Going Priestly in patch 2.4
by Adam Holisky 
Mar 25th 2008 at 12:40PM
With patch 2.4 live, lets take a look at what it's offering those of the more Priestly persuasion. Gear, a few talent and spell changes, and some new fun in the new instances will be a boon for your Priest.For our Shadow brothers, you can now look forward to Fear Ward in Shadowform and a somewhat nerfed Vampiric Touch (they've fixed the bug where casting lower ranks wasn't penalized like other healing spells are).
Disc priest, like Nethaera, can look forward to a slightly buffed Inner Focus (though in reality it's not a very big buff, just Chastise, Starshards, and Shadowguard corrections in that they'll no longer trigger the Inner Focus charge). Reflective Shield will not break CC, and a penalizing effect has been added to lower ranked Power Word: Shield. Chastise is now instant cast, and will no longer dis orient the target. And of course, Power Infusion has been changed.
Holy rollers will like that Silent Resolve now affects a wider range of spells. Mass Dispel will affect 10 targets instead of 5.
There will be several pieces of gear added as well.
Most of the new gear will be between item level 141 and 156. It's really top tier gear that should last you well into Wrath of the Lich King, if not up to level 80 and then some. Think of all of this gear as the top gear in Naxx pre-bc.
For Shadow Priests (and Disc Priests pieces of gear), the key pieces of new raid and craftable gear includes:
- Bracers of Absolution
- Cord of Absolution
- Treads of Absolution
- Annihilator Holo-Gogs
- Gloves of Tyri's Power
- Helm of Arcane Purity
- Leggings of Calamity
- Pantaloons of Growing Strife
- Shoulderpads of Knowledge's Pursuit
- Cuffs of Absolution
- Belt of Absolution
- Boots of Absolution
- Powerheal 9000 Lens
- Handguards of the Dawn
- Cowl of Light's Purity
- Pantaloons of Calming Strife
- Shroud of Redeemed Souls
- Shawl of Wonderment
There is bound to be more gear then is known right now, and the above lists are by no means exhaustive. With two bosses that still haven't been killed, we don't know for sure what all of the top and final gear will look like. Further, we don't know the drop rate on any of these. It might be as high as 20%, or as low as 3%.
What do you think of Priests in patch 2.4? Personally, I'm not seeing many reasons to be upset, and if anything, the extra gear is going to be pretty nice.
Patch 2.4 sounds great, but what's in it for you? Find out on our Sunwell Isle page where we list the impact on classes, professions, PvP, Raiders and many other playstyles and interests. Looking for more great info? Check out the WoW Insider Directory for the best of our guides and analysis.Filed under: Priest, Patches, Items, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
brittwilson Mar 25th 2008 12:54PM
Ummmmm, wheres the spirit loaded weapons? After making all these changes to mana regen over the last few patches, there better be a new spirit weapon........
Jill Mar 25th 2008 1:01PM
I think I would have a little more confidence in your assessment of the priest class if you could properly spell "Vampiric Touch."
VSUReaper Mar 25th 2008 1:03PM
I agree with Brit: wheres all the massive amounts of spirit???
@ Adam, no offense man, you write great articles about warriors, but this was kinda lack luster. You grouped disc in with spriests gear.... when disc is more into the healing gear....
Adam Holisky Mar 25th 2008 1:14PM
Thanks for pointing this out, it was more an editing mistake than anything. I do a good bit of off night raiding as a disc priest and I use a mixture of Shadow, Holy, and PvP gear.
"hai guyz! Should I wriate up posts @ 2 a.m.?"
Answer:
"Go 2 bed, noob"
Winks Mar 25th 2008 1:07PM
"For Shadow and Disc Priests, the key pieces of new raid and craftable gear includes:"
...
Are you serious?
kazimar Mar 25th 2008 1:26PM
oh boy, silent resolve buff. my heart flutters. who knew they could add such a useful and dynamic buff too the holy tree.. or rather, the disc tree. Forget that some priests are unable to get CoH if they are forced to get Imp DS. Let's buff reduced threat generation for the nubs who either can pull aggro off a tank by healing, or pick a nub tank.
On the lighter side of things, although not priest specific, the spirit/int buff gained me around 200mp5 on either side of the 5 second rule, in t5/t6 gear. I am still using Ethereum Life Staff from TK, we shall see what it is like with the Gurtogg staff or the neat one from sunwell.
thebvp Mar 25th 2008 1:09PM
A better grouping would be:
1) shadow
2) disc (pvp)
3) holy (pve healer)
4) LOLSMITE!
Onoral Mar 25th 2008 1:18PM
Woah, way to gloss over the amazing Power Infusion change. To all 7 lolsmiters out there, this buff is game-changing. The haste buff with Surge of Light will allow for more DPS sooner, and the mana savings means more smites in the long run. Then again, all 7 of us lolsmiters already realize this is some of the best endgame damage out there, and probably all realized how amazing this buff really is.
Ben Mar 25th 2008 1:38PM
Oooh, exciting! Silent resolve affects more spells now! Oh wait, according to the tooltip it was already supposed to be reducing the threat of all my holy and discipline spells. I love how every few patches they come along and say, "Hey, you know that talent you spent points in because you thought it would do what we told you it would do? It wasn't actually doing that....but now it does, so everything's all better, right?"
Duntherk Mar 25th 2008 1:42PM
Don't forget the Scryer's Blade of Focus for the weapons: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=34895
Check out http://www.shadowpriest.com/ and their gear forum to get a list of how they rate it.
Candina@WH Mar 25th 2008 1:56PM
As a Shadow priest, patch 2.4 rates a 'Meh' from a talent/spell perspective.
A thumbs up for new content and new toys.
A thumbs down for 'Yet Another Rep Grind' YARG matey's.
scarybooster Apr 1st 2008 8:44AM
Good thing Blizzard didn't replace Lightwell with something useful...
borgman Mar 25th 2008 2:13PM
priests got almost nothing good for spells/ability changes this patch, the gear is nice though
josh Mar 25th 2008 3:16PM
To the author, you can do better than this. Update the article with scryers blade and more of the 2.4 changes. Fix the shadow/disc priest gear. The buff to haste is by far the biggest change for shadow priests as it greatly increases the value of a load of pre-2.4 and 2.4 gear (1 haste=1 spell damage at 1400 +damage). As far as gear, you left out multiple important items (i know you said it wasn't exhaustive...but still, the other class articles did better). Especially, Timbal's Focusing Crystal - Priestess Delrissa, Heroic Magister's Terrace which is now the best shadow priest trinket in the game and Scryers Blade of Focus - new badge loot, which is on par with the Vengeful Blade. See: http://shadowpriest.com/viewtopic.php?t=9844 for a ranked list of shadow priest gear. All the new shadow gear from the patch is bolded in red.
Nails Mar 25th 2008 2:28PM
no mention of the kickass trinket from heroic MT?
[Timbal's Focusing Crystal]
http://wowhead.com/?item=34470
shadowpriests rejoice!
i can't to get that thing
Nails Mar 25th 2008 2:49PM
heh my last sentence got all garbled when it was posted, wierd
Naix Mar 26th 2008 2:19PM
I will roll against you on my warlock and win.
JSG Mar 25th 2008 2:50PM
What do you think of Priests in patch 2.4? Personally, I'm not seeing many reasons to be upset, and if anything, the extra gear is going to be pretty nice.
Well, lets look at the other classes. Just about everyone else gets improvements... and priest is still unchanged.
Oh wow, they allow us to repair the huge class deficiencies with gear. It's bandaids on bullet wounds here.
Post-TBC, the only way priest is viable in PvP is being all geared up and using the cookie-cutter Disc/Holy spec. Shadow Priest is a joke in PvP, and only good for being a mana battery in PvE.
I don't even want to hear the "burst damage" b.s., since that assumes every player in PvP doesn't view Shadowform as one huge "please kill me" sign. Same goes for Mind Flay- I've stopped using it since all it manages to do is give everyone a big blue arrow showing where the wimpy Shadow Priest is located.
Priest gets attacked, by ANY other class... and 4Priest gets killed a few seconds later (unless priest runs away and gets really, really lucky). Priests have zero way to avoid getting killed, since almost every PvP'er already has a trinket which makes fear irrelevant.
So no, I don't view more gear as a solution.
josh Mar 25th 2008 3:18PM
With skill shadow priests can do quite well. Learn to pvp in shadow and take pride in your abilities. At least our class takes skill to succeed in pvp.
For example, take a look at Noxn here:
http://www.wowarmory.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Mannoroth&n=Noxn
Noxn has skills.
Naix Mar 26th 2008 2:17PM
I am not impressed with Noxn. A SL/SL warlock in shadoweave and some blues would make him cry a single Shadow Priest wanta be warlock tear.