Priest wishlist for Midnight

Classes Priest
1

Doubt anyone from Blizz reads the class forums these days but I’ll shoot my shot.
This is from the perspective of an Aotc, keystone hero, 1800 elite Andy.

I want to keep playing Priest into Midnight and beyond, but I’m becoming increasingly frustrated with the class overall.

Firstly, mobility.
It feels terrible playing Priest compared to literally any other class at the moment. Time spiral is a joke for priests as life grip is all we have along with a few move speed increases. Fights like Razageth & Dimensius highlight just how bad it is to play a priest unless you’re Dracthyr, Goblin or Void elf.
Every new class that’s been added to this game is a mobility god. Even the historically immobile Locks & DKs feel great this expansion…

Suggestions.

  • Add a choice node to leap of faith once again allowing us to travel to the target.
  • Give the Venthyr ability Door of shadows to priests in the class tree, make it change from shadow to light just as Halo does to not conflict with fantasy.

Interrupts, stops and dispels.
Priest has been C tier for most mythic plus seasons unless PI, MD or their damage is busted. We’re plagued by a lack of an interrupt and poison dispel. Disc has good damage & burst healing but you can’t argue the disparity when compared to something like resto shaman…

  • Short interrupt
  • AoE Stun
  • Knock up
  • poison dispel and cleansing totem

I know homogenisation is a concern but the utility gap is so vast when you compare priest to pretty much every other healer. Especially Holy Priest.

For the record I actually don’t think healers should have access to an interrupt anyway. There’s a reason that role is underplayed in both PvE & PvP. Healing is stressful, you shouldn’t need to worry about interrupts on top of keeping an eye on party frames, mechanics, people standing in crap etc.

I also think balancing and boosting healer damage would make people play the role more. Particularly more passive damage for those that don’t heal via their damage.
You can buff holy fire all you want but if you’re frantically trying to top people off you barely get a chance to free cast damage.
Something like PoM causing a small explosion to nearby enemies when it triggers would be a nice touch.

Finally, Spell effects and visuals.
Priests are suffering from a lot of outdated animations and visuals effects. The Guardian spirit & Apotheosis wings could do with an update. Archon hero tree could do with some flavour. You’ve got the Kyrian/Felsworn wings & themes you can draw from. It’s about time all three specs had some new animations and spell effects.

I don’t play much shadow anymore but I find the spec so bloated and spammy from what it used to be. It feels like it has an identity crisis with the choice of major CD’s and particularly with archon+void form, there’s just two many buttons lighting up to push. Does void bolt even need to be a thing anymore?

TLDR Midnight wishlist:

  • Better mobility or a displacement ability
  • Poison dispel, or drastically reduce the amount of poisons going forward.
  • Interrupt, or remove interrupts from all healers entirely.
  • A stop, or reduce other healers stops to lessen the gap. (Shining force knock up?)
  • Better and more balanced healer damage, particularly passive damage.
  • Shadow rework (yes, another one).
  • Updates to spell effects and animations.
2 Likes
2

I agree with this

I just returned from an 8 year hyatus to me the spell effects are new. Compared to legion.

As for shadow I feel mindflay needs a rework it’s a long channel for low damage vs the old one which was a 2 sec channel.

1 Like
3

Agreed on everything, Priest has many very, very outdated mechanics and spell effects that just aren’t anywhere near the more modern classes. For examples the Discipline tree should have been something like the dps/augmenting aspect the Evoker gets.

Their animations are also super out of date especially healing effects. Are they still using the same flash heal effects/animation (and sound effect) from vanilla?

Mobility is another one that needs a serious look. Divine feather is just.. mediocre. I mean you have to target the ground each and every time, having extra charges hardly does anything to mitigate this. It should be easy and intuitive to use.

1 Like
4

I haven’t touched disc.

But:

  • Divine aegis
  • Power Word: Shield
  • Flash Heal
  • Holy Fire
  • Prayer of Mending
  • Heal (Used the old Greater Heal spell effect).
  • Divine Hymn (unchanged since WotLK)
  • Renew

Those are the spells I know still have their original/old animations/graphics.

But I know Heal and Renew are getting removed in Midnight, renew will be added to the holy words and you only will have one that does an instant heal with AOE rather than 2 seperate ones.

No idea what they have planned for disc or shadow so far.

5

For Disc, I would make it more into a support caster spec rather then the juggling act I find it to be today. You would be called upon to boost either raid defense or raid offense - or strike a balance where the defensive spells are classic Disc and Offensive continues to be inspired by void or shadow spells.

Power Word: Shield would be the defensive boost. Shields the target, increases other peoples healing on it etc.

Infusion would be the offensive boost. Does essentially what it does today but with reduced effects and Cooldowns.

*All your disc/holy offensive spells automatically provide healing to the raid - say the most injured ones. But only the holy/disc ones. The Shadow ones would provide offensive boosts or damage reductions (to a random number of raid members). All spells would be castable while moving to compensate for their lack of damage. The tradeoff would be lack of decent AOE.

Disc would also get a Disc-only ranged interrupt with a 10 second cooldown.*

The end result would be a caster who only in rare cases would top healing or dps charts but be a solid back support for the people who do. You could even argue this is a three button spec - 1Button, Shield and Infusion - where how you apply your boosts is where it matters.