of their stun/whatever rather than fear ward.

RPZip, that build is actually almost what I have now. The only differences are: I have Improved Death instead of Pain Suppression, and Improved Mana Burn over the two points in Reflective. It's the ******* spec I spoke of in my post. And trust me, I'm waiting for the day when a fight demands massive amounts of holy damage and guilds demand their priests respec Smitelol and paladins go Ret. However, why on earth would you take Holy Reach over Searing Light?

I think, RP, that the distinction about "focus" fights is key as to the use of this new Pain Suppression on tanks. The danger is that repeated castings of Pain Suppression, with its 5% threat reduction, could cause the tank to lose aggro. Perhaps the most important question regarding PS and PvE is: Does the threat reduction affect only threat generated while PS is up, or the target's entire threat history?

In the latter example you gave, PS would indeed be quite good. Because the targeting is independent of aggro the threat reduction does no harm. But other fights where aggro is still a potential issue make PS use more scary. It would be nice, along with shield wall, in extending the raid a few more seconds past an enrage timer, but depending on the fight I might be hesitant to use it on tanks.

It depends. Anyway, even if Pain Suppression does affect the whole threat history and is prohibitive on tanks, it merely changes how PS would be used. It becomes a sort of inverse Misdirect, used on high-DPS hybrids without threat reduction (like DPS warriors, shadow priests, boomkin, shaman). The example use given by Blue (prepping an AoE type) is infrequent but nice.

I'm incling to agree as far as how PS affects your total aggro. But again, that merely changes how PS is used; it doesn't thwart its use. It _does_ mean I'll have to have my threatmeter visible on-screen again instead of just running in the background, adding to my already-cluttered interface.

In my experiments with my spec, I've found additional utility for Power Infusion, as well. Now of course it's good for DPS casters, particularly shadow priests (where the increased damage yields increased mana returns; I call it "the gift that keeps on giving"). But recently I've been using it with my guild's tankadin, and he loves me for it. Using PI helps him get aggro, particularly in AoE tanking situations where he's spamming Consecrate. This in turn allows us to DPS the enemies down sooner and harder.

On the other hand, you could use PI and PS on the same target as a unit, allowing your buddy to really let loose while at the same time controlling his threat.

All of this has led to an intriguing thought. Blizzard has said that they're going to be changing around things in the Discipline tree, citing the lack of identity people have complained about. IDS, PS, and PI start to give a general idea of a possible identity: a tree based on using buffs and aids to others to influence combat indirectly, while still possessing decent healing on its own. (I think it has a pretty stong identity as a PvP tree but nevermind.)