Priests: 2008 the year of change
by Matt Low 
Dec 31st 2008 at 2:00PM
That year flew by really quick, didn't it? Last year, I remember I was working my way through Tempest Keep (Kael'Thas even). 2008 brought in a complete set of additions and changes for the Priest class across all 3 specs.
So, shall we get down to Priest class changes? Ranked in no particular order, we'll go over a few of the changes and the impact they had on the current game.
1) Fear Ward for Shadow: Even though Fear Ward become usable by all races in the tail end of 2007, Shadow Priests in Shadow form were unable to use it. This changed in Patch 2.4 (the Fury of the Sunwell). While it didn't have a major effect for Holy or Disc Priests, Shadow Priests were quite happy since they no longer had to switch out in order to cast Fear Ward and then switch back to Shadow to resume the melting of faces.
2) Holy Nova turns into a baseline spell: This former 11 point talent became trainable for all Priests. Desperate Prayer replaced its position on the talent tree. Humans and Dwarves were no longer the only race with access to it as now every race could use it.
3) Priest racial abilities removed: Many different Priest racial abilities were removed from the game. Others turned into talents or became trainable. Many players were disappointed or downright angry with the changes . Fast forward a few months later and its back to business for the Holy Priests.
4) Leveling Holy is easier: Especially when Holy Fire's cast time was reduced to 2 seconds.
5) Spellpower unification: There used to be separate items for spell damage and healing. A healer weapon had +healing and DPS casters had +spell damage. Earlier in the year, spell damage and healing stats were removed and a new stat known as spellpower was introduced. This would affect both damage and healing spells. As a side effect of this, Mages, Warlocks and Priests found themselves competing against each other for certain pieces of gear. The end result means more gear being used and less gear being sharded or vendored.
6) Discipline becomes even more viable as a raiding spec: Discipline was often seen as a PvP only spec for the extra survivability it offered for Priests. Some guilds have started including Discipline Priests in their raids.
7) Introduction of new 51 point talents:
- Penance: The staple of Discipline Priests
- Guardian Spirit: The castable cheat death for Holy Priests
- Dispersion: When things are about to go really bad for Shadow Priests.
8) Inner Fire is a must use: Although certain Priests (such as myself) had a bad habit of not using Inner Fire in the past, the change that gave it a spellpower buff component renders it a must buff for any Priest.
9) Circle of Healing became "smart": Circle of Healing used to be a spell that affected party members only. Now it can work on any target in the raid group of the Priest. In addition, a very important change was introduced: Circle of Heaing no longer healed summoned Snakes from Snake Traps. Thank goodness.
10) Crits all around: Prayer of Mending and Mind Flay can now crit. Priests everywhere jumped for joy since it meant more "on crit" effects could trigger.
11) Lightwell: The often ridiculed "lolwell" became vastly improved. It's cast time was dropped, the charges were increased, and the cooldown use was lowered. But is it being used? Yes but it isn't a must have ability. I've seen its use by other Priests in various runs but it does not appear to be popular.
12) Wand Specialization removed: Arguably a top useless talent in the game is removed. Twin Disciplines replaces it.
So what's next?
Perhaps the biggest upcoming change is that Circle of Healing will be hit with a 6 second cooldown between uses. You can read my reactions about it. For the most part, I'll be shrugging it off and adapting.
All in all, 2008 was a big year for Priests. I wouldn't want to say that it was a great year. That's entirely your perspective. But no one can deny that the year changed a lot of things for our class.
Who wants to take a stab and predict what other changes will be in store for 2009?
Filed under: Human, Night Elves, Dwarves, Undead, Trolls, Priest, Draenei, Blood Elves
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Rihlsul Dec 31st 2008 2:08PM
Hey, don't underestimate the awesomeness that will be castable-on-others Levitate. =P
PalominoMule Dec 31st 2008 3:13PM
I only hope that extending Levitate to others prompts them to maybe *fix* the spell. Man, I love this situation with Levitate:
I'm in the water. I would like to be *above* the water. Of course you can't jump while you have levitate *on*. My options consist of the following:
1. Find a way to get back up onto land and then cast it. Not so bad if I'm in a relatively narrow stream, slightly more problematic if I'm out at sea or surrounded by sheer cliffs.
2. Jump above the water and hit Levitate, hoping it goes through at the right time to keep me above the water. If I time it wrong, I end up *in* the water with levitation, unable to jump above the surface and still swimming. I have to remove the buff and try again. Note that timing will change depending on my current latency.
2 can be a right pain to work with. I cannot imagine how it can be done when I'm casting it on *another person*, except with a lot of luck or patience.
That said, I am eagerly awaiting Levitate for others, because I anticipate using it at inopportune times to annoy the heck out of other people. Since I can't downrank spells and spam heals on people until they scream anymore, I've been lacking in annoying spells.
Mr. Crow Dec 31st 2008 2:21PM
It's my hope that the future of WoW will bring us a viable, competitive Holy DPS spec. The spellpower unification means that Priests can actually get decent SP and crit, but having to dive so deep into Holy to do it means you lose out on a lot of the good tools for Holy DPS to be found in Discipline. I don't know if this Holy DPS spec can happen before the next expansion (and I don't foresee an expansion in 2009) but it's something I'll be pulling for.
Evi Dec 31st 2008 2:31PM
And I want holy form to go along with it! I hardly care what it does, I just want it. :D
Ueber Dec 31st 2008 2:38PM
Frankly, I don't see a holy DPS spec in the cards for us. Blizzard has had plenty of opportunities to retool things in that direction and it hasn't happened--if anything, they've scattered the potential holy DPS talents intentionally so we can't pick them all up. For some reason, we're the one class that lacks a single, unified healing tree. It probably dates back to the antiquated priests as the end all healer design. While we're unique in the sense that we're the only class with two healing trees, I think we're harder to balance because of it.
And Matt, I know you are a die-hard holy/healing priest , but come on. Fear ward for shadow is about the most shadow-specific comment here. I would have at the very least expected the complete overhaul of VT and shadow DPS to have made the list instead of some of these other silly things. Going from sub-par DPS but rocking mana battery to proper DPS with a shared regeneration capability is a more fundamental change than most of the things on your list and one that I would think most serious raiders would have taken note of.
Niomi Dec 31st 2008 6:36PM
What next, a competitive resto druid DPS spec? The focus of the Holy tree is by nature, for heals, and Shadow DPS leaves little to be desired. What's the point? Do you feel sentimental for smite?
Some1 Dec 31st 2008 3:04PM
It's such a shame that they removed the priest racial spells. I really liked those as a draenei priest.
Chastise was awesome in PvP, it gave me more time to react. I was often just defenseless as a Holy priest. Okay, it was not that great, but it could be useful.
Symbol of Hope was also quite nice. An instant small mana reg is always useful. It's nothing anymore what it was before, now with that damned channel time. I hardly use it anymore.
PalominoMule Dec 31st 2008 3:29PM
I too play a draenei priest, and I miss the original Fear Ward, incapacitating Chastise (the rooting one being less useful for me; at least I had an interrupt to use in an instance if a mob was bothersome), and most of all, Symbol of Hope. That was a lovely bit of mana regen there. Not huge, but dependable and unobtrusive.
Mark Dec 31st 2008 4:14PM
You think you have it bad? I was a night elf priest until level 14 and I learned of the racials. I deleted and rolled a dwarf priest for fear ward.
Now my priest is an ugly-ass dwarf with racials I don't need or want, instead of a super-sexy shadow meld. All so I could fear ward the tank, which any priest can do now. Besides which they nerfed the living crap out of fear ward anyway.
Blizzard owes all dwarf priests the opportunity to take a free race change.
Terrant Dec 31st 2008 5:40PM
...and some of us have a more refined aesthetic sense that appreciates the short and stout inhabitants of Azeroth. :)
zappo Dec 31st 2008 3:21PM
A year of change... and yet another picture of a character in a sunset.
Anyway I'll sort of miss the old Holy Fire. It was like the ultimate lol spell. You spend FOREVER casting it (think Dragonball Z) and this really cool explosion of holy light... and then it doesn't even do that much damage. It was always fun when a raid was getting a tad boring to through in a holy fire and have people saying "zomg the big guns are out!!".
Gerik Dec 31st 2008 3:49PM
Patch 2.4's change to spirit-based mana regeneration doesn't get mentioned? It was one of the biggest changes of the year for priests shy of the WotLK stuff.
vocenoctum Dec 31st 2008 4:03PM
I'd love it if they replaced the Lolwell with a Lightform. Something angelic that added to Holy damage/healing, or crit chance, or just made you glow so people could see you better... :)
Chastise was useful, I'm sad to see it go, but the Hymn of Hope thing is just worthless as is. It needs to go back to instant cast, or return more mana with a longer cooldown.
artjunkie808 Dec 31st 2008 4:09PM
I prefered shadow being a mana battery to being a raw DPS spec. I have my warlock for raw dpsing, I liked being a semi unique class in a game with now 10 classes and 11+ million players.... Oh well, I'm respecing to disc as soon as i hit 80 :(
Superjay Dec 31st 2008 4:21PM
I can't speak to other classes and specs, but I'll remember 2008 as the death of my very favorite-ist MMO character ever, the shadow priest. The homogenizing of the classes is making the game mind-numbingly dull. I loved being a utility class and mana battery, even with low DPS output. It was great actually having to be a good player to justify a raid spot. Why be a SP now? They're no better than any other button-mashing pew-pew class now, and without CC.
I'm guessing it's why I see very few SPs nowadays... they're all Disc or Holy now.
Stephen Dec 31st 2008 4:41PM
It seems that being a shadow priest just stopped being as much fun after patch 3.0. All of our guildmembers who had SP main characters, either switched to a healing spec, or have another toon as their main character.
Jennifer Dec 31st 2008 4:46PM
AMEN!
I was an Enh shaman pre-BC, and I enjoyed being the underwhelming DPS class that was begged for by all the rogues. Not everyone gets stars in their eyes by competing on the meters -- some of us enjoyed being pure utility.
In wrath, now I'm healing. It's the closest thing I can get to being a "pure buffing" class.
Hisevondil Jan 1st 2009 10:33AM
Now that druids have a regular rez, like every other healer, in order to keep priests competitive they need something else like a self battle rez or a soul stone. I have watched druid healers now move to the fore front of raids because of the advantage of the battle rez. Shaman also have the anhk. Priests don't have anything like this and are now getting a nerf to the one ability that makes them viable in raiding, the circle of healing spell.
Jennifer Dec 31st 2008 4:47PM
*cough cough*
pre-BC = pre-Wrath
I need to update my expansion lingo. ;)
syco Dec 31st 2008 5:49PM
My friend, who plays a PvE Disc priest, was f'ing pissed that wand specialization was removed, since he's wanding whenever there is no healing to do. Unlike other ranged weapons, there's no other way to augment wand damage, so such a huge multiplier on wands was awesome. Twin Disciplines is a nice talent, to be sure, but I can see why he was upset with this change.