WoW Class Balance: Priest

If you have never read one
of my blogs before, welcome. I am not
going to go into a large introduction, but I think of myself as quite
knowledgeable about the game and have been doing this (balance changes/ideas)
for quite a while. Anenga from Notorious
helps me out, as he is just as knowledgeable as I am. This time I will be covering my thoughts on
Priests.



Before you ask:

Am I an employee for
Blizzard? No.

Then why is this
important? You never know who is reading. Think about that.



Before I get into it, I
want to extend a thank you to everyone who posted a comment on my Warlock and
Warrior blogs. Especially to those who
decided to make their own blogs based off of mine. It's awesome and every comment and opinion
has been read. You all watched the flow
of the changes as time went on as some suggestions were modified or removed. Balance is an ever changing science, so
nothing is ever absolute.



Now we move onto the
Priests. This is an interesting topic,
as priests really are pretty decently well balanced in Arenas and PvP
overall. Shadow and Holy/Disc you see in
all brackets and I am happy with that, but the issues with priests are more in
the definition of trees and of course random bugs or fixes with abilities.



I am going to run you
through my thought process on the largest part of this, so it might be a bit
long winded. If you want to skip this
part, go for it and jump down to the second set of bullets.



All of the talent trees
should define how the class plays and feel different. If you spec deep (41 point talent) then you
should feel unique from someone else who went 41 points into a different tree. To show the point I will break it down real
quick the way I did initially. Think of
this breakdown as "If you spec into this tree what will you be doing/getting?"

• Druid - Balance (Nature DPS), Feral (Physical
  DPS), Resto (Healing)


• Hunter - Beast (Reliance on pet), Marks
  (Physical DPS), Survival (Physical DPS & survivability)


• Mage - Arcane (Arcane DPS & mana efficiency),
  Fire (Fire DPS), Frost (Frost DPS)


• Paladin - Holy (Healing), Prot (Tanking), Ret
  (Physical/Holy DPS)


• Priest - Disc (Healing), Holy (Healing), Shadow
  (Shadow DPS)


• Rogue - Assassin (Dagger emphasis), Combat (1H
  emphasis), Subtlety (Stealth Emphasis)


• Shaman - Elemental (Ranged Nature DPS),
  Enhancement (Physical/Nature DPS), Resto (Healing)


• Warlock - Affliction (DoT Emphasis), Demonology
  (Pet Emphasis), Destro (DD Emphasis)
  
  Warrior - Arms (2H emphasis), Fury (1H emphasis), Prot (Tanking)

So I got that stuff down and
I was thinking along the lines of "Alright, a Balance druid plays different
from a Feral druid which plays differently from a Restoration druid." That is how all of the classes should feel if
it is done right. There are problems of
course; an example being that Hunters struck me as odd with the similarities
between Marks and Survival. Seeing as
this blog is about Priests, though, I will jump to them, but I know there are other problems.



Disc and Holy trees of
Priests struck me as that they have no focus but are a mix of both. There really should be a difference, and it
lets me address a PvE problem that has plagued the class for a while. Priest healing really is not used when
compared to the other healer hybrids.
Swapping around a few of the talents would help give them a bit of help
as well as giving the trees some definition.
The goal, of course, is to get to the point where someone is a "holy
priest (Healing)" or a "disc priest (Survival)" and not just a jumble of both.



Moving talents is never easy. You need to make sure there are enough points
to get the next tier, that pre-reqs are kept as they are, and that nothing is
thrown completely out of wack. Now that I explained the reasoning behind the talent changed I am proposing, I am going to get into the actual priest changes.



Going to start different then I did last time. Not
going to break it up, as almost all of them have to do with talents in one form
or another. The actual talent suggestions are at the bottom (last changes for easy viewing).

• Lockout of spells is reset to zero when spirit
  of redemption is activated.
  
  
  
  • If you
    are Counterspelled or kicked right before you die and go into spirit of
    redemption form, you can't cast anything until the lockout finishes. It is extremely annoying and negates a
    good chunk of the time you are in the form. Setting lockout to zero when spirit is
    activated stops this annoyance and lets the talent function properly.
  
  
  
  

• CURRENT DEBATE: Mana Burn now has a 6 second cooldown.


• Improved Mana Burn now reduces the cooldown by 1 seconds per point and the cast time by .5 seconds per point, up to 2 and 1 seconds respectively.
  
  
  
  
  • This is a very debatable change, and I have heard all sides. I do think that the mana burned from spam casting this spell especially with bloodlust is too much in too short of a time. Thoughts. Mana
    Burn is a great way to destroy someone's manapool quickly, but I feel it
    needs a cooldown to put a hard cap on how quickly someone like a hunter's
    manapool disappears. Currently
    with bloodlust a priest can rape a manapool in no time at all, and it
    should be limited a little. This
    is my suggestion to help that.
  
  
  
  

• Lightwell (LOLwell) will no longer break on
  damage, is a 5 min cooldown, has 10 charges, and gains bonus from your
  +healing gear.
  
  
  
  • This talent
    is actually pretty good in theory, but was implemented poorly. It needs to not break on damage and
    scale better before it's worth the point.
    The 5 minute cooldown lets it be used more then once in some of
    the shorter fights. Hopefully if
    these happened we would see priests not skip it (as often).
  
  
  
  

• Pain Supression is now 40% damage reduction,
  undispellable, lasts 8 seconds, can be cast on other players in your
  party/raid, and puts a debuff on whoever it is cast on that disallows Pain
  Supression from being cast on them for 2 minutes. 3 minute cooldown.
  
  
  
  • This
    turns a self-defensive spell that is barely used into a good group
    utility for when paladin blessings are on cooldown. If you see this one go through, then
    priests got a nice group bonus (even though the damage reduction is much
    less then it is now) as it would help counter the 1-button gib groups
    that spam CC one player. A pretty
    good change.
  
  
  
  

• Circle of Healing now heals the five players
  with the largest health deficit in the radius as long as they are in your
  raid.
  
  
  
  • Currently
    this spell does not prioritize party and raid, and just heals the players
    in a given party if they are in range.
    This makes it a big drain in raid situations where low health
    people are strewn about between all the groups. If its made to pick the lowest 5
    players in the radius in your raid, it makes it a pretty damn good spell
    for raid healing. Priests are
    supposed to be the best AOE healers, so this would solidify that.
  
  
  
  

• Silence is no longer on the Global Cooldown and
  locks out the school it interrupts for 1 second.
  
  
  
  • This
    is hand in hand with my "all kick/silence effects off the global"
    argument, and if you read my warlock changes it was explained there
    pretty clearly. All timed
    reactionary interrupts taken off the global cooldown to separate the good
    from the best. Simple enough. The second effect is made for PvE. It's so that mobs that are immune to
    the actual silence effect can still be interrupted by priests when
    casting.
  
  
  
  

• Power Word: Shield now scales by 43% of +healing gear.
  
  
  
  
  • I did the math on this one myself, and with up to 2000 +healing (a stupid amount in PvP survival gear, its usually much lower, but its a round number), currently that gives 460 more absorbed. Which is nothing. If you scale it up to 43%, it gives around 1000 with 3/3 improved shield. That still isnt a lot given damage output, but its much better scaling then how it is now. I apologize for missing this earlier, not sure what I was thinking.
    
    
  
  
  
  

• Shadow Resilience now decreases the chance to be critically hit by 2/4% and also increases the chance that mind flay will not be interrupted by 25/50%
  
  
  
  • Keeping it the basic talent, I could have just said flat 2/4% damage reduction and it would be idenitcal to mage's talent. Copying talents isnt cool and different things are better. Thus they get something they have wanted for a while, which wont change it overall as its still easily interrupted by any melee.
    
    
  
  
  
  

• Spirit of Redemption swapped with Divine Spirit


• Remove Improved Divine Spirit and integrate it
  into the base buff


• Blessed Recovery swapped with Meditation


• Blessed Resilience swapped with Force of Will


• Rough Idea: http://talents.utimer.ppvh.eu/?p=vt&i=31695

-OR-

• Spirit of Redemption swapped with Divine Spirit
  and Improved Divine Spirit


• Blessed Recovery swapped with Meditation


• Blessed Resilience swapped with
  Force of Will


• Rough Idea: http://talents.utimer.ppvh.eu/?p=vt&i=31722
  
  
  
  • This is based off the talent explanation I had earlier. The difference, as you can see, is
    clearly in what to do with Divine Spirit.
    Do you integrate it into the base spell, thus making it give
    spirit and 10% boost from the stat or do you leave it as two separate
    talents? Either accomplishes the
    goal of defining the trees without throwing off the balance
    horribly. The offset for this is
    that current BR/disc priests will lose a lot of healing power in exchange
    for disc talents. I favor the one
    that removes Improved Divine Spirit, but really it does not matter to me
    much. It just keeps the tree
    cleaner.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • NOTE: The talents like Pain
    Supression and Circle of Healing on the linked example talent trees might
    not correlate with the suggestions I have posted here. I did not go through and change every
    talent. I just moved things around
    to give you an idea.  For now go off what is posted in this blog.
  
  
  
  

This is a big change, but instead of saying "OMG OVERPOWERED" think of what a priest would lose if this happened. A standing 28/33 healing pvp priest would roughly lose:

passive 10% healing, passive 20% mana cost of PoM, passive 15% mana cost of Gheal, passive 4-5% crit heals



And what you gain:

dispellable 12% of crit healed over 6 seconds after being crit (lawl), dispellable Power Infusion, passive 5% stamina/int, and 40% Pain Supression.



Overall you end up losing 4 good passives, gaining 2 buffs that can be dispelled along with the new Pain Supression and 4% more mana and life. Its not too strong.



I know there is one massive
thing that I did not touch on right now, and everyone is thinking it. Priest Racials and Fear Ward in
particular. I am not going into this, simply because this blog would end up being a massive amount longer.



I will return to priests
eventually and we will all talk about the Priest Racials just like I plan to return to warriors eventually to talk about Specializations. We have plenty of time before patch 2.3. =)



I would advise you to check
out Anenga's Blogs if you enjoy mine. He
thinks along the same lines I do and produces quite some great ideas like his
Dispel Mechanic.



Also I just noticed (afer I wrote this) that Kow made a priest blog recently. Check it out here:

http://www.gameriot.com/blogs/Kows-Hardline/A-Holy-Wish-List/



Edits:

Decided on Shadow Resilience

Removed Silence Cooldown Change

Fixed Mana burn, I messed it up

Added PW:S change

Removed weaving change

Pointed out Manaburn debate

Added basis for Shadow Resilience change



Enjoy. If there are spelling or grammar mistakes I will fix them as they are found.