Being as how a Priest is my main, it's no surprise that the "big issue" of 2.1 for me is the Paladin/Priest situation. In short Priests were healing worse than Pallies, and then Blizz nerved Pallies. I've come to accept the rhetoric that Paladins were nerfed because they were healing too well, and not to make Priests look better, but it's still a little annoying.

Yes, there were a couple of Priest buffs. I probably will use Binding Heal a bit more now. The Circle of Healing buff, on the other hand, was just silly -- 25 points to the maximum rank. Anyway, now that the community has had some time to complain, what does Blizzard have to say? Drysc:

We're fairly happy with priest healing where it is, so instead of just playing leap frog by pushing each class above each other until the encounters and content are trivialized ...

So there it is. They liked Priests where they were, so they tried to nerf Pallies down to their level. Honestly, as far as 5-mans go, I'm not sure they're wrong to be content with Priest healing by and large. I healed Shattered Halls last night without ever going under half mana, and I can fairly comfortably solo-heal most of the heroics I've tried.

As far as the change to CoH goes, again from Drysc:

We've made some changes to Circle of Healing obviously, and we're just in the process of wait and see, taking baby steps as we go. Changes to Lightwell are along the same lines, we want to make sure our footing is there before taking the next step. It's generally better to make incremental changes instead of emptying the clip and seeing where things fell, which don't get me wrong, has happened before in some capacity. It's not an approach we generally intend or like to take though.

Alright, I understand the idea behind making incremental changes, but 25 -- 5% -- is an extremely small increment for a spell that most Priests consider hopelessly broken. I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Lightwell and CoH are not fixable without extreme changes. You can't just retune their costs, values, or durations. If you want many Priests to consider them as viable options, you're going to have to do something major to them. But that's just my opinion -- what do you guys think?

Tags: 2.1, blue, forums, patch 2.1, priest, priests, ptr, warcraft, world of warcraft, wow

Filed under: Priest, Patches, Analysis / Opinion