GC- PLEASE read! Priests!

There are several very real problems with the priest class at the moment. I know that at this point everyone is complaining about their class but as a person who has played a priest since this game came out (I admit I was one of the OP pally’s in beta) I feel that our class is actually being more distorted and being made weaker than ever in some ways and stronger than ever in others. I know this is long but it is well informed. Let me break down where and why we are having these problems.

PVE:

Holy Tree: The holy tree at the moment is very strong in PVE. Truthfully, I believe we are currently the strongest healing class for PVE content. The only weakness here is that we are having some serious mana regen issues but my guess is that that is intended as priests need to get back to learning to manage mana and cancel heals better like they did PreBC.

COH does not need a 6 sec CD as has been suggested recently. It seems OP when we are doing these short fights against bosses and mobs with 30% less hp who do nothing compared to before. This is because we do not have the mana issues with such short fights. If priests were to just spam this heal, they would run OOM very fast. That being said, I do see that this spell is quickly becoming a must have for raids because of its raid healing viability, and I would say that the best way to fix this would actually be to just raise the mana cost. Make it so that it basically would kill your mana if you spammed it but would keep your mana in good standing if you used it every 6 secs or so. In this way it can be spammed in an emergency but at a cost, and yet still be a secondary heal to heals like greater heal.

Disc Tree: The disc tree is actually very underpowered in PVE atm. Penance is a fantastic spell but because of the way the talents are placed in the various trees, it gets very little in the way of additional plus healing. What this means is that the greater heal of a holy priest will often heal for more than the penance heal of a disc priest. This would be fine if disc was not meant to be used for single target healing, but it is, and as a result having the 51 point talent be a weaker spell then a free talent for holy priests is very lackluster.

Additionally, it seems as though the disc tree is being pushed in a critical strike direction, but the disc tree has very little in the way of increasing crit chance and I would say inspiration is far better than anything the disc tree gets in the way of a crit benefit. The shield is nice and all but even 30% of 4k is often not even the equivalent of 1 strike from the current lvl 70 bosses. At lvl 80 I expect that it will be even worst. 25% increased armor is honestly just superior. I recognize that inspiration can be specced into at lvl 80 along with the other crit talents, but it is at the cost of divine fury which is a necessity when you can only use penance every 10 secs (8sec after the spell is done). And again, it is basically saying that the holy tree is still superior to the disc tree.

In the end, a priest will heal for far more then the benefit of their mitigation the disc tree provides and the proc’s from the holy tree crit heals (25% increased armor, free greater heal, free instant flash heal,) are greater than the procs from the disc tree crit heals (shield absorbing 30% of the amount healed). It does seem as though you maintain mana better for longer in the disc tree but it is really because you are healing less because you are waiting for penance to come back up where as with holy you are not waiting for anything. In the end, disc is really just a good spec when you already have plenty of healing and the extra dmg mitigation is nice since the heals would not be needed anyways.

Shadow Tree: The shadow tree is actually quite viable in PVE. The only problem here really is that since you have changed the class so that it benefits raids less, so that as you said, they are not required for a raid, it means there is less of a reason to bring them. Most raids would rather take a class that can CC now or be more maneuverable and have far more health (requiring less looking after) like a mage or a lock. The class is not bad, it just does not do anything so well that someone would rather take a shadow priest over a lock or mage for really any reason anymore.

The abilities of the lock and mage (ignoring dps, which I know you say will balance out) are just more beneficial to the current raid environment (the ability to iceblock out of things, blink, sheep. The ability to dot while moving, have a huge mana pool, rarely run oom, banish, pet to hold agro, chain fear). A shadow priest returns mana and hp, yes, but as you said yourselves, you have adjusted the class so that they are not needed anymore, but now because they lack other abilities they are generally just not taken as often as a result.